"What are you doing here?" Harriet asked when she saw Damon lying on the couch in her living room.
"This is also my house" the dark-haired man reminded her.
"I didn't know you were coming" Zach said as he passed through the room and saw Damon there.
"I'm just checking on Stefan's homework. The country has gotten dumber in a hundred years. Why does he want to go to high school?"
"I ask myself the same question" muttered Harriet.
"Why are you here, Damon?" Zach questioned the vampire
"To spend time with you, Zach, and also with your daughter. Family matters to me" the vampire spoke sarcastic
"Since when?" the girl asked mockingly.
"I know you. You always have motives. Tell me, what do you want, Damon?" Zach asked again, and Damon quickly approached him to strangle him. Harriet ran to her father, who gestured for her not to come closer.
"You shouldn't question me."
"I didn't mean to upset you."
"I'm not upset, Zach."
"Damon, please let him go" pleaded the girl, but the vampire simply ignored her.
"What's going on here?" Stefan asked as he arrived, and Damon finally let go of Zach, leaving him on the floor.
"I'll bring you a glass of water, okay?" Harriet spoke as she approached her father and hugged him. He nodded, and left him alone with Stefan for a few seconds while she returned with the glass of water. "Here" she handed him the glass, and her father drank it all. "You have to do something about Damon, Stefan. This can't go on."
"I know, but I'm not as strong as he is."
"Vervain weakens him if he ingests it" Zach mentioned. "It would give you an advantage."
"Vervain hasn't grown here since 1865. Damon took care of that. The vervain I had, I gave to Elena."
"But there's something you don't know, dear Stefan" the girl commented, crossing her arms with a smile on her face.
"What?" the vampire asked confused.
Father and daughter approached an almost hidden door, followed by the vampire. They entered, went down some stairs to the basement, and reached another door where there was quite a bit of vervain growing.
"You cultivate it" Stefan murmured, impressed.
"It's something that has been passed down through generations. You can't be loyal to your vampire family. Damon would kill us if he knew we had it" Zach mentioned, and Harriet nodded, agreeing with him.
"But you told me. Why?"
"Because I trust you."
"You're not Damon. We know you won't kill us" the girl said with a small smile.
"Plus, you need it to get rid of him" Zach seconded, hugging his daughter
⚜️
Harriet was leaving the Lockwood mansion after the party when something stopped her. She saw her friend Caroline getting up from the ground, looking confused. Harriet approached her to make sure she was okay.
"Hey Care, are you okay?" She asked when she was in front of the blonde.
"Yeah. I'm fine" Caroline responded with difficulty, which worried the brunette. "I'm okay," the trembling girl repeated.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. Come here" Harriet hugged her friend, and Caroline started crying. "Calm down, breathe with me."
Harriet stayed with Caroline for a few minutes, helping her control her breathing. When she felt better, Harriet accompanied her to her home, prepared her some tea, and sat by her side.
"Whenever I feel bad, my dad gives me some tea, then he accompanies me to my room and stays with me until I fall asleep" the girl commented to her friend when she handed her the tea.
"Thank you" the blonde murmured and began to drink the tea.
And, as her father had done many times before, Harriet stayed with Caroline until she was deeply asleep. She then returned home, where Zach was waiting for her, informing her of Damon's new situation. He was locked up in the basement, which made the girl feel relieved.
⚜️
"Hello, Damon. Look what I brought you. It's a little blood to make you feel better, but don't tell Stefan" The girl passed a glass of blood to Damon, who was locked up and had not drunk a drop of blood in two days.
"Thank you. I knew you weren't that bad" Damon received the glass and drank a little, but then spat it out when he felt his throat burn.
"Oh, didn't I tell you? It's more vervain than blood" Harriet mentioned with a mocking smile. "That's for what you did to Caroline, idiot."
"I'm going to kill you."
"Do you think I care about your threats? I mean you're locked up and you're not very strong right now" the girl commented with false pity.
"What's going on?" Stefan asked as he arrived in the basement, hearing the small argument between his brother and niece.
"Your dear Harriet gave me vervain, pretending it was blood" Damon recounted, and Stefan turned to look at Harriet, who innocently observed him, making the vampire laugh.
"It was just a lesson, Damon. You're such a baby" the mocking brunette commented.
