Dominique Weasley would never claim to be beautiful, not because she wasn't aware of the fact, but because the women she admired most in the world didn't need a Veela's beauty to be aspirational.

Professor Sprout was one of those women. A frumpy woman with wiry hair and small eyes, none would claim the Herbology professor to be beautiful, although with her rosy cheeks and intelligent eyes she might have been pretty in her youth, but what she was was radiant.

There was a deep warmth to her smile, and mossy green eyes that shone through with caring whenever she addressed you, and even when she reprimanded students for not handing in homework or being late to a lesson she always seemed so concerned for them that it was more her expressing worry than annoyance.

Not only that, but she held such a passion for her subject that it shone through with the energy and knowledge she presented.

Such as how in the Herbology lesson she had gone into great detail beyond what they needed to know for OWLs on the best conditions in which to grow Bulgar fungi, which while incredibly toxic could be used in small doses that were applied to the skin to mildly alleviate the symptoms of Spattergroit. The best place in which to find them were areas that were populated more densely with phoenixes, as the fungi grew most effectively in the ashes of the bird, incredibly strange given that most fungi preferred the dark and damp conditions that so contrasted the arid deserts that the birds occupied.

Professor Sprout went on to explain that the fungi thrived so well in the ashes since the phoenixes built their nests with all sorts of exotic spices and other materials that never found its way together otherwise, and the balance of nutrients that was received was perfect for optimal growth, as well as the heat of the flames triggering the spores to start growing.

While the knowledge was technically not on the spec, it was possible to be asked broader questions that you required own knowledge for, and such levels of detail would give them top band marks. But more than that, the free knowledge that Professor Sprout granted them served to deepen interest in the subject and widen their understanding.

At least Dominique certainly found that to be the case as along with Care of Magical Creatures it had always been one of her favourite subjects, largely due to how brilliant both of the teachers were. She was keeping her fingers crossed that Professor Sprout would say at the school at least until Dominique was finished with her education, but it didn't seem likely since she was already talking about retiring.

Herbology was often scorned by a specific subsection of the Ravenclaw house who valued the 'more challenging' core subjects of Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, and Defence Against the Dark Arts, claiming Herbology to be an 'easy' subject.

However while it was true that it was easier to gain a low pass grade in Herbology, it was also far more difficult to gain the top grade of Outstanding, and that was what Dominique was aiming for.

Some people worked well under the harsher teaching style of those such as the Transfiguration teacher, Professor Lynnet, but while Dominique learnt plenty in her lessons, she never felt able to raise her hand and ask for clarification or extra information. Merlin, the majority of the time she didn't even feel capable of answering questions, let alone putting them forwards.

Professor Sprout's classes were the opposite of that, with a comfortable environment being founded.

This was the sort of woman that should be considered beautiful, one who dedicated her whole life to the service of teaching without ever taking a long term partner, who looked after the welfare of her students and cared for them, nurturing them to be the best they could be.

She was inwardly beautiful, of course she was, but in Dominique's mind the 'inwardly' shouldn't have been a precursor.

It was outward beauty that should be specified, where when somebody called someone beautiful the assumption should be made that they were talking about beauty and strength within.

Dominique was used to men and women alike staring at her family in awe, due to a mixture of outward beauty and what the elder members had contributed to the war effort, but she had had nothing to do with the fight against Tom Riddle Jr, and nor had she had anything to do with her genetics.

So what were they staring at her for?

Absolutely nothing save for second hand fame and outward beauty.

That was a pathetic legacy to uphold.

Dominique believed she was a fairly good person, nothing to the level of those like Professor Sprout, but certainly no villain. She never sought to take things from others, was generally polite, showed love and support to her family, and treated everybody she met as well as she could manage. Then there was her intelligence, certainly not to the standard of Aunt Hermione, but she worked hard. She took as many classes as she could, put in the extra time, and she loved learning and all of the subjects she had opted to take with a passion. And it paid off, her grades were a reflection of that.

And yet what would people think when they read Skeeter's bowtruckle taint? They would belief all the shit that Dominique and her siblings were just some pretty airheads just because a few fairy eggs of truth were thrown into the mix.

By the time people stopped staring at her and opened their mouths to hold a conversation, they already had all these preconceived notions about what Dominique was like as a person, and if she didn't live up to the dumb blonde stereotype then they were too surprised to actually continue speaking.

Dominique would always remember the first time she watched an interview behind the camera of her mother and father, and the interviewer started out by asked her dad a seemingly harmless question.

