Photography is all about secrets. The secrets we all have and will never tell.
Sometimes people ask me if I hate my sister. They always breathe the question quietly, as if they're afraid of the answer they think they already know.
I laugh at them when they ask me that. How could anyone hate my sister? It's physically impossible, like trying not to breathe, or blink, or keep your heart beating. Love and Victoire go hand in hand in everybody's minds; even mine.
But I can understand why people think otherwise.
I can understand that when they see little old me standing next to my sister they wonder how I can survive.
I wonder it too, sometimes.
Sometimes.
[Sometimes.]
But I know I don't hate Victoire. It would be like hating Santa Claus.
[But that doesn't mean I don't hate myself.]
I don't remember who first gave me the camera. It doesn't matter, anyway. It's not the beginning that determines the end; it's the journey.
People say I remind them of Colin. I assume they mean Colin Creevey. I looked him up in the school library when I first heard his name mentioned in relation to mine. He's just a footnote at the bottom of page 684 in The Final Battle: You-Know-Who's Demise. A footnote. The way people talk about him, remember him; I thought he was a hero, but he's just a footnote.
I suppose it's fitting, because I probably won't be much more than that either.
I like taking photographs. The camera is something to hide behind, making memories for me when it's too painful to do it myself. I take pictures of people, mostly.
Peoplepeoplepeople-TeddyTeddyTeddy.
I take pictures of Teddy Lupin and every single one is different. I take pictures of Teddy Lupin and lose a little bit of my heart to him whenever I click the shutter. I take pictures of Teddy Lupin and kiss them goodnight.
[Because a black-and-white version of him is all I can ever have.]
My dormitory wall is papered with photographs. Whenever people see them, they always point out Victoire. "She's so gorgeous," my friend Felicity said once. "You're so lucky to have her as a sister," Francesca sighed.
Funnily enough, out of the three hundred and eight photos on my wall, Victoire is only in seven of them; and yet, hers are the ones people like best.
I'm shivering in my new black robes and wishing my mother hadn't plaited my hair so tightly that morning. They're already up to 'S' on the register; I see Lorcan and Lysander being Sorted, into Ravenclaw and Gryffindor respectively, and my stomach tightens. I've always loved their mother, Luna. She and my parents are close; something about hiding together during the war, I think.
Luna has a beautiful soul. I only have one picture of her, taken while she was laughing at a joke of Harry's that wasn't very funny at all. Her eyes are huge and round like saucers, her face in the half-shadow cast by the dream catcher that's hanging off to the side. She looks full.
"Weasley, Dominique."
My cousin Molly squeezes my hand as I walk up to the three-legged stool, leaving her to wait alone. The Hat sits comfortably around my head, stopped from falling forward by my overlarge ears.
Such a labyrinthine mind, a voice hisses inside my head. Plans within plans, eh, Weasley?
"Is that a bad thing?" I can hear my voice trembling.
Not at all, the Hat assures me. I see Teddy sitting at the Hufflepuff table; our gazes snag, and he gives me an ivory smile. And in love with the werewolf's cub, the Hat whispers. Our plot thickens.
"He's not a cub!" I mutter furiously. "And I'm not in love with him."
We shall see. But of course, you still must be Sorted, my child.
I close my eyes. Everything zeroes in on this moment.
An enterprising woman indeed, the Hat muses. And clever, too clever for anyone else to notice. Yes, most certainly. It's clear you belong in -
"SLYTHERIN!" the Sorting Hat shouts aloud to the Great Hall. The silence grows thick as I step down from the chair. Great eddies of unspoken words swirl in the air (a Weasley in Slytherin?); I wish I had my camera, because this would make a beautiful photo. Brutal and bestial, but beautiful.
Teddy's eyes find mine as I'm walking toward the Slytherin table. He gives me a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, and I know the Hat was right.
I am in love with Teddy Lupin and he doesn't love me back.
I have pictures of Teddy kissing three different people.
In the first he is with Victoire, and it's as if a light is shining from the inside out because never have I seen anyone so happy. They're casually leaning against a wall on Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters and fitted together like adjoining pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The second is of Teddy and a nameless girlfriend he had for about four months. Her hair is long and brown and her fingers are thin, spindly like the legs of a spider. But there's something about the picture that makes me grin; maybe it's the way Teddy's arm is so effortlessly draped around the girl's waist, or maybe it's the way light plays across both their figures, dappled across their hair and shining along their lips.
I have never shown anyone the third picture. It wasn't that I promised not to, although if they'd seen me taking photos they would surely have asked me to keep their kiss a secret. It's more the fact that it feels like the moment is sacred, something pure and untouchable.
It is Lily Potter and Teddy Lupin lying on her bed, their lips barely meeting, their kiss as thin as tissue-paper. My heart bleeds for her, because the only person Teddy will ever belong to is Victoire, and Lily is about to get a reality check.
[But their kiss is like a sun shower; warm, rare and making you smile.]
