Author's Notes: I'd like to thank my wonderful beta reader, laurabeth, who has better grammar then I'll ever have, and SarcasticMyth, who made it clear that I used too few adjectives. Lastly, I dedicate this fic to my grandmother Anne, who was almost as much of an ardent Potter fanatic as I am and loved to read all of my writing. She died before I could finish this. This is for you, Grandma.
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All of her life, Isla had loved flowers.
On a lovely spring day when she was two years old, her nurse Clara had taken Isla and her older sister Elladora out for a walk in the exquisite and expansive gardens of the Black Manor. The dour cloud of death—the eldest Black child, eight-year-old Sirius, almost a year earlier—hung over the Manor still, and such an atmosphere was not good at all for young children. With Phineas safely in the charge of one of the house-elves, Clara strolled down the cobbled pathways without worry, Isla and Elladora in each hand. She pointed to each flower with her wand and said its name, let the girls touch it gently with two fingers, smell it, admire it. Elladora was uninterested, but Isla broke free and ran ahead, wobbly on her unsteady baby legs, mesmerized by the colors and scents. She wanted all the flowers, all the pinks and the lavenders and the blues, here, now, to pick them all. Isla was a baby—and later, a girl and a woman—who was used to getting what she wanted. So she cried.
"What's the matter, Isla, lovey?" Clara asked, drying Isla's tears with her own handkerchief. Elladora glowered at her younger sister.
"Baby," Elladora muttered, inaudible over Isla's cries.
"The flowers!" Isla sobbed, tears dripping off of her chin and her bottom lip stuck out. "I want the flowers!"
And for the first time in months, Clara tilted her head back and laughed.
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Most people thought flowers to be something to admire for their fragile, perfumed beauty. Isla saw more, and spent countless hours in the rose garden eavesdropping. The rose garden—called the Isla Garden by most of the inhabitants of the Black Manor—was dutifully overseen by its namesake, aromatic and beautiful. All flowers had something to say, but only the rose could say it in so many different ways. Isla liked to sit on her favorite bench, close her eyes, and listen.
'You are my true love,' the red rose sighed, and the jealous yellow rose would scowl and mutter under her breath. The white rose, innocent and pure but bold and unafraid, was shocked at the unrepentant secrecy of her orange sister. The purple rose was the mother and protector of them all, rarely getting involved in the petty squabbles of her daughters.
Summer had come and the roses were in full bloom, a sea of color on a cobblestone shore. With her seventh year finished last June, all conversation had naturally turned to marriage, but thankfully (and surprisingly), not hers. Her eldest brother Phineas was to be married to Ursula Flint, and all the talk of receiving lines and flower arrangements was exhausting. Isla knew it was but a matter of time before she would be expected to send out visiting cards and have Clara follow her with eyes like a hawk, to flirt with her fan and dance no more than two times with one gentleman, to gossip idly while she awaited her fate.
Didn't love—real, true love, without protocol and introductions, love that defied rank and blood and honor—exist?
The roses told her yes, and Isla listened.
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"You! Stop right there! STOP!"
She had definitely heard it. The whispered "Abrumpo," the retreating footsteps, hasty and nervous, brushing a hedge. Someone had picked a rose from her garden. Isla quickly got to her feet, her wand out.
"Isla!" Elladora's scandalized tone was no match against Isla's temper. She followed on her sister's heels, incensed. Isla ignored her.
The receding figure obeyed. He turned around to face Isla, his arms at his side, a pink rose dangling from his right hand, gingerly held between his thumb and forefinger. A tall young man stood before her with neatly cropped brown hair covered by a cap and warm brown eyes, wearing a shirt and dirt-stained trousers, the offending wand stuck in the pocket. Isla pointed her wand at his throat, eyes narrowed.
"Isla, for Merlin's sake, put your wand down! How undignified!" Elladora whined, but not before giving the man a withering look, her lip curled.
"You, obviously, are newly employed in our gardens." Ladylike and calm. No vulgar words. Clara followed her nearly everywhere these days. She magnanimously gave Isla a half-hour in the rose garden alone each day, which was usually rudely interrupted by her sister. Didn't she have house-elves to decapitate?
"That I am, Miss, was hired just a week ago," he replied politely, casting a confused look down at Isla's wand. "Bob Hitchens," he added after a beat of consideration.
"And I assume, Mr. Hitchens, that you are not aware that this garden belongs to me, and not even Merlin himself would be allowed to pick one of these roses?"
"I was not—but I request to keep this rose, Miss, if you please."
Isla was shocked. She had prompted house-elves to stick their hands in the oven, made new servants weep, and scared off a good number of suitors for the errant plucking of her roses. This man in his odd muggle clothing was unafraid.
"Why should I let you keep something of mine?" she snapped.
"It's very important, see, for I know of someone—a woman—who is the most beautiful, radiant creature I have ever seen, but she is well beyond my station. I want to prove to her that I am worthy of her love, and this—" he indicated the pink rose in his hand, "—is to be my starting point, Miss. The roses in your garden are the loveliest I have ever seen, and I want to give her a rose worthy of her. Yours, I believe, are the only ones that do so. And begging your pardon, Miss," he added a bit hesitantly, "there are hundreds of roses in your garden. Surely you wouldn't miss just one?"
By the time Bob finished speaking; Isla's wand was lowered to her side, her expression unreadable.
