Chapter Text
Harry crouches beside the small cluster of pots by the window, touching the edge of a basil leaf with the care of someone greeting an old friend.
The thyme’s gone a little leggy, curling toward the meagre sun, and the mint is holding on pretty well as well - stubbornly green despite the frost threading along the sill.
Molly’s note is still pinned to the container they’re in, back from when she gifted them to him. The ink is slightly smudged now.
Water every other day. Don’t forget to talk to them.
A heart doodled at the end.
Harry grins, brushing the tip of his finger across the handwriting, remembering how she’d tapped his cheek and said even basil needed love if you wanted it to come back strong. He knows she might’ve been talking about more than herbs at the time.
“Thanks for keeping them safe,” he says quietly, half to the plants, half to the woman wrapped in her dressing gown behind him.
Molly looks up from her knitting at the kitchen table. “You sound surprised that I did, dear.”
“I shouldn’t be,” Harry admits, standing and dusting soil from his hands. “You’ve always had the magic touch.”
“Oh, don’t you start,” she chuckles. “Arthur’s been teasing me all week for mothering your herbs like they’re children.”
“They kind of are mine,” he says, smiling.
She tuts, eyes twinkling. “Mm, well. None of them are ginger, so I suppose they must take after you.”
Harry blinks, then laughs, flushing to the tips of his ears. “Right. Okay.”
She waves a hand, mock-dismissive. “Sit down, dear. Did you make your list?”
He sinks into the chair opposite, pulling a scrap of parchment toward him. He runs his thumb down what he’s got so far, jotting a few more names before they slip his mind.
Bulbs to plant come february or march: lilies, dahlias, gladioli. Maybe anemones, too, for the early summer colour.
And he’ll have to check the beds for frost damage, top up the mulch. Maybe replace the broken trellis by the side fence before the roses begin their climb.
By june, they should be in bloom - those first ones he planted last summer, if all’s gone well. Pinks and whites clustered low, and behind them, the alliums, tall and bold in purple bursts. Then the dahlias in late bloom, drawing the eye upward in rich reds and amber. He hopes it looks as good as he’s picturing it now: a full garden, carefully layered. Built to lead people in.
Hermione’s said more than once that the effort she’s seen him put in means far more than any bloom ever could - but he’s not about to stop now.
It’s odd, in a quiet way, to think how much of the year is already sketched out in this garden. How much of himself he’s been slowly planting into it. Even now, with bare branches and frozen soil, it’s all there - the ceremony, the summer light, the paths people will walk.
He adds freesias and ranunculus beneath the list, underlining them once. Then pauses - hesitates - before scribbling sweet peas beside them, a small smile tugging at his mouth. He’ll need new gardening gloves too; there’s a hole in the last pair from weeding, right where his thumb kept brushing the soil.
“Think I could borrow Arthur’s car this weekend? I want to check out the muggle market on saturday."
Molly hums from her chair. “If it involves you and muggle trinkets, dear, he’ll drive the car himself.”
Arthur says the same thing when he arrives, pressing a kiss to Molly’s cheek and giving Harry a warm clap on the back.
They settle in for dinner not long after - the original miso salmon plan, a tradition of sorts now, getting scrapped in favour of practicality when Molly remembers she pulled chicken from the freezer.
With Arthur’s suggestions and Harry’s entirely improvised creative direction, they cobble together a sauce that isn’t quite traditional but smells rich and savoury all the same. Soy, ginger, a bit of honey, something vaguely citrusy from the back of the pantry.
They eat around the familiar scuffed wood, Arthur recounting a mishap from work involving a confused muggle vacuum cleaner that had tried to eat half a filing cabinet. Harry listens, laughs, soaks in the comfort of it – letting it settle around him like a well-worn jumper.
Later, upstairs, he clears the space on his desk by the window, brushing aside a few stray parchments from his last letter. The small carved stones are still there - his original prototype, and the one he’s been fiddling with since Christmas, runes smoothed nearly flat from how often he’s turned it over in his hand.
He thinks of the ward.
He wonders, idly, if a memory charm might work in tandem with it. One that doesn’t just pulse in emergencies but records changes in the surrounding wards slowly, like breath. A kind of magical barometer. A reading that can tell you how the place is feeling.
