I, London Man, did NOT write this story. This was written by Early-Frosts. I am just hosting it because EF was going to cancel their account. EF allowed me to have them on my site so people can read or reread them if they wanted.
I did NOT steal this story. Also, I want to thank Early-Frosts for letting my host their stories.
Chapter 21: Twenty: Dinner with the Potters
Family Matters
Disclaimer: Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling, the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer and all related materials belong to their respective owners. This is non-profit fanfiction.
Warning: This story contains slash.
Chapter Twenty – Dinner with the Potters
Alexander took several deep breaths to calm his nerves as he stood outside of the door that led to the Potters' rooms. As he had suggested, Headmaster Dumbledore had removed his staff to the Hogwarts Express; he claimed that the rooms were needed for VIPs from the various magical governments who would, from time to time, be observing the remainder of the Tournament. Once the rooms were vacated, Headmaster Justinius had remodeled them to accommodate the Potter family and Alexander—who was most vehement about not being included in the "Potter family" category—on weekends.
Officially, Alexander was staying at the New England Academy on weekends for the remainder of the school year so that he could work on various projects he'd been assigned as Student Body President. That was the cover story he was giving everyone who asked. The fact that he was staying in the same room as the Potters was not to become public knowledge under any circumstances. It was, simply put, too dangerous for anyone to know that bit of information.
The New Englander glared at the door for several long minutes, willing the entire situation to go away. Realizing that it wasn't working—and after questioning what good having magic was if it couldn't make all of his problems disappear—he reached up and knocked softly on the door.
The door opened so suddenly that Alexander assumed Lily Potter had been standing on the other side waiting for him. She was beaming at the sight of Alexander and his suitcase.
"Hello," the boy greeted his biological mother awkwardly.
Lily continued to smile ridiculously as she stared at the sixteen-year-old.
"Ummm . . ." Alexander began after a few seconds elapsed. "Am I going to have to spend the entire weekend out in the hallway?"
"Oh!" Lily Potter exclaimed. Clearly, she had failed to realize just how long she'd spent staring at the boy. "Come in, come in. Please."
The Wizard allowed himself to be ushered inside. Lily put her hand on his back to steer him inside. The touch felt . . . wrong somehow. It wasn't fair, but Alexander couldn't help but compare it to the way his real mother touched him.
At least she hadn't moved to hug him as she had during his first meeting with her.
Behind the door was a large round room that was effectively divided into two halves. One half had a large dining area with a table set with six place settings. The other half of the room had a large couch and four matching armchairs set up around a fireplace. Opposite of the entrance, there were three doors lining the far wall. From his conversations with Professor Justinius about the weekend visitations, Alexander knew that each door led to a bedroom: one for the boys, one for Cara, and one for Lily and James. Each bedroom had its own bathroom, which meant that Alexander would be sharing with Charles and Jonathan.
Charles Potter was resting on the couch; his head was visible as the boy used the armrest for a pillow. There were terrible purple splotches on his face that would have made him unrecognizable to someone who hadn't encountered him as many times as Alexander had. Jonathan Potter was sitting with him on the couch by the younger Wizard's feet. Cara and James Potter were sitting in the armchairs off to the right of the sofa by Jonathan.
"Alex!" Charles shouted when he heard the older teen enter. He did his best to sit up and look over the back of the sofa for a better view, but wasn't quite able to muster it.
The Cullen Wizard sat his suitcase down and shrugged off his backpack before rushing over to the redheaded boy. As he moved, he didn't miss the scowl on Cara and James's faces when Charles used the name 'Alex.'
"How are you feeling?" Alexander asked.
"I'm better. Everyone's treating me like I'm a baby, though," Charles sulked.
"I know how you feel. When I was sick last week, Edward physically restrained me to keep me from going to school."
Charles laughed, but no one else did.
Alexander looked up at the rest of the people in the room. "Hi."
"Good to have you here, son," James said as he got out of his chair.
There was another awkward moment as James didn't know whether to hug the newcomer or not. He went back and forth between the two motions for a second before Alexander settled the matter by extending his hand. The Potter patriarch accepted the offered hand and shook it firmly.
Lily had, at some point, shut the door and moved to join the rest of her family. She smiled broadly, looking back and forth between Alexander and the other Potters.
Alexander could read her expression perfectly: 'My family is back together.'
"Why don't we sit and chat a bit before dinner," the Muggleborn Witch suggested.
Wordlessly, Alexander and James sat down, the New Englander taking the free seat closest to Charles.
"So, how was your day?" Lily asked her long lost son.
"Good," he answered. Seeing that everyone was expecting something more substantial, he continued after a momentary pause. "Busy, but good. I have a bunch of work to do for the Tournament."
