"Lizzie-bear?"Alaric stopped when he saw the mess of books and notebooks around her. She had sprawled out to take up three full-sized library tables and all the chairs.

"Oh good!" Lizzie looked up and smiled. "Just the person I wanted to see! You remember what it was like when Aunt Elena turned off her humanity, right?"

"... yes?" Alaric furrowed his eyebrows and looked down at the book closest to him. Sure enough, it was about vampires and humanities.

"How did you know when she was turning it back on?"

Alaric caught on too quickly. "Does this have something to do with Hope?"

"No, I'm doing research. How did you know? I've read that it usually doesn't happen all at once. It's a whole process and sometimes it starts before the vampire even realizes it."

"Yeah, that's sort of how it was with Aunt Elena." He pushed a stack of books out of the way and sat in one of the chairs. "She was ... very far gone - not as far as Hope, if I'm going to be discouragingly honest - but she saw someone she loved die in front of her, and it ... well, it sort of brought her back enough that she was able to pull herself the rest of the way. It started a little before that, though. Anger was the first emotion to start sneaking in."

"Anger ... good ..." Lizzie was scribbling notes furiously. "What next?"

Alaric leaned forward and clasped his hands together. "Do you have some sort of plan I need to know about?"

"Nope!" Lizzie smiled sincerely. It was definitely a plan he did not need to know about.

"It still took a while after she decided to come back. She was ... vengeful. It was easier to focus on one emotion, I think: hate."

Lizzie kept nodding and nodding.

"But eventually she made it back to being the Aunt Elena you know. There was one important thing, though."

Lizzie was practically laying across the table, pen shaking in her hand with anticipation. Alaric reached across the table and took it from her hand slowly, setting it flat on the table.

"Elena only came back because she wanted to." Alaric sighed. "You can't force someone to take their humanity back. Hope has to want it."

Lizzie leaned back in her seat and slumped her shoulders. Of course her dad would know what she was thinking without her saying it.

"Look, I want Hope back just as much as you do," Alaric said. "But she doesn't want to be back, so until she does ... all we can do is wait. And control the damage she does. And find out who her new partner is -"

"Shit!" Lizzie shot up in her seat, scrambling for her phone. She knew she was forgetting something. Sure enough, almost twenty missed messages from MG were waiting for her. "Shit ..."

"Did you stand MG up?" Alaric asked, eyes bouncing between Lizzie's face and her phone screen.

"Sort of ... accidentally ..." Lizzie's face was a wide grimace lit up by her phone screen as she read through his messages.

Alaric stood. "Don't worry about it." He kissed the top of her head on his way past. "I'm sure MG doesn't know anything anyways."

Lizzie waited until he was gone to sigh and drop her head in her hands. Sometimes it felt like she couldn't do anything right. She peeked through her fingers at the page in front of her. Maybe she could do one thing right.

If the key to Hope getting her humanity back was her wanting to, then the only thing standing in Lizzie's way was figuring out what it was that could make Hope want to feel again.