"Go on, your dad is waiting for you to eat" The Salvatore informed her, and the brunette nodded before leaving, winking at the angry raven-haired man who was watching her
⚜️
Harriet walked towards her house, after escaping from the school car wash fundraiser, not without telling Stefan that she was leaving.
Before reaching the entrance of her house, she saw Caroline running towards her, scared, so she stopped her and looked at her with a mixture of confusion and concern.
"Caroline, is everything okay? What's wrong?" The blonde only looked at her frightened and then ran off again.
As Salvatore remembered the state Damon was in at home, she became scared at the thought of what he might do to her father, so she dropped her things on the ground and ran toward the house.
When she saw the rug bunched up as if someone had tripped over it, she ran even faster to the basement. When she arrived, the first thing she saw was her father's body lying on the floor.
She quickly approached him, trying to find a pulse, but couldn't find one. Tears streamed down her face as she realized her father was dead.
"Daddy, please, you promised not to leave me alone, please come back to me" The brunette hugged her father's body as she begged for it to be some kind of sick joke or nightmare to wake up from and see her father alive, bringing her tea like she always did when she felt unwell. "Daddy, please. I need you."
Damon, hearing the girl's sobs, hid knowing that in her state, she could kill him without any problem, not to mention that even though he was thirsty for blood, he knew that Zach put vervain in his daughter's coffee every day and preferred not to risk it.
Harriet spent hours hugging her father's body while crying non-stop. Night came, and Stefan finally returned home. Upon seeing the open door, he knew something was wrong, especially when he saw the rug in the hallway and Harriet's things on the ground outside of the house.
He called his niece's name, and when he didn't hear a response, he hurried to the basement to make sure that Damon was still locked up. But what he found down there was worse.
"Stefan" the girl called out with a broken voice, when the vampire arrived at her side.
"Oh no, Zach" the vampire murmured at the sight of his nephew's body.
"Damon killed him. When I got here, he was already like this. I couldn't go out and look for him. He's probably gone" the girl explained through sobs.
"It doesn't matter, Harriet, calm down."
"Stef, my father is dead" the girl said, and although she tried, the tears didn't stop. "Please help me, I can't stop crying, I don't want to feel this anymore, I can't take it."
"Don't say that, Hazz, come here" The Salvatore hugged the girl, separating her a little from her father's body, and her sobs became louder.
"I just want my daddy, bring him back to me, please."
Harriet's head was throbbing from crying so much. She wanted to scream, she wanted her father to be the one hugging her, and most of all, she wished Damon Salvatore was dead, she wanted to kill him herself and make him suffer the same way she was suffering at that moment watching her father's lifeless body.
Stefan carried Harriet to her room when she had calmed down a bit, and made her a tea like he saw Zach do every time, thinking it would calm her down, but when he gave it to her, she burst into tears again, calling for her dad, but Zach Salvatore never came to comfort his little girl.
The vampire stayed with the girl until she fell asleep; although Zach's death had hurt him, he tried to be strong for Harriet
Now Stefan was all the brunette had left, and he didn't know how he was going to take care of a teenager, much less what he was going to do with his older brother who seemed to never tire of killing every one of Harriet's relatives, starting years ago with her mother and sister who had not even been born yet, and continuing that day with her father.
The girl woke up the next day with a slight headache and swollen eyes. She went downstairs to make breakfast and as she passed through the living room, she saw Vicki Donovan on her couch with a blood-soaked towel around her neck. Just as she was about to approach to see if she was okay, Damon arrived, talking on the phone.
"What are you doing in my house?" Harriet asked angrily.
"I've told you already, it's my house too. And I want to be with my family," Damon replied cynically after ending the call in which he asked the person to bring him his daylight ring.
"You're not my family, and if you ever were, you stopped being so the moment you killed my father" Harriet said, with tears in her eyes.
"Now you're an orphan like me. Get over it," Damon said, taking a sip of the whiskey he had poured a moment ago. The girl approached to hit him, but he quickly stopped her. "I imagine the vervain is out of your system now, and sadly, I'm a little full from the buffet I had last night," the raven-haired man approached the brunette, having her just a few centimeters away from him. "Stay still and stop crying" he ordered her with his hypnosis, and the girl immediately obeyed without protesting. "Now tell me, do you know where my ring is?"
"No, Stefan hid it without telling me where" the brunette replied robotically, scared that she couldn't control her own body or words.