"Really?" Charles asked in excitement. "Do you get to plan the Third Task?"
"No," the Cullen boy answered. "I do get to plan a few other things, though. Like the awards ceremony and the Valentine's Day Dance. Also, the headmaster has finally given his okay for me to plan a few excursions so that the Hogwarts and Beauxbatons students can get off this blasted island for a bit."
"Good," Jonathan said in relief. "It's so crowded here. The first few weeks weren't so bad, but now it seems like I can't take two steps without running into someone."
"I'm more interested in this Valentine's Day Dance," Lily stated. "I know that Cara will go with that McLaggen boy and Jonathan will take Katie, but what about you? Is there someone special in your life?"
Alexander knew that this question would come sooner or later. Who wouldn't ask about his dating life? Fortunately, he had an answer all prepared. One that he'd rehearsed in front of the mirror just in case he had the kind of difficulty lying to the Potters that he did to other authority figures. "I do, actually. His name is Anthony. Anthony Masen."
What he didn't tell them was that Anthony was Edward's middle name and Masen was his mortal family name.
"I don't know that bloke," Jonathan said aloud.
"He's not a Wizard," Alexander explained.
Eyebrows shot up all around the room. They seemed far more surprised at the idea of him dating a Muggle than dating a boy. Then again, they'd likely already heard about his dance with Cedric Diggory at the Yule Ball, so his sexuality had probably already been deduced.
"That's why I go to all of the school functions with Eric and Marcia."
"Oh, well, uh, that's great," his biological mother stammered out in relief.
Alexander pondered her obvious relief for a moment. He quickly realized that she must assume that, because he was supposedly involved with a mortal Muggle, he had no interest in becoming a vampire.
The green-eyed sixteen-year-old tried to steer the conversation away from his love life. "What about you, Charles? Anyone you're interested in taking to the dance?"
The boy blushed at the question; even his ears turned bright red. "There is this girl, Laura Madley. We might go as friends."
"That's great. Anthony and I were best friends before we became involved with one another." The words left his mouth before he realized that he was moving the conversation back towards dangerous territory.
Alex's statement caused Charles to brush even brighter red.
"So, I've told everyone that I'm staying here because of my work with the Tournament. What have ya'll told people about why you're staying in this room rather than your usual dorms?" the Cullen boy asked Charles, Jonathan, and Cara.
Alexander realized, after he asked the question, that he'd begun to speak a bit like Jasper, using the word 'ya'll.' Clearly, spending so much more time together had started to have an effect on him. He wondered if he would start calling Edward 'darlin'' anytime soon.
"We're staying with Charlie," Jonathan answered. "Everyone thinks that Cara and I are staying in rooms with Charlie to help take care of him on weekends. But Dumbledore asked us to keep a low profile; he doesn't really want anyone to know that our parents are here."
"Makes sense," Alex commented. "So you're all pretty well confined to the room then. Welcome to the life of a commuter."
"Huh?" Charles questioned.
"Most of the commuter students live in Muggle areas. So that no one asks questions about why they don't go to the local schools, the parents always say that they go to boarding school. As a result, they can only be seen by the locals on rare occasions. Otherwise people would start asking questions."
Before the conversation could continue any further, a trio of House Elves 'popped' into the room and began to place food on the table.
"I guess dinner is served, then," Jonathan said as he watched the House Elves do their work.
"I'm just going to go put my suitcase away first," Alex explained before getting up and collecting his things. Jonathan absently directed him to the door on the far left as he made his way towards the dinner table.
The boys' room was a comfortable size for three boys to share. It was a circular room with three canopy beds, three wardrobes, and three writing desks with matching chairs. Alexander was quickly able to figure out that the center bed was his because it was the only one without a trunk with the Hogwarts insignia on it sitting at the foot of the bed.
The Wizard sat his suitcase by his wardrobe and slung his bag over the back of the chair of his writing desk before going out to dinner.
Alexander frowned when he reentered the main room. He had hoped that everyone would have had the good sense to eat in the sitting area so that Charles wouldn't have to get up. Instead, the redheaded fourteen-year-old was sitting at the dinner table, barely able to sit up properly.
Alexander took the only open seat: next to Charles and by the foot of the table. James was sitting at the head of the table, Lily was at the foot, Cara was directly opposite of Charles, and Jonathan was opposite of Alexander.
Once Alex rejoined the group, they wasted no time in beginning to eat.
"How come you didn't come to Hogwarts?" Charles asked after a bit of silent eating.
The question caught everyone off guard, but no one was taken by surprise quite like James Potter, who began to choke on his pumpkin juice.
