Chapter One:

Laying Down Roots.


Hemlock Potter

Lisbon, Portugal

February 2014

The floo call came at three am, the witching hour. Too late to be a catch-up call, too early for business, and definitely falling between the times of mild annoyance and downright panic. Hemlock Potter answered it in her Pyjamas. The voice and face that came crackling through the fire was someone unknown.

Hemlock knew who had sent them, however.

McGonagall.

She still had some friends left.

"This is Maria Whetspickle from the Auror department of the Ministry of Magic. Is this Hemlock Potter I am speaking to?"

Sitting down on the hearth stones, Hemlock nodded, a stone sinking deep in her gut. What was it now? Another Death Cult intent on kidnapping her so she could play deity for them? A zealot that had got it into their heads that if they miraculously managed to kill her then somehow all death in the world would stop? How about another rendition of necromancers frothing at the mouth for her particular... Gifts?

Hemlock Potter had been there, she'd done that, and she was bloody tired.

Hadn't leaving England been enough? Hadn't spending years on the run been satisfactory? Hadn't moving from city to city every five weeks been sufficient?

When would it stop?

Never. The little voice in the back of her head whispered.

This will never stop.

"We've had a few reports of vampire activity coming in from our cousins in Lisbon. Our mutual friend, Headmistress McGonagall, wanted me to give you a heads' up."

Vampires?

Why was the MoM floo'ing her about vampires?

Then again, did she really need to ask? What could undead beings possibly want from the Master of Death? A girl who, not so long ago, had a nightmare and accidently reanimated an entire graveyard in Godric's Hollow. The girl who couldn't be killed, not by spell, dagger, drowning, or that one time, a buzz saw. The girl who, coincidently, pulled the Grim Reapers strings.

Yeah, that math wasn't so hard to follow.

It was why she was running to begin with.

It's why she would always be running.

"You think this has something to do with me?"

The voice in the fire crackled and spat log cinders.

"Vampires are classified as a category S, and with all dangerous species, we like to keep track of their involvement with our kind. Apparently, one of Lisbon's citizens was cornered by a vampire, an old one by what she could tell before she apparated out of there. They didn't attack the witch, but they did ask if they knew anyone with a… Well, a lightning bolt shaped scar. Of course, this raised some red flags in our department when the report came across the pond."

No.

Not again.

Please-

It was fine.

Hemlock was fine.

Fenrir didn't get her, neither had Dolohov or Lestrange when they had eventually tracked her down in Paris, or the necromancers and the dooms day cult.

The only thing anyone who came after Hemlock Potter found was a two-by-two foot headstone.

"Do you think they have Death Eater sympathies?"

It had been so long since the war.

So very long.

Couldn't she just… Rest?

For a little while, at least.

Apparently not.

"Unknown. The witch got out while she still could. We thought it best to revise you of this, however, in case you needed to relocate again."

Hemlock nodded.

There really wasn't much to say.

Vampires.

Brilliant.

If she weren't being hounded by revenge driven Death Eaters, fighting wars she had not started, bogged down by fanatics wishing to exalt or sacrifice her, crushed under the weight of holding a title she didn't want, she was being haunted by dreams she couldn't understand, bizarre dreams filled with blood and oaths and a small boy running through the woods, scared, so scared, being chased by wolves and-

Hemlock Potter was tired.

"Cheers. I'll keep an eye out. I'll be packed by morning. I'll be safe."

Hemlock wished she really believed that.

She wasn't safe anywhere.

She never had been.

The floo cut off without a goodbye. Hemlock stood, knees blistered pink from the cold stone, and made her way to her living room window, glancing out to the stars above.

She liked to imagine the Sirius star was grinning down at her.

"No rest for the wicked, aye?"

The sky didn't answer back. Neither did the stars or moon. She did pretend she heard Sirius's gruff laughter though.

Not for you, dear girl. Rest is for the dead, and you don't get to have that. You never get to have that.

No... No she didn't.


Hemlock Potter

New Orleans

April 2016

"You think you're mister bigshot, huh?"

Standing barefoot in her kitchen, Hemlock Potter glowered down at the beast before her.

