There were times that Nymphadora hated her mother with all of her heart. There were moments that her teenage, heart-shaped face flushed beet red and she'd excuse herself from the table, run out into the woods a few streets away, and scream bloody murder, not caring if the crows, much less the neighbors, heard her. The pinpricks that set her off were simple: a flick of her mother's thin wrist, the taste of her freshly baked tart, a phone call not for her, but for Andromeda Tonks. Thin filaments of calm snapped, and a frightening rage would flourish, until she had shrieked and punched it out on some unsuspecting dirt clod.
The lamp light glinted on the smooth pile of braids that caused her mother's delicate neck to bow, swanlike. Nymphadora stuck her fist in her mouth, her normally-grey eyes flashing red for a split-second, and the tips of her hair turning an envious green. Strangers often liked to compliment her by remarking, "You are the spitting image of your mother!", or some variation there of. This was slightly true: Nymphadora's natural features where as if the aristocratic Black looks had been boiled and heavily sieved through a tea strainer labeled Tonks. It was true her eyes were large, like her mothers, but they were a tad too wide apart, and the lashes clumpy and pale, darkened by liberal amounts of mascara. Her nose was a hair off center; her lips, too uneven to be beautiful. Her face was the jolly heart-shape of her grandmother, Rosie Tonks, and her hair was the sandy brown of her father's. The only true similarity between her mother and her were their two equally ridiculous names.
Nymphadora (how she detested that name!) could not cook or garden or sew. She had no musical ear, and often, if she attempted to paint, found more of it on her then on the canvas. She was not good at math, like her father, and could not write, like her mother. Unfortunately, she was good at pranks, which her perfect and truthful mother desperately tried to wring out of her. Her father would guffaw and snicker at her antics, and carefully tack to the kitchen wall the letters Hogwarts sent, detailing her antics and inevitable punishments, and, with lips pursed, her mother would curse them of the wall, until her father charmed a few to hang indefinitely.
Her mother coughed slightly, and continued to clip articles from the Daily Prophet as Nymphadora awkwardly sat cross-legged in her bean chair, trying not to blow. The tiny snips of the scissors seemed to be cutting away at her patience as well as the paper, and with a quick, slurred, "Scuse me," Nymphadora leaped out of the living room, cramming her feet into her sneakers as she ran. It was raining outside, but it did not deter her from her mission. As she ran, muscles burning, she choked on her anger, and began to shrilly hiccup and cough.
Slipping down on the grass of Mrs. Delaney's yard, Nymphadora stared at the trickling water on the road, her fingers pulling up grass and dirt and throwing it, pretending it was her mother being hit, her elegant clothes stained forever. She was ashamed of her lack of admiration and respect she had for her mother, and hoped the rain would end soon. After the almost-purifying storm, she felt she could finally face Andromeda Tonks.