"Hawwy! Hawwy! Ginny! Gwandma!" No matter how loud Teddy screams, there is no one. He's all alone. It's dark, and shadows are moving, and no matter where he turns, all he sees is darkness. His heart is beating fast, and he's crying because he's terrified. "Mommy! Daddy!" He sees something move out of the corner of his eye, and he turns to face it. A huge furry shape rises from behind him, and he screams for Harry again. Then his parents appear out of nowhere. They are running, but suddenly the stop, and even though they try to keep moving, they can't. They reach for him, but they can'tget to him. The monster starts to move closer, and he screams for them, but no matter how hard they try, they can't reach him. Then they disappear, and he starts sobbing, calling for them. Then he hears Harry's voice, coming from far away. "Wake up, Teddy." But Teddy can't wake up, and the monster is moving closer. "Wake up, Teddy." It's Harry's voice again, closer. "Teddy, it's just a nightmare." Four year old Teddy blinks in the dark, but now it's not a scary dark, it's his own room. Harry is there. Moony is there. Teddy sits up and scans the room. There's his wooden bed, his wooden dresser, wooden bookshelf, with all his books and his puffskein, Buddy, in his cage on top. There's nothing hiding in the corner with his toy chest, or behind his cloak on the cloak hook. Norbert, his bear, his unicorn and his centaur were all lined up at the foot of his bed. There were no monsters. He crashed against his pillows and his hair, which had been standing on end and had turned midnight black, settled back on to his head and faded brown.

"Are you okay, Teddy?" Harry asked.

Teddy nodded. "I'm okay, but could you tell me a stowy so the monstews don't come back?"

"Alright. What kind of story," Harry asked, though he already knows the answer.

"Mummy and Daddy." Teddy replied instantly.

The little boy must have heard each story Harry had thought to tell him at least five times, but he never tired of them. "Which one?" Harry asked.

Teddy considered this for a minute. "Daddy and the Boggart," He decided.

Harry smiled. He should have known. "When I went to Hogwarts, I met your Dad. He taught us Defense Against the Dark Arts, so we had to call him Professor Lupin. Do you remember what Defense Against the Dark Arts is"

Teddy's hair turned green in his excitement. "It's whewe Daddy teached you to fight the bad guys!"

Harry smiled again. "That's right, and your Dad taught us all about the bad animals too. On our very first class, he started teaching us about boggarts. Now, boggarts are shape shifters-"

When Harry returned to his own room, nearly an hour later, Ginny was mostly awake, waiting for him.

"He alright?" she asked sleepily.

"He wanted a story," Harry replied, lying down.

"Daddy and the Boggart?" she said, smiling.

"How'd you guess?"

"It wouldn't have been Daddy fights the Dementor, or "Daddy and Mommy Rescue Harry at the Ministry, those scare him. If it had been Mommy and the Aurors, or How Mommy Used to Change Her Appearance Like Teddy, you would have been back before now, and if it had been How Daddy Was Going to Dump Mommy and Run Off With Harry-"

"What!" Harry yelped, "We never told him that one!"

"Got you," Ginny said, smiling sleepily again.

"Git!" Harry said, bopping her with a pillow.

"How Harry Murdered Aunt Ginny with a Pillow…"

"How Teddy Thought He Heard Us Fighting and Got Another Nightmare, And Aunt Ginny Had to Go Spend the Rest of the Night Telling Stories Over and Over Again…."

"Oh, har, har, har," Ginny mumbled as she drifted off to sleep. "Hey, Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you please move your ice cold feet?"

A few weeks after Teddy's nightmare, everyone was once again at the Burrow for dinner, and they were all in the sitting room, listening to yet another telling of "Daddy and the Boggart."

"Even though I was scared, I stood strong as I faced the spider. Monstrous, that spider was, twenty feet tall at least, and as wide as the chalk board-"

"Note to self," Harry muttered to Ginny, "Never again let Ron tell a story if he's in it."

Ginny hid her grin.

"-Covered in this thick brown hair. 'Get away, boggart, I shouted-' "

"Weally, Unca Won? Hawwy said you wewe so scawed, you almost falled down."

"Now he's busted!" Ginny whispered.

Hermione was almost doubled over with giggles. Harry was smirking openly now.

"Well, maybe Harry forgot some of the details-"

"Then why is Aunt Hewmyninny laughing so much?"

"Well maybe Aunt Hermione-"

"Give it up, Ron." Ginny advised.

"He got you." George said from the corner.

"You know, I've always said lying got my children nowhere-"Molly began

"I wasn't lying," Ron said heatedly. "I was just-"

"Prevaricating," George snorted.

"Fibbing," Bill said.

"Fabricating," Hermione chipped in.

"Falsifying," Harry said.

"Misrepresenting," Arthur added.

"User d'équivoques," Fleur pointed out.

"Being deceitful," Ginny smirked.

"Stretching the truth." Molly said.

"More like abandoning it." George commented.

"Maybe I was exaggerating a little-"Ron mumbled.

"A little?" Harry said, eyebrows raised.

"All right, all right."

"So how big was the 'pider?" Teddy asked, looking confused.

Everyone laughed.