Chapter Text
The house wakes louder than it ever has.
Molly is already in the kitchen, banging pots as though warding off evil spirits. Arthur trails after her, inspecting the gas lamp with the reverence of a scholar. Ron and Ginny argue in the hallway over who gets the last clean towel.
Hermione has stationed herself at the table, parchment spread, demanding details about New Orleans wards. Neville hums quietly in the courtyard, coaxing Harri’s lemon tree to grow straighter.
And the Mikaelsons—well.
Rebekah sharpens her tongue against every new arrival. Marcel plays diplomat with infuriating ease. Kol sulks and smirks in equal measure, circling Ginny like a wolf with a taste for fire.
Nik watches from the landing, arms folded, expression unreadable. The memory of the night before lingers—Teddy on his lap, small mouth shaping Da as if it had always been waiting there. The house had gone still. Harri had leaned against him, steady as an oath.
And beneath it, quieter but sharper, another memory echoes: her voice in the library, cutting and defiant. If you shut me out again, I’ll answer you in kind — or worse.
The bond still hums open between them, but every now and then he feels the ghost of that threat, sharp as a reminder carved under the skin.
He remembers another boy, years ago, standing in this same courtyard with blood on his cheek and defiance in his eyes.
Marcel had been ten, old enough to know hunger and fury, old enough to understand what it meant to be chosen by someone dangerous. Marcel had looked at him with awe, fear, and need, and Nik had thought: mine.
Teddy is different. Too young for awe, too small for fear. He clambers into Nik’s lap without hesitation, declares him Da as though it were simply the truth. No bargains, no defiance, no understanding of power. Just certainty.
Nik wonders which is harder to bear — a boy who chooses him because he must, or a child who names him father without knowing the weight of it.
Downstairs, Teddy bangs his spoon on the table, demanding breakfast. Marcel laughs, clapping him on the back like a little brother instead of a prince.
Nik almost smiles, dimples threatening. Family, it seems, keeps multiplying when he isn’t looking.
Harri glances up from the stove, hair loose, face warm in the light. She catches him watching. Doesn’t look away.
And Nik, who has stood on battlefields without blinking, feels undone by a kitchen full of voices and the echo of a word he never thought he would hear: Da.
By the time Nik descends, the kitchen is chaos. Molly is shoving toast at anyone who stands still. Arthur is quizzing Rebekah about her opinion on enchanted plugs. Ron has already eaten half the bacon and is shielding his plate from Kol, who looks far too interested.
Hermione has somehow cornered Marcel into explaining warding on the city’s borders, which he does with the patience of a saint and the grin of a liar.
Neville offers Harri a sprig of basil he’s coaxed from the windowsill, as though it were treasure. Ginny hurls a barb at Kol, who throws one back, both grinning like people who’ve already decided the argument will last all day.
Nik takes it all in with one sweep of his gaze, sardonic amusement curling low in his chest. A year ago, his house had echoed with silence. Now, it threatens to collapse under the weight of too many voices.
Harri stands at the stove, hair loose, sleeves rolled. She looks up when she feels his eyes. “Are you going to help,” she asks, “or just brood?”
He leans against the counter, smirking. “I find observation far more entertaining.”
“You find laziness entertaining,” she shoots back.
Rebekah rolls her eyes. “And somehow you find him tolerable. Miracles do happen.”
Molly catches the exchange, lips pursed. “You ought to treat her better, young man.”
Kol chokes on his orange juice. Rebekah barks a laugh. Harri groans, muttering, “Don’t encourage them.”
Nik only smirks, dimples cutting deep. He has survived wars, curses, centuries of betrayal — and yet this, apparently, is the battle he will lose: a kitchen full of people who insist on belonging.
And the worst part?
He almost doesn’t mind.
But when Harri presses a piece of toast into his hand without looking at him, the bond jolts with something else: the echo of silence, the ache of weeks where her voice never reached him.
She doesn’t speak of it now, not here, but he feels it — the small hesitation in the way her fingers brush his. He swallows it down, unwilling to break the fragile ease of the morning.
Molly insists on washing up, Rebekah insists on stopping her, and the two nearly duel over a dishcloth. Arthur follows Marcel into the courtyard, pointing at the wards carved into the stones as though they’re exotic insects. Hermione demands ink and parchment; Kol steals her quill and almost loses a hand for it.
Ginny slips outside, fire-red hair catching the sunlight. Kol follows at a distance, pretending indifference. Nik notes it, files it away. He will let it play for now — there’s a certain amusement in watching his brother circle someone who bites back.
Teddy, sticky with jam, barrels into Harri’s skirts and tugs until she bends to scoop him up. She rests him on her hip with practiced ease, hair falling into her face. For a moment, she looks absurdly ordinary, as though war and loss never carved their names into her bones.
