Yes, these are pretty much going to get consecutively longer as we go along.
As always, I don't own anything and Maggie's awesome.
For those of you keeping track at home, Dom is one year younger than Victoire
Dominique
For as long as she could remember, everything about Dominique Weasley had been defined by her older sister. Whenever anyone noticed her or referred to her or described her, it was always in comparison to Victoire. She was slightly taller than Victoire. Her hair was a little bit redder than Victoire's. She looked so much like Victoire.
Even the nickname almost everyone in the world called her – Nika – was a gift from Victoire, a two-year-old's inability to pronounce Dominique. 'Nika' had become Victoire's name for her, and everyone had thought it so cute that it had stuck, even with her grandmothers, despite it being a universally acknowledged fact that grandmothers will always call you by your full name, whether you want them to or not.
And it wasn't that Dominique resented any of this, not really. It was just a truth of her life. She was second to Victoire – second in age, second in grandchild line-up, second in radiance and ability and everything else. Because Victoire was perfect, and that meant it was literally impossible for Dominique to be anything other than second-best.
Sometimes, Dominique would stand in front of her mirror and try to figure out what gene from her parents had been handed to Victoire but had totally missed her.
Victoire had their mother's long, straight white-blonde hair that betrayed absolutely nothing about her Weasley side. The only hint toward generations of redheads was a slight sprinkle of freckles across her nose and cheeks perfectly placed to be adorable, the one tiny flaw to make her human.
Dominique, on the other hand, had hair that was not full Weasley red, but it was far more red than Victoire's, resulting in a color that really had no name, and while it was mostly straight, it had a tendency to frizz and curl in the rain, just around her ears and neck. Pulling it back in any way only made the frizzy curls more pronounced. And her skin was covered in freckles, just about every inch of it, and the only positive note about that fact was that they covered the pimples that no treatment, magical or otherwise, seemed to touch.
And they'd both inherited their father's height, but Victoire wore hers gracefully, and it wasn't excessive. Whereas Dominique had started sprouting upward the moment she'd hit puberty, and had now reached a height that no nearly-14-year-old girl should have forced upon her. She was lanky and gangly, and her arms and legs were far too long to be manageable. She felt like a bumbling giant, in danger of destroying something every time she turned around.
She usually ended up turning away from the mirror in frustration before she allowed herself time to take in her stick-straight figure and knobby knees and bizarrely stubby fingers.
The truth was, Dominique felt stuck, stuck in second place, stuck in Victoire's shadow, never able to escape the comparison, never able to measure up. It didn't matter what she did or how well she did it; Victoire had done it first, and Victoire had inevitably done it better. When she got to Hogwarts, it just became more true.
And the worst of it was, she couldn't even be angry with her sister, because it wasn't as if it was Victoire's fault. She didn't ask to be born first and to be perfect. And even if she had, Victoire wasn't the kind of person you could be angry with. Dominique knew; she'd tried. But every time she wanted to get angry with Victoire – because she was prettier, because she was more socially graceful, because she cast the shadow Dominique couldn't escape from – Victoire would do something kind or considerate or thoughtful for her, and all of Dominique's anger would melt away, replaced by frustrated resignation that was directed more at herself than her sister.
There were days when Dominique felt that the only time the whole world stopped watching Victoire was when it turned its expectant attention on her, as if to ask, And you, Nika? What do you have to show us?
Her fourteenth birthday was one such day.
It was the middle of July, and the whole family had come to Grandma and Grandpa Weasley's, as they did every summer. As it was her birthday, she'd been given the gift of being allowed sleep in, and so she didn't head down to the kitchen for breakfast until after the post had arrived. Before she reached the landing, however, her mother's voice echoed up the stairs.
"But Victoire, this is wonderful news! Gryffindor Prefect! We must tell everyone at once, they will all be so proud!"
Dominique's heart dropped down into her feet. She'd known the letter was coming, she'd known Victoire would be named Prefect, she'd known it would come while they were all at the Burrow, but why, on today of all days?
"Maman," Dominique heard Victoire interrupt, "I don't want to tell anyone. Not yet. Not today."
"But why?" Dominique's mother asked, confused by her daughter's request.