"Hopping from this place to the next, breaking out of any cage you're put in, demolishing anything in your way…"

Pulling up her hand, she brandished the half-chewed slipper.

"But did you really have to eat my last pair, Abra? That's four this month."

Of course, the bunny did not answer her, it's little pink nose twitching, a thread of cotton still dangling from his puffy cheek. Sighing, Hemlock hunkered down on her haunches and plucked the rabbit up from its nest of tattered slipper slivers by the cooker.

"Stop nibbling my fingers. Foods coming, you greedy shite."

She had gotten the bunny two months ago, when, after coming home late one evening on the back of Sirius's bike, a bike she would always think of as Sirius's, she had seen a box left on the side of the road too close in not to be hit by a passing truck.

The rabbit had been inside, dry water bowl and no food left.

Poor sod was barely fur and bones.

She could... Feel the death seeping out its skin.

She took it home, fed it, bathed it... Fixed it in the way only Hemlock could, and named him Abra, thinking herself funny.

A witch with a white rabbit…

All she needed was a top hat.

Pulling out some fresh salad from the fridge, Abra often ate better than she did, it wasn't like she could starve to death or die of vitamin deficiency at the end of the day, Hemlock scratched the top of the rabbit's head with a leather gloved hand before placing him back into the large hutch in the kitchen corner and setting to making both of them breakfast.

The truth was…

Well, the truth was uncomfortable.

Hemlock Potter knew all too well what it was like to be shoved into a box and forgotten.

She knew all too well what it was like to go hungry.

She knew all too well how lonely-

She was doing fine.

She was twenty-three now, old enough to realize exactly what she had gone through with a depressing clarity age granted oneself, childhood abuse, neglect, and indoctrination as a child soldier fighting a war those before them had made nuclear, yet, funny enough, not quite old enough to have worked through her mile-long list of traumas.

And that wasn't taking into account her suddenly very death-y abilities.

She was getting there.

Slowly… But trying.

Obviously, Hermione would say Hemlock was not dealing with it at all. Hermione would say, with a textbook in her hands and a know-it-all glint in her eye, that she was merely running from it after babbling out the symptoms of PTSD and self-banishment by sizable fear of loss.

And Hemlock would reply with a proud no accidentally resurrecting bone corpses or putrid carcasses for sixty-two days sign. If truth be told, there had been no capturing, sacrificing, and, as luck would have it, no touching someone and sucking out their life-force until they were a desiccated mummy incidents in months.

Wearing gloves and covering most of her skin stopped the latter from happening, she had found. And, she had found too, having imaginary conversations with her old friends helped ease the loneliness and fear that this was all there ever was going to be.

Hemlock just… Needed to breathe.

She needed to be able to look at any given place, and not have a flashback of a body hitting cobblestone. She needed to be able to sleep without hearing Tom Riddle's laughter, high and shrill and cold, in her ear. She needed to be able to rest through the night and not wake up in sweats, silently sobbing, reaching for Sirius, or Dobby, or Remus, or Hedwig, or Fred. She needed not to duck, frantic, wide-eyed, when there was a flash of green on the telly and she saw Cedric's blank dead face once more. She needed to be able to have a shower and not feel Inferi hands dragging her under and-

She needed-

She needed time, and, crucially, to get her powers under thumb before she hurt someone she loved.

As the Master of Death, she had spades of time now.

Too much, Hemlock would say.

So many years. Forever, the Healers thought. And what would Hemlock do in a century? In five? When she had to bury Hermione and Ron, or their children, and theirs, and theirs, or she found someone and settled down only to bury them too one day, or be mistaken for their niece or daughter when they inevitably aged and she did not, and on and on and on-

Alright.

Maybe she was running from some things. Things that were hard to swallow, like watching your friends age, and there she was, beside them, not a single damned thing different since she was sixteen and died the first time of many times.

There wasn't an instruction manual that came with uniting the Deathly Hollows and taking up the title of Master. Hemlock wished there was, otherwise she wouldn't be making such a horrendous muddle of things.

But she was trying.

That was what was important, wasn't it?

Hermione and the Weasleys understood in the end. She floo called them, and Andromeda and Teddy, every two weeks. Sometimes they sent each other owls. Rarely, Patronus's.

