One:
The Pale Pine Coffin
"Bad dream, Henryka?"
"The wolves got me again. The ones out in the woods."
"Ah. You do look very tasty. Just the right size for a snack, I think."
"Don't be mean, Nik."
A ruffling of furs and blankets, the offer of a warm bed and a safe hold from the storm raging outside the hut and in the mind of a small child awoken from a long plaguing nightmare.
"Come now, no tears. The wolves aren't going to get you while I'm here. I promise."
It's Nik's greatest lie.
I
"All right, Klaus has six siblings. Rebekah is now with Klaus. There was one dead kid in the old world, one dead kid in the new world, which leaves Elijah and two others, three sleeping Originals, four coffins. So… who is in the locked box?"
Helplessly Stefan shrugged at Damon Salvatore's question. He'd only caught a glimpse of it, the last coffin, the pale, pine casket sitting in the dark while he'd been forced to follow Niklaus Mikaelson's, often bloody, escapades around Chicago. It's much the same as it was there the first time Stefan saw it as it was here now, sitting almost innocuously before the Salvatore brothers at the old Bennett house. Smaller than the rest, thinner too, it had no engraved name, no gilt decoration, just pale wood and a curse keeping it shut, keeping it hidden, keeping it waiting.
A curse that had kept it concealed from even Niklaus himself. How exactly that worked was beyond Stefan's rather limited understanding of magic, but even Bonnie seemed a bit perplexed that the Hybrid could have been carting around a coffin for centuries he didn't know existed. Particularly such a paranoid immortal as Niklaus tended to be.
A compulsion spell was the cause most likely; Bonnie had explained. Perhaps mixed with a concealment charm, one that left a nice little blind spot in Klaus's sight when he ordered his underlings to 'Move the coffins' to wherever he ran to (apparently he kept all his coffins close at hand should a sibling need a long slumber), which meant he never personally counted them himself, never interacted more than shoving a brother or sister inside one and turning his back on the lot for the next century.
The fact remains, however.
Klaus had a coffin he didn't know existed.
Klaus had a coffin locked down and secreting something inside.
Klaus had a coffin… and now the Salvatore's do.
"No idea. But whatever is in here Bonnie seems to think it will help us kill Klaus. Why else would someone go to such efforts to keep it close to the Hybrid and yet hide it from him? So, the sooner she can get this open, the sooner we will know if she's right."
The wind whistles in the old Bennett house, the pine coffin rests on silently, and Damon raises his face to the mould speckled ceiling.
"Oh, you'd think the spirits of a bunch of dead witches that can make coffins invisible would have figured out how to open one."
The wind dies with Damon's long-suffering sigh.
"Fine, don't help."
"Henryka! Come down from that tree! You're going to fall!"
A leap of faith, a freefall in the wind, a child's laugh echoing her trust.
"Catch me, Elijah!"
He did.
He always did.
Until he didn't.
II
Henryka Potter awoke in her bed dampened with sweat with tears soaking her pillow until the cotton clung to her face, trembling like a leaf caught in a gust, struggling for a lungful of breath or anything to keep her steady. By the time she got down to the kitchens, Hermione was already up, cup of tea waiting on the counter of Grimmauld place.
"Another one?"
Clearly she hasn't cleaned up as well as she thought she had.
Henryka, Ryker to her friends, took the offered drink with a grunt, sipping, and the tea must have been straight from the kettle, burning her tongue and throat on its way down to her belly. It did very little to warm the chill in her bones, the feeling of rain on her skin, mud on her feet, the sound of baying in the night and teeth nipping at her heels.
Hermione, with the purple bruises underneath her eyes and the ashen cheeks of her face, didn't need Henryka to answer. The truth was written all over.
"When was the last time you slept without having one?"
Henryka slouched on a chair, downed the rest of her tea, and shrugged cautiously.
"Can't remember."
Hermione's fingers tightened around her own teacup, knuckles bleeding white, a sign of her worry.
"Which one was it this time?"
A beat, a break, and Henryka could still hear the growling, the scream of someone in the distance, crying, Henryka! No! Henryka!
"The wolves… The fucking wolves."
Hermione set her cup down carefully, as prudently as she tried to breach this conversation.
"You can't keep this up, Ryker. You look sick. Really sick. Maybe you should go see a Healer."
Henryka scoffed, running a tired hand down her face. Where she needed to go was somewhere warm, somewhere bright, somewhere the dreams can't reach her.
"I have. They all tell me the same thing. They're bad dreams. They give me sleeping draught and then send me on my way. It does fuck all. I visit the Healers again, and they say the same again. Rinse and repeat."
The wolves aren't the only dreams Henryka has. She's always had strange dreams. Odd snippets. Bits and fragments stitched together that make no sense come dawn. People she can't name when she's awake. Faces she only knows in her slumber. Wolves hunting her down in the rain and tearing her apart.
The worst dream is the coffin.
The bloody pine coffin.
She's locked inside it, she can't move, can't breathe, it's dark and it's cold and she's alone and she's begging for someone, anyone, names she can't remember when she's awake, to come let her out, come catch her, come keep the wolves away, and-
And she wakes up.
Henryka dreams, and Henryka wakes up. That is, after all, how dreams normally worked.
Until recently.
It hadn't always been this way, however. It wasn't so bad before.
The dreams, as all dreams do, came and went. Once or twice half a year growing up, a couple of times a month during the war when she was stressed and alone and hiding in a tent in the pitch black of a midwinter blizzard. Sometimes they bled into the daylight like ink seeps on parchment. She'd be studying in the library of Hogwarts, turn her head and say hey, Elijah, look at this, and Hermione would smile wearily and ask her who Elijah is, and Henryka wouldn't say a thing, couldn't tell her dearest friend she had no bloody clue, but the moment would pass. Colin Creevey would trip or Ron would cause a scene, and it'd be forgotten about.