He could try sketching it out tomorrow. Along with the light variations he'd been thinking about - subtle colour pulses, shifts in warmth, small visual cues to match the wards’ internal landscape.
Smiling faintly, he sets it down and crosses the room, barely toeing off his socks before flopping onto the bed with a quiet groan. He doesn't bother with pyjamas - just lies there for a moment, jeans half-unbuttoned, jumper wrinkled, letting the peace of the day settle into the mattress beneath him.
His eyes drift shut before he even means to, thoughts meandering.
Lark’s dry humour. The sleepy warmth of the hatchlings tucked under heat spells. The sharp shove of the ward at his chest, abrupt and unyielding. The way Charlie had smiled at him last time, all soft and sunlit, like Harry was something he wanted to linger over.
Tomorrow, he thinks vaguely, mind tugging at the thread of runes and light again.
He’ll try the colorwork. Maybe start with green.
***
The café is tucked just behind Diagon alley, half muggle, half wizarding, all charm. Luna is already there, perched cross-legged on the bench with a slice of carrot cake the size of a textbook.
Ginny arrives half an hour late, hair still damp from practice and temper already sharp from it.
“You look disgustingly well-rested,” she tells Harry as she sits, flagging down the waitress for coffee. “What’s your secret? Lavender oil? Hot baths? Regular sex?”
“Gardening,” he chuckles. “And therapy.”
Luna hums like that makes perfect sense. “Both very grounding practices,” she says, then taps her spoon once against the rim of her mug.
Ginny snorts, but she’s smiling. She waits all of two minutes after her coffee arrives before zeroing in. “Okay, fine.” she eyes him with that investigative expression. “We’re doing this now. The proper talk.”
Harry smiles despite the roll of his eyes. “Do we have to call it that?”
“Yes,” Ginny replies sweetly. “I let you off at Christmas because mum was hovering, but I’m reclaiming my right as the nosiest sibling alive.”
Luna tilts her head, sipping her tea. “You could draw a diagram instead,” she offers. “Sometimes it’s easier.”
Harry blinks. “A diagram of what, exactly?”
“The sex life, obviously.” Ginny smirks over the rim of her cup.
Luna swats her gently with the back of her hand. “His emotional ecosystem,” she replies, utterly unbothered. “His happiness. How it’s shifted. Though I suppose reproductive rituals are part of some species’ bonding displays.”
Ginny lets out a delighted snort. “Gods, please do that. Make sure to annotate.”
Harry groans and drops his face into his hands. “I should have known it would go like this.”
“You’re fiiine,” Ginny drawls cheerfully. “You’re just squirmy because you’re in love and we can tell.”
“Deeply in love,” Luna confirms, serene.
Ginny grins and nudges Harry’s foot under the table. “Come on, spill it. The ward work is impressive, but I want the nitty-gritties. The exact wording of how you confessed will do.”
Harry lifts his head, narrowing his eyes at her. “How did you even know it was me?” He pauses, then sighs. “Not that you’re wrong.”
Ginny leans in, smug. “I never am. And I know Charlie. If he kept that stubborn mouth shut for ages, someone had to crack first. My galleons were always on you.”
Luna props her chin on her hand, looking dreamily pleased. “Was it romantic? Or impulsive?”
“Sort of both,” Harry admits. “And awful. And maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
He tells them then - about the alleyway after the club, how everything had been too loud in his head, the way Charlie had held him without judgement, the quiet we’ll talk tomorrow that somehow turned into a full-blown, messy, terrifyingly honest conversation in the shed.
By the time he finishes, his coffee’s almost gone cold.
Ginny’s unusually quiet for most of it; fingers curled loosely around her mug. She lets out a slow breath and leans back, watching him like she’s seeing something she hoped for.
“Well, it’s about bloody time you two got your happy days,” she says warmly. “Very glad I didn’t have to stoop low enough to lock you in a room together.”
Harry lets out a breathless sort of laugh, a little sheepish. “That’s it? I was braced for at least three sarcastic jabs.”
Ginny shrugs, eyes dancing. “Ugh, I know. It’s disgusting. But I’m feeling almost… sentimental."
