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"Professor Snape."
Severus's quill lifted from the paper, more out of habit than any real, conscious attempt to not leave large, splotchy dots of ink on his parchment, and looked up from his tentative lesson plans.
"… Professor Potter."
Harry's smile was impressively toothy, his teeth bright in the gloom and the hundred burning candles of the Potions classroom. He stood with one foot in the classroom, his twill "I'm a proper teacher who teaches things, honest" robes hanging lopsided from his shoulders. Splattered mud, from some unnecessary romp in the Forbidden Forest no doubt, decorated the hem and blackened his rubber-soled shoes. A flush had turned his cheeks a deep red.
Severus stared back for moment. "… Well?"
The flush darkened as Harry jerked into some sort of action. "Right," he said, chin dipped down to his chest for a breath, before coming into the room proper. "You don't happen to have class this hour, do you?"
Severus gave the empty classroom a deliberate once-over before looking back at Harry.
Somehow, the flush only got darker. "I meant, what's your next class?"
"Third-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs." Severus set his quill aside. The way this conversation was going, that class would have started and ended and Harry would still be here, leaning awkwardly over the tables, hemming and hawing around the point of his visit. "Is there any particular reason you're here, or are you just that desperate for a taste of my company?"
Harry started and straightened out his spine. "Right," he said again, this time reaching into the inside pocket of his robes. "I have something to give you."
Severus's heart sped up suddenly, the little muscle pounding hard and fast against his rib cage. His thoughts raced as he tried to anticipate just what Harry had obviously rushed over, in between classes, to give him. Some cheap trinket? No, unlikely. A bit of flora or fauna he had found flocking about in the woods that had reminded him of Severus? Even more ridiculous. Severus’s shoulders pulled back; he wasn't going to lose his composure over whatever sentimental tack Harry was going to present to him, that was damn certain.
Harry huffed softly and pulled out a roll of parchment. "Here," he said, placing the thing on Severus's desk, right on top of his tentative lesson plans.
Severus stared at the low-grade parchment and the elastic band wrapped three times around the middle. His heart stuttered at least once in confusion.
"Greta Sheridan wrapped her Potions essay and her Defense assignment together," Harry went on.
"... And out of goodness of your heart, you've taken it upon yourself to turn it in for her," Severus concluded, his heart finally slowing down with misguided disappointment. He held the scroll up like a baton, a beacon of misguided idiocy. "You ran all the way down here for just this?"
"I have a class in a few minutes, yes," Harry said. "And don't deduct points from her for this. It was an honest mistake."
"She is too absentminded for it not to be," Severus said.
Harry glanced over his shoulder to the open door before turning back to Severus. "I should get back," he said. He leaned over the desk and pressed his lips solidly against Severus's own.
Severus tilted his head to the side, pushing back. It was soft and dry, too long for the classroom, but too brief. It ended with a little pop, leaving Severus a little dazed.
"I'll see you later," Harry said as he rushed out of the room. "And be less mean!"
Severus stared, blinking, at the open door, before shaking himself and returning to his work, his cheeks warm and his lips tingling pleasantly.