Disclaimer: Not mine, of course!
A/N: Really, this is just me playing with one of my favourite next gen characters. Dominique is so rarely written how I imagine her, so I thought that I'd give it a go. Consider this my Christmas present to you, if you're reading it, I hope you like it!

Dedicated to Morphy, who read this first and is always so wonderful to me! Thanks, darling!

On December the Twelfth, Cane and Zanipolo Zabini are born to Professor and Maddalena Zabini.

Two months later, Dominique's arrival brightens the morning of the Second of February for Bill and Fleur Weasley.

So really, everything starts here.

Or at least, it should have done. When she's on the way to Hogwarts for the first time, Dominique decides that she doesn't remember being a baby, ofr being a toddler, so that's not the beginning. She remembers her first piece of accidental magic, resulting in one very green Crookshanks at her Aunt and Uncle's house, so she wonders if maybe that was the beginning. That was, after all, the first time she recalls the word 'Slytherin' being mentioned in connection with her.

She sits on her own on the train and refuses to say a word to anyone who tries to make conversation. It's not that she's nervous. She most certainly isn't. She just doesn't want to get attached to anyone before she's even there. That just seems silly.

Two compartments down, Cane and Zanipolo Zabini are already causing a kerfuffle, playing chess a little too enthusiastically.

In a mess of overwhelming colours and people and food, Dominique forgets to try and remember all that she can. So, naturally, she forgets most of it. The shocked silence from all but Ted and Victoire as the hat places her in Slytherin is the one thing she remembers clearly.

The Zabini's are sorted after her, and they sit together at dinner. She's known them for all of five minutes, but Salazar, it feels like she's known them forever. She fits in with them (or maybe she doesn't, but neither of them would fit in with anyone else either, and so even though the twins are jigsaw pieces, slotted together, and Dominique's shape doesn't quite fit perfectly, but their odd shape makes a picture all of their own), like she doesn't ever remember with her family. When it comes down to it, no matter how much she loves them, she's always been a Slytherin amongst Gryffindors.

Perhaps that's why this feels so much like the beginning.

They know each other inside out within a few months, and there is no awkwardness because Dom is a girl, or because Cane and Zan are twins. As the years begin to melt away, Dom doesn't mind remarking on some attractive female, for their benefit, and there are some moments that make Victoire flinch at the vulgarity, but they don't mind going to shop for strange products for Dom. Still, that doesn't stop Zan and Cane from being protective, or from Dom acting like the little spoilt child she's sure she is inside.

Fourth year, things seem finally to work, and it is then that Dom looks back and wonders where the last four years went. James, Louis and Fred are in their first year and are all Gryffindor. Feeling the need to show some house pride, she dyes the tips of her blonde hair green. Her mother goes spare, but Dom really doesn't give a damn, because she loves it.

So fourth year is when she looks at the rest of the students, and then at herself and the Zabini's, and realises that they aren't really like the others. The revelation feels yet again like a whole new beginning, and when she mentions it to Cane, all he says is, 'Salazar, Dominique, what took you so long?'

Three years later, they roam the corridors as big, beastly seventh year Slytherins. Except they aren't, and mostly people know that. Zan wears a smirk, Dom, a grin and Cane, a loose smile, and there is nothing remotely scary about them. They're certainly imposing though, with Dom's still green-tipped hair and big black boots, Cane's long black coat and Zan's black ponytail.

Cane has always got attention from females, ever since he was thirteen years old and Zan gets attention, but he's the most untouchable of the three. Dom does a pretty good job of being untouchable herself, disliking the majority of the guys who give her a second glance, but the Veela in her blood makes itself well-known. In the end, she stops trying to push people away. She doesn't like that those people fall so easily in love with her beautiful exterior, when what's inside her is nothing like that. But then those people know what she's like, that she's not just another sweet Victoire. After a while she struggles to feel as guilty as she did at the beginning, she wasn't brought up to enjoy heartbreaking, but she makes no secret of the fact that none of them have a chance.

