[H.S] Shots

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“Class is dismissed. We will start the next assignment on Wednesday.”

Harry’s final class of the day all shuffled out of their seats and passed him by as he lent against his desk at the front of the room. Right on cue, the voice he hadn’t been able to get out of his head all semester piped up.

“Bye, Mr. Styles. Have a nice rest of your day,” she said as she walked past. Harry softly smiled at her as she reciprocated the gesture before passing over the threshold and leaving the room. The last glance he caught of her was the hem of her oversized, sky blue sweater following behind her.

Harry breathed a longing sigh as she left his sight, already missing her presence in the back of his auditorium style classroom. He had been feeling this way since she had joined his class for the spring semester. He had always been into poetry and connected to it on a deeper level than regular novels—hence, why he taught a poetry based literature class—, but it wasn’t until she had walked into his class did he realize why poets prosed so highly over their muses.

In all of his four years of teaching at this university, he had never met anyone that had intrigued him quite like her. (Y/N) was probably the smartest person he had ever had the privilege of knowing. Reading each of her essays and analyses, paging through her quizzes and tests, and hearing her occasionally speak up in class to answer a question or propose one of her own, was something Harry never took for granted. She added to each of his lectures in a way he could have only hoped he did when he was student (he knows he didn’t, though, always much too shy to make himself known). She always paid the utmost of attention to him while in lecture, Harry always able to find her gaze as he spoke, her eyes only shifting from him to take notes on his words. There has only been one occasion where she had been late to class, as it was the first day and she had apologized profusely and explained she had gotten lost trying to find the building.

Since then, Harry hasn’t been able to stop himself from becoming a little infatuated with her.

He had been briefed by his collegues some weeks after he had started, learning some of their tricks and tips as it was his first teaching job. They had spoken about the fact that, no matter how hard they try to be neutral and not pick favorites out of their classes, that they all had a student or two that they liked, or related to a little more than the others. The ones that always showed up for class and put in the effort needed to pass, the ones that consistently turned in exceptional work showing that they valued each session, and the ones that were just overall good people. They had all told him of those kinds of students, so Harry hadn’t thought too hard about the fact he had been so pleased to have (Y/N) in his class three days out of the week. He figured he just had a soft spot for the girl that always showed up five minutes early, took consistent and concise notes, and turned in some of the best work he had seen in his few short years of leading classes.

Then, things took a bit of a shift that Harry isn’t open to admitting.

It started when he would blush a bit each time she would walk into his class after the weekend. She always had on comfortable outfits—something that had a bit of effort put into it, but not too much, as Harry knew what it was like to be a struggling, tired uni student all too well—, and would pass by him at his station at the front of the class with a wave of her hand and a “Good afternoon, Mr. Styles”. She had been the only one to do that out of all of his classes, and it was something Harry didn’t even know he could become attached to. She would shoot him the sweetest smile before walking up the steps with another one of her friends to grab a couple of desks in the back of the auditorium. He found himself struggling to tear his eyes from her form as she took those stairs up, his gaze tracing along her body and focusing on whichever detail he had come to notice that day. It brought a heat to his cheeks so bright, that he was worried a few times that it would fog up his glasses. The neckline of his sweater vests would suddenly become a bit too tight, a sign he knew meant that his blush was reaching below the hem.