This is from Bonnie's POV, from before Elena woke up. If I get details wrong, or if I'm racially insensitive somehow, please let me know so I can fix it.

Though Enzo and I weren't biologically able to have kids, we still wanted them. I decided halfway through figuring out how we were going to, that I didn't want to get pregnant. So adoption was the obvious choice. Surrogacy just seemed too much like a repeat of history. I kept waiting for Caroline to awkwardly joke that she didn't want to be surrogate mother to another baby, even if it was mine.

It helped the adoption process a ton that Enzo was better at compulsion than Stefan ever had been. And I was grateful that Stefan wasn't there to see how happy I was with my current life, in case he tried to take it again. That sounds like I blamed him for everything bad that happened to me. I mean, most everything that did was my choice. But he'd killed Enzo. Whether I'd brought him back or not, I'd never forgive Stefan for it. Screw the humanity switch, he didn't so much as offer to help bring the love of my life back. Just flashed those sad eyes and eavesdrop on my conversations like a frickin' creeper.

But I've gotten off topic. When Enzo used his compulsion, we were able to basically look for the children that we could consider adopting and pick one out, like we were at the dog pound. That sounds callous, doesn't it? There would be a lot of paperwork involved, and we had tried before to just adopt but my record of having died a few times didn't help the process. So we stepped over those hoops and judged which child we wanted.

I myself, wanted one that looked like me. A black child, I mean. Even if the child wasn't biologically mine, having one that looked like me would help both of us. And if the child was young enough, there would be significantly less trauma to work through. Enzo mostly just wanted to help the child that had a sad back story like his. I didn't blame him for wanting this, he wanted to give back and I loved him for thinking that way. It made it easier to look through the 'applicants', so to speak. I didn't have to consult him on every child I considered. Though I still did sometimes.

After a few weeks of looking, I wanted to meet the first and hopefully only child I'd want to meet. He was three and a half and living in a group orphanage. He had no problems but was a loner. If he wanted to be with us, he would know love better than he'd ever imagined.

His name was Daniel Evers.

The meeting was brief, he was shy and mostly just wanted to color while Enzo and I talked to him which was fine. By the end of our allotted time, he gave me a picture. It was of me and Enzo. It made my heart melt, even though the person in charge of these meetings told me he drew every person who'd come to talk to him. He was extremely talented, not just a stick drawing and a smile face line. He put detail into our faces, and even picked the right shade of brown for me.

"That does it." I said on the way home. Enzo looked back at my determined face.

"You want to adopt him?" He asked with a smile. I nodded.

"Yeah."

We adopted Daniel a few months ago, and he's settling in very quickly. We got him a lot of colors, and he asked for some colored pencils and pointed at graphite ones. A three year old that knows how to sketch... That's most of his day, when we aren't taking him to school, he's eating dinner with us and we're putting him to bed with a bath and a story.

Daniel Evers-Bennett is my son. Is Enzo's and my, son. He is so smart, so kind, and a few months after we adopted him, he touched my face and called me mama. So he made his choice too.

I decided for his fifth birthday we were going to start teaching him magic. Even though he probably wasn't part of my bloodline, and even if he wasn't a witch, I wanted to try and see how it would work. He's extremely talented as an artist, so maybe he would be good at this too. One of his birthday presents was a few pages of my grams' grimoire. He was only five though, I photocopied them so he wouldn't get food smudged or color the original corners. It was the first spell I learned, the one about how to float feathers. The spell that convinced Elena that I was indeed a witch. I taught him how to pronounce the words, how to move his hands, and what to think about while doing it.

Daniel's seven now, and he showed me how he made three long feathers float in midair this morning while I was making him breakfast.

"Mama, I finally did it!" He said. I don't know how, but he did.

"Yes baby, you did," I replied in awe.

Since he knew how to do the feathers, I moved him to my second spell, getting the screech that disables vampires going. Enzo asked me not to, but I told him he needed to be able to defend himself now that we knew he could use magic. He knew I was right but he was worried Daniel would get it wrong somehow and hurt him. That, or that it would draw attention to our baby unintentionally. But I'd put a cloaking spell on him as soon as he started actually floating the feathers.

So when Daniel practiced this one, he was told to tell daddy so he could go to the backyard and continue whatever project he had going there. Unfortunately Daniel's practicing got perfect as they say, a little too fast. And Enzo had to start going for a walk around the neighborhood because Daniel's spell was enveloping the house.

When his reach started to travel three houses down, way better than I'd ever done, I told him that was good enough for right now, and daddy needed him to work on something else. My poor husband went to bed with throbbing headaches for weeks since Daniel still practiced once in a while. And he knew now that it hurt daddy, he was feeling rebellious when Enzo told him to go wash for lunch or get ready for school, and just made the screech. With Enzo curled on the floor in the fetal position, I grounded Daniel for two months the last time. No gimoire or gameboy.

Luckily every time Daniel was difficult, Enzo laughed it off and was more grateful that he was able to give Daniel a home and a father.

Daniel learned how to ignite a candle, and make the flame grow to six feet on his eighth birthday. It was then I decided I was going to work on how to bring Elena back to the land of the awake people. Daniel has heard stories about his aunt Elena and asked a few times if he was going to see her at the store, or a restaurant when we were going to have dinner with Care and the girls. On the one hand I want to tell him yes and see his beautiful face light up at seeing my best friend. On the other hand, Kai could still be right, and I could still die from even trying. Daniel would lose his mother only a few years after finally having one again. And Enzo agreed with me. He didn't hate Elena, but he didn't want to only have this person he barely knew back in his life when he'd lost his wife and his son's mother.

But Damon persuaded me. As much as he agreed with Enzo, he knew Kai could've been lying. Kai had hoped, all those years ago, that Damon would kill me in front of him and while he would get Elena back, Kai would get his twisted revenge on me.

"Although, let's not be stupid about this, Kai knew more magic than you have learned. Mostly from being stuck in that prison world with his creepy murder thoughts and nothing but time to keep learning spells."

"I know he was older than me by a decade, but he relied more on his siphoning magic than anything." I pointed out.

With that Damon and I had the same epiphany, shared a smile, and called Caroline. While she was hesitant about having the girls help, I pointed out to her that Kai wouldn't have accounted for another witch trying to siphon the spell off Elena. Especially a siphon witch related to him.

Still, with Elena in Damon's bedroom and out of her coffin, Caroline and Alaric both watched the now eleven-year-old twins put a hand each on Elena's.

Since Enzo was assured, I wasn't going to use any magic to bring back Elena, he offered to bring Daniel so the whole gang could be back to watch our Elena wake up.

But I knew something he didn't.

While Bennett's are powerful witches, no one thought a Bennett would end up with a vampire and not furthering the bloodline. No one Bennett witch knew about Daniel, and if they did, they would try to hurt him. Make me further the bloodline. I didn't really know a way of transferring my power to him, and until I did, he would be in danger. Caroline's twins knew too many witches and weren't good at keeping that kind of information to themselves. They didn't know Daniel knew magic, or that he was my son. And I wasn't going to risk it and have them feel guilty later.

I told him. While he tried to persuade me Lizzie and Josie weren't blabbermouths, I stood firm. Daniel wouldn't meet his aunt Elena this way. The girls wouldn't learn about Daniel yet.

This was the biggest secret I'd kept for years, but I knew how to. Was only a matter of time before the burden would lift, though.

And with this all on the line, I'd end up still linked to Elena where I'd become a nightowl, and wouldn't be able to take Daniel to school for another five years.