This is for the Once Upon A Time Challenge! by Lissie (fabricated fantasies) and Bri (swirling-summernotes) over on the NextGen Fanatics Forum. My pairing was DominiqueLysander, my fairytale was Sleeping Beauty and my prompt was shades of grey.
thorn nestled in my heart
Well, if it isn't Dominique Weasley, the spoilt little princess. Youngest and probably prettiest of two sisters, with a heartbreaking younger brother. Conniving, sneaky, charming in the wrong ways, sarcastic and, yet again, beautiful. That word always pops up when anyone describes her.
And those boys stare at you with lust-glazed eyes as you prance around in your short skirts and tight shirts, looking like a whore. You hear that, Weasley? A whore. Who do you think you are, with your red hair and scarlet lips and beckoning eyes and Slytherin tie?
And, no, those rumours about me and you are not true. I do not walk behind you in the corridors so I can ogle (why must the gossipers use such crass words?) your legs and I certainly don't walk behind you up the staircases to try and look up your skirt. Contrary to popular belief, I am not as disgusting as that Vane boy and I don't try and look at girls if they don't want it.
Haven't you ever seen the way Vane stares at you and drools? It's disgusting; he acts like you're a choice piece of meat and not a human being. And the worst thing is that you don't even seem to mind. You just giggle girlishly and every day your skirts get shorter and your shirts get tighter and you wear that green-and-silver tie with more pride.
And you're just a mess of red curls tugged straight and dark blue eyes beckoning boys and long bare legs and seductive smirks. Don't you remember the little girl from those summer days in the poppy fields? She had short red curls tied up with silver ribbons (you were always loyal to Slytherin's house colours, even then) and midnight blue eyes shining with innocent happiness and grazed knees and a wide grin as she pushed cousins into the stream. Don't you remember her at all?
And it seems like you don't have that thing, that one talent that defines who you are, like your siblings and all your cousins. I mean, Victoire has her sculpting, Louis has his football, Molly has her acting, Lucy has her painting, Fred has his pranks, Roxanne has her baking, Rose has her swimming, Hugo has his inventing, James has his Quidditch, Albus has his photography and Lily has her charms. What do you have? A little talent in bringing helpless boys into your web, but nothing defining, nothing that will leave behind memories of you when you're gone.
I don't know if I can stand by and watch you throw your attentions away on boys who don't care about the girl behind the short skirts and scarlet lips. I can't do it any more. You're throwing your heart away and you don't even see how much it hurts those who really love you. Your cousins are standing by and watching you do this to yourself, spiral downwards into drinking stolen Firewhisky and shagging boys in the bushes.
I even sent your sister an owl. You hate her but I don't see why. She's sweet and I bet you don't even know that she's expecting her first child. But the letter she sent me back was less than happy to hear I was owling about you.
Lysander, I know you're worried about Dominique. But everyone is and it's all anyone can talk about. Graham spent the entire twenty minutes waiting for the result of my pregnancy test talking about Dominique. Mum and Dad's marriage is on the verge of breaking up because of Dominique. Uncle Charlie came to stay from Romania - and that only calls up memories of when he had an affair with Mum - because of Dominique. Rose flooed me in tears after Scorpius broke up with her because of Dominique. So forgive me if I don't want to talk about Dominique.
Sorry for being so snippy, but I'm sick of everyone worrying about Dominique.
Victoire.
Your family are worried, Dominique, and I want you to stop this, but I don't know how to tell you. I can't help thinking that we should drag you away from the dungeons and take away your house tie, because I'm of the opinion you wouldn't behave like this if you weren't a Slytherin.
It's so cold now. The Christmas holidays are in three weeks, and Rose and Louis have decided that they're going to 'de-Slytherin' you over the holidays. From what I've heard, their plan involves taking away everything you use to create the ice-queen mask.