'Want us to sort him for you, Dom?' Zanipolo asks smoothly, feeling soft anger in his chest that someone has tried anything with her. Given, the someone who had bothered to try was an idiot Gryffindor, and he'd attempted to be charming and had failed spectacularly. Even though it was actually pretty funny, that didn't excuse it.

'Yeh, because clearly I'm incapable of 'sorting him' myself.' Dom smirks, punching Zanipolo lightly in the arm. 'I think you'll find that he'll have trouble sitting down comfortably for a week, and if he, or anyone else tries that again then -'

Cane laughs easily. It's a soft, low sound that breaks hearts and unsettles minds. 'Don't worry about Zan, he's sore because he wanted to try that line on you.' He wiggles his eyebrows and glides away, attention stolen by the Hufflepuff girl he's been seeing loosely.

Dom throws her head back and laughs, turning to Zan as they come to a stop in some empty corridor. 'You'll have to come up with a better line than that, darling.'

As she goes to move again, she is whirled around so that her back is against the wall.

'I think you'll find, sweetie,' he murmurs effortlessly, eyes raking down her body and back up to her face, watching her lips as he speaks, 'that I don't need a line.'

'You sound so sure.' She tells him. Her voice doesn't shake or quiver. Victoire told her that whenever Teddy had been about to kiss her in situations like this, her voice had been quivery and unsure and her knees shook. Dom had laughed then too. There was no fucking way that she was going to let any guy diminish her confidence, especially not Zanipolo Zabini, who she's already seen pretty much naked and has, for a stupid dare three years ago, and has already made out with.

Zan shrugs, hand still on her arm, pinning her in place. Still, they both know that she could get out in a second if she wanted to. 'That's because I am.'

His lips are hovering over hers, applying minimal amounts of pressure. He's teasing her, goading her and she knows it. There's no way she's going to let herself be teased by him. Who in the name of Salazar does he think she is? Some common tart, or one of his girls, who go weak at the sound of his voice? Because she's neither of those girls. She's Dom, and she's in control. So she flips them round, presses her hips to his and kisses him roughly.

She pulls back with some effort just after he has started to respond. 'We should get to dinner, darling.' She walks down the corridor, hips swaying, and she counts in her head. Three seconds, four, five, and he's walked briskly back to her, kissing her again.

This time she lets him initiate it, and she responds enthusiastically. She just had to let him know that she wasn't just one of his girls, but he's already wrapped around her little finger and it's too late to turn back now. Even though this isn't their first kiss, it's the first kiss like this, and she doesn't even note it as a beginning until later.

Nothing changes, just because they're kissing now and there's a flame ignited in her stomach, and because Zan calls her 'his' Dom, instead of just Dom.

They don't make a habit of making out in hallways, because why would they do that? A reputation takes years to carve and a minute to destroy, and anyway, this has always just felt like a natural progression of something that was there since even before they really knew each other.

He's hers, and the fire in their relationship feel unquenchable; they compliment and vex each other, kisses taste like fire and sex feels like need and something so right, so right that Dom wonders why they'd not felt it like this when they'd kissed in the past. She wonders if maybe she'd always known (it hadn't felt weird that first proper time, she reasons, when they'd been in the empty corridor), but she thinks that she can't possibly have done, because there's no way that she would've waited patiently for seven years for him to make the first move.

In the end, it doesn't really matter. She really has more important things to ponder.

Her job is one of those things. Finishing the N.E.W.T.s, she decides that it's time to make her choice. Cane's choice is an easy one, that he'd be sure of for years; he was going to be a Potion's Master, a researcher for the St Mungo's Potion Poisoning wing. Zan had decided that he was best suited to a job as Curse-Breaker for Gringotts, which he could do in Scotland and still Floo back to wherever they chose to live after they'd finished school. Dom's glad that he made that choice. She's seen the uniforms the Curse-Breakers wear, and she was most definitely looking forward to seeing Zan in it.

