It was a very concerned Augustus Longbottom who was standing outside 189 Carlyle Avenue, checking the postcard for the tenth time to see if she had the right address. The house itself wasn't much to look at; a grey Victorian style house in a neighborhood of similar houses, but it wasn't anything like she thought. Knowing Stephan, the "house" might've been something strangely shaped, weirdly placed, cylindrical mansion in the middle of a city.
Deciding that it was the right address, she walked up to the door, only for it to open before she could knock. A note floated down from behind the space above the doorway and bopped her on the nose.
That was a bit more in character.
The note said that he wasn't home, but that he should be home sometime before six o'clock. It also told her that some of his roommates might be back before him and that all of their doors should be closed. She was free to make herself a snack or roam the rest of the house, but they would appreciate it if she "didn't encroach upon their personal spaces."
A very Stephan thing to say.
Deciding not to wait around, she walked in and closed the door behind her.
The house seemed a fair bit larger on the inside than she'd thought it would, and the walls were littered with drawings and paintings, all of the same nine or ten people; all men of varying ages and ethnicities and one girl—a daughter maybe, with tanned skin, long dirty-blonde hair and large, electric blue eyes and thick-rimmed glasses. There were lots of each man, and the canvases on which they were painted came in an assortment of sizes and shapes. The next room was a bit larger with two sofas, scattered armchairs, and an upright piano up against the wall across from the large fireplace. A pair of strange swinging doors led to the unusually large kitchen and attached dining room with a large wooden table and a dozen mismatched chairs. Odd sculptures stood as centerpieces holding dice and decks of cards, and bookshelves covered the back wall. A hallway off of that lead past the open door of a bathroom, two closed doors, and into what seemed like a general art room, with another small piano, a few guitars, and an assortment of other instruments, some of which she didn't recognize. After that, she found an open door to a basement that appeared to have been made into a library. Back up the stairs to the second story, she found more closed doors, and one open one to what looked like Stephan's room. It was actually a bit like his room back at the manor; bed in one corner, a desk stacked with books, a trunk at the end of the bed, broom on a pair of hooks above the desk.
Not wanting to snoop too much, she went back downstairs to look a bit more closely at the paintings. She actually found an older one with all of the names below each person; the red headed one was Geoffrey, the pair of tall, dark haired twins were Michael and Gabriel, the African looking man was Richard, the skinny blond was Felix, the tall blond, Dominique, the shorter brunet was Jesse, the longer haired one was Joe, and the girl was Alina.
Suddenly, Augusta heard the front door close behind her and a girl's voice calling out, "Felix! I need a gosling—oh hello!" Alina stopped when she saw her and Augusta quickly looked her over.
She wore a sleeveless, baggy white button-down shirt tucked into a pair of short denim shorts. Her glasses were crooked and her hair was piled haphazardly on top of her head by several pencils and—was that a wand? After blinking a few times, Alina hung an oversized wool cardigan on a hook, seemingly randomly placed on the cluttered walls, hanging a canvas book bag there as well, only pulling out a leather notebook.
"Would you like something to eat?" The girl asked, already clumsily stumbling toward the kitchen, "'Cause I certainly would."
Augusta followed, if only to stop the girl from tripping over her feet.
Thankfully, Alina was a bit more graceful in the kitchen; otherwise, Augusta didn't know what she would've done. She was sort of used to it already, given Neville, but rather than being inherently clumsy, as Neville was, she seemed to be able to turn it off. She was making some sort of cookie, practically dancing as she did, her mouth going a mile per minute. She went on about cookies which led to cakes, rakes, leaves, pets, potions—wait…
"I'm sorry, you're a witch?" Augusta interrupted, immediately berating herself.
"Yeah, we all are—magic, that is, though I'm the only witch around here." The girl put the cookies in the oven, cursed, and pulled them back out. "I forgot to turn the thing on!"
"How old are you?"
"I am four thousand fifteen days nine hours twelve minutes and forty-eight seconds old." She deadpanned.
"What—"
"That's eleven years today, if that confused you, which, judging by the expression, it did."
"Are you going to Hogwarts this year?" Augusta pried.
"Maybe—"
"GOOD LORD THIS GOOSE IS LARGE!" Came a voice from somewhere in the house.
"THAT WAS EASILY THE LATEST REACTION FELIX!" Alina put the cookies in the now heated oven.
"No, no, no! You're supposed to answer; GO—oh hello, you must be Ms. Longbottom!" The skinny blond (Felix maybe?) burst into the room while somehow simultaneously leaning heavily on a carved wooden cane, his expressions ranging from exasperated to charming in under a second. "I'm Felix, the American. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"And you as well." Augusta answered, more out of habit than anything else.
