In Harmonia Progressio
Pairing: Dramione (Draco x Hermione), Nottpott (Theo x Harry)
Universe: eighth year AU
Rating: T
Summary: Olivie Advent cont'd.
Prompts: 1) dramione are assigned a toddler in a family planning class at hogwarts; 2) dramione/nottpott post-war at Hogwarts, Draco has to deal with issues of returning and Harry finds comfort in Theo. I didn't exactly keep to that first prompt, but… kinda.
"Harmonia harminetus," announced Professor Sprout, referencing what appeared to be a plump, leafy fern before her. "This particular plant is the source of most therapeutic balms and ointments, but it does have certain… preferences, as you'll soon learn. For this particular lesson, we'll be separating into partners. Let's see," she murmured, casting a glance around the room to where each pair of students stood before a pot of fresh soil. "Well, you've mostly arranged yourselves, haven't you? So let's have Nott with Malfoy, Potter with Granger—"
Hermione glanced at Harry with relief. "Thank god," she murmured under her breath, inching closer to him. "I was so worried I was going to have to work with—"
There was a sudden, wailing sob that became a scream, manifesting from somewhere in Harry and Hermione's seedling. At first it was easy to ignore, nothing more than a twitch of discomfort to the inner ear, but gradually, there was no denying that the plant's entire soul was in palpable hysterics.
"Oh no, oh no," fussed Professor Sprout, leaping down to shove Hermione and Harry apart, glancing over at the pot. "No, this won't do—Nott, come here—"
The harmonia harminetus screamed ever more distressfully, sounding as if it had been tortured.
"Fine, fine—Malfoy… Mr Malfoy!"
Hermione flinched as Draco sulked forward and the screaming abruptly stopped, settling to a tiny sniffle.
"Well," Professor Sprout said. "I did say they had peculiarities, did I not? Malfoy with Granger, then, and Potter, take a step to the left?"
There was a pause as Harry took a slow, unwilling step towards Theo's planter. Much to Harry's obvious distress, the plant began making tiny gurgling noises, cooing its approval.
"Marvelous," ruled Professor Sprout, exhaling in relief. "Well, that's that, then, isn't it?"
This was N.E.W.T. level Herbology, which of course Harry was only taking because it seemed like a nice place to finally get a bit of peace and also, because Neville had all but begged him. Seeing as Harry had already decided he'd had enough of the Ministry to last him a lifetime, he figured he ought to test the limits of his interests. All he'd wanted was to be an Auror alongside Ron, but now that it was a possibility, he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted. He'd only come back because Hermione had thought it wise, and whatever Hermione thought wise was probably close enough to it.
Theo Nott and Draco Malfoy were the only Slytherins to return for their eighth year, and their reasons were both distinct from Harry's and functionally the opposite. The Ministry was requiring it, as far as Harry could tell; a rehabilitation of sorts.
Not that Harry could figure out how his reward and Theo's punishment were the same thing. Tending to an infantile seedling that grew finicky each time its whims went unacknowledged seemed like a poor substitute for governmental accolades and a flourishing career. The Harmonia plant seemed to require feeding at all sorts of odd hours, growing easily too warm or too cold depending on the slightest shift in humidity. On the second day of tending to their plant, Harry and Theo were fanning it more vigorously each time its tiny, recently-sprouted leaves went limp.
"I don't see why we both have to do this," grumbled Harry, frustrated. "I was supposed to help Ginny with the new recruits by three." He wasn't captain—it was her turn—but still. Better that than this.
"Oh yes, for your little game," drawled Theo. "The one where you fly around and toss each other the toy?"
Harry bristled. "Quidditch is not just a game, Nott, it's—"
"That's right, you catch the special toy, I forgot," said Theo. "Silly me."
Harry glared at him, rising to his feet. "You can do this alone," he said definitively. "It doesn't take two people to keep a plant from overheating."
He spun, preparing to head to the pitch, when their harmonia seedling gave off a high pitched whistle, gradually becoming a sound like "deeeeeaayyyyyaaaaddddDDDYYYYY!"
"Did that just—" Harry stopped. "Did it just…?"
"Call you 'Daddy'? Yes," said Theo drily. "Though I'll be genuinely shocked if that's a first."
Harry glared at him. "Listen, if you're going to be a prick about i-"
"RrrrrraaaadddddyyyyyAHHHHHHH," declared the plant.
"Sorry, Potter," said Theo loudly over the sound of their plant's screaming. "What was that?"
"I'm just trying to tell you t-"
"—dadadadADADADDAYYYYYYYY—"
"—fine, fine, sorry," Harry said hurriedly, shushing the little sprouted leaves. "I'll stay, I promise. I'm right here," he soothed it. "I'm right here, I promise."
