Author's Note: Thanks to Krispy Kreme for commenting on the first chapter! You gave me motivation to write.
Chapter summary: Alex meets The Gang, angsty backgrounds are discovered, and the mop is not amused.
Alex just stood there for a minute, smiling and holding his hand out, before realizing that Aaron was not going to shake it any time soon. He let his hand fall to his side and cleared his throat. The prefect was still scrutinizing him. "So…" Aaron seemed to be shaken out of a reverie. "How about I buy you a drink?"
"That… that would be nice, thanks." Alex followed him through a group of men and women wearing magenta robes and had to jog to keep up with his long strides.
"Who are they?"
"Wizengamot members taking a recess from a court session."
"What's a Wizengamot?"
Aaron sighed. "It's the high wizarding court of law in Britain."
"How- "
"Alex." Aaron suddenly stopped walking and turned to glare at him. "Christ. Talk less. I'm not an encyclopedia."
Alex immediately changed his view of Aaron and demoted him to Burr. No way in hell was he ever going to talk less. Burr could take his opinions and shove them up his -
"We're here." Burr led him into a bar, smaller than the Leaky Cauldron but less sullen. The walls were a fresh green, and the ceiling had been bewitched to look like a clear blue sky. Kind of like the Hogwarts Great Hall, Alex thought, remembering something he had read earlier.
"Are you okay with Butterbeer?"
Alex snapped out of his daze. "Uh, I don't know. Sure."
Burr nodded and stepped up to the register, casually dodging a mop that was twirling itself across the floor. Alex sat down at the table closest to him, content with just watching the mop clean the floor and harass the couple trying to hook up in a corner booth. Back in Nevis, being associated with magic was like publicly declaring that you had contracted the chickenpox. Everyone thought that you were strange, and no one wanted to come near you. That's why, as a kid, Alex's mother had always waited for the sun to set and the neighbors to turn off their lights before teaching him all she could about magic. Here, magic was ingrained into everyone's lives. Such as the self -cleaning mop, which had taken to whacking the legs of the couple until they left the bar.
"If you want to succeed, you need to keep your head down." Burr appeared in front of Alex, handing him his drink. "Smile more. If you run your mouth off, you're going to wind up looking like a fool."
Alex took the drink, a buttery golden caramel looking brew, and was just about to take a sip when the doors banged open and revealed the silhouette of three boys.
"Yo, John Laurens in the house!" Cried the first one, striding up to the counter. "Two John Adams no, make that three!"
"I'll have my usual, mon cherie." Winked the second boy, flipping his fluffy hair over his shoulder.
"Butterbeer, thanks," said the third, "and tell your mother I might come around again."
The barista, a blond bespectacled boy called Matt according to his name tag, flushed a bright red. He could only stand there and gape for a second before blinking and getting straight to work.
"A perfect example." said Burr, gesturing to the trio of rowdy friends.
"Hey, if it isn't the prodigy of Hogwarts!"
"That's Aaron Burr to you, Laurens."
The boy who had spoken raised his eyebrows. "Well then, Aaron Burr, sir, I offer my sincerest apologies for bothering you and your…" his eyes landed on Alex, who felt a sudden need to crawl under the table, "friend."
"He's an acquaintance," Burr replied stiffly, "we've only just met today."
Alex whistled. "That's cold. And here I thought we were meant to be!"
The group cackled, and Alex couldn't help but beam.
Burr threw his hands into the air. "I don't even know why I try to be nice anymore." He then stomped away, throwing the door open with a swish of his robes.
"Don't mind him," said 'Laurens', who slid into the seat across from Alex, "he's just a closeted drama queen." Alex got a closer look at the boy. He was the shortest in the group, with long frizzy hair tied up into a ponytail. "I'm John, by the way. That one," he pointed to his broad -shouldered friend, who saluted Alex, " is Hercules. Yes, like the Greek guy. No, he doesn't like it when people point it out. Yes, he is secretly a big cuddly teddy bear majoring in fashion design who wouldn't hurt a fly."
"Unless you touch my knitting needles," Hercules corrected, cracking his knuckles for emphasis, "then shit gets personal."