The young man in front of her was looking a bit bedraggled, wearing only a bathrobe and a pair of wrinkled grey sweats. His hair was stuck up in all directions, but he looked, despite the clothes and cane, quite regal. Of course, it only lasted a moment before the young man slouched again and hobbled over to Alina with surprising speed.
"Whatcha making, sis?" He looked over her shoulder, exaggerating his movements.
She playfully elbowed his stomach. "Why don't you guess?"
"Mmm…" He moved back around the island to sit beside Augusta. "Plum casserole?"
"Ew! Is that a thing?" Alina asked, disgusted.
The pair spent quite a while bickering, not seeming too concerned that she was there. That didn't matter too much however, as she did have quite a lot to think about. The relationship between the ten who lived here, for example, and how they related to her son concerned her. Just from the two she'd met so far, this bunch already seemed a bit eccentric. Strange, actually, was a better word. The more she heard, the more confused she was as to why Stephan had asked her to come in the first place. What was the point? She hadn't seen her son in fifteen years, though considering the fact that he didn't seem to be going through a mental breakdown due to the loss of his father.
Now, fifteen years later, he had nine housemates, all degrees of strange considering—well—him.
"So, what have you done today, school?" Felix asked, changing the subject completely.
"It's Saturday, you freak. I went to work with Geoff today." She was now on the third batch of cookies but considering the fact that the three of them had been munching on them for the past hour, there was really only enough to almost make up two.
"Ooh, he let you? What did he do, make you brush the horses or something?"
"Actually, I made my own knife—see," she pulled a small, silver knife from her back pocket. "He wouldn't let me do anything bigger."
Augusta tried to ask where exactly this Geoff worked, but what sounded like the front door chose that moment to bang open.
"HONEY, I'M HOME?" Bellowed several voices in unison, a few of them harmonizing on the last note.
"YOU ARE ALL TERRIBLE PEOPLE I'M LEAVING." Felix angrily got up and hobbled past the men in the kitchen doorway, much to the amusement of Alina and confusion of Augusta.
"Hello madam!" The young red-headed man was the first to notice her, immediately drawing the attention of all the others who'd been greeting Alina. "You must be Steph's mum. I'm Geoff, and this is Mike, Gabe, Richey, Dom, and Joe. You seem to have met Felix and Al already, and Steph and Jess will be here tonight for the party."
"Jess is coming? I thought he wasn't coming back for weeks!" Alina exclaimed.
"He is, he and Kate are just stopping in here for your party before they're off again." One of the twins replied, grinning.
The other finished, "He might even bring her over tonight."
Alina looked at the remaining two for confirmation, and they nodded, immediately setting in motion a wave of excited hugs and badly held back squeaks. She even hugged Augusta, before she realized what she was doing and ran off.
Augusta blinked; the men chuckled and, as if this happened a lot, immediately took over the kitchen. She then noticed that at least half of them were holding grocery bags which she soon discovered held ingredients for a variety of different dishes. The twins took some things outside, and when asked, declared "shish kebabs," whatever that meant. This was something she had never experienced before.
Generally, in wizarding society, if any cooking was done by hand, it was done either by witches or house elves, very rarely did any wizards involve themselves in anything even remotely domestic, yet here, a grand total of seven wizards (Felix had returned) had busied themselves with cooking and cleaning and they did it all without magic. Did Stephan do things like this also?
Is that why he'd called her here?
They'd been corresponding practically since he left. Usually it was just little notes, the occasional letter with a currant picture enclosed to show that he was still alive, but that didn't change the fact that she hadn't seen him in over a decade. Was this just some grand gesture to show that he was safe, that he was in good hands? But she didn't know anything about these people; he'd never even mentioned them…
Oh.
Yes, he had.
Always in passing, but he had talked about them—how Alina's football team had a match that Saturday, how exasperated something he'd done had made Felix and Richard, how Dominique was "being French" whatever that meant, how Joe refused to cut his hair, so Geoff had done a body-bind and done it himself (and Joe had loved it)—Stephan had been mentioning these people for years! She'd just never even acknowledged it or bothered to ask who they were, assuming they were friends of his.
"You look like you've just had an epiphany." Alina was back now, armed with a pad of paper and a small tub of art supplies, already sketching out the scene in the kitchen.
"Did you paint all of those?" Augusta blurted. She had so many questions, that one just resurfaced first.
"I did."
"Why?" No that wasn't right. "Why not just use a camera? And if you're the one painting them all, why not make them move?"
Alina seemed to study her for a moment. "Have you ever heard of a photographic memory?"
"Excuse me?"
