There's no such thing as fairytales. They don't exist outside of books and movies. My mother, a Muggleborn, had always insisted on keeping me well-educated on my Muggle background, so I grew up watching fairytales and princess movies. But instead of loving them and insisting I'd have that kind of happy ending someday, I thought they were stupid and misleading.
There's no such thing as love at first sight. People don't get married and have 'happily ever after's after knowing the other person for less than a week. Before love comes trust, affection, and even friendship. Something like that takes time.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not some anti-romance killjoy. I've fallen in love and married, and to someone I never in a million years would've expected.
Fred Weasley had always gotten on my nerves. He was a loud, obnoxious, arrogant ladies' man who had a habit of going too far with his pranks. I'm not a stick-in-the-mud. I actually got a laugh out of most of his pranks, especially against the Slytherins and people who deserved it, but Fred, unlike his twin George, didn't always know where to draw the line. It was when his pranks went too far that I didn't appreciate it.
And then, to my chagrin, he started directing his flirting my way.
I tried to ignore him. I really did. But he went from flirting with me, to us hanging out, to me developing a tiny crush, to me finally saying yes after the thirtieth time he asked me on a date. We dated for over two years, falling in love in the process. Just before the third year, he proposed and we got married.
And that brings me here, propped up in a hospital bed, watching my husband hold our newborn daughter.
He was whispering to her, a loving smile on his face, and tears in his brown eyes that I would never mention outside of this room. Her head, with a sprinkling of downy, light golden-red hair, was peaking out of the blanket she was wrapped in, and her tiny fist was barely wrapped around Fred's index finger.
And in that moment, I realized that for all these years, I was wrong.
Because right there, in that moment, was probably the only true example of love at first sight.