After the End: Book 4

78. Parents and Power

A/N: This meme is literally me trying to edit this chapter after realizing my draft was like barely better than an outline. It took a minute to fix lol
Im writing so much right now. I'm trying to decide if I should write more fan fiction or just like something else. If it'a fan fiction, I'll likely divert from reality much more than in this one.
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Harry's POV

I had parents on my mind.

It's just like...parents are a really weird concept, right?

It's so easy to make a baby. I did it by accident once. Louis did it by accident with more success than me. Two people just had sex and then some magic biological shit happened and suddenly those two people are parents. Wasn't I technically a parent, just for a little while? Sometimes people would tell me I was a parent still, like it was something that never went away, but I definitely disagreed. Being a parent is about more than just making the baby.

Jay had nothing to do with my birth, but I viewed her more parentally than anyone else in the world. Louis was certainly a parent to the twins. Without a doubt they'd viewed him like that their entire life, and he only shared DNA with their mum. I mean, I couldn't lie and say I didn't view him a little bit parentally, and we didn't share any DNA at all. Maybe the parenting thing had more to do with your capacity to care. Louis cared about me more than pretty much anyone still alive, and I relied on that heavily. We don't need to dwell on psychoanalyzing the issues with that though.

Louis definitely viewed that insufferable prick Mark as his father, but as his parent? He had mixed thoughts obviously.

I'd never before seen someone tell off their parent like Louis had done to Mark. I tried not to think often on what parents owed their children, but the conversation that Louis and I had partaken in drunk on his bedroom floor was hovering in my mind. He'd called my mum some choice words that night. He'd mentioned some things I'd been deprived.

On Monday morning after the chaos that had taken over Sunday, I'd wanted to stay in bed. I was trying to avoid complying with that impulse, but I had actually been hit pretty hard, and I really felt like moving maybe wasn't the right decision either. My head hurt. A recovery day would have been nice.

Clary showed up around 10 am and practically dragged me out of bed. She wanted to take me to a support group that I didn't want to go to. I negotiated and instead we settled on getting a late breakfast. I agreed to be a nice open and honest sober soldier, so she could dispense her wisdom into me like a pez dispenser. She chose a small diner near my flat with a quiet atmosphere and soft amber lighting.

"So how do you decide who you're going to sponsor?" I asked over a plate of fluffy waffles. "Why me? Aren't there like a plethora of drug addicts running around?"

"Because I find you interesting," she said in a voice that told me it was true. "And your train wreck was hard to ignore. Plus I like to adopt broken things. It's like a terrible hobby of mine."

"And how long ago did you decide to adopt me?" I asked.

"The day you started holding Q and A sessions."

I felt my face get a little red. That didn't even feel like something I would do, but I remembered thinking it and rationalizing it. I remembered the theatrics and the way it all made sense at the time. Now I was clean and looking back on it and it made me a little dizzy to even consider.

"Why didn't you try to talk to me then?" I asked.

"I did. Several times actually."

"I don't think I remember that."