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Peppermint
He gave her the peppermint because of her toothpaste: muggle, minty, aromatic in a way that magical cleansing charms couldn’t quite achieve. He never noticed it when they were in school, never got close enough to breathe the same air. But when she’d visited him in the Hogwarts greenhouses, several years later, closer to thirty than to twenty, she’d leaned over his shoulder, watching as he harvested dittany for her healing potions. A crop blight meant supply shortages at St. Mungo’s, and being the extraordinary healer and problem solver that she was, she’d sought him out to assist.
The mint surprised him, so he said something. Perfume? he’d asked.
Her cheeks colored as she leaned away. Toothpaste, she’d said. A Muggle habit.
She relaxed when he smiled. Coiled a curl around her fingers. Took the dittany with a quiet, thanks.
She invited him to drinks with her friends for her birthday two weeks later. He brought a small potted peppermint plant as a gift.
A couple sprigs goes a long way in making unbearable potions more bearable, he’d said, handing her the small ceramic pot over the top of a bar table. Her other friends gave her more predictable gifts—less living ones—but it didn’t escape his notice each time her gaze drifted to the little green plant sitting amongst their emptied pint glasses. She smiled at it, like he’d given her a new friend.
Don’t plant it in the ground, he’d said at the end of the night, words a bit sloshed at the seams. It’ll take over everything; whole mint family is that way.
She nodded, looking at the little plant as if she couldn’t imagine it doing such a thing.
Thank you, she’d said. I’ve been thinking I should keep more plants I can use for healing. And it will be nice, taking care of something—after Crookshanks.
They said goodbyes: simple, pleasant. The smell of peppermint followed him home.
Aconite
He gave her the aconite in a different bar, this one in Hogsmeade on Halloween night, after the Hogwarts feast, after he’d completed his duties to the school. They’d gathered several of their Gryffindor friends, marveling at how easy it had been to slip out of touch over the years, and equally marveling at how naturally they fit back together after so long.
She’d once been a fixture in his day to day, never a centerpiece, but still a constant presence. Then there’d been war. Then rebuilding. Then careers. Then relationships: first they thrived, then they died. Then the creep of a new decade finding them at The Three Broomsticks, surrounded by laughter and soggy chips and a yearning sensation that felt a bit like the inside of a greenhouse on an early spring day: calm, warm, blooming.
The flowers will be small and purple when they open, he’d told her, talking over the quirk of confusion on her face that said she hadn’t expected him to show up with a gift. You can use it for brewing wolfsbane, obviously. Just be sure to keep the soil well-drained. It prefers to grow in the wild and can be temperamental when potted.
Her fingers brushed his as she accepted the pot, a delicate, healer’s touch atop his calloused, perpetually soil-stained hands. She rotated the plant, examining its deep green leaves and brighter buds, just days from bloom.
If I have trouble with it, I know where to find you, she’d said, a sparkle in her eye. I’ll put it next to the peppermint.
He might have told her they required different light levels and that they shouldn’t live in the same place, but then she’d asked him about his research and he’d lost himself, for a moment, in the sensation of having someone genuinely interested in his work.
She’d joked that she looked forward to seeing what plant he might select for the next time they saw each other, fingers running absently up and down the leather strap to the bag hanging off her shoulder. They laughed together, parting ways, and he felt warm again.
Mistletoe
Mistletoe had felt like the obvious choice for Christmas, but after nearly two months without seeing her, trading owls every fortnight or so, it started to feel a bit on the nose. It wasn’t just a useful plant whose berries were used in the antidote to most common poisons; it was a social convention.
But he’d spent several weeks fashioning an evergreen host for its parasitic tendencies, charming it to function in a pot and respond to domestic cultivation. It was a pretty plant, bright green with white berries, innocuous when not strung up from ceilings and used as social lubricant.
He gave it to her on her doorstep, where she laughed as if she hadn’t expected it, but also, that she might have hoped. She accepted it graciously and ushered him into her home, already bustling with friends and family celebrating Christmas Eve with elf-made wine and too-loud music blaring from the wireless.
