Lone [MATURE HS]

Chapter 42

NOTE: an extended version of this chapter is on Patreon

The next chapter (43) is also available on Patreon RIGHT NOW. 

There were many things I didn't think myself to be capable of doing or simply believing. However, in the past few months, there has been considerable evidence disproving these initial beliefs. I questioned my life no further because I was always led back to one conclusion: why me? And of course, everyone at some point questions the sequence of events that could be both fortunate and unfortunate in their lives. My will to question has diminished entirely granted that the continuous chain of misfortune follows us anywhere. Even in my dreams, so it seems.

One thing was clear: I had to do something in a timely and strategic manner. Maybe I wasn't entirely alone, as Charlie was with me all the business hours of the day. Our commitment to the truth and our preexisting friendship made the complexity and overwhelming intensity of the situation easier to grasp. I found that making more logical assumptions about things at this point was hard, and that if I had lost all logic and reason, then given the current circumstances, it would be simpler to maneuver the obvious absurdity of what this could all mean for me, for Harry, and for our child.

It was strange to have to contemplate the safety of a child now. But as strange as it was, it was also, nothing in comparison to the oddness of the events in my life, as well as natural. I feel as I have more reason to protect myself, my future with Harry, and all the conditions that were signed over to me the moment I let myself care for him. I did not sign up for the rest, but life would be nothing without its usual spontaneity. The issue now, was, solving the mystery of how exactly I could arrange the evidence (that is nowhere to be found as of right now) against Katherine and her co-conspirators.

And as I sat in my seminar class, the urge to regurgitate the contents of my stomach onto myself and my blank notebook pages was increasingly difficult to suppress. Professor Howard moved along the class room and maneuvered his lesson effortlessly, as if he had no intention of doing the things he did. As if he hadn't been obsessed with me. Little did I know; he was going to perverse my profound intimacy with Harry in the vilest way.

I'm squeezing the side of my desk; my skin pales and I feel myself start to perspire. The pounding in my ears was the sound of my pulse and the blood pumping throughout my body, recklessly. I look at the white board as he writes down a term, and my vision blurs, almost tinting red. Knuckles flushed white, hair falling over my face as I lower my head, I hear everything at once. The faint chatter behind me, Professor Howard's casual lecture, and the ticking of the wall clock several feet beside me against the wall. I must be having an anxiety attack.

"So, you're saying, Harry's aunt is responsible for the death of his parents...because she had an illegitimate kid with his father?" Charlie asks quietly, his voice mirroring my own as we both sat at a corner in the library, the usual spot encased in shelves of books and encouraging posters hung by the university.

I sit at the red beanbag chair, laptop on my lap as I type out another addition to an already extensive bulleted list of possible outcomes. My brain got me into an Ivy League, and not it was surely time to put it to good use. I could not preoccupy myself with the Harry in this dream, and I could not get sidetracked. If this was a chance to fix all of our problems, then I should take full advantage of the blessing, and I can think of all the perils and dangerous later.

"Yeah," I respond curtly, pressing the 'enter' key. "She and three other people. One was my neighbor, the other a professor here at brown, and the third is...still unknown to us. So, I wonder if I could start there. The third person. It had to have been someone who executed the death of Harry's father. That's all that's left if he was largely uninvolved in terrorizing Harry and I after his death."