Luna reaches over and draws a tiny heart in the condensation on his water glass, then quietly slips her fingers into his. He squeezes back, grateful.
“I’m planning to tell Bill and Fleur this weekend,” he adds, smiling. “They’ve asked me to watch Odette for a few hours while they’re at one of Bill’s work things. Figured it’d be a good moment.”
“Not that I think we’ll need to say much,” he continues. “Bill’s letters to Charlie lately have been apparently very... hinty.”
Ginny bursts out laughing. “Yeah, he told me about that. Said he’s trying to stay vague on purpose just to see how long Bill can dance around the innuendo.”
“It’s lovely,” Luna says thoughtfully, “how you all seem to loop into each other’s rhythms without trying.”
“Hey,” Harry says, bumping her arm. “You’re the one who gets all of us, even when we’re being thick.”
He snags a stray pen from the café’s sugar pot - probably meant for feedback cards - and starts sketching a rough graph on his napkin, scrawling: G, L, R, H, N, C clustered around a rising line labelled Happiness.
“See,” he says, nudging it toward Luna. “You being here makes the line go up.”
Luna and Ginny both glance at each other - and then, perfectly in sync but wildly different in tone, speak at once.
“Aww, Harry, that’s so sweet,” Luna says, her voice soft with delight.
“Fuck, what is wrong with you?” Ginny blurts. “Do you want me to cry?”
Harry laughs, startled.
The thoughts of his future have been creeping in lately, quiet and stubborn and oddly warm.
One made of little certainties: the garden. A weekend with Odette. A wedding in June.
One that actually feels like his.
***
He comes back from Bill and Fleur’s late sunday afternoon, his jumper still streaked with pale blots of baby food he hasn’t bothered to vanish.
He’d told them everything during their return, Bill listening with his arms crossed and a telltale smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.
Fleur had leaned in to press a kiss to his temple when he’d finished. “At last,” she’d murmured. “I am very happy for you, mon lapin. It was time.”
He finds the letter on the kitchen table.
It waits neatly sealed, the handwriting neat and angular, the Ministry of Magic crest pressed into the corner. Not one of the usual quarterly attempts to lure him back to the Auror Office.
He breaks the seal.
Mr Potter,
I have received word from Mirelle DuVal regarding the Romanian containment-ward.When the matter was first brought to my attention, I understood the ward in question to be of limited structural value - structurally unsalvageable, its core design incompatible with modern stabilisation methods - and therefore declined direct involvement, offering only theoretical guidance to the team. My schedule at the time did not permit closer engagement.
Your method of intervention, and the reported reactivity of the ward’s lower strata, indicate properties of both age and complexity that merit further study.
I have also been informed of the adaptive resonance stone you crafted before the event that has been used to monitor its condition. Its design and intended function appear, from the description, to align curiously with certain harmonic models currently under review in our department. I would be most interested in examining It and sharing details of our current model, should you be willing to share your notes.
If you are amenable, I would like to discuss your observations in greater depth. The Ministry has granted provisional clearance for a formal review of the site in March, at which time you and the involved team would be welcome to join us.
With respect,
Dietrich Adler
Ward Master, German Ministry of Magic
***
Dinner with Ron and Hermione is a familiar sort of chaos, just like every time. The little restaurant near their apartment hasn’t changed a bit - still slightly crooked tables, still overexcited waiters who refuse to write anything down but somehow remember every order correctly. It used to be their go-to spot before they started venturing farther afield, and something about it tonight feels comfortingly unchanged.
They barely sit down before Hermione orders the gnocchi.
It’s her favourite dish from the menu, has been for ages, because “it’s proper gnocchi - light and pillowy, like it’s supposed to be,” she insists, handing over her menu with a satisfied nod.
“So this bloke’s trying to buy a Fainting Fancy -”
Ron is halfway through a story about George enchanting all the mirrors in the shop to shout compliments at customers when Harry starts to drift, content but distant, letting the laughter around the table wash over him.
“- and the mirror behind him yells ‘Nice arse, mate!’ George nearly got fined for customer harassment.”
Hermione groans. “Honestly, sometimes I think he’s trying to get banned from the Alley altogether.”