Research takes far too much time for her liking, she just wants to know everything immediately. Curiosity and a need for satisfaction really means that the only thing she can imagine doing is being an Unspeakable. The very second she gets the idea, she's unshakeable. She is going to be an Unspeakable, she is going to dedicate her life to the pursuit of knowledge.

The others be damned if they don't understand the doors this opens for her when her application gets accepted.

Leaving Hogwarts throws them into the real world, and it's harsh and unfair, and somehow, they fit right in. They aren't like the Gryffindors, whose chivalry is lost in a world of other people also trying to act superior, or like the Hufflepuffs, who sometimes struggle with their compulsive niceness, or even like Ravenclaw, whose intelligence is often based on academia and leads them to trouble with reality. Or so Dom imagines, all she so far has to go on are her sister and Teddy.

The real world is an amazing place for an ambition past-Slytherin, and Dominique thrives. Cane, of course, flitters through the years relatively problem free, a different girl on his arm every time they see him, his charming smile unwavering. Quietly Dom wonders if he'll meet someone who he'll want to stay with for more than the week, but it'd be too far to say she wonders if he'll ever meet someone to settle down with, because he's always been untameable.

He's just like Zanipolo would've been, and she would have been, had they not found each other.

Zan has always been more quiet, more deadly and nothing changes. He acquires scars on his body from his job, but he never complains. Secretly, Dom thinks that he rather likes them. There's something of an intrigue in them. Just because he's with Dom doesn't mean he's stopped making other women weak at the knees.

Dom doesn't really find all that much joy anymore in making guys fall for her. She never liked the heartbreaking, but there's something flattering in the attention, and something just slightly amusing in the lines they attempt, and her mischievous side can't help but laugh. She finds that as long as it's her Zan's in love with, it doesn't matter even a little bit whether he quirks his eyebrow at women, or if guys still fawn over her.

And so they continue on, no longer teenagers who can stroll around being imposing or acting superior, but they're in the world now, and it is going to be kind to them, she's sure it is. Because, Salazar, if it doesn't, they'll just manipulate the facts until they do.

'Dominique…' Zanipolo says, voice dangerously low.

'What, darling?' She spits, her whole being rife with sarcasm as she turns around to face him, hands on hips and robes askew. 'Did I ruin your plans? Well, I'm so sorry…'

'You know you fucking didn't. Whatever this is, I want you to stop, right now.' Zanipolo states slowly, and Dom is so, so close to slapping his face.

'Stop what! You stupid bastard!' She so fuming mad that she can feel her anger pressing down on her chest, and in her stomach, where a tiny, tiny being is growing. 'Stop the child growing in my womb? I'm sorry, but I don't bloody well think that it works like that!'

She storms away angrily, maybe to complain to her mother (who, quite strangely really, she's always got on spectacularly with, and who'll be delighted that she's going to be a grandmother), or to Cane about how much of a pillock his brother is being about this (who'll just piss himself laughing at Zan, congratulate her by conjuring up some Slytherin-silver roses and challenge her to an angry game of chess). She's twenty-two years old, she's been with the same bloody guy for six years, why should she not be happy that she's carrying their baby?

When she returns hours later, the apartment is dark, but Zan's got candles glowing in the kitchen and she can see him waiting for her. Keen ears, he hears her the second she comes in and he crushes her in his arms, holding her, fingers tangling fiercely into her hair. She can hear him murmuring, his head lowered close to hers, ' I Love you, Dominique, I love you.'

In a way, she's sorry that their first knowledge of their child is received with anger and confusion and outbursts of emotion that are more extreme than some people experience in a lifetime. But that's how they are, that's their life, the life that the baby will be born into.

Because really, the child was probably conceived in that way, so it seems only natural that the beginning should be this way too.

