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Chapter Text

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WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Prologue: January 7, 1933

January 7, 1933
Afternoon, a bench in the park
About to snow: hand-warming charm

Dearest Tina,

I have been so looking forward to seeing you next month, and our plans to visit the Alps. (I haven’t forgotten: we visit for you to see them properly, of course, in addition to perhaps encountering the elusive Tatzelwurm.) And, yet– I write to request you do not come. I fear darkness like a lethifold falls upon Europe, surreptitious and quiet until just too late. There are whispers, Dumbledore says, of another rising war among the Muggles, though leaders turn their eyes away, too tired from the Great War to rise again so soon. And you know as well as I that our own problems continue, out of Britain and abroad, overlapped with the darkness brewing amongst the muggles.

I miss you like a mooncalf misses the— I miss you dearly, Tina, and your dark eyes, like fire through water from the bottom of the lake— And yet.

I would know more before I brought you here. There are whispers of a renewed hatred gaining traction, spreading toward us, too, perhaps due to the Muggle’s National Government and the Ministry’s willful ignorance, ignorance that I myself once sheltered behind but—

It is not safe. Wait, please. Wait for me to write, and tell you.

Notes on my day, as usual: I spent most of today with the erumpent, Corny. She is old now and ailing, and I know she will pass soon. I have been making notes on her decline, while doing my best to keep her comfortable. (Bunty is a boon, as always.) No one has written extensively about their life cycle before, nor studied them posthumously to identify the mechanism of their exploding horns. As much as it pains me that she will soon die, I do look forward to, maybe, figuring it out. Perhaps. I hope she wouldn’t mind. I don’t think she would. 

So. Tell me how you are, Tina. I think sometimes about you, when I make my tea at night. How you stood in the doorway to your room to bring us cocoa, how I thought the light from the gas lamp behind you was like a sun, and I was but a moth, fluttering, dumb—drawn to your light. The sound of those charmed spoons scraped china like birds at rising dawn. 

Anyway. Do not come. Find out what you can in America, about Germany, or the Weimar Republic. Dumbledore believes the Depression and it’s rhetoric is stoking a fire too close to Grindelwald’s for us, perhaps, to control. 

Yours,

Newt

P.S. - This summer’s litter of Nifflers — they keep trying to steal that photo of you in my case, the one that Queenie charmed, to make your necklace shine, as silver. If you could ask her the counter-charm, I would much appreciate it. They’re not falling for any more of my tricks and you begin to look a little shredded.

January 12, 1933
Over coffee, 7:55 AM
Kitchen table and the radio

My dear Newt:

Nevermind my niffler-attracting necklace: you have a silver tongue on the page, yourself. I’ve always liked our correspondence, talking to you this way. I know you better now, seeing from inside your head instead of just hearing whatever comes out of your mouth. (No offense.) However, as for Queenie and that countercharm… She’s taking an extended stay at Saint Nicholas’, so I can’t ask her yet. Enjoy this photo of her and I, instead. I was in my last year at Ilvermorny here, and the autumns were stunning when the mist cleared. If you fold it in half, it’s just me, so Queenie’s not scowling at you. (It was not a good year for her.) 

And that’ll be 26 sprinks for having Lipsitz print you a copy!*** 

Anyway. Queenie’s hospital has told us about progress out of Spain’s health department on spells to help born legilimens, like her. Charms that can be updated weekly so they can go out and about without working so hard. The Spanish have a budding interest in the mind and memory, St. Nick’s says, but it hasn’t been tested well, so they’re not ready to share. It’s too bad, as you know Queenie gets so overwhelmed sometimes, but I appreciate they’re being careful. 

It’s awful her stay at St. Nick’s happened so soon after her and Jacob’s wedding–the stress of it combined with her trying to play normal for his family during Hanukkah (and me being away for work so much now) were too much too soon, I guess. And she reacts to overwhelm differently now, since Nurmengard. I don’t know how to help her.

Anyway, I have spoken with a few at MACUSA about your concerns, regarding Europe, and my upcoming visit. My aurors were surprisingly useless in this regard. Perhaps unsurprisingly then—though I can’t believe I’m admitting this—my great uncle Arnold was more useful than all my people and the politicians combined. He still has wizarding connections–some distant family, actually–in Hesse-Darmstadt, the “old country” as he calls it. The No-Majs there are– How did he put it? He’s hard to follow some days.

The Freikorps specifically, he says, that lost some of their sway when Germany lost the war, are ignited again, stoking those fires that my own family ran from, when the wizarding governments could not protect us from the violence that rose at that place our lives have always intersected with the No-Maj world. 

I didn’t tell him why I was asking, but I got the impression we should maybe put off the visit, or else stay in England or nearby, just visit together. I’ve never been to Ireland, Newt, and you could study grindylows, in winter. Ice and such makes them different, right?

My day today: I have a department meeting and then reports due to the deputy of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement by end of day. Kedward messed up the soundproof charm on my office Tuesday and I was in the field yesterday, so I expect I’ll spend the first hour of the day trying to convince my door to stop broadcasting the sound of me shuffling papers to everyone in the room beyond. (Invigorating, I know.)

Write me to let me know how you feel about Ireland, since the Alps are out of the question.

I miss you, too. It is snowing here, as well.

Stay warm,

Tina

P.S. - ***Don’t send an owl to the bank asking for the going US-UK exchange rate yet—I’m only pulling your leg about paying for the film. In retrospect, it wasn’t very funny.

Chapter Text

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

PART ONE - 1933

Chapter One: January 16, 1933

International Floo Network Telegram from Newt Scamander to Tina Goldstein

Sent from a public hearth at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, Scotland, UK on Monday January 16, 1933 at 3:05 PM Greenwich Mean Time, arriving to a MACUSA hearth (New York City, USA) 17 minutes later, at 10:22 AM Eastern Standard Time. Telegram charged to Theseus Scamander's personal account.

The Three Broomsticks
Hogsmeade, Scotland, UK
Approximately 3:15PM
January 16, 1933

Newt dodged Madam Keena just in time to avoid being drenched in three pints of butterbeer, two firewhiskeys, and a gillywater. She glanced over her shoulder at him, shaking her head fondly as she stopped to levitate the tray to a rowdy table in a far corner. 

Madam Keena had always liked Newton, ever since he began showing up as a young, lanky boy who could barely assert himself long enough to shoulder past crowds of students and order a butterbeer. But she watched him grow over the years, trailing behind his brother when he came to visit on the odd weekend; sitting silent on the periphery of a group of Hufflepuffs, absently observing the fire or sketching in a notebook; even bent over a textbook in the corner, whispering with that Lestrange girl he was hardly without, whom she had watched him clumsily stand up for on countless occasions, and who–rumor had it–had perhaps gotten him expelled… 

Madam Keena had seen Newt work with creatures when he was in school, as he had helped her with a bundimun infestation in his fourth year, and she’d referred her neighbors to him for a rather extreme chizpurfle issue in his fifth. She had never seen anyone that naturally skilled or gentle with beasts before then, and she certainly hadn’t seen anyone since. It just wasn’t possible that he had experimented on an animal, but that simply wasn’t her business. (Just as it had not been her business when she let him escape through the kitchens on multiple occasions, those weekends when students were not in his favor or the world became too much.)

It went without saying that Newt was rather fond of her, too.

That afternoon, however, Newt hardly noticed Madam Keena, too focused on his own thoughts as he slipped back into place at his table. As he settled with a subdued thump—knees pulled toward his chest—the wooden wall of the corner bench seat pressed soothingly into his back; and he dusted the soot from the telegram off his chest and face with the hand of the arm he didn’t hold clutched to his sternum. 

It was, perhaps, more than a bite, but no reason to make Tina worry. For almost the first time in his life, his first line of defense against injuries that bled excessively–dittany–had done next to nothing. He presumed this was due to something in the creature’s unexpected venom. It had at least stopped the bleeding, but the wound itself had not begun to close, and it had been inflicted a good five hours before and was finally becoming extremely bothersome. 

He wondered briefly if he should have it looked at properly, but it was unlikely anyone would actually know what to do for it anyway, since–by all accounts–no one had even known Quintapeds had a moderately venomous bite until this morning. (And the venom didn’t make sense, if any of the stories about quintapeds were to be believed, but he had already put all those thoughts down in his notebook earlier—while documenting the effects of the venom on human tissue—and he was now trying to focus on anything else.)

He would give it an hour, he decided, and if it still burned and pulsed then, he would send his Patronus to Dumbledore at the castle, see if he could avoid St. Mungo’s altogether. Hospitals were an annoyance on his best days, and he was well-aware this was rapidly becoming not one of his best…

He made note of the time, readjusted so he faced the table, and then pulled Tina’s letter from where he had been carrying it in his pocket since the day before, skimming it again before setting it aside. Eventually, he retrieved a pen and a fresh sheet of paper from his case and hunched over to write.

Dear Queenie,
Tina told me that you are staying at St. Nicholas’ currently. I wanted to send my condolences–

Newt blinked hard at the paper before picking up his wand and erasing the words. He picked at a button on his jacket and stared hard at the once-again blank page. He leant forward and tried again.

Dear Queenie,
How are you? But that’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it, as I obviously know the answer, having addressed the letter to St. Nicholas’ myself. But I wanted to–

There was a crashing sound around the corner, and he looked up sharply. Several wizards had entered the pub, and one of them had apparently run headlong into a house elf’s levitating dishes, for there was an upside down bin and a mosaic of shattered ceramic and glass strewn across the floor. Newt rubbed his fingers together as he observed the resulting interaction for a few minutes, making sure things were taken care of without the house elf being mistreated.

By the time he had turned back to the page, the group of men who had caused the ruckus in the first place had sat down at the end of his long table, talking and laughing, discussing their workdays. Newt glanced down at them momentarily, scratched behind his ear, and then tapped lightly on the table as he looked back to the letter.

Dear Queenie,
How are you? But that’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it, as I obviously know the answer, having addressed the letter to St. Nicholas’ myself. But I wanted to let you know that if you need to talk, I am almost always available, as long as the post can find me. I know I’m not a stunning conversationalist, but–

The clanking of glasses momentarily crescendoed, for the pub had filled with people filtering in after a long Monday at work. He'd apparently been sitting with pen suspended thoughtfully for much longer than he assumed. He looked around briefly, then dropped a hand into his pocket to feel about for Pickett.

Dear Queenie,
How are you? But that’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it, as I obviously know the answer, having addressed the letter to St. Nicholas’ myself. But I wanted to let you know that if you need to talk, I am almost always available, as long as the post can find me. I know I’m not a stunning conversationalist, but I have been told I’m much easier and quite enjoyable to converse with on the page, and I do know a thing or two about–

One of the men had scooted down relatively close to him–to make room for a newly arrived friend–and Newt’s shoulders immediately tensed of their own accord. Pickett crawled out of his pocket and began to make his way up his jacket to his shoulder.

Dear Queenie,
How are you? But that’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it, as I obviously know the answer, having addressed the letter to St. Nicholas’ myself. But I wanted to let you know that if you need to talk, I am almost always available, as long as the post can find me. I know I’m not a stunning conversationalist, but I have been told I’m much easier and quite enjoyable to converse with on the page, and I do know a thing or two about wizarding hospitals, much to my chagrin. What–

The man nearest him sat down his mug with a heavy plonk and Newt momentarily closed his eyes, rubbed hands down his face as his arm smarted fiercely. He stared blankly at the paper in front of him. His finger and thumb rubbed together in double-time as Pickett finally reached his shoulder.

There was a gentle tug on his earlobe, then, and quiet chittering (followed by a more insistent tapping at the cartilage), before Newt finally stirred and realized what Pickett was trying to communicate.

Picking up his wand and flicking it in a sharp circle toward his head, he murmured imperturbarium accentus and–immediately–the noise of the room drastically fell, such that it was like listening to the world from underwater.

“Thank you, Pick.” Newt sighed deeply and tucked his wand into his coat. 

He looked back at the letter, but–by then–all inspiration had worn off, and the Three Broomsticks no longer seemed as warm and inviting as it had an hour before, when he’d walked in thirsty and shivering… He worried mildly about leaving so soon after sending the telegram to Tina, but he figured she knew him well enough by now to assume he wouldn’t be in one place long, and so would send a response to his personal hearth instead.

“I think it’s about time to head back into the case, don’t you?” he murmured to the bowtruckle, tucking both Tina’s letter and the letter to Queenie into his pocket, slipping the pen behind an ear.

Pickett chirped in agreement and climbed back down his shoulder, still camouflaged to the patrons around him, who therefore cast Newt odd looks as he Excuse me ’d and So sorry ’d his way past them and off the bench, back toward the door.

Just as he approached the entrance, a gaggle of giggling young women burst in, and Newt found himself dodging haphazardly out of the way, hopping on one foot to keep his balance —

He thought he would wait it out, but they just kept coming and coming until—

“It’s a bridal shower, love,” Madam Keena said over his shoulder, and Newt looked around suddenly. “There’ll be dozens of ‘em.”

And he could vaguely hear a series of apparition-pops in the street beyond. 

“Might want to leave out the kitchens,” she said with a smile, before extending her arms to welcome the group to her establishment.

Newt didn’t need telling twice. He ducked beneath Madam Keena’s outstretched arm and dashed out through the kitchens.

Meanwhile: International Floo Network Telegram from Tina Goldstein to Newt Scamander 

Sent from a MACUSA hearth in the Auror Office on January 16, 1933 at 11:06 AM EST. The telegram is delivered to Newt Scamander's personal fireplace (#NAFS1897LE) at his London address 26 minutes later at 4:24 PM GMT. Telegram charged to MACUSA.

Is the weekend too short notice? Have money saved, overtime, and already checked liner schedule. Need a break from work before Queenie is back. Saturday afternoon then? Also, Newt - whatever you’re messing with, be careful.

Hogsmeade and Hogwarts Grounds
Scotland, UK
Early evening into night

Newt had sent a message to Dumbledore by means of patronus, asking for permission from him or Headmaster Dippet to visit the hospital wing with a minor injury, as he was in the area. After that, he’d gone down into his case, removed his muffling charm, checked the wound, tended a phase-disoriented mooncalf, forced Pickett back into his colony (which had not been easy), and then threw himself into the hammock in the humid bamboo forest, listening to the movements of the creatures and their various calls as he swung suspended in a sea of green.

Now, however, Newt crawled back out of the case into a harsh Scottish winter, for Dumbledore’s phoenix patronus had slipped through the lid just minutes ago, swooping down through the rooms and mildly upsetting all the creatures before settling on a bamboo culm above him, calling out in Dumbledore’s voice to gain his attention. (He may or may not have fallen asleep while waiting for Dumbledore to find his patronus circling impatiently at his office door when he returned from his classes…) He shut the latches firmly behind him and flicked his wand to prevent their popping open if any of his creatures got antsy. 

Newt looked up the hill at the school, toward the gated grounds, still nearly two miles away. He rubbed a hand down his face, and sighed.

He was far more tired than he had even realized, and he was not looking forward to the trek, as apparition felt out of the question at the moment…

Suddenly, a voice in the night:

“I wondered if you might care for company, Newt.”

Newt spun jerkily around and smiled slightly at the sight -- “Dumbledore.”

Dumbledore inclined his head and smiled in return. “Even for someone who’s walked fifty kilometers through a Burmese forest unaided by magic, the trek to the castle is long when it’s dark and cold, and you’re hurt.”

“It’s not too bad,” Newt corrected impulsively, raising his arm and turning it side to side in front of him.

“All the same.” Dumbledore held out a long-fingered hand. “Would you like assistance?”

Newt looked from Dumbledore’s hand to his face and back again. “Thank you.”

At that, Dumbledore gripped his shoulder and apparated them to the gates.

The gates creaked open with the grind of metal on metal, and Newt canted his body toward his old teacher as they entered, so he could see him properly to initiate conversation.

“Do you have time to talk this evening, Professor?”

Dumbledore had his hands in the pockets of his long overcoat as he watched him, and he was walking in that way Newt had always been mildly impressed with, as if everywhere he strolled a road was sure to unfurl before his feet.

“Unfortunately not, Newt. Though I can guess the kinds of questions you have and I’m afraid I’m still unsure myself.”

Newt nodded and took an extra step to make up for Dumbledore’s steady strides in comparison to his syncopated ones. 

“Send me an owl, and we’ll set a meeting for next week.”

“Tina Goldstein will be here then,” he said quickly.

“By all means, bring her along,” Dumbledore said with a small smile, and it seemed to Newt that Dumbledore very much wanted to pat him on the back at that, but knew full well it would be largely unappreciated. “I’d be delighted to see her again. She’s got a promotion, hasn’t she?”

“She has.”

They were within sight of the glowing windows and main doors now.

“But you already knew that.”

“I did, yes,” Dumbledore said, stopping, and Newt pulled up short beside him. “Well, Newt, I think you know how to get to the hospital wing from here.”

“Unfortunately.” He murmured uncomfortably.

They parted ways then: Newt heading for the castle, Dumbledore disappearing quickly–-nearly ominously, in Newt’s opinion-–into the falling night.

.0.

When Newt arrived at the Hospital Wing, he slipped in quietly and sat his case gently on a chair inside the buttressed room. Madam Breit-–the longtime matron of the healing halls–-was leant over a work table by the bed closest to the entrance, and she didn’t look up as he entered. Far down at the other end of the hall, one student occupied a bed, and he was playing wizarding chess with a visiting friend.

Apart from the sound of Madam Breit mixing a poultice and the intermittent cracking of exploding game pieces, the room was utterly quiet.

Newt shifted slightly and Madam Breit finally acknowledged him.

“Dumbledore told me you might be coming,” she said, and she wiped her hands on her apron to take in his, admittedly, slightly bedraggled appearance.  “You’re lucky Dippet likes you, Mr. Scamander.”

“I rather think it's my textbook he likes, but I’m grateful all the same.”

Madam Breit laughed and gestured for Newt to sit on the side of the bed.

He glanced at his case but then obediently did so, perching gingerly as Madam Breit pulled her work table round and sat in a chair before him. 

“I understand this is from a Quentiped.”

Newt slipped off his jacket and pushed up his sleeve, unwrapping his arm and laying it flat on the table between them.

“So, what have you tried, then?” she prompted.

He glanced up at her and then back to his arm. “Dittany, to stop the bleeding, which – which worked but didn’t heal it at all. Then a solution of yerba leaves to hurry along the healing at the deepest bits, down at the tendons, you see.”

Madam Breit was nodding along as Newt recited, his eyes drifting from his arm to the door and back again as he continued.

“I thought maybe the venom was – was stopping the healing, you know, so I took a dose of common antidote like I do for doxies and creatures like that, then tried dittany again but–”

“But it didn’t work,” she interrupted sympathetically.

“It didn’t work,” Newt repeated, looking up at her for a moment.

Madam Breit bent down to examine the injury more closely and then went back through the ingredients in the poultice she had preemptively made, checking that there weren’t any known reactions.

“Awful serration on those canines, it seems,” she said, conversationally, when she was done.

“I know,” Newt said, bending forward to look at the wound again. “Quite interesting, really. I've not seen anything exactly like it.”

Madam Breit shook her head with a patient smile.

“We may have to do this the Muggle way, then.” Newt nodded.  “Have you ever heard of stitches?”

Newt tilted his head slightly–-he’d seen them done in the War but hadn’t had them himself. So he watched her prepare a needle and thread, picking at a seam in his waistcoat as she did so. She then explained what she would do and began.

Newt observed with fascination, watching her put in a few stitches at the top and bottom of the wound to prevent it from ripping further.

“That’s - rather disgusting,” he finally said, as she tied the stitch closest to his wrist with a gentle tug at his skin.

“Only you,” she shook her head and smiled as she worked.

Newt did not know what she meant by that, so he said nothing, and continued to watch her work, stuffing the wound with the magical poultice and pulling the largest flap of skin back over. He grunted softly, and she tapped the wound with her wand so it wouldn’t start to seal over until the paste and poultice were removed.

“There we go, Scamander,” she said warmly, and she began to bandage it up firmly with strips of crisp white cloth.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, looking at her long enough for her to see the sincerity before busying himself with his jacket. “I really appreciate it – not having to - I'm not very fond of hospitals and you've always been kind.”

“I understand,” she assured, and she began scribbling care instructions for him on a sheet of paper. “And you’re welcome.”

He started to stand—eyes already on his case—but she stopped him with a gentle hand hovering just above his forearm.

“Wait a moment.”

He rocked slightly on his feet and watched her hurry away to her office. She returned moments later with a magazine, stacking the instructions on top of it and handing them both over. He looked at her questioningly as he took them.

“There’s a muggle doctor in Austria,” she explained. “Trying to understand children who–”

Newt flipped back the obscuring paper to look at the magazine, Mediwitch Monthly. There was a static photo of a man with round glasses in the bottom corner of the front page, with ‘Austrian muggle-doctor Hans Asperger’ printed beside him.

Newt blinked.

“Well, he’s trying to understand children who are like you were, Newton.”

Newt could feel her watching him but he was not sure precisely what he was meant to say to that, or what kind of child he had apparently been—besides different —and Pickett was stirring impatiently in his pocket.

“I just thought you might be interested,” she finished quietly.

Newt moved past her for his case, opening it slightly to tuck the instructions and the magazine both safely inside. Then he straightened and turned back to Madam Breit.

“Thank you, Madam Breit,” he said, and he attempted a smile despite his exhaustion, for he knew she had always liked him, and people who liked you liked to feel liked.

He next inclined his head politely, watching the way the hair that had slipped from beneath her kerchief blended into the grey of the wall behind her, and then —

“Take care!” she was calling as he turned and hurried away.

He moved down the corridor at an unusually clipped pace.

.0.

Wishing for the powers of a demiguise had never yet granted him those powers and, as such, Newt’s former Care of Magical Creatures teacher sighted him in the corridor and insisted he stay for dinner. This was followed by mead in her office and a brief chat with Minerva, who was both fascinated and appalled with the wandering Quintiped, having distant family from the coast near the Isle of Drear. She promised to immediately pass on a message for him to his former full-time department at the ministry, letting the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures know he would be popping by next day to report the incident and support them in developing a plan for capture.

Ultimately, by the time Newt escaped the castle, it was gone nine, and–by the time he ambled back down from the castle to the village proper–it was nearly ten : the streets were empty, the snow had quit falling, and the day’s slush had hardened into ice. He slipped and slid down the deserted main road until he reached The Hog’s Head Inn, where he edged past two old wizards and a hag to reach the bar where Aberforth Dumbledore stood polishing a dirty glass.

“Excuse me,” Newt interrupted. “Your brother said I could–”

“I know.” 

Aberforth reached under the bar and pulled out a grubby leather bag of Floo powder, opening it for him to take a pinch.

“Thank you.” Newt paused for a moment, cupping the powder, and then continued. “You haven’t got a telegram form, have you?”

Aberforth looked at Newt oddly, before barking out a laugh. “Do I look like the post office, Mr. Scamander?”

Newt had to admit he very much did not , so he smiled slightly and headed to the grate, where he threw the powder in the flames, stepped confidently in, and announced his address. 

Moments later, he tumbled out into his own home, where–on the thinly carpeted floor–he found himself nearly eye-to-eye with a telegram from Tina, which he read eagerly before preparing his own response. He made a pot of tea and then penned an additional message to his brother, replete with his growing list of questions about international affairs. 

(Both telegrams were charged, regretfully, to his brother’s account.)

Newt Scamander’s flat
9 Sherringford Square
London, England
11:22 PM

“Newt!” A voice called from behind him.

Newt turned about so suddenly that Pickett swung out from where he clung to the collar of his nightshirt, and Newt himself splashed his evening tea all down his chest. There, in the fireplace near his bed, Theseus’ head floated in the ever-burning fire, seemingly unperturbed by the salamander aggressively investigating his ear. Newt shoved Pickett back up his shoulder and crossed hurriedly to kneel on the flaking brick of the hearth. 

“Theseus! You got my telegram,” he said as means of greeting.

“I did, and if you would stop charging your love letters to my account I–”

“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Well— They’re not— I haven’t gotten royalties for my book in a few months.”

“Nevermind, it’s fine; use it as long as you need to,” Theseus interrupted, pausing and craning his neck to squint critically at the half-healed scratch on Newt’s cheek. “What happened to you?”

“This?” He gestured at his face with his bound hand. “Oh - misunderstanding with a misplaced Quintaped. Didn’t know they were venomous.”

“What happened to it ?”

