Because {Three | Alaric Saltzman}

Because

The halls of the Salvatore Boarding School for the Young and Gifted were halls she got to know as the Salvatore Boarding House, and, even though there were far more after the expansions which turned it into the school, she had them memorized. They were full, those halls, of students who were accepting and eager to learn beyond what they expected when they opened their doors. And two of them were running past her as she stepped out of her classroom.

"Guys, slow down!"

"Yes, Mrs. Saltzman!"

They slowed to a walk as they fell into a fit of giggles that told her they would only speed up once they made it around the corner. She smiled as she shook her head, she couldn't help it. The younger kids always had a way of doing that to her.

Her husband's voice lightly scolding them just under the start of the day pulled her to the entrance hall. She'd watched him, the newly instated headmaster, arrive home from a recruiting trip with one more person than expected through her classroom windows. Two people greeted them, their daughters Lizzie and Josie, and led their intended recruit away on a tour as Alaric, Hope, and a teenager she recognized but did not know entered the building.

Her smile was perhaps a little too bright as she greeted them. "Good morning!"

"Good morning!" Alaric made introductions, "Landon Kirby, this is Abigail Saltzman. The Salvatore School's co-founder, history teacher of, of all kinds, really, and my wife."

Landon reached out to shake her hand. "Nice to meet you, Mrs. Saltzman."

"It's nice to meet you, too, Landon." It was an interaction she'd had countless times before, each of them different, all of them the same, leading her to ask, "What brings you here?"

Alaric answered for him, "He's a friend of our newest arrival."

Abigail and Hope shared a silent look as they followed them further into the school, a look that held two distinct messages.

"I'm curious, Landon, were you aware of us when you lived in Mystic Falls?" Alaric asked.

"I knew Hope went to some fancy boarding school for troubled rich kids. I see the rich part is true." The action around Landon, specifically the sight of a few girls telekinetically passing books back and forth, left his expression frozen. "Nobody in town mentioned anything about that."

"No one in Mystic Falls knows much about us. We blend in, just enough, participate, contribute, just enough..." Alaric opened his office doors, stepping to the side to hang his suit jacket on the coat rack and to allow them to enter the room comfortably before he closed them. "Keeps people from asking too many questions."

"What is there to know, exactly?"

Alaric sat down behind his desk. "Well, I used to have a speech prepared, carefully unpeeling the layers of mystical history, but it turns out most people have read 'Harry Potter' and are actually cool with me skipping the tee-up."

Landon, the only other person to sit down, sat down in one of the chairs across from him. "You're a school for magic?"

"We're a school for the supernatural, which covers a lot of territory. Everyone here has something that makes them special in ways the outside world wouldn't understand." He went on to say, "This school was created so we could shape the minds of young supernatural beings, protect their secret, and then send them out into the human world fully equipped to handle it."

Landon looked to Hope who had settled in the corner. "So, what are you?"

Hope did not have a simple answer to the question. She was the granddaughter of a witch, Esther Mikaelson. The daughter of one of the earth's Original vampires, Klaus Mikaelson, and a Crescent werewolf Alpha, Hayley Marshall-Kenner. Human blood did not run through her veins, making her the only one of her kind. A tribrid.