"To have a photographic memory is, basically, to have instant recall of anything you've ever seen. I've got one, which means that I remember every moment I've ever had with these idiots, good, bad, sad, all of it. I like to draw, so whenever I see something I want them to remember, I draw it, paint it, carve it, whatever. Fun for me, and they like to see how I see things. Sometimes if someone takes a picture I like of all of us, I'll draw what I saw happening the moment before it was taken, or I'll draw what happens in my dreams—I'll draw just about anything, a lot of which no one will ever see.
"As for the 'not moving' part? I'm not overly fond of doing magic, and even if I was, we all have muggle friends who come over and we don't tend to think about what they might find. If any witch or wizard comes over, they don't realize what we are until we want them to. It's a tactical advantage, and a precaution, and mostly Felix's idea. He's one of the brains of the bunch, that's why he tries to insist on the goose things. To know if something's wrong."
"And they never listen!" Felix complained, sounding somewhat resigned.
"It's a good idea mate," Geoffrey seemed to be the mediator of the strange group, "but yelling about geese every time we walk in is a bit suspicious."
"He does have a point," Richard, the tall one who reminded Augusta vaguely of Kingsley Shacklebolt, spoke up for the first time. "Besides, I don't there's any way for a household consisting of nine men and a girl to not look suspicious. Add in the fact that we drive around town in a large, black van and we'd look like a bunch of kidnappers if you didn't come and go as you pleased."
"How did this situation come about?" Augusta finally asked.
They all looked to Richard, who haphazardly continued to make pancakes as he told the story.
"I met Stephan first. My brother introduced us when we were at Hogwarts and we were kind of acquaintances for a while. After a while, he asked me to help him get his grades up, I asked him to help me get a date with Melanie Clearwater, thus began our accidental-sort-of-friendship. After his father died, he decided he wanted to just get away from it all. We were both going to leave behind family, but at the time, we didn't care too much.
"Geoffrey here, was a fourth year who overheard us talking and wanted to come along. He kind of halfway blackmailed us by telling us he was a muggleborn and knew how to function in regular society, unlike us purebloods who didn't really have a chance. So we brought him with us, kind of grudgingly at first, but it quickly became apparent that he would be invaluable. After a while, we ended up down Australia and ran into Joe. Someone had let slip that he was a wizard, and he was trying to hide, so we took him and skipped the country. We met the twins when they saved us from a nest of vampires in Vienna—and still haven't told us why they were in Austria by the way—and they came with us to France. Dominique convinced some of the locals that they were hallucinating when they saw the twins hex him for following us.
"About that time, we all decided to move to America and just try to go our separate ways. Before we could do that, we found Jesse and Felix trying to take care of Alina who was barely an infant at the time. It was a kind of unanimous decision that we made to help them out. We bought this house, got jobs, and we've been here ever since. The only reason that Jesse's hasn't been around is because his girlfriend of eight years lives a few hours away and he's gone to ask her to marry him."
By the end of the story, Augusta's mouth was hanging open. Apparently this was the usual reaction, because none of them had stopped what they were doing. When she got her thoughts together, she was asking questions, and a lot of them. Are you Kingsley's brother (yes), where did Stephan work (he was the owner of a pet store and played piano at restaurants around the city), when did Stephan learn to play piano (from Jess, whose gigs he was taking over for a few days, which was also the reason he was coming home late), and finally, if he was happy (yes!).
Curiosity sated for the moment, she absentmindedly munched on another cookie, mulling over the information she'd received. The more she heard, the more questions she had. The explanation she'd heard was, while on the surface detailed, actually incredibly vague. Knowing the Shacklebolts personally, she knew that they were a very private bunch, never letting any sort of scandal out in the open before it'd long since been resolved. Maybe that was why they'd all looked to him to give the explanation; they knew he wouldn't give anything away.
But what was it that they were hiding?
She decided not to pry too much. He'd been with them for so long that she knew that she'd have to win the favor of this family he'd built himself in order to have any sort of relationship with him at all.
It was seven o'clock before Jesse and Kate showed up, and another two hours before an exhausted Stephan finally walked through the door. As soon as he saw her he grinned and gave her the biggest hug she'd ever gotten—from anyone, including Molly Weasley. Despite the greeting however, his attention was almost entirely focused on Alina, it was her birthday after all.
Sitting at that huge table with these people was unlike anything she'd ever experienced. Their conversation could go in any direction, and dinner lasted from the time it was finished until nobody was hungry. Apparently none of them ever ate lunch, unless they woke up early to make it for themselves, so dinner was when they satisfied their need for food. According to Alina, they usually had two or three meals like this a week, only making another when all of the food from before was eaten. It was the only food schedule that could feasibly work for ten-now eleven people who all worked different jobs with different schedules—but they only ate altogether like this on birthdays and holidays.