You're sitting down by the lake this morning, your hair hidden away under a hood, a cigarette in your hand and a bottle of Firewhisky beside you. You're still wearing your short skirt and silver heels, though you've had the sense to cover your arms (or are you just covering love bites?). I watch you from behind a frost-veiled tree (must remember to give that phrase to Lorcan, he might be able to make a song out of that) and I can smell the alcohol and tobacco from here.
You're standing up, a little unsteady on your heels and you must be going inside, because it's freezing out here and there's nothing more to do. But you stand still at the edge of the lake and you're slipping off your shoe (what are you doing?) and hurling it into the lake, smashing through the thin layer of ice that covers the dark water. And now you're (stop, stop, stop!) preparing to jump and (why am I not running to pull you back?) you're jumping and in the air and (I can't move to save you) falling through the hole and you're gone.
And now I'm running, stripping off my jacket, prising gloves from trembling fingers and unwinding a Ravenclaw scarf, all the while praying that you're not already dead. A thousand images flash through my head, of you lying on the lake bed, paralysed by the cold water as your breath leaves your lungs in a rush of bubbles. Please don't die.
I dive in after you and half my breath leaves in a shuddering gasp as I hit the cold water. I'm soaked through and my clothes only weight me down. I light my wand and move the beam throughout the water, a searchlight, and finally I see you, sinking slowly down to the depths with your hair spread in a fiery halo. Your eyes are closed and icy fear grips my heart as I push through the water towards you, seizing you around the waist and kicking upwards.
A glimmer of silver catches my eye and I see your shoe, tangled in a bed of weed. I don't know why I swim down and pull it away from the dark green fronds. It just feels right. Now I'm breaking the surface and trying to keep a hold on you while I climb out. You're not breathing and the freezing water running down my face mixes with hot tears.
You're unresponsive when I call your name and wrap you in my jacket, performing warming charms on every inch of you. I begin pumping on your chest and blowing oxygen into your mouth, but you're still deathly pale, your lips blue and eyes closed.
I've been working for what feel likes days when someone places a hand on my shoulder. I turn and see Scorpius Malfoy, with your cousin Rose next to him, Lorcan and Lucy right behind them and several of your other cousins running towards us.
"Louis saw you down here," Lorcan gasps. "He's alerting Madam Finch-Fletchley." Rose and Lily take my arms and lift me away from your body and Scorpius takes over. He's better at it than me, slow and rhythmical rather than as panicky as I was.
Scorpius, Lorcan and Fred lift you up, Molly wrapping you in blankets and we run as fast as we can through the snow back to the castle and up the staircases to the Hospital Wing. The doors are open and Louis stands there, waiting for us.
"Oh, dear me, what happened to her?" Madam Finch-Fletchley exclaims, her blonde hair flying as she fusses around you, checking your pulse and listening for breathing.
"Fell in the lake," Rose says, her eyes shining with tears. "Is she going to be alright?"
"I can't tell you that now," Madam Finch-Fletchley says, a worried crease in her forehead. "But she's not good. Give me an hour to try and treat her and we'll see what happens next."
We all sit outside for what could have been days or mere second. We don't talk, just think about you and hope you will be alright. Rose and Lucy cry and are comforted by Scorpius and Lorcan respectively. I wonder if Rose and Scorpius are going to get back together, but am distracted by your parents, Victoire and her husband crashing into the room.
"Where ees she?" your mother shrieks. "Can we see 'er?" Victoire catches my eyes and I shake my head once. Her eyes fill with sudden tears and she clutches her husband's hands tightly.
"Madam Finch-Fletchley is treating her," Lily says matter-of-factly. "We'll find out her verdict in about ten minutes." Your mother bursts into tears and your father holds her close while we wait.
The bell rings for next period and the stamping of thousand of feet echoes all around us. Doors creak and slam and the floor groans under the weight of stampeding students, but five minutes later it's all stopped.
Madam Finch-Fletchley opens the doors and looks at us, her expression deadly serious. We all brace ourselves for bad news about you, waiting for her expert opinion.
