Thank you for reading! I don't own any of Harry Potter! Please let me know if you enjoy! Updates every Saturday!

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Harriet blinked at Ron and Hermione.

Ron and Hermione blinked back.

"Are you……are you positive you heard him correctly, Harriet?" Hermione asked.

Ron frowned as Harriet furrowed her brow and replied in a huff, "Yes, I'm positive I heard him correctly, Hermione! Do you think I'm daft?!"

"No, no!" Hermione said defensively as she raised a hand, "I didn't mean that……it's just…..you did have a really terrible fall. I'm certain Madam Pomfrey gave you a few potions to help with the pain. Are you positive that what you heard wasn't a hallucination?...From a side effect or something?"

Harriet frowned at Hermione while Ron innocently asked, "I thought Professor Snape told us that most healing potions don't give people many side effects?"

"Not many and none are two different things, Ron." Hermione quipped.

Ron shrugged as he glanced away.

"So you two don't believe me then?" Harriet asked with a scowl, "Look, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I heard him! I did!"

"No, Harriet! It's not that! We believe you!" Hermione insisted, "I….I think you should be absolutely certain though before you accuse Malfoy of saying all that! Can you imagine what would happen if I was right and you dreamed it instead?"

"I never said I was going to accuse him of anything." Harriet huffed.

"...Then what are you going to do?" Ron asked with a frown as he looked at Harriet.

"The same thing I've done for years." Harriet shrugged, "I'm going to try my best to avoid him."

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That night, Draco wore a deep frown on his pale, handsome face as he stared down at the blank diary page.

He had become well accustomed to the exact time that Harriet's words usually appeared in front of his eyes.

As Draco did every evening, he sat with the diary page in his hand, ten minutes before he expected to begin communicating with his darling.

He eagerly anticipated the start of what would be another one of their secret conversations, but the time for Harriet to write came…….and passed.

Draco's heart clenched as two minutes went by and her words failed to appear.

Three minutes.

Four………..

Five.

By minute ten, his pulse pounded so quickly that his arms trembled as he waited, quill in his hand, frown still on his face.

Draco sat there for the next hour, waiting, watching, and hoping, but for the first night in over a year, Harriet's words never came across that torn out diary page.

Across the castle, during that hour before bed, although Harriet kept up a lively conversation with her friends in the Gryffindor common room while they laughed and chatted together, her mind kept wandering back to the diary.

It pained her to have finally learned the identity of her pen pal.

She had really enjoyed using the diary to find a confidant in an unseen friend, yet the truth that she had been writing to Draco Malfoy the entire time mortified her.

In the Slytherin common room, Draco eventually accepted his defeat, stood, placed the torn out diary page into his pocket and trudged to bed with a deep pout engraved on his handsome features.

He kept a woeful look on his face even as he laid down and closed his eyes to sleep.

A thousand pressing questions ran through his mind as his broken heart established a blockade between him and drowsiness.

Why hadn't Harriet written to him that evening?

Had she become ill?

Had she grown tired of writing?

Draco continued to feel confident that Harriet had been asleep during his secret confession.

The Malfoys' arrogance comforted him as he rolled over in bed.

Draco never had the thought enter his mind that Harriet could have possibly heard him…..

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As the remainder of the school year passed and summer mercifully arrived, Harriet and Draco both felt a sense of melancholy settle around them.

Draco continued to haughtily sneer and boast as if nothing were wrong.

Harriet kept her smile as she spent time with her friends, but they both harbored wounded hearts.

Harriet did not welcome Draco's feelings, yet she dearly missed writing to him in the diary.

Draco lamented the loss of his only window to Harriet.

That summer, things were different at the Snapes' cottage and Malfoy manor as Harriet and Draco went through the days of the warm season with forlorn frowns on their faces.

Draco lied to his parents and said he had a disagreement with a classmate which continued to annoy him.

Lucius and Narcissa foolishly believed his falsehood.

Harriet didn't say much at all.

Whenever Severus or Lily asked what troubled her, she mumbled to them and left the room as quickly as possible.

Lily didn't stop trying to discover the truth.

While her brothers napped upstairs one afternoon, Harriet sat at the table and ate her lunch with a scowl while her parents watched.

"...Sweetheart?" Lily asked gently.

"What, Mum?" Harriet answered with a frown as she looked up to meet her mother's gaze.

Severus mirrored his daughter's expression as Lily went on, "Your father and I would really appreciate you telling us what troubles you so, darling. We love you and want you to be happy! There's nothing you can't share with us!"

Lily flashed Harriet a kind smile as she reached over and took Severus's hand in hers.

Harriet hated her own senseless anger, but as she watched Lily and Severus, it annoyed her to see how obviously in love her parents seemed.