The plant gave a little shudder of relief, and Harry glanced up, spotting Theo hiding a laugh.
"What?" he demanded.
"Nothing," said Theo.
"What, Nott?"
"I told you, nothing."
"You obviously think something's funny—"
"No, no. I don't." Theo gave one of the plant's leaves a gentle stroke. "Poor little war hero," he murmured to it, glancing up just long enough to give Harry a broad, half-taunting smirk. "If it isn't one thing, it's another."
The mockery was the cherry on top of an already frustrating afternoon. "Why doesn't it scream like that at you?" Harry demanded, and Theo gave a shrug in response.
"Because," he said. "It already knows I'm not going to leave."
The harmonia plant had been alternating between loud moans and intense bursts of hiccups for at least the last twenty minutes.
"It's hungry," said Draco flatly.
"It's not hungry," retorted Hermione. "It's only half past two!"
"Look at it, Granger—"
"Look at what, Malfoy?"
"It's obviously in distress, and whenever it's hungry it gets a bit peaky-looking like that—"
"All the books say to keep a regular schedule, Malfoy—"
"Would you put down the books for a second, Granger, and look at the fucking thing—"
"Look at what? It's precisely the normal height for this stage of development—"
"Don't worry about its height, I'm talking about its needs—"
"Are you trying to tell me I'm not nurturing our plant well enough?"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH," wailed the plant, and Draco growled his frustration, rubbing his pounding temples as Hermione gave an exasperated half-whimper, bending to face the plant head on.
"What is it?" she offered coaxingly. "I'm right here, I promise—"
"—ahhhHHHHHHHHHhhhhhaaAAAAEEEEE—"
"For fuck's sake," Draco snapped, reaching over her for the mix of water and salt. "Here, just give it some, would you?"
"Malfoy, it doesn't need an-"
"—YYYYYYYYYAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRR—"
"Granger, just take it!"
"Fine, I just—here, HERE, here you go, EVERYTHING'S FINE! Everything's—" Hermione broke off, collapsing with exhaustion as the plant happily lapped up the fertilizer, suckling at the sodden dirt with cheerful gurgles.
"Everything is fine," Hermione said, and promptly burst into tears, falling onto the low stool behind her.
Draco stared at her, taken aback, before clearing his throat, crouching down until they were nearly at eye level. "Granger," he said, approximating a comforting tone.
She gave a little sniffle from behind her palms, shoulders quaking with silent sobs.
"Er," Draco said. "Listen, Granger. Ah. This is… it's fine. Really. If you need to, erm." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Do you, if you want…? So. Yeah."
"I," she announced from behind her hands, "am less maternal than Draco Malfoy."
"Uh," he said.
"I," she repeated, abruptly surfacing from her hysteria to reveal her red-rimmed eyes and swollen nose, "am less nurturing than a war criminal!"
"Well," said Draco stiffly, "that's a lovely way to put it, thanks—"
"I don't know what people need," she sobbed, suddenly collapsing again. "I don't know what they want. I don't understand it. I don't understand anything."
She cried a few more minutes in earnest, though it seemed to not be about Draco at all. A relief, really, as most things seemed to be about him these days.
Mostly about how he'd fucked it all up, which he couldn't even argue with.
"Granger," he said. "The plant's telling you what it needs. You don't have to understand. All you have to do is listen."
She sniffled again, turning her overlarge eyes on him for a beat of silence.
Two beats.
Three.
"Sixth year," she said, startling him. "You stopped playing quidditch. You were late to class. Your eyes were shadowed and your exams…" She hesitated. "Your schoolwork suffered."
"I—" He frowned at her. "What?"
"You were clever," she said. "Terrible and smug, but clever. And then you weren't."
"That's a bit harsh," he said defensively, but she was crying again, only this time she had leaned into his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry no one heard you."
Half of him was frozen with shock, the other half with misery. He was the one who needed to apologize to her. He was the one who was apologizing to the world just by being here, just by existing. He was the one who had come back to the place he'd nearly destroyed, bathing in the wreckage, and not once had he questioned whether his guilt was earned. It was. It was justifiable misery.
This, however.
This was something else.
"It's okay," he said gruffly, because she had offered him something and it would be rude not to accept, and then he gave her hair a tentative stroke, hoping that might somehow return the favor.
From the pot, their plant stretched slowly upwards, humming to itself with a wistful sigh.
"People don't talk about how much it sucks when your best friend leaves you," Harry said.
"No," said Theo. "They don't."
The plant had reached its adolescence, which meant it kept the same hours as a teenager: it rose late, well after their herbology class period, and then stayed awake well into the evening. At the moment they were in the greenhouse alone after midnight, for which they'd had to receive special dispensation from Professor Sprout.