"It's Nika's birthday." She said it simply, as if that one fact explained everything, and Dominique threw her head back against the wall of the stairs in frustration. "It's not fair to overshadow that," Victoire continued. "I'll still be Prefect tomorrow, but Nika only turns fourteen once. Please, Maman?"
"Godric," Dominique muttered darkly under her breath, "Stop being perfectly understanding and empathetic, and just steal my thunder for once, would you?"
She found herself suddenly with no appetite for breakfast. Knowing she'd be discovered by someone if she didn't move soon, she slipped through the back door and out over the hill behind the house, kicking at the grass to vent her frustration.
"That does not look like the face of a particularly happy birthday girl."
Dominique looked up as she crested the hill to see her Uncle Charlie leaning on a shovel, watching her.
"Yeah, well," Dominique said darkly, crossing to the fence that separated the garden from the field beyond, "what's a birthday? It's not that important. After all, it's something you see coming from a mile away, just like Victoire getting named Prefect. And this is just the beginning. Next summer, it'll be her twelve Outstanding OWLs. The summer after that, being named Head Girl! And then perfect NEWT results and every Department in the Ministry begging her to accept their internship."
Understanding played out over her uncle's face, and Dominique looked at the ground, a bit embarrassed by the bitterness that had escaped her.
"Okay," Uncle Charlie said, setting down the shovel with a grunt and patting the fence between them. "Sounds like someone needs to unpack a bit. What's up, Dom?"
Her uncle Charlie was the only person in the entire world who called her anything other than 'Nika,' and Dominique adored him for it. Realistically, she knew it was only because he'd been on assignment out of communication range for the 18 months after her birth and so had missed the development of the nickname, but that didn't matter. He called her Dom and nothing in 14 years had convinced him to do otherwise.
And she knew you weren't supposed to have favorite family members, but she couldn't help it. Uncle Charlie was her favorite uncle. Over the years, when everyone else was showering attention and praise on Victoire, Uncle Charlie was always at Dominique's side, giving her a compliment or a wink or a gift or something, and he always made her feel noticed. She'd asked him about it once, and he'd said that Victoire had plenty of people to pay attention to her, but that he understood the plight of the second-born, and he would always be in her camp.
As she took a seat on the fence, she remembered that conversation, and she found herself opening up. "It's my birthday," she said heavily, and Uncle Charlie filled in the blank.
"And Victoire prefect badge came in the post this morning?" When Dominique nodded, he continued, "Well, I don't think you have anything to worry about, Dom. Your sister would never—"
"I know, that's the point!" Dominique interrupted in frustration. "The point isn't that I'm upset she's going to announce it and take focus away from me, the point is that she isn't going to do that! She's going to keep the scores a secret so that she doesn't steal the spotlight away from her little sister's special day, because she's perfect, and that's what perfect people do! They're entirely considerate and selfless and humble and they make the rest of us look bad!"
"Sounds like someone's feeling a little inadequate," he commented, leaning on the fence beside her. Dominique huffed heavily, blowing stray tendrils of hair out of her face.
"How do you not when Victoire Weasley is your older sister?" she mumbled at her hands. "You know, being her sister just makes it worse half the time."
"How so?" Uncle Charlie asked.
"Because . . ." Dominique searched for the words. "Because everyone expects me to have some great insight into her, because I'm her sister. But I don't. She's just as much larger than life to me as she is to everybody else. I don't know her, not really. And I don't understand her."
Uncle Charlie said nothing to this, just continued to lean on the fence, looking pensive.
"Did you ever have to deal with this with Dad?" Dominique asked then, and Uncle Charlie watched her closely out of the corner of his eye.
"What do you mean?"
"People tell me stories, about when he was at school. How he was top of the class, perfect student, Prefect, Head Boy. The teachers all loved him, but the students did, too, and he was basically everyone's favorite. Just like Victoire. So did you have to deal with it, with being second best?"
Uncle Charlie considered his answer carefully. "Well," he finally said, "honestly, no. I never saw your dad and I as being in competition quite the way that you mean. For that, you'd be better off talking to your Uncle Percy."
Dominique gave a snort. "Yeah, Uncle Percy's not exactly the kind of person you talk to about stuff like this. He'd probably launch into an explanation of some theory of magical sibling hierarchy and forget to give me any actual advice."
