DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to J.K. Rowling, obviously. Any OC's and the plot belong to me.
BRANDED: Prologue
Throughout my years at Hogwarts so far, I've been given many titles from many people, and none of them are very flattering. The Slytherins identify me a traitorous, walking contradiction for being a Gryffindor. Scorpius used to see me as an embarrassment. He probably still does. The Gryffindors recognize me as a "sneaky, untrustworthy daughter of a Death Eater. I know for a fact that the Greengrasses hate me from the bottoms of their prejudiced hearts. Younger students who don't know me very well are just under the impression that I'm a crazed Beater.
Worst of all, people have called me "Scorpius's little sister". I am not his little sister. I'm his twin. Okay, I'm pretty short for a 14 year old. Sure, I sometimes have random bouts of childishness (who doesn't?). And so what if I still like to sleep in pajamas with Pegasi patterns on them?
There's only a 4-minute difference between Scor and me. It's really just my parent's stuck-up friends who made (and still continue to make) that horrid mistake.
Thankfully, I look nothing like the prat. According to my dad, I look like my namesake, Andromeda Tonks, when she was a kid. Apparently, of the 3 Black sisters, she was the only one born with black hair. Her hair was as weird as mine-it had a few streaks of brown. Okay, mine doesn't have streaks of brown; it's streaks of silvery-blonde. Unlike Andromeda I, my streaks never faded away. I just hate it-sometimes it looks silver, and it makes me feel like an old hag. It was then that I had gotten one of my crazy ideas. See, Dad told me the story of how Great-Aunt Bellatrix ruined her hair, when she was 15. She used to have dirty-blonde curls. I guess she got jealous of Dromeda's natural streaks or something, so she tried transfiguring her hair. The spell backfired and left her with a crazy, frizzy black Afro.
Well, black suited her better anyways.
Either way, I decided to transfigure my silver streaks to brown. As you can deduce from my sorry tale, I wasn't very bright at the age of 8. I didn't think about Aunt Bella's failure as I snatched my mother's wand. Thankfully, I didn't end up with an Afro. In fact, I made most of the streaks turn black. ('Most' being the keyword there.) Alright, fine, if I leave my hair alone for too long, it frizzes up, but that's why I have Dominique. Either way, having natural streaks in your hair is apparently unusual in pureblooded families, which is kind of ironic.
Pureblooded families just can't stand changes. Some can, most can't. Like I've mentioned before, the Greengrasses hate me. They really can't stand the thought of me disgracing the Malfoy and Greengrass name. There's not much to disgrace, really. My parents are okay, I guess. Dad isn't anything like Lucius, and Mum isn't the typical snobby Greengrass.
It's hard to remember my years before Hogwarts. I really can't imagine telling Scorpius anything personal, or important. Sharing muggle food with my stuck up cousin Lyra Greengrass can't exist even in a fantasy. Even calling Greengrass by her first name gives me shivers of disgust, and she's my only cousin.
Her mother never liked me much. It was more of a small, barely noticeable dislike. Being the only Malfoy in Gryffindor made her dislike grow with a burning passion. Aunt Daphne even sent Howlers, pretending to be my mother, Astoria. Mum was furious when she found out. Greengrass used to defend me against Aunt Daphne, surprisingly enough.
But that was a long, long time ago. People say that you should let go of the past and live in the present, even though the present is really the results of the past. You can't deny that the past still affects our current time. Most people just don't notice it. People like Greengrass and her mother would do anything to "follow tradition". Incest, arranged marriages, as long as they're in their little world of purebloods, they'll be satisfied.
They look down on my house, my friends, my clothes, my hair (especially my hair); they even find flaws on my Quidditch position.
My hair may sometime resemble Bella's, I may share the same hair oddity with Dromeda, and I may have inherited Narcissa's and Draco's pointed face, so I'll have to admit, I look a lot like my pureblooded ancestors.
But I'm still a Gryffindor. And I've come to realize that, at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if someone is a Gryffindor or a Slytherin, or even a Ravenclaw.
Because either way, they'll still judge you.