"Go have breakfast. When you're done, come back here and don't drink a drop of vervain," he ordered, finishing his glass of bourbon.
Harriet obeyed and went to the kitchen to make her breakfast. She ate and when she finished, she returned to the living room with Damon, who asked her to sit down.
"I'm going to regret this" the raven-haired man commented, biting his wrist and then giving some of his blood to Vicki. When he closed his wound, he reopened it and let a little blood drip into a glass before his wound closed again. "Take it. Drink it all" he ordered Harriet, and although she didn't want to, she drank Damon's blood. "Now what I want you to do is forget that I killed your father and have fun with me until Stefan gives me back my ring."
"Little brother, you'd better give me back the ring because I just gave our niece my blood. So if you don't give it to me, I'll kill her and she'll be in transition. You decide," the vampire left one last voicemail message for his brother and then put on some music for the girls.
⚜️
Vicki, Harriet, and Damon were in the living room listening to music. Damon drank whiskey, Harriet danced, letting herself be carried away by the music, and Vicki went back and forth also dancing while telling the Salvatore brothers about her love life
"Why don't you have a partner? You're both very attractive" The Donovan asked.
"We know" Damon and Harriet responded simultaneously.
"Don't you want to fall in love?" Vicki questioned, pausing her dancing.
"I've never been in love" Harriet replied, also stopping.
"I have been. It's annoying, difficult, and overrated," the dark-haired Salvatore commented. "Let's not talk about it anymore. Let's dance."
They danced for a while and drank a few bottles of alcohol before going to Stefan's room and completely trashing it, on orders from the elder Salvatore. Afterward, Vicki and Damon danced a slow song while Harriet finished a bottle of vodka.
"Your life is so pathetic" The Salvatore girl commented after Donovan talked about her sad life.
"Yes. I'm a failure. Everything comes easily to Matt. He's a pretty boy. He'll get a football scholarship, marry Elena, have a lawn mower and kids...and when I think about my future, I see nothing," Vicki replied, tears in her eyes.
"You have no self-esteem" Damon said.
"No, nothing."
"I know what can help you," Damon continued.
"What?"
"Death." And in a split second, the Salvatore broke Vicki's neck.
"You killed her" Harriet said and burst out laughing.
"And you're very drunk," Damon deduced, approaching his niece. "Go take a shower and don't drink any more alcohol."
The brunette obeyed, and after two hours, the alcohol had left her system, leaving her with a headache.
"My head hurts" the girl said when she arrived with Damon, who was waiting for her with a pill and a glass of water.
"Defects of being human. Take this. It will ease the pain a bit" Damon said.
Harriet thanked him, took the pill, and drank all the water in the glass. She stayed with Damon until dusk. Before the dark-haired man left to find his brother, he hypnotized Harriet one last time.
"You'll forget everything today and continue to hate me. Maybe someday everything will be better between us" the Salvatore left, leaving the confused girl behind, who forgot everything she had done with Vicki and Damon
Harriet's phone kept ringing, so she searched for it and answered when she found it. It was Stefan.
"Are you okay?" was the first thing the brunette asked when the girl finally answered her phone.
"I don't know," the still-confused Salvatore replied, trying to remember what she had done all day.
"Did Damon hurt you?"
"No. Stefan, why don't I remember anything?" she questioned, confused.
"Damon must have hypnotized you."
"Damon? How? Why?"
"I don't know. You were with him all day."
"What?"
"He forced you to be with him and Vicki. By the way, be careful, okay? Damon gave you his blood, and Vicki just finished the transformation."
"Vicki Donovan?"
"Yes. Damon gave her his blood like he did to you, but he killed her. I'm going there in a few minutes, just take care of yourself."
"Okay."
The Salvatores said goodbye, ending the call. Stefan went to talk to Elena, and Harriet went to her father's room. There she found some pictures of herself, her mother, and some others where she was with her parents, and one of them with Stefan from a few years ago.
Harriet felt tears in her eyes along with the sadness she felt towards Zach's absence. She sat on the bed and, looked at the locket around her neck where her parents' photos were.
Harriet start sobbing. She couldn't believe she had just spent the day with the man who had killed her father the night before.
She just sat there for hours crying for her parents, she missed them so much and she was so scared because now she was alone, she didn't have anyone to take care of her, to just listen to her day or hug her when she needed it.