Jasmine, Iris and Crocus
Harry finds the first bouquet in a vase on his desk when he comes back from the Hospital Wing after a particularly vicious Bludger attack that he’d stopped heading towards the Slytherins during a session that the Eighth Years had set up for themselves. Said Bludger had been caught, restricted and given to Professors Hooch and McGonagall to check for tampering; it was obvious to Harry and the others that had been playing that the Bludger had been tampered with but the Professors would know how to find out who’d tampered with it.
Harry had come away from the incident with a broken arm and two broken ribs from where the Bludger had thrashed against him in its attempt to reach its victims before the others had caught up with him and bound it down to the box to control it. Madam Pomfrey had taken one look at him, rolled her eyes and pointed towards what was unfortunately known as his bed in the Hospital Wing (Harry thought that he should at least have his own nameplate on the bed to make it his officially, but he didn’t want to worry Hermione any more than she already did about him).
Two doses of Skelegrow, a Sunday roast for dinner and one sleep in his bed in the Hospital Wing later, Harry was back in his dorm room. He wasn’t quite sure who’d placed the flowers on his desk but he did know that if he wasn’t able to find his Transfiguration book and homework, he would be having at least two evenings of detention with Professor McGonagall. Fortunately, a quick sweep of his desk revealed said items hidden under several open books that Hermione had left for him in an attempt to get him up to speed on Potions.
Whilst Professor McGonagall hadn’t exactly been pleased with his tardiness when he arrived at the door of the classroom three minutes after class had started, the corners of her mouth turning upwards when she spotted how out of breath he was from running from the dorm had suggested she’d at least found it a little amusing. He’d managed to hand in his homework on his way to his seat, where he found himself in the unusual position of being seated between Neville and Luna, who’d managed to work her way into the Eighth Year classes as if she’d never been a year behind them.
Luna had given him a gentle smile and told him about the Nargles floating around his head. Harry had nodded, still amused that Luna had the ability to see all of the thoughts buzzing around his head in the form of Nargles. He’d been so distracted in class that he’d turned the table leg that was supposed to become a mirror into a vase of roses (which had caused him to blush a violent shade of red that almost matched the roses), a pair of paper clips had become a daisy chain and finally, he’d embarrassingly managed to transfigure Luna’s robes into a pair of flower patterned dungarees to which she’d become almost ecstatic, telling him how pretty and soft they were.
Harry wished that Muggle technology like cameras or mobile phones worked at Hogwarts so he was able to show Neville a photo of the bouquet without having to wait until the end of their lesson to drag him back to the dorms and show him. Hermione and Harry had tried getting their mobile phones to work at Hogwarts but they’d eventually given up, the magical interference being too much for the phones to work.
George had been told all about their problems and he’d gone out to buy all manner of Muggle phones to take to the shop’s workshop from where Harry received random letters at all times of day with questions about how data worked, whether there was a likelihood that Hogwarts could install WiFi, how you would charge your phone in a school with no electric sockets, and whether those kind of sockets could easily be made to work with magic? George sent Harry drawings and all sorts of blueprints to show what he was working with to get phones to work in the Wizarding world and Harry, knowing that once George had an idea that it would get manipulated and changed until it worked, held out hope that one day he would have a phone that worked at Hogwarts.
Neville can tell that Harry’s impatient to get back to whatever’s bothering him so they wave goodbye to Luna at the end of their lesson and Harry barely notices Ginny, who’s waiting by the door for Luna, because he’s in such a rush to get back to the dorm. Whoever it is that’s sending him flowers has him in their grip and he’s almost powerless to stop them.
“Harry, slow down! I can’t keep up with you tearing down the hall like that!”
Harry only realises he’s been rushing back to the dorms as he gets halfway down a flight of stairs before Neville’s call stops him in his tracks. He stops and climbs back up the staircase to give Neville a moment to breathe, but only because that particular staircase is well known for moving just at the wrong moment so he doesn’t particularly want to get stuck going towards the Ravenclaw dorms which are in the opposite direction to the Eighth Year dorm.
He makes it back up the stairs to the landing just as the stairs start swinging towards the other exit that it takes and Harry groans in dismay. It’s all he can do to hold himself back from dashing down the stairs and taking a running leap to make it to the landing but he can also see the gap widening to show the floor below them, full of students making their way to their next class. He also knows he has no hope of working out what in Merlin’s name those flowers could mean without either Neville or Hermione to help him.
“What is it that you’re trying to get back to, Harry?” Neville asks, having managed to catch his breath from running after Harry. “Someone’s left me a flower bouquet and I don’t know who it’s from or what it means and you’re the only one who’s likely to know what they mean and you’re also one of the only people who I know will help me. I just left them in the vase they were in, I didn’t protect them or anything and I want to know what they are before they get destroyed.”
Fortunately, when the two boys finally made it back to the Eighth Year dorm 15 minutes later, the flowers were as Harry had left them. It seemed like whoever had arranged them had ensured that there was some kind of preservation charm on them, almost to show that they knew Harry more than he thought they would. Preserving the flowers in their current state had only come to Harry’s mind when he’d managed to transfigure that mirror into a vase of roses, but the bouquet looked as perfect as he’d found it.
Neville’s eyes catch onto the purple petals first. Harry watches as his eyes glaze over, and he takes on that look that everyone knows as Neville’s thinking face. Neville’s eyes sweep over the way the bouquet has been tied and arranged, the twine that’s holding the bouquet together falling over the edge of the vase, with the stems hovering an inch under the water line on the inside of the transparent vase. Neville reaches for the inkwell on Harry’s desk, pulls his quill and a piece of parchment out of his school bag and starts jotting notes down before he Accio’s a book from his room.
Over Neville’s shoulder Harry can read the following: ‘Jasmine - cheerful? Iris - Admiration or hope. Crocus - kind and generous.’ The book in front of Neville falls open on a page detailing almost exactly the thin white petaled flowers that Harry learns is called jasmine. Neville scribbles down a whole paragraph about the care that jasmine plants need; this is then repeated for the other two flowers that Harry then commits to memory are called iris and crocus (or, as Neville tells him, iris and croci or crocuses).
The notation about the flowers doesn’t help Harry work out who sent him them though, although he thinks Neville may have an idea but won’t share it with him. He goes to Hermione when she comes back from the library and shares with her everything that he and Neville have found in Neville’s book: she also seems to pick up some kind of sneaking suspicion about who sent him the flowers but again, like Neville, refuses to share it with him.
He goes to bed in despair, the perfectly preserved bouquet sat on his desk just out of sight as if to torment him. He falls into a tumultuous sleep, dreaming of flowers, their meanings and lovely pale hands arranging them. He awakens to find the vase and bouquet gone and in their place, an envelope sealed with pressed versions of those same flowers has been placed. His name is written on the envelope in curving handwriting that he doesn’t recognise, and inside the envelope, a message reads “Thank you. We appreciate your protection and forgiveness. Until next time.”
Harry folds the parchment carefully back into the envelope and slides the envelope between two of his books on the shelf in front of him. He doesn’t forget about the flowers, but there are no more suggestions as to who it was or what it could’ve possibly meant beyond what Neville found and the letter that came after them until after Christmas, when the second bouquet appears.