When Your Parents Tell You Bedtime Stories

9

"Sometimes we have to give up the thing we want the most."

Rigel was lying in the Slytherin boy's dormitories, wide awake, curtains drawn tight. These past few weeks had left him with a lot to think about. A Slytherin loving a Gryffindor? It made Rigel think of a girl that lately he had been thinking about a lot; Persephone.

Turning over, he remembered his best friend's laugh, and the way she would toss her curls back and forth when she was angry. He smiled at the thought. She was so strong-willed and never backed down. He loved that about her.

Suddenly his sharp ears picked up a noise in the common room; a noise no one else would hear. Sitting up, he reached for his curtains and pulled them back. Rigel, in just his silk pajama bottoms, padded his way stealthily down the stairs and peered into the common room....

*********

Mirach sighed, staring into the Gryffindor common room fire, slouching farther into the leather chair. Bringing the butterbeer from the stash that Bobby Weasley had started from Hogsmeade, he finished it off and tossed it into the fire. There was something he couldn't get off his mind.

Standing, he pulled his cloak over his flannel pants and made his way across the room. As the portrait hole swung open he glanced from the dark hallway back into the common room. For some reason, as Mirach took off out into the castle for a midnight stroll, he had a feeling he might not be coming back tonight.

********

The man whispered the Slytherin common room, one he had coaxed out of a Slytherin unknowingly put under Veritaserium. Entering the cold bone-chilling room, brought back a rush of memories. Sticking to his task at hand he quietly made towards the staircase, tripping over a book along the way. Cursing under his breath he continued. But he never made it unnoticed....

*********

Draco Malfoy stirred in his bed. Turning, his gaze falling on his empty brandy glass, glowing in the dim light of the moon. In his head he was going through the bedtime stories he had told his daughter countless times and finding the truth in them. A Slytherin and a Gryffinder; it really wasn't meant to be. If fate had meant for it to be, she would be lying beside him now, instead of six feet under.

Reaching into his drawer and picking up his wand, he studied a picture. The light of his wand made the girl in the picture seem to glow. Draco threw the picture skidding across the floor, listening to the glass break, a fit of anger sitting in. Draco had only cried one tear when she died. One single tear had run down his cheek, the one she had wiped away before....

Who, even a Slytherin, didn't have the decency to cry when the person you loved with all your heart dies? But he was Draco Malfoy, he didn't cry and he didn't have a heart. That's simply the way things were.

*********

Persephone had just drifted off to sleep when a ripping sound tore her wide awake. Eyes widening she lay perfectly still, hoping she was still asleep. Someone slid a hand over Persephone's mouth, silencing her fast and making it hard for her to breathe.

"Your mother had been right not to trust me. She always was the smartest witch."