He wants to marry her. He has just told her (not asked, Zanipolo didn't ask, he informed) and she hadn't responded honourably. Actually, she had said no. At the time, she'd not been exactly sure of why she'd turned him down. It was just … why could they not continue as they had before? Why put a label on love? She smiles widely, knowing exactly what she wants, what she had always wanted. 'Zan!' She calls after him. 'Zan, wait!'

'What, Dom? I'm tired of fucking waiting! Just tell me what you want.' He turns round, breath heavy and angry. Merlin, she loves Slytherins. No, not true. She loves this particular Slytherin. More than she can really believe.

'You. Just you. You and our child. Not some big wedding, not a big ceremony. Can you imagine me in a bloody white dress?' She asks, raising one eyebrow with a smirk, drumming her fingertips on her protruding stomach, 'Seems contradictory anyway, doesn't it?'

He fixes his dark eyes on her, serious for a second. With baited breath, Dominique waits for them to soften. 'What if I want to make an honest woman of you?'

'As honest as I'm ever going to be, darling.' She says, biting her lip. He nods, smiling. 'But I suppose if you're so desperate to make a dishonest woman of me, I could be content to torment you for all eternity.'

As his lips bruise hers, she's certain that it doesn't matter whether she has a ring on her finger or not. It does seems a little odd though, to her, that Zan suddenly feels the need to do this properly, to go for convention; child not to be born out of wedlock, wife and husband, and baby. She doesn't bring it up though, because if that's what he wants then she won't upset him for no good reason.

So two weeks later, her life begins as Dominique Zabini, and that sounds more right than she ever thought it would.

Explaining to her maman and dad why she got married in secret and wears her rings around her neck instead of on her finger like any normal person would do, is a whole separate problem. Luckily, she thinks that her parents are already accustomed to having only one daughter to go through and do things properly. Get married first, have a job she can actually talk about, things like that.

Besides, the look on her maman's face when they tell her that she's going to be a grandmère for the first time is so fantastic. The look on her dad's one is funny for different reasons, he looks like he'd not really realised that his youngest daughter was older than ten. Dom finds herself hugged and kissed, and she can't help but laugh when Zan gets the same. Her untouchable Zan, with his ponytail, having his hair mussed by her family is a sight of which she wishes she'd remembered to take a picture.

When they tell Maddalena and Blaise, it's over an elegant meal, and it feels far more comfortable some how. No matter how she tries, she just can't ever seem to make herself completely relax at the Burrow. She's fine around her maman and dad, and her brother and sister, but the whole Weasley family is sometimes too much to handle, especially now she's the first Weasley of her generation not to carry the surname anymore. She loves her family, she does. But even after school, she still feels a little like a Slytherin amongst Gryffindors. She grew up at school, and the person she grew into is different to most of her family.

The Zabini's are great, the conversation over their dinner is sarcastic and meaningful. Professor Zabini talks about his work, potions and students, and Maddalena adds the occasional quip, rolling her eyes and spending the time taking in the sons she doesn't see all that often.

For years, she's been the daughter that Maddalena never had, and she gets on with the woman almost as well as she does with her own maman. She's so excited when she finds out that she's going be 'Una Nonna!' (as she exclaims happily) for the first time. Dominique made the decision long ago that her baby isn't going to be a stranger to either of their families.

They call their son Nico Sebastian Zabini, and Dominique wonders why any other moment in her life has felt like the beginning. As she brings her son into the world, it seems like the most obvious, natural thing in the world that this is really the being the beginning of everything.

He screams until his face is red almost every night, and sometimes Dom wakes up to tend to him, and sometimes she is woken up by him to find that he is already cradled in his father's arms.

'So, boy, I told her that she was going to marry me, and that was the end of the matter.' Zan told his son, whose screams had ceased, and was now looking at his father in bemusement. Zan's gaze flicked towards her slightly before returning to Nico's little face. 'Sometimes you just have to show people an iron fist in these matters.'

