Authors Note: I had this idea in my mind for a long time and I started typing the story up one day. I already have a lot of the story written up so I will post a new chapter about every two weeks. I also posted this on Wattpad as wellso you can read it on both if you want.
Review and let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter just my OC
I will never get married.
I will never allow a man to run my life.
Muggle or pureblood.
"What will you do with your life?" Be free. Travel the world, be lost, scared, but all on my own. "Who will take care of you?" Myself. "What will you leave behind?" Like everyone else, nothing. "Honestly Jared what will you do with your life?" Live in the city and have a normal life.
"I already have a man's name, why can't a live a man's life?" My mother spiteful of my father named me a name she knew he would hate. The defiled muggle name of a boy, so rightfully opposite he and his family stood for. A name that so basic, with no deep root meaning in the Pureblood society but one that belongs to muggles and in their beliefs.
I will live life like a man.
"Besides I want to move to New York and live in the city. I want to work for an Ad Agency, like McCann or something. I want a normal life." I want to live the stereotypical muggle American dream of making it in the big apple, like they say. I don't want some basic wizards job that the moment I quite or die someone else will take it and it would have been nothing.
Everyone at Hogwarts will have a meaningless job that will contribute to nothing.
I don't want to follow some order that is already made for us.
I want to get away from magic.
"Why do you want to give up magic so badly? Your wand? Your heritage?"
"Because nothing good came from magic." It was true. Though muggles had their fair share of wars and killings. Magical society was worst. The supremacy, how women were treated, and how ordinary muggles where treated by purebloods was disgusting. While muggles had their own society issues, Voldemort was our own.
"Honestly I don't know how we are related." My beautiful sister, Ilya. Our father picked the name for her, completely opposite from my own. Her being the oldest when our parents divorced she went with our dad and I was raised by our mother.
The parenting styles completely different.
"Dad is worried about you. He doesn't want you to embarrass yourself." He was never supportive of me.
"You mean embarrass him. He doesn't want me to make you and him look bad at your wedding." She was in her last year at Hogwarts, getting married just three weeks after she graduates, and I'll be stuck here for another two years. "Especially since you're marrying one of the sacred twenty-eight" I always hated the family trio. "You'll get to be a Lestrange. Wonder if your hubby will join like the rest of them."
She gave me a look, a warning not to push it. While we were in separate houses, her in Slytherin and me in Gryffindor, we still always sat with each other in the dining hall. Me mostly going to her table since she refused to sit at mine. "He's not like that."
I laughed, snorting on my drink laughing. "You're joking right? Come on you know he is that bad" He goes to Durmstrang for crying out loud!" I didn't like him, and he didn't like me.
"You need to be nicer to him. He's only that way with you because..." I knew what she meant. When our parents divorced our father took her to live with his family in Germany. Our mom because of him upright and leaving was stuck to afford things on her own and in doing so I lived with muggles.
"Yeah but I'm on best terms with Snape." Knowing it was true. Professor Snape was my neighbor when I was growing up and since my mom had to work all the time I was left alone when no one could watch me. So I would annoy him. "Even then I would call him Professor Snape" I would yell his name from my porch to get his attention, since I had no one else, and barely saw my sister at the time.
"But Jared I do need you to be on your best of behavior. In three months is the wedding and dad wants all the families there. That means Malfoy and Parkinson." I made a sneering face at the mention of their names.
While their families raised them to be wealthy and appropriate for pureblood behavior I didn't have the luxury of doing so. When our father left my life for a while, our mom struggled. I was raised in a poor area, many with muggles, and watched and saw my mom need help from my grandmother. Since our father's family refused to help us, even disowning me for a period, my mom's family had to come in.
My only real family.
The ones who introduced me to America and where I picked up their accent.
"Why so daddy can show off his greatest gift of all." I didn't hate my sister or was I jealous of her. I knew the life she lived wasn't her choice or what she was taught. We were both raised differently. While my mom loved and cared for her and sadden by my father taking her, I didn't feel the love from our dad. Instead for years up until I started Hogwarts we had gone unspoken. The only person I communicated from that side was my sister.
The one my mom had to push for. "What would your friends think leaving your own daughter to be raised by Muggles?' Something so shameful that he needed to fix before everyone saw how he failed with his second child. Though it was known how my mother refused to take him back and willingly got the divorce, it was also the fact he left me behind.
Something a lot of them seem to ignore and forget.
Ilya I knew felt sorry for me. For a while she would apologize and bring up about our different upbringings. But I had one thing Pansy, Draco and she can never have.
Independence.
I have no family to impress, no rules to oblige by, and no man I need to marry for the sake of a name. Just as Pansy latched onto Malfoy from second year and onward, Ilya attached herself to a Lestrange, and all because of the name. While neither will ever admit (not that I would ask Pansy) the name of the two men draws Purebloods together and into a partnership.
To keep breeding.
The concept of marriage was wrong in every way. A woman belonged to her husband, and the man seemed to have all the authority of the role of their lives. My sister's life will be controlled by him and every day that came closer to losing her I begin to hate him even more.
"Just be nice. For me? You're my maid of honor!" Something not everyone found to be amusing. When Ilya asked me to be her maid of honor it even shocked me. While I didn't support her choice, or even her life style, I would have never say no to her.
"How did I get so lucky with that?" Seeing my sister so happy and glowing about her day made me happy, but I knew deep down what will happen. Even as she began speaking about her plans to her friends who sat down next to us my heart ache. Soon she will be a Lestrange and lose her name. She will be part of his life and I won't have her anymore. She will move into his family's estate, not even her own, and the only time I will see her is when I owl first.
I will never get married.