Nik feels the bond hum, steady, inevitable. She catches his eye across the chaos and smirks — yes, I see you watching.
He should look away. He doesn’t.
And the silence they survived flickers like a ghost between them — a warning, and a vow.
Later, when the house is quieter — the Britain family napping off jet lag, Rebekah dragging Ginny out to see dresses she’ll mock but secretly enjoy, Marcel taking Teddy for a walk through the Quarter — Nik finds himself with Harri in the studio.
She trails a finger across a canvas, one of his newer ones. A skyline. A storm. Too sharp for beauty.
“You still paint like you’re fighting,” she says.
“And you still speak like you’re unafraid of the answer.”
She tilts her head. “Am I wrong?”
“No.” He sets down his brush. “But storms are survival. Without them, I wouldn’t remain.”
Her eyes soften. “Then maybe one day you’ll paint after the storm.”
He laughs, low, bitter. “Hopeful little one.”
“Realistic,” she corrects, lips curving. “There’s a difference.”
The bond hums low between them — steadier now, but still haunted. He thinks of the weeks he starved her of it, and the way she threatened to starve him in return. He almost apologises. Almost. Instead, he lets the moment breathe.
At supper, Arthur tries to bless the food. Kol interrupts with a toast to chaos. Molly nearly hexes him. Harri sighs, pours wine into Nik’s glass without asking. He takes it as victory.
The night ends with Teddy asleep across Harri’s lap, his small fingers still clutching Nik’s shirt. The boy doesn’t let go, even in dreams. Nik sits beside her, listening to the drone of voices, pretending irritation, feeling something stranger.
This is not peace. He doesn’t trust peace. But it is… something.
A year ago, his house echoed with silence.
Now, it shakes with life.
And he — who has never been good at choosing — begins to think he already has.
Marcel sees it the moment her family steps through the door.
Everyone else notices only the laughter, the tears, the way Harri lights up like a lantern at last — but Marcel’s eyes are on Nik.
On the way his smile stays sharp at the edges, how his shoulders hold just a fraction too tight. Even with the bond reopened, even with words finally spoken, hesitation lingers in the air, thin as smoke.
And Marcel feels it too. Not in his chest the way they do, but in the way the house carries it — a pulse off-beat, a tension coiled through the walls. The bond between them hums faintly like a string pulled too tight, and the air itself aches with it.
He has watched his old man put down crowns and accept loyalties before; he knows how Nik walls himself with cruelty to keep people whole.
He has watched Harri press and not relent, demand transparency the way some people demand air. They have talked. They have bled truth at one another. But Marcel can feel the hesitation threaded through Nik’s movements — the half-steps, the restraint that smells of old wounds.
Conversation opens the door; fear keeps them on either side of the threshold.
So Marcel chooses movement instead of waiting. If hesitation holds the house together like a thread, he will pull at the knot until it loosens. He will make a choice that forces the next one out into the open.
He goes to the cellar.
The coffin waits in the cellar, stone walls slick with damp, the air rank with old earth and candle smoke. The Quarter presses even here, its breath heavy through the cracks, fog coiling beneath the door like a patient ghost.
Nik stands in this chamber as he has countless times, watching Elijah’s face carved into stillness, lips parted around silence, lashes dusted like frost. A portrait of nobility undone by iron and ash. But tonight the air hangs thicker, as though the walls themselves listen, eager for what choice will be made.
Marcel stands beside him, broad-shouldered, steady. The lamplight catches sharp along his jaw, and for a moment Nik sees not the boy who once chased through these streets with laughter at his heels, but the man carved by centuries of his making.
“I’ll never forgive him,” Marcel says, voice low, steady as stone. “Not for what he did. Not for what he tried to take.”
Nik lets the words linger, tasting their weight. His mouth curls — half-smile, half-snarl, sharp as glass. “Nor would I ask you to.”
Marcel exhales, sharp as flint against tinder. “But I can see what this is doing to you. To her. And maybe letting him out doesn’t mean pardoning him. Maybe it just means giving you both space to… shift. To breathe.”
Nik tilts his head, sardonic glint sparking in his eyes. The cellar lantern flickers as though amused with him. “So the son instructs the father now?”
Marcel does not flinch. “If that’s what it takes.”
The silence bends around them, thick as blood. Nik studies him — this boy he pulled from battlefields, this man who dares to stand before him unbowed. Something sharp stirs in his chest, a marrow-deep ache that feels like pride and pain in equal measure.
He looks back to the coffin, to Elijah’s pale stillness, the mask of virtue that has so often cloaked betrayal.
My noble brother, who killed what was mine and thought it righteousness.
The memory burns, vivid as the night Elijah’s blade nearly ended Marcel — the closest Niklaus has ever come to bleeding.
And yet — Harri’s green eyes rise unbidden, steady and unyielding. The persistence in her voice, the tether humming with want, her promise to burn slowly until even his cruelty bends to flame.
