Disclaimer: You'll be happy to learn that J.K. Rowling still owns most of these characters, except the ones I made up. No copyright infringement is intended.

Ron shuddered awake in the dark when he heard the faint cry from down the hall, and as always, it took him almost a full minute after waking to remember where he was. Sussex, he told himself: the little white house with the green trim, which did not look quite large enough from the outside to hold four bedrooms. The peeling yellow paint, the Muggle neighbors, the Muggle school his children attended until they were old enough to go to Hogwarts, the clock which had once been his mother's hanging in the kitchen, all five hands even now pointing to "bed."

As his breathing slowed and he felt Hermione's warmth in bed beside him and he remembered where he was, there was silence. He glanced at the bedside clock: 3am.

Then he heard it again: his younger daughter's soft whimper, barely audible. The sound was half-strangled, coming from far back in her throat, followed by a quick sniff, then a series of gentle sobs muffled into her pillow. Mattie was having a nightmare.

For each of the Weasley children, the nightmares had come differently.

His younger daughter, Mattie, wasn't like either of the others had been. Tori and Harry could whisper or shout their problems to the world and be rid of them in short order, but Mattie was more introverted than her older brother or sister, biding in silence, letting her fears linger and fester and grow out of all proportion. There weren't many fathers who would have seen through the serious, patient, calm façade of this little girl, but Ron had learned to recognize the way she pressed her small lips together at the breakfast table after a restless night, the way her brow would crease and she'd silently wring her hands when something was troubling her. He recognized the signs because he'd seen them before. Mattie was her mother, all over again.

And because he recognized this, Ron had been waiting for Mattie to come to him, to share her nightmares with him when she was ready. She'd come back from a sleepover party at the neighbors' two weekends ago with her small brow furrowed, silent and jumpy and secretive. "Okay," she'd said, when he'd asked how the party was. Hermione had frowned and said that maybe Mattie had been too young for a sleepover party after all, even if it was only next-door. She'd given Mattie some toast and marmalade and let her sleep for the rest of the day, and no one had said another word about it.

But Hermione hadn't seen what Ron had, hadn't heard the faint whimpers coming from the last bedroom down the hall every few nights. She hadn't been waiting, as Ron had, to find out what was troubling Mattie, because in the daytime Mattie was perfectly normal and calm, flying around the backyard on Tori's old toy broomstick, giving her orderly rows of stuffed animals school lessons in the drawing room, painting pictures and playing games. She was her usual placid, controlled self, and Ron knew he could only wait to find out what the stifled cries in the middle of the night meant; he could only wait for her to be ready to tell him.

Their eldest, Tori, hadn't needed any encouragement to share her nightmares, even at Mattie's age. Back then, Tori's small, quivering form would be hovering around their bedroom doorway before they heard a sound from her, before they even knew she'd had a bad dream. They'd look up and there she'd be, clutching the doorjamb and bouncing one foot against the other as she did when she was nervous. She'd wait for one of her parents to smile and beckon her over, then she'd creep up to the bed and crawl in, settling herself between her parents, still clutching her stuffed orange Beater's bat, and whisper her nightmare into the dark, waiting for her mother's comfort.

For it was Hermione who dealt with the children's nightmares in the beginning; there were times, especially when Tori was very young, when Ron wouldn't even hear her, when he'd sleep heavily right through her whispered nighttime confessions, only to wake in the sun-drenched morning to find her snoring on the pillow next to his, her mouth slightly open, her freckled face flushed. Hermione was always awake before the two of them, and she'd be reading in bed, a heavy, dusty book balanced on her knees as she stifled a giggle into the back of her hand, explaining in a whisper, The two of you just look so funny, both lying there snoring with your mouths open.

As his daughter grew older, Ron learned to wake the moment she touched the bedcovers, to reach out and take her hand when she crawled, sniffling, into bed with them. It happened less and less often after her brother and sister were born, but Ron learned to be awake and listen with his full attention for the brief time it took Tori to explain her nightmare and fall back asleep, her slow, calm breaths sounding in time with her mother's.

Harry was a different story. Even as a child younger than Mattie was now, he'd had too much pride to creep into his parents' bed after a nightmare. Instead, Ron and Hermione would be woken, groaning in protest, by the muffled thumps of their son kicking the wall beside his bed and driving his small fists into his pillows, trying to beat the nightmare out of existence.

