Hope spent the whole night tossing and turning in bed. Now the sun is up again and she barely slept at all. Still, she pushes the covers off of her body and gets out of bed.

She's halfway through getting dressed when she realises she doesn't actually feel like going to class. Her chat with Penelope kept replaying in her mind again and again.

Add to it her grief over her parents' death and it makes her an emotional mess.

Instead of putting on the beautiful shirt she was planning on wearing today, Hope reaches for the paint stained one she keeps for painting. It doesn't take her long to get to work, but with each minute, the frustration and sadness seem to grow.

After one too many canvas wasted, Hope throws her brush on the other side of the room. She takes a deep breath, trying to get her emotions under control as tears threatens to fall from her eyes.

Maybe binge watching episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen is a better idea for today.

She takes her laptop from her desk and walks to her bed. Hope slips under her covers and quickly look through her laptop to find new episodes of her favorite cooking show.

But just as she's clicking on an episode, there's an urgent knock on her door. Hope sighs, puts the laptop aside and walks to the door. The Mikaelson girl opens it, preparing her best glare, but then she sees the terrified student on the other side of her door.

"Hope! There's a guy attacking the school. He took MG as a hostage and he requests to see you!"

"What? Wait, who is attacking the school?" Hope asks with a frown.

"We don't know, he just said he wants to see you and that he wouldn't hurt MG if you came willingly." The students says, fear laced in his voice. "Please Hope, it's urgent."

Hope follows the girl through the halls, her paint stained shirt still on and pain still clouding her head and heart. The students are all gathered around the windows, looking outside with fear.

"Stay inside." Hope says to the girl before walking out of the school.

It doesn't take long for the Mikaelson girl to spot the man holding MG hostage in the middle of the driveway. It's pretty clear the man is a vampire, and Hope is sure the people waiting behind him are too. She takes a quick look at them, before focusing herself on the man and MG.

"You asked to see me, now let MG go." Hope growls.

The vampire smiles, and then he lets go of MG, arrogant smile still in place. MG stumbles to the side before getting behind Hope at vampire speed.

"Go back inside MG." Hope says without looking back at him.

"Bu-"

"Do as I said!"

When she's sure MG is back inside the school, Hope places all her attention on the man. She tries hard to think if she've seen him before, but nothing comes up.

"The daughter of the most evil men roaming the earth."

That feels like a stake in the heart to Hope, but she does her best to stay in control.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Hope asks, her eyes never leaving the vampire.

"My name is Salazar, and I am here to kill you and destroy this school." He says with an evil smile.

Hope rolls her eyes, not really caring about the "killing you" part because that is literally impossible, but she does worry a bit about the "destroying the school" part.

"What did I do to you?" She asks.

"You… Nothing." The man concedes, but then his eyes darken. "Your father on the other hand… He killed my son. The only family I had. Forced me to watch, and then turned me into this monster to make sure I'd suffer forever."

Hope sighs and closes her eye for a second.

"I'm sorry for your loss, really, but it doesn't have anything to do with me."

She turns around to leave, but he roughly catches her forearm and forces her to turn around.

"Not so fast." His eyes have a crazy glint to them now that Hope is closer. "It has everything to do with you. When I heard about you, I couldn't believe the day of my revenge had finally come. A child for a child." Salazar chuckles. "I could send him your heart as a souvenir."

That's when it strikes Hope, Salazar thinks Klaus is still alive. She hesitates to tell the man about her father's death. She wonders what kind of impact it would have.

"I'll even destroy this place he loves so much. Do you think he'd like to have pictures? Like a 'before vs after' kind of thing?" Salazar keeps talking and he finishes with a crazy laugh.

"Look, I'm really sorry about the horrors my father put you through, but I highly suggest you let me go before I get really angry."

"You see… Your father." The disgust in his voice while he said father wasn't lost on Hope. "He killed my family pretty much over nothing. And that was like… 700 years ago. My friends back here are about that same age, so I think we have more than enough power to deal with you getting angry."

