Part Of Your World | H.S.

Running through the garden, where nothing bothered us

"Harry, I can't believe you were a theatre kid!", I exclaimed, bringing my hand up to my mouth in a shocked gesture. It was chilly autumn afternoon in the UK, but luckily Harry and I were sitting inside his cozy childhood home, in the heated living room to be precise. We had been enjoying a hot cup of tea after an amazing lunch made by his Mom and although I was in somebody else's household, this must have been what coming home should always like, associated with security and warmth, instead of anxiety and anger. In my hand I held a rare, probably worth a million dollars, picture of Harry Styles as a young boy, dressed in a costume, screaming into a microphone he was holding in his hand. "Why didn't you tell me you were in a musical?! I am amazed."

"Oh, that wasn't his only musical performance", Anne said enthusiastically, setting down her cup of tea. On the coffee table in front of the couch were sat on, she had stacked up old boxes full of memories and old photo albums of Harry's childhood that we went through one at a time. It must have been a very stereotypical thing for a mom to do, showing your guest embarrassing picture of your child. My Mom most certainly would have done the same. I was currently flipping through the used, brittle pages of the second one, when Anne started rummaging through the cardboard boxes in front of her as if she was looking for something. "I think I even have a video tape of him. Maybe, I'll find it in one of these boxes"

"Mom, no, please stop", Harry interrupted her, waving his hand in front of her. The whole time he had been sitting between the two of us, barely enduring the exposure of his theatre past by his proud mom. Anne sighed and sat back down with a slightly disappointed look on her face that I wanted to roll my eyes at Harry for. Harry must have seen both of our disappointed expression, because he himself started rummaging through the boxes as a distraction. A few seconds later, he pulled out an even more used and brittled looking one, in which all the photos seemed to be black and white. "Hey, another one. What's in here?"

"Oh honey, you don't have to look in there", she said to him, chuckling and I noticed that her and Harry had the same dimples when they were laughing. They were very similar in a many ways, one them being their unlimited hospitality. Harry and his Mom hadn't seen in each other in months, but they both didn't seem to have a problem with the company of a random girl, aka me. Harry's mom had even asked what I would prefer to eat, since it wasn't fish 'n chips, to which I had responded that it wouldn't matter. I was their guest, the intruder in their family reunion. "Those are my old photos from when I was in High School. You're not gonna find any photos of you. You and Gemma were far from being born."

"Perfect, exactly what I was looking for", Harry said in relief and sat back down with the photo album in his hands. While he wasn't, I was certainly enjoying this whole scenario. It was nice to see that our childhood hadn't been that different after all. I could see why he had stayed so grounded after all those years in the spotlight. His roots were filled with so much love and so many lovely people, that I had longed for in these past ten years. Harry started flicking through the pages of the one he had picked, while I was still busy with the other one, when he found something that caught his interest. "Err, Jess, your Mom grew up here too, you said? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this could be her, right? Look, the girl in the back, she looks like your Mom in that photo in your dressing room."

"What?", I mumbled absentmindedly, shifting my gaze from young Harry in my hand to what did resemble a young version of my mother in his hand. It was a photo from what seemed like a party back in the eighties. In the centre of the picture, there was a group of teenagers, neither of them I recognized, but in the back, there was a girl, that looked familiar to me. First of all, she looked like me, but most of all she looked like my mother, but even younger than in the picture I had of her. If it was really her, she must have been somewhat between the ages of sixteen to eighteen at that time, but I had no image of what she really looked like then. "Oh my god, you're right. I mean the picture isn't really good, but that does look like my mother."