Uncle Charlie hid a smile at that. "I think he'd be better at the advice than you might think. So would your Uncle Ron, for that matter."
"But I'm not talking to Uncle Percy or Uncle Ron, I'm talking to you," Dominique said impatiently. She just wanted an answer! "I want to know how I can get people to look at me and not see me as just Victoire's little sister. I'm tired of being defined by her. I want to be defined as me!"
"And what does that mean?" Uncle Charlie asked, and his words brought Dominique up short.
"What do you mean?" she asked, puzzled.
"Who is Dominique Weasley?" he clarified. "What are her strengths, her weaknesses, her passions, her interests? What makes her who she is? What's important about her?"
"I . . . don't know," Dominique said in a small voice.
"Then it seems to me that your first step needs to be taking the time to answer some of those questions. Getting to know yourself, as it were. Because if you don't, how is anyone else supposed to?"
Dominique was silent for a long time. Then, she said, "I don't know how to do that."
"Well, I can tell you that it's pretty simple, all things considered. But that doesn't mean it's going to be easy," Uncle Charlie said. "You're going to have to step out of your comfort zone, try new things, new experiences. Discover what you're interested in, what you're good at, what you're lousy at, all of it. You need to figure out who Dominique Weasley really is. In fact, I'm making that your assignment."
"What?" Dominique asked, startled.
"Your assignment," Uncle Charlie repeated. "Your summer project. We'll call it 'Defining Dominique.' For the next three weeks, you need to be working on a list of statements that define you. It needs to be at least five items long, and you need to be ready to present it to me by the last week of this month. That gives you a three weeks."
Dominique stared at him. "Are you serious?" she finally asked.
"Completely," he said, and she knew he meant it.
"So I just put together a list of things that make me different from Victoire?" she asked, and Uncle Charlie frowned at her.
"When, in any of that, did you hear me mention your sister?" he asked. "Even once. When?" Dominique colored.
"You didn't," she said.
"That's right," Uncle Charlie said, and then his tone got gentler. "Dom, the first person you have to convince to stop defining you through Victoire, is you. I don't want her to enter into your head at all while you're making this list. I don't give a damn one way or the other if any or all of your statements could also apply to her. She isn't important to this. This is about you, and only you. Got it?"
Still blushing Weasley red, Dominique nodded.
"Good girl," Uncle Charlie said then. "Come to me in three weeks with your list, and I'll tell you the secret."
"What secret?" Dominique asked, her curiosity piqued in spite of herself. Uncle Charlie's eyes twinkled.
"The secret of how I kept from feeling second best next to your dad," he said simply.
Over the course of the next three weeks, Dominique became a different person. She tried things she'd never done before, like making dinner with Grandma Weasley and playing chess with Uncle Ron. She spent an afternoon in Muggle London with her Aunt Audrey, and spent another tinkering with Muggle gadgets alongside Grandpa Weasley in the shed out back. She fed the chickens and collected eggs and tried her hand at knitting. She asked to shadow her dad at the bank, and then proceeded to ask to shadow every single one of her aunts and uncles to their various jobs. She went to the Ministry with Uncle Percy and the Quidditch pitch with Aunt Ginny and the joke shop with Uncle George. She offered to babysit all ten of her younger cousins for a day so the adults could go out for a night on the town.
In short, she was more engaged and active in those three weeks than she had ever been in her life. At one point, her dad pulled Uncle Charlie aside and asked, "Charlie, you wouldn't happen to be behind the drastic change in my youngest daughter of late, would you?"
Uncle Charlie just smiled. "No," he said. "Adolescence and growing self-awareness are behind it. I may have catalyzed her current project to help her fit into her own skin a little easier, but what you're seeing is all her."
"And this project?" Dominique's father asked. "You want to fill me in on that?"
"Come to the pasture next Monday," was all Uncle Charlie would say. "And Dom might just do that on her own."
When her three weeks were up, Dominique went to the fence where Uncle Charlie had first given her the challenge she'd been working on for the past month and a half. But it wasn't just Uncle Charlie waiting for her – it was her father as well, and the sight of him brought her up short. She stopped suddenly, looking at him with apprehension, fingers inadvertently crumpling the paper in her hand.
"Do you mind if I sit in?" her father asked, and Dominique had to swallow a few times before she answered. She glanced at Uncle Charlie, who smiled encouragingly.
