Chapter 18: The First Gift
The first package appeared two days after Theo’s pasta intervention. Hermione nearly tripped over it on her way out to work, a small, lumpy parcel wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with rough twine. No note. No label. It sat squarely in the center of her doormat like a challenge.
She brought it inside, her heart doing that foolish, hopeful lurch again. The wrapping came away to reveal a terracotta pot holding a plant with delicate, silver-veined leaves that shivered at her touch. Asphodel. Not the flashy, magical variety, but the subtle, nocturnal kind whose roots were used in advanced calming draughts. It was beautiful. It was specific.
She placed it on her kitchen windowsill, where the morning light turned the leaves to mercury.
The next day, a flat, rectangular package. Inside, a first-edition copy of Philtres and Fallacies: The Unwritten Principles of Potion-Making by Hesper Blackwood. A book she’d mentioned wanting, once, in passing, months ago in the townhouse library when Draco had been ranting about the idiocy of standardized Stirring techniques. The spine cracked gently, releasing the scent of old parchment and drying herbs. Her thumb traced the embossed title. No note.
The day after that, a sleek box from a famed wizarding chocolatier in Paris. Chocolate frogs, but not the usual mass-produced ones. These were dark, rich, and filled with a surprising burst of bergamot cream—her preferred flavour of tea. She ate one standing at her counter, the complex bitterness melting on her tongue, and closed her eyes.
It was a siege. A quiet, relentless, perfectly targeted siege.
Her flat, once a sterile monument to moving on, was becoming a museum of him. The Moondew pulsed on her nightstand. The Asphodel trembled on the sill. The rare book lay on her coffee table, a silent accusation. The chocolates were half-gone, because she was only human.
She tried to focus on the Portkey fraud report. The words “non-regulatory apparition vectors” blurred into an image of his hands, deft and precise, potting a plant in the dim light of his private greenhouse. She’d never seen it, but she could imagine it: the quiet concentration, the line of his shoulders as he worked the soil.
“Who sends Asphodel?” she muttered to her empty flat, throwing her quill down. “It’s a funeral flower. Also a potions ingredient. Is this a romantic gesture or a coded critique of my emotional state?”
Her Floo flared green.
“Are you talking to yourself already? It’s only been a week.” Ginny’s head floated in the flames, her grin wide. “I come bearing gossip and a desperate need for a decent cuppa. Your place or mine?”
Five minutes later, Ginny stepped through, shedding travelling cloak dust onto Hermione’s clean floor. Her eyes immediately scanned the room, missing nothing. They lingered on the book, the plant, the shiny chocolate box.
“Well, well,” Ginny said, her voice dripping with amusement. “Someone’s being courted. With bibliographic precision and horticultural flair. Very specific. Very… obsessive.” She flopped onto the sofa. “Let me guess. No cards.”
“Nothing,” Hermione said, busying herself with the kettle. “It’s infuriating.”
“It’s Draco Malfoy,” Ginny corrected. “He’s not going to sign his name. That would be vulgar. This is him… whispering. In objects.” She picked up the potions book, whistling softly. “Blimey. This is the good stuff. Harry mentioned Draco was in a right state, snapping at everyone in the DMLE corridors yesterday when his Floo authorization was delayed. Looked like he hadn’t slept.”
Hermione’s back was to her, measuring tea leaves. “That’s not my concern.”
“Of course it isn’t.” Ginny’s tone was dry. “So you’re just going to sit here, accumulating his cryptic botanical and literary offerings, until your flat resembles a Slytherin-safehouse?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Hermione snapped, turning around. “Confront him? ‘Thanks for the funeral flowers, are you suggesting I die?’ He let me walk out. He doesn’t get to… redecorate my life from a distance.”
“He’s not redecorating,” Ginny said, her expression softening. “He’s communicating. In the only language he probably thinks won’t ruin things further. He’s telling you he listens. He remembers. He pays attention.” She leaned forward. “You have two choices, Hermione. Send it all back in a big box, which is a clear and brutal message. Or acknowledge it.”
“How?” The word was a plea.
Ginny just smiled. “You’re the cleverest witch of your age. Figure it out.”
After Ginny left, the silence pressed in again, but it was charged now, like the air before a storm. Hermione walked to the windowsill. The Asphodel’s leaves were orienting towards the fading light. She touched one. It curled softly around her fingertip, a shy, living response.
Enough.
She wasn’t a parcel to be left on a doorstep. She was witch who faced down bloody Death Eaters in a bathroom. This passive waiting was beneath her.
She didn’t change her clothes. She didn’t rehearse a speech. She simply grabbed her cloak, walked out her front door, and strode through the chilly London evening, her footsteps echoing her racing heart. She didn’t go to the townhouse. She went to the source.
The discreet brass plaque beside the reinforced oak door read M. Malfoy – Potions Research & Consultancy. The alley behind Diagon was quiet, the sounds of the main street muffled. Light seeped from under the door.
She knocked. Once, hard.
For a long moment, nothing. Then the sound of locks disengaging. The door swung inward.
Draco stood there, silhouetted against the warm, chaotic light of his lab. He wore dark trousers and a white shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms dusted with a fine, iridescent powder. A smudge of something green adorned his jaw. He looked exhausted, his grey eyes wide with pure, unguarded shock.
He blinked. “Granger.”
The scent hit her first: bergamot, yes, but underneath it the sharp, clean bite of wormwood, the earthy breath of stewed mandrake, the ozone crackle of a recently-stabilized potion. It was the smell of his mind at work.
She didn’t wait for an invitation. She stepped past him into the warmth.
The lab was organized chaos. Gleaming copper instruments bubbled quietly on mahogany worktables. Shelves lined every wall, holding hundreds of glass phials, jars of pickled ingredients, and stacks of handwritten notes. In the center, a large cauldron simmered over a low, blue flame, emitting a pleasant, lavender-scented steam. The Potion of Peace, she thought irrationally.
She turned to face him. He had closed the door and was just staring at her, his usual mask completely gone. He looked young. He looked wrecked.
“The Asphodel,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady in the humming quiet. “It’s thriving. Though I’m still not clear on the symbolism. Grief? Peace after death? A simple ingredient?”
He swallowed, the motion visible in his throat. “It’s resilient,” he said, his voice rough. “It looks delicate. It isn’t. It thrives in poor soil. In the dark.” He paused, his gaze dropping to the floor near her boots, then forcing itself back up to meet hers. “It seemed… appropriate.”
“And the book?”
“You wanted it.”
“The chocolates?”
A ghost of his old smirk touched his lips. “You have a terrible secret sweet tooth. You hide the wrappers in the bottom of the bin. It’s pathetically obvious.”
She took a step closer. The iridescent powder on his arms caught the light. “Why this? Why no words?”
His jaw tightened. “Words are my weakness. I use the wrong ones. I… ruin things.” He gestured vaguely around the lab, at the precise instruments, the perfectly calibrated flames. “This I can control. These things… they’re true.”
Another step. They were almost touching now. She could see the fatigue in the faint lines around his eyes, the tension in the set of his mouth. She could smell the tea and chocolate on her own breath, the gifts he’d given now a part of her.
“You let me leave,” she whispered.
“Yes.” The word was ripped from him.
“Why?”
He finally broke, his eyes closing for a second. When they opened, the grey was stormy, vulnerable. “Because you needed to. And I… I have never known how to hold onto something good without crushing it. My hands—" He looked down at them, at the long, clever fingers stained with potions. “They’re good at breaking things down to their components. Not so good at… keeping them whole.”
It was the most honest thing he’d ever said to her.
Hermione reached out. She didn’t take his hand. Instead, her fingertips brushed the smudge of green potion ingredient from his jaw. His skin was warm. He froze at her touch, a sharp, indrawn breath hissing between his teeth.
“I’m not made of glass, Malfoy,” she said quietly, holding his gaze. “And I don’t thrive in poor soil. I just thrive.” She let her hand drop. “The next gift you bring… bring it yourself. And use your words. Even if they’re the wrong ones.”
She turned and walked back to the door. Her hand was on the latch when his voice stopped her, low and strained.
“Hermione.”
She looked back.
He hadn’t moved. He stood amidst his perfect, controlled chaos, looking utterly lost. “What if they’re all wrong?”
A faint, real smile touched her lips for the first time. “Then we’ll translate them.”
She left, closing the door softly on the stunned silence behind her. The night air was cold, but a fierce, warm satisfaction burned in her chest. She had made her counter-move.
Back in the lab, Draco stared at the closed door for a full minute. Then, slowly, he walked to his workbench. He picked up a small, finished phial he’d been preparing—a new variant of a Dreamless Sleep potion, tailored for someone with an overactive, brilliant mind. He’d been planning to leave it next.
He looked at it. He looked at the door.
He pocketed the phial.