And without further ado, here we have the Twenty-Eighth and Final Chapter of Crawling Under the Surface.

Enjoy, and be sure to keep reading until the very end of the page, because there is a LOT I need to talk about at the end of this chapter.

Epilogue.

Eight years later...

The sun was just coming over the city, the yellow-orange rays just beginning to shoot out from behind the tall skyscrapers. It reflected upon the water, shining into the eyes of an old man who was taking his dog for a walk along the river. They slowly slid up and along the tall buildings, shining into the apartments and waking the weary occupants to the new day.

In one such apartment, the door to the parent's bedroom slowly opened a crack. A head with messy red curls and a face loaded with freckles cautiously peeked in to see if the occupants of the large two-person bed were awake. There were two lumps in the bed, as there should be; they were both still asleep. One rolled around and made a grunting noise, and a hairy leg poked through a hole at the end of the covers.

The figure ducked back behind the door when she heard the grunt, giggling softly at the noise. The door opened slowly further and the head returned, this time followed by a stick-thin body in pink-and-white stripped pajamas with feet attached. She was very young, no older than six years old at most, and very nimble and agile. Her brown eyes had a mischievous glint in them as she tiptoed into the room, sneaking in just like she saw the cat do it on the television.

She slowly crept up onto the end of the bed and stood over the lump on the left side of the bed and took a deep inhale of breath.

"Daddy, wake up!" she shouted, and cannonballed on top of him.

There was a loud groan as her knees dove into the gut that lay under the sheets. The top of the covers were pushed off as Ron Weasley's head popped up, looking extremely tired and yet when he saw this little girl, smiling with a tooth missing from when she had lost it a week ago, he could not help but smile either.

"And just what do you think you're doing?" he asked her, pretending to sound stern and not succeeding by much.

"Waking you up," she said, her little voice making her sound so innocent yet her grin made her look so mischievous.

"Oh? And why are you doing that when YOU should still be asleep, young lady?" With that, he grabbed her and began tickling her, causing her to emit high-pitched squeals of laughter as she tried to escape.

The other side of the covers pushed off of Hermione Granger-Weasley as she sat up, woken up by all the noise. Her tired eyes surveyed the scene of her husband as he wrestled with their six-year-old daughter, and her only concern was that he would be careful with her.

"What are you doing up, young lady?" Ron asked, subsiding from the tickeling.

"I-it's..." the little girl had to catch her breath, exhausted from laughing so hard. "It's Saturday, Daddy. You said you'd play with me today!"

"Well, I was hoping to get started..." He glanced at the clock beside his bed, "a little later than seven o'clock in the morning, Leslie."

"You got an owl," Leslie handed him a small envelope. "It looked like it was ur...urga..."

"Urgent, honey," Hermione said tiredly.

Ron took the envelope and opened it, scanning its contents quickly. He groaned.

"McAllen," he explained. "He's having troubles with the new interns. They are a wild lot, it's like we hired them straight out of the zoo."

"Oh..." Hermione sighed. "You should go help him, then."

"Mmm...no, that's okay." Ron wrote a quick reply on the back of the letter, then handed the letter to Leslie. "Send this back with the owl, kiddo. Then go get dressed, we'll go to the park today."

"Yay!" Leslie took the note and rushed out of the room, almost tripping over the door frame as she went out. Hermione snuggled up against Ron's chest.

"You sure? McAllen's not the best candidate for training interns," she reminded him.

"Well, he's going to have to learn," he said, kissing her forehead. "Today's my day off, and it's your day off, and we haven't had a day off together in months. I don't care if Ray has set his desk on fire, I'm not to be disturbed today."

"Well, I guess I can't complain about that," she said with a smile, planting a kiss on her husband's lips. "We should probably get dressed then."

She stood up, pushing the rest of the covers off of her as she stood to go to their adjacent bathroom. Ron pushed his covers off and sat up, looking out the window as the sun shone through.

They had stayed in England for seven months after the Huntington Massacres- as the incident had become known in England and the United States- so that Hermione could finish up her medical residency and prepare her packing for Ron's apartment in Manhattan. She transferred to the wizarding hospital in Brooklyn, where she was now a senior attending mediwizard. It had taken a few months, adjusting to the customs of American, but Hermione, with Ron and the DuMont family's help, she accepted her new home as though she had always lived there.

A year and six months after moving, she had given birth to their daughter Leslie, who as she grew older looked like a feminine version of her father, but had her mother's brains. She was now a month into the first grade, and was already excelling in Muggle elementary school, bringing in spelling tests with shiny gold stickers on them. Ron and Hermione were debating on whether they were going to send her to Muggle school or wizarding school when she turned eleven. That was still a long way away, though, and they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

There was a picture of the three of them next to his clock, and he picked it up and looked at the three smiling faces. This had been taken at the zoo, and Ron was handing his then three-year-old daughter her ice cream cone. As much as he loved the sight of the happy family, Ron sometimes wondered what would happen if three became four.

They had made attempts, several of them, over the last few years to find the child Hermione had given up due to his departure, and in those years, they had thus far been unlucky. It was unlikely now that they would ever find him/her, wherever they were. Ron just hoped that wherever they were, they were happy, and that the parents were treating them the way he and Hermione would have treated them.

"Ron?"

Hermione came out of the bathroom, towel drying off her wet hair, dressed now in a T-shirt and jeans to go out in. He turned back to her, the smile back on his face.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," he responded, placing the picture back on the table. "Just thinking of things."

