House: Slytherin
Category: Short
Prompt: Blue
Word count: 532
A/N: Harry is the girl here (Holly)
"No," Holly shook her head as Hermione pointed out yet another dress for the upcoming Yule Ball. The two girls had went through what felt like half the Diagon Alley, and they still haven't found that right one for either Hermione or Holly. "Too much blue."
"You don't like blue?" Hermione asked with a cocked eyebrow, shifting most of the weight to her right foot. Holly shuddered and nodded.
"But you never seem to dislike Ravenclaws," Hermione pointed out.
"I hate wearing it, or being near anything huge with the same color," Holly explained tartly. She was not about to explain why she hated that damned color so much to Hermione. That was private, not to mention completely irrational. "I don't hate people wearing it."
Hermione looked at her with a suspicious glint in her eyes, but eventually accepted Holly's reasoning and went deeper into the store to look for other dresses, leaving Holly alone to catch a breath.
She knew her fear and dislike of blue was absolutely irrational: she had never had any bad experiences with anything blue. Even at her most sadistic, Aunt Petunia had never tried to drown her.
Yet… Holly still detested blue. It reminded her of the half-fogged dreams she would wake up from gasping in terror, her wrists and ankles aching from the invisible manacles and her back raw from the rocks she rubbed against trying to escape her bonds. At a few occasions, she even bled after those dreams, the smell of iron reminding her of battles she had never seen in her life yet knew every single agonizing detail of.
The sea was her kingdom's most precious ally: it was the only way they could send out their riches in exchange for crops and fresh water. However, it could also be their worst enemy at times: sea storms were known to sink the supply ships, and the pirates and dead sailors were not an unusual sight at their shores. Death was something even she, the crown princess and sole heiress, was far too used to.
Being used to it, however, did not mean being indifferent to it, particularly when it was staring you right in the face. Tugging fruitlessly at the cold iron binding her wrists, the princess bit her lip and cursed her mother's pride and quick mouth for the innumerable time in the last few hours. Why, oh why did she have to insult the immortals by comparing her daughter to them? In the end, she would not be paying the full price of her folly - it was her daughter who would be eaten by the enormous sea monster!
Speaking of which… the sea started boiling over in the distance, alerting the princess that the monster was coming closer. It seemed like the sea was to be her grave, after all...
Holly shuddered as she recalled her most common nightmare. For most people, blue meant serenity, peace, order. Holly wished she would belong to that majority, and not be special like this. The again, after having that sort of dream her entire life, was it really that strange for Holly to hate color blue and just about anything associated with it?