"Ah, well, I didn't get a Hogwarts acceptance letter," Alex explained slowly, ignoring James's coughing.
"Why not? Don't they have a book of names or something?"
Alex was officially out of his territory. He had no idea how Hogwarts selected its students.
"Well, Charlie," Lily began to explain. "Hogwarts does have a magic book that records the names of every magical child in Britain, but it self-updates as people move in and out of the country. When Ha-Alex," she caught herself midway through the name. After stopping for a moment to recover, she continued. "When Alex moved out of Britain, his name disappeared from the book. Not even the Ministry would have been able to find him at that point."
"But, Dumbledore knew about him," the fourteen-year-old pointed out. "Why didn't he just write his name on an acceptance letter and send it with an owl. It would have found him, right?"
That was a question that Alex could answer. "It's not that easy, Charles. Think about how many people there are in the world with the same name. If I wanted to send you a letter, I would need more than just 'Charles Potter' because there are lots of people out there with that name. I would need something more specific. A general location, for instance. Or the owl needs to be familiar with the person already. That's why, for the majority of correspondence, we just send replies with the same owl that brought the first message.
"I could probably tell a New England owl to find any student from this school because they are all familiar with the students, but they would be hard-pressed to find you unless you've used the owl before. If I don't know where you live, I'd have to send the letter care of Hogwarts. Otherwise, the letter probably wouldn't get to you."
"But couldn't Dumbledore have sent the letter to every 'Harry Potter' in the world?" the redheaded boy pushed further.
Alexander felt a great swell of pity for the boy. He was clearly trying to find someone to blame for him not having had Alexander in his life before now.
"It's illegal," James muttered. "Too many Muggles would have gotten the letter. It would violate the Statute of Secrecy."
Charles looked down at his plate and began to pick at his food once again. "Oh, I guess that makes sense," was all he said in response to the explanation.
There was another long period in which the only sound in the room was that of six individuals eating.
"So, what subjects do you like?" James attempted to start a new conversation.
"Charms is my favorite. I like the subject matter. And Professor Brekenridge is the best," Alex answered the man. "But I pretty well like everything but History of Magic."
"Isn't that what Professor Reynolds teaches?" Jonathan asked.
"Yes. He loves to talk about the great history of Wizardkind and how important it is for us to shun everything Muggle and return to the oldest of traditions," the vampire-raised Wizards said with an overly-dramatic and superior tone.
"You don't like him much?" James questioned with a laugh.
"More like he doesn't like me much. All of my big accomplishments at this school have been things he hates. The first thing I did here that really got me noticed was to hold a protest over the school uniform policy."
"A protest?" Jonathan asked, clearly delighted at the idea of Alexander being a bit of a troublemaker.
"Edward was a little bit of a hippie in the sixties. I'd heard stories about sit-ins and protests, and I wanted to be just like him. So, I staged a big demonstration in the courtyard protesting the uniforms."
"Why?" Lily asked in bewilderment.
"They're expensive," Alexander said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "The only tailor who was authorized to sell the uniform was from an old, Pureblood family. She kept the prices high so that only students from rich families could buy tailored uniforms every year and the students from families with fewer means had to go longer without new robes or, if they had older siblings at the school, they had to use hand-me-downs. When people complained, she'd agree to do special sales during the summer, but then she'd time them so that they happened before the school supply lists went out. Because most Muggleborn students didn't do magical shopping during the summer except to buy school supplies, they still missed out."
"And this Professor Reynolds doesn't like that you protested against the uniforms?" James pressed.
"I protested and got enough support that I was elected Student Body President. After that, I became more vocal about it and managed to convince the Board of Trustees to abandon the policy."
"How did everyone else take it?" the man questioned further.
"The vast majority of students were thrilled; only a handful of students wanted to keep the uniforms. But there were some problems. We had students showing up in Halloween costumes for weeks after the policy was removed. It was pretty funny, but we had to put a stop to it. So we wrote a dress code policy to cover things like skirt length and costumes."
"What else did you do?" Charles asked in excitement, his mouth half-full of bread.
Alex shrugged. "Mostly party planning. The only other major things I did was get some of the professors to let us use Muggle writing instruments instead of parchment and quills. Not all of them agreed, but most of them did."
"And you almost derailed the Triwizard Tournament," his older biological brother pointed out.
Jonathan's statement led to Alexander having to recount the entirety of the debacle from the start of the school year. By the time he was finished, most of the diners had finished eating. Alex, however, had barely started; he'd spent so much of the meal talking, that he had hardly touched his plate.
