I've never been one for rules. Guidelines and suggestions, maybe, but not rules. Even my grandmother has a hard time controlling me, and she had six sons and a hoyden of a daughter. But according to everyone that's ever had the honor of meeting me, I'm my uncles Fred and George combined, as well as Sirius Black and James Potter. Though how their mischievous genes got into mine I'll never know, since I'm not related to Sirius or James Potter the First. Who am I, you might ask? I'm Dominique Mattieu Delacour Weasley, but if anyone ever even thinks about calling me Dominique they'll end up hanging off a cliff with a Beater's bat up their ass. I'm Dom Weasley, and this is a collection of my many endeavors to get expelled from Académie Beauxbâtons de la Magie, or as any normal British person would say, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic. And before you ask, yes, I am a guy.
When I first turned eleven, I got two letters from magical education facilities. Since I live in Britain and my dad graduated from Hogwarts, I got a Hogwarts letter, but since my mum's whole side of the family went to Beauxbatons, I got one from them as well. The look of exultation on my mum's face when the Beauxbatons letter came I will never forget: that was the first and only time she's ever looked at me like that. I personally think she was terrified that I wouldn't get one; even at the tender age of eleven I had quite the reputation for mischief-making.
Of course, my perfect older sister had gotten a letter from France as well, but she had flatly refused to go to a school in a different country. Or at least that's what her excuse was, I personally believe that she just didn't want to be separated from her precious Teddy. But I was a whole different story. I couldn't wait to get away from my parents and the suffocating pressure of belonging to the Weasley clan. If I went to Hogwarts then I'd be surrounded by cousins and fame on all sides, but at Beauxbatons there would only be a little attention paid to my arrival. To my innocent, naive, eleven-year-old mind, that fancy letter written in caligraphy on French stationary represented freedom.
Therefore, when my mum and dad sat me down to ask which school I'd like to go to, I immediately jumped at the chance to get as far away from parental authority as I could. Which was how I found myself walking through the streets of Paris, my mum clutching onto me with one hand and her purse with the other, on our way to get my school supplies at Boulevard de Cuivre, the magical shopping center of Paris.
I had lived my whole life immersed in the Wizarding world, and therefore had gone to Diagon Alley countless times. However, I had never been to Boulevard de Cuivre, the French equivalent to Diagon Alley and so when we walked through the intricate door that appeared in a giant beech tree's trunk after tapping it four times in a circle, I was as slack-jawed as any muggle-born.
Everything seemed to be so much more elegant and refined than in Diagon Alley. It was like one of the prissy pureblood balls, except on a shopping-mall scale. All the shop windows were clean, clear, and full of things that seemed to be pretty yet useless. I immediately hated it, and amused myself with imagining all the types of chaos and destruction I could cause. The part of my mind that sounded a lot like Uncle George thought, It's dangerous to have so much glass in one place, imagine if someone decided to let out a bunch of free-thinking fireworks! A mischievous grin took over my face; France had no idea what they were getting into when they sent that letter.
I spent the rest of the summer going between my grandparents' houses – the Delacour chateau near La Rochelle on the Bay of Biscay, and the generations-old Weasley Burrow. For the first time in my short life, I was the center of my mum's world, because I was the only one of her children who showed even the slightest inclination to attend her "bien-aimé Beauxbatons." She was so worried that my French wouldn't be up to par that she made me speak in nothing except it for a month, after which I rebelled by writing – in French – I bloody well know how to speak this fucking language (Je ensanglanté sais bien comment parler cette langue baisante) on the front of the refrigerator in permanent, magic-resistant marker which I had acquired from Uncle George's shop. My parents capitulated with the logic that if I knew French swear words, I had to know the rest of the language.
After my mum's and my trip to Boulevard de Cuivre, I had found that France had no acceptable joke shops, and therefore I stocked up on everything I could get my uncle to give me, which happened to be quite a bit since he saw me as something of a protégé. Uncle George told me about all the stuck-up French students he had encountered during the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and because he wanted to make sure that I never turned into one of them he was more than willing to part with some not-yet-in-production products. To say that I was thrilled would have been an immense understatement.
I knew from my mum that Beauxbatons was a school that valued decorum and elegance, so like the rebel I was I decided to be the exact opposite. I would enter with a bang, and things would get worse from there.
The night before I left England for France, I stayed at the Burrow with the rest of my cousins. This year a couple of the Weasley-Potter clan were entering school, and as such we soon-to-be-first-years had a secret meeting by moonlight in the meadow behind the Burrow. My cousins Fred, James (II), Roxy (Fred's twin sister), and Rose all attended. We were to be the first wave of Weasley pranksters since my uncles had been in school. A part of me wished that I was going to Hogwarts to help my cousins with their pranks, but the majority of me was glad that I would get all the credit for my genius ideas.
As we discussed ideas for first pranks at both Hogwarts and Beauxbatons, James got an evil grin on his face. He waited for us all to be quiet, then said in a faux-serious voice, "We need to make a vow. Like the Marauders' except this is ours, and we aren't going to imitate the Marauders, we'll build off the foundation that they built." He had everyone's attention now, so he continued.
"We have to vow to create as much chaos as possible throughout our academic careers, as well as to never steal another person's idea for a prank. We are in this together, even though Dom will be in France, and as such we must work with each other instead of against them.
"We are the Weasley-Potter children, we have a legacy to uphold. Except I don't want to just live up to our uncles and the Marauders, I want to surpass everything they ever did. With your guys' help, I believe we can do that." James finally took a breath and looked at the rest of us for our input.
In the following silence I simply shrugged, "I agree. We have a duty to wreck havoc on the world, I'd hate to disappoint them." Roxy, Fred and Rose all agreed, though Rose seemed a bit uncertain. I suppose that when you're raised by Aunt Hermione breaking the rules isn't as ingrained as with everyone else.
So there in the middle of the meadow under the silent stars five eleven-year-olds made a vow to create pandemonium from the moment they got to school till the day they graduated. And as I sat there surrounded by my cousins, I knew that when we all returned to the Burrow for Christmas everything would have changed.
The next day I, Dom Mattieu Delacour Weasley, became the first Beauxbatons student to ever get a detention before school officially started.