Welcome to a Nightmare

Chapter 38: Home Improvement

"Time for a bit of a makeover," Crystal says with great satisfaction. Her hands flicker and glow eagerly with magic, the good kind of magic. She was excited to make this place more of a home, preparing to make it as comfortable as possible for both of them for how ever long this curse might last. The two climb the red carpet stairs to the second floor. "You can have any room you want Henry; how do you like me to decorate it?"

"I want it like at my mom's house," he answers. He looks down at his feet and then back up, feeling like a little kid again. Despite how much he'd hated being in the house with the Evil Queen, it was his home. It was the room he'd grown up in and while he moved around from the Mill's house to the Blanchard loft, to Emma's house depending on where he decided to sleep, the one in the mayor's mansion still had a special place in his heart. He can remember spending many nights reading his fairy tale book under the covers with a flashlight after Regina thought he'd gone to sleep. He can remember all the times he'd used the tree outside his window to sneak out or to be comforted by the soft glow of his favourite night light as he slowly drifted off to sleep.

"Which Mom?"

"Regina."

"I haven't seen it in a while, you may have to describe it for me," she says, biting her lip as the two roamed around the second floor. Eventually, Henry finds a room that he'd like, further to the back of the mansion, away from all the noise and chaos of the front hall, but it had the bathroom right next door.

"I'll do my best," he says, but even he wasn't sure if he could do that.

"Or maybe..." she ponders, thinking about another solution.

"Or maybe what?"

"Let me try something," she says. She conjures up a dreamcatcher. Immediately, Henry steps away.

"No way!" he says remembering the last time someone used a dreamcatcher on him.

"Relax, I'm not going to steal your memories, I just need to see your room in order to make it the way you want. I need a visual reference."

The young author still hesitates. "I don't know..."

"I promised I won't store anything in them. Besides, my dad taught me how to use them properly."

"Your dad, well excuse me while I jump right into it."

"Henry, I just need one memory of your room, it doesn't have to be a good one, I just need something you won't miss for a couple of minutes and I swear that I will put it back."

After a long moment, the teenager sighs.

"Fine," he sighs, figuring it was just better to get this over with.

Crystal waves her hand over the delicate circle and it immediately begins to glow with bright yellow light. A beam of light connects to Henry's head and an image of memory slowly begins to appear. Soon, a clear picture forms and it begins to move, in front of Henry is his mother and she is smiling at him before using her purple magic to create a very large cupcake with rainbow icing on top for him. It looks like a bribe, but the daughter of the Dark One doesn't really care about the context, she just needs to see his room. It obviously wasn't one of his fondest memories with Regina if he was willingly giving it to her.

Once the connection is broken, the adult with magic holds the dreamcatcher up and then gazes at the empty room that had dust cloths over the bed and dresser, an old rocking chair sitting by the window, and some kind of strange paper machine in the corner. She then smiles.

Crystal uses her magic and waves it over the room that her brother had chosen. Almost instantly, the dusty room is transformed. The walls become covered in striped wallpaper and a bed with the exact wooden headboard that once resided in the Mill's house appears against the wall close to the door. However, Crystal still decides to give Henry a queen-sized bed, one luxury she can give him that he received in the penthouse, but it is still covered in his favourite patterned blue sheets. Bigger versions of his blue curtains droop down from both windows that overlook the garden and she puts a heavy oak bookcase next to the door with a globe and clock on top of it, and she adds comic books to the shelves; Henry told her he'd add some of the books from the library onto them as well. His favourite desk with many shelves above it and his vanity, both made of mahogany, are put into position, with various pictures of their real family and notes from various people, including Violet, are stuck beside the vanity mirror. Clocks, pieces of art, posters, a cuckoo clock made by Marco, and other miscellaneous components that appear in the dreamcatcher poof onto the walls. Henry's dresser materializes next to his bed along with his favourite "magic lamp" that showed various shapes, including ducklings, flowers, and a swan. While she cannot change the general structure of the house of where his closets are, she still makes sure that there is a mirror on the door and more pieces of his artwork from school are there. The last touches Crystal makes to the room is Henry's solar system that hangs above his vanity and a little model airplane that hung near his dresser. The only things that remained from the old room are the weird paper machine and the rocking chair, which Crystal decides might be useful for herself.