Author's note: Happy (belated) birthday to Aya! Her beautiful mind is the one that came up with the orchard headcanon you'll see below, and I had no choice but to expand on it for her birthday fic because, as you will see, it is incredible and adorable. Go check out her Malfoy family drabble series Threads of Faith when you can. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Dedication: To Aya Diefair!

Hogwarts: Ravenclaw, Ancient Studies Task #4: Must prominently feature someone from one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families.

Content Warnings: Grief; references canon character deaths (Astoria Greengrass); references miscarriages briefly

Harvest in the Frost

The tip of his nose was cold when he woke up. That realization sunk in slowly at first, but when it hit he shot up in bed, scrambled into some clothes, rushed downstairs, and wouldn't have bothered putting on boots had his father not called for him to do it. When he asked where Scorpius was going in such a rush, he ignored him and bounced out of the back door.

He ran to the south side of the house, hearing Mum's words echoing back to him from the specific place in his head where he kept as many thoughts of her as he could in the same way, and for the same reason, that a dam could be built to ward off flooding. But she'd told him more than once: citrus is best planted near the south of a house; they're just so sensitive to cold that they need all the sun that they can get.

"Especially lemons," Scorpius muttered to himself as he ran—finishing the thought out loud the same way he did when he studied. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

The grass crunched under his feet, frosted over as it was. It was an early frost, sure, but truth be told Scorpius hadn't minded any of the orchards all summer—not the peaches, the pears, the apples, the cherries, the plums… Mum hadn't gotten around to planting a vegetable patch this year, maybe sensing that the end was coming, but Scorpius would undoubtedly have neglected that too if she had. Only Dizzy the House Elf had kept the herb garden in the kitchen alive and well. Scorpius, meanwhile, had failed.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck…"

He reached the line of lemon trees and paused, heart beating in his throat, to assess the state of them—trying to remember all the signs for frostbitten plants he'd learned from either Mum or Professor Sprouts… his mind was completely blank. He was simply overwhelmed by the pure and simple fact that the trees were still there, frankly. As if some part of him had expected them to vanish overnight, leaving upturned dirt and gaping holes in the earth.

He rubbed at his eyes and sighed, both in relief and because of how ridiculous the thought was. But it was a scary thought and it made all kinds of feelings bubble up in his throat. Luckily, they simmered down when he heard another set of footprints crunching down on the frosted grass. His father joined him, jogging lightly, and wrapped a cloak over Scorpius' shoulders. Then he looked at the lemon trees too.

"Out of all the citrus plants, they're the most sensitive to cold," he said as it dawned on him too. His father had also forgotten the orchards. They'd always been his mother's project—she was the one who planted trees after her miscarriages and losses, to prove to herself that life could and would persevere and flourish even when the unimaginable happened.

Scorpius tightened the cloak around his shoulders and approached one of the trees and plucked a fruit. He gave it a squeeze. The peel was cold, of course, but texture-wise it seemed fine. He wasn't sure, though. He wasn't sure.

"I'll go through your mother's gardening books," his father promised. "I'll find the spells she cast to keep the trees warm over the winter. Perhaps I'll invite Blaise to make sure they're cast properly, he was always much better at Herbology anyways."

Scorpius nodded. "We still have to pick all the lemons, though. Now that the frost has set in, they'll just waste if they sit outside."

And Mum had never ever wasted fruit.

His father nodded. "And all the other fruit."

"Merlin, what are we going to do with all of it?" Scorpius asked. Usually Mum picked the fruit as it grew. What wasn't even right off the branches turned into tarts, cakes, jams, jellies, preserves… They had not been as wise, as put-together, or as functional without her. That wasn't a shock or a surprise by any means, but Scorpius felt even worse about it than he had in months since now these living, growing things had been caught up in his grief. Living, growing things that Mum had taken such good care of, had planted specifically to show the world that grief wasn't going to be the end of her. He tried to swallow back his shame, but it was more bitter than any lemon could dream of being.

"I'll go through your mother's recipe books too," his father said. "It will be fine. We'll find ways to use it all up. She must have bookmarked all her usual and favourite ones. I'm sure you and I can follow the steps to a lemon curd recipe. We'll have to learn, at any rate."

Scorpius wasn't so sure, but he heard the slight tremble in his father's voice as he promised to rifle through his mother's things. He didn't want to make it harder by being difficult or pessimistic—not in the orchard of all places. Not if they were going to persevere.

"Do we really need to start with lemon curd?" Scorpius asked.

His father grinned slightly. "You want peach jam, don't you?"

"I want lemon shortbread," Scorpius confessed.

"Of course you do," his father said with a bigger smile. "Alright. Well, go get the baskets from the gardening shed—I'll go see if I can find you a lemon shortbread recipe."

It wasn't flourishing, not yet anyways, but it was perseverance. And that, if nothing else, was going to be delicious.

WC: 920