“He says it’s good for business,” Ron says, spearing an olive with his fork. “Says people come for the sweets and stay for the flattery.”
Harry laughs, surprised by how easily it comes. “Merlin, I’ve missed this.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ron rolls his eyes, though he’s clearly pleased. “You’re the one running off to Romania every other month. What’s this, your fourth trip now?”
“Second, thank you very much,” Harry corrects, lifting his glass. “I’m going next monday.”
Hermione perks up immediately. “For the ward review?”
Harry nods.
“Has Dietrich said any more about it?”
“We’ve been writing every now and then.” Harry hesitates, swirling the wine. “He offered me an apprenticeship.”
Ron blinks. “He what?”
“Unofficially, at least. For now.” Harry says, a grin starting to tug at the corner of his mouth.
Hermione’s eyes widen before her whole expression softens into something bright and proud. “Harry, that’s - that’s incredible. I heard he barely ever takes apprentices.”
“Yeah, well, he said the same thing,” Harry admits, cheeks warming. “I think he’s mostly curious about what we can turn the stone into. I’ve been fiddling with it more than I probably should, to be honest.”
Ron snorts. “So that’s why it takes you a whole day to answer my owl. I thought you were secretly trying to fade me out.”
Harry rolls his eyes. “You owled me at half ten at night to ask if dragons like biscuits.”
“It was a serious question! Charlie would have taken longer to reach.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hermione says, swatting Ron’s arm lightly. “He’s just excited. It is a big deal.”
“I am excited,” Harry admits. “And a bit nervous, I guess. He got clearance for us to simulate the ward site, and he wants me to go through and demonstrate the stabilisation process in front of a bunch of ward specialists. No pressure.”
Ron makes a face. “I’d rather wrestle a horntail.”
Hermione nudges Harry’s arm. “You’ll be brilliant. You always are.”
“Thanks,” he says softly.
He probably should have been more hesitant saying yes - even unofficially. It’s not like he has a plan, not really. No defined path laid out the way Hermione always seemed to have, or even the steady sense of direction Ron had found lately.
But the truth is, he wants this. The work, the challenge. The feeling like he’s helping shape something that might last. He still doesn’t know exactly what the stone will become, but he trusts his magic a bit more now, and Dietrich trusts him.
And maybe that’s enough.
Their waiter returns to clear plates, and another bottle of wine follows - by that point it would’ve been rude not to. When Hermione excuses herself to take a call from a work friend, Ron immediately leans back in his chair, wearing a smirk.
“So,” he says, dragging the word out. “Excited about seeing him, are we?”
Harry looks up from his glass, deadpan. “Who?”
“My brother,” Ron replies, like he’s been waiting all night for the line. “Charlie. You like him. A lot.”
Harry snorts. “I like all of the Weasley brothers, actually.”
“Sure,” Ron says. “But only one of them has you glancing at the clock every half hour. Let me guess, today’s owl day?”
Harry laughs, shaking his head. “You’re insufferable.”
“Maybe,” Ron says cheerfully. “It’s impressive, the long distance. Never really had to do it with Mione. You’ve definitely got that look.”
“What look?”
“The one that says my heart belongs to a rugged, dragon-wrangling idiot and I miss him terribly. Like a lovesick pensioner.”
“I do not look like that,” Harry says, a little too quickly.
“Right. And I’m not ordering dessert.” Ron flips the menu. “What the hell is an affogato? They must’ve added that recently.”
***
Charlie,
I’ve just arrived home about an hour ago. I’m still half convinced I left something behind. Probably my sense of time, because I swear the whole week went by in about five minutes.
Everything’s unpacked (mostly), and the house feels strange without the hum of the people or Dietrich’s voice explaining something I only half understood. I don’t think I’ve sat still long enough to realise how much we actually did. Between the ward stabilisation re-enactment, the field notes, and discussing the stones, I’m convinced I only remembered to eat thanks to you.
I feel a little guilty for it, even if we still had evenings together. Part of me keeps waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and tell me it was all a misunderstanding - that people like me don’t get offers like that. Old habits, I suppose.