Nik steps forward. Fingers curl around the dagger’s hilt, its silver chill sinking into his palm. The air leans closer, thick with expectation.
For a moment, he does nothing. The cellar holds its breath, the city above humming like a dirge.
Then he pulls.
The dagger slides free, slow, deliberate, and Elijah’s chest heaves a breath — the gasp of the drowned.
Nik does not watch him stir. He turns instead, eyes on Marcel.
There is no mocking now, no grin to twist the edges of his mouth. He crosses the narrow space, grip firm on Marcel’s shoulder before pulling him close, arms tightening in an embrace that carries all the weight of centuries.
His voice is low, rough as gravel. “You are mine, Marcellus. In all ways that matter. Do not forget it.”
Marcel stiffens, then exhales, the fight leaving his body in a rush.
Nik pulls back enough to catch his gaze, and the dimples flash, sharp but stripped of humor. “You are as much Mikaelson as any born of Esther’s womb. More, perhaps. Blood makes nothing — choice makes everything. And you were mine long before Elijah thought to rip you from me.”
The cellar exhales with them. Stone drips, the lantern gutters, the world folds into shadow. Behind them, Elijah stirs, noble mouth parting for breath, but neither man looks his way.
For this moment, it is only father and son.
Nik tilts his head, smirk curling faint and sardonic. “And should our noble brother dare forget it, we will remind him. Together.”
The bond hums faintly at the back of his mind — Harri’s presence steady, waiting above. He thinks of her defiance, her hurt, her persistence. Of her promise to burn slowly.
And for the first time in years, he allows the thought of Elijah walking again without reaching for rage first.
Not forgiveness. Never that.
But perhaps something adjacent to it, dark and sharp and dangerous.
A beginning.
Nik turns from the coffin, the weight of the dagger still ghosting his palm. Marcel follows his lead, the silence between them thick with unspoken truths.
Behind them, Elijah’s breath hitches again — ragged, desperate, the sound of lungs remembering how to hold the world. His fingers twitch against the wood, struggling for purchase, for grace.
Nik does not look back.
Let him wake to the dark alone. Let him drag himself upright with no hand offered, no familiar face to soften the silence.
Marcel glances once over his shoulder, jaw tight, but says nothing. His footsteps follow Nik’s up the stone stairs, boots echoing against damp walls.
The cellar door groans shut, cutting off the flicker of lamplight, leaving Elijah to the cold and the dripping stone.
The house is brighter, louder, as though refusing to acknowledge the ghost waking beneath its floor.
In the courtyard, Teddy totters across the stones on unsteady legs, curls bouncing, cheeks flushed, a wooden spoon clutched like a sword.
“Da! Da-da!” he babbles, striking the air.
Nik plucks the spoon from his grip before it smacks against his boot. “A poor strike,” he murmurs, though his mouth curls with warmth. “But you’ll learn.”
Teddy squeals, sticky hands reaching. Nik gathers him up with ease, the boy’s weight solid against his chest, curls damp with heat.
The bond hums faintly at his ribs, her presence brushing against him, watchful. He does not hide from it this time.
I’m taking him out, Nik threads into her mind, low and certain. Marcel as well.
The answer comes soft, sure, carrying the press of her worry and the steadiness beneath it. It’s okay. Just—come back safe and sound. All three of you.
The tether thrums once, like a promise.
Nik glances at Marcel, at the boy in his arms, and lets the smallest smile curl his mouth. “We’ll return,” he says aloud, voice curling like smoke into the air. “My sons would hardly allow otherwise.”
They step into the Quarter together, city noise rushing to meet them — jazz horns swelling, vendors shouting, sugar and smoke thick in the air.
The city plays itself loud — brass bleeding from open doorways, preachers crying sermons at corners, dice rattling in alleys. Drunken sailors curse in a half-dozen tongues, while the scent of frying shrimp coils thick with sugar.
Nik walks at Marcel’s side, Teddy in his arms, and thinks of how easily the world bends itself to him. His city. His son. His claim.
Below, Elijah stirs in darkness. Alone.
It pleases him.
The day bleeds into dusk, the air heavy with magnolia and ruin, jazz horns curling like spells into the sky. Teddy half asleep against his chest, curls damp with heat, his small body rising and falling in rhythm with Nik’s.
Marcel walks at his side, broad and steady, shoulders set against the city’s chaos. Men call greetings, women glance twice, but he belongs here as much as Nik does.
He always has. And the world has always known. And if they forget… well, Nik has always been good at reminding others.
Nik’s gaze lingers on the two of them — boy and man — and the thought coils sharp inside him.
This is what matters. Not forgiveness. Not peace. Not Elijah’s righteousness or Harri’s persistence.
This man — his choice, his defiance, his loyalty carved across centuries.
