💭 SFW: Harry being hopelessly in love, very clingy and very sweet :)
A/N: Regularly scheduled content coming back soon! I have a similarly styled Draco fic I should have done tomorrow! <3
You’re scribbling down notes, ink flowing from your quill, head bent, jaw set. Focused.
That little flutter at the back of your neck. That shift in the air—warmth, presence, a flicker of something familiar that makes your shoulders loosen without meaning to.
He’s standing between the shelves like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. His cheeks are dusted the faintest pink, hair windswept, tie crooked, and his eyes?
“Hi,” he says, almost breathless. “Was looking for you.”
Your smile pulls before you can help it.
“I told you I’d be in the library.”
“I know,” he says. Then, quieter: “Still missed you.”
He crosses the space in three steps, hooks his bag on the back of your chair, and sits right next to you—closer than necessary. His thigh presses against yours. His hand grazes your knee under the table. He doesn’t even open a book.
“You’re not going to study?”
“Not really why I came here.”
You glance at him, and he’s already looking at you. That soft little look he saves just for when he thinks you’re not paying attention.
He leans in, just slightly.
“Do you mind if I just sit here?” he asks. “I won’t distract you.”
He doesn’t say much at first.
Just lets his hand settle on your knee under the table—warm, steady, his thumb brushing the edge of your robes in slow, absent circles.
“Hmm?” he says, blinking up at you, like he genuinely has no idea what he’s doing.
Your quill stills between your fingers. “I’m trying to study.”
“I know. I’m not doing anything.”
He gives you this look—wide-eyed, innocent, the absolute picture of blameless Gryffindor boyfriend behavior. But his thumb keeps moving, slow little arcs that send a very unhelpful warmth crawling up your leg.
But Harry is right there, his hand is right there, and every time you shift in your seat, he just adjusts like your bodies are synced without effort. And worst of all?
Like you’re the most interesting thing in the world.
Like whatever passage is in your textbook could never compete with the crease in your brow or the way you chew on your lower lip when you’re concentrating.
“You could help, you know,” you mutter, tapping the page in front of you. “Instead of hovering.”
“I’m not hovering,” he says, even though he is hovering. “I’m offering moral support.”
“With your hand on my knee?”
“It’s very morally supportive.”
You huff a laugh, and he leans a little closer, proud of himself.
“You’re not even reading,” you point out.
“I am reading,” he says. “Your notes. They’re very good. Very… thorough.”
You shoot him a look, and he grins like he’s won something.
His hand doesn’t leave your knee. If anything, he shifts it a little higher. Not indecent—just enough to remind you he’s there. And he’s not going anywhere.
And then there’s every time you go to the bathroom.
You open the bathroom door and nearly trip over him.
Harry, cross-legged on the corridor floor, leaning back against the stone wall with his head tilted up and eyes half-lidded in that sleepy, patient, love-sick way that makes your stomach do a little flip.
“You’ve been sitting there the whole time?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t want to miss you.”
You blink. “You know you could’ve—literally—gone and done anything else.”
“But then you’d come out and I wouldn’t be here.”
Like that’s obvious. Like that’s the natural conclusion one comes to when someone they love is behind a door for ten minutes.
“Besides,” he says, standing up and brushing off his robes, “I like being close.”
You narrow your eyes. “You just saw me.”
“I didn’t touch you though.”
He loops an arm around your waist like it’s second nature, pulling you into his side as you walk.
“You’re ridiculous,” you say, but your voice is fond.
Dinner at the Gryffindor table is always a bit of a mess—half-conversations overlapping, plates clattering, pumpkin juice sloshing dangerously close to someone’s textbooks.
You’re already seated when Harry appears behind you, slightly winded, like he ran here.
“There you are,” he says, relief blooming across his face like it physically relaxes him to see you.
You raise a brow. “I’ve been here five minutes.”
And without asking, he slides onto the bench next to you—right next to you. Close enough that his knee knocks against yours, his shoulder brushes yours, and his plate barely fits between the two of you. There’s plenty of space farther down the table. You point this out with a side glance.
“Ron and Seamus are down there.”
He says it like it’s the only argument that matters.
You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling now, nudging his thigh with yours.
Halfway through dinner, he reaches over—without warning—and swipes a biscuit off your plate.
“They’re literally identical.”