"So, what about you, Cara? What is your favorite subject?" he tried to draw his silent twin into the conversation.
The redheaded Witch looked at her twin for a moment. "History of Magic," she replied simply.
When Cara refused to elaborate further, Alexander looked to Jonathan.
"Defense Against the Dark Arts," the eldest of the Potter children replied with a confident smile. "The professors have been pretty bad, though. Most of them, anyway. And we've had a different professor each year."
"Seven professors?" Alex asked in amusement.
"Yes. During my first year, DADA was taught by Professor Vance. After she retired, we had Professor Quirrell in my second year. He was possessed by Voldemort and got killed in a duel with Dumbledore."
Both Lily and James were sending Jonathan stern looks from the moment he mentioned the name 'Voldemort.'
"Then there was Gilderoy Lockhart, but he turned out to be a fraud and got himself sacked." Jonathan hesitated for a moment before continuing. "After that it was a Death Eater disguised as a retired Auror named Mad-Eye Moody. He was involved in the last Tournament." The boy got a faraway look as he spoke. "Then the Ministry decided to get involved and assigned Delores Umbridge to the post. Fortunately, someone threw her into a damaged Vanishing Cabinet and it addled her brains for a few weeks, so she either couldn't or wouldn't return. Last year it was a bloke from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement named Thicknesse, but someone tried to curse him and addled his brains permanently. And this year it's an Auror named Dawlish; also assigned by the Ministry."
Alexander chewed on a carrot. He wondered if the 'someone' who had thrown Umbridge into the Vanishing Cabinet was the same 'someone' that had tried to curse Thicknesse. "Any idea why no one can hold the position for more than a year?"
"Voldemort cursed it," Jonathan said with a careless shrug.
"That's enough," Lily snapped in a harsh whisper.
Alex watched as Jonathan, Lily, and James exchanged looks, as though they were having some kind of silent debate.
"What's going on?"
"Nothing," Lily said with a tight smile. She wouldn't meet Alex's eyes and began to fiddle with her napkin nervously.
"That sure was convincing," the Cullen boy said in sarcasm.
"Harry," James admonished the sarcasm with a tired smile.
"Alex," the boy corrected.
"Here we go again," Cara said in irritation, shoving her plate away in disgust.
"Cara, please," Lily begged.
The girl frowned deeply and glared at her mother. "We're talking about nonsense instead of what's really important here. He," the Witch jabbed her finger towards Alexander, "thinks he someone he's not."
"Cara, just stow it!" Jonathan snapped at his sister.
"No," Alex said. "Let her say what she has to say to me. As Emmett always says: be direct."
Cara visibly clenched her jaw and shifted her glare from her mother to her twin. "You're our brother. Our brother. And your name is Harry. You know that, but you don't seem to care. You don't seem to care that you're part of this family. You keep calling yourself 'Alexander Cullen,' but that's not who you are!"
Alex impassively watched as Cara vented at him. Her face went bright red. And, if he wasn't mistaken, he saw her eyes well up a bit.
"If you woke up tomorrow and found out that you were Ron Weasley's sister, how would you react?" Alex asked evenly after his twin was finished.
"What?" she demanded in frustration.
"How would you react if you found out that Ron Weasley was your biological brother? Or better yet, how would you react if you found out that Eric Weathercrest was your brother? If you found out tomorrow that you had these other people out there who lived on the opposite side of an ocean that were your family by blood, what would you do? Would you cut all ties to the Potters? Change your name to whatever it was that they wanted to call you when you were born? Move across the ocean?"
"I-I," Cara tried, but couldn't make anything sensible come out.
"I'm trying here. I honestly am. But whether you like it or not, family is more than blood. Esme Cullen, the woman I call 'Mom,' made me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to make me feel better when I had trouble learning to read. And Rosalie taught me to tie my shoes. Emmett told me bedtime stories and Edward checked under my bed for monsters. And they did the hundred million other things that a family does.
"I'm trying to get to know you because you're the family I was born into. I want to know you. But there is no way in Hell that I'm giving up the family that raised me. I love them and they love me. And if you want anything to do with me, you have to accept that. I am who I am and I'm not going to apologize or change for anyone."
Silence reigned over the dinner table for several long minutes. No one said anything. No one moved. For one moment, Alexander even forgot to breath.
Then, Cara jumped up from her seat, rushed to her room, and slammed the door shut behind her.
Alexander looked up at the rest of the people in the room. Everyone was very uncomfortable and looking down at their mostly-empty plates.
The Cullen boy had had enough of the Potter family for one night, and so softly excused himself to go do paperwork in the boys' room. He was very grateful to Professor Brekenridge for assigning him so much extra work.