It was a rainy afternoon in Forks, Washington.

Doctor Carlisle Cullen stood in front of his elegant full-length mirror, dissatisfied. After much careful deliberation and closet-searching, he was now wearing tasteful khaki trousers, an immaculate white button-down shirt, and a powder-blue cashmere sweater – modest, but tight enough to hint at his modest but rock-hard vampire pecs. He frowned at his reflection, and decided to undo his top button, just as a hint. He sighed in frustration. Carlisle prided himself on his effortlessly sophisticated and classically masculine fashion sense. He knew just what to wear for any occasion, yet meeting with a wizard, and not just any wizard, but Gandalf the Grey, was something unprecedented. What does one wear to meet a man who looks so disarmingly dashing in just a grey sack? It's not fair! Carlisle thought.

"Carlisle?" Doctor Carlisle Cullen's inner monologue was, once again, interrupted by his wife, Esme Cullen, née Platt. "Are you still getting dressed in there?"

Carlisle reluctantly tore himself away from his still-unsatisfying reflection to meet her in the hallway. "I'm done now," he said, with a twinge of regret. "Are you sure you want to say?"

"Of course I do," Esme laughed. "Why would I pass up the chance to meet with a revered wizard seeking our help?"

"Oh, it's just that, well, we don't know if this Gandalf is who he says he is. What if he's conning us? I'd hate to endanger you. Or, besides, I feel that he and I have already established something of a rapport. You know, man-to-man. It might go over your head a little bit, it might be terribly boring."

"I think I'm up to the challenge," Esme said, smiling. "But come on, he should be arriving soon, we should be downstairs to receive him."

Carlisle followed his eternally-young vampire wife, sighing deeply. The truth, though even he couldn't fully explain it, was that he wanted the wizard all to himself. After nearly a century of sharing everything with Esme, was it too much to ask for just a little independence? Regretfully, he re-buttoned his top button.

He lightly descending his elegant marble and steel stairway. Seeing the esteemed yet raggedy wizard in his tasteful entrance hall, he could hardly suppress a grin. He had chosen this house for its clean modern lines and symmetry - and though he refuted the supposedly typical vampyric penchant to crypt-living, this was the sort of place he should like to be buried, a sterile and peaceful monument to beauty.

"Welcome to my home," he shouted as he reached the bottom, with a flourish and a rare abandon. Something about Gandalf made him even impulsive and childish, despite his craving to impress. "Please, come to our reception chambers, we may speak and my beautiful wife, Esme Cullen née Platt, will bring us tea shortly."

With an answering grin, Gandalf followed.

Seated in the high ceilinged chamber, vampire and wizard gazed side by side out of a wide window upon the verdant lawn, made lusher by the damp and gray of the Forks sky. Gandalf had lit his pipe, at Dr. Cullen's hospitable urging, and smoked pensively. There then appeared on the lawn a muscular figure in a dark blue tracksuit. Gandalf fixed his twinkling eyes upon this newcomer - his iridescent complexion, his broad shoulders, his becoming buzzcut.

"And who might this be?" he enquired, with his usual air of wry amusement.

"Ah, Emmett," the doctor responded with a sigh.

Gandalf inclined his head toward his partner.

"Your lover?" he asked with a smile.

Carlisle's eyes widened.

"No, my son."

Gandalf only smiled in response, and puffed on his pipe. At this moment, Esme entered with a tea tray. Placing it in front of Gandalf, she seated herself beside her husband and addressed this novel guest.

"Dr. Cullen and I are pleased to welcome you to our home!" she put forth amicably. "Now, I do not know the specifics, for my dear husband, who seems to be underrating my perspicacity as of late, has neglected to provide them to me,"—here she looked playfully at said dear husband—"but have gathered that you've come here to solicit the Doctor's advice on matters both arcane and lofty, and as his spouse, I am duly honored. Please, have some tea."

"I have given some thought to your proposal, and I so admit I am willing to help for even more selfish reasons than hitherto offered," mused Dr. Carlisle Cullen, "for my interest is quite piqued. For what manner of creature is a hobbit? Is he a half-human or something different all together? And as such how does the vampire strain operate upon such flesh? How does it choose it's affinities, cleave to its destiny? My good wizard," he looked to Gandalf, his voice taking on the slightest tremor, "I know to you, as to me, the centuries are as days - here we may yet be brothers in time! But upon this Earth, so different from yours, this is the end to which my affliction serves, to diligently observe the great parade in generations, the solemn march of human progress and the inexorable wheel of evolution, removed myself from humanity. And as I see the race change, I look ever more upon the sleek vampiric bodies of my own family, seen in our time as the perfection of physiognomy, and I wonder, at what point do we - flies trapped in glimmering amber - become obsolete? Adamantine clothing for demons of a bygone era, models of a barbaric race before the latest model of humankind? It seems to me that the study of your fine friend, be he from our past or from our future, could provide a key."

"Yet this is news to me, Doctor Cullen." The high-minded matriarch Esme Cullen née Platt had trained her hard glare upon her doctor-husband for the latter part of his speech, and after a moments pause she responded. Her tone was low in habitual deference to her esteemed spouse, yet cold. "We are a family, but in front of your colleagues I see we become a medical experiment."

Carlisle quickly looked to the Grey Wizard, who, nonplussed and still with a twinkle in his eye, drew on his pipe.

"My dearest wife, I meant no harm. In fact, I speak like this because of the great esteem I have for you. Do you not recall those days when we would freely discuss philosophy? Or were you even then incensed, and have lately grown weary of concealing it?"

"But of course I keep always in my mind those beautiful days of our youth, my darling. I merely wonder - back then you debated, whether it was nobler to preserve a young person from untimely death or to save them from this perpetual inhuman life that has been thrust upon us. And now you have eliminated the latter concern in a stroke with your lofty appeals to science. But truly, I do not believe that you would be content mouldering here forever if you only had knowledge for comfort."

Carlisle was becoming visibly agitated, glancing back and forth from the incisive commentary of his spouse to the disinterested cloud of smoke curling around the wizard's rugged face. But before he could respond, Gandalf rose.

"Well, Doctor and Mrs. Cullen, your generosity and hospitality befit your reputation, and for that I thank you. But I must bid you good night. I will bring my friend here on the morrow." And with that, he turned into the garden and disappeared.