All that was required in Harry's case was for Ron to stumble half-asleep into his room and sit down at his side; Harry would throw his sweaty, trembling arms around his dad's neck and howl his fear and frustration out. The boy eventually cried himself back to sleep, his dad stroking his sandy curls and whispering, It's all right, little man, and Harry would wake the next morning with no memory of anything so undignified having happened. Ron and Hermione took it in turns to calm Harry's nightmares, for the simple pleasure of enjoying the caresses the boy would have deemed "yucky" in the daylight.

But Mattie always wanted her dad.

It was her dad who'd woken tonight. And tonight, some instinct told him that it was time to stop waiting for her to come to him.

Frowning, Ron pushed back the covers and sat up. He slipped one foot down onto the floor, feeling around for his discarded T-shirt, while glancing over at Hermione. His movement had half-woken her; she lifted her head, brushed a stray lock of hair away from her eyes and squinted at him, making the same inquiring noise from the back of her throat that their daughter had just made down the hall.

Smiling, he leaned over and planted a kiss on her forehead, her hair tickling his nose. "S'all right," he whispered. "I'll be right back."

Her head dropped back onto the pillow with another small murmur as he leaned over to collect his shirt from the floor. A few moments later he was padding from the room and easing the door closed behind him.

The night-lights along the hallway floor, bewitched to light up when anyone came out of their room, glowed a gentle orange against the carpet. He crept by Tori's room first; through her half-open door he could hear the ten-year-old snoring, and he glanced into the dim bedroom to find her deeply asleep, her silky red hair spread riotously over her pillow, her long limbs poking out from under the bedcovers in all directions. Grinning, he pulled the door shut and moved on.

Next was Harry's room; putting his ear to the tightly closed door (KEEP OUT flashed at him in neon-colored letters from a large sign, messily affixed to the door with entirely too much Spellotape) he caught the faint whirring and clicking of the boy's model airplanes and broomsticks, probably still racing about the ceiling in tireless circuits as he slept.

Mattie's door, the third in line, had fallen slightly open, the yellow glow of another nightlight showing through the crack and casting a faint glow into the hallway. Ron put his hand on the doorknob and heard another soft whimper from within, followed by an even softer sniffle. He couldn't suppress a grin; like Hermione, Mattie always tried, and failed miserably, to stifle her cries.

He pushed the door open to find that four-year-old Mattie had kicked her pink bedspread onto the floor; it lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed. Her nightgown was plastered to her legs, her hands bunched into fists, her pillow a tangle of curly golden-brown hair as she buried her face in her arms.

"Hey kiddo," he whispered from the doorway.

Mattie sat up at once, wiping at her face with closed fists and looking around at him with damp, red-rimmed eyes, her chin quivering just like Hermione's always did when she was trying not to cry. She took a great, shuddering breath as Ron crossed the room and settled himself on the edge of her bed.

"Oh, Daddy," she whispered, and let the tears go, burying her face in his T-shirt. He felt the wetness seeping through to his skin as she sobbed, and he smiled faintly as she clung to him. He stroked her hair, tangling his fingers around the curls, as her sobs tapered off into hitching gasps, then stopped altogether.

"Now," he said, when he was sure the storm of crying was over, "What was it about?"

She mumbled something into his chest, her thin voice muffled by his T shirt. It sounded like 'Ionteloo.'

He pulled her back, hands on her shoulders, and made her look at him. "Sorry?"

"I can't tell you," she said, dropping her eyes and wringing her hands in her lap. Silent tears were still tracing paths down her cheeks.

"Why not?"

"It's…" She clutched at his shirt. "It's too scary."

"Oh." He sat back from her. "I understand now," he said, wiping at her face with his thumbs and nodding his head.

"You do?"

"Um-hmm. You think that if you say it out loud, it's going to be even stronger and scarier than before. You think that if you say it, it will come and find you."

She looked up, open-mouthed, and let her hands fall back into her lap. "How did you know?" she whispered.

"Because I used to do the same thing." He paused. "I used to be afraid to say the name of the thing I feared most. Not just me: the whole world used to be scared of saying one word."

Her face registered the kind of shock usually reserved for reactions to her brother's more foul language. "You used to be scared of things?"

Ron allowed himself a chuckle, and ruffled Mattie's hair. "Present tense. I am scared of things."

"Even nightmares?"

"Absolutely." Mattie just stared at him, seemingly awestruck, and Ron chuckled again. "Being grown-up doesn't mean you're never scared of anything, hon."

"Oh." Her face fell, and she stared down at her hands, which had begun to twist in her lap again.

"But I know a secret," he said.

"What?" Her shining brown eyes caught his blue ones.

