I do not own Harry Potter, the Wizarding World, or any canon characters.
Harry steps up in Potions class to smell amortentia, and says in front of everyone, "Hmm, it smells like [name]" not knowing what the potion is.
-0-
You could hear a needle bounce off the stone floor in the thundering silence in the dungeon classroom. It was the kind of silence that was louder than thunder, a silence that made a person hear absolutely everything. A tiny cough, the slightest breath taken, the beat of a heart and not just your own.
Usually it took a grand admission to cause a silence like that to occur. A statement so baldly and boldly given that shocked everyone who heard it into such thunderous silence. The kind of truth that made jaws drop, eyes widen, and things to fall from nerveless fingers.
The instigator of this silence, one Harry James Potter, looked around the room, as if finally noticing the silence that he had caused. "What?" he asked, flummoxed by the slack-jawed stares and the tangentially related silence from the others.
"Uh, Harry? What did you say?" Hermione Jean Granger asked. Her voice quavered a little and her cheeks were bright red. She stared along with the others but the shock to her was a bit more personal than the shock the others had felt.
"I said it smelled like you," Harry said, wrong-footed. He looked around and felt his own cheeks flush.
"R-Really?" Hermione squeaked.
"It does to me," he said defensively. "Doesn't it?"
"Actually, my boy, it wouldn't be a smell that multiple people would agree on unless they had exceptionally bad luck," Horace Slughorn said with a big beaming smile. The older Potions Professor was trying to be kind and understanding and not enjoying the moment utterly. He was slightly successful on the former tasks, but failing miserably at the latter. "Do you not know what this is?"
"No Sir," Harry said, embarrassment replaced by confusion. "Should I?"
"Perhaps not," Slughorn conceded. "But do tell, what does it smell to you that made you say that?"
Harry shrugged. "It just does. It smells like books, but not like that old and musty smell. It smells like the kind of binding a good book has, that dry but nice smell. It's soothing." He missed the looks the others were giving Hermione, as well as missed the look Hermione was giving him. "It also smells like mint. Not like regular mint, but that super fresh mint that comes from toothpaste and mouthwash."
Hermione blinked and held a hand to her mouth, breathing out and sniffing the air and her eyes widened more.
"Oh and parchment! Like the good kind and ink. But not bad ink. The ones that aren't too thin and watery. When you know it's good." He finally noticed the looks the others wore. "What...what should it smell like?"
Slughorn patted him on the shoulder. "Oh well, that's what it should smell like, to you. You see, this is called Amortentia, it is a love potion and it smells like the things you love most." Slughorn watched as Harry slowly made the connection. "Yes, that's right," he said, sparing the poor boy when Harry went bright red and opened his mouth.
Harry nodded jerkily and walked woodenly back to his desk and started to sit down awkwardly. He looked at his other best friend, Ronald Bilius Weasley, when Ron suddenly got up and switched seats with Harry. "What are you doing?" Harry hissed.
"I'm not sitting between you two," Ron hissed back, "not after that!"
"Ron, please," Harry begged.
"Just sit down," Ron sighed, pushing his best friend into the chair beside his other best friend and grinned at his two best friends who might be something a little more now. "Merlin's pants, you already said it. Can't take it back. Be a bloke and own it, sheesh."
Harry and Hermione sat there like statues, looking at anything but each other. What felt like an age, reality only a few seconds, Slughorn called on another to try and identify another potion.
"Harry?"
"Hermione?"
"Do...did you...did you really mean that?"
He nodded slowly.
"Oh."
He felt his heart beat slow and he wished it would stop so that he would stop.
"Would...do you want to know what I think it smells like?" she asked timidly.
He nodded even more slowly.
"It smells like the polish you use on your broom," she confessed, staring straight ahead and not looking at him, her voice soft. "It smells like the raspberry jam you put on your toast and scones."
Her voice became a whisper only he could hear. "It smells like treacle and caramel."
His heart suddenly decided to beat faster than it had ever beat before and he felt the blood rush to his face. "Oh," he stammered. "Th-that's nice."
"Just snog already," Ron groaned, handily ignoring the embarrassed look on Harry's face and the furious look on Hermione's. "Just somewhere I don't see."
Harry felt much better as he listened to Hermione and Ron bicker. Even when some things change, some things never did.