Forever Original | Alaric Saltzman

Chapter 71

March 26, 2019

They were in bed when Hayley called.

"Hayley?" said Hilda groggily, rubbing her eyes. "What is it?"

"I finally have it," she said excitedly. "Mary thinks she found a Malraux."

Hilda sat up immediately, accidentally whacking Alaric in the face and making him whine. "You think this is it?" she said.

"I think so. I admit, I lost all hope after we only managed to get six strains of the venom. Your siphon witch and your antidote came through for Freya and Rebekah, but..."

"Do you want us to meet you at your house?" asked Hilda, already getting up to get dressed.

"I'd appreciate it if you could. Mary and Alaric can stay with the girls— it's about time they got to meet in person. You and I can take care of getting our Malraux wolf."

They were on the move within the hour.

The girls were still asleep as they put them into their carseats, and Alaric and Hilda had packed the biggest suitcase with as much clothes as they might need for a few days away from their Texas home, which they had returned to after waking Elena up.

The poor doppelganger had been incredibly confused hearing about everything that'd happened while she was asleep, but she was delighted to meet the twins, who were fascinated with the fact that Elena wanted to be a doctor. It seemed that everyone could be happy now— Stefan and Caroline had married, and it seemed Damon and Elena were going to follow along soon enough. Bonnie and Enzo still wanted to wait before they made any big decisions, but they were happy, and from that shared happiness of the friend group came a gift.

Stefan and Damon had agreed that the Salvatore Boarding House was not going to be an ideal place to keep around once they each got married. They weren't even currently living in it anymore. It had been Caroline who gave Alaric the idea of starting a school for the twins, and after a very extensive week of discussing, Alaric and Hilda decided they wanted to try and go through with it, which left the Salvatore brothers giving them the Boarding House to use as the campus. Caroline, of course, was overseeing the renovation of the Salvatore House to accommodate students properly, and with Elena and Bonnie's help, Hilda was learning more about how she and Alaric would end up running the place. The Original had certainly never pictured herself running a school, but the thrill of getting to teach magic as a job was making her go with the flow and feel excited. They intended to open it in the coming fall, and they had already planned out how they wanted the curriculum to work.

Hilda was not a fan of having required subjects, especially because everyone's strengths were different and she knew they would already have a greater class load with supernatural classes on top of everything. Thus, they established that they would have career counseling done once a month for every grade level they ended up having, so that students would be free to not take a class if they didn't want to, meaning they had more room in their schedule to play on their strengths and not be weighed down by their weaknesses. They would encourage the students to take at least one class in each subject area for one term just so they would be exposed to everything, but after that, they would not be required to stick with classes they don't like (they would be more lenient with students at high school level, but would try to have the younger students continue to take all the basic subjects).

They had one minor examination that the students would complete when enrolling just to assess their mathematics, science, and English knowledge from their previous schools. That way, they would be placed in the appropriate class with the amount of support needed for their level. They were already expecting high school level students and they wanted to ensure they were ready for college, if they chose to apply. They would use career counseling to help students find the right path for them, and they would be informed of which classes they ought to take to follow the pathway they chose.