He bites into it with a content little hum, entirely unapologetic, and you’re not even mad. You can’t be. Not when he’s looking at you like that—soft-eyed, all affection, like just being pressed up against you in the middle of a loud, chaotic Great Hall is the best part of his day.
And when dessert appears and he slides the dish of treacle tart just a little closer to you?
You forgive him for the biscuit.
The common room is warm and golden, fire crackling low in the hearth, the murmur of conversation drifting from the other end where Ron’s in some heated debate with Dean about Quidditch stats.
You’re curled up in the corner armchair, book balanced in your lap, legs tucked under you.
Wedged in next to you like he belongs there—like your lap is the most obvious place to be. His head is resting against your stomach, one arm slung lazily around your waist, the other lying across your thigh. Your fingers are in his hair, combing gently through the thick, soft mess of it in a slow, absent rhythm.
You pause to turn a page, and his head shifts. Just slightly. Then—
Harry’s looking up at you with those big, green, wounded eyes. Like you’ve personally betrayed him. Like you’ve ripped something sacred from his soul.
“So read and play with my hair,” he mumbles, nuzzling his face back against your stomach. “Do both.”
You bite back a laugh, but your hand goes back to his curls, and he melts. Fully. Like his spine liquifies. You feel the tension drain from him all over again.
“You’re spoiled, you know.”
Minutes pass with your fingers in his hair.
You shift beneath him, stretching out your legs and nudging his shoulder.
You expect him to groan. Maybe pout. Maybe try to convince you to stay just five more minutes.
“Okay,” he says, already standing and offering you his hand like it’s a given. “Let’s go.”
You blink up at him. “We’re going to bed?”
“Well, you’re not sleeping without me. That’d be cruel.”
You open your mouth to argue—but the boy’s already pulling you up, like this is just a known fact, not a question.
And somehow… it kind of is.
By the time you reach your dorm room and push the door open, he’s still behind you, right on your heels like a clingy little shadow. You turn to give him a look—not annoyed, just… bemused.
“Relax. I came prepared.”
And then—casually, like it’s not a shocking reveal—he crosses to your trunk at the foot of your bed, flips it open, and pulls out a toothbrush, a very soft but rumpled spare pair of pajamas, a pair of Gryffindor socks (not yours—definitely his)
“You stashed pajamas in my dorm?”
“Our dorm,” he corrects, eyes gleaming with way too much pride. “For emergencies. Like sleepovers.”
He shrugs, completely unbothered.
“Ron talks in his sleep. You don’t. It’s simple math.”
You toss your jumper aside, already reaching for your pajamas when Harry makes a quiet, totally unnecessary sound behind you. A soft little “hmm.”
You glance over your shoulder.
He’s standing there, holding his own pajamas like he’s forgotten what to do with them. Still in his shirt, eyes lazily tracing the curve of your back as you slip on a sleep shirt.
“Nothing,” he says—way too quickly. Then, grinning: “Just forgot how pretty you are.”
You roll your eyes, but the smile creeps in anyway.
“You see me like this all the time.”
“Yeah. Still gets me every time.”
You throw a pillow at him. He ducks.
The nighttime routine continues like it’s ritual:
You both stand at the tiny mirror in your shared dorm bathroom, bumping shoulders while brushing your teeth. He insists on doing everything with you—simultaneously. If you reach for the toothpaste, so does he. If you wash your face, he’s right there, splashing water like he’s done this beside you a hundred times (he has).
“We’re not actually attached at the hip, you know.”
He spits into the sink, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“We could be,” he says, grinning through the mirror.
And then you see it—his toothbrush.
Like, exactly. Same color. Same little gold trim around the handle. Same brand.
You arch a brow. “Matching toothbrushes?”
“Figured it’d be cute,” he says, totally shameless. “Plus, easier to remember which one’s mine.”
“They’re literally identical.”
Once you’re both in pajamas and done with your absurdly synchronized bedtime routine, Harry flicks the light off with a lazy wave of his wand and crawls right into your bed without waiting for an invite.
He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t hesitate. He just belongs there.
And when he curls into your side, tucking his face into your neck with a soft sigh, you can feel it: that quiet kind of contentment, like everything in the world clicked into place the moment your arms were around him.
“This is better,” he mumbles against your skin. “Always is.”
