A/N: This is something I wrote back in October based on a prompt by demisexualmerrill on tumblr. I thought it was particularly good for Valentine's Day, so consider this my box of chocolates to all you lovely people.
A little bell jangled when Hermione Granger marched into "Heirloom Blooms." On the shop window, they'd claimed they could make a bouquet express anything and everything, and she had a very specific phrase in mind.
"How do I passive-aggressively say 'fuck you' in flower?" she asked, slapping a twenty pound note on the counter.
The teenaged shop boy had looked bored out of his mind earlier, but now he brightened up. He grabbed a thick encyclopedia from under the cash register.
"It's only my second day on the job, so this might take a little while," he explained, thumbing through sections with illustrated buds and branches. "Hmm, you could always go with some hemlock. We'd have to order it special, but I think he'd get the message when the delivery comes in next week."
"No thank you. Whatever you've got in the store today."
"Alright then. Well, geraniums are cheap and easy. They mean stupidity."
Hermione snorted. "He's got that in abundance."
The shop boy grinned. "You could throw in orange lilies too, for hatred, and maybe yellow carnations for disappointment."
"Got anything that means 'you're a useless fuckwit?'" she asked.
The boy flipped around in the flower dictionary for a second before shouting. "Yes! Meadowsweet! And we just got a shipment this morning!"
Fifteen minutes later, the boy was putting a yellow ribbon around the bundled green stems and handing it to Hermione. She looked over it closely, trying to see which flowers she recognized from Herbology before realizing there were actually five types of flowers in the bouquet.
"Excuse me? What are these tall, purple ones?"
"Oh, I thought I'd just throw that in for the heck of it. It's foxglove. Means he's never sincere."
She nodded absently and left the store, already imagining Sirius Black's reaction.
xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx
"That you, Hermione?" Sirius asked from the kitchen when he heard the floo, "I didn't expect to see you here so-"
"Here," she said, aggressively thrusting the bouquet into his hands, initially opened wide for a hug.
"What's this?" he asked, turning the bundle around and examining it from all sides. Hermione said nothing, just crossed her arms and waited.
Sirius looked over the tops of the flowers at her, the corners of his lips twitching. "Tut tut, Miss Granger. Such impolite language."
He touched the large orange lilies first. "I hate you?" he asked before pulling them out and letting the petals drop to the floor.
"You're a stupid, useless, disappointment?" he asked, repeating the motion until the carnations, geraniums, and meadowsweet petals had all joined the lilies on the floor.
Now only holding the tall, purple foxglove, he grinned triumphantly. "But now, I see your plan all along. How kind of you, kitten."
"Kind?" Hermione balked, "No, I was saying fuck you! You're translating wrong."
"I hardly think so," he said, sauntering closer as she backed up further. "I learned flora like I learned French, which is to say, j'ai appris tres, tres bien."
Hermione gulped, finding herself backed into the wall anyways. How had everything gone so wrong?
"It means insincerity," he explained when she stubbornly refused to ask.
Hermione's brow knitted together. "But that's what I wanted it to say."
Sirius, his eyes dancing, drew his face mere centimeters away from her own. "It means insincerity on the part of the giver. You just told me the flower equivalent of 'I hate you. Just kidding!'"
"Bloody shop boy," she muttered, rolling her eyes and letting her head fall backwards to bang against the wall.
"You didn't have to go to all this trouble to say 'I love you too, Sirius.'" he said, smiling like a maniac.
"You can't just tell me you love me for the first time when you're drunk off your arse with the Weasley twins!" she said, smacking his arms which were now caging her in on either side.
"Course I can't," he said, now taking advantage of her exposed neck to drop a line of kisses. "But who says that was my first time?"
"Huh?" she asked, partially confused by his answer and partially confused by the onslaught of hormones rushing through her blood.
"I get you your favorite strawberry pancakes in the morning," he said, nuzzling the soft spot behind her ear, "and I let you pick what you want to watch at the muggle movies. And I let you ride on my motorbike."
"Last one hardly counts," Hermione mumbled, "you just want to hear me screech like a banshee."
"I admit, it's a perk," he said, pulling away to look her straight in the eyes, "but please. You had to have known before last night. Right?"
Hermione looked down and away, but she sighed. "Yeah, I guess."
"Glad that's settled," he whispered before his lips crashed into hers.
"I love you, too, you know," Hermione said when they came up for air.
"I know," Sirius grinned, twisting the foxglove around in his fingers, "flowers never lie."