Bound by Pages | larry

thirty-six

Harry ran, literally ran, into English class. He had overslept his alarm severely. He had only had time to brush his teeth and grab some cookies before running out of his house, not even putting his jacket on first. 

He stopped momentarily only when he saw the confused face his mum was giving him while she sipped her tea. In his tired and confused state, he paused to wonder why she was sitting there and not locked up in her room. Harry still woke up sometimes, forgetting that his life had changed. He woke up with the dread of having to face his father, even though that was no longer a part of his life. 

He sprinted down the hall and burst into his English class, ignoring the looks in the hallway he got from the frequently late. Mr Wikards took a pause from reading the names on the attendance to stare at Harry with a raised eyebrow.

"Sorry, sir. I got uh... lost." Harry sheepishly smiled while making his way to his seat. He heard a couple chuckles around the room from his lame response. That excuse barely worked at the beginning of the year, let alone four months into school. 

Harry put his bag down on the seat, forgetting that the seat next to him would be full. He snapped his head up, staring into familiar blue eyes that he hadn't seen in so long. They were still as blue as the ocean, and Harry was drowning in them. 

What he really wanted to do at that moment was to jump on the boy and tackle him in a hug and smother him with kisses, but for the sake of the class, he didn't. Instead, he just spoke to Louis, even waiting for Mr Wikards to finish attendance like the wonderful student that he was. 

"Lou," he whispered out so that only Louis could hear. The word sounded so weird on his tongue. Almost like his mouth was rusty and this was a skill he hadn't practised in a long time, but in a good way. Almost like the rain that ended a long drought. 

Okay, maybe Harry was being a little dramatic, but that's what it felt like to him. 

His stomach grumbled loudly, reminding Harry that he hadn't eaten anything all day. He shuffled around in his backpack until he found the paper bag that he had grabbed on his way out the door.

He really needed to work on his essay, so he decided to actually work. Or at least try since the boy sitting next to him was sure to be a distraction. He spent almost a full minute munching on a cookie and twirling his pencil between his fingers before Louis spoke. 

"Cookies for breakfast? Harold, that can't be good for you," Louis smirked, grabbing a cookie from the bag. 

"Hey, I was in a rush. I just wanted a quick snack." Harry defended his poor decision, raising his hands and shrugging. 

"Right..." Louis paused, looking down into the bag. "That why you needed... seventeen."

"They're small cookies-"

"No, no they aren't," Louis stated. "Sorry, I don't make the rules."

Harry looked down at his paper, his currently empty paper. He looked over at Louis, which was almost full already. How was that fair?

"You, Louis Tomlinson, are not good for my education."

"Says you. I'm trying to work here Harold." Louis fake glared, then smacked Harry with the back of his pencil. 

Harry tapped his pencil on his paper a few times but produced no words. He had gone back to spinning his pencil in his fingers when something miraculous happened. He wrote his first word on the paper. The word was 'the', and Harry had spent a good twenty seconds on each letter, trying to make them look perfect. That was procrastination at it's finest. Maybe if there were no more distractions, he would actually get some work done.