But I can’t deny it feels good. More than good. He’ll be back in Britain next month for a ministry symposium, and said we could officially start then. I have a month to sign the papers, but I’ve already started pulling together all the notes for further tests, which probably tells you everything you need to know.I miss the reserve already. And you.
- H.
***
Harry,
I’m glad it’s good to be back, even if it’s quieter. You deserve the rest. We both knew you were going to sign that apprenticeship the second he matched your level of excitement when you both pulled the stones out. The sentence sounds utterly ridiculous when written down, but alas. Don’t feel guilty, love - I enjoyed every second with you, and would want more nonetheless.
Speaking of more time with you - I talked to Mirelle this morning. She mentioned a few new posts being established through the reserve’s liaison office in the UK. Mostly bureaucratic nonsense, but a few in there are promising - especially the training and transportation ones.
Before you start thinking I’m doing it for you - I might be, but not only for you (don’t make that face). It’d be good for me, too. A change of pace, closer to family, fewer singed casualties. I promise I’ll only take it if it actually sounds interesting.
You’d have laughed at us this week. We had to move a juvenile Hungarian crossbreed - gorgeous creature, terrible manners. Alrik and I spent an hour coaxing her toward the transport pen, and she spent the same hour pretending not to hear us. When she finally moved, it was in the entirely wrong direction - right through a fence panel. You can imagine what it was like trying to get her out.
I’ve got a new mark on my arm and Alrik’s got a new appreciation for protective charms.How did dinner with Neville and Luna go? Tell Luna I said thanks for the sketch of you in the garden - I’ve pinned it up above my desk.
- C.
***
Charlie,
Dinner was good - better than expected, actually. I ended up inviting Ron and Hermione too, since I wanted to get started on the Christmas hamper Ron’s given me last year. There was enough cheese to feed the entire house, five types of chutney, even wine pairings hiding at the bottom of the basket. We opened everything at once, because of course we did.
The blue cheese was the best. Luna kept having it with ginger syrup, which horrified most of us, and everyone started doing it too just to see if it really was that good (it wasn’t). We talked for ages - mostly about the wedding, and Neville’s latest plant experiments, and Ron’s insistence that his new tie makes him look like management.
And about what you said - you didn’t have to tell me you’re not doing it just for me, but I’m glad you did. The whole ‘focus on yourself first’ thing, it goes both ways. Selfishly, I’d like to see more of you, but mostly I just want you to do what feels right.
And send me a picture of the new scar. I’m not going to explain why.
- H.
***
Dear Harry (who hasn't made contact in over a week despite promising),
Thought I’d write before you forget all about the wonderful times we shared with the bucket of live feed in the nursing pen.
First off - congratulations again on what is an entirely impressive and well-deserved apprenticeship with Dietrich. I know you technically already had it when you were here, but still.
The man is just as ridiculous as he is brilliant. After you left, he spent a couple more days walking around like an academic thundercloud, gathering more samples and whatever else you people get up to - absolutely no sense of humour, glaring the smoke back into shape.
He’s unnerving in that very specific, hyper-competent way, but I think he likes you. Or at least, he respects you - which, with people like him, is basically the same thing.Things here have been… weirdly peaceful. The dragons were on their best behaviour, naturally. Can’t have a ministry dignitary thinking we run chaos here. The whole visit was good for morale, I think. Charlie and I have been swapping shifts to free up evenings - walking the southern ridge or pretending to sort inventory while mostly talking shit.
He’s been genuinely happy about the new position. We all are. I know he mentioned to you that he asked about openings, which already says a lot, but what he’s too humble to tell you is that Mirelle had been in talks with the Yorkshire team for a while about someone taking this role - and she’d already put his name forward.
It’s a good fit. Long-term dragon placement and transition work, mostly sanctuary coordination. You know how he is with relocations - big, stubborn dragons listen to him. He doesn’t talk about it, but we all see it.
Attached a picture of me and Alrik, since that’s apparently an official thing now (you can act surprised).
I suppose a bit of thanks is due here.Your second favourite handler,
Lark
***
Harry,
I won’t pretend this is a sensible hour to be writing you - or that this is the kind of letter I should send by ordinary post.