"I can't wait to see your dress!" Her friends talking loudly, Pansy and her gang joining in chatting about the upcoming ceremony. My sister with beautiful golden blonde hair, big blue eyes and lips and teeth that where a tad big for her face but made the room glowed when she smiled.
Ironically, she looks like our mother at her age.
I look like our father.
Dull brown hair that waves at the end, bangs, and a more rounded face. While you can tell we are related by our cheeks, and nose, every feature was completely different.
In every way we are different.
"Do you ever think you will get married Jared?" Daphne Greenhouse one of Ilya's closet friends that is the same year as me. She is one of her Ilya's bridesmaids. The girl was nice to me, tolerable, and easier to talk to than the ones my sister chooses to hang.
I heard scoffs and laughter coming from Parkinson. Looking her way, I saw her laughing and making jokes, imitating me about marriage. Malfoy sat hear her with his goons and her gang of friends all laughing at the notion of me being married.
"No." I loudly spoke gaining their attention. "I don't need a man and I certainly don't need the name that comes with one." Standing up I grabbed my things and left the great hall. While my sister chose to hang with the 'it' crowd of Slytherin I didn't hang with any group at all. I wasn't part of Potter's little group, annoyed by Hermione mostly even though she means well. But I never fit in anywhere to be part of a group. I don't have enough understanding of a muggle's need or wants with life and how magic can be confusing to them. I don't their full lives outside of Hogwarts and how one can completely live without magic. But I don't get a pureblood life either. To me it was so dull and boring with no excitement like a muggle's.
Heading to potions class early knowing Snape would be there mostly likely annoyed with grading papers.
"Why does she really need to get married? And to a Lestrange?! His two uncles are in Azkaban for torture and she wants to marry one!" Sitting in the front, my ropes a little messing hair a mess from coming my fingers through my bangs to push them back. "I know she says she loves him, but it has to be the money and name. Because I can tell you he's not that great." Did I say before that I hate him? "I really worry about her and if she's making the right decision. What if she's not?" Snape sat there grading his papers and making notes ones who clearly failed or wrote something completely wrong.
"Do you think they will end up like your parents?" He didn't even look up to ask me the question.
"Yes." Deep down in some way I could feel that they will turn out like them. "I mean I've seen Malfoy's parents hundreds of times and even with them they have some type of love. I just don't see it with them." While I may dislike the Malfoys but I noticed how different Draco's parents where to my own. For years being raised by a single mother was normal for me and a way of life. The idea of a father being there was foreign to me and that divorced parents are not what purebloods do.
Until I met them.
They are the perfect family I have ever seen. For a while there I envied them.
"Maybe you don't see it because you refuse to acknowledge it." Snape looking up at me his beading eyes staring into mine. I knew he was right. "Your sister is an adult and if she wants to marry him she can. His family's past is the past." But I also knew I was right too.
"Did you ever want to get married?" Without a second of a thought.
"NO." Smiling and laughing as the students started walking in. Malfoy and his two goons coming in first sitting in the front row as well but off to the Slytherin side of the room.
"What are you laughing at?" The after effects of Snape's comment still on my face turning to Draco who spoke to me with his sneered voice.
"Why do you care Malfoy?" Why Malfoy bullied other's I never understood it. He had everything. Almost everything.
He didn't have freedom.
While others complained of his behavior and the way he treated others I felt bad for him. I have seen how his father speaks to him, and how he is treated. While I began working at Borgin and Burkes over the summer his father a frequent customer I noticed how he expectations of his son was higher than most parents.
A lot higher than my own.
His father wanted perfection. A perfect loyal to the cause pureblood son, and Draco was just that. He is the exact to the stereotype of a pureblood that one thinks and picture in their mind. His family working for the ministry, being one of the richest families, and hide their dark ways while living in lavish style. Draco Malfoy was what every pureblood family wanted as a child.
A perfect soldier.
So while many hated him in my house and I didn't. I felt sorry that he will never have the life I do. That all his choices, all his thoughts were already made for him. Just like everyone else here in the classroom they were pre made and set everyone up for failure.
I refuse to be a failure.
While jotting down my notes, going over the ingredients we needed, I knew for me this was a waste. I didn't want to brew potions but be out on the city making art. I didn't want to go to transfiguration but sketch and come up with ideas. I didn't want to just take notes in history, but I wanted to make my own for my life.
I felt trapped in an endless cycle.
"What will you do with your life?" A question I knew what I wanted since the first time I saw New York City. The moment I saw the giant billboards and ads on television. The magazines flooding with pictures and stories. The way just a few words could grab your attention and make you want to buy it. I wanted advertising.
But I didn't live where it offered it.
So I took a summer job at the Dark Arts store Borgin and Burkes and I ended liking that. I made signs for them and helped sell out their artifacts for a better price that gained more money in their pockets. Working there made me feel like I was in the city in some way. I felt like I was making something to grab others attention and needed to pitch the idea.
"Maybe be a dark witch and gain some followers. Ruling the world sounds fun." The question going over again with me, and I still didn't have a clear-cut answer.
Because what I want to do isn't offered for me to take.
Snape gave me a hard look when class ended, and everyone had already left. "I want to do advertising and I want to be in the city. There's this company called Fold7 its an agency that muggles work there. But they do huge companies and if I can get into there I'll have a chance!" I didn't want to be here forever. "I've been working really hard this summer and I saved up enough money and bought one of those muggle's things they call a computer. I even started using it!" Talking faster and rambling on about the way muggles used the device and what they 'programs' where on the thing.
"I really want to work there." Since the first time I went to New York right before I started Hogwarts I knew instantly what I wanted to do with my life.
I didn't want this pureblood magic life.