Sometimes she'd see one of George or Fred's inventions and think Kol would find this hilarious. Occasionally she'd cross a painting hanging on a wall and believe Nik could do better. Every so often she'd buy an extra bag of sugar quills because Rebekah has a sweet tooth or read a book she has no interest in because Elijah would find this fascinating or buy that plant she doesn't need from the supermarket because ferns were Finn's favourite.
The thoughts are always gone before she can fully think them, hold them, taste them. Like trying to catch fog with her bare hands, they slip through her fingers.
In Henryka Potter's life, this was oddly not the strangest thing she'd ever been through.
Until the dreams came… and came… and came. Now she was lucky if she had a single night of rest without them haunting her. Hounding her. Crippling her.
The coffin.
The fucking pine coffin.
Because now… Now she swears she can feel pale wood around her, the cling of leather breeches on her thighs, the stagnant air of a tight box cloying her nose with air so stale and old it stings… And she's awake, and the feeling is still there, as if she's in two places at once simultaneously, split here and now and there and then, and she feels like she's going insane.
Dreams are meant to stop when you're awake, aren't they?
"Perhaps you should wake up."
Henryka batted her lashes, stiffened in her chair until the aching joints of her bones seized, voice dark and hard like stone.
"What?"
Hermione nervously chuckled back.
"I said perhaps you should clean up. If you won't go to the Healer again, maybe some time out in fresh air will do you good."
Clean up...Yes. Yes. That made more sense.
Awake.
Henryka was awake.
She was fine.
Then why could she still smell pine wood?
"Why does Henryka get to join you and Ayana and I don't?"
"Because, dear girl, Henryka's like us. She needs to learn to control herself."
"Don't worry, Rebekah, I'll bring you back the berries from Ayana's bush!"
"Alright… But make them the black ones. They're sweeter."
Henryka does bring back berries three days later. Big, fat juicy ones. They share them outside, sitting hip to hip with stains on fingertips and lips and they giggle in the night.
It's one of Rebekah's fondest memories.
One of Henryka's kindest dreams.
III
The clock on the wall opposite Henryka had only one hand and no numbers at all. Written around the edge were things like Time to make tea, Time to feed the chickens, and You're late. Books were stacked three deep on the mantelpiece, books with titles like Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, and One Minute Feasts — It's Magic! And unless Henryka's ears were deceiving her, the old radio next to the sink had just announced that coming up was Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorceress, Celestina Warbeck.
Molly was by the sink already, doing dishes with a flick of her wrist and wand as Henryka wondered in from outside where the Weasley litter was playing quidditch. She's too tired to play seeker today, she's running on fumes, three days of perturbed sleep.
"Need help?"
The older woman smiles kindly at her, using a scrap of clothe to dust off the counter where Ron had butchered his slice of cake.
"Could you be a darling and pass me that tin from up there?"
Molly asked with a tilt of her chin to the cupboard behind Henryka, to the red biscuit tin hanging on the shelf. She does as the woman bids, brings it down and takes it over, and Molly reaches for it-
And snatches her wrist in a firm, hard grip.
"Wake up."
Henryka laughed, perhaps because she doesn't know what else to do, because of course this is some sort of joke, perhaps a hex by George or a misplaced Wizarding Wheezes toy that the Weasley matriarch had accidently activated, or maybe she's heard wrong but Molly merely stares at her, face blank, eyes empty.
"Wake up."
There's a chill that leaps up Henryka's spine, the soft downy hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and she tries to tug her wrist free from the grip latching on.
"Okay, maybe I should-"
Molly yanks back just as hard, and in a blink she's there, right there, in her face, in her space, so close Henryka can see her own reflection in her eye-
Her own reflection sleeping in an open lidded coffin.
"Wake up!"
Henryka startled with the yell, finds she's over the kitchen, still by the cupboard, she hadn't moved at all, and the tin falls from her hands and crashes to the floor with a clank and a clatter.
Molly, startled by the noise, looks over from levitating the dried dishes back to their nests above the sink, frowning worriedly at her.
"You alright there, dear?"
Henryka stumbles back, lurches away mindlessly and hits her hip on the edge of a counter, a pain that hardly registers, and darts for the kitchen door, for the front door, for anywhere but here and the thing she'd seen in Molly's eye.
"I'm fine. I-… I need air."
Dreams are meant to stop when you're awake.
"One more story! Please, Finn!"
"Alright. One more before bed. There was once a girl who lived in a castle. Not just any castle, but a magical castle-"
"With a moat?"
"Yes, Henryka. With a moat and magical boats and all the wonder a little girl could dream of."
"Don't forget the little elves that live in the kitchens. You forgot them last time."
Finn forgets the little elves this time too.
Henryka doesn't.
She never forgets, only dreams.
Next Chapter: Henryka's world slowly starts to crumble around her as dreams and reality become harder to pick apart…
A.N: I know, I know, yet another story. But, hear me out, I haven't done one for Damon Salvatore yet… so surprise! Plus this little plot bunny has been taking up valuable space in my head and won't be evicted until I write it off.
As we're dealing with dreams and what is real and what isn't, this fic is going to start off a little wacky, but hopefully, if I've done this right, it makes more sense as we continue on.
Thanks for taking the time out to read this, hope you all enjoyed this first prelude, and if you could, do drop a review, and I will see you all soon! Until then, stay beautiful. ~AlwaysEatTheRude21