Dominique Weasley wasn't like other children, which was pretty obvious considering she was a witch and other children were not. But besides that, where other children played games, or drew pictures, or collected rocks, and played with other children, Dom preferred to wander off on her own in search of animals.
And most children outgrew their old hobbies and moved onto new ones. But Dom was still trying to bring home animals, despite the fact that her mum had been saying no since she was around five and tried to bring home a robin.
Things only got worse when Dom was introduced to Hagrid once she entered Hogwarts. An equally avid lover of animals, Hagrid was more than willing to help Dom convince her mom in keeping the animals that Dom found in the woods.
Every week, without fail, Hagrid would send an owl to Dom asking her to come with him into the Forbidden Forest so that he could show her whatever new thing he had found and Dom was more than happy to go.
And on the last Sunday of March, on a warm evening in Dom's fifth year, her friends found Dom putting on her hiking boots.
"Dom, don't you have an essay due in for Potions tomorrow?" her best friend Sophia asked.
"Already done," Dom said once she's tied the knot on her left boot and straightened up. She made sure her jacket was zipped up and grabbed her wand.
"What are you wearing?" Sophia asked, looking Dom up and down.
"Just some muggle clothing that I picked up, it's a lot easier to walk around in the woods with than tripping over my robes," Dom replied and stepped around Sophia.
"What are you even looking for in that forest?!" Sophia asked as Dom skipped down the stairs. "Haven't you seen everything in it?!"
"I'm going to look for fairies!" Dom yelled back, and then she was across the Ravenclaw common room and out the door before anyone could say anything else. Dom sprinted across the castle as fast as she could and across the grounds to get to Hagrid's hut.
She found him waiting for her outside of his small cottage holding a large lantern.
"Where are the fairies?" Dom asked, out of breath, once she'd come to a halt in front of him. Hagrid ruffled her hair and told her to follow him. The floor of the Forbidden Forest was familiar under her feet. Where most people would've tripped over the large roots poking above the ground, Dom leapt over them and easily kept step with Hagrid's long strides.
Dom had been in the Forest so many times now that she insisted that Hagrid didn't have to escort her anywhere, she knew the Forest and the Forest knew her. But it was as if the words went in one ear and came out the other without registering in the brain. Nevertheless, she followed him, keeping close to his side and looking around trying to catch sight of any stray fairies as she went.
"How do you know when we get there Hagrid?" Dom asked, as they went deeper into the forest.
"Can't miss it," Hagrid replied, and left it at that. The forest was alive as Dom made her way through it, sometimes she caught a pair of eyes looking at her in the dark, and then rustling as whatever it was hurried away when she made eye contact. Had it been any other student, they probably would've freaked out and booked it out of the forest, Dom on the other hand was tempted to go running after the creature to see what it was.
After a few minutes of trudging, the darkness began to lessen and Dom could see light ahead of her, through the trees. She became aware of a small high-pitched sound, almost like a buzz, which only grew in sound as she moved closer to the light. Hagrid was right, you definitely couldn't miss the fairies.
Hagrid stopped her a few feet away from what must've been a small village and told her to be careful, and Dom didn't have to ask why. Fairies could be very vicious if you said the wrong thing, not to mention there was the very real possibility that she might step on something that belonged to one of them. If Dom knew anything it was that just because something was small, it didn't mean that it couldn't cause any harm.
Dom carefully made her way towards the light, making sure that she didn't step on any fairies or small houses or food. The high-pitched sound that was similar to that of a buzz turned out to be the squeaky voices of fairies as they flew above her head going about their business.
Their small village was blindingly bright, Dom was quite tempted to squint and shield her eyes from the shine. She couldn't help but let out a gasp once her eyes adjusted to the light and everything came into focus. Fairy houses were no bigger than regular birdhouses, secured up in the branches of the trees by grass and twigs and Dom didn't know what else. There were bright lights strung from house to house, connecting them all together, and it looked as if each house had it's own enchanted garden. And if Dom squinted, she could've sworn that some of the fairies were riding squirrels or equally small animals across the branches of the trees.
The most amazing thing of all however, were the fairies themselves, they were no bigger than her hand, with different coloured wings on their backs. Their clothes were made of leaves, which were accompanies by pointy ears, and crooked, mischievous smiles. They flew around Dom, stopped to stare at her for a few minutes before growing uninterested and moving on. She turned on the spot as she took in everything around her. There were hundreds of houses perched on the trees, it almost looked as if there was some sort of party going on. She couldn't believe so many of them lived and worked so close together.
The sky was full of fairies flying in zigzags and around each other, all of them various shapes and sizes, their wings bending the light as they moved through the air.
"Ouch!" Dom cried, and her hand immediately went to the back of her head, which was now a little sore. She turned on the spot only to see one fairy give a high-pitched gleeful giggle, and fly away with a relatively thick strand of her hair.
"That was rude," she muttered, she wasn't going to be asking her mum to let her keep any fairies any time soon. And now that she noticed it, more and more of the fairies were stopping to stare at her bright hair. Dom lingered for a moment more before turning her back and hurrying away before she went bald.
"Hagrid, one of them pulled out my hair," Dom said once she'd reached him.
"Well, I can see why," Hagrid said, and at the confused look on Dom's face added, "fairies like bright hair, use it for their beds to keep 'em warm yeh see, an' they don' get much brighter than yers Dom."
"What else do you know about fairies?" Dom asked as the two of them made their way back to the castle.
"Well, yeh can get 'em do almost whatever yeh want if ya pay 'em enough compliments, make pretty good messengers they would, if ya could tame one that is," Hagrid added.
"Vain creatures aren't they?" Dom asked.
"Reminds me of James," she added thoughtfully, eliciting a snort from Hagrid. For the rest of the walk up to the castle, Hagrid answered any and all of Dom's questions about fairies including whether or not some of them changed colours depending on the season, how they survived in colder and hotter climates and their general attitude towards humans. Some fairies liked humans, some didn't, it all depended on their past interactions. Some fairies hibernated during the winter, and some were only awake only during the winter, which led to the question, were there any in Antarctica (the answer was yes).
Hagrid walked Dom all the way back to her common room just to make sure that she didn't land herself in detention for being out of bed after curfew by another teacher. The two of them ran into no one on the way back to the Ravenclaw Common Room, which was just as well because neither Dom nor Hagrid had an excuse for why they would be near the Forbidden Forest late at night.
"Thanks for showing me the fairies Hagrid," Dom said once she'd answered the riddle to the common room.
"See yeh next time Dom," Hagrid said with a ruffle of Dom's hair.