She had not visited England since she had left a year after the war. Hemlock wasn't ready for that yet.

Maybe one day.

If they ever let her back by the way she had left and-

In the meanwhile, she was doing fine. Not good, heavens no, but fine, and that, sir, was a step in the right direction. She had a home she had bought with the money Sirius had left her, a nice quant place down in the Garden District of New Orleans, pricey but quieter than the French Quarter the muggle estate agent had promised her. She had Abra, an ungodly shit most days, but her ungodly shit. She even had her own business.

Chew on that lemon, Petunia.

A little florist shop in the French Quarter called Pushing Up Daisies. If an immortal were going to open up a flower shop, however temporary it would be, how could they name it anything else?

And it was doing well.

Very well, in fact.

Hemlock had not been living off her inheritance for nearly four months since she had opened the shop.

More importantly, Hemlock liked it. When she was having bad days, and she had quite a few of those, the ones where she couldn't sleep, when she panicked and felt like she couldn't breathe, when she thought she saw one of those strange men she dreamt of, or the man with the white stake in his hand, hunting her in the mirror-

Pain wasn't pretty, and trauma doesn't miraculously disappear once the one who caused it was gone.

Trauma lingers.

Trauma stains.

Still, Hemlock makes do.

She was immortal now. There really wasn't any other option but to jumble on and hope for the best.

She was her own boss. She decided when she went into town, to her shop, and when she stayed home. On the plus side, no one touched a florist. No handshakes, no idle brushes of arms, no accidental finger tip skimming as you passed the paperwork, and definitely no mummified horror shows ending up at her feet. That was... Good, wasn't it? She could take it a day at a time here in Louisiana, and, like flowers, that's all anyone needed to grow.

She enjoyed gardening too. Hemlock had since she was a little girl, when Petunia would drag her out her closet by the skin of her neck and throw her out, along with a tray of new blooms and a trowel, and told her to get to work or she wasn't eating for the next two days. The rain had been horrible, soaking through her threadbare hand-me-downs, but the flowers had been nice, soft in her hands, gentle in a way a seven-year-old Hemlock had not known things could be gentle.

Would never get to know now that her touch caused death.

Or some quasi-resurrection into a mindless, ravenous corpse-creature if you had already popped your clogs.

The earth laughs in flowers Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote. Hemlock would agree. A smiling wife holding a bouquet, a mother reading a get well soon card as she sniffed the lilies, a nervous man asking for two dozen roses for his date… Flowers brought happiness.

That's what Hemlock deals in. Not buds and blooms, or ferns and arrangements, or garlands and wreaths. Hemlock deals in happiness.

She didn't think there was a lot of that left in the world, so…

So she would make some for everyone who would come pattering through her doors, and perhaps, maybe, if she really was a lucky girl, she would find some for herself along the way too.

"There you go, buddy."

In his hutch, Abra hopped for the bowl of chopped salad and mineral powders the local pet store swore were the best around.

Sipping her own cup of tea, Hemlock checked her watch.

6 am.

Time for work.

She'd be back before sunset.

Though there had been no sign of a vampire stalking her shadow in the last few years, it was better safe than sorry. Hemlock may not be able to die but she could still feel pain, and there were worse things in life other than death.

Dear ol' Tom had taught her that.

Downing the rest of her drink, she left the cup in the sink, braced her hands on the ledge, and nodded indomitably.

"Today is going to be a good day."

Possibly, if she said it enough one day it would be true.

When Hemlock left her house, she locked her doors but she did not lock Abra's hutch. He'd wreck another pair of shoes, or perhaps a table leg, or the book she was reading. He'd tear magazines to tatters, and dish towels to shreds, and re-hem her jeans.

She'd fix it with a spell or two.

She knows what it's like to be locked in a box and forgotten. Sometimes, she could still smell the mould from her under stairs cupboard. At times, she still feels as if she was running through that maze, trapped. Now and then, she can still feel the stone statue pinning her down as Pettigrew grinned in the graveyard.

Yeah, she knows.

She won't do that to Abra, or anyone, or anything, and like hell would she let anyone else do it to her again.

It was a good day.