Together, they are the kingdom he claims.
For now.
The door groans on its hinges as they step inside. The Quarter’s heat clings to them — smoke, brass, sugar — but the house itself feels altered, as if the air has been cut and stitched into something denser.
Nik carries Teddy against his chest, the boy awake with drowsy sleep, curls damp, fingers locked stubbornly around a wooden spoon. Marcel keeps close, steady as the shadow he has always been.
But the sound that meets them is wrong.
It swells from the parlour like a tide — Molly’s voice sharp as a hymn out of tune, Ron sputtering protests, Hermione’s questions spilling one atop another, Rebekah’s clipped retorts slicing through it all.
The cadence of foreign voices, British vowels slamming into Southern lilt and French undertone, makes the house itself shudder.
And then Nik feels it — the bond thrumming hot at his ribs, not a plea but a flare. Harri waiting. Bracing.
They step into the room.
Elijah stands there.
Awake. Composed and half-ruined. A portrait of nobility dragged raw from dagger-sleep — pale, still grave, but breathing. His suit is the same as the day he was entombed, creased and stale, but he wears it as though the centuries never touched him.
He looks like a man dredged from a grave and convinced he is still a prince.
His eyes sweep the room, cataloguing, measuring, dismissing.
The Weasleys gape.
Molly clutches Arthur’s arm, whispering a prayer under her breath. Ron blurts, “Bloody hell, why’s he look half-dead if he’s meant to be a vampire?”
Hermione hisses at him to hush but cannot stop herself from staring, lips moving with unvoiced questions. Arthur peers as though Elijah were some broken Muggle contraption that ought not to run but somehow does.
Neville mutters something about the colour of his skin being wrong, as if death itself still lingers in the pores.
Andromeda does not flinch. Her eyes are flint, flicking from Elijah’s ruined face to Teddy cradled safe against Nik’s chest. One hand hovers near her wand, her expression steady and merciless. If this man so much as breathes threat, she will end it.
Elijah ignores them all.
His gaze cuts over Molly’s fuss, Ron’s gawking, Hermione’s restless parchment-and-ink hunger. Past Ginny, arms crossed sharp as a blade; past Marcel, broad and unmoving; past Kol, lounging like a wolf too pleased with his own joke.
For the briefest heartbeat, his eyes find Harri. Green eyes meet dark, but only for a moment. There is no warmth, no curiosity. Only dismissal — the cool cataloguing of a man who sees an interloper cluttering his house. A distraction. A passing whim. Nothing more.
He looks away.
The tether sears Nik’s ribs. Harri’s sting slices through him, raw and immediate, sharper than words.
Teddy stirs against his chest, eyes blinking open. A small hand reaches up, curls tangling in Nik’s shirt. And then, clear as a bell, the word falls from his mouth:
“Da.”
Elijah blinks once, slow, at Teddy’s small voice. Not with surprise — he has heard that word before, in another mouth, a life Nik claimed as his own.
But the sting is sharper now: another child naming Nik father, another life woven into his orbit while Elijah lay silent in the dark.
Kol’s laugh cracks the silence, sharp and delighted. “Ah, brother, welcome back to the theatre. A year gone, and already you wake to find roles rewritten. Quite the cast, don’t you think?”
His grin hooks toward Harri, sly and dangerous. “Don’t mind him, darling. Elijah has a fondness for pinning butterflies — all wings, no weight. He’ll catalogue you and move on.”
“Kol,” Rebekah snaps, though her voice trembles between fury and shame.
Nik steps forward before silence can thicken. Teddy shifts against his hip, clutching his wooden spoon like a weapon. Marcel shadows him, broad and certain, presence iron at his side.
Nik’s smirk carves sharp, dimples flashing without mirth. “Ah, Elijah. You wake into a house you once fractured, into the presence of a son you nearly stole, and into the company of a woman you presume to dismiss.”
His eyes linger on Harri, the bond flaring molten. “And yet you compose yourself as though you chose the terms of your return.”
Elijah’s jaw tightens, but he does not speak.
Nik tilts his head, voice curling low, venom sweet as smoke. “This is no distraction. No ornament. She is mine. And you will treat her as such.”
The Weasleys exchange bewildered glances — Molly with scandalized dismay, Arthur with cautious calculation, Ron muttering disbelief, Hermione already composing questions too dangerous to ask.
Neville stares as though Elijah had clawed his way out of the soil. Andromeda remains unyielding, her eyes locked on Elijah as if daring him to so much as breathe wrong in Teddy’s direction.
The parlour swells with it — the stench of old betrayal, stew cooling on the table, jasmine heavy from the courtyard, brass curling faint from the Quarter beyond.
Chaos. Family. Reunion.
And Elijah, pale and grave, stands among them like a wronged dragged into a world he does not recognise, a chorus he cannot command.