The pastor had been delighted to announce Mr. and Mrs. Tanner and Diana Howe. All in attendance were overjoyed to receive them.
Two years prior...
Tanner Lindsay Howe seemed like a nice enough guy, but he was just so "Normal." Nobody really knew how Diana had found him or what she saw in him. She had just sort of brought him over one day when everybody (except Kelly) was home and introduced him. They had been dating about a year at the time.
He was an accountant. It turned out he was the controller for one of the plants in a medium sized industrial adhesives company and had set his sights on transferring to Corporate in the next two years. It was pretty clear that he didn't fully understand what the company really made - but that's sort of typical in his line of work.
Kelly was on assignment in North Africa at the time and heard about it via Catherine. He thought it was ironic that this man actually *worked* for the company which maintained his cover identity. "James Scott" was one of their Middle Eastern and African regional international sales representatives. He was pretty sure "James" had never met Tanner before, but "James" also didn't spend much time in their plants.
Everybody except Diana thought it was completely strange that she was taken by a man with *no* powers at all. His "powers" were a moderate amount of charisma, being better than average at reading people for an accountant, and being *EXTREMELY* adept at working through the maze of "The books" at a large corporation. His abilities and work ethic had combined to fuel his promotion within the company.
His own personal life was just as unremarkable. He had a friendly brown 3-year old lab mix dog, wore comfortable brown penny loafers, drove a white hybrid Toyota Camry, liked playing penny poker and the monthly round of golf with his college Accounting friends, and lived in a smallish but comfortable apartment. All of his past girlfriends had been school teachers or nurses.
He was also thrifty to a fault with a fully funded 401k and enough savings to buy his first house. His one "Guilty pleasure" was playing in the stock market - he had used his Accounting and statistical skills to amass a small fortune which of course he quickly reinvested in S&P 500 Index funds and 10-year Treasuries.
The more they got to know him, the stranger things became. Which started to relieve them. He did in fact know about "Grimms" and he knew about "Hexenbiests" and "Zauberbiests" but it seemed more theoretical than anything else. As you might expect - "the girls" got ahold of him and sensed him to see if there was anything going on. They were moderately surprised to find "The Blood of a Grimm" AND Zauberbiest blood in him, but he had neither manifestation of anything nor interest in finding out.
They talked about family - both of his parents had passed on. His father a year after he graduated college and his mother last year. He related the names. Nick and Adalind decided the names were familiar and needed to investigate.
Nick found his mother's name in his Grimm book. He investigated and found that yes - she had been a Grimm but thought it was such an onerous and horrible curse that she had left her family and her native Nebraska forever. She had concealed her eyes for years to avoid being detected.
Adalind *KNEW* she knew his Howe family name. Elizabeth Howe had been one of the witches executed in Salem. Yes - his family was THAT Howe. His father had been born the only son of a Hexenbiest/Zauberbiest family. He somehow never inherited *any* powers or the ability to wogue though both of his sisters were Hexenbiests. The family had disavowed him in his late teens and he had gone off to pursue a life of fame and fortune as an accountant at a local bank outside Cleveland, Ohio. Tanner had never know any of that.
His mother had secretly reached out to one of her husband's sisters to destroy her powers when Tanner was an infant. Otherwise they never had any other contact with either of their families. The two had prayed ceaselessly that their son would be free of their family curses and were overjoyed to find he was. Tanner had never known any of that either.
Interestingly the one thing he has inherited besides blood and lots of recessive genes from his parents was the ability to see Wesen and Grimms. His eyes just never "Grimmed" - so Wesen never became alarmed. He had been born this way and so just assumed everybody else saw everything exactly the same way as he did. His parents had asked if he ever saw people "change into monsters?" Of course not... But nobody followed up with the rest... It was just normal to see many people's faces to change and occasionally he would meet somebody like Kelly, Chuck, or Diana's Dad with black holes for eyes.
Diana, Kelly, Catherine, and Chuck had all been born this way as well - they had seen Wesen and Grimms from birth. It had taken Nick and Adalind quite a while to train their kids to draw Dad with blue eyes instead of giant black holes. They had simply never seen their father any other way and so drawing Dad with blue eyes like Mom's made no sense. The dismaying part had been the very first mornings Kelly and Chuck had woken up, looked in the mirror, and their eyes were full black like Dad's.. They knew what it meant and were happy to finally "Be Grimms" but they were also unhappy that nearly every single person they knew was about to freak out and try to kill them.
The only thing Tanner knew about his family was that his parents had lived a happy life as a banker married to an elementary school teacher in a small town outside Cleveland and had one son relatively late in life. Tanner was born when his father was 48 and his mother was 46
The one distinct memory of his father was Halloween. The man would sit outside in a lawn chair silently staring into the Halloween night sky all night long. This was the only time he had ever seen his father cry. The only explanation his father would offer is that this brought back fond memories of mother.
But God has a sense of humor and now "normal" Tanner was married to an actual princess! Not only that, he was married into the Renard and Burkhart families. Not only that, he was married to Diana!