'Iron fist my arse.' Dom whispers to a smirking Zan, offering Nico her fingers to hold.

'Language, darling. What would Fleur say if she could hear you?'

'She'd tell me that I should never let a man think my decision wasn't my own.' She laughs and nudges him in the side, pulling his face up so that she can kiss him. The second her lips touch his, the screams begin again.

So though they don't like to decide his fate too early, even Louis knows that if ever there was a baby born to be a Slytherin, it's Nico Zabini.

Nico's eyes remain a cloudy grey colour, even though they wait to see which of them he'll take after in that respect. Annoyingly, he doesn't have the same colour as either of them, and somehow it's like he's done it on purpose.

Dom wouldn't have him any other way though. He's theirs, a mixture of them and every tiny little thing he does is just as fascinating and incredible as the years she's spent as an Unspeakable. She expects this to grow old, for this amusement and amazement to falter, but as he lisps a quiet 'dada' for the first time, Zan gets tears in his eyes (and she's never seen that, in all the years she's known him), and Dom knows that this is always going to be new. Even though she can hardly remember a life without Nico in it, everyday she wakes up it feels like a new beginning.

She also expects, on some sorry, buried level, what she has with Zan to age too, but it doesn't. Not really. She supposes that it's because they never had that awkward stage where they hardly knew each other. They've always known each other. They were in the middle before Dom had even managed to identify a beginning. (Really, that's why there is still the fire and the anguish, the constant fight and need.)

His reaction is more favourable the second time she realises that she's pregnant. Nico is two, sitting easily in his father's lap, looking like some exotic little Prince and he's just like Zan in so many ways.

'There's going to be another baby, Nico, for you to play with.' Dom tells him carefully. Nico has developed quite a curious way of taking news, his reactions somewhat unusual. That's a Delacour trait, her Aunt Gabrielle was always the same, and sometimes Nico is so like her maman that Dom is amazed. The rest of the time, Nico is Zabini through and through, and sometimes Dom wonders if she's given her son anything at all, except maybe the shape of his lips and nose. All the most important things, she thinks to herself with a sigh.

Zan and Dom still have yet to settle into what they'd really consider a proper family life. Dom doesn't stay at home and fawn over her son and cook for her husband everyday, no matter how much she loves the two of them, that's simply not for her, and Zan wouldn't want that either.

She's still an Unspeakable (a job title that is still amusing to her family, because it just feels so right for her), and she still has green-tipped hair, still wears her boots. Those things are part of her, they make her feel elegant and beautiful in her own way. And, as the second baby to grow inside of her proves, Zan shows her too.

Cane tells them, while exploiting Nico's innocence with his ideas of naughtiness, that he quite fancies having a niece to spoil next, if they can manage that for him. Zan smirks, and Dominique tells him that she thinks that he should have a child himself to spoil instead of indulging Nico's, and their future daughter's, every whim.

Cane does make an excellent Uncle, even though his influence is frowned upon by Maddalena. Cane is to Nico what Charlie always was to Dom, when she was growing up. So she hopes for a daughter. A daughter would be really, really great. Victoire would like a niece too, to completely pamper. If she's not having a little girl of her own just yet, she might as well buy little green dresses for the niece she'll probably be getting soon; that's Victoire's reckoning anyway.

Adèle Fleur happens to be that niece and that daughter, and she's silent from the start. She whimpers instead of crying most of the time, and Maddalena laughs and tells her not to worry. Zan was the same. That makes Dom calm down more than anything else, and love their daughter even more than she thought possible.

Addie had Dom's eyes, the same dark blue, with the same grey rims. She has Dom's lips, like Nico, and her nose. She has the black Zabini hair and skin like caramel. She's the most beautiful little girl in the world - Maddalena calls her 'Bonita, bonita!', so she is eventually nicknamed, to all but Dom, Bonny. People stop her in the street to tell her how adorable her daughter is, how much she looks like her mother.