The shock of me being in Slytherin wears off my family after a time. Albus Potter follows me here, anyway. After that, it's nothing special. I'm just a Weasley wearing a silver and green tie.
Lorcan kisses me under the eaves of Honeydukes in our fifth year and it makes me cry. He is beautiful, and I take a photograph of the left side of his face; half his lips, half his nose, one brilliant blue eye, and freckles like constellations across his cheekbone. He is beautiful, but I don't love him, and I suspect he doesn't really love me.
I tell him to go and kiss Molly instead, because I've seen the way they look at each other. He does, and the next day I capture a picture of the back of them, their hands clasped, Molly's head turned slightly so you can just see the tip of her horn-rimmed glasses. Even from behind they look happy.
[Afterwards I walk into the abandoned girl's bathroom and photograph myself in the mirror. The flash reflects off the glass and all you can see of me is the tail end of my blonde plait and my Slytherin tie, knotted tight around my neck.]
I take a photo of Lysander in the darkened corner of the library. He is frowning in thought, flicking through a heavy tome from the Restricted Section, a feather quill tucked behind his ear. He reminds me so much of Luna.
He sees me standing there, looking through the lens of my camera, and smiles. We kiss as the sun dips below the horizon outside and it feels right.
[I open my eyes once during the kiss and swear it is Teddy Lupin with his arms around me; but it's just a trick of the light and Lysander is there a moment later.]
I take another picture of him as I am buttoning my shirt back up. He is barefoot, and the flash sets off his pale hair so it looks white. He could be an angel, crouched among these dusty bookshelves, sent from heaven to bring peace to the world. He could be an angel until he glances up at me with a wicked glint in his eyes; that is the moment I click the shutter, and his dangerous grin burns into my memory like a fire through dry bushland.
I keep those photos of Lorcan and Lysander and Molly safe. I don't ever want to lose them.
It's funny, really. When Victoire and Teddy get engaged, I don't find out about it from either of them; nor from mum, or dad, or even Louis.
It happens as I'm ducking to the bathroom between lessons. One moment I'm alone in the corridor and the next I hear it. Somebody crying. My eyes find the tapestry hanging to my right and, sure enough, when I lift it up there is an alcove hidden behind.
When I climb inside I see Lily. She's huddled into a small ball and her red hair has come loose of its braid. I'm a seventh year and she's a first year and I think I know what this is about.
[It was only last Christmas I caught Teddy and Lily on that bed; she was eleven years old but all grown up.]
"They're engaged," Lily says in a hollow voice, lifting her head so I can see her face. My hands itch for my camera because in this instant, Lily Luna Potter looks like a ghost.
"It was always going to happen, Lily," I whisper, taking her undone plait in my hands and beginning to re-braid it.
"I know," she murmurs. "But that doesn't mean I want them to."
Her eyes meet mine, then, and I use a hair tie to finish her plait. "Me neither," I say, and hold up my camera, taking a picture of the both of us before she can protest. We look like lost souls, my hair blonde and hers red, our skin pale and freckled, our eyes mirror images of despair.
I look at her in this darkness cracked with our secrets. She smiles sadly. "Just promise me you won't be their wedding photographer."
"Cross my heart," I laugh, and take another picture of Lily smiling. Her braid has already started to come undone. "I'll see you later," I say, and slip from the alcove without another word.
[I cry myself to sleep that night, remembering three photographs of Teddy Lupin's kisses and wishing that there had been four.]
They ask me to be their wedding photographer.
"I can't," is the automatic answer that slides from my lips.
"Dom -" Victoire begins, but I won't listen to her.
"Dominique," Teddy reasons, and I falter.
I remember a sun shower kiss on Christmas Eve with a girl barely eleven years old.
"No."
I take a photo of their offended faces; Victoire's expression is stony, Teddy's bemused.
The picture's fun to burn.
I see Lysander sometimes but I know his heart's not in it. "Who is she?" I ask. He tells me she's a Muggle whose name is Helena Calvert and who doesn't look a thing like me.
As he's leaving I click the shutter and there he is, suspended forever in my doorway, jacket half-on, suitcase half-open on the floor beside his feet. I hope he tells Helena he's a wizard. It would be nice to take photos of them.
Sometimes people ask me if I hate my sister.
The answer is no.
Once someone asks me if I hate myself.
"Sometimes," I say.
People never ask me if I hate Teddy Lupin. I think about him; about every photo being different, about anonymous kisses and sun shower kisses and how he used an eleven year old girl.
I think the answer is yes, but I'm not quite sure.
Not sure.
[Quite sure.]
Author's Note: Some of you may have read my Dominique-centric chapter story Shine As Bright; well, this is entirely different and entirely angstier. I really wanted to write a VictoireTeddyDominique story with a bit of LilyTeddy thrown in; hopefully I did all right. I quite like this. Please review. xx
EDIT: Thanks to guest reviewer who pointed out a little word jumble of mine. All fixed now. (: