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“Oh hell, not again.”
Newt got teary. “He was starving.”
Theseus slapped a hand over his eyes, dragging it down over his face. Then he went about identifying the creature his baby brother had brought home this time: Newt seemed to be strangely incapable of making a distinction between safe creatures, like cats and toads, and dangerous creatures, like snakes and spiders, and so identifying whatever it was he’d brought home now was a key step in determining how much trouble there would be.
To Newt’s credit, this didn’t look like a dangerous creature. It was… Odd, to say the least, but did not have any of the hallmarks of something that could kill them. It looked a bit like a sheep: But instead of hooves the feet were webbed; its neck was unnaturally long, and its body was almost comically small compared to its head; its eyes were gigantic, taking up most of its face. The creature was lying down on a wad of blankets Newt had set out for it, breathing slowly- its large eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion. And now that Theseus looked closer, he could see the creature’s ribs far more easily than he should have been able to.
Its head was resting on Newt's lap. Newt was feeding it from an old bottle their mother sometimes used for her baby hippogriffs. He still looked teary, and terribly concerned- for the creature, not for Theseus’s exasperation. He’d proven over the eleven years of his life that he had little notice for the worries and particularities of the average human- including his brother’s. But then, that was probably true of most little brothers and sisters.
Theseus rubbed his eyes again, and then dropped down beside Newt, resigned. “What is it?” He asked, ‘this time’ going unspoken for the sake of brevity.
“Mooncalf,” Newt responded promptly. “I think it must have gotten lost. They burrow underground and only come out when the moon’s out.”
“You mean Mooncalves aren’t inclined to come out on bright, sunny days?”
“No, not at all,” Newt said seriously, ignoring (or maybe missing, it was hard to tell) Theseus’s joke. “They do their dancing at night.”
“Dancing?” Theseus asked weakly. Sometimes he wondered if maybe this was all a con, that Newt was some incredibly dedicated jokester who only pretended to be socially inept while laughing at everyone who took him seriously when he said ridiculous things like this. “They dance? How?”
“On their hind-legs,” Newt supplied, stroking the mooncalf’s head. “It might be a mating dance. No one’s sure.”
Theseus eyed the odd webbed feet on the mooncalf. Its legs didn’t look as though they were capable of bending that way- or, maybe it was just an incredibly strange and awkward dance that they performed. “How come I’ve never seen them before, if they live around here?”
“They’re shy,” Newt mumbled, turning the bottle a little to check how much was left. “And as I said, they only come out at night.” A beat. “And you’ve always been at school. Or work.”
That was true. Theseus was very nearly nineteen, and he’d been out of Hogwarts for a year. He’d spent most of Newt’s childhood at school, coming home during the holidays to find a taller and somehow even more awkward boy than the one he’d left. “You’ll be off to Hogwarts in fall,” He remarked.
Newt stilled for a second, stiffening slightly, and kept his eyes on the mooncalf. “Yeah,” he mumbled.
Theseus waited, but received no further input. He watched as Newt fed the mooncalf, relaxing as the silence rolled on uninterrupted. Newt was a twitchy child, anxious when there were too many people around. Theseus could not help but notice that Newt had spoken very little about his impending residence at Hogwarts; indeed, he seemed to go out of his way to avoid the subject, and Theseus suspected that being away from home and his variety of wild creatures was not a pleasing prospect for him. He prickled uncomfortably, sympathetic to the distress his little brother would feel when surrounded by hundreds of other students, few of whom he would know or trust or, more likely than not, get along with.
Protectiveness rose up in him. Newt was odd- Theseus knew it well enough. A Ravenclaw schoolmate whose family associated with the Scamanders socially had made the mistake of calling Newt ‘simple’ a few years back, and Theseus had made the utterly rational decision to break the idiot’s jaw for it. The month of detention was worth it: Only a fool would pick on a boy’s baby brother in front of him. Point being, Theseus knew Newt was odd- but he was accustomed to it. He knew Newt well enough to know him beyond his eccentricities. His classmates would not. And Theseus would not be there to defend him from the nasty comments, the pranks, from being cornered and intimidated by larger students.
Hogwarts was supposed to be a wonderful time in a young witch or wizard’s life. Theseus wasn’t certain it would be so for Newt, and that troubled him.
The mooncalf made a little noise and raised its head. Newt, alert, leaned back a little to give it space- but eventually it laid its head back down onto his lap, nuzzling against him. Newt frowned, but placed his hands on its head and scratched it gently. Theseus thought of his gentle little brother at the mercy of those who did not understand him and wanted to be sick. “Do you suppose it’s getting better?” He asked, trying to pull himself away from the subject.
Newt shrugged. “That’s only the first time I’ve fed him.” He scratched around the mooncalf’s ear, and one of its flippered back feet pawed at the ground the way a dog’s would. “He’ll need more. Then I’ll have to figure out where the burrow is, so he can get back to his herd.”
Theseus bent and broke the way he always did, the way he had since Newt was taking his first steps and insisted on shadowing his every step. “And how… Would one go about finding mooncalves?”
Newt eyed him, perhaps sensing a cooperative spirit. “They like dancing in big, open spaces where they can see the moon. Sometimes the dancing creates strange patterns in the grass.”
What a coincidence: Theseus had been walking through town earlier and heard a few farmers grumbling about how something (a lot of somethings, from the sound of it) had gotten onto their farms and trampled their grass and gardens. He had a sneaking suspicion that this mooncalf’s herd had taken to fence-hopping and crushing tomatoes with those funny webbed feet of theirs. “I suppose I can make some inquiries,” Theseus sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Discreetly, of course.” He eyed Newt. “Do not. Tell. Father.”
“I. Won’t.” Newt offered one of his crooked smiles, and Theseus bit back a groan. Where a mother bird might nudge her baby out of the nest, he was now tempted to drag Newt back to it. You can leave when I know no one will break you, Theseus thought helplessly, even knowing it was out of his hands.
He reached over and wrapped an arm around Newt’s shoulders. Newt’s mood for hugs fluctuated regularly, with no predictable pattern, and so Theseus was half-expecting him to shrug it off. Instead Newt leaned into it, head bumping against his brother’s collarbone; but that was the depth of his reciprocation.
“Thank you, Theseus,” Newt mumbled into his jumper.
“No problem, baby brother,” Theseus sighed, reaching over to scratch the half-starved mooncalf’s head. “No problem at all.”
He never was, and never would be.
-End