It’s just gone five here. I woke up half out of breath after a particularly vivid dream, and I haven’t been able to settle since. Everything was slowed down in the way dreams are, but gods, it felt real - your glasses thrown crooked on the nightstand, your hand fisting the pillowcase, and that little look you gave me right before you gasped my name.It’s embarrassing, how much I think about you. About your mouth, your smile, the weight of you when you crawl over me to steal the book from my hands.
You’re in my head, love. All day, all night.
-C.
***
Dear Harry,
Hope yeh don’t mind, but I might’ve shown yer last letter to Professor McGonagall. She was askin’ after yeh, and I couldn’t help tellin’ her about all the work yeh’ve been doin’ with the Dietrich fella.
I got one o’ them photos developed from the hogsmeade festival in february - the one when yeh came by. Thought yeh might like it. Don’t mind the blur on the left - that’s me elbow, not some new creature escapin’ the pen. Makes me smile every time I look at it. Proper good day, that was.
You should see the garden now - pumpkins already the size of quaffles and it’s only may. Don’t know what I’m feedin’ ’em this year, but they’re growin’ like they’ve got somethin’ to prove. Got a family of puffskeins tryin’ to nest behind the shed too.
Don’t let those ministry types wear yeh down, though. Make sure yeh take time to rest. And give my best to Charlie when yeh write next.
Take care o’ yerself,
Hagrid
***
Charlie,
I read your letter three times before bed and once again in the morning, because apparently I like making things worse for myself. You shouldn’t write things like that when you know I’m already missing you. It’s unfair.
I didn’t dream. But I did lie there and think about it. And if I don’t move on to another topic now, I’ll have to take an entirely different kind of break.
So, news from the more respectable portion of my life: We’re experimenting with the stone using an imprint matrix. The idea is to have it predict any small imbalances in time before anything actually happens. It’s exhausting and brilliant, and half the team forgets to eat, so Molly’s taken to sending me with suspiciously big lunchboxes. I think she’s trying to feed the entire lab.
The evenings have been quiet. The garden’s waking up all at once - the tulips have lost their minds this year, being absolutely massive. Luna stopped by and said it’s a sign of something good coming.
I miss you too.
-H.
***
[scrawled handwriting on a spare bit of folded parchment, wedged between Harry’s gardening notes and a half-drafted ward schematic]
Harry,
First off: disgusting. You said the miso salmon thing was on your desk, so I came poking around while you were off with Dietrich, but your recipe book had Charlie’s last letter to you on top of it. Thankfully, since you folded it in a real shitty way, I only caught the first couple lines, but it was enough to know I need a St Mungo’s-level brain cleanse.
That said, I’m happy for you. Sickeningly so.
Come round for dinner soon. It’s time to advertise my boyfriend to someone, and I don’t exactly feel like starting with mom. I need to know if he’s really that amazing or if it’s just the pining that’s made me lose all objectivity.
Love,
Gin
***
Harry,
The new post is nearly sorted. I’ll be fully based in Yorkshire for the first six months to settle in properly - site inspections, long-term habitat studies, a few reserve-linked approvals here and there. It’s nice work, and I’m actually looking forward to it. Close to the dragons still, and closer to you.
Lark’s already packed up half my kit. She’s pretending it’s to keep me efficient, but I caught her standing at the edge of the enclosure yesterday with a face like she’d bitten a lemon. She says she’s going to miss having someone around who actually ‘gets it’. I told her she can visit - and I hope that’s alright. She’s already planning a route.
This in-between is getting harder.
Letters help, but they’re not enough now. I want to see your mouth curl when you’re trying not to smile, hear the sound you make when you stretch like a cat first thing in the morning.
I’ll be home soon.
-C.
***
Hagrid,
Sorry it’s taken me this long to write back - your letter’s been sitting on my desk with that photo tucked inside, and I’ve kept looking at it between everything else. I can’t tell you how much it meant.
Thank you for showing McGonagall my letter - though I bet she raised an eyebrow. I’ve been meaning to write her myself, especially now that things are moving forward so quickly with Dietrich’s team. The imprint matrix project’s in full swing. We’re refining the stones weekly, running predictive tracking, and - if all goes well - we might be testing them at the reserve soon. It’s exhausting work, but gods, it makes me feel more like myself than I’ve felt in years.