"Where would your wife like to sit?"

Bill Weasley had mellowly relayed the exact same question to her mum, who with great composure had gestured to the chair the interviewer was sitting in. "But in zee absence of zat, I will take zis one," she had conveyed sagely, perching herself onto one of the free seats, after leaving a slightly too-long moment for the laughter to grow awkward.

Fleur Weasley was the Queen of Poise, any awkwardness was intentional.

As the interview went on, it only went downhill from there, with the majority of questions being directed at her dad, even those to do with matters of French culture or the role of Veelas in the fight against Voldemort. Dad would genially direct them towards his wife, but his ears had grown redder and redder, and after the interviewer, clearly displeased by the fact that Fleur had been answering so many questions, made a snarky comment that she clearly wore the pants in their relationship, he finally snapped.

"Actually she wears the skirt, as is clearly evident, but that does not make her any less capable of being on an equal level with me, and far superior to the likes of you. We are partners, and outdated gender roles or fashion sense do not affect the way we handle our affairs, no matter what you may imply with your snide comments."

Her mum had suppressed a smile. "Well said, my love. Would you agree we are done here?" She offered her husband a hand from his seat, and whispered something into the interviewer's ear, too quiet for even the shellshocked camera crew to hear.

Dominique was standing slightly closer just out of the camera shot with her grandma, whose ears and cheeks had steadily flushed a vivid red to combat that of her hair. The two of them had just about heard the woman's icy advice to the man.

"Perhaps you should try wearing a skirt some time, Mr Stevenson, it would help increase the airflow to your fragile masculinity zat is clearly so squashed by zose tight trousers."

With that the interview was concluded, yet surprisingly never made it into a newspaper.

Dominique wouldn't learn any lessons from the experience until many years later, however when she did the thing that would stick out to her as the most shocking was the blasé manner in which it was treated by her mum and dad afterwards, as though it were just something to be expected, annoying, but part of life.

When it really shouldn't have been as Dominique looked back at the blatant disrespect afforded to both her parents during an interaction that should have remained professional.

People seemed to believe that beauty afforded the Delacour descendants everything they had in life, and that they held the right to be bitter over such a thing, but those people were just plain wrong.

Part Veela or not, her family had experienced tough times. They had fought through a war and still experienced discrimination in the streets from those that dubbed then as half breeds. Peers of Fleur's at Beauxbatons had claimed her to have used some dark Veela magic to con the Goblet of Fire into picking her as champion, while at the same time in France her own mother received a head wound from people campaigning against legislation that would afford part Veelas equally rights to health care at Clement Crosse, to be followed by other magical hospitals within France.

To claim that beauty granted them everything was not only misinformed, it was insulting.

But her entire line of family on her mum's side merely dismissed the reduction of their hard work as 'people just wanting to complain'.

Beauty was looked on by so many as a gift, but Dominique saw nothing more than a curse in the isolation and jealousy that surrounded it like a cloud of flies, waiting for frowns to rot the outside and insecurity the inside.

Dominique's soul felt as blank as her skin when these thoughts surfaced, until she would remind herself that she had everything to be bright for, a family, a future, and herself.

She was the only one of Molly and Arthur's grandchildren who didn't have freckle spattered skin that could be connected to form so many constellations, so her brightness would have to come from within.

Stars may not grace her skin, but they burned fiercely where they embedded in her very soul, the brightness only released through her eyes, the one outlet for the true her that was trapped in this pale, flawless body.

Her eyes were her one link to her family, and that was fortunate as otherwise she thought she might have found herself resenting them too, and then she would be so trapped that not even her closest family could have seen her.

Dark thoughts for a simple Herbology lesson that had started off with promise, but promise sometimes lacked, and the promises she had made herself over the summer were proving to be more difficult to uphold than she could ever have imagined.

Make friends.

But she had tried with Jill Reisser and Falin Martel and Parson Green and Deidre Acre and Ricky Jordan and Keire Nott-Zabini and Mellie Igwe, and none of it had come to fruition, at least not yet.

Dominique gave herself a threat to focus on the lesson that was taking place, but something was deeply wrong inside the girl and she was failing in the struggle to maintain the constant levels of confidence required to tackle whatever it was that made her skin prickle when people stared at her and her heart blacken when the word beauty was directed at her.

She wanted more than anything to have the easy confidence of Victoire or the bubbly enthusiasm of Louie, but something wasn't right.

What it was she couldn't pinpoint, but it was there and it was overshadowing her whenever she paused to think.