Author's Note: As always, a big thank you to my incomparable beta hkvoyage and the artist who sparked my imagination with her stunning art, cc-graphics .

Warning for mentions of gay-bashing (and the death of an OC as a result) and other violence.

Chapter 2: No Son Of Mine

"There's something I need to tell you. Mom. Dad."

Pam, who'd just opened the door to Blaine's bedroom without knocking, backed away before Blaine could see her.

Blaine was addressing his reflection in the mirror, rehearsing a speech he clearly meant to give his parents. Pam had heard the same intro several times already - while Blaine was clearing the table after dinner, while he was fixing his hair in the hall downstairs and while he was helping Pam bring the groceries in.

Pam smiled at Blaine's earnest expression, and closed the door to his room softly so as not to disturb him. She'd come to summon him to dinner, but that could wait five more minutes.

Blaine had been restless for about a week now. Evidently, he had something to get off his chest. Pam wondered what it would be this time. Blaine's speeches, earnest and eloquent, had been his way of communicating with his parents ever since he was five and announced over dinner that he planned on becoming an astronaut. Pam had studiously avoided her husband's gaze to keep from laughing.

After the astronaut phase, Blaine decided he wanted to be a superhero. That was a phase he still hadn't grown out of. Every year, when Halloween rolled around, Blaine roped Pam into helping him design and make a superhero costume, each one more detailed than the last, and unlike Edna Mode, Blaine still very much believed in capes.

The next craze had been music, and Pam had been very impressed when Blaine summed up the twelve benefits of music education as a way to get his father to buy him a piano. He embroidered on the same theme later on to get a violin, and then a guitar.

Blaine had never been this antsy about a speech, though, nor had he rehearsed it so often beforehand. Whatever it was, it would be important. Maybe he'd found himself a girlfriend? There was this girl's choice dance on Friday, and Blaine certainly seemed to look forward to it.

As Pam arrived back in the kitchen, she shrugged it off and peeked through the glass door of the oven to check on the meatloaf. Yes, an extra five minutes wouldn't hurt.

K&B

That Friday night, Pam woke up to the shrill blaring of the house phone and hurried to answer the call. Her insides turned to ice once she understood what was happening, and she was quick to shake her husband awake.

"Eddie! Eddie! We need to get to the hospital! Blaine is hurt!"

Edward Anderson slept like a rock, and it took some time to fully wake him up, but once he did, he dressed faster than she did and made them both a cup of coffee before they left for the hospital.

Pam wrung her hands anxiously all the way there, and hurried to the reception desk while Edward parked the car. They'd been sitting in the emergency department's waiting room for several hours when a young doctor came in asking for the relatives of Blaine Anderson.

"That's us," Pam said. "How is he?"

The doctor shook her hand and Edward's. "He's stable now. Quite the little fighter, that one! It was touch and go for a while, but he pulled through. He's still in a coma, though. Nasty head wound."

Pam gasped.

"So how did this happen?" Edward asked, his hand rubbing soothing circles on her back.

"The police suspect it was gay-bashing. Your son wasn't the only one beaten up. There was a second boy, who didn't even make it to the hospital because of his extensive injuries. Your son was trying to shield him when the police arrived on the scene, and their attackers were shouting homophobic slurs at him."

Edward's jaw set. "My son is not a fag!"

The doctor looked taken aback by his vehemence, but didn't argue.

"Can we see him, please?" Pam pleaded.

The doctor smiled at her. "Of course. Right this way, ma'am."

K&B

Two weeks later, Blaine woke up from his coma. After another month, he left the hospital.

Edward had been weird the whole time. He'd refused to visit Blaine, so Pam had brought Cooper with her instead, whenever her eldest son was home for the weekend. He'd also taken to hiding himself in his study as soon as he came home from work, and had to be coaxed to eat dinner, which he then did without saying two words to Pam, disappearing again the moment he'd cleared his plate. And he'd ordered all sorts of stuff online. Nearly every day, a package arrived for him. His study was full of cardboard boxes and foam peanuts at this point. Their contents remained a mystery.

Now that Blaine was home again, Pam hoped that things would be getting back to normal. She really hoped so.

Blaine hobbled to the sofa on his crutches and sat down with a sigh.

"Now I get to try them, right?" Cooper asked. "I've never walked with crutches before."

"Be my guest," Blaine laughed, and then he laughed some more as Cooper really hammed it up, pulling the most ridiculous faces, mock-fighting and even trying to dance with the crutches.

K&B

When Edward came home from work that Saturday, he froze when he came into the living room and saw his two sons watching television and snacking on popcorn.

"Hey, Dad!" Blaine beamed at him. "I'm back home."

Edward nodded curtly. "So I see. I need to speak with you, Blaine. In private. Come into my study."

Blaine raised an eyebrow, but obediently got up and hobbled towards his father's study. Edward followed, and so did Cooper, but Edward only let Blaine in, closing the door in his eldest son's face and locking it for good measure. Cooper, undeterred, looked through the keyhole and listened intently.

"Cooper…" Pam said hesitantly.

"I need to hear this, and so do you," Cooper retorted. "If I'm not mistaken, our dear father is a big homophobe and is planning on throwing Blaine out of the house for being gay."

Pam sighed. She'd very much feared that would be the case, and now she found herself mentally going through her stock funds and other money investments to decide which ones she could liquidate to help her youngest son out if Edward proved unreasonable.

"Son of a…" Cooper hissed.

"What?" Pam whispered back.

"He's changed the visitor's chair in his study. He's just pushed a button and Blaine is now shackled to the chair. His arms and his neck. Looks like an execution chair now. What the hell?"