"You should have seen what happened to Laf when he mistook them for chopsticks."
"In my defense, they were lying on the table on Takeout Day, and we were having Chinese!" Exclaimed Laf defensively. "By the way, I'm- "
"Marie- Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette." John and Hercules chimed in, both trying(and failing) to imitate Lafayette's accent.
Lafayette rolled his eyes. "You can just call me Lafayette or Laf. Also, Marquis isn't technically a part of my name." Alex sat there for a moment, trying to process everything.
"Hey, are you okay?" John snapped his fingers in front of Alex's face. "Laf, I think we broke him. Oi, say something!"
"You have a lot of freckles." Alex blurted. He then flushed red. Hercules and Lafayette gave each other a knowing look, and John just smiled.
"Thanks, I guess."
It was true though. Freckles adorned John's skin like stars in the night sky. Alex wondered just how far those freckles went, and then smacked himself in his head. Wonderful. Three minutes into this friendship and he was already forming a crush on him.
Alex cleared his throat, nodded, then paused. "Wait, Lafayette, you're a marquis? Like, a nobleman?"
Said nobleman sighed. "Yes, but I'd rather you didn't go around telling every witch and wizard you meet. It's mostly just a title nowadays, passed down by my father and his father and his mother and so on."
"Basically, Laf here doesn't like gold diggers." Hercules said, stealing a sip of John's Sam Adams.
"Hey! Get your own drink!" John slapped the back of his head, and Hercules choked, spilling half of the beer down his chin.
"John, you little- you just ruined my new tie! It took weeks to find the right materials, and the stitch count, John, I swear to Merlin I will -"
"Okay, Herc, why don't we calm down? Let's go to the bathroom, I'm sure we'll be able to charm it off, non? Besides, you'll have time to kill him later, maybe when we're passing by Knockturn Alley. It's easier to get away with those kinds of things there."
"Thanks, Laf."
Hercules shot one last glare at John before being ushered away by Lafayette. John only chuckled, watching them disappear behind the bathroom's swinging door, before turning back to Alex. "So." Alex smiled sheepishly, suddenly aware of how alone they were. The mop had ushered out another amorous couple, the old wizard in the corner had finally woken up and shuffled away, and the barista, Matt, had retired to the kitchen behind the bar. The only other person left was a hiccuping goblin, and Alex supposed that it wasn't even technically a person.
"So," He said back.
"Who are you?" Alex was taken aback by his blunt tone.
"What?"
"I mean, you haven't even told me your name." John observed, narrowing his eyes. "For all I know you could be an Azkaban escapee with a bad case of Dragon Pox."
"If I had Dragon Pox, I would be green and spewing sparks from my nose," Alex pointed out.
"True." John nodded thoughtfully. "But that doesn't mean you can't be a class A criminal."
Alex laughed. "Okay, okay. I'm Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton." He paused expectantly, but John didn't seem to get the reference. "I was born in Nevis, a small island in the Caribbean, and I moved to the New York City with a cousin when I was ten." He stopped there, deciding not to tell John about how one morning he had woken up and found Peter hanging from the rafters, how he had cried for hours before calling the police, how they had done nothing but take him away from his brother, how he had lived the next five years in that miserable orphanage.
"You okay?" John asked, breaking Alex away from his thoughts. He sounded concerned.
"Yeah, sorry. So, a couple of months ago, a letter arrived in the mail from some company called American Exchange Program." Well, the letter had arrived for Miss Stevens. Alex had had to sneak into her office after lights out to get the letter. "At first I thought it was a joke, you know?" The letter had been so specific, all the way down to the number of beds away he was from the window, so it was natural to think that it was just another tasteless prank from one of the other kids. "But then I saw the opportunity and I took it, you know? It was like a dream come true when I got accepted a weeks later. They provided everything, including train and airplane tickets."
"Air - what?"
"Um, airplane?"
John's face lit up. "Oh, I know those! I used to see them all the time flying over our neighborhood back in the States. They're like really big broomsticks, but with enough room for twenty people, right?"