"Dominique is suffering from hypothermia and a hard knock to the head," she says solemnly. "I'm afraid her brain has shut down and she's in a coma. I'm not sure…well, I don't know if she'll wake up. If you desire it, she can be moved to St. Mungo's-"
"No!" Lily interrupts, almost before she's finished speaking. "If it's okay with you. Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, I want her to stay here, where her family and friends can keep an eye on her."
"Of course," your father says, his eyes quite dry as he nods at the woman who's going to take care of you now.
Please be alright, Dominique. Please wake up soon.
—O—
We went through your room last week, looking for important things to surround you. Lily found several bottles of Firewhisky and a packet of cigarettes going through your clothes and we threw them away. You have to understand why we did that. Rose and Louis threw away all your tight, short clothes and your make-up too. When (if) you wake up, we're not letting you go back to the old Dominique.
But we found photographs in silver frames of most of us in a locked drawer and letters to us. You made Rose cry when she found a letter you wrote to her apologising for Scorpius breaking up with her. Even Lily cried when we found those photos. We placed them all on your bedside table and Victoire bought new clothes for you. You'll still look beautiful, and probably even more so because you won't look like a whore.
We all pooled every Knut we could scrape together and bought you a big bunch of poppies, your favourite flowers. Lily charmed them the same midnight blue as your eyes and we placed them in vases all around your bed. We've drawn up a rota of who keeps vigil over your bed each night, watching for any sign of movement in pairs and trios. Molly and I watch on the same nights, drinking coffee to keep ourselves awake and talking in low voices about our twins and acting and music and magical creatures.
"Lysander, do you ever think about love?" she asks as we watch pipes pump potions into your body to keep you alive, to keep your heart beating so you can wake up and see us one day.
"I'm a Ravenclaw, Molly, you know we don't understand love," I answer, watching the shallow rise and fall of your chest that is the only movement you've made for almost a fortnight now.
"I've read a thousand scripts that detail great love stories," she continues, her eyes firmly on me. "Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Anthony and Cleopatra…I'm waiting for the boy who'll be the Romeo to my Juliet, the Demetrius to my Helena, the Anthony to my Cleopatra." She looks up from under her lashes at me, a trick she no doubt learnt from you. "Maybe I've found him."
She focuses her gaze on me and I can't help but notice that her eye are almost the same shade as yours. Almost. They're not quite dark enough or rich enough to be like yours.
She moves forward and her lips are on mine, her arms around my neck and my hands running through red curls. But this is wrong. These are the wrong set of lips, the wrong red curls, the wrong dark blue eyes. She's the wrong Weasley girl.
"I'm sorry, Molly, but I'm not attracted to you in that way," I say, praying that she won't cry or scream or fly into a rage. "You're my friend and I do love you, but I'm not in love with you." Molly looks at me, then down at your unconscious form and back to me. Something like realisation dawns in her eyes and she smiles gently.
"It's Dominique, isn't it," she says, not asking me to tell her. She just knows. "It's always been Dominique." She takes a small book, bound in red leather, from her pocket. "Read that, I think you'll find some very interesting things." I take the book, noticing the word diary embossed in gold on the cover and open it to read the words written in an achingly familiar hand.
I'm Dominique Weasley, and I'm not a whore like everyone thinks. There's this boy I like, and I don't think he likes me back. I think - know - he likes my cousin. I'm just trying to make him jealous with all those other boys.
I look at your still form, wondering if it's really you who wrote these words. Is this a scam to raise my hopes before crushing me? I flick through the pages to find another entry that looks interesting.
I can't believe I'm being so girly over this. I'm a Slytherin, not a Hufflepuff like Lucy and Victoire. It's just a crush, that's what I've been telling myself. But it's not. Every time I see him I have these pains in my chest and I know it's because my heart's breaking every moment he doesn't look and see how much I love him. Damn, now I'm getting all poetic. I feel like an eleven year old with her first kiss. I'm not sure how much Flitwick will appreciate an essay about Cheering Charms with the words 'Mrs Dominique Scamander' scribbled all over the back and little hearts scrawled everywhere. I'm being babyish.
