Absolution ➺ H.S. AU

Chapter 19 ➺ Harry

I walked through the hallway to waste time. I always ask to go to the bathroom to escape Mr. Brown's horribly boring history lecture. It's not like I'm going to need to know what the Ancient Egyptians lineage was in my day-to-day life anyway.

After meandering around the first floor for as long as I possibly can without it being suspicious, I head back to the classroom.

When I return, the lights aren't off and the middle-aged, balding man isn't putting the class to sleep anymore. On the contrary, it's quite the opposite. Everyone is chattering and grouped up, sitting in little pods. Wow, I leave for five minutes and miss the most ineresting thing we've done all year.

I walk up to Mr. Brown's desk to get the scoop on what has taken place since my departure to the restrooms.

"Ah, Mr. Styles, you're back. You missed my explanation, but basically, we're going to be doing a group project on an aspect of Ancient Egyptian culture. Will and Jesse have been so kind as to invite you to their group. I'll let them explain the rest of the project to you."

Group project, fuck. I don't work well with others. And I have no clue who "Will" or "Jesse" is. I don't bother learning who my classmates are.

"Who?" I ask.

"Will and Jesse."

"Well, yeah. Who are they?" I snap back. We're a month and a half into the school year. He should know by now I don't really give a fuck about many people.

"Will and Jesse." He said, annunciating each syllable as if he couldn't believe my attitude, and pointing to a girl and guy sitting with their desks pushed together in the corner of the room. I walk over to them, pulling a desk up to theirs effortlessly.

I force a smile onto my face. If I have to work with them on this we might as well try to be cordial. Even though we're nothing alike. Two totally different social groups.

"Hi." I say. Maybe Paisley is rubbing off on me with this whole 'be nice' thing.

"Hey, Harry." The girl, Jesse, obviously, says. The boy, Will, obviously, just gives me a curt nod of adknowledgement.

"So what are we doing for this project?"

"We're going to do a presentation on the Egyptian view on the afterlife." The boy said.

"Alright. Like pyramids and stuff?" I was really trying to be nice. Really.

"Well yeah, those are their tombs for the Pharoahs." Jesse said. We all just sat silent for a moment. I sure didn't know what to say or do to get started.

"Maybe we should start by brainstorming aspects of their religion and then breaking down which parts each of us want to research." Will suggested. Maybe I got lucky and got put into a group with some smart kids.

"Okay." Jesse and I said in unison. Will pulled out a piece of paper and began to jot stuff down.

"So, what Harry said about the pyramids, we'll need stuff about Osiris, the weighing of the heart, the tombs of the people..." Him and Jesse bantered back and forth, thinking of different topics. I kind of felt bad that I couldn't really contribute much. But hey, I did give them the pyramid thing.

"Sorry, I don't really retain information that well." I said, relaying the fact that I really haven't helped at all.

"It's fine." Jesse said warmly.

After that, Mr. Brown dismissed our group to the library so we could start doing our research. We were walking down the vacant halls when Jesse spoke up.