“Hm, ah - well - it got away. Pity, because it shouldn’t be off the Isle of Drear at all, and one’s never been caught, so there’s no way to know the truth of their evolution, or their design. I was really hoping I could…” He pressed his fingers into the gold line etched in his now half-empty teacup. “And then there’s the question of how it got there in the first place, which is a—”

Theseus shook his head firmly to regain Newt’s drifting attention, and his gaze promptly floated back toward him as he finished shortly:

“—um – which is a major secrecy concern…”

Newt could tell Theseus shifted at his fireplace from the way his head bobbed before leaning further forward, ignoring Newt’s musings to ask:

“Have you had yourself looked at? By someone that’s not you, I mean.”

“Of course. I was up near Hogwarts - Madam Breit.”

“Good. She's good.”

There was silence for a half minute as Newt readjusted and dried the tea off his shirt with a siphoning charm. Theseus watched concernedly.

“So, about your message then,” he started, trailing off.

Newt only sat watching him so he eventually continued.

“Can you meet me for breakfast tomorrow, to talk in person?”

Newt blinked.

“Yes - yeah - but why not–”

“Questions tomorrow, Newt, and I promise I’ll give you answers.”

“Dumbledore said–-”

“Nevermind Dumbledore. Get some rest, all right? You really do look awful.”

Newt looked down at himself and Pickett immediately chittered something in his ear. (By the crooked smile tugging at the corner of his brother’s lips, Theseus assumed the bowtruckle was insulting him.)

“Meet me at the Leaky Cauldron at seven, brother,” he intoned.

“Okay.” 

“And look—” Newt blinked twice before looking back at him. “Don’t send any more political inquiries on a semi-public network before then, eh?”

“All right, Theseus.”

Theseus smiled in a way that Newt thought was meant to be reassuring, and then disappeared with an understated whoosh and a trailing Goodnight, Newton …

Newt sank into a cross-legged position and stared at the fire for a few minutes, lost in thought, until the renewed howling of the wind and the settling of the old house fell into a rhythm that complimented the crackling flames, drawing his attention from his own mind. 

Newt shook out his hands and turned with more intention to the fire, which he charmed lower with a flick of his wand, such that the salamander trembled with delight and curled up to sleep in a divot of vibrant glowing ashes, too much like a cat to not be amusing. 

“Like that, do you?” he said with a chuckle.

As he watched, the salamander shifted slowly from brightest orange to a deep blue, and–with a final readjustment that sent a wave of shivers through its small, warm body–it closed its shining eyes for the night. 

Newt braced a hand on the hearth and pushed himself to his feet with a slight grunt, fingers playing with the buttons of his pajamas as he slipped into bed. He swallowed the tonic he’d left on his sidetable and then turned off the lights with an absentminded mumble. Pickett promptly disappeared beneath the pillow and Newt rolled over himself, arm tucked beneath his head. 

Pulling the quilt up all the way so only his eyes peered out, he watched the flickering flames and the reassuring breaths of the salamander that caused the coals it was nestled in to pulse in time to the rhythm of its fragile life.

Tina couldn’t get here soon enough, he thought, and–-eventually–-he was asleep.

Chapter Text

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WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter Two: January 17, 1933

The Leaky Cauldron 
Diagon Alley, London, England 
January 17, 1933
7:08 AM

Newt dropped his fork onto his eggs with a wet clatter, slipping one arm out of his jacket and hastily unwinding Madam Breit’s bandages. “It won’t stop itching.”

Theseus looked over at his brother’s arm and wrinkled his nose. 

“Merlin’s beard, Newt — that’s worse than that hole in your hand after the Qilin. It looks terrible.”

He reached for a knife to cut his sausage as Newt chuckled in response and scratched gently at his arm.

“It does,” he agreed. “Although it is more interesting.” He flipped his arm over and pointed at a bit of torn and swollen skin—purpling and maroon at the edge of the bite—glancing at Theseus for his attention.

Theseus hid a smile with effort. “Put it away before you make that woman over there sick, little brother.”

Newt huffed at him but glanced toward the appalled witch guiltily, nonetheless. He shot her what he hoped was a charmingly apologetic smile and immediately rewrapped the wound.

“Has anyone actually been bit by one of those before?” Theseus had abandoned the sausage (which looked too grossly reminiscent of Newt’s currently mangled arm for him to stomach) and was taking a bite of his brother’s abandoned bacon instead, watching him expectantly.

“Well, yes, certainly - ” Newt rolled his shirt sleeve back over the bandages and continued talking, eyes fixed where he straightened his cuff. “ - but they’ve all died, so there’s not a—”

“What?!” Theseus exclaimed, dropping the bacon and staring.

Newt, meanwhile, jumped so hard his knees hit the table. 

At his brother’s otherwise non-response to his panicked inquiry, Theseus leapt up, grabbed him hard at the elbow, and insistently hauled him to his feet.

“What do you mean they’ve all died?” he asked in a low, urgent voice, raising his other hand to grip at Newt’s shoulder, shaking his elbow once when Newt only continued to blink at him, lips forming shapes that didn’t quite convey sound. 

Theseus subtly surveyed the room for the safest exit for immediate apparition, like the well-trained auror he was. 

“No, no - sorry!” Newt finally stammered loudly, and he upset the table slightly as he took a hurried step away from Theseus’ urgent hands. 

Disposing of the grip, he bent his knees minutely and held his own hands before him—cautious—for his brother stared at him wide-eyed and chest-heaving, much like a threatened animal. 

“Theseus,” he said slowly, emphasizing his words with a gentle flick of one hand, “the ones before died because they were mauled , not because they were bitten . I -  should have started with that.”

“Newt, Christ — yes, you should have.”

Theseus ran both hands through his coiffed hair as Newt sat down quietly, slipping his jacket sleeve back on before diffidently reaching for his coffee. Theseus, meanwhile, rocked slightly on the spot as he observed Newt and–to Newt–it seemed as if he were analyzing him like a creature at a zoo. 

Eventually, Theseus sat down heavily, shaking his head.

“Look, you really ought to go to St. Mungo’s —”

At that, Newt put down his coffee.

“I don’t do hospitals, Theseus.”

“I’m aware, but—”

Newt held up a less gentle hand and said with quiet intensity:

“Theseus – I said no , please.”

Theseus said nothing and picked at his bacon again, staring at his brother as Newt shifted sharply in his seat and then stirred another scoop of sugar into his coffee with a nonverbal charm he didn’t even seem to realize he was doing…

“All right, then,” he finally said. “But if you’re not better by Friday—”

“Tina’ll be here this weekend. Believe me, she’ll be sure I go - if I need to.”

There was a long moment of silence apart from the early morning bustle of the inn and the sound of Theseus’ renewed chewing.

“I’ll hold you to it then,” he eventually managed.

Newt picked up his coffee once more as Theseus picked up his napkin, wiping it briskly over his hands before dropping it onto his plate with finality.

Newt had long ago learned his brother’s communication patterns, and he recognized one of his conversational transitions when he saw one. He cradled the coffee more tightly in his hands and leaned slightly forward.

“So about your questions…” Theseus finally said. 

He pulled out a thin folder and sat it on the table between them. A witch appeared seemingly out of nowhere to clear their plates.

“Thank you,” Newt murmured with a sidelong glance at her, pulling the folder toward him. 

His brother had pinned his telegram to the front of it with one of his flashy adhesive charms—a faux gold pushpin in the shape of a small ship.

Theseus cleared his throat, adjusted his chair, and queried with a tone of fruitless hope: “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what you’re up to, with these...specific questions?”

Newt looked up from the telegram, glanced at his brother’s eyes for a moment, and felt a small smile pull at the corner of his mouth—he could not help it, even though he knew it would not endear him to Theseus in the moment, and he quickly looked away.

After a beat or two, Theseus sighed: “No, of course you wouldn’t.”

Newt suppressed another smile.

“Secrets, I know.”

“I’ll tell you when I understand,” he immediately assured. “I’m serious, Theseus. I just need - I need time to think.”

His brother pressed his lips together briefly, before laying his hand beside Newt’s elbow on the table, just close enough for a display of sincerity without encroaching on his space: an unspoken apology for grabbing his arm before.  

“All right.”

A pause.

“All right,” Theseus said again more firmly, as if convincing himself this time, and then he caught Newt’s gaze and began to speak.

Newt listened raptly, but he also thought, for there was a look in his brother’s eyes he hadn’t seen in a while… Not since they had both come back from the War to an empty house, not since Theseus found out neither of his best friends had returned home either. 

But as Theseus reviewed the first sheet of parchment in the folder with him—pointing to specific lines occasionally as if he were back in school—Newt realized there was something else there, too.

Something he couldn’t quite identify, and—despite his lifelong attempts to eschew worry—that unsurety ignited in him an animal fear. It charged like a Tebo as a decades old memory appeared—unbidden—as puzzle pieces in his mind: 

The pressure of his brother’s hand on his elbow 

A flash of his mother’s dark eyes when he glanced up:

she adjusted his scarf so the wool wouldn’t scratch, as if he were only setting off for school

His wand behind his ear catching at his satchel

The scent of spring on the air, mingled with choking coal 

A jerk of his body as he started to board:

his brother turning him round to face him, a gentle touch, callused fingers at his chin— 

‘Just let me see you’

The uniform sharp and clean, the only thing in his sight

(a memory of the rush of relief he’d felt when he’d realized he wouldn’t have to wear one)

Theseus’ freckled hands busy at his chest, a glint of red-and-blue Union Jack pinned to his yellow-black scarf

‘My courageous brother, the dragon-tamer’

—his mother sniffling, her rustling skirts as she turned away—

‘Don’t forget to write her, Newt’

Cold where hands had once been warm

the screech of the train -
colors flashing from a passenger window -
fingers picking at the rough Graphorn-skin gloves he’d been given when he turned seventeen 

His brother’s eyes wide through the dirtied pane—still, somehow, in the chaos (unmoving)— shining as he raised a hand in farewell

                               –Air raid alarms in the distance. 

Newt ripped himself violently from the memory’s assault and clutched convulsively at the papers. He looked away from present-day Theseus as fast as he could, before that look could consume him. 

Theseus had not noticed his momentary inattention, and they talked for over an hour. 

When they were done, his brother would not let him pay for his meal. He even insisted on buying him a cup of coffee to take along. (Much to the confusion of the serving witch, as Newt rummaged about in his case for a good half-minute before finally retrieving a mug, too preoccupied by Theseus’ constant stream of small talk with the woman behind the counter to even remember he could use a summoning charm.) 

And then Theseus had touched him gently on the back, shouldered his way out the entrance, and was gone.

Newt followed vaguely–

He stood on the Muggle sidewalk, nursing his coffee and blinking in that reflected brightness only possible in London’s post-dawn hours—before freshly fallen snow is churned and dirtied by commuters—and he watched through the mist of his breath and the steam of his coffee as the sparrows on the telephone lines above him chatted unconcernedly: they groomed each other beneath an overcast sky.

It hit him then, as he stared at the birds (watching as one insistently attempted to feed another, while that other hopped stubbornly down the line), that he had seen that oddly intense look in Theseus’ eyes more recently than the day in his memory, in 1916…

He had seen a flash of it, in fact, just an hour before.

While Newt had been too startled by his brother’s interruption of his explanation of Quintiped bite history to pay truly good attention to his face, he had nonetheless felt it in the quietly burning urgency of Theseus’ hands—

That look in Theseus’ grey eyes suddenly coalesced in his mind, and he was flooded by memories of it, stretched out over decades: they were given abruptly new and unforeseen meanings, arranged now for him to see, in context.

Newt stood still. 

Face upturned, he watched the silhouettes of the birds caught suddenly in the rising morning sun, how they were colored pale and static despite the light behind them, as warm rays met the cool of the snow.

Theseus—Newt suddenly knew—was worried. 

Theseus was worried about him.

The fog rose from the streets all about him as the sun peeked beyond the tops of the surrounding buildings.

Newt finished his coffee and tightened his grip on his case, yanking his gaze away from the sparrows before setting off with purpose down the slowly busying street.

Chapter Text

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WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter Three: January 17, 1933 - Part 2

The same day an hour or so later
The Ministry of Magic
London, England, UK
January 17, 1933
9:17 AM

Theseus had really only given him information on his second question, so Newt had resorted to actually reading Madam Breit’s copy of Mediwitch Monthly as he waited. 

…one can also not help but wonder if such study or distinction is as useful among wizards as it is thought to be among Muggles, for haven’t we always been proud of the odd bunch among our kind? For example–just to name a few–we celebrate wizards like Arrius Ollivander, who brought and developed our great wand tradition in 4th century AD (though at the utter neglect of his—

Newt’s brow crinkled as he flipped a page, steadfastly ignoring Teddy’s insistent yanking at a well-tightened cufflink and barely registering the crash of the elevator and its echoing “Level Four: Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures” as it occasionally flashed by.

He skipped slightly ahead.

…and then Bowman Wright, who single-mindedly dedicated his life to the working of magical metals and the rabid protection of Golden Snidgets, in the 1400s. Even today, we value those among us who are perhaps a bit perplexing, but lead the world in diverse fields, e.g., human transfiguration in Ethiopia, verbal healing in formerly French Louisiana (USA), and even here in Britain—

Newt could hear his heart in his ears as he stared at the page, but he shook out a hand and straightened the magazine, forcing himself to continue.

—with our own intrepid—

“Scamander!”

A jovial voice, and the door to the room—directly across the hall from the waiting area in which he perched—burst open, revealing an older, rather bulky man, smiling widely.

Newt stuffed Teddy in his jacket and rose to his feet as Grimblehawk plodded toward him. He clapped Newt on the shoulder collegially, who stiffened–even as Pickett (hidden beneath his scarf) chirped—but greeted him with a genuine smile nonetheless.

“Hello, Marcus.”

“You’re right famous these days. Heard from my wife—healer at St Mungo’s, you know—that you made it into another magazine this week. Have you seen it?”

“News travels fast. Has everyone read that by now?”

“Mediwitch Monthly?” Grimblehawk asked as if confirming they discussed the same thing, and Newt held up the magazine he’d been reading, folded back to the page on Asperger.

Grimblehawk chuckled. “So sorry, Newt. There’s got to be some law about speculating on the brains of living people in a public forum... But you’re just so damned interesting.”

Grimblehawk ruffled Newt’s hair as if he were his younger sibling, and not a 35-year-old man who was the veteran of two wars and the preeminent scholar in their shared field… But Newt supposed Marcus couldn’t forget the version of him he met and took under his wing in 1913: that meek, bumbling, bowtruckle of a teenager, who had unceremoniously appeared at his desk the day after his expulsion hearing, first asking after the health of his jarvey and then desperately begging for a job…

Newt nevertheless ducked away and shoved his copy of Mediwitch Monthly back into his case, tucking Teddy in, too—on second thought—for good measure. Marcus opened the door and ushered him into his old department.

“Well they - didn’t actually name me so -” Newt began to murmur.

“They didn’t have to, kid,” Grimblehawk guffawed, jerking his head at the offices they passed as they entered the department. “They’re certainly not talking about any of us.” 

As they neared Grimblehawk’s office, Newt caught sight of his old partner in House-elf Relocation—Dirk Merriwether—who sat now at a small desk in the corner assigned to the Pest task force. Merriwether rose and called out to Newt as he passed, holding up a copy of Mediwitch Monthly and waving it like a taunting flag as they made fleeting eye contact. 

“Ignore him–” Grimblehawk started.

But Newt could not. 

Later, he wouldn’t be able to say whether it was the everpresent pain of the Quinteped bite; the distance he now had from those stressful and tedious early years in the Department; or the confidence that came with the shameful (and very non-Hufflepuff) sense of superiority he felt in regards to Dirk who—eight years his senior with a Care of Magical Creatures N.E.W.T (as he had always been quick to remind him)—hadn’t risen above task force while Newt himself had been promoted so quickly he effectively rose even out of the Ministry, but…

Whatever it was, before Newt even realized what he was doing, he had spun around, elevating his quiet voice to a more moderate level, and shut Merriwether down firmly —

“Shut it, Dirk.”

The whole department went silent, and then he added in a quieter but no less firm voice:

“Please.”

At this more typically-Newt addition, the room burst into laughter, and Merriwether sat down, burning scarlet.

“Newt, mate—I was only joking—”

“Well —” Grimblehawk began, trying to smooth over the situation by opening the door to his office for Newt, who was still facing Merriwether.

“I’ve never found you particularly amusing,” Newt interrupted, and he did not waver in his energy, even as his eyes focused on the stack of day-old memos to the left of Dirk’s desk. “And you were never exactly kind to me, or to those unhoused elves we were assigned to help, as outrageously boring as it was.” 

Merriwether stared open mouthed and Newt vaguely heard someone hiss out air behind him.

“So you’ll excuse me, Mr. Merriwether,” he finally finished, his voice going gentle again as Pickett shifted somewhere behind his lapel, “if I don’t believe you.”

“Hufflepuff’s got teeth,” someone whispered in the absolute silence that followed, which was broken only by Dirk tossing the magazine into a bin beside his desk—a tinny, booming sound—and settling himself down harshly, preparing to be endlessly ribbed. 

Newt turned back around and straightened his jacket.

There was a rustle of movement in the large room behind him.

“Hey, have you heard?” Someone called from the kitchenette. “Dirk’s got a meeting with the Centaur Liaison Office this afternoon!” (1)

There was immediate, raucous laughter.

Newt couldn’t help a poorly hidden smile as he tucked his head to his chest and, finally, took Marcus’ cue to slip inside his office.

January 16, 1933
Afternoon, Three Broomsticks
Hogsmeade, Scotland
January 17, 1933
Late afternoon, MoM

Dear Queenie,

How are you? But that’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it, as I obviously know the answer, having addressed the letter to St. Nicholas’ myself. But I wanted to let you know that if you need to talk, I am almost always available, as long as the post can find me. I know I’m not a stunning conversationalist, but I have been told I’m much easier and quite enjoyable to converse with on the page, and I do know a thing or two about wizarding hospitals, much to my chagrin. What

What ward have they got you in? I’ve mainly spent time in Creature-Induced Injuries (no surprise there), Spell Damage (it’s complicated), and the Children’s Wing (a long story) at St. Mungo’s, and then a very loud and seemingly unnamed ward somewhere in Europe, after a mishap in training Ironbellies–-for an airforce of all things-–on the Eastern Front. (They went with owls instead, which I think the dragons and I were both quite glad of.) Awfully confusing place to wake up.

Anyway Queenie, what I mean to say is this: For all the good certain hospital stays may produce, I am also intimately aware that there can be significant stressors. You of all people deserve peace (which I know is a hard-fought thing). I think you should have all the support you desire as you make your way there.

In that spirit, I’ve enclosed a copy of a patent I’ve finally registered with the Committee on Experimental Charms at the British Ministry. I began developing it years ago - at Hogwarts - to muffle startling sounds. Perhaps this seems rather simple theoretically, but the charm has evolved to function by acting on the cognitive properties of the caster, as opposed to the qualities of his surroundings. While environmental stimulus is certainly different from the sorts of problems faced by a legilimens, I wonder if its theoretical underpinnings might be of some use to your healers, in developing something for you, to take away the unwelcome intensity of other people’s heads. I can reach out to Lally Hicks in this regard, as well. (With your permission, of course.)

I think of you and Jacob often, and your wedding is a memory I will treasure for all my life. Perhaps Tina and I can send you a postcard while we are in Ireland.

Warmly,
 

Newt

Newt Scamander’s flat
9 Sherringford Square
London, England
About 7PM

Newt approached the door with marked caution, having just bounded up the steps from depositing notes in his office when the visitor’s knocking hadn’t ceased at his extended non-response but, rather, become increasingly insistent... People did not just randomly call on him, so he wasn’t sure whether to expect a flustered Bunty with some message she’d forgotten, a confused tourist asking for directions, or a murderous squad sent by Grindelwald, perhaps having just remembered he continued to exist. 

As his eyes fell on the figure on his step, however, it was none of the above—

“What’re you doing here?” 

“Good evening to you, too, Newt.” 

Newt loosened his hold on his wand, for there stood his brother, hat tucked under his arm as he leaned casually against the concrete wall.

“We’ve just seen each other, Theseus—” 

The wind suddenly picked up, and Newt stopped abruptly, blinking—

“So sorry.” He stepped back to allow his brother to come in, out of the cold. “Manners…” 

“Impressively handled, brother,” Theseus smiled, passing him, and Newt fumbled with the lock behind them. “You’re getting better.”

“Sorry, it’s been a busy few days. My mind’s a bit frayed.”

Theseus put a supportive hand on the back of Newt’s neck as Newt cast a protective charm on the door (a new habit of his), before critically surveying the small flat.

“This is tidier than I remember,” Theseus finally offered.

Newt looked at him oddly, tucking his wand away and ambling past him into the kitchen. “Thank you?” he offered over his shoulder.

Theseus laughed. “No — I can see the surface of the table and you’ve done something to the drapes. It looks nice.”

“With Tina coming, I thought it appropriate to make an effort.” He fiddled with the gas on the stove before putting the kettle on. “Teddy’s not pleased with being locked in the basement, but he’s a pest so.”

Newt heard his brother take off his jacket and drop it on a chair and he, in turn, took that as his cue to spell more water into the kettle…

“Things are going well with her, then?” Theseus asked when Newt glanced up.

“Hm - Tina?”

“No, the niffler’s girlfriend.”

“You’re very funny, Theseus.” Newt leaned against the counter, absentmindedly picking at the hem that ran the length of a trouser pocket. “And, yes, I think so. We certainly continue to - to enjoy one another’s letters, at least.” 

Theseus observed him and, for not the first time in his life, Newt wished his brother was not an auror... But Theseus eventually nodded and offered an ‘I’m happy to hear that’ before joining him at the counter. 

For a moment, they both watched the kettle in silence, and then Theseus noticed a pile of notes and mail by a haphazard stack of Newt’s rarely used recipe books, a rather odd magazine choice carelessly tossed atop it all.

He shook a Muggle election notice and a trifold from Newt’s publisher off the magazine before considering the cover with interest.

“What do you have Mediwitch Monthly for?” He gestured with it.

Newt tugged it from his hands and tossed it toward the kitchen table without even looking to see where it landed. “I’ll explain later.” 

He heard it slide across the table and slip with a papery thump onto the floor, could feel the building heat of the kettle beside him; and he chose to ignore the look of ill-concealed amusement that won over confusion on his brother’s face at Newt’s response to his innocent inquiry. 

Ignoring it, however, became increasingly difficult, for Theseus only leaned against the counter, tucked hands into his pocket with cool confidence, and then continued to watch him, saying nothing at all.

Theseus was playing the silence game, as if Newt were the one with something to say and he hadn’t been the one to show up unannounced at his door.

Unfortunately, experience told him Theseus would only become more wordlessly insistent if he failed to initiate some kind of conversation so—

“Right,” he finally said. “Listen, it’s not that I’m not pleased to see you - I’m very grateful we’ve come so far in the past few years, Theseus, and of course…”

He trailed off when he noticed his brother’s amusement piquing once again. 

“Sorry, but - Theseus, really — You always write ahead. What are you doing here?”

“Ah.” Theseus said shortly, and he took a half step back, and for a fraction of a second Newt thought he saw a flash of something that might have been trepidation on his face. “I came here to apologize.”

“You - Uh - Wh-” Newt stuttered, swallowing, brows crinkling of their own accord. “’Scuse me?” (2)

“I wanted to apologize,” he repeated. “About grabbing you, at the Leaky Cauldron this morning.”

Newt stared at him, so Theseus continued.

“I know you don’t like— I was worried, but I shouldn’t have.”

Newt stood there, processing for a moment, before dropping a hand into the pocket he’d been picking at to play with one of the loose strings inside.

“You came here just to tell me sorry? In person?”

Theseus nodded and shifted slightly on his feet.

“It’s all right. You were very helpful with your information–”

Theseus cut him off. “Newt.”

“It is, though,” he said again. “I did it once, to a hippogriff, when I thought he was – After a storm and he'd been – Well, the details don't matter. But I forgot my manners, despite the hippogriffs’ nature, and we were both quite upset by that in the end."

Theseus looked at Newt for a long moment, and Newt watched Theseus (eyes fixed on the minute crinkles between his brother’s eyes), and then he turned away to retrieve a pair of mugs.

“I forgot that you startle,” Theseus said from behind him. “I’ve accepted that you don’t like to be touched, even if it took me a long time—far too long, really—to stop forcing it on you.”

Newt could hear the unspoken confusion in his brother’s voice. 

“At the same time, you’re different than you were when we were kids, you know? More sure. And you handle those beasts like nothing at all.”

Newt cracked his knuckles before unscrewing the lid from the can of Gunpowder tea and—without turning around—he flicked his wand over his shoulder, toward the teapot he kept on the built-in shelf above the sink.

“Newt?”

The teapot floated past Theseus’ head just as Newt turned back around, open can in his hands. 

“I have more field data now,” he said simply.

Theseus stared, and then jerkily readjusted so one hand was in his pocket and the other on his hip, leaning slightly forward with furrowed brows as if being closer to Newt would help him better understand the meaning behind his words.

“Field – What?”

But Newt only muttered a charm and the mugs he had pulled from the cabinet floated toward Theseus. He turned toward the stove once more, though he was aware of the cups bobbing insistently at his brother’s shoulder, and he allowed himself a small smile at the resulting annoyed huff. He busied himself with measuring leaves into the teapot as he spoke:

“You said I’m different from how we were as children and, besides the obvious fact that I’ve spent the past thirty-some years growing up–”

He turned back toward Theseus and leaned against the counter, one hand shoved back down into his pocket. 

“I have more field data now.”

Theseus stood still with the mugs held absently in his hands, each clutched to his chest the same way Newt often found himself holding baby nifflers.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

A beat.

“You know what I do, when I’m out in the world, right?” Newt asked, glancing at the now roiling, steaming kettle, and he grabbed a tea towel to wrap about his hand before pouring the water into the pot.

“Obviously,” Theseus said, still awkwardly cradling the mugs.

“Help me,” Newt said with abrupt distraction, picking up the teapot with one hand and—having gingerly used his wand to assemble a tray of sugar, milk, and napkins with his injured, non-dominant hand—floating the kit to the small corner table in the sitting area near his bed. “The mugs,” he suggested shortly, as he additionally grabbed a tin of biscuits from underneath the mail, pinned it under an arm, and then passed Theseus, eventually turning around and waiting expectantly when his brother did not move to follow. “And – There’s whiskey and gin above the washbasin, if you want it.”

At the guileless prompting, Theseus immediately and wordlessly summoned the gin and two tumblers and then crossed the small flat after Newt, who had delicately set down the tea and biscuits before throwing himself lengthwise—and much less gently—onto the small couch. 

“The biscuits are from Mrs. Brightsummer down the road. Ever so grateful for the elementary information I provided her on bundimum last month,” Newt was saying as Theseus settled more carefully into the old, brocade armchair beside him. “She’s an odd thing. Hates the Ministry, though I can’t always blame her for that. She wouldn’t even call the Pest division.”

Theseus consciously chose not to react to Newt’s continued disdain for his career—or his audacity at calling someone else odd, considering his own reputation—by refocusing them both on his earlier comment.

“Field data, Newt?” he prompted.

“Right,” he said. “Okay, see—”

But he paused, and then turned his head slightly to look at Theseus, before rolling onto his side and into a sitting position, carefully observing his brother, who was pouring a finger of gin for each of them.

“Do you really want an explanation?” Newt asked, and there was an intensity to the question that made Theseus pause with his hand halfway to putting the stopper back into the bottle. “You’re not just humoring me?”

“Of course I really want an explanation.” He frowned and capped the bottle.

Theseus pushed the gin toward Newt then, which he took and sipped at for a moment before starting again. Theseus noticed his eyes were fixed on the fire, watching the small salamander skitter from one side to another beneath the warming flames.

“So field data,” he finally said. “It’s the information I gather on creatures, when I’m traveling, in the - in the field.”

Theseus did not speak but, instead, nodded, for he knew Newt could probably see him in the periphery.

“Which sounds obvious, I know,” Newt continued hurriedly, “but field observation is useful for more than just creatures. I know you’ve always been perplexed and frustrated by my - my seeming lack of interest in, well - in humans –” Newt glanced up at Theseus at that. “But I have spent a lifetime observing them, too,  not - not necessarily out of true, passionate interest, but for - frankly - for survival .”

Newt pulled his legs up onto the couch and tucked cotton-socked feet beneath him. He looked at Theseus to see if he was following, but his brother’s brows were crinkled in confusion.

“Sorry, I don’t know how to - ” Newt started.

“What does having more 'field data' on witches and wizards have to do with you being different now than you were as a child?” 

Theseus caught his eyes for a moment and Newt took another sip of gin before pushing it away and opening the biscuits, holding them out to Theseus, who waved him away.

“Ah - yes, see - ” Newt tried again. “People are patterns, aren't they? Not as predictable as creatures but – ”

Theseus watched the fingers of one of his brother’s hands start twisting the thumb of the other in unconscious but slowly growing aggravation.

“Newt—” he said commandingly, and after a moment he looked up. “Look, don’t try to explain this to me in a way that you think I will understand. Explain it the way it makes sense to you.”

Newt blinked in surprise, but tucked one hand into the crook of his knee, leaving the other loose in his lap. It seemed to take him a moment to integrate Theseus’ request, but then he rocked slightly until he was facing his brother more, although he looked off to the side as he started again.

“That - what you just did - That's what I mean. Why I was startled - ”

Theseus’ eyebrows went up and Newt’s hands suddenly fluttered to the teapot in response, but Theseus flicked his wand so a tiny ward flared up before Newt could deal with it. 

“It’ll over steep,” he protested weakly, but Theseus was already serving the tea, so he slumped back into his seat slightly.

“Talk, Newt.”

“Right,” he said immediately, scrunching his nose slightly before continuing. “Having more human field data also means I have more field data on you. And, as you’ve just said, you have accepted I am not a person who is overly responsive to - to touch. So that’s new data I have. It’s something that I’ve noticed and it’s now - now it’s part of what I expect from you, when we interact. I've integrated it into what I - what I expect from your behavior.”

Theseus placed a saucer beneath a mug and then pressed it into his brother’s absently fiddling hands. Newt clutched the cup but didn’t actually look at him.

“So it follows,” he continued, “ - it follows that you grabbing me this morning was not necessarily unexpected for humans, maybe, but it has become unexpected for you, in your patterns of behavior with, specifically, me.”

He finally looked up at Theseus and saw his brother listening with still wrinkled brows but now, at least, slightly nodding. 

“It’s like — you see,” Newt said, suddenly more confident, and his words smoothed as he continued. “Creatures are easy to handle most times, because one studies their behavior and makes predictions based on precedent and antecedent that, generally, hold true.”

He looked at his brother more directly now.

“Like a demiguise, using probability from multiple sources of environmental, behavioral, and experiential input to predict the most likely outcome for the succeeding moment.”

Theseus nodded, and he was immediately glad he had actually retained what he had read in Newt’s books, had actually retained the information he had picked up from his brother's sometimes excessive rambling about beasts over the years–

“So while creatures can be surprising, which is what keeps it novel - exciting,” Newt was saying, and a smile crept over his face as he described it, “humans are less predictable, as their thought patterns aren’t written onto their bodies in quite the same way as, say, an erumpent, or a bowtruckle. So when humans defy my typical predictions, that’s not at all atypical. But you…”

He trailed off momentarily and blew at the steam on his tea.

“Are you comparing me to a beast then?” Theseus offered with a touch of amusement in his voice.

“No. Not at all,” Newt answered seriously, “though there’s hardly anything morally wrong with the comparison.” 

Theseus contained a smile.

“Look, you’re just -  my brother. And you finally know me well enough, I think, to behave in ways that don’t intentionally confuse or startle me, whether you know you’re doing so or not.”

It was Theseus’ turn to blink.

“So that’s why I was so startled, because you never move like that around me - not anymore - at least when we’re not, you know - when we’re not being chased by Grindelwald or something...”

There was a moment of silence between them, disturbed only by the crackling of the fire and Newt’s quiet tapping at his teacup.  

“Makes me wonder if you actually read my books,” Newt finally offered in a dry attempt to fill the silence that, for once, seemed to bother him...

“Huh,” Theseus said, after an even longer moment. “Huh.”

“Yes,” Newt agreed. “Anyway. Apology accepted. Drink your tea and have some biscuits.”

Theseus couldn’t help but huff a laugh at such a sudden transition, and Newt himself smiled self-effacingly.

“Seriously, Theseus, I have an early Ministry portkey to north Scotland,” he said, pointing at a chipped blue-and-white plate on the mantelpiece that Theseus hadn’t noticed before. “We're dealing with the Quentiped. And I’ll have to feed everyone before I leave, before Bunty even arrives, so I really must go to sleep soon.”

Theseus shook his head and finally took a sip of his tea, dunking one of Mrs. Brightsummer’s biscuits in it as he watched Newt nibble at a biscuit, before getting up abruptly to fiddle with the salamander’s fire.

“Would you even keep that thing lit if it weren’t for her?”

“Yeah, pipes would freeze otherwise.”

Newt settled back into his seat and finished his gin.

“So what are you doing with Mediwitch Monthly, brother?” Theseus finally asked, bringing the conversation full circle.

“Ah - Madam Breit gave it to me. She thought I might be interested in the content.” 

He paused, flicking his wand with a barely discernible frown so that the magazine rose from the table and zoomed into Theseus’ lap.

“I’m sort of—” The pages were flicking through rapidly to the beginning of the relevant article. “I’m sort of mentioned in it.”

“Another incorrect gossip column?” Theseus said with humor. “The world finds you too charming, Newton.”

Theseus leaned forward to pat his knee lightly, and Newt himself scratched at the back of his neck as his brother sat back—tea in hand—to read the article. He next rubbed absentmindedly at his still quietly throbbing arm and magicked half a finger more gin into his glass, watching the corners of Theseus’ expressive mouth as he read.

‘Both Prodigy and Imbecile’: Muggle Doctor Hans Asperger Describes ‘Autistic Personalities’ in Mentally Abnormal, Asocial Children

By Erma Boot (magical-medic historian, St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries) and Mordicus Egg (researcher, Institute of Muggle Studies), with translation support from Persephone Müller (scholar, European Institute for Continuing Studies in the Wizarding Humanities)

Hans Asperger, only 27 years old but already a well-respected clinician on a children’s hospital unit in Vienna, was an odd child, even for a Muggle. He recalls preferring solitary play, struggling to make friends, and running off classmates by incessantly reciting Franz Grillparzer’s poems and plays to them, from memory—all before the age of nine. Today, however, despite his trying start in life, Asperger is a Muggle doctor and professor, who is interested in the types of children he has come to describe as both “prodigy and imbecile”: children who show extraordinary, perhaps, prodigious skill (“extraordinary levels of performance in certain areas”), but struggle to comprehend—let alone succeed in— simple, everyday routines like self-care and schooling. (3)

These asocial children, Asperger comments, are so in touch with abstract thinking that they fail to appreciate, recognize, or respond to the rich social world around them. Ongoing observation indicates that for all the abilities unique to these personalities, there is an endless list of disabilities: aversive gaze (poor eye contact); limited intuitive social understanding (difficulty reading faces, disinterest in peers); odd gait and repetitive (sometimes nervous) behavior, 'stereotypic' body movement and habits; unusual use of language (e.g., antiquated verbiage, strange linguistic expressions); strange response to noise, smell, light, touch; periods of silence; and the aforementioned “strange fixations”, or special obsessions, unique to each child. (3)

Asperger calls these children autistic psychopaths, and they exist among us—Wizard and Muggle alike. Describe the traits above to any healer or mediwitch, and she will surely be able to identify at least one child formerly in her care who, for these very reasons, infuriated both clinicians and parents alike.

Although previously undescribed, Asperger is not the first Muggle to have taken interest in such abnormal people, and one can only wonder at the interest of the non-magical world with these kinds of children and adults. Still, they seem to have maintained noted fascination for at least 100 years, as a survey of American families in the 1800s discovered a number of previously identified “idiots” were actually highly adept in certain areas, like mathematics or song, despite their asocial and nonverbal dispositions. (4) Even earlier than that, rumours abound that at least one of the witches put to death during the now infamous 1692 Salem Witch Trials bore traits markedly similar to those identified in Asperger’s current lectures. (5) Muggles, historically, have not been kind to those who somehow march to the beat of a different tune…

However, one can also not help but wonder if such study or distinction is as useful among wizards as it is thought to be among muggles, for haven’t we always been proud of the odd bunch among our kind? For example–just to name a few–we celebrate wizards like Arrius Ollivander, who brought and developed our great wand tradition in 4th century A.D. (though at the utter neglect of his family and countrymen when waves of Germanic invasions buffeted the island in the years that followed); and then Bowman Wright, who single-mindedly dedicated his life to the working of magical metals and the rabid protection of Golden Snidgets, in the 1400s. Even today, we value those among us who are perhaps a bit perplexing, but lead the world in diverse fields, e.g., human transfiguration in Ethiopia, verbal healing in formerly French Louisiana (USA), and even here in Britain, with our own intrepid magizoologist. All individuals brilliant and accomplished in their fields of choice and yet—in the wider world of daily conversation or typical domestic dreams—still somewhat abnormal…

Though what we writers suppose we cannot see is the stress and pain these enlightened thinkers may have endured in their childhood—and perhaps suffer to this day—to have survived so long and well to reach the pinnacle of their respective craft. For, as Asperger spoke in a lecture to his students just this year, “We are convinced […] that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfill their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers.”  (3)

Nor do we writers know the fate of the silent class of those who Asperger names as possessing an autistic personality while lacking full function of their faculties, minds replete with thought but unable to tell them to us with words spoken aloud. Do those with these entirely mute dispositions exist in our Wizarding World? Or do they come out different in some other way, as something else, like a squib? 

Whatever the case, Muggle researchers (including American Lauretta Bender and Austrian-Jewish-American Chaskel ‘Leo’  Kanner) are split on the psychological/environmental versus hereditary/natural origin of these personalities. Asperger, however, makes the following observations about the family of one of his patients: 

The mother stemmed from the family of one of the greatest Austrian poets. Her side of the family were mostly intellectuals and all were, according to her, in the mad-genius mould. Several wrote poetry 'quite beautifully'. A sister of the maternal grandfather, 'a brilliant pedagogue', lived as an eccentric recluse. The maternal grandfather and several of his relatives had been expelled from state schools and had to attend private school. [The child] strongly resembled his grandfather. He too was said to have been an exceptionally difficult child and now rather resembled the caricature of a scholar, preoccupied with his own thoughts and out of touch with the real world. (3)

We wizards, therefore, align ourselves—thus far—with Asperger, and advocate for falling on the side of heredity. Across blood statuses, such individual uniqueness (whether brilliance, oddness, idiocy, or some combination of all three) has long been documented in lines with leaders such as these, if one traces them back far enough. The Ollivanders, for example, are riddled with eccentricities, and the lines of arithmantists, naturalists, and potioneers in particular have been famously replete with overly zealous devotees far longer than even Nicolas Flamel can likely recall. Still, while many of these bizarre, asocial types have created as much trouble as they have brilliance—some even maintaining repeated run-ins with Wizarding and Muggle law while simultaneously championing their defense (again, see our own maverick magizoologist)—we see no reason, at this point, to be concerned with the Wizarding gene pool.

Of course, it remains to be seen how research like Asperger’s will affect the world, and whether it will truly have an impact on us, in our own. For now, we shall have to keep our eyes on Austria, and wait to see what our muggle counterparts have to offer. Eventually, it will be up to us wizards to decide if such a thing is worth addressing in the Wizarding world and, if so, what—if anything– should be done about it.

Newt saw the moment Theseus finished reading, for he shifted slightly in his seat, and his hands loosened their grip on the magazine, even as he continued to stare at the page. 

Finally, Theseus looked up and gazed at Newt. 

“I had no idea what you were asking about when you sent that telegram last night. This is what you were talking about?” He held up the magazine and shook it. “This article?”

Newt nodded and took a sip of his tea, for his gin was thoroughly empty.

“Don’t know how you didn’t hear about it yet,” he said quietly. “I just read it this morning and everyone at my old department was talking about it by the time I arrived. But a lot of men in the Beasts Division might be more likely to be married to a healer, or mediwitch than the average fellow - for - you know - for convenience.”

“But no one ever cares about Muggle medicine, Newt.”

“No,” he agreed. “But they do care about gossip.”

“Ah, yes, true, little brother.”  

Theseus tossed the magazine onto the coffee table and, for a full minute, they both stared at it, and at the static photo of the Muggle doctor seemingly studying them from the corner of its cover.

Theseus finally cleared his throat. 

“His description - Asperger’s… When you were a child…” He trailed off and peered at Newt imploringly. “Newt –- add in magic, and it sounds exactly like you.”

Newt couldn’t quite bring himself to meet his brother’s eyes, so he leaned forward for another of Mrs. Brightsummer’s biscuits.

“And no one knew what to do, even mum...”

Newt swallowed the biscuit and vaguely noticed his fingers were, once more, mindlessly rubbing at the hem of his waistcoat. He tried to stop himself (the words from the page seared like an enchantment on his mind), but he simply couldn’t. 

He felt like he was vibrating inside himself as he looked up at Theseus.

“I know,” Newt finally said. “Believe me, Theseus, I know.”

.0.

After a few weeks and a brief flutter of commentaries parroting Mediwitch Monthly, the British wizarding world would largely forget about Boot and Egg’s article on a simple Muggle doctor, far across the continent in Vienna. Eventually, Newt would forget about it, too, until a sporting event that would later become infamous: the 1936 Quidditch World Cup, in Berlin.

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter Four: January 19, 1933

Northernmost Scotland, UK
Thursday - January 19, 1933
3:55 PM, just before sunset

Newt was well-used to sitting for extended periods of time in odd and distinctly uncomfortable places, but he was admittedly a bit tired of this one—the ticking clock for when he was meant to meet Tina at the London docks heavy on his mind. Nonetheless, he had advised—and then been asked to spearhead—the Department’s attempt to contain the rogue quintaped, and that just wasn’t something he could pass up.

But it had been nearly a full two days now, and he was on his fifth shift, most of which had occurred in near full darkness, with the daylight only lasting six hours at John O’Groats that time of year. They’d had only one sighting of the creature between them, and that had been his own (and from quite too far away to do anything about it). The morale of the rest of the team was rapidly flagging, even as Newt became more desperate in his own observation and searching, eager to find a solution that protected beast, wizard, and muggle alike, as well as his own—for once—pre-arranged social schedule…

That afternoon, he had thoughtfully ignored Grimblehawk’s request for him to stay at a particular post—within shouting distance of Avery—as it had become clear to him that their very measured manner of maneuvering was what had foiled their tracking thus far. 

Newt was, therefore, tramping a half-mile inland on the increasingly marshy banks of a brackish waterway when he heard an oversized skittering in the reeds, and he suddenly found himself a half dozen yards away from the bizarrely shaped and mildly primate-like quintaped that had taken a chunk out of his arm four days earlier…

“Hey there, you,” he murmured after a pause.

The creature’s odd eyes were wide and darkly maroon, and Newt and the beast stared at one another for another long moment until it snuffled deeply, and then sucked air in for an inhuman roar, its hair standing eerily on end like a very peeved kneazle. Newt instinctually twisted himself to the side so he appeared twiggier and less threatening while retaining his significant height, hoping to discourage an instinctual advance.

“Just want to get you back to your family…”

When the creature only shrieked again, it became immediately clear to Newt that this approach was very unlikely to be effective, so he simultaneously pressed his fingers into the Protean-charmed band on his wrist while shooting a patronus over his shoulder, requesting back-up from the camp at John O’Groats. 

“How’d you get all the way over here, hm?” he continued mildly, out of habit, but the quintaped only vibrated from hairy face to clubbed feet and continued to stare him down.

By the time the first department employee apparated to the agreed upon safe zone nearly a kilometer to the east, Newt was beginning to regret his foolish wandering, for the quentaped had crept forward another few meters and was making it abundantly clear its intentions were on Newt and Newt alone. Knowing someone was sure to join him momentarily, he gave one more pacifying try:

“Now, I know you might want another bite, but I can promise you—”

He bent his knees slightly, averting his gaze to lessen any perceived threat, but the creature was near enough that he could see the details of its mouth, trembling lips stretched back over its fangs with saliva slicking its beard. Its limbs flexed like some perversion of a harmless Atlantic starfish as it swayed like an equally unharmless acromantula, entirely unconcerned with this Newt-as-magizoologist and far more interested in the prospect of a Newt-as-dinner …

“—there’s better meals more suitable to you on your own island,” he continued quietly. “So how about we—”

Another few pops of apparition sounded closer to them then, and—at that—the quintaped charged . 

On another plane of his mind, Newt appreciated the fascinatingly undulating movements of the creature’s galloping body— and the bizarre attention it had for him—even as he dropped all pretences and moved to set a safe restraining ward about the charging beast—

A ward which was immediately knocked askew by an ill-timed stunning spell from McLaggan.

The stunner flew past both human and creature alike, but it clipped the pinky of Newt’s extended wand hand with unfortunate force, sending his wand spinning into the watery marsh from suddenly numb fingers.

He shook out his arm compulsively as he instantly realized this had become a grappling match he was entirely unlikely to come out of alive if Avery and Saltdimmel didn’t hurry the hell up or McLaggan pull himself together…

As the quintaped leapt, again, with the unexpected dexterity of a spiderous monkey, Newt was vaguely aware of pounding, mucky footsteps in the distance. He gritted his teeth so hard when the creature hit him—slobber from its gaping maw momentarily blinding as he swiped his injured arm out at it with wild force—that an ache immediately bloomed from temple to jaw. 

However, within half a moment, the quintaped had rounded on him again , and Newt was flat on his back in the sawgrass. They rolled over and over for the length of two breaths until he was pinned firmly on the ground, one arm flung protectively across his throat and the other pushing desperately at the underbelly of the beast, for it was twisting its anatomically impractical body to—he presumed—finally eat him.

But there was a sudden flash of disorienting green light, then—

The strength of it produced a series of fireworks in his brain as his head flew back with force— 

And the weight of the creature fell instantly, heavy as stone through water, on Newt’s heaving chest.

Though relatively muddled from his proximity to such a vicious spell, he rolled himself out from beneath the dying quintaped and stared—head turned—as it shifted slowly, its breathing shallow, laboured…

He heard then—as if from far away—three pops of apparition right beside him—a little late, he couldn’t help thinking acerbically—and then there was also Avery’s face (the apparent caster of the killing curse) moving at speed in his periphery. 

But Newt ignored them all, focusing instead on the dying creature sprawled beside him.

“I’m so sorry.”

It was snuffling still, even as it died, and he reached out a hand as his colleagues’ watched on in silence. He placed fingers on its spitty cheek, after which it took one final, snuffling breath and collapsed fully into the spongy marsh: hairy, starfish limbs limp, and still.

Newt wrenched back his arm with no small degree of pain and then flopped onto his back.

McLaggan, Avery, and Saltdimmel began to move about him, murmuring to one another about something he couldn’t quite bring himself to care about, and there was another series of pops in the distance—the off-duty team members arriving at the nearest safe-zone.

But Newt lay still, breathing, even when McLaggan approached to check his pupils and apologize for his clumsy stunner, even as Avery poked at the quintaped with his heavily-booted toe. 

He let his mind hurry along its own paths as his head throbbed, his eyes—tearing up as they blinked away the dead creatures’ spit—fixed on the rapidly darkening, winter-grey sky. 

.0.

Theseus’s Office
Department of Magical Law Enforcement
Ministry of Magic
5:15 PM

Theseus flipped the page of the preliminary report that had been sent to his office from the field a quarter hour before. His brother’s name (and occasional distinctive phrasing) was splashed liberally throughout the entire thing. Normally, these sorts of issues would not inherently be his department’s business, but given rising concern over dark activity and the potential for misplaced beasts to be associated with intentional attempts by Grindelwald-minded wizards to violate the Statute of Secrecy—though why they would start in north Scotland, he didn’t quite know—everything seemed to come by his desk now…

Reconnaissance. Two-day stakeout: basecamps at John O’Groats and Swona, 6-hour shifts. Communication: patronus, Protean charm. Travel: limited apparition, footpaths. Initial impression: No evidence of human interference in coastal habitat established by lone Quintaped. Magical residue present but indiscernible. Aerial surveillance of Isle of Drear (broomstick - McLaggan) and on-the-ground investigation at set points (rapid-apparition - Scamander) revealed no disruption to previously described behaviour and habitat (see de Groot, 1743; Scamander, 1927). Reports from families on nearby wizarding Isle of Swona indicate more localised gales than winters ‘30 and ‘31, but otherwise no unusual activity.

Interception. Inland waterway. Lead: Scamander. Secondary: McLaggan, Avery, Saltdimmel. Incident supervisor: Grimblehawk. Team summoned by means of Protean charm and—

There was suddenly a soft fwoosh and a familiar voice in the grate behind him: “Have you heard from your brother recently?”

Theseus jumped nearly as high as Newt had at the Leaky Cauldron those few days before, and his knees stung as he whipped about in his swivelling chair to face the fire.

“Merlin’s beard , Dumbledore!” he exclaimed. “How in Andros’ name they let you through security every time—”

But he was cut off by the tapping of a bedraggled owl at his atrium window. At that, Dumbledore floo’d all the way into his office and Theseus jerked open the glass in one fluid movement, gently unbinding the scroll on the proffered leg.

He read in silence for half a minute.

“Albus…” Theseus looked up after reading the message, and he shoved it at him, tucking his hands roughly into his well-tailored pockets and fixing Dumbledore with a highly suspicious look. “Look, I know why I have an interest in this quintaped business, but why have you?”

Dumbledore finished skimming and then dropped the note onto Theseus’ neat desk, raising one well-groomed eyebrow and allowing himself a small smile that set Theseus scowling.

“I expect the same reason.”

Theseus rose to reach for his coat but Dumbledore waved him down. 

“I shall retrieve Newt and meet you at yours,” he offered simply, and—with a pop—he was gone.

“Come on ,” Theseus muttered. “Every time , straight past the wards.”

Then he turned his attention back to the report, packed his things up neatly—sealed in a well-charmed folder—and Floo’d himself directly home. 

.0.

Evening, Theseus,

I’m fine. However, healer won’t release me to an “empty” house, no matter how many times I explain I routinely kip in my shed after these things. May I stay the night with you? If so, I would appreciate if you would fetch me. Spell concussions apparently forbid apparition for 24 hours (?).

Location: Swona, one isle over from Drear (aprx 58.74279°N, 3.05815°W).  Visualise an actual island so you don’t overshoot - high tide.

Regardless, please let me know. I can write Bunty or Dumbledore instead. Or you can pick me up at St. Mungo’s tomorrow, I’ll manage.

-Newt

P.S. Please give Elmira a biscuit. She was very agreeable even though it is raining here. She’ll know to head back to Level 4 when she’s done.

.0.

Theseus’ Flat
London, England
8:22 PM

The wind howled, even as the sky only sporadically spit bitter rain on London’s unlucky inhabitants. 

Theseus had just returned from the chippy with dinner for himself and the, supposedly, soon-arriving-Newt. He was cursing emphatically as he tripped over the umbrella stand when he heard a sudden pop of apparition on his front stoop, so he set the fish and chips on the entryway table and wrenched the door back open.

Newt and Dumbledore immediately came stumbling in from the gale, and Newt’s face was split in a wild grin, even as he leaned heavily on his erstwhile professor—hair plastered to his face—and even as Dumbledore gripped Newt’s trusty case, for Newt clutched his arm, once more, tightly to his chest.

“Theseus, you wouldn’t believe —”

“It’s been 3 hours since your owl. Where have you been?”

Dumbledore was helping Newt in and steadying him as he excitedly shook himself out of his drenched overcoat, jacket, sweater, and waistcoat.

“We went back by Isle of Drear—”

Theseus paused in flicking Newt’s garments toward the blazing hearth and paid better attention.

“—because I had a realisation - about the quintaped's behaviour and I - I needed to know.”

“Excuse me?”

Newt ignored him, one hand dancing in the air as he explained, instead of his typical two. “It was clearly only focused on me, despite the three others in the vicinity, and it was intent on my previously injured arm, which made me wonder—”

“Newt—”

“It obviously reminded me of hippogriff behaviour after someone’s been bitten—they can smell it on you — physiological, I think, like dogs. Hormones, probably. Haven’t studied it yet but that’s my best guess—”

Theseus glared at Albus, who had deposited Newt into an armchair and then silently removed himself to Theseus’ kitchen, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

“—so far. And, praise Paracelsus, I was right!”

Theseus finally gave up and rubbed a hand down his face as Newt bent over a notebook he’d seemingly conjured from nowhere and continued his delighted rambling.

“The ones on Drear only went after me, not Albus, and not after any of the birds—or the illusions—we conjured either, to test it.”

There was a moment of silence as Newt sketched and jotted notes in his book, and Theseus could hear Dumbledore digging in his cupboards across the kitchen.

“See, they’re not only specifically carnivorous toward humans, but they’re responsive to the scent of their own venom, even if it’s days old,” Newt explained more directly. “Once they’ve marked you, they’re set on you, no matter what.”

Theseus stared at his brother as he beamed.

“Which is obviously an evolutionary marvel and a detriment,” he was saying, but his excitement was diminishing as the exhaustion of the past few days, in combination with the aforementioned concussion, finally caught up with him.

“Can you believe it?” he finally asked, more quietly but with no less sincerity.

“I really, really can’t,” Theseus said with a weak smile, for he was not yet willing to crush Newt’s uncharacteristically effusive mood, even if he was distinctly annoyed by the entire reckless business and Dumbledore’s suspicious involvement in it…

Theseus turned toward the kitchen, then, to see Dumbledore himself floating two mugs of cocoa and trays for their chips toward them, before offering a jaunty wave and slipping out the front door before Theseus could say anything to him at all.

“So, have you read the preliminary report yet?” Newt asked abruptly, hands wrapped loosely about the mug as the tray settled on his legs. His energy slowly regulated itself again. “McLaggan can be a dry writer but he has excellent attention to detail, and Grimblehawk’s had the poor quintaped's body transferred back to the Department so we can dissect it tomorrow afternoon. Apart from Avery, that is—disciplinary -”

“Disciplinary suspension for using an unforgivable curse on a highly sought-after beast, especially so close to a colleague, resulting in said colleague’s—luckily—minor injury.”

Newt snapped his mouth shut at that—only then realising just how much he’d apparently been speaking—at which point Theseus cast a water-evaporating charm on his still-sopping hair. Newt felt it spring back to life as Theseus shoved the fish and chips into his lap and settled into the matching wingback chair across from him.

“I read the report, Newt. Eat. You’re ageing me decades.”

“Says the fearless director of Britain’s infamous auror office,” Newt muttered under his breath, gently unwrapping the oily paper without looking at his brother.

“Don’t think I won’t apparate you straight to St. Mungo’s for that mandatory Ministry observation,” he countered around a mouthful of haddock.

Newt’s cheek was immediately silenced, and he tucked into his meal with a bit more showy enthusiasm than Theseus would normally expect. 

Theseus’ flat
Friday - January 20, 1933
6:10 AM

Theseus woke the next morning at 6 o’clock, the scent of just-cooked eggs and slightly burnt coffee permeating the room. Regardless of injury, Newt had always managed to function on a strangely limited amount of sleep, so Theseus quickly performed his morning ablutions and hurried downstairs to where he expected to find him at the kitchen table, nose in a book or head in the clouds as he perfunctorily ate an omelette. 

“Good morning,” he called as he rounded the corner, but he emerged into an empty kitchen and slid in his socks to an undignified stop.

The table was set for only one, complete with steaming omelette, coffee, and Daily Prophet . 

Dishes were rinsed and drying in the sink. 

Newt’s case was stored neatly in the tight space between cabinet and stove. 

And, yet, no Newt .

Theseus crossed slowly to the table and pulled back his chair, noting the warming charm his brother had thoughtfully cast on the eggs.

He then saw—peering out from just beneath the newspaper—a pile of silver sickles and a note in his brother’s thick, half-printed cursive, apparently scribbled on the back of a grocer’s receipt.

Morning - 

Headed to the libraries after I pop by MoM. Needed some Muggle money for the British Library (I don’t actually know if it’s possible to copy microfilm non-magically?) but the banks aren’t open so I took some from that drawer in the bathroom. Hope I calculated exchange correctly. (Also, borrowed your extra key so the house will let me back in later - my case.)

Regarding breakfast - Hopefully the charm worked. Haven’t used it on anything but [uncooked] fwooper and jobberknoll eggs in years. Toast in the oven—picked up butter, check your ice box.

- Newt

P.S. Also yes, head fine, arm fine. Hope work isn’t dreadfully boring.

Theseus frowned, for he had long known that thoughtful little acts like ‘picking up butter’ did not come naturally to his often preoccupied younger brother and that—when they did—they were often purposefully employed to distract, or to preemptively (and often subconsciously ) apologise for something Newt soon planned to do, whether he realised it yet or not…

Theseus sighed and sat down—muttering the countercharm that allowed his breakfast to naturally cool—before flicking open the newspaper with a resigned huff (though he was, admittedly, unsure exactly what it was he was huffing about ). 

He took a sip of the slightly charcoal-y coffee and flattened the page.

The morning’s international headlines did little to ease the previously Newt-related anxiety prickling at the back of his mind: 

Grindelwald Acolytes Infiltrate Muggle Rally Near the Reichstag: Ministers Fawley, Fischer Discourage Concern

Merlin. Could they have one month of peace?

Work, unfortunately, probably wasn’t going to be ‘dreadfully boring’ after all.

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter Five: January 21, 1933

Tilbury docks near Essex (1)
London, England, UK
Saturday - January 21, 1933
Late afternoon

One day, one dissection of a quintaped, six hours at the libraries, and yet another awkward conversation with Theseus later, Newt was meeting Tina at Tilbury docks on the Thames.

As the gangway was pushed into place beside the SS Minnewaska (2), he felt for a moment as if he’d been struck by a misplaced levitation charm, something he found mildly annoying, since he and Tina had known one another for years now. He would have liked to have thought—logically—that such a sensation would long have passed, but he nevertheless found himself glancing down at his feet, just in case, only to find them (as expected) perfectly still on the dock…

He shook out one hand and watched the passengers disembark, occasionally checking his pocket watch.

Tina emerged onto the gangplank after eight long minutes, wrestling with a small steamer trunk. She was dressed in her long black leather coat with a burgundy silk scarf peeking out the collar, and Newt couldn’t help thinking it brought out the natural warmth in her cheeks, a warmth so often downplayed by the monochrome palettes she usually preferred: it reminded him of that striking splash of red atop the common green woodpecker, how it transformed them, somehow, into something that might stop anyone as they passed, turning heads—embarrassed they’d failed to notice before—in sudden, unblinking wonder…

As she descended, he noticed her scanning the waiting crowd, searching for him, and the moment her eyes found his, he felt his face split into a smile, for she beamed at him for a very long moment before turning away to tug once more at her luggage. As she reached the very bottom, the man in front of her stopped without warning, readjusting his satchel. In an instinctual attempt to avoid running into said man, Tina had twisted herself to the side to step onto the dock, but she began to trip (rather majestically) over the gangplank’s lip—

Before Newt had even realised he was moving, he’d bounded the last few yards between them to intercept her before she met the ground. He righted her instantly but kept a hand hovering at her back as he yanked the trunk from her himself, all before she had even said hello.

And so they spoke at once:

“Damn corner piece always—”

“Tina, your scarf is—” 

And so they tried again, at the very same time:

“Hello.”

Newt smiled brilliantly, and Tina bobbed slightly on her feet before reaching up to rub a spot of dirt from his nose. 

And then he was moving away from the crowd, away from the boat, and away from the prominent arrow of a sign marked Alien Immigration…

She hopped slightly to catch up and brushed gently along his arm.

“Newt, there’s a very obvious sign back there you failed to notice.”

She waved her hand at the line forming for customs. 

A large cormorant on the dock beside them simultaneously extended its wing, as if it too were reprimanding Newt by pointing toward the office, though it immediately ducked its head to clean its feathers as if to disabuse them precisely of that notion.

Newt couldn’t help being amused by that, so he asked with a crooked smile, “Sorry, but have you got any magical creatures in this trunk, then? — Anything you’d prefer to hide?” 

She scoffed.

“Right, then our own office will be a lot quicker. Probably more respectable for America’s Head Auror, too, actually entering wizarding Britain legally...”

He grabbed her hand and took a few more quick steps to the left before any Muggle officers noticed them breaking so wholly from the crowd and—placing one hand on an odd little whirl on a post holding up chains at the dock’s edge—they were pulled through one tiny space and deposited abruptly in another.

It was a small shack with one muggle-proofed window, a side door facing away from the Muggle customs office. Through the window, however, Tina could see the SS Minnewaska she had just arrived on, and the no-maj's milling about impatiently in their own queue. Earlier, from the outside, the shack had looked like a simple, rundown supply shed. 

Already ahead of them were a witch and one wizard, the former of whom she’d often found herself sharing dinner with, though they didn’t speak to one another at all, only eating quickly in companionable quiet before escaping to their respective cabins.

“Wow,” she finally said. “This is much simpler than the port I went through in France.”

“Yes, well—”

But Newt was peering over the shoulder of the witch and wizard before them, seemingly trying to figure out who exactly was on duty—

“—we’re a lot less flashy and have had a hell of a long time to perfect it, being an actual island with a long and, um, rather aggressive maritime history...”

He looked back at her with a small smile once he’d quit craning his neck to examine the desk.

“You alright?” she asked abruptly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re twitchy.”

“Oh - yes - I maybe haven’t had the best, erm - The best experiences with this particular post in the past. Forced to go through it on my way back from that disaster in New York and if it weren’t for Theseus, things wouldn’t have ended well then.”

Tina raised her eyebrows. The witch at the very front of the line left through the side door and apparated with a near silent pop.

They took a step forward.

“The man that time was the same as during my first incident, on my way back from the War,” Newt offered at her apparent continued interest. “He’s worked here for decades and quite doesn’t like me. You wouldn’t believe the mess then, travelling with legal specimens—”

“For once,” she interjected dryly.

“—on behalf of the Beast Division.” He ignored her. “You’d think I was – He said I was shifty.” (3)

“And?”

They shuffled forward slightly.

“Well, Theseus was still in France at that point, so I spent a few days in an unlit, unnumbered cell below the Ministry before the DRCMC (4) director found out and retrieved me.”

“Mercy Lewis, Newt!”

“Unpleasant, yes. Lost the majority of my work, too. ‘Dangerous times - desperate measures’ was the entirely unapologetic justification.”

The wizard in front of them was gone, too, so they took another step forward, for they were the last in the shack. Tina went through the motions with the officer while Newt stood silently beside her, both hands tight on her trunk so it was lifted slightly from the ground, eyes on a stack of immigration forms at the corner of the man’s desk.

Tina was just tucking her freshly inspected wand back into her overcoat when a hand shot into Newt’s line of vision, resting unobtrusively on the stack of papers his glazed gaze considered as he thought. 

He looked up to see the officer smiling and he glanced away before he could stop himself—

“Mr. Scamander.” 

There was the feel of Tina’s hand, then—a light, restrained pressure on the thick fabric of his sleeve—and he managed to look back at the officer.

“Yes,” he acknowledged softly, but the man indulged his clear dislike of direct eye contact by casually going back to his work—inspecting Tina’s ‘reasons for visit’ and declaration forms—as he continued to speak.

“My son’s rather a fan of yours, Mr. Scamander. Fifth year at Hogwarts, working on one of his O.W.L.s in Care of Magical Creatures.”

“That’s wonderful,” Newt replied stiltedly, readjusting his grip on the trunk so he could tuck his previously quintaped-mangled hand into a pocket.

The officer was looking at Tina now, clarifying her information. “So you’re here to see him, here to travel, or you’re here for work, Miss Goldstein?”

“All of them, actually,” Tina answered with direct confidence, though she fumbled in a pocket for her MACUSA identification as she spoke. “Sorry I wasn’t clear on the form. This was last minute. Yes, I came to see Mr. Scamander, so my destination is technically London, but we do plan to travel.” She flipped out her MACUSA card, identifying her as Head of the Auror Office. “I’ll also be meeting with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement while I’m here, though I didn’t confirm they’d have time before actually getting on the boat.”

“They do,” Newt interjected immediately. “Have time, that is. Theseus – My brother - “ He redirected his attention to the officer, then, appreciating the need for context. “My brother is our Head Auror. He Floo’d me this morning to make sure I knew he wanted to meet with you—” He turned back to Tina with an inclination of his head— “before we – ”

“I’m well aware who your brother is, Mr. Scamander,” the officer interrupted with a chuckle. “Theseus Scamander the War Hero.” 

He said it like some name from a story, printing “London” on the page and then stamping Tina’s forms, magicking them into a pile behind him.

“My son’s a Hufflepuff, you see,” the officer told Newt then. “His siblings are Gryffindor and Slytherin—my wife was in Ravenclaw, and our parents didn’t go to Hogwarts at all. So I’m the only Hufflepuff in the family besides him, and I’m not very exciting, really.”

He waved a hand about his workplace with an amused, self-deprecating smile, and Newt nodded awkwardly. Tina could tell he had no idea how to respond to this particular situation, but the officer just continued talking as he scanned Tina’s passport with a series of spells, checking—she assumed—that she had no surprise warrants out for her. 

“So I used to tell him all about Theseus Scamander’s bravery and ingenuity to cheer him up.”

At Newt’s slight tilt of the head, the officer clarified.

“I’m afraid his older brother wasn’t too kind when he got sorted, you see. My youngest’s always been a bit of an odd kid—intense, sensitive - you know the type—and his sweet, idiot, overly charming Slytherin brother insisted Hufflepuff is where they put all the ones that can’t fit anywhere else.”

Newt managed an expression halfway between a grimace and a chuckle. “Not entirely untrue...”

“No, it’s not,” the officer agreed with a laugh, and he closed Tina’s passport and leaned back in his chair. “No offence, though, but he wasn’t overly impressed with your brother, Hufflepuff or not—said he didn’t like the idea of war much.”

Tina could feel Newt shift beside her, and she leaned forward to gently tug her trunk from him. His hand grasped compulsively in the air as she did so, and she couldn’t help but smile at his subconscious desire to keep handle-shaped things well in check.

“But you… ” the man continued, crossing his arms across his chest. “He was 12 in 1929, the year your Fantastic Beasts book became required reading for Care of Magical Creatures. His older sister had just bought it for her first CMC class, and we couldn’t get him out of Flourish & Blotts before getting him his own copy…”

Newt stood stiff beside Tina, and he watched a desk ornament she hadn’t before noticed flickering gold as it spun on its axis.

“Dug through all my wife’s magazines and some old copies of the Prophet to find those articles on you, your interviews, after that Grindelwald business in New York, and then during your book launch. Bundled them up with his school things, tied it all up with a note, and sent him off on the train.”

Newt was pink beneath his freckles by now, but he managed to glance up at the officer, since he knew it was expected. The man still hadn’t handed back Tina’s passport, which was beginning to very mildly irk him.

“What did the note say?” Tina asked after several long and silent moments, for it seemed Newt would not be finding his words to encourage the conversation any time soon.

“Told him that we’re all called to serve in different ways. That there’s different types of bravery, even for a Hufflepuff, just like the difference between Theseus Scamander the War Hero and his little brother Newton.”

Newt had turned away slightly and was rubbing a hand at the back of his neck, the other curling about the edge of his coat pocket.

“Told him the best thing he can do is be true to himself, regardless of House or siblings or whatever.”

Newt composed himself and seemed to have warmed to him slightly, for he turned back to face the officer with a less flushed face.

“That’s good advice,” he finally offered quietly. “You’re a kind father.”

“Well, he’s different now, my Hufflepuff son, since he started following your career—confident and sure.” The officer stopped and laughed then, and the tension in the small room broke. “A little too confident, mind—gets himself in trouble constantly now. Can’t keep him in the castle half the time, and the other half he’s getting marked down for making every assignment about magizoology... Wife’s worried he’ll get himself expelled.”

Tina’s hand had raised to the small of Newt’s back at some point, and he felt the nervous energy flood from his hands like water out a sluice.

“Yes, well, don’t let him do that,” he said with an amused huff. “I would know.”

“I’ll do my best,” the officer smiled. He paused for a moment then, leaning forward and picking up Tina’s passport again before continuing. “Now, I don’t normally do this, Mr. Scamander, but would you mind signing something for me, to send to my son? It would mean a lot to him.”

“I– Oh, uh, yes - Um, sure,” Newt managed, and he took the suddenly proffered quill and paper and hunched awkwardly over the table, writing a note as Tina surreptitiously peered over his shoulder. “I’m sorry, wait —” He glanced up and fixed his eyes on the officer’s hand, laid across Tina’s passport. “What’s your son’s name?”

“John Szapira. John with an ‘h’.” 

Newt nodded, wrote, and then looked up—

“S - Z - A - P - I - R - A,” the officer spelled. (5)

“Thanks.” Newt scribbled, and then said distractedly as he continued writing (trying to think what would have made him actually behave better as a child): “I worked with a Szapira— During the War - spelled the same. Only fellow in the unit I didn’t annoy...”

“Eastern Front?” he asked with piqued interest. “Ukraine?” (6)

“Yes, in part. Dragon Protection and Aerial Defense programs, 4th ECW Specialty-slash-Reserve.” (7)

He finished the note and blew on it to dry the ink, digging about his pocket for an old business card his publisher had insisted he have while working on publicity. 

“He - uh - he liked poetry,” Newt said vaguely, and he folded and handed the note and card to Mr. Szapira before taking a quick step back, watching the desk ornament again.

“What was his proper name?” Mr. Szapira asked.

Newt looked up at that, for he could feel a suddenly mournful power emanating from the man across from him, like the intensely grievous pull of an augurey separated from its brood. 

“I - ” He paused. “I’m so sorry but I honestly don’t know. A lot of the - a lot of us who spoke different languages we - um - we only used surnames.”

He cleared his throat and stuffed a hand in one pocket to pick at the inner stitching.

“It was printed on our equipment , you see. ‘T. Ivanova, J. Leipzig, A. Szapira, N. Scamander’…” he listed. “Easier to remember.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. 

“ A, you say?”

Tina shifted beside him. 

Newt nodded and felt oddly compelled to continue. 

“I didn’t have reason to recall until now, but - um - Szapira didn’t call me by name, actually. Said I reminded him of - uh— You obviously know my name’s Scamander . But he said that I reminded him of salamanders because I was the only one the Ironbellies didn’t want to eat—fireproof, you see—so I was - er - I was Salamandra instead.” (8)

Tina huffed a half laugh beside him. 

“Sounds like a funny man,” Officer Szapira said with repressed fondness. “And one who knows his Talmud.” (9)

Tina looked up at that.

“What happened to him?” he prompted. 

“I honestly don’t know,” Newt admitted, and it surprised him. “We were - about the same age so we stuck close together while there, but he left, um, right before the end of our program. His family had been killed—”

He stopped abruptly, thinking—

“—near -” 

Tina put a hand on his back—

“Near Kyiv… ” (10)

After another moment of silence and a hard blink, he restarted again with a jerk of one arm and a slight shifting on both feet. 

“Almost right after he left, I was transferred to my brother’s unit in France - because our programs were retired. That was - about the same time as that Russian-German Muggle treaty - fall and spring of - of ‘18. (11) It was a mess when we left — Russia’s own war. (12) I - ah - I never heard from him again.”

Officer Szapira watched Newt carefully when he finished, and that deep sadness had not gone away at all. 

Newt shook himself out of its power and turned purposefully to Tina, clearing his throat quietly:

“Sorry, we should really be going, Tina, if you don’t mind. And -” He nodded politely to the officer. “If you’re finished, if we could have her passport, Mr. Szapira?” 

“Of course, yes—” He returned instantly to his work persona. “Boat coming in from France on the half hour, actually, so we’ll get you right along.”

He added a Wizarding Work Visa to a page of Tina’s passport, folded it back up, and extended it to her. But before she could properly take it, he had tightened his grip infinitesimally, such that their arms were stretched across his desk, passport linking them and hands frozen between:

“Where will you be travelling, Miss Goldstein, if you don’t mind my curiosity?”

She smiled at him, and Newt caught some suggestion of sadness there that set the previously diffused energy rushing right back up his hands. 

“Just Ireland, Mr. Szapira.”

Officer Szapira nodded and handed the passport over, before advising Tina to be careful, thanking Newt—once again—for the letter to his son, and wishing them well as they turned around for the apparition point.

They didn’t get far.

“My daughter,” he said after barely less than a second, for Tina had just begun to open the door for Newt, who was carrying her trunk again. “She wants to be an auror. Told her it was too dangerous, but she’s set, in that righteous Gryffindor kind of way...”

Tina flicked her wand at an empty form on the man’s desk as she kept the door propped open for Newt, who had already slipped outside and was turning up his coat collar, tapping fingers on the top of her trunk as he watched them. 

The form filled her mailing addresses and personal Floo number onto the page. 

“She can write me if she has any questions about making it as women like us in a profession like that.”

And then they were out the door. 

While the charmed window hid Mr. Szapira’s face from them, Newt couldn’t help but notice—with a heavy stone of something that felt almost like guilt, deep in his gut—that Szapira had dropped his head into his hands when he thought the door was fully shut…

But Newt could only slip his hand into Tina’s own, warn her they were apparating, and concentrate hard on his flat in the wake of that pesky concussion, so he didn’t splinch her. 

With a slightly louder pop than he normally would have allowed, he left the memory, and the man, behind.

There was a flurry of movement in their wake: 

A flock of seagulls at the edge of the dock—preening winter feathers, scuffling for food—rose into the air as one, disappearing fast as smoke in an overcast sky.

.0.

The note to Officer Szapira’s youngest son, John. The paper is from the top page of an ill-used, Ministry-stamped notebook, splattered with night shift’s coffee and tea stains. 

January 21, 1933

Mr. John Szapira
Hufflepuff House

I have had the pleasure of making your father’s acquaintance this afternoon while meeting a friend at the docks. I was pleased to hear about your interest in magical creatures and I do hope you finish through NEWTs.

I know the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures puts a lot of stock in those things but it will also make your life easier (if you are serious about magizoology) to finish in herbology and potions and charms, too. I made some choices that did not allow me to graduate from Hogwarts and, so, my early career was perhaps more stressful than it otherwise might have been.

All you can do is try and it’ll be over soon. The world shows us over and over again that incomplete understanding is often more dangerous than ignorance.

Newt Scamander

PS - Have attached my card so you may contact me with any questions about your studies.
PPS - There’s nothing in the forest actually worth getting expelled over.

.0.

Tina may have been in near constant correspondence with Newt over the past several years and had hosted him on various occasions in New York, but she had never made it to England to visit him herself and, consequently, had never actually seen where he spent his time when he wasn’t camping in the wilds or wreaking accidental havoc on major metropolises...  

When he opened the door to his flat and stood back to allow her entrance, however, she was not at all surprised by what she saw: a sparse, small and reasonably well-kept domicile, dotted here and there with piles of books and the odd tool stashed on a shelf. The lights glowed warm when he flicked them, and he deposited her trunk on his modest bed before crossing the space to stoke a dying fire, where she was—again—entirely unsurprised to see a salamander skitter from the back of the hearth to enthusiastically greet him (or as enthusiastically, she expected, as a salamander could greet someone).

She slipped out of her coat and sat gingerly on the edge of his couch, eyes taking in the space as Newt spoke in a low voice to the small creature. She subconsciously categorised items and exits in a way that had become second-nature after years at MACUSA. Her gaze eventually settled on a clearly thoughtlessly discarded copy of Mediwitch Monthly on the coffee table, a half-shut tin of what appeared to be biscuits obscuring most of its cover.

Newt stood and turned suddenly, then, wiping ash off on his thighs and hurriedly cleaning away the biscuits and magazine to the slightly cluttered surface of his kitchen counter.

“So -” he said, but nothing followed it, and Tina couldn’t help but be amused and warmed by the way he stood before her, body shifting as the fingers of one hand flicked with ill-concealed excitement, for he fought off a brilliant smile, brought on by simply observing her, sat on a couch in the centre of his flat in London.

“So,” she answered and her own smile grew. And then: “So are we really gonna see your brother before we leave for Ireland?”

And then the surface tension that was the delicate way Newt was keeping his body in check broke, spilled over, and he smiled brightly. There was even something approaching a chuckle as he emphatically answered: “Absolutely not.”

Tina stood and walked about the coffee table so they were a bare few feet apart.

“Unless you really want to, that is.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Scamander. I need a vacation.”

“See, that’s what I told him, but Theseus—”

“Is Theseus,” she finished simply.

He stepped around her and headed for the kitchen, checking the clock on the wall, hands fluttering toward the tea kettle and then turning abruptly back to Tina instead, where she still stood in the centre of his living space.

“I expect you’re hungry, and I’ll admit I forgot to eat breakfast myself.”

“It’s six o’ clock, Newt.”

“All right, and lunch, then.” He paused and then offered, straightening a book on the counter without quite looking up at her: “We could eat here, of course. I have things for soup, some bread from yesterday. Or we could go out.”

“It’s your call. I’m just glad to be off that boat.”

Newt glanced behind him, where he heard the vague sound of tiny claws scrabbling at the basement door. He flicked his wand at it to add another gentle ward.

“Sorry - Teddy’s peeved I haven’t let him up here in days. Didn’t want him wrecking the place before you arrived.”

There was silence for a moment as Tina watched him. 

“So I haven’t really got a preference, though,” he finally continued. “Theseus told me about a restaurant a few blocks away. It’s Muggle-run, so we wouldn’t talk - work - of course, but it's Italian, or - or maybe French?” A look of confusion flitted across his face. “I was half asleep, so I wasn’t really – ” 

He stopped again to look up, actually meeting her eyes this time, and then swallowing hard. 

“Well, he just said that we might enjoy it.”

Tina’s eyebrows twitched at that, and she subconsciously placed a hand on her hip.

“Oh, so Theseus’ told you to take me out to dinner?” 

Newt tilted his head in surprise and, also subconsciously, took a slight step back from the counter, sensing that there was the potential now for a social misstep but having absolutely no idea why or what it might be.

“My brother told me,” he answered evenly, brow furrowed as he assessed the shift in her posture, eyes fixing firmly on the fist on her waist and the cock of her hips before flickering back up to her face, “that we might enjoy ourselves if we - if we went somewhere that’s not my flat or, well, a bog - in Ireland —” 

He held her gaze for a full second before glancing to the counter again. 

“—on your first evening in London.” 

Tina flushed slightly and then actually, truly laughed.

“Something about appreciating a nice meal after three days on a ship,” he was continuing hurriedly.

“I won’t disagree with that.” 

“And, you know - since it’s a Muggle place - not being able to talk about politics, or work or - or my creatures.”

“I like your creatures,” she insisted immediately.

Newt paused again and looked at her carefully, lips twitching in a half smile that felt a bit too vulnerable after only speaking to her in letters for a month and then having the rug pulled out from under him back at the Immigration shed, so he turned himself slightly away to continue:

“Theseus thought it might be helpful if I were forced to focus on - on you.”

“Did he now?” 

She raised her brows again and Newt sighed, walking back toward her to hover beside his armchair, hand suddenly diving into his pocket to pick at a string.

“Listen, I’ll be completely honest, Tina. I don’t often know how to — It’s been recently brought to my attention that I lack a certain intuitive — Look, I - I don’t understand the nuance of these things so—”

“Newt, your brother wants you to take me out on a date. That’s all it is. You’ve heard of dates, right?” she teased gently. 

“Of course I’ve – I’ve been on - Merlin’s beard, Tina, we’ve gone on dates! But maybe we should - should talk about this when - I mean, you’re staying at my house —  It would be inappropriate to—”

“Newt,” Tina said firmly, and she closed the space between them to tap him gently, sending him with a stiff flop into the waiting chair. 

He breathed out quietly, cheeks puffing slightly before the air emerged from his lips in a near-silent, but still comical, puff.

“Bugger,” he muttered. “I’m being ridiculous”

“You’re not,” she said immediately. “But you clearly have more going on in that head of yours than you told me, and don’t think I didn’t notice those potions on your side-table.”

He blinked.

“You have to do better when you’re friends with aurors, Mr. Scamander.”

“Well, pleasing aurors isn’t—”

“But you’re starting to sound like one of those awful mass-manufactured dolls whose charm is wearing off so I need you to slow down and breathe, Newt, or—God help me—I’ll stun you myself.”

He smiled wearily and huffed a laugh.

“Right,” he said quietly, leaning forward slightly with hands braced on his knees. He gave his head a small shake. “Sorry - A moment.”

She watched the nape of his neck as he stared at the floor, hands eventually tapping out a rhythm on the insides of his knees before he abruptly straightened again, face turned toward her and eyes nearly there, too.

“Look, Tina, I would like to take you out. You know I fancy you.”

She laughed almost imperceptibly but didn’t interrupt further.

“But it’s just - I’m not -” 

He paused for a moment, a moment in which Tina settled on the arm of the chair beside him, her presence a suddenly silent reassurance as he collected his thoughts.

“I’m not sure this is how it’s meant to go, Tina,” he admitted, head tilted toward her. “Barely seeing each other for years, communicating in letters for months at a time and then silence when I’m away, and—”

“Newt, I don’t think this was ever going to go the way it does in stories. I arrested you when I met you, for Morrigan’s sake!”

“You did,” Newt said, and he met her eyes then with a true smile, leaning back into the chair so he could watch her on her perch. “And don’t think for a second I’ll ever let you forget it.”

There was a retort on her tongue, but it fell from her lips as he reached out a tentative hand to tuck a strand of magically-curled hair behind one ear. As he pulled away, fingers brushed her cheek...

But when a log popped in the fire behind them, Newt rose like a cork from a bottle in an unexpected flurry.

“Sometimes Theseus is supremely annoying,” he muttered. And then, louder: “So would you like to - Miss Goldstein - That is, may I take you to dinner?”

Tina could only huff a laugh in response and cross the room, and Newt couldn’t help staring as she opened her trunk on his bed, removed a few items of neat clothing from it to set aside on his pillow as she dug deeper for a pair of low heels, and then gathered it all up into her arms with a spell, striding past him and jerking her head toward the door by the basement—

“Bathroom?” she asked.

“Ye- yes.”

And he watched her disappear into his washroom and then looked down at himself, suddenly mildly concerned he would be underdressed.

He slipped out of his blue jacket, changed his tie, charmed his pocket watch chain so it shone without grime, splashed water on his face, and then pulled on a neater, grey overcoat so that—by the time Tina was emerging from the bathroom—he was crouched on the floor before the sink, rummaging about for the Muggle bills he’d tucked into a tool box after returning from the Ministry the day before.

“Sorry - got it.” He waved the cash. “Shall we?” 

And he was very careful not to stare as he rose from his crouch, for she was wearing brown slacks and a deep chocolate blazer instead of her usual black, and the almost dragon-scale bronze of her shoes was nearly as distracting to him as it would have been, he imagined, to a niffler...

“You look nice,” he said, in as controlled a voice as he could manage. “The brown is very warm. It suits you.”

She shrugged on a heavy wool coat with a tempered smile and let him lead the way to the door, watching from the stoop as he locked it behind them with a key, and then with a quietly muttered charm, and then a ward he seemed to trigger with a short series of hand movements.

Tina looked up at the snow-heavy sky and waited for him to finish. 

“Your hand here,” he said suddenly, and he pointed to the gold number 9 on the door. “Press your palm against it, and think of something only you and I know.”

She did so, and it flared hot, for just a moment, against her skin.

“Theseus is on it, too, though he hardly uses it. And Bunty, only on the days she works.”

He gently pulled her hand away.

“But now you can get in, without me and without a key - if you need to - any time. It’s pretty well-guarded. Even Theseus couldn’t find anything to critique, so — Might be useful.”

Dangerous times, desperate measures, she couldn’t help but muse, and they started down the slick stairs with carefully placed steps.

She didn’t think she’d ever seen Newt actually go anywhere without his case (let alone without a single creature, for Pickett and Teddy, he had assured her, were secured in the basement), and as they headed down the street, he seemed to be—oddly—almost listing like a boat taking on water without it.

“Think you’d like to tell me about that bite and whatever you’re taking those bruise tonics or whatever for, before we get to this restaurant?” she asked him after a half block of silence, and she glanced up at the sky when she saw the first snowflake of the evening dance through a street light’s yellow spotlight.

“I absolutely would not,” he replied with a slight smile.

“Fine then.” 

She looped her arm through his and his lopsided gait corrected itself immediately, more anchored with a weight on one side, it seemed, in lieu of his case.

His lips quirked in surprise at that, and she couldn’t help but smile in return, though she bit her lip to reel herself back before he was turning to her, abruptly asking:

“Have you ever heard a forest of Augureys, in winter?”

“Can’t say those are exactly common in New York, Newt.”

“Right, of course.” His arm jerked under her hand in excitement as he looked up at the snow, too, guided them round a corner and into a well-lit square. “It’s fascinatingly disturbing. I can’t wait to show you.”

She tried very hard to suppress a laugh at his response, but she didn’t quite manage it and was, accordingly, humiliated when it came out as something of a Queenie-influenced giggle.

Newt nearly stopped in his tracks as he led them across the street, only maintaining their motion at the honk of an impatient Bentley behind them.

“I’ve never heard that sound from you before,” he observed matter-of-factly, and then they were at the entrance to the restaurant, and he was opening the door for her, and the chivalry wasn’t bothering Tina quite as much as she was used to.

“Cataloguing it away in your head for a book on me, huh?”

And while she had been joking, Newt’s head ducked and he smiled into the floor, ears burning a brilliant pink as he handed off their coats to the maître d', who tossed them to the coat boy before gracing them with a beatific smile and leading them to a candlelit table by the side window.

“Something like that,” he finally muttered.

He pushed the wine menu toward her without meeting her eye. 

She took it and observed him in silence from over the top of the menu, for he was staring off across the room, eyes unfocused and head tilted as if he were, indeed, memorising something…

She’d ordered a bottle of wine by the time his attention shifted back to the present, and she said quietly:

“No-maj conversation, then.”

“No-maj conversation,” he agreed.

A long moment passed as they stared at each other, thinking hard about what constituted normal Muggle behavior, and Newt eventually put a hand to his forehead as a lopsided grin pulled at his lips, and then there was a true sound of amusement from somewhere in his chest that seemed to startle even him and—she couldn’t help the infectious nature of it—she started laughing, too…

“So tell me about your pets, Mr. Scamander?”

“How’re the bootleggers in New York, Miss Goldstein?”

“I’ve heard the geese migration in Romania has been disrupted by conflict, Mr. Scamander?”

“That amendment to Law, um, 547 of the - of the United States - uh - Ministerial Code? - Miss Goldstein?”

But she couldn’t continue the game then, because at the way his last inquiry had come out like an equally extremely falsified statement and an exceptionally baffled question as his inflection wavered pathetically at the end, she had dissolved so far into her fit of laughter she lost complete use of her words. 

Across from her, Newt was blinking rapidly himself, both hands pressed to his lips, and then there was an unexpected snort of amusement from behind his fingers just as the waiter returned to show them the wine for their approval.

A quarter minute later and he’d already given up, leaving them with two full glasses and their barely polite laughter, as the snow picked up in the street outside their window, as their faces lit gold in the candlelight.

Chapter Text

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter Six 

Sunday, January 22, 1933 - Friday, January 27, 1933
Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland

They were staying in a magically enlarged tent—though done less skilfully perhaps than Newt’s own case—and Newt would neither explicitly confirm nor deny whether he had stolen it from a European Confederation of Wizard barracks on his way back through France in 1919. 

Tina very much suspected so, however, because while Newt wasn’t perhaps the most tasteful person in the world when it came to decor, he was also—very much—not anywhere close to military bland. (Though there were personal touches layered here and there over the dull olive green: they covered the walls so thickly in some places it was like magical papier-mâché, souvenirs spanning decades.)

“I did get some of the spells for my habitats from analysing this, I will admit,” he had offered, rather quietly, as they worked together to make camp their first evening in Ireland. “My case was very basic back then – just barely larger than this.”

He waved a hand about the space and folded out a camp bed beneath a taller bunk. 

“It’d been made under duress, you see, and there were - well—” 

He folded back the sheets on the bed he’d set up for Tina, gently reshaping the pillow without looking at her.

“—There were certain bits of my theoretical magic, then, that were really quite shaky.” 

Newt didn’t often mention the impact his expulsion from Hogwarts had had on his magical development ( or his survival at war, she couldn’t help but muse). And because he had certainly made up for the loss of advanced training over the years—even exceeding on his own what traditional schooling could typically accomplish—Tina, as a rule, didn’t pry.

But she would attentively listen with rapt curiosity those scarce times he felt inclined to share, those few times he let his words get away from him about something besides magical beasts.

(And they had had a conversation while he was in New York for Queenie’s wedding about his tendency to ‘under-share’ about himself, so perhaps this was—)

“But I found, with this thing…” he was saying—

He’d sat down on the cot then to look over at her, where she stood by the couch, trying to look only casually and non-threateningly interested while sorting their wool socks from their cotton ones into baskets.

“I found with this , that if I dug at it deep enough, with enough precision, I could see the - the hinges of its magic. The hooks of charm on spell, braids of transfiguration and charm and ward, how they - sort of looped together to make something bigger. Fabric on a loom.”

His eyes had drifted away from her and they skittered across the tent walls as he spoke.

“And then there were the spots in between all that where there was more room. Where new spells might be worked, or old ones - well - unravelled. Or remade.” 

One hand picked at the Y of his leather braces, and he squinted slightly as he spoke toward the ground.

“I could look at this thing and see it was only a skeleton, or a cell wall - a lone mathematical sentence or a severed phrase.” 

Tina finished sorting the socks and perched on the back of the couch, arms crossed and listening as he looked over at her.

“So for the first time in my life I saw the potential of magic—of - of my magic, specifically—to be a rich series of equations or a complex machine, or the - the blood and sinew—the chlorophyll and vessels and tissue —of, um, a living thing. That I could build with it, instead of simply treating, or reacting...”

He slipped his hands between his knees and looked at the tent walls fondly.

“It was offensively simple, had been patched up Merlin knows how many times before I took – ”

A beat.

“Anyway, its bones became a project that made the books I’d spent so long studying at night—after work - the Ministry, between Hogwarts and the War—finally make sense...” 

Tina nodded, even though Newt wasn’t quite looking at her. He’d never even alluded to any of this before and, somehow, it seemed important for her—given the way she had learned, over the years, Newt had come to view her: highly successful (like him, she thought), fiercely independent (like him, she thought), and intelligent in ways nearly guaranteed to be comprehended by society (significantly less like him, she knew)—to demonstrate compassionate understanding.

“Honestly, I think that maybe—” And he was staring hard at the floor now. “—I think that deconstructing it - working on my case - perfecting a few charms of my own while diving so fully into the theoretical underpinnings of defensive warding and transfigurative science… That’s probably what kept me sane when I got back.” 

He looked surprised at that, then immediately a little uncomfortable, as if just then realising how much he’d admitted about two of the subjects he generally tried to avoid. 

“What do you mean?” 

An immediate prompt before he had time to retreat.

“Well, I’d never really gone over there to do some of the things I ended up doing, you know.”

“Then what did you go over there for?” 

“Dragons, Tina.” 

And there was a hint of teasing there.

“Well, I know that. But why go for dragons at all, if not to be part of the war effort?”

He shrugged and grimaced slightly.

“Because I knew I was better than whomever they had over there.”

And it was said—somehow— utterly humbly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. 

“And I knew they deserved better, despite what some of the Allies wanted to use them for, those they weren’t just relocating to reserves, or trying to keep calm and unnoticed by Muggles. That I could maybe make their lives just that much less stressful, that much less painful. That I could do that,” he said emphatically, “even if it meant also, inadvertently, supporting training for things I didn’t think any creature should ever ever be used to do...”

He tilted his head back and forth for a moment as if thinking how to better explain it—

“Because the ECW was going to do it whether I was there or not...” 

He picked at the Y of his braces again.

“And it did turn out—for better or worse—that I was better than everyone else. And that, well - at least in the context of the horrors of war… That those dragons were better off than they would have been had I decided to sit it out.”

He looked at her.

“So serving was really the only choice I ever had, you see.”

Tina turned slightly to flick her wand at the baskets of sorted socks, sending them zooming gently into the space beneath the camp bed on which Newt still sat.

“You really are something, Mr. Scamander,” she finally offered.

Newt stared at a spot on her shoulder and—when he looked back to her face to see her smiling at him in that odd way he didn’t quite know how to interpret (but he did know it was overwhelmingly warm)—he decided he didn’t actually need to know exactly what she meant at all.

Especially when she tapped the corner of his case with her foot, clearly indicating she knew precisely how ready he was to move on to lighter conversation:

“So, you wanna show me the new Zouwu?”

And he leapt from the cot to open his case—

“Well, she’s at home in the basement, in isolation.”

—and gestured Tina down the stairs first.

“But I’ve got an injured demiguise who really hates Dougal, which is—quite frankly—an absolute riot.”

Their first morning saw them hiking a high cliff on the western coast.

“We can apparate, if you’d like,” he had said at the bottom, crouched on the ground and redistributing weight across their packs.

“I can handle it.”

She sank down to her haunches, too, tightening the laces at the top of her Blundstones.

“I know that.” 

And he was smiling oddly, cinching a strap across the top of her pack before handing it over to her, after which he leapt to his feet, slung his own pack over a shoulder, and hefted up his case to wait.

She adjusted the other boot as Newt watched her in silence, as if he observed a particularly fascinating bird.

“Besides, the view is pretty,” she said as she stood.

Newt hurriedly looked around in response, taking in the low, rocky, gorse-riddled field about them, nothing like the sights at the top of the cliff—all beautiful to him, perhaps, but most people didn’t—

And then he whipped back around to Tina, for the unspoken meaning clicked into place, his cheeks pink as he bashfully agreed: “It is, Miss Goldstein.”

That had all been an hour ago and they were halfway to the top now, discussing what Tina had been reading in her very limited spare time, what goggles Newt had designed for Pickett while stranded at a station in Portugal—

But at the top —he promised her with a sudden stutter—the sky would open up before her like the heavens, higher than the clouds, higher than the birds: as if the American Grand Canyon had been painted grey and green and blue, levitated straight up into Hy-Brasil. (10)

Around one o'clock, he said, too, the sun would break like a million tiny rainbows through the fog—bent uniquely by each droplet—if they were lucky. 

And Tina could only stare at the back of his head as he continued their trek, because while Newt hadn’t met her eyes once since they left the rocky undergrowth far below, she’d also never heard him paint words—aloud—so beautifully in all the years she’d known him.

Tina found Newt endearingly exasperating and also, sometimes, worryingly naïve.

For while his particular brand of bravery and intelligence set him worlds apart, it also occasionally placed him at a level of risk he didn’t even seem to notice until later. (Something she found borderline unsettling as a person whose very job was to assess, track, adapt, and respond to danger.)

But whether she liked it or not, she had come to accept Newt did not always see himself as a relevant variable for inclusion in his decision-making equations. 

This realisation was not entirely new, but it was certainly underlined on their little expedition and, honestly, rather impressively so: two occasions within six hours in less than one day.

She woke early that first Tuesday to find the sun barely up, yet Newt’s bunk made, case gone, and a note pinned beneath a bowl of porridge, stating he had gone for a walk and he expected to be back within an hour of sunrise.

Newt, however, did not return within an hour of sunrise and—as such—it was nearing eleven when he ambled back into camp. 

Tina had just finished skimming the first page of nearly every seemingly incomprehensibly selected book he had amassed since “acquiring” the tent fifteen years before (from Muggle science fiction to Mesoamerican arithmancy, European historical accounts to Persian poetry, a pile of forty years’ worth of the British Magical Almanack and innumerable, well-thumbed treatises on charms, evolution, beast law, and more, with publication dates that spanned centuries…) when she heard his steps—unusually heavy—approaching from the direction of the lake.

She popped her head out the tent to see him emerge around the bend.

The midday sun played on his sopping wet—and somewhat frosted—hair, and it reflected off equally soaked clothes as his case levitated alongside him. He seemed to be breathing just slightly heavier than normal, for the air before him plumed crystal in the cold winter light. Furthermore, his injured arm—from the unnamed bite he had yet to explain to her—was tucked deep inside his jacket, while his other hand clutched a nondescript rock, which she could only assume was some sort of fossil...

The little remaining ice of the night before crunched beneath her feet as she stepped fully out of the tent, and it was only then Newt seemed to notice he was being observed.

“You go for a swim or something?” she called.

“Um, a bit.” 

“You are aware—” She stopped to murmur a spell beneath her breath and circle her wand, reading the resulting temperature aloud as he came to a stop in front of her. “—that it’s 3 degrees Celsius and the last week of January in north Ireland. Aren’t you, Mr. Scamander?”

“Look, I can explain,” he defended immediately, gesturing with the fossil while very much failing to hide the chattering of his teeth or the slight wheeze between each phrase. “Though if we could go inside — I might have, um - I might have overdone it a smidge on the gillyweed and should probably whip up something for overdos—”

“Are you kidding me?”

Tina grabbed his arm then—

“No?”

—yanked him through the tent flap, and shoved him into a chair at the beaten up card table. 

He stared at her as she cast a spell to begin divesting him of his drenched outer layers—which made him jump in surprise, despite the admittedly sluggish reactions of his cold muscles—and another to dry the clothes beneath, as she (somehow simultaneously) heated the kettle while summoning a pair of dry socks.

“There was a disturbance in the water, you see,” he began to explain desperately, with a small cough, for she was unlatching his case and demanding a list of bottles to retrieve for the antidote. “Four ducks on the motionless surface, then the disturbance, and then after - after, Tina, there were three.”

He summoned a book and several jars of herbs and extract from inside his case, floating them over to her. 

“I knew there shouldn’t be anything non-magical of its estimated size in a lake of that depth, but I really did watch from the shore for a while.”

He unwrapped the sopping wet bandages from his arm and glanced at her momentarily. 

“But—” A small wheeze. “Um. Just until it surfaced again.”

She couldn’t help glaring at him as she pounded the pestle against the mortar on the open page of the potion book he’d retrieved for her.

“But it really wasn’t until I saw a fellow on the other side of the lake watching, too, that I conjured up a bit of distraction, swallowed a bundle of gillyweed, and, um, got into the water to check it out myself.”

“Newt,” she said, with clear exasperation, and then she’d flicked the paste into a bowl and was pouring the boiling water to its rim.

“Statute of Secrecy, Tina,” he argued emphatically, magicking dry bandages back around his forearm as he spoke. “Really, you of all people should appreciate—”

At that, she cleared the old bandages off the table with a highly controlled yet somehow exaggerated swipe, and Newt knew her well enough to—at least sometimes—sense when his honesty was ill-appreciated… 

He hurried to change the subject.

“And there’s been reports, Tina, of something in this lake by locals, since - since 1684. And that man was simply looking far too interested in it—” Another ill-disguised cough. “And if the reports are anything to go by - a Muggle exploring in a skiff while the dobhar-chú is feeding…? It was bound to end quite poorly for the both of them.” (1)

Tina softened slightly at that, and then slowly poured the simple potion into a mug before sliding it into his fiddling hands and finally sitting down in the chair beside him.

He thanked her with a tentative smile and took a sip that elicited a deep shiver. 

“All right,” she finally said when he looked up at her over the lip of the mug, a few drops of lake water still clinging to his lashes. “Fine, Newt.”

He sat down the cup and shrugged into a sweater he’d left on the table (the potion apparently having done its job, his breathing quiet and even).

“Did you stop to think, though,” she asked after a moment, in the tone she reserved for particularly stubborn suspects she hadn’t yet decided to intimidate, “that if it was bad for a No-Maj to be in a boat, in the lake, while this thing was feeding, that it might also be bad for a wizard to be in the actual water, Newt, while it was feeding, too?”

He blinked—

“A wizard who is also under the influence of a plant that prevents him from breathing air, should he need a quick escape? With the only person in the whole country who knows where he is miles away? And maybe asleep?”

“Ah,” he breathed with quiet sincerity. “I mean, yes — Of course I thought about those things, Tina.” 

She raised her eyebrows as he continued. 

“It just didn’t seem particularly relevant to my decision at the time. And I, er, do do this all the time when you’re not here.”

“Mercy Lewis,” she muttered under her breath. 

“And you do the same thing - in a different context - when I’m not there, too. And sometimes when I am - the both of us do. And worrying means—”

“You suffer twice,” she finished for him, tiredly. “I know, Newt.”

He smiled slightly, and then bent to pull on the fresh socks, to run a hand through his hair and shake it to stop it sticking to his forehead.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, though,” he said, as he straightened back up.

He looked at her directly and Tina could read the slight confusion in his hazel eyes.

“I’m not exactly upset,” she countered carefully.

“You appear upset.” 

And his tone was cautious, curious, and Tina could only shake her head, not quite sure how to explain that—sometimes—frustration could come from a place of fear for another’s well-being, as opposed to outright disdain for that person’s actions.

A long moment passed and then Newt suddenly stirred.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

He rose to his feet stiffly, lifting a hand to a button on his cardigan to twist it between fingers, as Tina silently watched. 

“Would you like to go look for hinkypunks?” 

And when she didn’t immediately respond, Newt tried again by offering additional information—

“They’re surprisingly interesting.”

Tina pushed back her own chair, turned away slightly, and then began rinsing the mortar out above the washbasin with a jet of water from her wand.

“Can we just— Just sit down and do something where I can see you, okay?” 

Newt laughed—though there was a hint of discomfort in the sound—and immediately settled down on the couch at her request. He summoned a notebook and a stick of charcoal and set to sketching the truly monstrous thing he’d just observed in the depths of the freezing lake...

Tina bit her lip and left the tent without a word, in desperate need of a solitary walk of her own.

.0.

She returned to the tent after an hour—having sorted through her thoughts and calmed herself sufficiently—only to find it frustratingly empty. 

She was about to curse Newt to high heaven until she looked slightly closer, and saw a handwritten note beside his case on the floor:

Porpentina - 

Haven’t disappeared, I swear. I’m just working down here for a bit. Have been thinking and realised you were probably confused, and worried—not actually angry with me. (I elicit that response from Theseus on a disturbingly frequent basis.) Nevertheless, I am sorry for causing you distress. Let me know you’re all right? And you choose the location tomorrow. 

- Newt

Tina huffed and shifted jerkily on her feet, before deciding she should perhaps go down there to make amends. She caught sight of Newt’s half-empty tea from the crack of dawn on the floor by the couch and spelled it warm again. (Not perfect, but the thought was there.) And then she pocketed the note and slipped inside the case.

She stepped out of his workspace into the space outside and saw him immediately. Half facing away from her in the empty desert habitat, he laid on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, seemingly consolidating notes from various sources into a more organised notebook. There were books, papers, newspapers, and folders spread around him in a half-circle, and he appeared deeply engrossed as he wrote.

Tina cleared her throat and called from just outside the shed: 

“I brought you tea.” 

He looked up.

“Well. Reheated tea,” she clarified.

“That’s still really kind, Tina.”

And he swung his legs over the side of the raised wooden stage where he had been working, offering a small smile as she handed it up to him.

“Can I join you?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She sat down beside him as he took a sip of tea.

“What is all this?”

“Quintapeds, mostly. That’s what I’m working on right now, anyway.”

“Can I see?”

“Yes, but only if you promise to remember that my actual occupation is, in fact, magizoology and that I do, therefore, often know what I’m doing.”

She flinched at first, but when she looked over at him to realise that—while he wasn’t looking at her—he was smiling humorously, she rolled her eyes and pulled a few sheafs of paper toward her.

“About that…” she said. “I’m sorry for my reaction, Newt. About that water thing. Okay?”

“I know.”

“It’s just easier for me to accept the danger when I’m there, too, and can see it for myself.”

“Believe me,” he said with a small smile, scooting back around to face his work again. “I certainly understand.”

Tina spent a few minutes reading through Newt’s field notes in silence, such that Newt was submerged back into the depths of his notebook by the time she reached for the next stack of papers.

“Deliverance Dane,” she exclaimed, when she flipped one sheet of paper to see a sketch of both the quintaped’s jaws and Newt’s own arm—tendons partially exposed—after encountering one.

He looked up and leaned closer to see what she was doing.

“Ah! that, yeah— Really quite fascinat—” But he stopped himself and cleared his throat. “I mean –  gruesome, obviously, but I did learn a lot.”

Tina stared at him.

“And hardly life-threatening, of course.” He pushed up his sleeve and rolled down the bandages. “See? Nearly good as new.”

Tina decided it was better—given her original goal of making amends—to ignore her baser instincts that told her to smack him in annoyance and instead just continue showing interest in his work.

She allowed herself one more glance at his nearly healed arm before he bound it back up, and then reached for the copy of the DRCMC report on the retrieval mission he’d been on while she herself had been crossing the Atlantic.

“This Avery guy’s an idiot,” she said after a few minutes of reading, without glancing up. 

“He - uh,” Newt murmured with a small chuckle, and he shook his pen to unstick the ink as he leaned back over his paper. “He has his strengths... We certainly don't have the same ones.”

Tina snorted.

She finished the report and turned to Newt, who seemed to have finished the paragraph he had been working on, too.

“So who tipped you off about this quintaped situation in the first place?” she asked.

“It was anonymous. "

He placed his pen inside his notebook, closed it like a bookmark, and then handed her a page of folded parchment from yet another folder.

“Slipped under my door while I was out buying supplies.”

Tina read the very brief note—which described a creature outside of its normal habitat, the writer’s apparent concern for its well-being, and a set of approximate coordinates for the last sighting—and looked up with concern. 

“Newt, you’ve got wards on your door, though. Good ones.” He frowned slightly. “Ones that even the head of the British Auror Office approves of. So how did someone manage to—”

“—to get me the message. Yes...” 

He tapped fingers on his knee as Tina prompted: 

“And why?”

He made a mildly frustrated noise at that, and then there was a moment of silence that stretched into a minute, in which he started packing up his notes into folders, and Tina moved his tea so he wouldn’t knock it over.

“Look, Newt,” she finally said, for he had finished stacking the folders atop one another beside a small pile of books. “What I’m going to say, don’t take it the wrong way, okay?”

He nodded stiffly, not meeting her eyes, and not even responding as she gently took up the hand that had just begun to pick at the dry skin on his thumb.

“Because I trust you, I do. And I’m sorry that I sometimes misunderstand your actions.”

She paused for a moment but received no response.

“And you are such an intelligent, insightful man, which I hope you know,” she said sincerely. “But that’s why I have to ask you this.”

He was blinking and staring at her knee, where she sat cross-legged beside him.

“Why didn’t you—” She stopped. “How did you not think to question the source of the tip? When it got past your wards?”

There was a chirrup from somewhere—a surprising sound in the largely empty case—and Tina was momentarily distracted to see Pickett climbing up the back of Newt’s cardigan to settle on his shoulder. But Newt only shook his head, pulled his hand away from hers to quiet the bowtruckle, and then placed it gently back into Tina’s own.

“I don’t actually know,” he said then, quietly. “I didn’t even think— I don’t know.”

He stared at their hands and there was a crinkle to his brow as Tina continued.

“I know that you understand creatures, Newt, but I understand people, so knowing what constitutes a potentially mysterious threat—when there are plenty of reasons for you to receive one—is more my department than yours.”

His cheeks flushed suddenly beneath his freckles.

“And I think your compassion is your greatest strength, Newt—I really do—but it's also your greatest weakness. So you’ve got to be careful, okay? You can’t just – You can’t just run off into danger when—”

“I understand, Tina,” he said shortly. “Thank you—”

“You can’t let yourself be manipulated.” 

Newt didn’t say anything for a long minute, instead only looking at their intertwined hands, where he let his thumb rub at Tina’s absentmindedly before disentangling them and leaping to his feet. 

“Are you hungry?” 

And without waiting for her to reply, he fled the case and spent the next hour preparing a hearty meal, alone. 

Tina sat in the empty habitat after Newt left and stared at his books, lost in multiple levels of thought, for the books and newspapers stacked before her were not about quintapeds or grindylows or magical beasts of Ireland—

Memories of the First Crusade and Early Massacres of Jewry, as collected in wizarding and muggle letters across history (1894) 

Testimony of Victims of the 1903 Kishinev Pogrom, as written down by Ch. N. Bialik and others (1908) 

Report of the Federation of Ukrainian Jews in London, of their efforts to assist Jewish pogrom victims in Ukraine, 1917-1921 (1921)

Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Part 1, Adolf Hitler (1925)

Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Part 2, Adolf Hitler (1926) (2-4)

And a stack of news article with a few headlines peeking out on top:

Massacres of Jews - Conditions in Poland - Ukraine Towns Wiped Out (1920)

American Jewish Committee Responds to Henry Ford’s Anti-Semitic Literature, Jewish Telegraph Association (1927)

World Conference of Religions to Work for World Peace (1930) (5-7)

Newt was quiet when she crawled out of the case, and they ate their tea in silence.

.0.

After a largely wordless afternoon spent on opposite ends of the couch (wrapped in blankets, their own thoughts, and independent projects), Newt thought to smooth things over by apparating them to Parke’s Castle that evening at sunset, where he produced a thermos of hot cocoa before working a set of charms on a garish orange afghan he’d spread on the winter-dry grass, creating a tolerable bubble of warmth at the edge of the lake. He then explained to her, in great detail, his system for assessing risk, after which he shut up and listened, instead, to her own. 

Newt found he was, in fact, mildly frustrated by her ability to forcefully commandeer a conversation, but he was also willing to forgive such an auror-ly instinct when the soft light lit her dark hair mahogany in those moments before the sun slipped behind the mountain on the far side of the lake…

And Tina, in turn, excused Newt’s increasing inattention when she noticed the way his eyes began to drift, skyward, with the night’s rapid deepening. Head tilted back and face toward the heavens, he was watching the winter stars emerge above them, until she too had leant back, wide-eyed and silent—

One by one, the stars pricked silver across the ink-dark sky, and Newt shifted minutely on the blanket beside her.

Tina was surprisingly good at catching Grindylows, especially for someone who hadn’t taken a class on magical creatures in her entire life, or even thought about them as anything more than a nuisance until she was twenty-five.

(Though, to be fair, grindylows were somewhat obnoxious.)

That day, they were moving about a series of lakes and waterways, tagging grindylows for tracking, for while—Newt explained—wizards knew a lot about what they did and how they were (and definitely weren’t ) useful, there had been no study whatsoever on life cycles or migration, and this seemed like a contained enough place to start. 

Tina had helped him set traps and corral them for a good half hour, and she now crouched on the shore, watching him work in the shallows.

“I ever tell you,” she said abruptly, “how I broke it off with Tolliver?”

Newt coughed unnecessarily and glanced up from where he was affixing a tag to a grindylows’ forearm, knee deep in freezing water.

“Um, no.”

“I threw a drink in his face.” (8)

He submerged the grindylow below the surface and moved it back and forth to allow it to reacclimate before he un-immobilised it.

“Why?”  

She smiled as he blinked at her from his hunched position, very obviously suspicious of the conversation.

“Well, you wouldn’t believe what he said about magical creatures.”

And at that, Newt laughed—loud and unexpected and bright—before muttering the counterjinx and tossing the grindylow into the air toward the middle of the pond, just as it tried—semi-successfully—to take a chunk out of his hand.

“Actually, I quite imagine I could .”

He stuck his finger in his mouth and sucked for a moment, and then spat out the blood and shook out his smarting hand.

Tina chuckled and handed him the next tag.

Over the days, Newt quickly found that he quite liked spending time with Tina outside the city, and without the pressure of other people’s presence, or any specific mission apart from the ones they set for themselves.

He realised that he liked to hear her talk about herself, too, and about her life; and he noticed that while she didn’t spontaneously offer up a lot, she would answer almost any question he proposed to her.

So—like he did for most things he loved in life—he’d started taking notes in his head on the things she shared: 

The stories she told that put a smile on her face 

(her father and a kite and Central Park on Sundays; matzah balls rolled under sticky palms, passed to her auntie to toss in the boil; her first wand, N.E.W.T. results, her auror training acceptance, a package with her mother’s locket, a late Spring day), 

and the ones that put the subtle sound of heartbreak and sorrow in her 

(sandwiches for her sister when their parents went to St. Nick’s but didn’t come back; a mother beating her child and she couldn’t intervene; losing sight of Newt behind a wall of flame, her sister gone for years—

(and the smaller things, too: wet socks on tile, a scoop of ice cream melted on the sidewalk, seeing Queenie cry).

Then there were the things he did that made her smile (a list that was growing, every day, longer than he expected)

(tea offered without request; patient explanations as he tended to a creature; reprimanding Teddy when he went for her necklace; touching fingers to her back, letting her see his eyes, complimenting her hair; honest inquiries about her work, even when he didn’t always actually care; coffee made the American way; not always letting her get the last word; cutting onions because they made her cry; holding open the tent flap, but only sometimes), 

and the words he used that made her unexpectedly laugh, 

(bugger; Miss Goldstein; middle-head; Porpentina; you see?)

like a burst of rain from a cloudless sky.

And while Newt didn’t always know what to say to her when she looked at him as they worked in silence; or when she offered an observation on something they were doing together that seemed bafflingly unnecessary given their shared engagement in said task, the normal rush of embarrassment that typically accompanied his confusion did not come.

Newt found that he quite liked that Tina didn’t seem to mind his intermittent silence…

So he catalogued that away in his notes on her, too.

It rained incessantly for two days, and that night—somewhere far away, where the rain, perhaps, had not yet reached—she could hear an augurey’s cry. 

Newt was half busy chopping vegetables at the counter and half busy scribbling in a notebook (via a quietly mumbled monologue and a charmed pen) while Tina sat on the ratty couch behind him. (The one he had admitted to her that morning he ‘rescued’ from an alley in the Balkans—while also rescuing some creature she’d never heard of from an overly zealous potioneer—and the one she had, consequently, cast a few subtle scourging charms on because Newt didn’t seem to register things like mildew and mites quite like she did.)

Still, she was trying to read, but she found herself staring blankly at the pages of the book more often than she did actually reading them... 

Her thoughts had taken to dashing back and forth. 

There was something intoxicatingly domestic about their current scene—quiet and books and the soft voice of a person you trust—and it filled her with a warmth she hadn’t felt in far too many years. But there was something about the scene, too, that sparked memories of a deeply buried anxiety: the whispers of parents she had overheard in the night, and the subsequent whispers she had spun for Queenie, in turn, to lessen the biting acerbity of their parents’ secrets as they festered in the dark.

Perhaps it was the contrast of things, now, that set her on edge: Newt’s hair burning in the flickering light as he moved inoffensively about his tasks; the eerie sound of wind occasionally beating the utterly still, weather-spelled walls of the tent; Pickett’s warmly incessant chirping from the arm of the couch, equidistance between herself and Newt; and then that stack of translation-charmed books Newt had brought along for himself that she had not yet asked him about, because she was uncharacteristically fearful of disturbing the relaxed, liminal space they had built these past few days, and because the contents of said books were anything but light…

This was all uncomfortably real, and new, and Tina Goldstein was not used to letting herself relax. 

And she was not used to this version of Newt Scamander either, one who—far away from the presence of people, submerged in his work from dawn to dusk—was more relaxed, too , more like the man she knew from their letters: quietly funny, intensely compassionate, even as he still provided overly blunt assessments of the world and its inhabitants while tripping occasionally over his own feet.

So Newt’s new interest in European Jewish history be damned, but Tina was too selfish to bring this all grinding to a halt just yet, even as—she knew—the world beyond the walls of their tent slowly fell apart, even if that was—upsettingly—largely beyond the pale of their control…

At that last thought, Newt turned around and wordlessly floated her a cup of chamomile tea. He caught her eye with a shy smile as he plopped onto the couch beside her, legs stretched out on an overturned crate, notebook levitating before him as he absently picked at the cuff of his sweater and reread that day’s work.

Tina returned to her novel and they sat like that for an hour—side-by-side in silence (apart from Pickett’s chirping and that distant augurey’s intermittent cry), nestled in the scent of slowly cooking soup—until a particularly loud gust of wind managed to bring out a barely perceptible quiver in the wall of the tent across from them.

Newt dropped his notebook with a flick of his hand and patted the cushion between them vaguely, muttering something about charms before leaping to his feet and sticking his wand between his teeth. He had shrugged jerkily into his coat and disappeared out the front flap into the raging night before she could even blink. 

Tina was left alone, then, watching the unmoored canvas undulate in his wake like the wing of a bird torn suddenly from flight— 

She spelled it back to stillness.

Tina told Newt she was perfectly entertained gallivanting about the countryside, but he had insisted on her seeing at least a few hours worth of humans in wizarding Ireland, explaining that he thought it was rude to just expect her to follow him around while he got them lost in the woods. (Though, Tina pointed out, he hadn’t gotten them lost once. And fine, he had countered, but it was an intentional exaggeration - for effect.) 

Nevertheless, what that meant is that they had apparated to Dublin in the early morning, gone on a guided tour of both the Wizarding and Muggle city, and were now sitting in a pub, accessible via portal in a shop abandoned after the Easter Rebellion, on the Wizarding side of O’Connel Street. (9)

Their conversation had petered out after Tina returned from ordering their lunch at the bar, and—after a sip of his porter—Newt had fallen into the kind of attentive silence Tina had come to recognize well, for it occurred often when he’d spent too much time in the hustle and bustle of New York: eyes distant, yet taking in the movements of the people around him, all while very clearly—very much—off in his own head.

This time, however, the silence didn’t last long. For, as a wizard at the table next to them left and began floating his copy of the Daily Prophet to a dustbin, Newt leapt to his feet and intercepted it.

“Look!” he said with amusement, and he lurched back to their table and flattened the newspaper on the surface, settling into the booth beside her. “It’s you!” 

And it was. A photo of her and Theseus side by side—in different squares—under a second page headline.

Heads of British and American Auror Offices to Meet Next Week

By Orelia Fay

LONDON, Jan 26 -   As tensions continue to build in both Muggle and Wizarding Europe, UK Head Auror Theseus Scamander and US Head Auror Tina Goldstein will meet at the Department for Magical Law Enforcement next Tuesday to discuss the situation. Unnamed sources indicate Scamander and Goldstein will appear jointly before the Wizengamot at the top of the month. At time of print today, spokeswizards for both the Ministry of Magic and MACUSA have declined comment. The Prophet was unsuccessful in locating Goldstein for interview, and it is our editor’s opinion that Auror Scamander’s response to our simple inquiry is better left to the gossip rags.

“What do you think Theseus did?” Tina asked.

“I have no idea,” Newt murmured, setting down his beer. “He’s got a mouth on him when he’s pressed, but he can also talk his way out of anything, so.”

Tina tried to cover her chuckle.

“Yes, I’m well aware he inherited all the charm and I got the refuse.”

“Newt!” Tina exclaimed, laughing, but she could tell he was genuinely joking and not being self-deprecating, so she let it go.

She finished her own stout and saw him watching her expectantly.

“Yes?” she prompted.

“Do you want to hear those augureys today? There’s a place not far away, and they’re perfectly horrific at sunset.”

Their food arrived, they ate, and then Tina was treated to one of the more disturbing choruses she had ever heard in her life.

Newt often fell asleep after her and woke at least a half hour before. She could often hear him flipping the pages of books as she fell asleep; or the whisper of the tent flap, the sound of him changing his clothes, or the click of his case when he stirred in the mornings.

What that meant for Tina, however, was that—in the mornings—she had begun practising how to make tea.

Tina had thought she knew how to make tea, but after spending time with Newt over the years and watching Theseus subtly pull faces when he took a sip of hers when he travelled to New York for conferences… 

Well. She had finally started paying attention to their process.

That morning when she went to put the kettle on—Newt already gone into the low morning light—she found yet another note left for her on the rickety table.

Dear Tina -

Out for a walk. (I swear, just an honest-to-Merlin walk.)

There is a wizarding village nearby, right outside Ballycastle, where we can get some groceries and supplies for our last few days. Unfortunately, I have been banned from the apothecary there. (Not sure why, but it was either after asking the shop owner where he sourced his unicorn materials from, or when I pointed out his ashwinder habitat was insufficiently charmed to prevent the enclosure catching fire, which it promptly did. While I was standing there.)

I mean to say, perhaps you can run into town this afternoon, if I were to make a list? 

(I should have suggested we shop while in Dublin yesterday, but there were the birds to see.)

Also, I would like to know: 
What is your favourite flower?

Newt

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter 7: January 27, 1933

January 27, 1933
Near Ballycastle, Northern Ireland

How the owl found them after he’d just spent fifteen minutes enchanting their camp so it could only be located by himself or Tina, Newt did not know, and he was not entirely sure he wanted to... However, with a mildly overprotective auror for a brother, what Newt had long known was that he had only as much privacy in the British Isles as Theseus felt it appropriate to give him, and Newt had quit wasting resentment on that a decade ago.

He therefore slipped inside with the owl and fed it some dried meat from a waistcoat pocket before leaning against the couch and ripping past the Ministry seal on Theseus’ letter. 

Little brother, 

We landed in that rag—Wizarding Gossip—this morning: you and your ‘aberration of [the] brain’ and me and my ‘fire, under all [that] pomp and circumstance.’ I thought I had called them off last week, but apparently not. Just wanted you to hear it from me before you or Tina saw it on the newsstand.

Relatedly, I’ve fired Celia, my secretary. I am certain she'll run straight to WG and we’ll be right back on the front page next week, but what can you do? We are currently scouring the full department for other leaks, and I’ve got Grimblehawk doing the same in your own. It concerns me that WG got access to any of our immigration and travel records at all. Furthermore, the potential breach of the Floo network-–in addition to the eavesdropping—is unfortunate, as there are far more confidential Floo conversations that could have been leaked than the one Cece actually did...  Please let Miss Goldstein know I have alerted Percival Graves to turn an eye to their own departments, as well; and, just so you’re aware, I’ll be checking the wards on your flat this evening and speaking with Bunty in the morning (only regarding protocol for the press and providing access to you, or your house).

Finally, please tell Tina we can push back our meeting, if you two need more time. You may want to take it. Apart from all this significant nonsense, all’s quiet on the Western Front, though I’m not sure how long that will last. 

Be careful, and do try to return in one piece.

With love,
Theseus

P.S. - I assume it goes without saying, but I have no interest in stealing your girl. (No offence to Miss Goldstein.) 

 

By the time he was done, the owl had flapped itself over to the shelf above a camp bed and was eyeing Pickett with interest. Newt reprimanded him, urged Pickett into his pocket, and scrawled a short “ Got it. Thanks. Take care. Newt” before attaching the response to the bird’s leg, opening the tent flap—owl on extended arm—and then nearly running headlong into Tina.

She ducked as the owl launched itself into the sky with one final, hungry look at Pickett, and then shoved the groceries she had picked up from the wizarding community at Ballycastle into his arms as she reset the wards.

“Do you remember when we weren’t household names, Mr. Scamander?”

Newt glanced down into the brown paper bag and was met immediately with the sight of his own face.

“Um, vaguely.”

She took the groceries back as Newt snatched at the magazine. Staring at the page, he followed her blindly into the tent, Pickett chirping in his ear, as he murmured offhandedly:

“They always find the worst photos of me.”

She sat the bag down and turned back to him, coming round so she could stand right at his shoulder. 

“Oh, that’s not the worst,” she teased, and she flipped it open to direct his attention to a Hogwarts yearbook photo from when he was, approximately, thirteen.

Third year had not been a good year for his hair, and—furthermore—there was a splatter of mud on his cheek from the marsh, for he had been chased inside for photos by Head of House Seznec under threat of losing Herbology lessons.

“Merlin,” he said, laughing. “Wherever did they get that?”

But his amused smile fell as he began to skim the article. 

He looked up long enough to shove Theseus’ letter toward Tina, and then they both stood in silence for a few minutes, reading.

WIZARDING GOSSIP’s Weekly Column: Britain’s Most Beguiling Bachelors!

Who’s the Bachelor Now? Scamander Brothers Troubled and Stirring Up Trouble

By Goldie Aelfwine (1)

Jan 27 - As our readers know, rumours abound that Newt Scamander’s unusual magizoological brilliance is as much an aberration of his brain as it is a sign of his dedicated passion, at least since the usually dry Mediwitch Monthly published their accidentally provocative article on the Austrian-Muggle doctor researching the ‘abnormal’ mind last week. While many other publications have already mined the well of certain Hogwarts alumni who were not overly fond of the youngest Scamander and therefore willing to offer up fascinating facts on his early years, we at Wizarding Gossip tried our best to dive even deeper for the entertainment of our dedicated weekly readers. We are, therefore, sorry to report that most of Newt Scamander’s former teachers and current confidantes are as tight-lipped and loyal as one might expect for acquaintances of the off-beat, but otherwise quite archetypal, Hufflepuff… 

Luckily, however, a few less close acquaintances were willing to spill the ashwinder eggs: one retired Hogwarts professor—who wishes to remain unnamed—described Newton as “the singularly most infuriating student I ever had the misfortune to teach, for whom, I quickly concluded, any attempts at typical, instructive discipline were an utter waste of time”. A squib who lived nearby and played with his older brother Theseus on Hogwarts holidays recalled how she once walked into the Scamander’s gardening shed to find primary school-aged Newton bent over a gnome with a gore-encrusted knife, only for him to immediately assure her “I promise it can’t feel anything—it was already dead”. Finally, a former colleague at the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures described the young, post-Hogwarts adolescent as “brilliant, slightly mad, and altogether disconcerting in his ability to communicate seamlessly with creatures when he couldn’t even look the secretary in the eye long enough to say good morning”.

Meanwhile, the subject himself has—perhaps characteristically—gone off-the-map in the wake of the gossip, allegedly “in the field with DRCMC”, “off in a bog”, or laid up “recovering from some beast nonsense” (depending on the source), and thus could not be reached for comment. However, a longtime WG informant at the Ministry reports that renowned veteran Theseus Scamander personally contacted Mediwitch Monthly author Erma Boot in her office at St. Mungo’s Thursday last, requesting a retraction of the aspersions cast on his brother. The overheard Floo conversation revealed that while neither he—nor Newt himself—“inherently disagree” with her conclusions, the family has found the additional publicity unhelpful during “a trying time” in both their lives. (Both Head Auror Theseus and pacifist-turned-paladin Newton were involved, in an unknown capacity, in Gellert Grindelwald’s failed apprehension following the Walk of the Qilin in Bhutan last month.) Miss Boot apologised for so explicitly referring to the younger Scamander in her piece, but she primarily pins the fault on her co-author Mordicus Egg, who had become acquainted with Newt during the Great War and therefore “thought he could handle it”. 

While no retraction was actually printed, we assume this was the inspiration for the statement issued by St. Mungo’s in the Daily Prophet Monday, reminding journalists that we are not qualified to identify, diagnose, or treat magical or non-magical maladies of any kind. (Though we at WG maintain we still have the right to write what we like!) Of course, whether a high-ranking Magical Law Enforcement official should be intimidating a journalist and entire institutions in order to protect the, perhaps, surprisingly delicate sensibilities of his, arguably, head case of a brother is another issue altogether. This writer, however, is well-acquainted with Auror Scamander’s fire, under all that pomp and circumstance, and can therefore uniquely report on a related interesting development of both a political and salacious nature.

As printed in the Daily Prophet yesterday, Head Auror Theseus Scamander is set to meet with his American counterpart Porpentina Goldstein in the coming weeks. Ministry immigration records indicate Auror Goldstein arrived in London this past Saturday, and that she was approved for a two-month Magical Work Visa, citing “a personal visit to Mr. Newton A. F. Scamander, including local and regional travel, and MACUSA business with Head Auror Theseus E. T. Scamander in addition to consultation with MoM DMLE” on her visa request. No address for stay was listed, and she has not been seen since that Saturday evening, when WG’s own tea lady spotted her walking through Kennington Park on the arm of the younger brother, approaching 10 o’clock at night. Where she has disappeared to since is a relative unknown, as she has not signed into the Ministry and does not appear to have, at least legally, crossed international borders. 

However, when a Daily Prophet writer approached Auror Scamander about both Miss Goldstein and his brother’s whereabouts, as well as the reasons for the UK-US Auror Office meeting, said writer was emphatically rebuffed. The older Scamander informed the writer in no uncertain terms that neither Auror Goldstein nor Newt Scamander’s whereabouts were the public’s business and that a journalist of the writer’s calibre “should well-know why officials specifically charged with pursuing dark wizards” might be meeting in the wake of the International Confederation of Wizards election. Auror Scamander refused to clarify, stated the Prophet should be ashamed for haranguing public servants at their homes, and then shut the door in the writer’s face, resulting in a slight burn from the domicile ward flashing in its wake.

Nevertheless, while 44-year-old Theseus Scamander is still considered one of the bachelors to catch by single witches nationwide, interest in 35-year-old Newton has no less diminished since Mediwitch Monthly ’s enlightening publication. Still, one can’t help but wonder if it is, in fact, the younger Scamander’s apparent mental affliction preventing him from holding onto a girl, despite dashing good looks, marked literary and scientific success, the friendships he has demonstrated himself able to maintain with female company, and the scores of women who have attempted to gain his attention since the Grindelwald showdown of 1926. While rumours originating from Newt Scamander’s close acquaintance with wizards like Albus Dumbledore, as well as insinuation by some of the previously mentioned Hogwarts informants, have suggested his extended bachelorhood may be attributed as much to a preference for a different form as his obsession with his career and his obvious social ineptitude, recent evidence does suggest otherwise. 

Since Newt Scamander’s travel ban was lifted in the late 1920s, records obtained from a Ministry source reveal he has visited the home of MACUSA—and, thus, one Tina Goldstein —on multiple occasions, travelling through the ports at New York more frequently than he has any other in the world, apart from his home docks in London. Floo Telegram correspondence (charged to Goldstein’s MACUSA account and Auror Scamander’s personal one) is frequent between them. However, we at WG would note that Theseus Scamander’s visits to New York are also similarly frequent, though usually—at least ‘officially’ (and wouldn’t they be?)— on Ministry business…

After the mysterious 1927 death of Newton’s former Hogwarts sweetheart and Theseus’ lovely fiancee—Leta Lestrange—in France, the brothers have become particularly close. However, a brother who marries his own brother's former lover likely does not change over night…. One must, therefore, wonder if Auror Goldstein is a woman set to come between them once again.

Return to the newsstand next Friday for more on our spread of Britain’s Most Beguiling Bachelors! Here at Wizarding Gossip, we exercise our right to write what we like , so we always get you the hot scoop first!

 

Newt looked up to find that Tina had long-finished Theseus’ letter and had begun putting away the groceries. 

“Have you read this?” he asked.

“Yep.” And there was an immediate, small chuckle, as she moved a few items onto the counter—an onion, a small bottle of aspirin, a well-wrapped flank of steak. “Girl at the shop said if I was going to stand there reading it I better be buying it, too.” 

A pack of dried dittany, a half dozen eggs, four potatoes, the Daily Prophet , two apples: Newt watched her hands move quick and sure as he gripped the magazine tightly in his own.

“Sounded like she wouldn’t have cared whether I was an auror, her mother, or Grindelwald himself—” she was saying. “She would’ve got her money from me one way or another and I wasn’t in the mood to argue.”

Newt barely even registered the humour.

“So - does it bother you?” he finally managed.

Tina shrugged in response, dusting off her hands and waving her wand at the kettle on the stove. 

“Not really. I’d obviously prefer if we weren’t fodder for the press after all the miscommunications we had right after we met, but it is what it is. You can’t blame a hidebehind when you’ve built a Boy Scout Camp in the middle of the forest.” (2)

Newt blinked, the Americanism nearly throwing him off as his mind worked hard to ascertain its meaning, but he grasped the gist and forced himself to continue:

“Tina, I meant me.”

It was her turn to stare.

“No, I mean -” He tried again. “What they write about me, about how I am. That I’m off.” He paused. “People have been talking, Tina, and I haven’t told you because—” 

She started shaking her head halfway through his winding question, and Newt couldn’t help but swallow apprehensively— 

“So does that - the way I am, that is… Does it bother you?”

There was a moment of silence that felt to Newt as if it would stretch on for eternity, and then Tina was a step closer. He might have instinctually taken his own step back if Pickett hadn’t grabbed his ear in reprimand before slipping off his shoulder to the rickety table, making himself scarce behind a bowl of dried apricots.

“What bothers me is the tone in which they say it, Newt,” she answered, fiercely, so close he could feel her breath on his cheek. “I love you just the way you are.”

Newt was nodding at the reassurance before he had even realised what exactly it was she had admitted to, at which point he immediately stopped skimming the map on the wall behind her and began to intently study her face instead.

“Now that this—” She waved a hand at Newt’s head and then the space between their hearts in an attempt to sum up the conversation thus far. “—is out in the open…” 

He swallowed and looked her in the eyes as long as he could.

“Now do you wanna tell me why you’ve developed a sudden, morbid interest in the history of European Jewish persecution?”

He almost laughed in surprise—

“Oh.”

—glancing at the book he had left on the floor by the couch. 

He looked back at her instantly, though, for the words came suddenly, tumbling out as if it were the simplest thing in the world: 

“Because I love you, too.”

And, for all the complexity—all the reasons they shouldn’t, all the reasons they maybe should have waited—it was.

.0.

They took Theseus’ advice and spent some extra days in Wales.

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter 8: Wednesday, February 1, 1933

The Harpy’s Wing
Holyhead, Wales, UK
February 1, 1933
8:35 PM

The second to last night of their holiday saw them sitting relatively close together at a wizarding pub Newt had frequented the summer of 1921, when he had been on loan to the Spirits Division while attempting to ascertain the veracity of reports of a spate of deaths attributed to Morgens. (1) (An assignment which—apart from the endless hours tromping up and down the coastline—mostly meant a lot of time at The Harpy’s Wing weedling leads from poggled locals and, as a result, occasionally ending up in his cups himself when they insistently bought him drinks...)

That night, however, Newt and Tina were keeping well to themselves as the crowds swelled intermittently around them. Newt had shown Tina the cognitive muffling charm and, while she had at first been horrified (Mercy, Newt - so the first time you—what? Held your breath and prayed?!), she quickly found it made him much more attentive and much less twitchy in such a loud public space and, thus, gratefully accepted a copy of the charm patent to learn herself. (2)

They were presently a quarter hour into a heated debate over Mexican beast trafficking law when Tina suddenly pressed a hand to his mouth and hissed at him to hush.

“Excuse me?” 

But then he blinked and turned to look at where she pointed, for the large radio behind the bar had begun flashing a deep scarlet. 

Wizarding Wireless Network special announcement!

Flicking his wand to remove the muffling charm, he turned halfway away from the bar to better hear the broadcast, for the last time he’d been in a public setting when programming had been cut off it was 1926 and the wizarding world was finding out Grindelwald had just killed twenty members of a Muggle government in Switzerland...

We interrupt ‘Maxie’s Marvellous Magic Hour’ with a live broadcast and breaking news from our partner agency in Germany, Die Goldene Melodie!

At the name of Germany’s radio network, an old wizard in the middle of the bar began shushing the surrounding pub-goers, after which the half-giant at the far end slammed his hand onto the age-old polished oak, which sent glasses clattering and heads turning from all corners of the establishment. His goblin companion gestured at the flashing radio and the place fell utterly silent.

 The evening before last—Monday—Germany appointed a new Muggle Chancellor— (3)

The tension in the pub broke somewhat at the utterance of ‘muggle’, yet still no one moved, memories of Germany’s assaults on the Eastern coast—and the relief they’d felt that they’d never made it as far as Wales—clearly at the fore of everyone’s minds. (4)

—the man who led a 1923 coup and most recently came in second behind now president Paul von Hindenburg in the country’s March elections— (5)

Tina had turned to put one ear toward the radio’s sound, too, and her knees bumped up against Newt’s as she leaned forward.

—Adolf Hitler, of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, popularly known as the Nazi Party. 

There was a sudden hum around the room like reeds in a summer breeze, and Newt couldn’t pick out the overall tone of the whispered commentary as the announcement continued. (6)

This evening, for the first time, Hitler speaks to the German People as Chancellor.  Being mindful of the British wizard’s continued interest in shake-ups among the Great War’s Central Powers, we bring you Herr Hitler’s radio address, live from Berlin.

The radio fell into quiet static for a moment before the opening chords of Die Goldene Melodie ’s news chimes emitted from the radio, followed by a journalist’s voice that began in German and then morphed into accented English after a purple buzzing flashed through the radio’s lights and dials—

Then, the speech began, and Newt’s hand was intermittently caught between fingering the wool over a notebook deep in his jacket’s inner-pocket, and wishing he had the cognitive and emotional wherewithal to reach for Tina’s hand while simultaneously listening to the increasingly nationalist speech. 

—lost sight of the most valuable assets of our past and of our Reich, its honour and its freedom – and thus lost everything. Since those days of treachery, the Almighty has withheld His blessing from our Volk. Dissension and hatred have made their way into our midst… (7)

Newt was stuck in limbo even as Tina bit her lip beside him—

…the appalling fate that has dogged us since November 1918, we see only the consequence of our inward collapse. But the rest of the world is no less shaken by great crises. The historical balance of power…

—dark eyes worried and nostrils slightly flared—

…The National Government will therefore regard it as its first and supreme task to restore to the German people unity of mind and will. It will preserve and defend the foundations on which the strength of our nation rests. It will take under its firm protection Christianity as the basis of our morality, and the family as the nucleus of our nation…

—as they listened and listened and listened , the minutes seemingly stretching on interminably, a lead in Newt’s gut.

…May Almighty God look mercifully upon our work, lead our will on the right path, bless our wisdom, and reward us with the confidence of our volk. We are not fighting for ourselves, but for Germany!

Silence.

A long static screech.

And then the announcer from the WWN was back on the line, purple buzzing subsiding as the scarlet flashing resumed once more.

Remember, you can always count on us at the WWN for European breaking news, Wizarding and Muggle alike! 

And then the voice sped up as if he were a auctioneer as Tina and Newt continued to stare at one another—

Language interpretation spells provided by advanced students at the European Institute for Continuing Studies in the Wizarding Humanities. 

The silence in the bar suddenly broke with renewed chatter and the clinking of glasses, louder even than before, louder than—

We now return to our regularly scheduled— 

But the wizard behind the bar flipped the radio off with an erratic flick of his wand, lowered the needle on a Louis Armstrong record, and poured himself a hearty shot of firewhiskey, clearly perturbed. Tina let out a breath, broke eye contact with Newt, and then raised her eyebrows at the barkeep before she’d even realised what she was doing. 

“You serve in the War, then, did you?” he snapped at her gruffly, when he noticed her looking.

“Eastern Front,” Newt replied in an automatic, distant voice, still watching Tina, and she shook her head.

“He gets it then,” the man jerked his head at Newt and poured him a glass, too. “I’m Muggle-born, and I’m not getting bloody drafted again.”

Newt turned back to the bar and Tina watched him take the whiskey tentatively, clearly unsure whether to say thank you or not. The bartender finished his in one swallow.

“War’s probably still a ways—” Newt started.

“You think I don’t get it?” Tina interrupted, directing it at the barman. “I’m Jewish. Do you know anything about Adolf Hitler?” (8)

“War’s the threat; men are just the politicians who—”

But the barman stopped abruptly, for Newt had begun patting down his coat and digging about in his inner pockets for a notebook. 

Pickett fell onto the bar with a squeak, and then stood—disoriented—before scrambling up the knit of Tina’s sweater to hide behind her hair. 

“What the hell, mate,” the bartender muttered.

But Newt only settled back into his chair, propped the notebook on the table, and looked up at the barman directly to announce—

“From Adolf Hitler’s personal manifesto, published seven years ago.” (9)

—before licking his thumb, flipping to the appropriate notes, and tapping the page as he read aloud:

“[T]he Jew [...] is fighting for his own dominion over the nations. The sword is the only means whereby a nation can thrust that clutch from its throat. Only when national sentiment is organized and concentrated into an effective force can it defy that international menace which tends towards an enslavement of the nations. But this road is and will always be marked with bloodshed—”

Tina was entirely unsurprised to see that Newt had been making sense of the books via legitimate studying, and the look on the barman’s face as Newt focused so intently on his notes was admittedly amusing. She took up his free firewhisky as he skipped down the page to continue reading:

“There is no such thing as coming to an understanding with the Jews. It must be the hard-and-fast 'Either-Or. [...] [We must] wipe out the Jewish State—”

And then he paused to clarify— 

“It helps to know that he’s been calling them parasites and germs before this, doesn’t it? And a racial disease, in another essay.” (10)

And then started again:

“Every racial mixture leads [...] sooner or later to the downfall of the mongrel product, provided the higher racial strata of this cross-breed has not retained within itself some sort of racial homogeneity—” 

A few heads had begun turning toward them by then (including the lone half-giant and pair of goblins at the far end of the bar) for Newt—unaccustomed to public oration and, similarly, characteristically oblivious to social behaviour in a new context—was not particularly regulating his voice—

“Systematically, these negroid parasites in our national body corrupt our innocent fair-haired girls and thus destroy something—”

And Tina—auror senses tingling—was just about to kick Newt in the shins herself when the barman broke in—

“Merlin, hey — I get it, eh?” He batted at Newt’s hands desperately. “Just - just stop reading that filth in here.”

Tina gently tugged the notebook out of Newt’s hands and patted it closed before him. 

“Now you know who Adolf Hitler is,” Newt offered simply, eyes watching the flicker of light on the record, head tilted slightly toward Tina.

The barman raised his hands in surrender before looking from Newt to the notebook to Tina and back again. “But if you with her...  Why’re you reading that shit, Fritz?” (11)

Newt blinked hard, retrieved his drink from Tina, and knocked back the remainder. 

“Know thy enemy, I suppose.”

Tina turned to him with a shaky laugh, gently brushing along the fabric of his trousers as she placed a hand on his thigh. The barman shook his head when Newt immediately fumbled in slipping the notebook into his pocket.

“Merlin,” he huffed. “You two are something .”

He split the remainder of the bottle between them dramatically.

“But see, del—” (12) He nodded at Tina. “Between Grindelwald, your Hitler bloke, and the threat of another bloody war on top of our own — Well. We’re all fucked, aren’t we?” 

And with that, he pushed their glasses forward, tossed the empty bottle into a bin under the sink, and poured three pints of ale for the aggravated giant down the bar.

They sat in silence for a long moment before Newt drummed his fingers and glanced sidelong at Tina with a sad, crooked smile.

“And I didn’t even get to the part about castrating the mentally deviant.” (13)

She met his eyes briefly, laying her hand over his on top of the bar.

They both stared at the radio and Tina picked up her whiskey.

“Jesus.”

.0.

It was one of those moments Newt would one day look back on with pity, for the ignorance of his younger self. And it was a day, he would later learn—when the fog later lifted (blinded as he was in 1933 to the full implications for the future)—had shifted his entire world. 

It would become clear within months that this was only the beginning, that that Muggle news on that cold evening in that small Wizarding pub in Wales was only the tail of the manticore... (14)

And it would become clear within years that neither the Muggle nor Wizarding governments of Britain could muster up a damn, too intent on hiding in their fear of another War, pigeon-hearted and peering from beneath their separate sheltering wings as—on the distant horizon—central and eastern Europe began, in earnest, to burn… (15)

Months after Muggle Britain and France declared war to protect European interests of power in September 1939, it would take Grindelwald’s synchronised, building wave for the British Ministry itself to officially act; and it would take explicit reports from fleeing refugee wizards—despite non-Ministry intelligence indicating concern years earlier—for the ICW to take a stand against the explicit persecution of some of their very own kind…

In the far distant future, Newt would look back on Tina’s hand on his thigh and their fingers knit together atop the bar like a moment in a Muggle snowglobe. 

In the far distant future, he would look back and see the look in her eyes like a drop of dark water at the edge of a mandrake leaf: it’s surface tension barely enough to hold back its potential against the pull of gravity, until a thousand moments after sent all the drops rolling—a river of fear to wake the bulbous root and shatter the world…

And, so, the next ten-plus years would test the resolve of both Newt and Tina in their daily choice to continue to love, and it would challenge Newt’s lifelong philosophy of the futility of worry until it threatened, eventually, to break them both down.

Chapter Text

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WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter 9: February 11, 1933

February 11, 1933
London, England, UK
Early Morning

It rained the morning Tina left, and Newt apparated them directly from his flat to Wizarding Customs, so they could steal a few more minutes over coffee in the kitchen.

After boarding, Tina waved from the deck until she was shuffled away by an eager family of five; and Newt stood in the drizzle watching the boat’s departure until it was a billywig-sized smudge on the river’s horizon.

Eventually, he apparated to a Wizard-safe alley; bought a box of pastries; pulled his jacket well over his head so he looked like some kind of spindly beast; and then hurried to his brother’s for silent commiseration, baked goods under one arm and case beneath the other.

At the door, Theseus dried him with a spell, before guiding him—without touch—to an armchair by the fire, where the side-table was already set with an extra cup of tea.

He turned on the radio as Newt stared at the flames, nibbled distractedly at a biscuit. And Theseus said nothing at all when his brother glanced at him sidelong before disappearing into his case, only to return a half minute later with his favourite black niffler in his arms.

Theseus simply removed his own cufflinks, hid the candlesticks from the mantle, and then watched from behind a copy of a Muggle morning paper as Newt settled back into his chair.

He cast his cognitive charm and sunk low.