It was also the first day she accidentally brought someone back from the dead in perfect form.


Hemlock Potter

New Orleans

April 2016

She's dreaming again. Hemlock knows she is. Strange dreams. Dreams that don't make sense. Dreams that feel oddly surreal and real simultaneously. This one she knew intimately, a dream she had been having since she could remember having dreams.

The boy in the woods.

The boy in the woods, bleeding, screaming for help.

She cannot understand him. He weeps in a language that is lost to her, old and jilting and somehow soft like a melody. She does understand desperation, though. She had screamed just as this boy had when Cedric dropped, and Sirius fell through the Veil, and Dobby had died in her arms.

The wolves are closing in and the wind howls with them.

The boy tries to move, he tries to run.

He won't make it.

He never does.

How many times had she had this dream before?

Countless.

And Hemlock will be there to see him torn to shreds. She can smell copper in the air, tangy and metallic, feel it sting her nostrils. She can hear the pounding of paws, feel the earth shake with them, feel the wind blow through her hair and bring another toxic breath of bittersweet air.

There it is.

There the boy falls over a log.

It won't be long now and-

Her foot lurches forward. She pauses. That... She can move? She can move.

She doesn't have time to think about it, not really, as she darts forward, through the spindly branches and prickly underbrush, closer to the bleeding boy, arm outstretched, leather gloved fingers splayed open, stretching.

"Take my hand!"

She reaches for the boy as she had reached for Sirius.

She had failed that day.

Failed Remus too not long after.

And Fred.

Not this time, she promises herself.

For once, just once, she was going to be fast enough.

The boy sees her by the barren tree.

He has never done that before either.

He sees her and he reaches, and what kind of monster would she be if she didn't take his hand and-

and she does. She takes the hand, small in her own, a child, just as she had been when Voldemort had chased her through the woods much like these, and then there was a burst of hot, blinding light.

When Hemlock jolts awake, she's sitting at her reception desk in her florist shop, half eaten ham sandwich picked apart before her. The phone was ringing loudly. The door was locked for lunch. Not a flower petal out of place.

Apart from the boy on the floor beside her chair, hair long and damp, clothes sodden with blood, his blood, blinking up at her with dark eyes, his hand still clasped in her own.

"Hvar er ég?"

Oh-

Oh no.


Hemlock Potter

New Orleans

October 2016

The no incidents sign goes plummeting back to zero days.

It was... Rocky, in the beginning. Hemlock had already spent too long in New Orleans. If people were looking for her, and people were always looking for her for not so pleasant reasons, then it wouldn't be long before they found her if she didn't move.

And yet... There's the boy.

The boy who didn't speak her language, and she his, the one she had healed from his wolf wounds, who was confused over everything, how showers worked and how to put the heating on, and he couldn't even use a tin opener, didn't know what a tin was at all.

He'd die if she left him behind.

Or something worse would befall him.

And if she floo'd the Ministry, told them what she had done...

No.

They had let her leave once, and that was on the condition that Hemlock never, ever, came back.

No one wanted a person who could resurrected Tom Riddle on their shores, or kill their citizens with a snap of the fingers, or empty their graveyards for a snapping, salivating army within minutes.

She's dangerous.

She knows that too.

It was hard. Hemlock doesn't know what to do, what she had actually done, how she had done it to begin with, and she doesn't know how to fix it, whether it was really right to fix it at all now that he was here, alive, breathing and-

He was so young.

Eleven, she would later find out.

A child.

A lost, scared child.

Just like her, once upon a time.

And it was decided.

Just like that.

She would be for him what no one was ever for her. Someone to protect him. Hemlock had brought him here, into this world, in a way, and she would damn well make sure no one would take him out of it.

They use an Icelandic to English Dictionary in the beginning, the closest thing to whatever language he talked. There were mistakes, obviously, in those tender new weeks, awkward ones and funny ones, and soon, as the months drew on, they begin forming... Well, a little family. She teaches him how to ride a bike, as Vernon never taught her, and she shows him how the shower works, and how to cook food in the oven, and-

And Hemlock was happy.

The happiest she had been in years.

