House: Slytherin
Prompt: Blue
Category : Short
Word Count : 530
When Hermione comes back to school after the war, she doesn't want to think anymore. She stops taking notes in class, and she just listens, with her eyes closed, as the professors drone on and on and on and on.
She likes the monotony of it. Harry and Ron love the excitement of being admired war heroes living their life in the great big world, but Hermione is tired. She wants to rest.
Hermione likes to lie out by the Great Lake when it rains, letting the water wash over her. It makes her feel as close to happy as she can be these days. She is lonely, with Harry, Ginny and Ron off in London and her parents blissfully unaware of her existence, but lying there and looking up at the grey sky makes her feel like she is part of something much bigger.
No one ever disturbs her. There seems to be an unspoken understanding between the students and staff that everyone needs to heal in their own way, and no one questions anything anymore.
Then she comes.
One day, Hermione is staring at the grey clouds when suddenly a girl with bright blue hair is standing over her. "Parkinson?" Hermione whispers. She knows it's her, because no one else has hair like that. Not at Hogwarts.
"Get the hell up, Granger," Pansy says, and her voice sounds like venom.
"No."
"Get the hell up or I'll make you, and I assure you that won't be fun."
"I don't care."
"Get up."
Hermione stands up.
"Good," Parkinson says. "You have to stop running away from your problems. Didn't think you were a coward, but here we are, with you lying in the bloody rain because you don't want to think about the War. Well, it happened. Get over it. It happened to all of us. Get over yourself."
Hermione feels her fists begin to clench. "We all have ways of coping," she grinds out.
"Your way's not working. All your friends are out living, and you're just sitting in the mud by the Great Lake."
"Shut up! How dare you come here, with your stupid face and that stupid blue hair! Who wants hair that color? It looks stupid, Parkinson."
"Blue is the color of quiet calm, Granger. We all have ways of coping."
Hermione feels tears well up in her throat. "Does it help? Does having bottle blue hair help you cope? Because I would really bloody like to know how to not feel like dying all the time, and if stupid hair is going to help me, then I'll have the bluest hair you've ever seen! Because I'm not coping, Parkinson. I'm broken and breaking and everyone knows but no one cares and just shut up already!"
Everything is quiet for a moment. "You're the one yelling," Pansy whispers. "I didn't know you hated my hair so much."
"Blue was my mother's favorite colour," Hermione says as tears roll down her pale cheeks, and though Pansy doesn't know why that's so sad, she somehow understands and she wraps her arms around Hermione.
"It's all going to be alright," she soothes. "It's all going to be okay.'