I’m forming quite the collection, she’d said, finding him in her kitchen, near the window at the sink. The peppermint had doubled in size. The aconite looked as if she’d recently collected several leaves. The mistletoe fit in nicely, lined up on the tiny sill with the others.
They’ve been helpful for brewing? he’d asked, turning to lean against the sink. She nodded. Smiled. Handed him a new glass of wine and stood too close, for too long. Something else brewing.
He let her rant about a new regulation being pushed through at the hospital that changed training and hiring requirements. Short-sighted, she’d called it, sighing as she sipped on her deep red wine, staining her lips like crimson baneberries: exceptionally poisonous fruits, but decidedly lovely. He gathered the empty glasses and plates she kept eyeing as she spoke, sending them to the sink and setting a cleaning charm on them, watching as her tension sank, still ranting.
Before he left, he rearranged the plants on her windowsill, moving the aconite to the side, slightly obscured by her gauzy curtains. A little less light would do it good. And he told her so, on her doorstep again, bidding her a goodnight and a happy Christmas with a hug and hand at her waist.
Dittany
Dittany? she’d asked on a gasp, genuine shock coloring her tone. He’d stopped by her flat in the short time he had between dinner and his patrol duties, monitoring the handful of students spending the holidays at Hogwarts. New Year's Eve usually meant attempts at parties he had the honor to disrupt.
He’d been working on the dittany for months, since the day in the greenhouses with her peppermint breath. It was a rare plant, difficult to grow, extremely temperamental. He only had one specimen himself, but he’d taken a cutting, nurtured it in a special terrarium enclosure he’d been experimenting with, and presented it to her slightly out of breath, having jogged from the apparition point near her flat.
She had faint purple shadows under her eyes. She wore flannel pajama bottoms, a white fluffy robe wrapped tight.
No plans for the New Year? he’d asked, perhaps stupidly, perhaps insensitively.
She waved him in, took the plant in its terrarium, and placed it on her kitchen table, sitting.
I’m tired. Work, she’d said as an explanation. Shift work, she’d added. I miss having a routine. And my research…
He watched her sink into her seat, reconciling the general awe the world had with her success as a healer, her command of an entire department at St. Mungo’s, with the exhaustion she wore so plainly.
The terrarium is self-sufficient, he’d said instead of anything else. He doubted there was much he could say to make the nature of her job less troublesome. It will take care of itself—keep the flammable vapors contained, too. I’ll show you how to harvest from it another time.
She smiled up at him, a grateful, tight-lipped smile contained in the lower half of her face, eye still tired. He touched her shoulder, gave it a small squeeze, felt the way she leaned into it, and said his goodbyes.
Have a happy New Year, Hermione, he’d said at her front door.
You, too, Neville, she’d said from her kitchen chair.
Vervain
He decided on vervain: green stem, small pink flowers, dense thorns. It required well-drained soil, full sun. It could be used in all manner of healing potions, with properties particularly well suited to treating mad dog bites.
Easter became his first real opportunity for gift giving outside of New Year's. He’d considered Valentine’s Day, but his giving and her receiving, it only had the faintest taste of something romantic, something more, simmering beneath the soil, certainly not enough to justify a day reserved for lovers.
He didn’t want to be presumptuous. His gifts had utility to her work, after all. Her appreciation could very well be tied to that thoughtfulness, nothing more.
They met for tea the Friday before Easter. He’d felt haggard, trampled by a term full of rowdy kids, test preparations, and several unfortunate Gryffindor-Slytherin blocks. His exhaustion had nothing on hers. She wore concealment charms—he could see the faint blur beneath her eyes—but a purplish-hue peaked through.
The world hadn’t stopped raving about her groundbreaking work in healing potions for the past month; she’d revolutionized the field. She’d completed years’ worth of research and experimentation, a behemoth of an achievement.
She didn’t look like she’d slept.
She didn’t look like she enjoyed her success much at all.
But she smiled, a real smile, when she accepted the vervain. She asked him questions about its uses, a traveller, for a time, out of her own life and into his.
New Year's to Easter was too long, she’d said, tired eyes watching him over the rim of her teacup.