She tells herself she didn't forget to move on. She tells herself she needed to stay. The boy was enrolled in school now, and in the parent magazine she had read idly at the store while waiting for cashier to come back from break, it said moving too much could be detrimental to the development of relationships and-

And before she knew it, months had passed, seasons had changed, and a whole year had gone on by.

But what a beautiful year it had been... Before everything went to hell in a hand basket.


Hemlock Potter

June 2017

New Orleans in June was like a lover's sigh. The air was humid, sultry, secretive, and clung to one's flesh like warm kisses. Honeysuckle, silver bells, and the silt of the rivers perfumed every breath. It was refreshing and repressive, soft and violent at the same time.

It changed when you arrived in the French Quarter, away from the swamps and backroads and alligators.

Here, the air had a hint of steel animosity, fumes expelled by tourist buses rising in the air, black smoke from stalling trucks delivering Dixie beer, and the indescribable aroma of concrete. Some mornings Hemlock could still smell the whiff of piss and vomit hot and heady as the straggling drunks lumbered home after a night out on the town.

The French Quarter, pretty on the surface, a little bit rotten just below.

The perfect place for someone like Hemlock Potter to sell flowers.

On her way to Pushing Up Daisies down in the French Quarter, Hemlock passes a very large house. The Abattoir, the locals call it, also known as the compound.

Five weeks ago, the for-sale sign had gone up, and so had Hemlock's hackles. Four weeks ago, it had SOLD in big bold red letters printed over it. Three and a half weeks ago, the moving vans and renovation lorries carrying builders had blocked up the entire street and made her twenty minutes late every Circe damned day they had been there.

Pushing Up Daisies was only two storefronts across from the house.

Now the road was empty.

Now the sign was gone completely.

Now, by the red velvet drapes hanging in the remodelled windows, people were actually living inside.

And it was the sight of the windows that eased the trepidation Hemlock felt since she had first seen the moving vans and builders pull up to the house. They had been renovated but not boarded up. That was a good sign.

Boarded up windows meant the ones inside wanted darkness.

Generally, wanting darkness meant a tendency of dying from a suntan.

Vampires.

There wasn't just herself to worry about anymore.

No, Hemlock told herself. There were no vampires in that house, and definitely not the vampires looking for her, whatever reason they had to do so. She was safe. The boy was safe. It was only muggles.

And Hemlock already disliked them.

Who needed such a ostentatious house?

People who's shoe doesn't match their boxer size, that's who.

Not only had they made Hemlock late continually for the last month in summer, arguably the busiest time of year for a florist, when she had funerals, weddings, and bar mitzvahs to prepare arrangements for, the builders and designers had worked day and night, drilling, hammering, sawing, and running away her customers.

One fucker had even reversed his truck too far back and rammed a timber beam through her shop window. It had taken her three days to fix it, and not a single apology.

What if someone had been standing by the window? What if Henr-

Bastards.

Parking Sirius's bike across the road, down and out the way from her shop and pedestrians, Hemlock gazed across the street. No one was around, too early for the French Quarter where the parties didn't stop until the people themselves dropped… With a flick of her gloved fingers, a spark of magic, pale lilac, zapped across the street and hit home on the entrance step of the Abattoir.

Not a terrible hex. Only a little curse to make the entry slippery.

Served 'em right.

Smiling to herself, and her harmless little tomfoolery, Hemlock slipped from Sirius's bike and made her way to work.

"Mischief managed."

"You're not causing trouble again, are you? Mrs Goodworth still hasn't gotten the pink out her hair."

Glancing to the boy already waiting for her at the shop door by his chained up bicycle, Hemlock grinned.

"Only a little."

The boy smiled, large and bright and toothy, as she unlocked the door.

"And what are you doing up so early? I left you sleeping in bed. Did Abra break into your room again?"

The boy shrugged.

"No, but he did eat my sheet music. I thought I would come and help out at the shop today."

Hemlock wasn't buying it.

The boy was in his early tweens. They didn't do early or helping.

"Have you done your homework?"

"Yes mom."

Cracking open the door, the bell above jingling, she ruffled the kid's hair.

He still kept it long.

He ducked out from under her grasp but laughed all the same.

"Less of the cheek. School's important. You don't want to end up like me, do you? Twenty-four and a drop out."

