Her Mentor
Summary: A story of two girls, growing up and trying to learn the true meaning of 'perfect'.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. All credit goes to J.K Rowling and her brilliant mind.
She was her mentor. Of course, why wouldn't she be. She was beautiful. She was smart. She was kind. She was fair. She was perfect.
So it wasn't a surprise when 4 year old Dominique Roselle Weasley looked up into her older sister's eyes and said "When I grow up, I want to be just like you."
And from that day on, Dominique was, or at least tried, to be true to her word. She dragged her brown teddy bear by its arm and followed Victoire everywhere, yawning and stretching when she did. She sat at the table only eating what her older sister ate, only touching her fork when her older sister did, and only standing up when her older sister did. She even tried to straighten her hair and dye it blonde like Victoire, but of course, like every mother, Fleur Weasley had her boundaries. Dominique was her own person and most of all, her daughter. Her baby daughter.
It seemed like days ago when Victoire would sit on her bed, her little sister in her lap, teaching her how to read, because Victoire loved her little protégée more than anything or anyone else in the entire world. The concept of her taking any of it for granted was lost in those years of bliss and contentment. Her baby sister.
For years Dominique followed her mentor everywhere, even when she wasn't so little anymore. Bill Weasley smiled when ever his youngest daughter ran to get the seat next to his eldest daughter and Fleur just laughed when Dominique asked to go to Hogwarts the same year her sister did with a serious face. Such innocence, such pure undisturbed innocence and beauty. His baby daughter.
For two years without her mentor, Dominique would curl up with a book at the corner of the house and either read, or write to Victoire.
And of course, Victoire missed her sister, wanting to tell her things she just couldn't write with a simple quill, she wanted to show her things she couldn't explain, she wanted to teach her things her teachers wouldn't be able to do. It was simple, but she waited. And she would teach only half the things she knew, because in such a time of youthful bliss, would one not think they would have all the time in the world. Years and years and years...
But Victoire, though smart, was not bright. She disregarded one of the most carefully unwritten rules of life. To not take things for granted.
The years passed by for both like one was waiting for an hour glass to move all the sand from one chamber to the other while in a dreadful hurry. Annoying, boring and if you stayed still and thought just long enough about the predicament, just a tad painful.
Then it was a time for the little strawberry blonde girl to go to Hogwarts. It was what she had wanted for years, and she smiled blissfully as she fell asleep on the train, her head on her mentor's shoulder awaiting to learn and keep true to her word, to be just like Victoire Orabelle Weasley. Dominique expressed her love to be her older sister over the years because she was perfect. She had always expressed how much she admired her. Yet Victoire had never gotten a chance to say how much she loved her protégée, to say how much she appreciated her, how much she wished the best for her...How much she wanted her to be happy. So happy. Happier than anyone else in the world. Because she deserved to be.
Victoire watched her little sister grow up. From the timid little girl, to the smart, beautiful, wonderful teenager, who laughed when she wanted, who walked the way she wanted, who ate the way she wanted. It was strange, so very strange. She never saw the younger girl really change. She just...Became.
In her fifth year, just before Victoire left, mentor and protégée celebrated in the kitchens. The topic of this celebration? Dominique's first boyfriend.
Victoire wanted to tell her what she had learned over the years, she wanted to tell her how losing someone who you were sure truly loved you back felt, she wanted to tell her the heart wrenching pain, feeling like you'd never breathe properly again. But when she looked into Dominique's blue eyes that looked so much like the sky, she would see the little girl with curly strawberry blonde pigtails that carried that ratty old teddy bear wherever she went. Those eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, how could they ever experience pain?
No, every time those eyes blinked, she never wanted the reason to be to hold back tears. Every time they blinked, when they opened again, when the world was seen by this girl, they would only know happiness.
And then Victoire would think of the past years before the boy, the year when Dominique was sorted into Gryffindor and made friends with Mary Thomas and Kristin Redwood, she would smile and wipe tears from her eyes at her sister's first act of independence, being able to make friends by herself. They were best friends, and as her little sister grew, she needed less of her mentor. She was wonderful, like she wanted to be, because her mentor was wonderful.