My heart gives a great leap of hope. I look up at Molly and see her smirk as she gestures for me to read on. Her hand reaches out and flicks to a specific page and she points to an entry around halfway down the page.
One of those massive thugs in seventh year was bullying Lucy in the corridor today and he stepped in and hexed him and yelled at him to leave poor Lucy alone. He's like Superman, but, unfortunately, I'm not Lois Lane. I've written a poem about him:
'Soft eyes of misty grey/I've waited so long/Why must it be this way?/I wish I could say it loud/But I'm too Slytherin/Too proud.' It's terrible and there's no rhythm, but I think I'm in love so who cares about bad poetry.
"Her talent was writing," Molly says, dragging me out of the world that is your mind. "Like mine is acting and Lucy's is painting, she's a writer as surely as Roxanne's a baker."
I'm still in shock. You wrote these entries, it's your handwriting, I know it better than my own. You love me? It's difficult to process, to believe that you did everything you did because you love me.
"She loves you, Lysander. She's going to wake up soon, so you better realise what you have," Molly continues. I look down at you and see you moving, stretching out your limbs, though your eyes are still closed. "I'll go and alert Madam Finch-Fletchley." Molly leaves and I reach over and take your hand, waiting for you to open your eyes.
A moment later, you do and sit up slowly, wincing a little. You look at me, down at our entwined hands and the book in my hand. You smile, all the shades of grey you used to mask yourself gone.
"I always meant for you to read it one day," you say, turning your frail body to look at me. "I imagined giving it to you when you were married, but a cousin handing it to you when I couldn't works just as well."
"It was Molly," I tell you. "She made sure that I didn't love her, then gave me this book."
"Let me guess, she kissed you and neither of you felt the spark." I hang my head in shame and you just laugh. "In other circumstances, I'd curse her, but as she got it through your thick skull that I love you back, I'll leave her alone."
"I love you," I say loudly, ignoring that there are sleeping patients in here and Madam Finch-Fletchley and Molly aren't far away. "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you."
"I love you." You're far less mushy than I am (once a Slytherin, always a Slytherin) but your eyes - the right, rich, dark blue - bloom with tears as I run my hand through your hair - the right red curls - and press my lips to yours - the right pair of lips. You're the right Weasley girl.
The moment is interrupted by Louis skidding into the room, still in his Chudley Canons pyjamas with a wide grin on his face. You groan at his choice of outfit, but you can't keep the smile from your face as your friends and family run in.
"'Bout time you woke up!" James exclaims, hugging you tightly. "We thought you'd turned into Sleeping Beauty and would sleep for a hundred years!"
"Clearly, all it took for you to wake up was a kiss from your handsome prince," Rose says, smiling and actually holding hands with Scorpius.
"Sleeping Beauty teaches us that true love waits," Lucy says, clearing a space by your feet and sitting down. "It's shown by you two."
"I'm going to write you two a song," Lorcan proclaims, pulling a notebook from his pocket.
"Don't count on Ly singing it," Hugo says with a wink in my direction. "We all know he sounds like someone stepped on the cat when he sing." We all laugh and we're friends again, a family unit, all of us merry.
We leave in a loud, loving mess half an hour later, after Madam Finch-Fletchley has assured us at least twenty times you'll be able to leave the Hospital Wing in a few days and forcibly ejected us, commanding we go and sleep. It's three o'clock in the morning but we're too excited and happy to be tired.
Like Lucy says, true love waits. And, after seven years of dreaming (on my part) and scheming (on your part) and breaking down walls and dissolving shades of grey, it's all paid off. You're Sleeping Beauty and I'm Prince Charming, waking you with a kiss.
I'll see you tonight, once upon a dream.
I hope you all enjoyed this :D Also, kudos to you if you read this line: 'every time I see him I have these pains in my chest' and thought 'and I know it's her fault, that bitch!' ;)
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