Dealing With Absence » h. styles au

50ᵀᴴ CHAPTER

                                         50ᵀᴴ CHAPTER 

    "We're going to have to let truth scream louder to our souls than the lies that have infected us" 

He steps out of the tube to an open sky falling down in a wet, stubborn patch; kind of cold, too. The streets feel wary, like it’s scared any movement might startle its quietness, but Harry just doesn’t know. It doesn’t make much sense.

Nor does the weather, either, to be honest – which the day before had just been pleasant; 6p.m. and the sun still up, bright orange like never before, surrounding the skies with warm tones so dark it took them ages to fade into the slightest shade of blue, very up high, lost on its own.

Today, however. It’s turned into grey. It’s hard to look up and distinguish which ones are clouds and which ones are open spaces in the wilderness, even though it’s not like Harry’s bothered to look up, anyway. He’s got one of his hands deep down the pocket of his coat and his head ducked to the floor as his bag shoves from one side to the other according to his hurried steps, hard on the floor, breaking up puddles underneath his worn-out boots.

It isn’t of much help his lack of an umbrella – and Anne had told him to bring one along, but. Moms. –, albeit there’s nothing much he can do about it now.

As he sprints off under the rain, he squeezes tight the book he’d been reading all the way here, using the hand buried into his pocket to pull the coat over the papers to try and shelter them from the stronger-by-the-moment water. It’s almost useless; the water drops having inked their shapes into crumples on the pages where they landed already.

By the time he reaches the awning of a random shop, a few hairs have slipped out of his bun and are glued to the skin, his clothes slightly damp, the amount of puddles he’s stepped over starting to feel noticeable at the own dampness of his socks. It’s uncomfortable, to say the least, though the shifting doesn’t do much to help it.

He ignores the stickiness in his feet as he chooses to step into the shop, shoes doing this annoying, sticky noises as he moves. Walking inside, however, makes it a tad bit better, having the heat on and the fresh smell of pie coming from somewhere behind the counter.

Harry instantly lands his eyes over the display full of several treats; some colourful, some home-ish looking. It only takes him about a minute to decide upon the carrot cake – covered by chocolate icing –, and a cup of chocolate cookie latte that’s actually brought to him something like two minutes later on the table he’s chosen.

Then, he simply sits there, moving his cup around and playing with the straw over the whipped cream, drawing random figures as he distractively pulls his journal out and places it next to the book on the table. He’s simply lost interest in the middle of a chapter, possibly because it was impossible to go through a certain line when people all around him kept talking so loud. Now, though, the excitement is far gone, his mind too vague and distant to focus on such things as organised words.

The rain has no sound from where he’s sitting, staring out a window that’s not quite as big as the one he’s used too; also, this one has thin curtains hanging over them, which makes it the more unfamiliar. He tries to convince himself it’s alright to make changes, sometimes. Tries to blink away the too-usual scenarios that keep flashing through his brain.

The latte somehow gets to the temperature of his palm, and as Harry fails to realise it, he flicks through the pages time took care of wearing out, not caring to spend too much time on the words his old self spent so much time putting down.