"That's an awfully long time to hold a grudge, don't you think?" Hope says, though she can't help but sympathize with him a little bit. She also couldn't help but being a little intimidated by the fact they could be an actual threat.

"Easy enough for you to say little girl. You haven't lost the ones who meant the world to you. I did. Your dad killed my son as a punishment only because I accidentally destroyed one of his paintings."

That sends a pang of pain through Hope's body. Her father wasn't the most merciful man that lived, but that was too cruel even for him.

You have no idea of what I lost. She sadly thinks to herself.

"Your father is nothing but a monster, and I'm gonna show him what pain feels like. He's gonna have a taste of his own medicine." Salazar says, his smile even more crazy than before.

His words are like a knife going straight through her heart. And he notices as much.

"The rest of your monstrous family is no better. They burned my whole village to the ground just because they could." He walks around her, his eyes holding nothing but disgust.

"And you... The abomination... Nothing but a mistake... A monster, like every member of your family. I don't know how your mom had the guts to actually carry that freak's baby. She must be another monster to actually give birth to someone who will most likely be even worse than him"

Now Hope can't take it anymore. Her temper gets the best of her and she shoves the vampire away from her.

"Don't you dare say anything more about my family! My parents both gave their life for me. You don't get to talk about them like that. I won't hesitate to-"

Salazar interrupts her with a loud laugh. "Klaus Mikaelson is dead? Leaving an even bigger abomination as his legacy? Sounds like him." He walks closer to Hope again. "I hope he'll be watching this from hell then. Don't worry sweetie, you'll see both of the beasts that served as your parents again soon enough."

The first blow catches Hope by surprise and so Salazar's fist collides with her jaw in full force. She stumbles back, but quickly recovers. In no time, Hope is in fighting stance. When the vampire tries to hit her again, the tribrid easily catches his fist in her hand.

"A whore mother and a crazy father, what does that even make you?" He says.

His words have more effect on her than his fists, and suddenly she's loosening her hold. He gets his fist back and sends her to the ground. This time Hope feels the fall in all her body.

"Shut up." She ruffles, her voice shaking. But he pays her no attention.

"Sending you to this school… hoping you'd blend in, as if you belong. Was your father that stupid?" Salazar spits out before kicking Hope in the ribs. "I would have loved to torture you before his eyes. Make that monster watch would have been so satisfying. But I guess I'll have to settle for this."

He goes for a final blow to her heart, but Hope is fast enough to dodge it. She quickly spins on the ground and grabs his ankles, pulling on them to make him fall. Quickly, Hope gets back to her feet, soon followed by Salazar. At vampire speed, the man sends her flying in the air again. Hope quickly gets on one knee, trying to get up, but her head is facing down with her hair hiding her face.

"You know how to fight, but that won't be enough to save you. I'm going to kill you. Since I didn't have the pleasure of killing him myself, at least I'll have the satisfaction of making sure your whore of a mother and crazy father died for nothing."

Everyone inside the school is watching the scene unfold before them, jaws dropped and eyes wide but too scared to intervene, including a certain raven-haired girl who was just too shocked to do anything. Not from fear, but because of the gut wrenching pain she could feel emanating from Hope. How bad she must be hurting from hearing such horrible things, and the timing also couldn't be worse. So she stood there watching everything from a far, shocked, with her heart actually breaking for the other girl.

MG on the other hand could no longer bare to see his friend like that, he knew how much those words were hurting her. Leaving an angry looking Alyssa behind, he starts to make his way to Hope, but before he can reach her, he feels the ground and everything else around him shake violently and falls to his knees.

Hope slowly feels the control over her magic slip through her fingers. His words, the disgust in his voice as he speaks of her family. It's all too much for her heightened emotions. Suddenly, the little control she had left on her magic escapes her without her being able to do anything about it.

"SHUT UP!" Hope roars as she lifts her head, revealing her face with her tribrid features showing up in its full glory.

