Edel

“A child at Pride? Awful.”

Sirius had always absolutely hated the fact that protesters were allowed at Pride. He understood the idea behind it–the right to peacefully protest was important. But still, the screaming, angry, sign-wielding assholes reminded him painfully of his parents.

He was usually able to ignore them, though. Until he and Remus brought Harry to Pride for the first time.

Four-year-old Harry, in his adorable little ‘I love my guncles’ shirt, holding a rainbow flag and decked out in so many free rainbows he looked like a walking advertisement for the event.

As soon as the woman holding her ‘Homosexuality is a Sin’ sign acknowledged Harry, Sirius was ready to throw hands. Lunging forward, he glowered, one hand clenched at his side, the other grabbing for Harry’s shirt to pull him away from the woman.

But she continued talking, leaning down to get in Harry’s face.

“Young man, are you scared? I know all of these men in dresses are terrifying, yes?” she cooed, making Sirius growl and Remus start toward her as well.

But before anyone else could speak, Harry wrinkled his nose and said, “Your breath is scary. Did you eat eggs or something?”

The woman’s mouth popped open and Sirius and Remus turned to each other, smiles stretching onto their faces. 

You hate it.

It looks terrible on you and you've always thought that. When you were really young, you thought that's just what everyone thought about their hair colour. When you were a teenager, people chalked it up to hormones and wanting to be unique and follow the trends of dying your hair. It wasn't.

You've seen people with brown hair. It looks so good. You start imagining yourself with beautiful brunette hair. What if you could be that? And then you hear someone talk about you, call you 'that blonde over there' or someone telling you, 'your blonde hair looks so good!' and you're reminded all over again.

Your parents talk about something. Something you've never heard of before. "All those young kids, dying hair everywhere," they say. You ask them what it means. "Oh, that's when someone with one hair colour thinks they're better off with another hair colour." Your heart lights up. There's more people like you. You're not insane. And then- "Fucking insane. They just want to feel special. All this ridiculousness over trends." It hits you in the heart. You say nothing, just mumble an 'okay' and turn your attention back to your food.

That night, you're scrolling on your phone, and one video pops out. It's talking about dyed hair. You see people not just with natural-coloured dyed hair, but blues and greens and so many other colours. It looks beautiful. You remember your blonde hair. Could it finally be brown? These people are like you. They might be able to help.

You do research. You reach out to people online. And finally, you have your hands on a box dye from a store. it's not the highest quality, but you have it. At midnight the next weekend, you do it. You dye it brown. It's messy and tricky, but your heart is swelling with joy the entire time.

You expect people at school to be happy. Your hair is beautiful. You're beautiful. You finally feel comfort in your hair, confident in the way you look. Instead, you get side-eyes. People whisper and glare. One of your friends pulls you aside. "What happened to your hair?" You tell her you dyed it. Asks her if it looks nice. She grimaces. "Yeah... it looks fine.... but your blonde hair was your natural hair colour and it looked fine as well." You tell her the truth. How you've always hated it on you. Found brown to be so, so much prettier. Looked so much more amazing on you, and felt it too. "Yeah... but blonde is still your natural hair colour, right? No amount of dye is going to change that." Your confidence starts to sink. Will everyone think this?

Turns out, they will. You hear people still refer to you as "that blonde there". New people express confusion. "But her hair's brown? It's very clearly brown." "Well, yeah, but she dyed it. Her natural hair colour is blonde." "Oh... okay."

Your parents don't like it. "Your blonde hair was so beautiful," your mother sobs through her tears. "Why did you have to ruin it? My beautiful blonde child is gone! Gone forever! Why did you do it?" And you tell her that her child is not gone, her child is right here, just with different hair. She doesn't listen to a single word. Your father is mad. He yells at you to get out of his house, that you're a fucking disgrace, that you're mentally ill and brainwashed by trends and so many other hurtful things. You can only leave.

You try to go to another friend's place. She answers the door with a scowl. "Why are you here?" she seethes. She's angry. Why? You tell her about your situation. "Serves you right," she spits. "You're incredibly offensive to everyone with blonde hair." You ask her why, puzzled. "You clearly hate blonde hair. Why else would you dye it? Do you find blonde people disgusting?" No, no, that's not it. Blonde people are fine, you try saying. It just didn't suit me. I wish it did, but it didn't, so I changed it. "Stop twisting everything," she says. "I don't want to see your face." The door closes and you're left there on the steps.

You don't know what else to do. Were you truly lying? No, blonde hair has never suited you. Brown looks better. Brown makes you feel secure. You feel it's what makes you feel like yourself. But why can no one grasp that?

You search up more on your phone, and you find a community for similar people. People thrown out, disowned, abused for dying their hair or expressing wants to. When you get there, you find that they accept you with the warmest smiles and the coziest hugs. You find people that bleached their brown hair to blonde and dyed their blonde hair to brown, just like you, and they look so amazing. You find people with all sorts of coloured hair too, red, blue, yellow, purple, multicoloured and hair that gets redyed differently depending on the day. They all have similar stories. You've finally found a place you belong.

Outside, people are still outraged. They scream at the community that they're brainwashing their kids, that they're grooming every kid to dye their hair until there's no natural hair kids left. You don't feel hurt anymore. You know now they make no sense. They push out their own children, and this is the result. They don't want people with dyed hair banding up together.

Brown hair has always suited you. You're rather tired of people trying to pretend it doesn't.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

read the previous pride hc here 🏳️‍🌈✨

byler where mike is the first one to arrive at the parade. lucas tells him to find a spot, something easy to recognize and to stay there while he waits for the rest of the party.

he turns around a couple times before he sees a small crowd. snaps a pic and sends it to their group chat.

mike is too busy checking his phone for his friends’ location to notice the people around him slowly thinning out. or the pretty boy now smiling brightly at him.

“next!”

he looks up so fast his heart shaped sunglasses fall flat on his face. ouch. “what?”

“aren’t you in line for the portrait?”

portrait?

suddenly, mike takes in his surroundings. apparently the reason behind the small gathering was ‘@williamthewise’s whimsically colored cardboard little booth offering live drawings in the middle of the parade.

“oh.” and of course he stood in line without noticing. atta boy. mike feels his face growing hot in embarrassment. why is it always in front of the cute ones? “sorry, i’m not really um— modeling material.”

the boy at the booth grins like he knows something mike doesn’t and mike feels a little weak, a little stupid. in the best way possible. “don’t worry, you’ll do just fine, trust me.”

for some reason, mike does.

“i’m will. please, take a seat.”