"Daddy,"Leslie came back into the room, also dressed to out, wearing the pink fall coat that her mother had bought for her. "I'm hungry."

"Let's make some pancakes, Leslie," said Hermione, taking her daughter's hand and leading her out while the girl squealed in delight.

Ron stared after them with a serene expression. Over the last eight years, everything had worked out perfectly. There had been some apprehension, first with the move and then with the pregnancy, but it had worked out, mainly with Skip and Kristina's help. The two had not had any more children, but with two growing girls and a growing boy, that was alright by them. Skip, as predicted, had bounced back from his wounds and now, with Ron, they were running the entire Auror division in Manhattan. Ron was in the top desk; Skip was right under him.

He stood up and put his clothes on, planning out the day. After breakfast, he would take his family to the park and let Leslie run around the jungle gym and play in the leaves. Later, they would head to Skip's house for a dinner big enough for the eight of them. Then they would return home, Leslie close to passing out, and maybe they would watch a movie together.

A classic family life. What he had always wanted.

"Ron, hurry up."

"I'm coming," he called to his wife.

He stood in the doorway, looked over at his bed, then smiled and closed the door behind him.

He had not had a nightmare in eight years.

His life was now the one he had hoped for when they had graduated high school, with Hermione, with their daughter.

And he would not have it any other way.

The End

And that's Crawling Under the Surface, ladies and gentlemen! Three years to the day of starting this story and now it's finally finished!

Thank you all so much for sticking with the story to the very end. I know it's been a year and a half longer than it should have been, and that's my fault due to the hiatus I took and all that, but I'm happy to say that you all made this story worthwhile for me. I see the hits go up every day, the new story favorites and alerts, and I read each and every review that comes in, and the amount of people that this story has drawn in is amazing to me, and it's all thanks to you.

I started this story three years ago, during a time where things weren't exactly going well for me and I needed a thoroughly depressing story to try and channel myself through. And now three years later...well, life could be better, but it could definitely be a lot worse, so I guess I can say I'm in a better place than before.

During the last three years, I've undergone a huge development in how I write, and I tried to make that apparent from Chapter 17 until the end. This turned into a very important story for me, and I'm happy that it came out so well, though I'll admit, there are a couple things I wish I could go back and change now. Oh well, I think everything turned out for the best.

Now, normally, I save this spot at the end of the story to thank the reviewers and anyone else that has supported the story. This time around, however, I don't think I can get them all, because there were just so many of you. So I'm going to thank as many of you as I can, and if I miss any of you, I just want to let you know, it's not you, it's me.

With that said, thank yous to the following people:

Reader of Cannon FF

SpiderQueenSkylar

MissAmanda

Avanell

L-Ae-D

SilentDre

Vogon Jelts

iheartdrummers

Wanderer27

juanli

flash wonder cat

charma10

ako

MizBookieWormie

Tara22

Owl of the Night

LitaFanForLife

smore4u1

Heather

wasu

Mione-Girl.x

wow60

Aslaug Vanessa

TheDivaDivine

rhmac12/Kristen

Chocolatelover68 (formerly Dobbylover68)

cursingjarvey

And last, but most certainly not least, thanks to the woman whose psychologically fucked-up and wonderfully written stories served as the inspiration to this story:

Salemsoriginal99

But I assume the big question right now- and I haven't gotten any reviews asking this, so I don't know if people are really questioning it, but I figure I'd just get it out of the way before people DO ask- is:

Will there be a sequel?

And my answer to that for the moment, until I say otherwise, is:

Maybe.

But not for a while.

So until that day comes, I'm going to have these characters take it easy.

Finally, I want to talk to you guys about my next Harry Potter Fanfiction project.

It's not a Ron-Hermione story. In fact, with the exception of a possible cameo from one of the book characters, it's not going to have any of them in it, and it's not even going to take place in England.

No, this story is going to be a Muggle OC story. It's definitely going to be more of a character driven story, and I'll say it now, it's going to be very long and have a lot of characters in it. And I don't want to give too much of it away, because I want people not knowing what to expect going in, but I do want to let you all know right now:

This story is going to be different. A lot different. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm attempting something that's never been done before in the Harry Potter universe. Or maybe it has, and I just never saw it, but maybe it hasn't been done to the extent that I plan on taking it. This is probably going to be the biggest thing I ever attempt to do for this website, and given the projects I've attempted over these last three almost four years, that's saying a lot.

With that said, I just beg that readers go into this with an open mind. People tend to distrust things that are new or different, and this story will either be a huge hit or a resounding failure. I will say, though, that I would not attempt to do this if I was not one hundred percent sure I could pull it off. I am sure of that, hence why I am going to do it.

The acting title that I'll post it up as will be "We Stand Alone Together." Corny, I know, but there you have it. I say acting title, though that may very well be the actual title overall. "Crawling Under the Surface" wasn't supposed to be the real title of this story, but I never came up with anything better, so it stayed as that. Anyway, it'll come out as a rated T story, though that may change to M as we go along. Experience has shown me that I am definitely more of a mature writer than I gave myself credit for, so we'll just have to see.

In fact, you know what, any Harry Potter story I do from now on, just assume it'll be a Rated M story. Unless it's a one-shot.

Anyway, expect it out sometime within the next month or so.

With that said, leave any final reviews you have, favorite the story, and make sure you put me on Author Alert so you can always know what's going on.

And until next time, I'm Wesker888, and I'm just another freak in the freak kingdom.

I'll see you all soon.

Thanks again.