Her eyes change, where it should be white turns pitch black, her pupils glow in a intense red with hints of orange, angry veins starts pulsing violently under her eyes. Her power so insanely strong that it could actually be seen as a dark purple glow corsing inside the veins covering good part of her face.

The surprise and panic on everyone's faces has barely the time to register in Hope's brain before a huge shock-wave of pure energy blasts out of her, destroying everything in its path, killing Salazar and a few of his vamps in the process, the ones who survived ran away as fast as they could, terrified.

Just before it happens though, Hope hears MG calling her name, but it's too late. The force of the magic almost knocks Hope out too, and when she recovers from it, a scene straight out of her worst nightmare waits for her.

Luckily MG wasn't close enough to Hope to be hit by the full force of her power, but he was sent flying straight into a tree, impaling him. The branch that went through the boy is so close to his heart, that Hope thinks he might be dead.

Desperation fills her as she runs to him, tears already threatening to fall from her eyes as she makes her way through the students that gathered around the tree. Relief washes over her when she realizes her friend isn't dead.

"No one touches him!" Alaric yells. "We could kill him if the wood moves in the wound."

"MG... I-I'm so so so sorry, I didn't mea-"

Alyssa interrupts her. "Get away from him! This is all your fault! All you do is bring death to people that surround you. Those people wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for you!"

Hope is shocked to hear the hate in the witch's voice.

"Alyssa I-"

"You almost got MG killed you freak! You got your parents killed, wasn't that enough? No wonder why you're always alone, death follows you like a shadow. You're a cosmic mistake and you'd be better off dead."

The effects of Alyssa's words on Hope are somehow worse than Salazar's and it's all it takes to makes her tears fall. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Salazar knew nothing about her, but Alyssa knew her her whole life.

"Alyssa! Enough! Detention for a month!" Alaric snaps.

"I'm the one getting detention?! She's the one at fault here." Alyssa yells.

"She saved us." MG says in a weak voice.

"Rafael, go get a saw to cut the tree." Alaric demands.

All the words and emotions are too much for Hope to handle. With a final rushed apology to MG, the Mikaelson girl vamp-speeds away from the scene.

Amongst the students gathered around the tree, there's Penelope watching silently as the painful scene unfolds. She was dying to interrupt, but for the first time in her life the words got stuck in her throat. She heard and felt every word that was said about Hope and her family just moments ago.

It makes her think of her own family. Her very messed up family. Penelope thinks about her negligent parents, and their high expectations of her. She always felt so angry about that. The witch always envied people over their perfect families, but now she realizes that even though her family's not perfect, they're still alive.

She stays outside until MG's safe and sound, and then, without looking back, she walks inside the school and straight to her room. She closes the door behind herself, allowing herself time to lean on it and breathe for a couple of seconds. She was still processing everything that happened just a few minutes ago.

When she feels like she's in control again, Penelope reaches for her phone and quickly goes through her list of contacts. She clicks on her parents' number and put the phone to her ear, nervously waiting for them to pick up. After the third ring, Penelope's heart sink. Her parents are not picking up. Just as she's about to end the call and throw her phone away, the line gets picked up.

"Penelope?" Comes her mother's voice.

"Mother." Penelope manages to say with a choked voice.

"Why are you calling? Aren't you supposed to be in class?" Penelope's mother sighs loudly. "Did you do something stupid again? Look, I don't have much time. Your father and I are shopping for baby clothes."

Her mother's words put Penelope in some kind of shock. "Baby clothes? What for?"

"We're having a second child. It's gonna be a boy this time."

Penelope hasn't heard such excitement in her mother's voice during her entire life. It was no secret that the Park's had always wanted a boy. What was the really shocking thing is that her mother never wanted a second child before, add that to the fact they didn't tell their daughter about it until now.

"I'm not gonna waste any more of your time then. Have a good day mother."

The line goes dead, her mother hung up without as much as a goodbye. Penelope chuckles darkly as she lowers her phone. The black haired girl prides herself over the control of her emotions, but now she silently lets the tears fall.

Having a family could suck as much as not having one.