The world sees everything in color, even I see some form of technicolor over the holidays. One of the few times the world and I are synced. Though, Christmas is here and I can barely stomach it. There is red and green plastered everywhere, and the knot in my stomach tightens profoundly at every small glance of such pigments. A shining glimmer of silver bells and gold trinkets laid bare to the public for view or greedy consumption.
I love these colors and hate them near simultaneously.
Red, a color that dyes the infuriating and loathsome fat man in his stupid suit who always gave my sisters something and I nothing. I try my best to behave, and yet no one cares. I'm constantly overshadowed unless I step out of the pre-drawn line. A year's work of goodness, erased by a small incident big enough to condemn me.
But oh, how their blood splattered so artistically against the alabaster snow. The scarlet blood dripped, weaved into the frozen crystals, and melted against the white.
Or the blistering, festering red I see when father belittles me, calls me his bane, and throws me to the wolves for things he did and had nothing to do with me. The red I see when I receive the punishments for things out of my control, or when I have to step in because Andromeda has no balance and broke a family heirloom, again. Everyone sees red in the world at some point, but my world is often tinted crimson.
Then there is the green sprouting from the macabre tar-ish seeds of my family. How could I hate green? It's the color of my house, my lineage. It's Slytherin and the taste of peppermint gliding across my tongue with sweets and drinks, but that ugly tree my family erects in the manor is this deep verdant. It's not the proper green. It's nothing like the woods that surround the home, that I can play in, and escape the orderly noble law of Black Manor. That tree is wrong in its portrayal of pine as it is the artificial insult to what a tree is, alive and chaotic in nature.
Next is silver: the color of Narcissa's hair fighting against a winter breeze, mother's stare out a frosty window or to one of her own. It's the jewelry I always end up having to adjust on all three of us daughters before a gathering. The world sees us all as the poise and perfect regal teens, but we all are a mess under our masquerade. Silver is the color of the ornaments hung around the manor, glinting like stars in the fading light, or the mask I wear to mother's parties.
Too many gold drinks at her holiday balls is why I ended up snogging Rodolphus Lestrange in the hallway, away from incorrect chaos. There was too much gold at the parties, even if not physically present. Everyone walked as if they owned the world with all their money in the bank, and flaunted it. The cacophony of meaningless chatter echoes and bends to the ear of any and all guests dripping in auric metal.
Gold is the metallic hue of my new engagement ring, and I swear the metal burns at my flesh worse day by day.
It was the holidays, yet I never had the joyful cheer that others felt cloud my mind as it did to so many. I saw the colors, heard the annoying songs, even tried to be good of heart. Never did the thought of the holidays give me a sense of pleasure.
There is an ache where I should've felt happy. I'd rather cut out my heart as the beating, breaking pain violently pumping in my veins was too intense. The color red was just too dominant in my world, and so I really wished I stayed at Hogwarts for the break.
