This was written in response to the 27th October prompt (including the bonus prompts) from Hogwarts Online.
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"Your own children are always perfect in your eyes, no matter what they do – that's the mark of a good mother." Molly often made such statements, playing up the role of motherhood. Once Fleur had realised that, in a way, it was tragic that Molly had never had the opportunity to learn of her own potential in other capacities, to form an identity separate from her family, she had stopped taking them quite so personally.
Of course, Fleur loved all three of her children dearly. They were wonderful. After all that she and Bill had lived through during the war, having created a set of people blissfully ignorant of how it felt to experience death and loss and suffering was like a salve on every hurt they had sustained. None of their children had shadows behind their eyes – they were happy, as children should be.
Victoire didn't hesitate before smiling.
Dominique was trusting to a fault.
Louis was always ready to laugh.
These traits made her children doubly precious to Fleur, but it didn't mean that she was ignorant of their faults.
She saw the way that Victoire would linger in front of a mirror, slightly in awe of her own beauty. She saw the way that her first child drew boys' hearts to her – Teddy Lupin, Lorcan Scamander, Scorpius Malfoy... Fleur didn't want to know if there had been any more – as though love was nothing more than a game. It was something that she should have put a stop to; they ought to have curbed her vanity when Victoire was young enough to change her ways, to listen to her mother's words without question. Bill had told their eldest daughter that she was the most beautiful girl in the world so many times that, in a way, they had all believed it.
The problem was simply that he had never stopped saying it. Not even after Dominique had been born. It wasn't that he loved her any less than Victoire, but the words would slip out of his mouth, unbalanced, accidental. By nature, Dominique was probably a little kinder than Victoire. As the second child, she was more accustomed to sharing; clothes, toys, the love of her parents. But as Dominique grew older, more aware of the physical differences between her and her sister, Fleur noticed that she would peer at Victoire from the corner of her eyes, taking in all of that overwhelming beauty and resenting it. There would always be an undercurrent of jealousy directed towards Victoire.
And when Louis arrived, the much anticipated boy, it hadn't helped the situation between her girls. Thankfully, Dominique hadn't envied her brother. Instead, she had doted on him; so had Victoire; so had every last member of the Weasley family. He had been a very affectionate baby, and grown into a considerate boy. However, Louis had been given everything in his childhood, and he didn't expect this to change. As a child, he had thrown monstrous tantrums if he had thought one of his siblings or cousins had been given any kind of advantage over him, from understandable things, like a newer model of broomstick or fancier robes, to the ridiculous – a little more meat on their plate or an extra few marshmallows on their hot chocolate. It had worried Fleur, but as soon as the storm passed, her good-natured little boy would return to her, ready for a cuddle. And it had been easier to oblige him, to stroke his golden hair that was so like her own, than to confront it.
They were her children, and their faults, as Molly took pleasure in pointing out, were her own. And they meant everything to her. Even when Victoire preened and flirted, even when Dominique would silently seethe, even when Louis would rage, even when they were at their farthest from perfection, they had their mother's love.
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