Drabbles

When the roses had been delivered to Harry’s office, he thought at first they’d been sent by one of his fans. Harry didn’t like to admit as much—even to himself—but he did enjoy the female (sometimes male) attention that his Chosen One status and whatever daily flavour of heroism the Daily Prophet would assign to him, had given him.

He knew it was probably an unhealthy reminder of the little boy starved for affection he had once been, but it was nice to be sought after romantically.

Which he would vehemently deny if anybody asked, of course.

But then the roses had started talking to him.

Which fair— this was a magical world and he was working in the Ministry of Magic, so anything was theoretically plausible. It still didn’t account for the fact of how rude these botanical marvels were to him. More like botanical assholes, he muttered to himself now before entering his office again to be immediately greeted with, “Oh no, not squinty face again. Doesn’t anybody else ever come in here?”

The first time they’d insulted the colour of his mustard yellow tie in that squeaky voice, he’d almost fallen out of his chair. The second time, they’d scoffed at his loafers, whispering something about poor taste. His hair was always a popular topic among the chattering blossoms. Sometimes when his quill scratched against his paper, he raised his eyes to the flowers and would catch them standing in a cheerful little circle in their vase, snickering about how he looked like somebody who was constantly poking a fork into an outlet.

“Maybe that’s what gets him off,” the meaner one of the roses roared.

When Harry finally learned to drown out the personal insults, they began endlessly and needlessly whining about the room’s temperature, the smell of old coffee wafting towards them or that Harry’s office didn’t have a view of the sun.

“Oh, how I miss the blue, blue sky,” one of them would say, which caused the others to sigh until eventually, another started singing in a deep sad voice, “Mr Blue Sky please tell us why, you had to hide away for so long…”

“Why don’t you just throw them in the rubbish,” Ron asked with an irritated quirk of his brow when Harry finally relented and brought them outside with him to his weekly visit to the Leaky Cauldron.

“Ron, don’t be crude,” Hermione said with a shake of her head and a stern look when the roses gasped in horror, “they are sentient. That would be cruel.”

“Yes,” the roses agreed, “don’t be fucking crude, Weasel.”

Ron continued to glower at them while they kept whispering sweet nothings into Hermione’s ear, obviously having found a liking to their saviour.

Harry didn’t want to admit that the reason he couldn’t relieve himself of these chatty roses was because he had a very good idea of who the person behind the gift had been.

There was only one person who would do something like this and consider himself a romantic. The man Harry had spent one passionate night with months ago after attending one of those dreadfully boring Ministry galas. The man who had told him the next morning when Harry had tried to sneak out of the hotel room, “You can try to run away from this, love, but this night will come back to you like a boomerang. You will never escape the thought of how it felt to have me. Sooner or later you’ll crave me so much, you won’t be able to keep telling yourself that I’m the wrong choice.”

“Is that a promise?” Harry had asked holding onto his shoes with a little more force as as he looked at his image in the mirror. His hair had been even more askew than usual, brushed through as often as it had been by desperate fingers.

“No,” Theodore Nott had laughed, lounging on his bed in nothing but his boxers, his eyes gleaming with mirth. “It’s a challenge.”

Harry closed his eyes now, drowning out the chatter of his friends and the roses and all the little and big noises in the pub until he could hear Theo again.

“Harry, Harry, please, please, right... there.”

Well, fuck.

He understood the enormity of the challenge all too well now. The roses hadn’t truly been necessary, but they were a nice touch to remind Harry just how much of a douchebag he’d been. But how could he accept wanting a pureblood prick to the point it bordered on obsession? Draco Malfoy’s best friend? It seemed ill-advised at best. Destructive at worst.

“So, he asked me out,” Hermione said with a little gasp which made Ron drain his entire pint in one big gulp. When Harry forced himself out of his memory of wrecked Theodore Nott below him, he saw the high flush on Hermione’s cheeks. “And I said yes.”

Ron almost spit out the beer.

“Who asked you out?” Harry asked with a frown.

“Draco Malfoy, of course,” Hermione huffed. “Do pay attention, Harry.”

There was much to dissect about that surprising turn of events, but all Harry could think of at this moment was Theodore Nott’s curls between his fingers, the drop of sweat he had licked off his skin right below his jaw.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Do you not have any opinion on this?” Hermione asked carefully while Ron was still busy choking on his beer and making a big show of hitting his chest with his fist. Harry shook his head, grasped the flowers and said, “Happy for you, Hermione. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have somewhere to be.”

Nott’s house was larger than Malfoy Manor which made Harry instantly resent it. He still stepped up to the entrance, placed the roses in front of the large doors and stood again with a sigh.

“We’re going to freeze to death,” the tiniest of them cried out with a shiver and Harry pulled out his wand to conjure little woollen hats and scarfs for them.

“Tomorrow you’re going to see the blue sky,” he promised the roses which made them Ooh and Aah while he scribbled his message to Theo on a small piece of paper.

“Can you keep this note safe for me until the person who owns the house finds it?” he asked.

They were instantly chattering again.

“What does it say? What does it say?”

“Your petal is in the way! I can’t see!”

“Has anybody seen my reading glasses?”

Harry smoothed down his coat with a deep sigh.

Just when he was about to apparate away one of the roses read from his note,

“Challenge accepted.”