"Oh, Isla, let the silly mudblood have one of your roses!" Elladora interjected, feeling this was the right time to stop alternating between looking exasperated and fanning herself nervously, "Don't make a spectacle of yourself over this."
"Take it." Isla said quietly.
"Thank you, miss, I'm very grateful! I must be going, though, I have your garden to attend to," Bob replied with a wide grin, and took out his wand, carefully sticking the rose where his wand had been. He tipped his cap and set off towards the northern end of the garden, whistling.
"The nerve of him!" Elladora exclaimed haughtily, "The audacity! I should have a mind to tell Father about this….he didn't even acknowledge my presence!"
Isla watched him for a long time, deadheading and pruning and whistling, jealous of that kind of freedom.
The next day Isla returned to her garden after lunch, just as she always did, to her favorite bench in the southwestern corner, halfway hidden by a particularly tall bunch of hedges. Lying there, in all its glory, was a pink rose.
Grace and beauty, Isla thought, astonished, as she picked up the rose and tucked it gently into the pocket of her robes, as if it would break into a million pieces if she handled it too roughly.
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Every day there was a new flower, in the same spot on the same bench. Tiny boquets of deep blue gentians and dark yellow furze flowers proclaimed her loveliness and his enduring affection. 'I am always thinking of you,' he said with lavender heartsease. Almond flowers represented hope—but hope for what? To see her again? Isla looked for him whenever she could steal moments in the other gardens, but he always seemed to elude her.
The August morning that Isla took her fate into her own hands was hot and muggy. The fog settled lightly among the roses, barely grazing the smooth surface of their petals. The flower hung limply in her hand.
There he was, in the same shirt and dirt-stained pants, arranging three flowers on the bench. A daffodil. 'I hope for return of affection.' A single thornless red rose. 'Love at first sight'. Isla, still wearing her long white nightdress with her red hair loose instantly felt exposed.
The last flower he put down he twirled around in his fingers tentatively before gathering his courage and placing it on the bench. He took a few steps back, admiring the effect.
A white rose. 'I am worthy of your love.'
"You're not a very good servant." Isla blurted out before she could stop herself.
Bob jumped and turned around, startled. He looked at her in ecstatic disbelief, taking her in. It was the moment he had dreamt of and feared at the same time.
"Begging your pardon, Miss, but you're not a very good woman."
Isla raised her eyebrows. "You are a servant and I am your better, you will not—"
He kissed her.
Isla had never kissed a man before, not like this; she felt like her knees would give and her insides would melt and she would go careening off into space, never to return.
When they finally parted, the world was a very different place.
"I—!" she sputtered,
"You," Bob interrupted, "are spoiled and stubborn and accustomed to certain things that I'll never be able to give you, and I'm too bold and rash and I'm Muggle-born and the only robes I own are the ones from Hogwarts, but I love you," he said, quickly and breathless. "And you love me too."
Isla didn't know quite what to say. She thrust out her hand sheepishly, like a child, a rare orange rose between her fingers. Secret love. Bob smiled.
She kissed him that time, hoping it was enough.
Their clandestine meetings were few and far between as summer faded, but the flowers never stopped. A red carnation, 'My poor heart aches for you', was left with a longing glance over the garden walls. The next day a primrose was left in its place, 'I can't live without you.' Isla, in a stroke of boldness, wove violets into her hair, proclaiming her faithfulness.
"Get those stupid things out of your hair," Elladora said bossily one morning in early September. She had been making it a habit to invite herself to Isla's daily walk through the gardens: whether this was Clara's influence or their mother's, Isla couldn't quite figure out. Elladora's bony fingers made their way towards Isla's hair.
"You're neither my mother nor my nursemaid!" Isla retorted testily, swatting her sister's hand away. She glanced at Bob, who was deadheading the last of the roses. He winked at her.
"What are you looking at?" Elladora snapped at Bob, her head spinning to face him so fast there was a faint 'whoosh' of her nose whipping through the air. "Do you not have a job to do?"
"Yes'm." Bob replied, and he dutifully returned to his work.
It took Elladora some time to realize it, but midway through afternoon tea a hunger filled her cold grey fish eyes, the unmistakable realization of delicious opportunity.
"Kreacher!" trilled Elladora with a manic glint in her eye.
"Yes, Elladora, miss?" The weedy-looking house-elf bowed deeply. He was very fond of Elladora.
"Go fetch my mother this instant. I have something very important to tell her."
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She had never seen the roses at night. The shroud of darkness concealed their painful state, hovering near death, brown and withered. She didn't want them to die alone.
"Isla…" he began, his voice gentle. She nodded, tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Bob put an arm around her waist and kissed her head gently. The tears retreated.
"I know. We've stayed here too long."
Hand and hand, they silently made their way through the gardens, occasionally crunching their feet on the petals scattered on the cobblestone paths. Bob led Isla to the shed of the old groundskeeper, who kindly lent them two ancient brooms, dusty and splintered at the ends.
"Yeh'll be safe in Hogsmeade," the groundskeeper said urgently as they mounted their brooms outside, "If anybody comes 'round here I never saw yeh."
Isla took a second before lauching off into the inky sky to whisper her gratitude, a last dying prayer for her beloved roses.
After all, they had kept their promise.
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A/N: Just FYI, 'abrumpo' is latin for 'to break off or to sever'. I read a thread on FA a couple of months ago where a reader expressed annoyance at everyone using 'diffindo' for the severing spell, so I thought I would avoid being cliché.