A/N: I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters.
This is for THC/The Houses Competition
House: Hufflepuff
Class: Muggle Studies
Category: Drabble
Prompt(s): (color) Lilac
A huge thank you to my betas!
Word Count: 509
"It's lilac, not purple," Pansy muttered, staring at the nearly boiling potion in front of her.
"Why isn't it darkening?" she asked, glancing at the instructions on the board which clearly said the potion, when complete, was to be a deep shade of violet. Pansy wrinkled her nose. She could almost smell the heavy scent of lilacs in the air, the ploying heavy scent that filled the air every Spring at her family's manor house.
Pansy hated Spring, the way the air was perfumed and everything seemed fresh and new. It should have been a happy time, but for her, it was a season of everything changing. It was the season of lies, of hiding things, of keeping secrets. Orchid was Pansy's biggest secret now, one she couldn't even dare talk about.
Her sister, Orchid, had disappeared the spring before she'd turned eleven. Pansy had only been seven at the time. She'd woken to find Orchid gone, everything that she'd owned gone, it was as if Orchid had never existed. Her room was empty, the pale lilac walls repainted a neutral white. The photographs that had once lined the long halls were gone, replaced with photographs that only showed Pansy or her parents.
There was no investigation. No one asked questions except for Pansy. She was told not to talk about it, to pretend Orchid didn't exist, that she'd never existed. As far as the world was concerned, Pansy was now an only child. Pansy didn't understand, but she did as she was told. She kept her mouth shut, she didn't ask questions of what had happened to her sister, her best friend. The sadness in her mother's voice, the anger in her father's eyes was enough to silence her.
She stayed out of the house after that. She found herself in the garden most days, sitting under the large lilac tree in the garden. She and Orchid had always sat under it, pretending they were princesses and the lilac colored petals falling down on them were confetti thrown by their adoring public.
Pansy cried, loud sobbing cries that she knew no one would hear. The heavy scent hurt her lungs as she breathed. The lilac petals of the flowers raining down on her, sticking to her tear stained face. Lilac, Orchid's favorite color, had become Pansy's most hated color, Spring her least favorite season, and she knew there was nothing that could ever change that.
"Come on you stupid thing," Pansy muttered, her mind returning to the potion in front of her. Nothing had changed, despite the passing of the minutes she'd been lost in her own thoughts. She had hoped maybe as it cooled, it would change. It still hadn't darkened to its proper color, a color that didn't remind her of everything she'd lost, a color that didn't remind her the way her world had shattered. But the potion remained unchanged, a swirling lilac that Pansy eventually poured into a vial and handed in, a lilac Pansy knew wouldn't earn her a passing grade.