"What better way to start?" he asked softly, and Dominique took a deep breath.
"Promise you won't get mad at me?" she asked, her voice shaking the tiniest bit. Her father frowned.
"Why would you think I would get mad at you, Nika?" he asked, and whether it was her uncle's encouraging presence or the list in her hand or the fact that the last six weeks had changed something about her, Dominique did something she'd never done before – she spoke up.
"Because the first thing on my list is that I hate that name," she said, and the words came out in a rush, surprising both herself and her father. She saw his eyebrows rise, and she took a deep breath and continued. "I think my name, Dominique, is beautiful, and I hate that you gave it to me but don't use it. I know I can't just expect everyone to up and change what they call me after fourteen years, but the fact is, I really would prefer to be Dominique, or Dom. Not Nika."
The rush of courage that had allowed her to say all that spent, she looked at the grass at her feet, terrified at her daring, almost amazed at what had just come out of her mouth. Old Dominique would never have stirred the waters like that. Old Dominique wouldn't have dared.
"Dominique." The sound of her name brought her head up, nervously, but in her father's gaze there was no censure or disappointment as she had feared there might be, but only, dare she say it, pride? "I didn't know you felt that way," he said, an apology in his words. Dominique felt brave enough to smile.
"I didn't either," she admitted.
Her father nodded, once, then said, "Well, then. What else don't I know about you?"
She started off reading from her list, but the longer she spoke to them, admitting that she thought Quidditch was boring and that she loved Muggle literature, she found that she abandoned the list before long and just spoke to them, told her father and her favorite uncle about who she really was, a girl who would like to spend a summer in France, a girl who wanted to learn to cook, who was good with kids, who was hopeless at chess and thought she might like to be a Muggle liaison someday.
And when she had said her fill, Uncle Charlie beamed down at her and swept her up in a one armed hug. "And now the secret?" she reminded him, and her father raised his eyebrows.
"What secret?" he asked, and Dominique felt herself blushing again.
"He promised to tell me how he avoided feeling second-best next to you," she admitted, and Uncle Charlie laughed at the look on her dad's face.
"Now, this is a secret I'd like to hear," her dad said, prompting another laugh from Uncle Charlie.
"All right," he said, ruffling Dominique's hair. "It's simple. Your dad was my best friend. Still is. That's how."
Dominique frowned. "That's it?" she said, and it was her father who answered.
"You'd be surprised how important that is," he said simply. "And now I have a secret for you, Dominique. Being perfect can get awfully lonely when you don't have a best friend. That one person who doesn't expect or need perfection from you, the person you can really be yourself around."
Dominique's frown deepened. "But who's Victoire's?" she asked, and her father shrugged, a little sadly.
"I don't know that she has one," he said, his voice soft, his gaze toward the Burrow, where Victoire was visible through a window.
It was a lot to think about, especially after all the revelations that day had already provided. But as Dominique moved back toward the house with her uncle and father, she had a great deal besides her own new identity to think about. If she really put her mind to it, she wondered, what could she really become?
"Uncle Charlie?" she said before he could enter the house. At her words, her dad smiled and left them standing alone outside the door, her uncle turned back to her. "Thank you," she said.
Uncle Charlie smiled. "I told you, kid," he said. "I'm always going to be in your camp." She gave him a quick hug before darting inside.
She'd think more about Victoire later, spend more time pondering her father's words tomorrow, or the next day, when everything had had time to settle a bit. But for now, she had to pack for Hogwarts, the start of her fourth year, and the chance for her to truly become Dominique Weasley.
Oh, Dominique. This piece goes out to anyone who has ever felt overshadowed by an older sibling.
If you're familiar with a piece I wrote last year, The Noticing of Lucy Weasley, you'll recognize some of this character. I put her into Lucy in that universe, but for Pieces, I wanted that child who didn't fit in to be Dominique. Eventually, this Dominique will become Victoire's best friend, but I wanted to look at where that started and where she'd come from, and I hit on the idea pretty early on of making Charlie her favorite uncle and confidant.
So here's the awkward adolescent trying to be noticed from within the shadow of her famous sister's brilliance, but it's an effort doomed to failure because Dominique has no idea who she is. Hence 'Defining Dominique.' This grew from there