When Your Parents Tell You Bedtime Stories

Epilogue-thirteen years after chapter 24

"Tell me a bedtime story, Grandpa. Like the one's you used to tell Mama."

"Alright." The man sighed, feeling much older than he was. "You have to pay close attention though, and promise me you'll never forget it."

"I won't," she promised, shaking her head with its freshly cut black curls.

"Once upon a time there was this heartless prince who reigned in a land only he thought was perfect."

"The prince has to have a name, Grandpa. It's no fun if he doesn't."

"Alright," the man said, surrendering. "The prince's name was Draco." The little girl giggled but kept her mouth shut so she wouldn't disrupt him, because he had suddenly gotten this look in his eyes that mesmerized her. "One day he met a commoner, one who he had run into often and disliked very much. But on this day he really met her and saw just how truly beautiful she was."

"What was her name?" the girl asked quietly.

"Her name was Hermione Granger. They were two completely different people from two different worlds."

"Did they fall in love?" the little girl asked again.

"They did." He nodded, laughing at her curiosity. "Though no one ever really understood it."

"I want to fall in love someday. It must be so lovely."

The man chuckled again, his blonde hair cascading into his face, at the girl's ingenious. Runs in the family, he thought. "He didn't realize how truly in love with her he was until it was too late. She never got the chance to tell him how she felt, though, many years later he awoke one morning and knew that she had loved him as well."

'What happened to her, Grandpa? Did she die?"

"No. You can't die when you live in the hearts of those you loved and those who loved you. She's still very much alive."

"How does the story end?"

"Well, she left the prince behind something of hers, and sort of something of his too. A little girl. A beautiful little girl with laughing curls and a twinkle in her eye, so much like her mother." He reached out and tugged at one of the girl's curls. "He didn't realize it until the girl was full grown and figuring out the same adventure he'd gone through, that she was the only reason he got through it. That little girl was why he really lived. Because, even without his princess, he knew love."

"I bet he missed this Hermione badly though, huh?"

"He did. Very much. But there were more important things then dwelling on those that you can't change. And so, the man lived very happily ever after."

"Do happy endings really exist, Grandpa?" she asked, trying to suppress a yawn.

"They do."

"Will you tell me bedtime stories a lot, Grandpa? Every night, maybe? I don't think I'll ever get too old for them."

"I will always tell you bedtime stories," he whispered as the girl's eyelids fell closed. "Until you don't need them anymore."

"And when's that?" the little girl nearly moaned.

"When you finally understand them and are living them." He bent down and placed a soft kiss on the girl's eyelids as she dozed off. "Goodnight, Hermione," he whispered to his granddaughter. The man reached over and blew out the candle by her bed, but never moved. He didn't move from that spot until many hours later.

The lone spectator turned from the door, tears in her eyes, and made her way away from the room. She loved that bedtime story. Every time, every version. She was crying because she'd never heard it end like that; but she knew that they always had deep inside the man's mind. She knew they always would. Persephone silently prayed that one day her little girl would discover that those bedtime stories weren't just bedtime stories after all; they were reality.

"Is she asleep?" a voice spoke next to her ear, grabbing her around the waist.

"Yes. And she'll have dreams filled of princes and commoners and a love that never fades," the woman whispered.

"Good." The man sighed. "I love you."

"I love you too, Mirach."