Cooper took a run-up and smashed his shoulder into the door to the office. It didn't budge. He tried again, and again, but the solid oak door wouldn't give.

Pam ran to the tiny glass cabinet at the front door holding the spare keys, and took the key to the study out with trembling hands.

Cooper grabbed it from her and rammed the key into the keyhole. The door opened, and Cooper and Pam hurried inside.

Pam gasped, because yes, it did look like an execution chair. And Edward was force-feeding Blaine a purplish liquid that looked like poison and made Blaine go pale as death.

Cooper stormed towards Edward and decked him with one punch, making the rest of the liquid spill onto the carpet. The damage had been done, however. Pam and Cooper could only watch in horror as Blaine went from pale to translucent, and then there seemed to be nothing left of him but dust particles swirling around.

"Blaine!" Pam sobbed.

She heard a dark chuckle. Edward got up from the floor, smirking, and gloated, "Well, that's Blaine done for. That fag is no son of mine. Now all we need to do is fetch the vacuum cleaner to get rid of him forever. I never thought that erasing potion would actually work, but it's been worth every penny."

Cooper let out a strangled cry and threw himself onto his father, punching him until he was unconscious.

Then Cooper turned towards Pam, who stood there frozen in horror. "Quick, there must be a manual here somewhere. Maybe there's some way to undo this."

Pam rummaged through the papers on the desk and found a booklet every bit as purple as the potion had been, with gold lettering on the cover. She rifled through it, and found a chapter on reversing the spell. "Okay, we need to find things that have some of Blaine's essence in them and siphon these dust particles into them, saying these incantations as we do so. We only have half an hour, though."

Edward groaned, and Cooper glared at his father's prone body, and then grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and took him to the cupboard under the stairs, where he locked him up.

With Edward out of the equation, Pam and Cooper hurried to Blaine's room to fetch his favourite bow tie, his first guitar, his diary, his Nightbird costume and his copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Pam took a detour by the kitchen, where she snatched the magnet Blaine had made her in pre-kindergarten off the fridge and grabbed the cookie tin she always kept filled with Blaine's favourite cookies.

Cooper contributed the photos of Blaine he'd been keeping in his wallet and a video of Blaine and him singing and dancing to Hungry Like A Wolf/Rio.

They worked together to imbue these items with what remained of Blaine, and managed to finish with five minutes to spare.

"It says here that the only one who can bring Blaine back to life is his soulmate," Cooper frowned. "But how will we ever find that person?"

Pam snatched the booklet out of Cooper's hands and read the passage he'd just referred to.

"Hmm, apparently, there's a way to find out who it is."

A loud clanging sound came from the cupboard under the stairs, and then loud swearing.

"First things first, though," Pam said. "We need to take all of this someplace Edward won't find it, and I need to call my lawyer to start the divorce proceedings.

K&B

Nearly four years later, Pam met with her realtor to discuss an offer for the house.

"It's quite a bit lower than the asking price, I'm afraid."

The realtor sounded apologetic, but Pam waved that away. "I just want the house to go to a nice family. You know I don't care about the price, Paul."

Pam heard Paul grumble "I care!" under his breath, but didn't let on she'd heard him. "So, tell me about the people who made the offer."

Paul fidgeted a little. "Well, they're… not well-to-do. Which explains the low offer. Mr Hummel told me he really couldn't go any higher without bankrupting himself. He's a small businessman. Owns a garage in Lima. His wife is a nurse at the hospital there. They have two sons, both sixteen years old."

Pam quirked an eyebrow. "Twins?"

"No, no. It's a… what's the term again… a blended family. Mr Hummel's first wife died, and he remarried. Both he and his wife have one son, so… They're stepbrothers."

"I see. Can I ask why they want to buy my house, though? It seems rather far away when their jobs are in Lima. Quite a commute."

Paul sighed. "Well, they've been looking for a house for quite a while now, but nothing ever seemed to fit. Mr and Mrs Hummel are easy enough to please, but their son Kurt finds fault with every house he visits. Until yours, that is. Seems like he took quite the liking to your house. Raved over the kitchen."

The kitchen? That reminded Pam of when they'd used the divination potion to see who Blaine's soulmate was.

Smoke swirled up from the clear liquid they'd just poured into a bowl, and when it cleared, Pam and Cooper saw their kitchen, only, it was strangely empty, and a boy they didn't know was looking around with an awestruck, delighted expression on his face. The vision melted into another: the same boy reaching behind the refrigerator to catch the magnet and photo hidden there, and then smiling down at his find.

Pam had put the house on the market that very same day, but until now, the only people interested had been a couple of rich baby-boomers and developers who wanted to demolish the house and build a bigger one.

Could this be…? Would it finally be…? I must go check the kitchen. See if the magnet's still there.

Pam smiled. "It's a very nice kitchen. I must say I like the sound of this family. Let me think about it, and I'll let you know my decision before the day is out."

Paul, looking a little stunned, nodded eagerly. "Brilliant. Yes. Brilliant."

K&B

The magnet was gone. Pam had checked the other hiding places, and the bowtie was gone, too. The manual to Edward's erasing potion had explained that a soulmate would be drawn to the remnants of his other half, and would cherish them without really knowing why at first.

So this Kurt was Blaine's soulmate, was he?

Pam, who'd scarcely allowed herself to hope, all this time, now felt a spark of confidence settle inside of her.

Yes, she was going to sell her house to the Hummels. Yes. She really didn't care about the lower price if it would bring back her youngest son in the end.