Forest Greens (Larry Stylinson/AU)

Colourless

"Why'd you leave school?" Louis repeated with genuine curiosity.

"Well..." Harry lowered his brows as his lips pressed together in deep thought.
"I...well...uhm...pfft..." While Harry sat there stuttering his answer, Louis tapped the end of his fork against his plate, patiently waiting for Harry to come up with a proper sentence.

"Well, back at my school, the kids there would never understand my umm...actions..." He finally said, hesitantly, "so I left..."

Louis raised his eyebrows and slowly nodded his head at Harry with a little smile as if to say, "wowwwwww took you long enough."
"Shit...that school sounds tough..." in truth, Louis had full knowledge that most high-schools were infested with overly-judgmental teenagers, but what he wanted to find out was, which school Harry went to...he needed to find out more about Harry and his family and it was strange for Louis to think that finding out the name of his former school was the way to go...but is was.

"I've never heard kids as brutal as that... what school did you go to even?!" Louis asked, pretending to be shocked.

"Uhm..." Harry bit his lip and stared intensely into Louis' glass of water, "Kapelle Comprehensive School..." he said, dragging the words out slowly.

"Ahh..." Louis nodded with wide eyes, "never heard of it."

"Yeah...it's...it's a small school..."

After the awkward conversation, the two lads continued eating their dinner before leaving the table to wash up.

As soon as Louis made it back to his room, he whipped out his phone and began the hunt for Harry's school...via Google.

He typed into the search bar: "Kapelle Comprehensive School" and was immediately bombarded with results.

"Hm. S'not much of a small school now, is it?" He mumbled to himself as he scrolled through the many articles. Louis was never going to find what he came here to look for at this rate. With quick fingers, he typed in the name "Harry Styles" next to the name of the school and hit search.

Bam. First result was from the school's own website that was published back in 2009.  Louis read the article and learnt that it was all basically a sum up of the end of the school year. It contained a class photo from each grade and so on. Louis looked through the class photos and landed on the face of a familiar-looking student.

Is that...

Louis' eyes fell onto the name that was displayed below the student's picture.

"Harry Styles." he read.

Louis smiled warmly at the photo of young Styles. He was so smiley, so childlike, so...adorable. Louis then noticed the name displayed above Harry's picture: "Zayn Malik."

"That's Zayn..." Louis thought in realisation. From the photo, Zayn did not look half as bright as Harry or any of the other students and had kept his smiling to the bare minimum. On each ear, he wore one, black stud earring. Louis was getting a sense of "bad-boy" vibes from this Zayn.

Louis had found this web article to be quite resourceful and had obtained much information that could lead to unveiling the dark secrets of Harry. Louis had written down the school's phone number and he had gotten a picture of Zayn, so he knew what to look for when he asked Liam for a picture of the Zayn that attended their university.

Louist91: Zayn

PaintrainP: ?

Louist91: picture. Now.

PaintrainP: why tho?

Louist91: Just give it to me. Quick.

PaintrainP: Later, I'm studying.

Louist91: Aren't you always.🙄

PaintrainP: u sound desperate. Why do you need a picture of Zayn?

Louist91: I'll explain everything once I find an answer to smth, so pls, Li. Just a single photo.

PaintrainP: Good lord, okay, fine. Here.

PaintrainP: [sent an image]

That's him, Louis thought as he inspected the photo, That's Harry's Zayn.

Louist91: why r u standing so close to Zayn like that?

PaintrainP: lou, u got what u want now go away, I'm busy.

Louist91: alright, alright. Thanks.

Louis saved the photo into his camera roll and exited the texting app.
He then grabbed the paper that laid beside him and dialled its contents into the phoning app.
Louis pressed the screen to his ear and began to wait for the other end to pick up.

Louis ended up hearing nothing but the voicemail system.

"Shit." Louis hissed as he heard the tone. Louis thought of hitting the "call" button again, but then, something suddenly reminded him of the time. It was well past schooling-hours, so the school would have definitely been closed by now. After remembering this, Louis locked his phone and groaned in frustration. He was going to have to wait until the next day to call.

Louis leaned back into the bed and rested his head on the pillow, sighing as he stared into the ceiling. As the minutes passed by, his eyes felt an unfightable pull towards a deep sleep, which was then followed by the rest of his body. With no reason to stay awake, Louis slowly closed his tired eyes and drifted away into a dark, dark, dream.

Louis was standing in the ill-lit living room of a house that looked almost exactly like Harry's, except, the walls were bare and splintered. No framed cat photos, nothing. There was also absolutely no colour in his vision; he felt as if he were starring in an old film from the 1920's. He had no recollection of how he had came to be here in this space and he could only do so much as to observe his surroundings.

As he wandered, he had grown convinced that this house really was the house of Harry's. Everything looked exactly the same, except for the loss of colour, a few minor details and some other thing that Louis couldn't quite put a finger on. Ignoring that, everything else was in its correct place. However, when Louis actually attempted to enter his room, he found the door to be locked.

Strange.

He then went to the neighbouring room directly next to his own and tried to open the door. The knob was jammed.

Locked.

Louis then went the the final room situated at the end of the hall. Louis had remembered this door; the last time he had tried to open it, he had found it to be locked. He never bothered to come back and try again.

Until now.

He slowly reached for the knob and placed his palm against the cold metal. Louis felt nervous. He could feel the sweat form beneath his hand and he twisted the knob. Louis didn't understand why he was scared. He had no reason to be. Why was he scared?

The door opened.