The boy made his way to the front desk where she kept her appointment book, idly flicking through her chicken scratch notes.

"Also an incredibly powerful being who saved me. I can think of worse things to grow up to be."

Saved him? No.

But maybe they had saved each other.

A deathless witch, a dreadful bunny, and a dream-plucked boy.

"Yeah, yeah, prince charming. I'm still not letting you go to Jessica's sleepover. I know what happens at those kinds of things."

The boy huffed, the jig up.

"Come on! Please?"

Hemlock crossed her arms.

"Fine… But only if you water one of the greenhouses by lunch."

The boy lit up like a Christmas tree, dashing for the door for the greenhouses out back. Hemlock had to shout at his swiftly retreating form.

"And no drinking, Henrik! I'll turn your hair pink if I find out you've had one single beer!"

Laughter echoed out the doorway.


Elijah Mikaelson

June 2017

For the sixth time that morning, Elijah Mikaelson hung up the phone. Klaus, journal open in his lap, boots kicked up on the mahogany table, pencil in hand, hummed long and hard.

"Another dead end?"

Bracing his hand upon the mantel of the fireplace and leaning heavy on the wood, Elijah sighed.

"It has proven… Difficult to find a wand-wielder willing to talk."

Klaus slapped the journal shut, cocking a high brow.

"I told you we shouldn't have let that one in Lisbon walk. I could have got him to talk… Eventually."

Huffing, Elijah whirled on his brother.

"Yes, Niklaus. Let us torture our way through the sparse few wand-wielders we can find to begin with, to hunt down a Soul-Bonded that clearly does not wish to be found by anyone, and not expect to have any severe repercussions of such actions. Brilliant idea, dear brother. Why did I not think about that seven years ago?"

At his prickly tone, Klaus simply rolled his eyes and twirled his pencil through his deft fingers faster.

Klaus could not fool him.

Elijah's brother was just as on edge as the rest of them.

The truth of the matter was, in seven years of searching, they had as much information as they had the day they had all dropped down dead.

Which was to say not very much at all.

Wand-wielders were a generally isolationist, secretive species. They did not… Play well with others. Werewolves, vampires, wiccans… Neither group had a very conductive relationship.

Wand-wielders typically saw themselves above werewolves and vampires, wiccans distrusted wand-wielders for being unrestrained by ancestral magics, outside rules and limitations, werewolves typically did not have confidence in any one not a werewolf, or part of their pack, and vampires-

Well, vampires ate most wand-wielders they could find.

That was the difference between wiccans and wielders. A wiccans magic was outside oneself, in the earth and sky and air, concentrated on keeping the Balance. They had to call on those powers, and could be, sometimes, rejected. A wielders magic was inside themselves, was themselves, beings born of magic, so far less concerned with anything remotely balanced.

It made them quite… Delicious.

Delicious and dangerous.

As an original vampire, as soon as a wielder, any they could find, crossed paths with them they ran.

The very few willing to talk, often after a little while under Kol's charm, clammed right up after being asked if they knew a wielder with a lightning bolt scar.

One, however, had let slip, before they had vanished-

Apparating, the wielders called it. Possibly why it was so hard to track one down and keep one in sight.

"I'm not telling you were she is. Let her fucking rest. She's earned that much at least."

And then they were gone with a deafening crack.

Concerning on multiple levels, Elijah had thought.

For one, as an original vampire, Elijah was primarily used to getting what he asked for when he asked for it. For the wielder to weigh the odds of either angering an original currently standing before them, someone with an unpredictable and vicious reputation as Kol, or staying silent on this mysterious she, to have the she chosen above the original meant…

Well, it meant she was either incredibly feared or respected.

Or both.

Neither option would help in tracking her down when it kept mouths firmly shut.

Secondly, let her fucking rest, was troubling in and of itself. Coupled with the Marks they had… It did not paint a very pleasant picture. A Soul-Bond Mark could come in many shapes and sizes. Touch, taste, smell, dreams, scars.

The form the Marks took, the bond between souls, meant as much as their happenstance. To have scars shared meant… Meant she, whoever she was, had been under a lot of pain.

Pain one soul could not handle, and so the dregs of it filtered through the bond.

