storm clouds in colour
DominiqueScorpius
7/19/2011
i. what you've done here is
put yourself between a bullet and a target, my dear.
"Dominique?"
The girl looks up from the pile of scattered moving images on the carpet, adrift in a sea of refulgent sequins and thick glossed pens and cut-out paper puzzles. She squints lightly through the phosphorescence at her grandmother's silhouette across from the fireplace.
The older woman keeps talking, fidgeting with a photo frame on the mantlepiece the way she usually did when she was nervous.
"Why are you barefoot, love? You'll catch a cold."
Dom knew that her grandmother wasn't really thinking of nasty viruses, ones that she could fix with just a flick of her dainty wrist, that she was only asking out of concern. Perhaps her attire of a thin cardigan draped across her shoulders wasn't particularly adequate for the occasion, but the room was a little warm and anyway, Dom liked the cold.
"Well," Molly says, kneeling down, voice gentle like she's talking to a small child, "are you sure you don't want to join us? We're having dessert, your favourite."
Dominique just shakes her head, turning back to the fire and her masterpiece, and waits until Molly leaves.
::
She hears their whispers, when they think she's in her room reading or sleeping or watching her cousins play Quidditch.
She ticks off the words as they are mentioned, starting with "what happened?" and "heartbreaking" and "sick" and "poor girl," then "fix her", followed by a dismissive "overdramatic", then the sugar-coated "bastard" and promised to "kill him" and, always the cincher, "how long has she been like this?"
The list goes on and on and on.
::
She falls in love in March, in the classic way at sometime in the middle of the night, surrounded by cracked bottles of firewhisky and old hand-knitted blankets.
To add to the cliché; she'd originally come there to escape, and discovered that she wasn't alone. There were other other people in the wizarding world who found it unbearable, despised the dull omnipresent pain that came with having magic running through their blue-blooded veins. Because magic meant you could do anything, right? —but they were still here, living their pointless teenage lives, weren't they?
The magic, it used to make her feel alive; but now it's just sucking away at her soul. She wonders idly as she brings the bottle to her lips how long she'll last, and then shivers because it's a cold, cold thought and her mind's an icedrift in this apathetic world.
She tells all of this to the hooded boy in the corner with the quirky gray eyes. It spills out of her, like the slugs from Uncle Ron's mouth in that story that was always told at family dinners at Grandma Molly's house. Big slimy truths drip out of her mouth like a tap, thoughts she's never admitted to anyone else, and she can't stop them, finite incantatem won't work this time.
She rambles about her family's fame (how they can't go anywhere without being bombarded with compliments and "oh, your dad's bill weasley? so you know harry potter?") and at first it's overwhelming and she's scared she won't be able to breathe anymore, but after a while she gives up and just lets it go.
Because for the moment, she's not thinking about repercussions or regrets or alcohol-induced inhibitions or saying too much or anything. For now, at least, it's okay.
Because for the first time in her life, someone's listening.
::
She tries to avoid her family's judgemental gazes. Some pitiful, some disillusioned, some just plain worried.
Victoire, the poster child for ennui, as always. Not caring a tad bit about her sister's pain. She shrugs it off, biting back the scream on her pink lips, but she can't deny that she isn't frustrated with the older girl's resolve to not acknowledge her, and forever brand her as the annoying little sister, the second Weasley daughter who would never match up to the original. Louis, pretending to be engrossed in some Muggle contraption his grandfather had given him—a Gameboy, perhaps?—but he's secretly straining to hear their reaction.
Fleur places a hand on her daughter's arm, perfectly sculpted blonde brows arched in confusion. "Chère?"
"But..." Bill's running his hand through his auburn hair, trying his best not to let the letdown show, but it's not bloody working, "he's a Malfoy."
They all know where this story ends.