And speaking of the reserve - Charlie’s already arrived last month. The post came through faster than we expected, and he’s now officially based in the UK. I can’t tell you how good it’s been, just to have him nearby.
I’ll see you at the wedding soon, of course. Hopefully you’ll be proud of everything I’ve planted – even if my pumpkins aren’t nowhere near the size of yours by the sounds of things. There’s even a small patch near the shed I’ve saved in case you want to bring anything to add.
Take care of yourself - and the puffskeins behind the shed.
Much love,
Harry
***
June, 2001
Hermione always thought of roses as a difficult flower. Finicky with their roots, stubborn with their thorns. They had to be tended carefully, patiently, or else they’d wither or lash back.
Which was why, when she’d seen Harry - of all people - crouched in the dirt last spring, hands smudged to the wrists as he coaxed a sapling rosebush into the soil, she’d chuckled so loud from the kitchen window that he’d actually looked up in surprise.
He rolled his eyes, mud streaked halfway up his arms, and flicked a clod of earth at the window in retaliation. She flicked the V at him in return, grinning. He’d grinned back.
It had felt like something sacred. A little moment, reclaimed from all the grief.
Luna had once handed her a book - a slim, frayed volume called The Language of Flowers.
“It’s not really about botany,” she’d said, flipping to a page on violets. “It’s about how people see themselves in what grows.”
Hermione had humoured her, of course. She always did. Filed the meanings away in that meticulous way she did with everything she didn’t want to forget.
Yellow rose: friendship.
Red rose: desire.
Blush pink: admiration.
White: new beginnings. Or sometimes - silence, reverence, the kind of love that waits until the right moment to speak.
She thinks of those pages now as she stands just off the garden path, warm evening light catching on the soft folds of her dress. The air smells of herbs and honeyed wine, of sugar from the cake table and the faintest trace of peat from the low-burning fire pits.
Music drifts from the quartet - a light, lilting melody - and somewhere near the dance floor, Fleur and George are attempting to spin Ron between them while Bill heckles from the drinks table. All of it surrounded by soft arches of ivy and rose, a garden in full, shameless bloom.
And Harry had planted every inch of it.
Bright pink roses along the back fence, because Molly liked them. Yellow and peach tones near the shed, for Ginny, who said they’d make cheerful vase flowers. Blush-toned climbers trained over the ceremony arch - not one shade, but seven - because Hermione had said anything as long as it doesn’t clash and left the rest to him. He’d drawn diagrams. Brought out swatches. Consulted Luna on colour compatibility like he was sitting his N.E.W.T.s again.
And this morning - just as her nerves had begun to gather in her chest, just as her fingers started to tremble - she’d caught sight of him pinning a single white bloom to Ron’s lapel. Not just fixing it, but lingering, adjusting, tucking the stem with the kind of care that said he’d thought about this. About every part of it.
Love, everywhere. In every colour. Pressed quietly into the lives of the people he cares for, as gently as possible.
Often without them even realising it.
For a moment, just a breath - she isn’t here at all.
She’s back in the drawing room of Grimmauld Place. The floor cold beneath her knees, Harry hunched in the corner, legs drawn in. The war technically over, but not where it mattered.
It had been how she found him. Quiet. Detached. His voice not raw with emotion, but flattened by it - emptied out completely.
I can’t feel anything, he’d said, barely above a whisper. Like saying it aloud might trap it in the walls. I can’t even find a reason for why you’re here.
It had cut through her. Not the words themselves - but how convinced he’d been that he didn’t deserve to be loved. That being left behind was simply what came next.
That was before the garden.
Before the photographs on the mantle.
Before Fleur’s recipe clippings ended up in his fruit bowl, and Luna’s chipped tea mug appeared beside the sink, and Neville’s handwriting started showing up on parchment by the nightstand.
Before all of this.
Hermione blinks, breath catching, and looks again at the arch. At the white blooms tucked between blush, at the soft spill of greenery framing the aisle.
And wonders - not without a tug at the corner of her mouth - how many rosebushes will bloom the day Harry and Charlie stand beneath an arch of their own.