TAINTED BLOOD ━ FRED WEASLEY ( editing )

𝖛. 𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖚𝖑𝖎𝖆𝖗 𝖔𝖚𝖙𝖈𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖘

Alexandra's morning was usually uneventful, yet that very morning, when the blonde's eyes landed on her own damp hair she couldn't help but gasp as she stumbled backwards. The teen brought her shaky hands to her hair, her fingers curling around a lock on her right side. Her once even blonde hair was no more, for on the right side of Alexandra's head stood a single lock of white hair.

There was no plausible explanation for such change, yet the teen couldn't help but wonder what could have stripped all the pigment of a lock of hair in her sleep. It had not been a prank, that much the witch was sure of, for she had immediately cast a spell she'd learned thanks to the Weasley twins, only to find herself with the lock of white hair still in between her shaking fingers.

The reason why this had happened was simple, yet Alexandra found it hard to accept it, for it simply meant that such change was irreversible. The change had been caused by the very potion she took each evening and the nightmares that haunted her sleep.

Forcing herself to inhale deeply to calm her nerves, Alexandra gritted her teeth as she muttered a simple spell to dry her damp locks before throwing her hair in a simple updo that would have hidden her white lock from the rest of the school.

The witch refused to give others more to gossip about. No matter how unnerving and truly frightening such turn of events was, Alexandra's eyes slowly fluttered open, only to stare at her own calm and collected façade in the mirror before her.

Alexandra's eyes, along with her temper and silver tongue had already piqued the interest of the fraud that was Rita Skeeter. Skeeter was famous for having no boundaries and for stopping at nothing in order to publish any kind of story that would have gained her more fame. It was only a matter of time before the reporter published something about Alexandra and she refused to give the blast-ended skank yet another thing to add to her piece, let alone something that made her look a lot more of a freak than she already did.

While, from an outsider point of view, she might have looked as calm as a clear blue sky, Alexandra's mind and feelings could only be compared to the surface of the sea during a heavy thunderstorm. Fear twisted Alexandra's insides and the teen found herself doing what she knew best; turning her fear into anger, for while there was no controlling fear – a feeling that was much like a ticking time bomb – anger was something Alexandra had learned early on to deal with and to contain.

All Alexandra could hope for, at that point, was that nobody would notice the lock of white hair she'd meticulously hidden with her intricate updo. She was well aware that her new hair-do would have risen some questions on behalf of Freya, for the blonde teen had always denied her best friend's requests to style her hair, yet Alexandra couldn't find a better way to tackle the situation at hand.

After all, it was only one lock of hair, wasn't it? Surely things couldn't get worse.

Oh, how wrong she was.

🙤 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🙦

   "Don't you look like a ray of sunshine today?" Freya sassily observed as she took a seat beside Alexandra, who snorted at her best friend's remark.

"You look like you've just been hexed, Potter." Blaise was quick to add as he sat next to the boy in question.

"Don't get me wrong," Alexandra remarked while neatly folding the latest issue of the Daily Prophet and covering the moving picture of a rather smug Rita Skeeter with a plate of pig sausages. "I am sure Harry enjoys your company as much as I do, but what are you doing here?" The witch raised a single brow, her eyes scanning her best friends' faces, only for the two to brush her question off as they proceeded to pile toasts and sausages on their plates.