He leaned in close, to whisper in her ear. "If you name it, it won't scare you any more."

She pulled back, fixing him with a gaze of cock-eyed skepticism of which her mother would have been proud. "That's not true," she whispered.

"Sure it is. Here, try it. What was your nightmare tonight about?"

More hand twisting. "I can't…"

"Sure you can. You can whisper it, if you like. Say it very softly, so only I can hear."

Her eyes met his for another instant, and then she leaned close. Her eyes shone with tears and her chin trembled as she said the dreaded word:

"God…God…Godzilla."

It was fortunate that Ron wasn't looking directly at Mattie during her horrible confession, or she would have seen him bite his lip to hold back a yell of laughter. As it was, his face was perfectly serious when he drew back and looked her in the eye. "You had a nightmare about Godzilla?"

She nodded, her bushy hair falling into her face, took a deep breath, scrunched her face up, and let it all out in a rush: "Yes he was walking down our street and smashing lampposts just like in that Muggle movie that Candy from next door showed me when I slept over," she paused to take a breath, "And he looked in my window and his eyes were yellow, Daddy, and Harry's model planes were flying around his head and he was batting at them, and then," another long shuddering breath, "he was breathing fire just like a dragon, just like in that animal book on Mummy's bookshelf that's in with the books all the way at the top that I'm not supposed to look at but I did anyway cause Harry was, and my bed was on fire, and then he picked me up in his mouth and Oh Daddy! It was so scary." She was breathing hard and her eyes were wide and shining and her lips trembled, but she did not cry again, only sat there clutching at his hand and staring over his shoulder into the middle distance.

He waited.

Finally she spoke again. "But it's not scary now."

Ron smiled. "I knew it wouldn't be."

"But…" she wrung her hands again, and bit her lip, and again looked so much like her mother that his heart squeezed in his chest and his smile broke into a wide grin. "I was so scared…before," she said.

"I know you were. But you gave it a name. You said it out loud for someone else to hear. And that broke it up, that made it less scary."

"Huh?"

He took both her hands in his. "Voldemort," he said, slowly and clearly. "I used to be afraid of that word, even when someone else said it."

"You did?"

"Yeah. That's what I was most afraid of. That's what my nightmares used to be. But once I gave it a name, and said that name to someone else, it just…broke." Ron was staring at the wall above Mattie's headboard, his eyes glazed. "It broke and it didn't scare me. Not like before." He blinked and looked down at her, at her shining brown eyes and her halo of curly hair. "Can you say it again?"

"Godzilla," she whispered, her voice trembling.

"Again," he said, squeezing her hands.

"Godzilla," she said, in her normal, piping voice, her eyes blazing and determined.

"Excellent," he said. He leaned close and whispered, "It's even a bit of a funny name, isn't it, when you really think of it?" He widened his eyes and stretched his mouth comically to the side, and said, "God-ZIL-la," in a drawling, drawn-out way.

A smile bloomed on her tear-stained face, just a small one, followed immediately by that twisting of the mouth that she and her mother both used when they were trying not to smile. The smile won, and broadened into a grin as she widened her eyes in imitation of her father and drawled "God-ZIL-la." She broke into giggles for a few seconds after this.

"That's my girl," he said, and ruffled her hair again in the way he knew she hated.

Predictably, she batted his hand away. "Do you still have nightmares, Dad?"

"Yup. But they're mostly about spiders, nowadays." He gave a theatrical shudder. She laughed again, a real hearty laugh this time, and flung her arms around his neck and sighed, her tears forgotten. "Always name your fears," he said, staring away from her and breathing into her sweet-smelling hair. "Never be afraid to say them out loud. Promise me you'll always do that?"

"I promise," she said, and pulled back from him, rubbing her eyes again. "Daddy?"

He smoothed her frizzy hair back from her brow, only to have it pouf back into place over one eye. "Yes darling?"

She squirmed around so that her head was lying on the pillow again, her fists bunched up under her chin. "Will you stay here, until I fall asleep?" she whispered as she drew her knees up to her chest.

Ron leaned over and pulled the fluffy pink comforter off of the floor, tucking it around her again and planting a kiss on her forehead. "Of course," he said.

And in truth, he sat watching her long after she had fallen asleep, until the room began to lighten with the dawn and the shadows receded. He watched her chest rise and fall with long, even breath, her hands curled under her chin and her small, chubby face smooth and free from worry. He watched her without seeing her, after a while, as his eyes glazed over and he gazed into the middle distance, past her, past everything.