Dom hates that, though she always says a polite thank you, and scowls when they are out of sight. 'Come on, Addie,' she whispers to her, 'lets go home and make a mess.'

Addie giggles happily and claps her hands. Dominique actually rather resents what she has managed to give her daughter: a lifetime of attention for beauty. She knows that her daughter will be much, much more than that, and to prove it will be a challenge that she hopes Adèle won't resent.

She makes a good mother. Her days stalking the corridors making sarcastic comments and roaring with laughter seem years ago; she's not the same when she looks in the mirror, and neither is Zan. They're two children richer and seven years down the line. They're still only twenty-four years old though, and they're allowed a little wildness, sometimes, when their children are staying with whichever family member has stolen them for the weekend.

They don't get bored of each other. When every second they spend together, every second apart, every second they've spent fighting, and making up in progressively more interesting ways, every second spent drowning in each other, and spent falling more in love with the children who are parts of both of them, they hardly have time to get bored.

Before she really has time to think again, she's so far from the beginning of this that she can't see it anymore, and even though each time one of her children does anything different, it's a little new beginning, they're in the middle of something, her and Zan, and it's pretty damned exciting, actually.

'Dom?' Zan whispers in the middle of the night, when Nico is seven and Adèle is five and they've been juggling jobs and children and love and life. 'I want another child.'

Why Zan suddenly wants another child, she doesn't know, but it's not the first time he's said something unexpected (like when he decided that he wanted a ponytail, or that they were getting married before Nico was born). He's never been big on speaking without reason, and he's also pretty damned impatient. Which Dom guesses she doesn't always mind.

She hadn't considered having more children. Judging how Nico's curious ways will continue to develop, and sating his curiosity as best they can seemed enough at first. Then Adèle's coming changed everything, and balancing two children, with fiery hearts and extensive inquisitiveness, is demanding and exciting every day.

Now Zan's told her that he wants it, she wants it too. She want's another son, who'll have her eyes, this time, and a daughter to teach. Salazar, she wants another child so that Nico and Addie can have someone to show how to play chess and best make a face with spaghetti and meatballs (Nico is a master of that one). She wants another child, because now, she can't imagine not having one.

A year later, they go to Mungo's, full of the anticipation of another new beginning, but there's something not right. They take her away, to surgery, to save her and their baby. Zan knows something's wrong, but he grasps everything he can to try to focus on his wife and Nico and Adèle and their child who's being born.

He wants to be with her. He's not used to not getting his own way, but according to the Healer, this is the only way. She'll be out soon and they can go home. Salazar, Zan's never been the sort of want to be in one place forever (not until Adèle was born, anyway, and moving around with two children became more difficult), but all he wants is to be back in their house, their home and be able to hold his wife and watch his children sleep, and get up when they wake in the night.

The healer says a lot of things to him in the aftermath of Lucina's birth, but he only hears fragments. He hears the words 'sorry' and 'complication', and he knows. All of his nightmares come crashing down around him as they take him to Lucina, small and weak and loud. This is one of the beginnings Dom was always harping on about, but it doesn't feel like it. Dom should be the one laughing and crying as Adèle holds Lucina Dominique for the first time, and Nico reacting to his sister by telling them that she looks like a house elf.

But isn't there and she won't be, and Zan's laughter rings hollow when his son tells him that she looks like a frog (he's moved on from using house elves as insults, apparently). She isn't there to see Addie point out that Lucina's eyes are the same colour as hers, and she won't ever see that.

He resents her a little, and even though he's smiling with his children, then comforting them later when they come to know what has happened to bring Lucina to life, he can't help it. She lived too fast, and he wonders if there was anything they should have done differently. He knows that nothing will change it now. It's too late.

Lucina is a beginning, a big, important beginning, but Zan knows that this is the end.

You might have heard that I run with a dangerous crowd
We aint too pretty, we aint too proud
We might be laughing a bit too loud
And only the good die young.