Say You Love Me

{1}

Attempting to cough it out did not work. The smooth, velvet feeling did not go away until Hermione was able to stop coughing and slide the object from her mouth.

Staring back at her was a tiger lily petal. It was orange with black polka-dots, the unmistakable pattern of the flower, but how, in Merlin's name, had it come from her mouth? Thinking about second year when Ron had been throwing up slugs for a couple hours, Hermione groaned at having that image in her mind, but she couldn't take her eyes off the prize.

More like a surprise.

Panic overtook as it probably should have when she had to take the petal out of her mouth in the first place, and Hermione sent her patronus off to Harry with more urgency than should be possible. A ministry note would have taken too long, and he ignored most of those anyways.

Paralyzed with a plethora of emotions, Hermione awaited Harry in her office with little patience.

She got up to pace, eventually, leaving the incriminating petal on her desk, as he came into her office in a flurry of Auror robes, having changed into his field set for some reason since she'd last seen him. Hadn't it only been minutes, or was she going crazy?

"What's wrong, Hermione?" His voice was urgent and broke her from her reverie. "I came as soon as I could."

The door slammed behind him, and she jumped, looking at him with her brow scrunched. It was starting to hurt her head.

"I coughed up a flower petal."

His eyes went wide, the green very obvious in that moment, and his jaw was slightly agape, but she merely wanted to have an answer from him.

"What?"

"I coughed up a flower petal, Harry Potter. What the bloody hell is so hard to understand about that?" She asked him in utter disarray.

He breathed out, "I'm sorry Hermione. Come here."

His open arms were a comfort she had been expecting, and it felt good to finally be able to shake in the comfort of someone's embrace.

"You coughed up a petal?"

"Yes," she whimpered into his shoulder.

"Right, bloody hell."

Hermione had her wand in one hand and Harry's robes in the other as she hugged him, closing her eyes at the comfort she was finally receiving. The problem was, they couldn't just ignore the damnable thing that had come from her body, sitting on her desk like it'd just fallen off the flower itself.

Harry broke the silence first. "What kind of petal?"

"A tiger lily."

He snorted, and it felt weird in her chest which was so tightly flushed to his.

"Can I see?"

She nodded, squeezing one last time, then walked around her desk and handed him the aggressor.

He held it flush in his palm, looking at the little thing with an odd curiosity.

"This came out of... you?"

Hermione could tell his attention was not on her, but she nodded anyways, feeling just as dumbfounded as he was currently. It had not worn off, and she wasn't entirely sure it ever would.

"You need to see a healer," he determined, placing the petal between his thumb and index finger to hand back to her.

Looking at the item thrust between the two of them with a slightly absent look, she wondered why in Merlin's name she hadn't thought of doing that before. Of course a magical healer would be able to diagnose her better than any old muggle doctor. She lived in this world now, how was that not her first thought? Obviously, a few months away from Ron had diverted her back to some of her original ways of living.