When Your Parents Tell You Bedtime Stories

Epilogue-twenty-eight years after chapter 24

Looking at her daughter, Persephone could see so many similarities. She had heard so many times now about the love her father, Draco Malfoy, had shared with her mother, Hermione Granger, and it related to this moment in so many ways. Perhaps it was the name that caused such a strong bond, or maybe it was the simple fact that there was so much of herself in her daughter; either way, Hermione Achernar and Draco Malfoy shared a relationship closer than a father and daughter. Persephone had never been jealous that her father had captured her daughter's trust in a way she never could; she was just glad Hermione had always had someone to depend on. And this was the knowledge that brought tears-not just one-streaming down her cheeks today.

Mirach glanced at his wife and understood why she was crying. She wasn't crying for her loss, but for his daughter's loss; and as he glanced at her now, in her one moment of weakness, he felt like crying as well. At fourteen-years-old, Hermione was every bit as beautiful as her mother had been at eighteen. He could see, upon careful inspection, that her pale cheeks were tear-stained and only a few pieces of her mass of curly black hair, not blown away from her face by the wind, were stuck to them. Hermione Andromeda Achernar truly looked as if she was dying too; and Mirach knew, if given the chance, she would open up the casket and hop in there with her grandfather without a glance back.

Entranced by the fresh mound of dirt, Persephone was pulled out of her reverie by a short scream as the small crowd headed away from the graveyard. She sighed in relief when she realized it was only her son. Mrs. Achernar turned her head, daringly, to her daughter; captivated by the fact that she seemed to be going through more pain then she was. She couldn't help but contrasted her oldest daughter with her three sons, Jerome, Dayton, and Isaiah, whom were tackling each other on the grass. They were young still-ten, eight, and four-yet she knew even had they been older, they would not look the same as her oldest daughter.

Someone placed something in her arms and she turned to see the slightly tearful face of Aludra Wood-wife of Oliver Wood's oldest son, Patrik-placing her youngest daughter back into her hands. Though Aludra had remarried, nearly ten years after the death of Bobby, Persephone knew that the smile would always be painted on and the 'I love you's would always be from her head, not her heart. Persephone couldn't imagine living without Mirach. She quietly embraced her friend, nodded curtly to her friend's husband, and turned her head once again toward the dirt mound, listening to the crunching on the frozen ground as they too walked away. The little blonde girl struggled in her arms and she shifted to accommodate her.

"Dad, can't we go home yet?" Dayton whined.

"Yeah, we been here for a million hours," Isaiah put in.

"We'll go home when your mother is ready," Mirach bent down to tell the impatient boys. He reached out and ruffled Jerome's mass of black curls and then the other two boys' straight dark-blonde hair (inherited from him and his father).

"No, they're right," Persephone spoke-though the words barely registered before they came out. "It's quite cold out here and it is getting late. Why don't you head toward the car (they had bought one, finding it a hassle to transport all the kids any other way) and I'll be along in a moment." Persephone placed her daughter, laughing and giddy, on the ground and watched her trot behind her husband out of the graveyard. She turned slowly and cautiously approached her daughter.

"It isn't fair," the girl spoke for the first time in days.

"Life never is," Persephone said, stepping up beside the girl, but knowing better then to reach out and place a comforting hand on her shoulder as one of hers was itching to do.

"I don't want to leave yet."

"Yes, I know, Hermione, but...."

"But nothing; I don't want to leave yet and I won't go with you."

Persephone knew her daughter had inherited, miraculously, more of Draco Malfoy's stubbornness then she did.

"The ironic thing is, he wasn't even my real grandfather."

"Yes he was," Persephone said, letting yet another tear escape down her cheek, "in all the ways that count."

"Mum, I'm scared. I don't think life will be the same without him."

"It won't."

"Then what's the point?"

Persephone knew she didn't have to answer her daughter's question right now, and she knew she would never have to answer it directly, so she let a brief silence settle in before she found the perfect words to say. "He told me the same bedtime stories he told you; I loved them too. Although I grew too old for them, unlike you."

There was another silence-not an awkward one-and Persephone drew her daughter into an embrace where Hermione released a sigh. Her daughter hid behind a strong façade, one Persephone gladly recognized, and still would not cry more than that one tear-the evidence still on her cheek-that she had let slip out of her closed eyelids this morning. The eyelids Draco Malfoy kissed every night when he had tucked her into bed after telling a bedtime story that Persephone still had yet to get tired of. It was then that it finally struck her: the bedtime stories had stopped too soon. She felt like weeping with her daughter-for her daughter-and collapsing as any other normal person would do; but she knew, true Malfoy or not, that she couldn't, especially not if her daughter couldn't even find the courage to.

Hermione pulled back and turned to stare again at the grave, putting them back in the same positions.

Draco Lucius Malfoy

December 1980-February 2041

Loving Man

Man described it all; father, grandfather, guardian, friend, lover, and storyteller, Persephone thought.

An outsider would almost see them as angels, protecting the grave. They'd probably wonder whose grave could possibly be so important that it would have not one, but two amazing angels watching over it. In a way, the spectator would be right. Draco Malfoy had certainly been an amazing man, and these were his two angels, his Earth-bound protectors whom he had created.

"Back then he would disguise the stories for me and he changed them all the time-the same plot but different characters. My favorite was the very first one he told me, one I made him repeat the most, about a prince and a commoner from two different worlds. It took fifteen years to figure out it was about my mother and himself. Their names were Betelgeuse and Cassiopeia."

"Cassie...."

"We call your sister Cassie so often anymore I didn't think anyone remembered her real name: Cassiopeia. I never told your father why I had insisted on the name, and since he had named the boys, he didn't ask. I felt that if I brought Cassiopeia back the story could have such a happy ending; the one it deserved that it didn't get when my father told it to me. He always ended it with the simple fact that joining two worlds was impossible and just simply not meant to be."

"But you and dad...."

"I know, that's why I named her Cassiopeia. In Father's stories, it may have not been meant to be, but I felt they needed the ending they deserved. Does that make sense or is just the rant of a crazy old woman?"

"You're not old, Mum."

"You forgot crazy."

"You're not old, Mum." The angels both almost broke into a smile there and their eyes shone with a brief happiness; though, it was gone fast as the guilt reminded them again of the day, the hour, the moment. "You should go back to the car and go home; it's freezing out here. I'll be home when I can, I promise."

Hermione looked up in time to see her mom wave the waiting car away and she watched as it drove out of sight, curious faced peeking out the back window.

"How much time do you need?" the older angel asked quietly.

"An eternity?" the younger one suggested, a deep sadness in her voice.

"Dinner can wait."

"What if it rains?"

"Then the sky simply does what we cannot."

"I know he's watching and I don't want him to see me cry; it would show

weakness."

"I know a man who cried once when he lost someone he loved dearly." They were silent again. Persephone would stand there beside her daughter as long as it took. She would stand there until her daughter realized that the bedtime stories would never die. She would stand there until her daughter could find the strength to let go-Persephone knew how hard that was. She would stand there until her daughter realized that the end of her bedtime story had yet to be written. But most importantly, Persephone would stand there until her daughter found the strength to release her pain; she would be there until her daughter found the courage to cry.