He agreed.
They settled on tea again the next week.
Wiggentree
She laughed when he walked in with the wiggentree: almost his height, but not quite. They’d been meeting at various tea and coffee shops on a near weekly basis since Easter. This time of year didn’t have nearly enough holidays for him to hide behind.
He settled on the summer solstice, knowing it was a flimsy sort of excuse.
I don’t know that they allow trees in tea shops, she’d said through a giggle, arms outstretched as she tried to help him wedge the tree into their booth.
It’s a small tree, practically still a sapling, he’d said, smiling right back at her. If it can fit in a pot, it can fit in a booth .
It’s a rather big pot, she’d said.
He ignored her. Instead, he launched into an informative lesson about the wiggentree: how it gave its name to the wiggenweld potion, how it related to the rowan family of trees, how bowtruckles guarded its overwhelming goodness. She listened: actively, intensively. She asked questions; she genuinely cared.
She stared, wide eyed, when he told her his favorite quirk about the tree.
It protects you from dark creatures so long as you’re touching the bark, he’d said, unreasonably proud of the little tree next to him. I thought maybe you could use it in the creature ward, at the hospital. He’d left unsaid the strange burn beneath his skin that wanted to offer her protection, safety, for reasons beyond his ability to explain.
She shook her head.
It might be selfish, but I’d like to keep it for myself.
He kissed her cheek goodbye when they parted.
She smelled like peppermint and tea leaves.
I’ve heard Madam Pomfrey is retiring, he’d said, knowing exactly why he’d said it, ignoring the guilt that it hadn’t been entirely over concern for her work-life balance.
Mimbulus Mimbletonia
The mimbulus mimbletonia was the first gift she didn’t look excited to receive. He couldn’t blame her. It was hardly the prettiest plant, or the most romantic, if one were thinking in that way. But she smiled and accepted it, a tilt of her head, a small line between brows.
You’re supposed to receive gifts on your birthday, not give them , she’d said, looking brighter, lighter, than she had in a long time. Sure, he supposed it was a bit odd to give her a gift on his birthday, but he’d needed an excuse, transparent as it may be. They were both doing such an excellent job pretending.
July was humid and hot, and even with the cold butterbeer in his hands and the cooling charms inside The Three Broomsticks, he couldn’t shake the general sense of warmth, blooming and twisting and spreading from bone to blood to skin, from soil to stem to flower.
It’s a cutting from mine, the one I’ve had since school. I know it smells, but the stinksap has healing properties in animals that—with the right research—could have interesting applications in human healing, he’d said. He wanted to do the research with her.
You think I have time to do casual research? she’d asked, partly hidden behind her pint, the angle of her smirk distorted by curved glass.
He did.
I’ve heard Hogwarts has a new school nurse, he’d said. She smiled.
She presented him with a new pair of potting gloves before they parted: soft, strong leather. She wished him a happy birthday with a kiss to the cheek, maintaining whatever slow, pretending dance they’d been dancing in stages, step by step.
See you on the first of September, she’d said, hands on his arms, holding too long.
Peony
He gave her peonies for her birthday because she liked them.
Do they have healing properties I don’t know about? she’d asked, greeting him at the door to the hospital wing before dinner.
They didn’t. They were pretty, and she liked them, and he charmed them to transition in a spectrum from white to pink to red because he wanted her to have something lovely in her life that didn’t have to serve a purpose. That she could enjoy independently of their utility. She’d been trying to do more of that lately: enjoy more, work less.
She placed them on the long windowsill beneath a row of tall, sunrise facing windows. He smiled at the sight of his other gifts: peppermint grown out of control, aconite shaded behind mistletoe, dittany thriving in its custom terrarium, vervain positioned in direct sunlight, the wiggentree on the floor behind the rest, taller than him now, and the mimbulus mimbletonia almost doubled in size since he last saw it, growing its first boil. So much life in a place of healing.
She smiled at the collection.
They’ve been good excuses, she’d said, a fondness enveloping her tone, the room.
He agreed.
She tasted like peppermint, too.