"He left me," Harry said. "It wasn't just Hermione. It was me, too."
Theo was silent a moment.
"You'd make a shitty Auror," he said after a while.
Harry turned his head, arching a brow. "Better not," he warned blandly. "You know the plant hates it when we're cross."
"It's not an argument. I'm not trying to have a row."
"Then what are you—"
"People born in captivity," Theo said, "aren't meant to do it to others. People who live in a cage shouldn't be responsible for putting other people inside them. And people who get left behind shouldn't have to turn their lives into a chase."
Harry blinked, and across from them, the plant gave them both something of a conspiratorial eye roll.
"Why are you here?" Harry asked Theo eventually.
"Complicity," Theo said. "Plus the criminality in my blood."
"No," Harry sighed, impatient, "really."
"Really."
"Stop it or the plant will scream."
"Plant doesn't scream anymore."
"True. It swears, though."
They sat in silence another moment, and then Theo shrugged. "I'm righting my wrongs."
"You don't have any wrongs, Nott."
"Of course I do."
"You don't."
"I do."
"Not like Malfoy does."
"I do."
"Like what?"
"Like everything," Theo said. "I didn't lift a finger. I didn't stop any of it. I just sat there and watched it happen." He glanced at Harry again. "I'm guilty of all of it. Everything Draco did, that's on me just as much."
Harry shook his head. "You were just a kid," he said.
"So were you," said Theo. "And not a damn person tried to make that easier for you."
Harry hesitated, swallowing. "I didn't need them to."
"Yes," Theo said. "Yes, Potter, you fucking did, and they let you down."
A few seconds ticked by in silence as they stared at their angsting plant. Out here it was so quiet they could hear a church bell chime the single hour from afar, followed by the sound of Peeves pelting Mrs Norris with something. Probably chalk.
"Is our plant smoking?" asked Harry eventually.
"I think it plans to get a tattoo," said Theo, "shortly."
He slid a hand over, brushing Harry's pinky with his. Harry didn't move.
"Don't leave," said Harry quietly.
Theo turned Harry's hand over without looking, brushing the tips of his fingers over the calluses of his palms and then lacing them together.
"I won't," said Theo, letting Harry hold on tightly.
Their plant matured more slowly than the others. Hermione took to checking on it between classes, sometimes reading aloud to it and otherwise bringing a thermos of tea for her own silent meditation. The third time she did this, she noticed Draco must have been there as well, because the plant's soil was freshly watered. The sixth time, the pot had been rotated to face the sun. The seventh time there was a note that said, "Noon?"
Hermione wrote back, "Noon."
He was sitting beside the plant, which was nearly fully grown now. It hadn't quite caught up to the others, but it would soon. Hermione was quite sure it would soon.
Neither she nor Draco said anything as she took a seat beside him. She was starting to learn things about him, sorting out the language of his posture or his tone. Today he was mostly relaxed, though his hands were clasped tightly.
"Everything alright?" she asked him.
He turned his head slowly, like in a trance, and found her from a long distance.
"Bad news from my mother's trial," he said.
"Oh. I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said. "It's justice. It's deserved."
Hermione chewed her lip, then leaned forward, taking a closer look at their plant. It had a lovely color to it, a nice sheen. She noticed that it bloomed most on sunny days, and also when she played music. She waved her wand and put on a bit of Vivaldi, and when she settled back, Draco had closed his eyes.
"I like this one," he said. "Spring."
"Feels clean, doesn't it?" she said.
"Yes." His mouth twitched. "That's precisely the word."
She pulled out her book, about to start reading, when she stopped, glancing warily at Draco a second time.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No," he said.
"Right," she murmured, and opened her book to the page she'd left off. She glanced over it, half-skimming, and then sighed, shutting it again.
"Draco," she said, and his eyes floated open, finding hers expectantly.
She hesitated a moment, and then leaned forward, pausing just shy of his lips. She waited, letting the syrupy sound of the strings carry from Spring's second movement to the third, and when Draco didn't move, she closed the distance lightly, gently.
It lasted only a moment, her pulse bouncing sweetly, and then she sat back, clearing her throat and picking up her book.
"Thank you," he said.
"You're welcome," she told him.
She leaned her cheek against his shoulder. He tucked one arm around her waist.
Tranquilly, their plant made a soft sound of satisfaction, unfurling its leaves with a contented yawn and sprouting a blade of blossoms as tall as it was wide.
a/n: I know, not exactly the request, but I hope it's enjoyable regardless. I've said this many times now (or at least I hope I have) but thank you so much for being here. I am very grateful to have you.