And as she grew, Victoire saw the true happiness in her eyes. The happiness she had wanted for years. Because being in her, with her never ending chatting friends, she never got people to see things in her eyes. Because she was quiet. She was weak. And the strength her little sister, her protégée, gave her from those younger years faded each day.
Truthfully, Victoire always knew she wasn't perfect. She always new she had a porcelain heart. She always new she was a pushover, boring, naive, and every time a man even uttered the words 'I love you' in her direction, voice full of meaning or not, she took it upon herself to love him with every fibre in her body. But Victoire couldn't tell that to Dominique. She couldn't rise losing the joy she felt every time the younger girl ran to her, eyes bright and soft giggle brushing away her worries. She was her very own stress reliever. Her happiness. She couldn't lose her. Yes, Victoire Weasley was selfish, but she wouldn't deny it for her protégée.
When she looked down the table at the laughing girl, she'd see everything she wanted to be. And she learned from her, even though Dominique never knew. Because from that moment onward in Dominique's fifth year, the year Dominique had admitted to her older sister that she was in love - a word that the elder had never so much muttered or uttered or stuttered to the younger in regarding romantic feelings, was when Victoire realised that her protégée didn't really ever need her to be who she was and who she enjoyed being now. Dominique never loved because of her. Dominique felt the strongest and most powerful emotion known to mankind because she deserved it. Because she was happy and perfectly content as herself.
Victoire then learned to be strong enough to be truly happy, but didn't experience it long, because she was too late. She waited for years for her protégée to show her the way, and it was too late, because she had already set her ways as the porcelain doll who did her homework every day, who helped her friends when she only had three hours of sleep the previous night, who never said no because she was 'perfect'.
And so Victoire began to learn from her mentor. The one she had used to teach to be patient, to be kind, to be 'perfect'.
She was young and after learning that her previous definition of 'perfect' was far from true, she realised, that her then protégée was smarter than anyone had ever given her granted for. Because to be perfect was impossible. It just wasn't. Because to be perfect, you had to make everyone happy, and making everyone happy just wasn't possible. Perfection is a complete and utter lie. It simply does not exist.
And so the roles switched, the mentor became the protégée and the protégée became the mentor. The mentor to true happiness. And the first rule? True happiness doesn't come to people who want to be perfect. It comes to people who want to be who they are.
During the two years without her mentor, Victoire became a healer, helping those in aid, because helping those made her feel happy and saving someone from death was definitely making other people happy. It was the closest to being a perfect person she would ever get.
And after a year she had graduated, Dominique had announced that she was engaged to her first boyfriend. The one protégée and mentor had celebrated about in their fifth and seventh year.
Victoire had sighed at dinner when she found out. Dominique hadn't gone through the pain which was good, those blue eyes were still pure. But her little sister had found her Prince Charming when Victoire's one had gotten lost and was just too stubborn to ask for directions.
Victoire smiled at the memories. She was curled up in the attic of her parent's home, her mentor's wedding was tomorrow at noon. It would be beautiful, she was sure, because she was the Maid of Honour.
In front of the 21 year old were old photo albums of two laughing girls. One had golden blonde hair and pale blue eyes, paler than the clearest sky in the world. The other girl had strawberry blonde curls, with deep blue eyes that sparkled as she trailed after the older one. Her heart wrenched. Her baby sister.
The footsteps on the staircase were coming closer but then they passed, probably just Louis, pacing around the house, thinking about his older sister's wedding the next day. He loved Dominique too, of course, and though he would never admit it to the soon-to-be bride, gave her fiance a very thorough talking to. His older sister.
How strange.
The protégée never truly appreciated everything she learned from her early childhhod until that night. She forgot how dependent her mentor was on her, she forgot how much she helped in the making of the beautiful wise young lady about to be wed in just over 12 hours. And Victoire vowed to remember that, as she traced her fingers over the gold decorations on the old albums with her right hand, while her left hand tightly clutched a worn old teddy bear to her chest.
A/N Okay, it was like 12:00am when I started writing this and it's now 2:24am. So...What do you think of my first one shot? Please review, I accept compliments, flames and constructive criticism or whatever you call it.