Harriet furrowed her brow as she stood from the table with her teeth clenched and stomped over to the staircase.

"Young lady….." Severus called out warningly in his low drawl, "I beg your pardon, Miss Snape, but will you allow your father to ask where you are going?"

"I don't feel well." Harriet murmured as she traipsed up the stairs without turning around, "I'll be in my room."

Severus and Lily exchanged concerned frowns as they heard Harriet close her bedroom door after she reached the landing.

Neither of them saw their poor daughter flop down on her bed in the privacy of her room.

Alone as she wrestled with her feelings, Harriet covered her face with the pillow that she hugged tightly to her chest in an effort not to scream.

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Harriet's unknown trouble weighed on her parents.

As they readied for bed that evening, after a summer of dealing with their daughter's unwarranted, uncharacteristic surliness, Severus and Lily searched for a way to help Harriet.

Lily's heart ached at simply knowing that something bothered her daughter.

Severus held great concern for Harriet, but it destroyed him to see Lily so unhappy about their eldest child's plight.

Lily laid down in bed first that night and rolled towards the wall.

Severus slipped in behind her a moment later as he laid a hand gently on her shoulder before he bent down and kissed her cheek.

Lily said nothing in response, but Severus felt her move back in bed until their bodies touched softly.

"Lily, my love," He drawled in a low purr as they both laid together in the darkness, "Please……I beg you to show me kindness...my heart can't bear the sight of your displeasure."

Lily turned towards Severus as she looked up at him with a pout.

Severus frowned down at her before she exclaimed, "I can't help it, Sev…I'm worried about Harriet! I'm afraid something terrible has happened to her and she's refusing to tell us for some reason!"

Lily's words roused Severus's most paranoid suspicions as a dark scowl quickly clouded his pale face as he asked, "...Something terrible? Something terrible such as….? Do you think someone has had the audacity to hurt our daughter?"

"Well, clearly someone's done something to her!" Lily gasped as she lifted one of her hands, "Someone's hurt my baby, Sev! What do you expect? Of course I'm not going to be happy! Not until I know she's alright!"

"I have the opportunity to observe Harriet every day at the castle during class and meals." Severus reasoned as his scowl remained, "I would have noticed it in her face if the transgression had been violent. I doubt any physical harm came to her or that she's with—"

"Would you stop going on about her being with child?!" Lily snapped as she sat up in bed and glared at her husband, "Since she first bled, that's all it is with you, Sev! She could be with child, she will be with child, she may be with child…..There are other obstacles in a young woman's life! What kind of girl do you think we've raised her to be?!"

Severus's frown deepened as Lily huffed at him and rolled over in bed again.

Determined not to give up, Severus gently wrapped his arms around his beloved flower.

Her voice had sounded angry but she welcomed his embrace and settled against him as he placed his lips next to her ear.

His words escaped his throat in a delicious, velvet whisper that sent goosebumps prickling down Lily's spine, " I think we've raised our daughter to be as bright, beautiful, and kind as her mother……..I can take little credit for that achievement, though. It was you who carried her, you who bore her, and you who taught her, Lily. I could ask for no better wife, no better mate, and no better mother for my children."

Tears welled in Lily's emerald eyes while Severus placed a gentle kiss on her neck, right under her ear.

"Sev…….." Lily whispered as she raised a hand behind herself to gently hold Severus's cheek.

She tried to turn and look at him, but Severus hadn't finished.

He chose to keep his bride possessively in his grasp as he went on, "I think our daughter's struggling with something she thinks we can't understand…..or won't…..for whatever reason. She is beautiful and kind like you, Lily, and that makes me fear for her safety, not doubt her character…..I was a young, unmated alpha once. While my heart never fostered the darkness that plague some, I am well aware that those dangers exist."

Lily settled into Severus's embrace as he held her more tightly.

"I wonder if Harriet would be willing to discuss her troubles in greater detail if she views us as more relatable?" Severus mused.

Lily tried to roll over again and found success after Severus loosened his protective grip on her at last.

"What do you mean, Sev?" She asked.

"We'll share some insight with her tomorrow…….that may spur her to speak about her…..difficulty…..and perhaps then, we may finally discover a way to aid her." He surmised.

Lily smiled at Severus in the darkness as he frowned, "...May I know your input on the matter?"

"I think that's a wonderful idea, Sev!" Lily chuckled.

The sound of her laughter and the flash of her smile was enough to place a bandage on Severus's aching heart.

As Lily kissed him lovingly while they lay together, Severus felt soothed and complete.

It comforted him to have developed an action plan of how to help his daughter after many weeks of faltering.

Professor Snape wanted to see Harriet smile again, as brightly as her mother.