Alex stared at him for a second, looking for any sign of joking in John's eyes. John's green, almost hazel eyes that seemed to radiate happiness itself. Alex realised a little too late that it wasn't appropriate to stare for that long into someone's eyes. "Uh… not exactly. But anyways, my life basically did a one -eighty degree turn in the last two months."
John sat back in his chair and blew a stray strand of curly hair away from his face. "Wow. Sounds like one of those witch- flick Knut- novels. You're the once ordinary witch who experiences a life changing event and suddenly discovers, like, a hidden power or secret royal bloodline or something. Now all you need is a shining knight in armor, maybe two who battle it out for your affections." John suddenly adopted a gallant demeanor and stood up. "Oh, Alexander, I have had many a restless night ever since you graced my life with your beautiful eyes. Many a restless night, just thinking about you." He winked, and Alex suddenly felt as if the temperature of the room rose a couple of degrees. They stared at each other for what seemed like forever, before dissolving into a fit of laughter. The mop in the corner suddenly perked up.
"Well," John said, calming down enough to speak, "my background is textbook compared to yours. I'm also an exchange student, but I started here the year I turned eleven. My family's from South Carolina. My dad runs a... trade and farming company, I guess you could say. We're kind of old money." He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I'm not exactly close to my family. We have very different views on a lot of things. My dad, uh, well, when I said trade, I meant elves. House elves. It's not illegal," John quickly explained at the look on Alex's face, " it's only an exchanging ground. That makes it sound horrible, and I guess it is. A lot of folks, usually old families that get tired of their elves, send them to us my dad's company, I mean. Laurens and Oswald. It's one of the biggest elf trading companies in the world, and it's not something I'm proud of. Their disciplinary and treatment towards them... I really hate it."
"Oh," Alex breathed, not sure what to say.
John laughed bitterly. "Yeah. When I was nine, as a birthday present, he took me to one of the grounds. My dad was expecting me to be happy, or excited, or something. So when I burst into tears when he told me that it would be mine someday, he was, well, disappointed would be an understatement. It didn't exactly help that I joined S.P.E.W., the Elfish Welfare club at Hogwarts, my first year there. And to top it all off, I chose that very same year to come out to them. Like I said, they're an old family dating back to the Revolutionary War so it wasn't the best Christmas gift I had given to them." John looked at Alex tentatively.
"I... I'm really sorry. I know that doesn't change anything, but, I'm really, really sorry you had to go through that." John let out a breath that Alex didn't know he had been holding.
"That means a lot. Thanks, Alex."
Alex nodded, and the mood seemed to shift a little. He realised that he hadn't even tried any of the drink that Burr had bought for him, and raised the glass to his lips. "Hey, maybe later do wanna FUCK!"
John chuckled. "You could at least buy me dinner first, Alexander, but if you're that eager I'm sure I can ignore the Three Dates Rule just this once."
Alex ignored the way his heart jumped at the way John said his name and instead focused on the beautiful, heavenly golden drink made by singing angels and love. "No, I mean this drink! Uh, Buttery Beard or whatever it's called! It's," Alex paused to take another gulp, "amazing!"
John gave him a strange look. "You've never had Butterbeer before? Christ, Alex, did you live on a remote island for the majority of your life?"
"Yes."
"I guess I should have expected that."
Just then, Hercules and Lafayette came back from the bathroom, with Hercules looking decidedly less murderous.
"John, don't you dare think that I'm going to forget this any time soon. I will wait until you let down your guard, and then I'll -"
"Alex has never had Butterbeer before." Instantly, the tie was forgotten.
"Merde, Alex, what rock have you been living under?"
"Dude, that's… kind of really pathetic!"
"Hey! Just because I haven't had this perfect, flawless, caramel beauty- okay, I get your point. I've missed out on a lot of things in the Wizarding world."
"It's decided then," Lafayette announced, "you are now a part of our squad. You have missed some major things in life, and it is up to us three, your holy saviors," Alex rolled his eyes at this, "to make your less awesome life a little more awesome."
Two minutes later, the gang was chased, laughing, out of the pub by a very annoyed looking mop- or at least the closest an inanimate object could be to looking annoyed- that had decided that their impromptu party had been too rowdy for its taste. It was worth it.
Author's Note: Please feel free to comment and tell me how I'm doing!