After everyone (even Augusta) helped pack all of the food away, everyone gathered in the living room with the couches and fireplace. Everyone stacked their presents all around Alina, who sat cross-legged in the large armchair facing the rest of them on the couches, barring Felix, who sat next to her and handed her the gifts, decidedly in order from largest to smallest, followed by the one that everyone pitched in to get.
The first was a handmade wooden trunk from Geoffrey, wrapped entirely in the comic pages from newspapers, and very carefully so that she could read them all, like he apparently did every year. Next were a cello and a violin, once again handmade, but from the twins, with several extra sets of strings and a pair of bows each, then several different sketchbooks of varying sizes, and several replacements for paintbrushes she'd worn out that year from Richard. Along with that came from Stephan a carrying case for all of her art supplies, again handmade, with different compartments for different supplies, and one enchanted to hold whatever she put in, from books to (theoretically) a piano. They had to stop her from testing that theory to receive her gift from Joe, she got a tricorn hat, oddly enough, and a large, heavily ruffled white shirt. This odd combination made her incredibly excited for a reason that was lost on everyone but the Aussie, who just smirked. Dominique had given her several odd instruments, none of which any of them but Jesse and Alina had recognized, Felix had given her four pairs of plain white canvas slip-on shoes, and Jesse and his girlfriend-now-fiancée, had given three plain silver rings, a large hoop earring and a binder filled halfway with graphing paper.
Now was for the group gift, but before they gave it to her, Stephan asked, "Mother, can I have a word?"
Curious, Augusta followed him across the hall to the music room, where he closed the door behind him.
"Firstly, I swear to you that I planned to ask you this before we got to the gifts, but as that did not work out well, as I didn't actually know I would be home late, I want you to know that you can absolutely decline this request if you feel it unreasonable. Now, as you've hopefully gathered by now, Alina is eleven this year. I've already arranged with Dumbledore for her to go to Hogwarts, and the ten of us plan to move to Brittan for the duration of her time at school. However, we haven't quite figured out where we'll be moving, which will naturally depend on where we get jobs and things like that, but would it be at all possible for us to stay on one of the properties until we can figure out a more permanent location?"
On any other day, even a few hours before then, this request would've made Augusta absolutely furious. This boy hadn't visited in fifteen years, and here he wanted to use one of the family properties?
But the circumstances had changed. He now had a family (of sorts) and he was only doing what was best by them. He had asked her to talk, face to face, in order to ask this question, and asked away from the others so that she could refuse without feeling too guilty, and from the looks the others had given him, they didn't know he was asking. In the process, he'd also given her access to his life, what he could, without violating his housemates' privacy, probably so she could see just what she would be getting herself into if she did decide to help him, and if she didn't, she at least knew where he'd been all this time.
The situation wasn't ideal, but he'd done what he could to be fair, to everyone, and she could see no fault in that.
"Alright."
He had been incredibly nervous asking her this, that she could plainly see, but his entire face lit up when he heard her answer.
"Really?"
"Why not; it's just Neville and I in the old place now, and it would be a shame for him to never know his uncles." She said it offhandedly, but if possible, he looked even happier at her use of the plural. She could tell that she'd be seeing a lot more of this bunch, even after they moved out. As Augusta found herself swept into the arms of her prodigal son, she felt all of the worry he'd caused her these last years just slip away.
After a long moment, he let her go and quickly schooled his expression, the way she'd taught him growing up, and reopened the doors.
They found Alina, who'd let her long hair out of it's bun and donned the tricorn hat, dancing crazily with Geoffrey to Jesse's piano playing. After the song ended, they bowed, and noticing Augusta and Stephan, sat back down.
"Ready now Steph?" Asked one of the twins, only playfully mocking.
"Of course! Give it over Felix!"
Alina's eyes widened when she saw the gift one of them had disillusioned. It was a book bag, much like the one she already had, but with the Hogwarts crest embroidered on the strap. Her eyes widened and she grinned.
"You mean it?" Her eyes flickered from face to face, looking for something.
"Look inside." Richard replied, trying to hold back a smile.
Her grin stretched from ear to ear as she started pulling out a variety of objects, stacking them haphazardly around her. Textbooks, some old, some new, several quills with different tips, ink of different colours, rolls of parchment, and finally; the letter. The second she saw it, she launched herself into the nearest person, in this case, Felix. She made her way around the room, hugging and thanking everybody, even Augusta and Kate, before sitting down to organize everything. Augusta watched her fondly, in spite of herself, but still noticed when Richard pulled Stephan aside to see what they were talking about before. She smiled.
This was going to be bloody stressful.