And by the scars they had, dark magics, marks of torture, that had been extreme pain and-

What had not come through the bond? What had she bore by herself? What was she getting in return?

The Bond was a two-way street.

Had she felt the dagger? Had she tasted copper every time they fed?

There were too many unanswered questions, and Elijah Mikaelson never did very well with question marks hanging above his head.

If only they could find someone, anyone, willing to talk and-

"As illuminating as watching you pace for the hundredth time has been, brother, I'll have to decline watching again."

Exhaling long and low, Klaus stood.

"I'm heading out. Don't worry, I won't make too much of a mess."

Coming here, to New Orleans, had been a mistake. It held too many ghosts for the family.

Too many old hurts.

And yet, they could not continue dashing about the place, from city to city, country to country, searching for a scar.

They needed a base.

They needed a home.

Klaus would not be convinced of that being anywhere but New Orleans. Elijah supposed New Orleans being built upon the meeting point of seven Lay Lines, hot spots for wielders, had aided in convincing the other siblings of joining Klaus there.

If they were going to find a wielder out in the open, unguarded, New Orleans was their best bet.

Their only advantage currently was the wielders lack of vampiric knowledge, not many of them seemingly knowing that vampires such as he, those with spelled rings, could walk in daylight.

It gave them a head start if the wielder wasn't expecting a lunchtime visit.

"Keep an ear pricked, Niklaus, and not just for Marcel. There has to be a wielder somewhere here. All we need is one, and this time you can try getting them to talk."

Opening the front door to their new home, Klaus spun on his booted heel, threw his arms out wide, and backed out.

"There won't be a secret in this city that I won't know by-"

And Klaus promptly went skidding backwards, foot slipping on the entrance step, flailing as he sailed, crashed, and rolled, limp on the sidewalk.

Elijah blinked, as laughter, loud and boisterous, came from the grand stairs as Kol, who had been coming down, caught sight of Klaus's blunder.

"Forgotten how to walk, Nik?"

Lifting his head from the concrete, Klaus glared.

"The entrance is… Slippy."

Kol came to a pottering stop at the bottom of the stairs, still chuckling.

"Sure it is, and I'm saint-"

Elijah marched forward, towards the door, to the entrance, and bent down over the stone.

He ran a hand over the slate.

Smooth like glass.

And-

And there.

A shimmer, barely there, scarcely quantifiable, unseen by most eyes not hewn with supernatural gifts, unfelt by most hands who did not have witches' blood already in the veins.

The vampiric curse may have stripped them of their own magics, but it could not dull the inherent sense those born with it held.

Elijah pulled his hand back, palm warm and buzzing, bowed and faced a Klaus struggling to a stand.

"The stone is hexed."

Klaus froze, and Elijah smiled.

"It seems a local wielder has already found us."


Next Chapter: New Orleans does, in fact, hold ghosts for the Mikaelson family, just not the ghost they were expecting to run into...


A.N: So I did get a bite! I'm so happy you guys liked this and wanted to see it continue. I'm having fun with it, and I hope you guys are too. I also wanted to publish this chapter pretty soon after the little taster of the last one as it adds some context and a tiny bit of back story for Hemlock before we start moving into the meat and potatoes. Don't worry too much, I know a lot of people have some questions about how the Soul Bond works in this fic, and will have questions about what exactly happened between the years of the Wizarding War and now for Hemlock, but all that will be unravelled slowly through the fic. I have some juicy, juicy stuff planned, and I'm sort of excited.

I also knew, if I were to continue this fic if there was interest, that I would have Henrik Mikaelson in it, alive and happy. That kid deserved better, and this is a hill I will die on. I will also say quickly, as some readers have asked, there will be no Haley in this fic. I'm just not a huge fan of her character in general, like Elena or Katherine, and... shrug. As for the altered timeline of Harry Potter, I moved it all along a couple of years just to fit better with the Originals timeline going on.

And on that note I will bid you adieu! Thank you so much for the follows, favourites, and all the bloody lovely reviews! I sincerely hoped this brightened up your Saturday evening, even just a little bit, and as always, if you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a few words in the review box! The muses are thirsty for validation lol.