He crossed his legs at the ankle and scratched the fur between the niffler’s beak and eyes—head tilted back, absentmindedly humming—until, eventually, the tuneless noise petered off…

An hour later, Theseus took the sleeping niffler from his brother’s lax arms and returned him to the case, before spelling a blanket onto the lanky frame and slipping out, silently, to the chippy.

Chapter Text

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WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter 10: February 27, 1933

Newt Scamander’s flat
9 Sherringford Square
London, England
February 27, 1933

When Newt was home long enough to establish a routine, having tea at his front window to keep an eye on the Muggle post was part of it. Wizarding letters were transferred to the Muggle post for delivery on only the 4 o’clock rounds in his mixed neighbourhood, so it was a fairly easy way for him to divide up his days. (1) ‘Before Mail’ was for all things tending and observing , while ‘After Mail’ was for all things reading and writing . (And, sometimes, eating dinner. When he remembered.) 

After Mail was also—consequently—for responding to letters.

These days, those letters were usually from Tina, as their rate of letter exchange had skyrocketed since she’d left a few weeks ago, beginning even before she’d docked in New York. (And, while he would admit it to no one, he was already counting down the days until his own trip.)

That afternoon, ‘Mail Time’ itself found Newt cleaning away a disaster, as—much to Teddy’s delight—he had mistakenly poured his tea into the cup with the gold stripe around the rim…. He was therefore just putting the finishing touches on reconstructing his flat when the mail arrived through the slot with a significantly more solid thump than usual. 

He syphoned the last of the tea from his stack of notes and then crossed to the door to pick it up. 

On the top was an official-looking letter from his publisher, which he set aside for later. The second item was a square package wrapped thickly in brown butcher paper. Tina’s oddly elegant hand spelled out his name and address, with enchanted instructions beneath the Muggle postage that directed Owl Post to send it abroad using her tracking spells if he were not at home. 

(There were pros and cons, he supposed, to dating a powerful auror.)

He unfolded the wrapping and picked up a note that lay atop a smaller burlap package within.

Bergman’s Magical Books & Marvels 
About 10AM on Saturday
February 18, 1933

My dear Newton Scamander - 

I am writing this at the table near the entrance of the store my parents brought me to in 1907, when they decided I was old enough to have my own Tanakh. (2)  Thank you for loving me enough to want to know all the parts of me. Thank you for loving me enough to want to protect me without making me feel stifled or — G-d forbid — weak. But Newt, you should know the stories, too—not just the pain. We can be a mournful sort, but there’s joy amidst the sorrow. 

We are all more than our suffering. (3)

I know you’re brilliant, but I also know you’re pretty clueless when it comes to religious texts (and also easily bored by things outside your interests), so I’ve bought these children’s versions for you. Same content, less flowery language, nice little enchanted illustrations. Sound familiar?

If you ever want the versions for grown-ups, you know precisely where to find me. Or — I suppose — I could deliver them myself.

With love,

Porpentina E. Goldstein

P.S. - Obviously, take what you want with a grain of salt. I don’t hold to most of it—we are ‘sorcerers’, after all!  (4)
P.P.S. - Great Uncle Arnold is delighted with your interest, by the way. I’m sorry, but you’re actually gonna have to meet him when you’re here in March. You should probably write Lally for tips on surviving his idea of Purim. (5)
P.P.S. - I miss you like a mooncalf misses the fullest moon. 

Newt opened the burlap wrapping to find two small books with a short, dated, handwritten inscription in the front of each one. (6) A photo fell out of the second, and he studied it for a long moment: It was Tina as a child, perhaps in her 2nd or 3rd year at Ilvermorny, wearing a dress that looked odd on her lanky frame and her mother’s silver locket. She sat hunched over a book in a setting Newt couldn’t recognize, and there was a younger version of Eulalie Hicks behind her, braiding back her hair and speaking soothingly.

He flipped the photo to the back:

Me, before my bat mitzvah, when I was 12. (7) Perhaps if we are lucky, one day we will give these books to our own children.

Newt blinked, flicked open his case, and pinned the photo—writing side up—beside his December 1926 ticket to New York City.

END OF PART 1

Chapter Text

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WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

PART TWO

Interlude: March - July 1933

Tina Goldstein's apartment
Very early morning - March 13, 1933
New York City, USA

Tina didn’t admit it often because the men in her department would not have respected it but…

She sincerely enjoyed knitting. 

However, it was one in the morning now, and she was intermittently nodding off, nearly dropping stitches of the blanket every time her fingers slipped. Newt was propped lengthwise on the couch beside her, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles so his cotton-socked feet just barely brushed against her thigh.

He still wore the shirt Queenie had transfigured to resemble dragon scales—in keeping with the spirit of the holiday—when they visited her at St. Nick’s that morning to deliver her Purim basket; and he was sipping at her abandoned wine as he frowned at the wall. Teddy the niffler was rocking unconcernedly on the arm of the couch behind him and—for once—Newt seemed hardly to notice… (1)(2)

He’d made it a respectably long time at the raucous feast and festival, Tina thought, though he’d perhaps used the alcohol to cope with the jostling and unfamiliar culture more than she’d seen before. But, during Purim, no one knew the difference between a sober Newt Scamander and a sloshed one, anyway.

After a moment, she laid a hand on his foot and gently shook.

“It’s late. Have you fed Teddy?”

He blinked and looked at her from over his wine glass, eventually nodding. But he was still looking at her—oddly steady—so she put down her knitting and pulled up her feet to face him.

“What’s it like?” he asked, suddenly. 

Tina pulled a pearl pin out of her hair and frowned in return, a slightly confused sound emerging from her throat before she could stop it. 

Teddy shuffled against Newt’s neck behind him. 

“Well, I’m not -” he started again. “My family’s not, you see—” 

He looked at her from the edge of his gaze, seemingly frustrated with himself, only to find her watching him evenly – that calm and blankly patient expression Newt had begun to expect whenever he had something to say but the words swirled in his brain like the mists of a failed patronus. Tina even managed to summon said patience in the middle of disagreements, as if it were little inconvenience at all. 

He was not entirely used to that yet.

“My family —” he told her, and he put his wine down on the coffee table and pushed it away. “We weren’t religious, Tina... I wasn’t raised on anything but the world around me, apart from myths and stories of ages past.”

Tina nodded and scooted slightly closer, shifting his legs so they fell over her at the knees, waiting for him to pull himself together.

“And tonight— And the story, which I’d read before, of course, but— And the horror of it, Tina, but the joy —?”

Five hours before, she had watched his face drain to see a facsimile of Hitler—an apparent stand-in for the murderous Haman—at the side of the street, “Death to Jews” hanging on a sign about his neck, as a group of young men danced about him, waving signs demanding a boycott of German goods. (3)(4)

Also five hours before, though, she had watched him stumble to a stop when he stepped into the ballroom—utterly dazzled, fingers picking excitedly at the Y of his suspenders as he took it all in. (That same look he’d worn the day she’d arrested him seven years ago, when she’d pushed open the doors to MACUSA and he had begun to shuffle a half beat behind her: eyes wide - cast upward - a wondrously young smile upon his face, so seemingly oblivious to the danger he walked into.) 

“I don’t—” Newt was saying now, in her apartment, in March 1933. “I’m trying to understand what it’s like -  to be religious. I’m confused and—”

She leaned forward and took his hand, and it felt like a gift he didn’t flinch away. He sat up to meet her.

"Well, I’ve never been anything but Jewish, Newt. It’s a way of thinking for me."

He didn’t look satisfied, but he nodded, and she could tell he was watching the light flicker off the jewels in her hair.

“It’s what my parents left me; what my grandparents and great-grandparents came here to preserve.”

Teddy had snuffled his way from the arm of the couch, down Newt’s dragon-studded chest, and across the small space between them to stare up at the pins in her hair.

“And isn’t it a beautiful thing? Even if you don’t understand?”

He met her eyes then, and she would never ever admit it, but her heart skipped a beat when she saw her own jewels—so out of character for her—reflected in his eyes.

She levitated one down into the grasping paws of the niffler just to watch him smile. 

April 7, 1933 

Dear Newt,

I’ve been real delighted you and Tina are finally doing something about the way you’ve been looking at each other. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it’s been to hear all that mind-chatter from you two and keep my mouth shut! Though I’ll admit, honey—your head’s more full of snatches of her face and flashes of her doing weird stuff (buttoning your jacket, handling an occamy, adjusting her belt—even hexing a guy, Newt!) than actual words. But Teenie’s thoughts just make me blush!

I used to think I had a hard time reading you because you’re British, but since meeting some other guys with accents— and after meeting your brother (when his Occlumency’s down) — I really think it’s just you. I read some of those articles back when I was at St. Nick’s—they keep the ladies’ wards well-stocked with gossip - sorry, sweetie—and I saw what they said about you, and your brain. And, Newt, I don’t know how you feel about all that stuff, but I think it’s neat how different you see the world. I just thought you should know. (5)

Speaking of! Your charm, honey! It's made all the difference. Healers wrote Lally themselves and she helped them fix it up into something that turns down the 

Sorry, someone came in the shop. People can get so rude right before Passover!!

Anyway, Lally helped those healers fix it up into something that turns down the intensity of the noise, so they’re whispers I can ignore instead of a bunch of clanging, when I want them to be. It’s like turning down the static on a radio! You’re a real lifesaver, Newt. (Tina’s real fond of that charm of yours, too — says, even in public, you can be a real charmer yourself when you’re not caught up in everything. But I’m not surprised by that at all. And she’s always thought you were a charmer—she’s just kidding herself, acting like that’s something new. But that’s Teenie for you.)

At any rate. I’m just real glad we met all those years ago, sweetheart. I can’t wait to see you again. Jacob misses you and I know he’d be real pleased if you’d write him again soon! He’s all worked up over ‘bottom-line’ things that I just don’t give a hoot about, and he sure could use a pick-me-up from his ‘best pal’.

Hope this letter finds you well, honey, or that it at least finds you. 

With love,

Queenie Goldstein Kowalski

.0.

MACUSA Advises Caution Travelling in Central Europe

Press Release from MACUSA Wizarding Office for Public Information

NEW YORK CITY, Apr 10 - MACUSA, specifically the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and the Office of International Affairs, encourages American witches and wizards to exercise caution while travelling in Europe. This is a reminder that the country of Germany has enacted laws that pose a threat to certain members of the wizarding community. Additionally, the UK Auror’s Office has confirmed increased Grindelwald acolyte activity in and around Austria and Germany. Populations most vulnerable to threat include: No-Maj’s, journalists, Jews of all types and degrees, Jehovah’s Witnesses (though uncommon in our communities), those who have pursued homosexual relations at any point (or may appear of the sort), gypsies/Roma, anti-Nazi political opponents of any nationality, communists, the mentally or physically infirm (assuming they are traveling). The Associated Negro Press (Chicago) additionally reports concerns for travellers. We encourage all individuals travelling abroad to contact their magical embassies to inform them of travel plans, and to report concerns directly to the ICW, ECW, or their own domestic governments as they occur. Political and refugee issues regarding foreign nationals should be directed to the ICW’s crisis unit. (6)(7)

.0.

April 12, 1933

Dear Jacob,

Queenie says the shop’s doing well but you’re worried about ‘bottom-line things’. I’ll admit, I have no idea what that means, but I know you’ll do great. 

I was down in Dorset yesterday to release a mackled malaclaw. Decided to poke around past the breakers afterward, and I stepped right on a murtlap, that creature that bit you, back when we first met. It made me think about how hilariously calmly you accepted everything we threw at you that first day. I’m ever so sorry for the stress, but it is—in retrospect—quite funny... I am still beyond grateful, Jacob, that your obliviation didn’t take.

Anyway, I’m home for a spell and then off to north Italy for a research trip. I’ll send you a postcard from Turin, or Genoa. I hope you’re taking care of yourself, and Queenie, and keeping an eye on Tina (as much as she’ll let you, goodness knows it’s a battle). 

Let me know how you are, when you can. 

Your friend,

Newt

May 17, 1933 
Near Glencoe, Scotland, UK

Newt had been in Scotland for most of May, working with DRCMC and the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes in the aftermath of a well-publicised sighting of the Loch Ness’ massive Kelpie. (8) They’d only just settled it when Dumbledore requested a meeting of his peers at Hogwarts, which threw Newt and Tina—unexpectedly, and to their utter delight—into close quarters with both each other and Theseus and Lally for several days, after which they absconded into the wilderness for a working holiday at the summit’s conclusion.

Now, they were camping, just south of Glen Coe. Newt wasn’t particularly superstitious, but the glen made Tina jumpy when they were still out after dark, for he had made the mistake—their first afternoon, on a hike—of retelling a tale related to him just the week before by his colleague Avery, about the 17th century Jacobite massacre. (9)

Head Auror Tina Goldstein, Newt was finding, was full of surprises.

And Tina herself was finding she was actually only mildly annoyed that the way Newton Scamander—infamous lover of all things slightly horrible—had found out she was more than mildly apprehensive of spirits was via a historical tale he hadn’t even meant to be a ghost story at all. (Which just seemed offensively in character for him.)

Besides that, though, their visit since Hogwarts had been remarkably pleasant—even if she did have to work on paperwork half the time (while Newt did Morrigan knows what in the mountains)—and she had rather come to look forward to his arm about her shoulders in the cool of the highland evenings.

Still, he sometimes got that look on his face that, she now knew, meant he very much wanted to say something but was also aware that voicing said thoughts was likely to incur a negative reaction from his conversational partner. It was an amusing thing to observe when he wasn’t looking at her, but—tonight—he’d been glancing up constantly as he chopped vegetables and it was beginning to set her on edge (in addition to placing his fingers at significant risk of dismemberment).

When he looked up at her for the third time in as many seconds, she finally interjected:

“Newt – what?” 

He jumped, nearly dropping the knife; and she wiped her hands on a rag before tossing it on the counter.

“Sorry,” he said quickly, and he reached for a carrot, turning his gaze back to his task. “I was just thinking.”

She intercepted the carrot and took the knife from his fingers, forcing him to turn.

“I know.  You’re doing that thing with your face where—”

“Right.”

She laid down the knife and tapped his temple gently with the carrot—

“So what’s going on up there?” 

He blinked hard and looked back at the half-prepped veggies. 

“Newt, c’mon,” she urged quietly. “I’m not gonna yell at you or somethin’.”

He snorted at the promise, but then turned away from dinner prep and leaned against the low counter anyway. Hands tucked into pockets and thumb beating out a rhythm on the fabric, he eventually ventured, words tripping forward like a spring brook:

“So I know you’d had a promotion - obviously - right before we were in Germany, and Bhutan. But – What were you doing while we were there? You told me you watched the Qilin bit in the MACUSA atrium but–“

Tina winced internally, but Newt seemed to since her discomfort anyway, because he paused for a long moment— Being on the same team politically (and, now, romantically) meant they had come to know almost everything about the other’s work, though there were obvious exceptions, like the limits of American Wizarding law and those assignments neither she nor Newt were keen to share due to Grindelwald’s skills as a Seer... 

“But - Did Dumbledore have you doing something I’m not meant to know?” he continued cautiously. “I only ask, Tina, because – Only because I saw him take you aside when he thought no one was looking, so I was just thinking that—”

She put hands on her hips and he abruptly stopped.

“Newt, you know that even if he had , I wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell you…”

He shifted slightly on his feet, and she couldn’t quite read his expression. They sometimes seemed to get stuck somewhere between what he was actually feeling and the exact opposite, which was incredibly unhelpful.

“Had he, though?” he repeated.

Tina looked at him evenly and noticed his thumb had begun to rub more quickly over the stitching of his pocket, a far more telling clue than his face during these sorts of conversations. She waited for him to meet her eyes before answering firmly:

“No.”

“No?” he repeated.

Tina bit her lip.

“I wasn’t anywhere for Dumbledore, Newt,” she clarified. “I’m employed by MACUSA, remember?”

He sighed and flicked his wand at the stove to heat the garlic in the skillet, fixing a pointed look just to the left of her. “Well, I’m not employed by Dumbledore either, but here we both are.”

“Newt…” she nearly whined, and a tiny frustrated hop burst from her body before she could contain it.

Something approaching a chuckle emerged from him in response, and he shifted a bit again.

“All right, all right, sorry,” he said, gesturing awkwardly in front of him in that stilted way she shouldn’t have found quite so endearing. “But - it was worth asking.”

She raised her eyebrows at that and he continued more convincingly:

“Yes, yes - keep your secrets, Miss Goldstein.”

She rewarded him with a smile and turned back to making their dinner, finishing Newt’s chopping with a wave of her wand.

“If it makes you feel any better,” she said, as he stood stiffly beside her, watching the veggies chop themselves but still clearly thinking. “I didn’t tell Lally either.”

“Um, I’m sorry - I don’t —” He frowned. “Why exactly would that make me feel better?”

“Because—” But she waved a hand when he continued to look at her confusedly, eventually releasing a short laugh. “Forget it. I was just trying to say that me not telling you has nothing to do with trusting you.”

“Oh - I know that, Tina. I trust you to do what you think is best. I have almost since I met you, at least once we got past that nasty death cell business.”

“Merlin, Newt – anyone ever tell you you can be a bit too trusting?”  

“Only everyone,” he said with a self-effacing smile, summoning a blanket from the nearby chair. “Drives Theseus mad.” 

At that, he wrapped himself up in the fern green throw she’d made to replace his atrocious orange afghan, then turned to deal with the rice, effectively signalling the end of his interest in the conversation.  

Tina finished sautéeing the vegetables before dividing them up onto plates, whereafter they sat at the small rickety table and ate largely in silence, though she didn’t much mind at all. 

.0.

Later, the lamplight would catch at his curls, and she would tug him outside to look at the stars. 

(If she did so, in part, so Newt would have an excuse to forgo his inconsistent sense of propriety to sit close to her in the dark, so that he might wrap them both in a blanket when she inevitably began to shiver, so that she could feel his breath on her cheek and see him flush beneath his freckles in the dim light of the crescent moon— 

(Well, no one needed to know that.)

July 4, 1933
Around noon
Bamboo hammock

To my fiery Leo, Tina -

It has been far too long since I saw you, and the last visit a working holiday, too! I’m so sorry my schedule has been so hectic recently (this book is shaping up to be a considerable amount of work), and that I’ve received your notes (thanks to your unsettlingly good tracking spells) but have been entirely unable to reply myself… I hope you will accept this bundle of letters from late May through July 1 as proof I’ve thought of you all along. 

—Though I apologise in advance that, sometimes, it’s quite clear my head was in my work more than anything else. I thought you might enjoy the sketches from those days, anyway. 

I also rather wish I hadn’t written some of the things quite the way I did, particularly in my response to your frustrations with MACUSA hierarchy, in your June 3 letter. I thought about it a while this morning and decided it would be a bit dishonest of me to remove it from the stack... I’m working on watching my words more carefully, in the context of you, and how I imagine you might feel when you read them. But it’s a process, and you deserve to know exactly who you’ve embarked on this journey with, so you can assess whether you have the patience to wait for me to catch up. Whatever the case, I’ll understand if you want a good, long argument when I arrive. (I’ll even pack dittany.) 

(I’m mostly joking.)

Speaking of which—

I would love to see you, Porpentina. To celebrate your birthday, in particular, something we’ve never had the chance to do. And regardless of my clumsy words, you certainly deserve to be celebrated—your leadership, your moral fibre, your compassion and strength, and beauty… And I intend 

Now, I’d very much like to

I’m quite sorry for not asking ahead of time—that was really presumptuous of me, in retrospect—but to be perfectly honest I’ve already bought a ticket, set to arrive on August 13 (a Sunday). Please let me know as soon as possible if that’s not good for you, and I’ll see if I can get in touch with Theseus somehow - to change it. I expect to be back in London by Aug 5.

I’ve barely been home for a full day as it is—just enough time to restock the basement habitats and post this package to you—but it’s mating season for the chimaera on a particular, isolated island off Greece… And if I want to arrive in time—taking into account a bit of Muggle travel—I’ve got to go immediately. Bunty says Dougal’s lonely and seems offended I only let Pickett and Teddy come on trips these days (unless I’m taking someone home), but I’m not one for repeating New York, so I hope he comes round… 

Seems like I’ve done an awful lot of asking for forgiveness this year, but that’s just the way of it.

Oh! And Tina! Happy Independence Day. I just got back from India and—honestly—if I were America, I’d have wanted to get out from under our thumb, too. (10)

Yours, for as long as you’ll have me,

Newt 

P.S. - Sorry this is so hurried. I promise the letters in the package are better, the days I actually wrote. I even let myself wax a bit poetic for your entertainment. See you soon. xX  

P.P.S. - You could have knocked me over with a hippogriff feather when Mum explained “XX” didn’t just mean “Harmless/may be domesticated”. (I’d been using it in a notebook to rate the friendliness of children in the village, you see.) Theseus didn’t stop laughing until our father aguamenti’ed him in the face. In my defence, I was 6.

Tina Goldstein's apartment
August 1, 1933
New York City, USA

Tina threw herself onto the couch and levitated a pack out of the ice box onto her shoulder. (It had been a long day directing operations in the field, and things had gotten a bit out of hand.) The ice immediately cut the heat of the evening. She stared out the window at a family of bickering pigeons as it eased her throbbing joint, remembering how—just five months before—Newt had been veritably curled on the cushion beside her, as they wandered ever closer to the kind of emotional vulnerability from which it was nearly impossible to return.

Purim 1933

Newt hadn’t pulled his hand away in all the time they’d been talking, though he was watching a loose lock of her hair instead of her face, his lips stained maroon from the evening’s revels, and he had that far distant look in his eyes that Tina now knew meant he was either at the end of his tolerance for a situation or, conversely, just thinking very very hard… 

He drew a sudden breath—

“Why would you keep doing something, if it gets you hurt?” He tilted his head slightly toward her.  “If you could die for it?”

Tina caught his gaze and then pointedly looked down, reaching for the hand that wasn’t grasping her own. She took his arm in her grip and pushed up the sleeve to reveal the shiny burgundy of the quintaped scar, tracing fingers down it from top to bottom. She turned his wrist and stopped at a discoloration on the back of his hand, where a curse from a poacher had left a blotchy white mark uncounted years before.

“Why do you keep doing what you do,” she countered, “if you could die for it?”

“That’s not the same,” he said immediately, frowning. 

He laid his hand over hers, then, linked their fingers together, pulled them into his lap—

“Isn’t it?” 

He shook his head. “That’s—”

“Fine. Why do you keep doing what you do against Grindelwald? If you could die for it? That has very little to do with beasts.”

Not even a beat—

“Because I believe what I’m doing is right.”

She shrugged. “Exactly. Being Jewish is who I am. Being half-blood wizards is who we are. And, so, I owe it to my ancestors—and you owe it to yours—to not make it easy for anyone to take that away from us.” (11)

Newt hummed in response.

“But religion—” he eventually stuttered after a long moment, eyes fixed firmly on their intertwined hands, unconsciously rubbing at the wand-callous on her palm. “I’m not sure it’s - well…  I’m not sure it’s real, Tina.”

“Isn’t it?” she countered quietly. “And even if it’s not, does it matter? Hitler certainly thinks it is. The idea of it is real, Newt, and—for the world—that’s always seemed to be enough, for better or worse.”

He had nothing to say to that.

She closed the last few inches of space between them so they were both cross-legged and knee-to-knee on the couch. He, in turn, disentangled their fingers, retrieved the abandoned glass of wine, and took a sip, before passing it to her with both hands, like an offering.

She stared at him for a long moment before accepting it and raising it to her lips. (12)

A scarred hand cupped her cheek—

“Yes,” he murmured. “I think that’s real enough for me.”

.0.

The very next day—in the shadow of New York’s celebration of Esther, the triumph of the Jewish people over genocide—reports of two American Jews suffering violent attacks in Berlin, prior to being expelled from Germany, would breach containment. (13)(14)

One week later, the world would find out about the opening of Dachau. (15)

A week after that, and Newt would be wrestling Tina away from a mixed Wizard-Muggle protest at Madison Square Garden, just as the Wizarding press arrived…. She would beat at his chest—swearing at him bitterly—while he shoved her head beneath his outstretched coat to hide her from the cameras. He kept her shielded until he’d got them clear of the crowds to apparate to her apartment. (16)(17)

There, she would stalk the living room for a long while (like a Wampus, he had made the mistake of saying aloud) and then collapse dramatically onto the couch with a suddenly tearful apology, head bowed, still angry. Newt would make her a cup of cocoa—because coffee’s not for crises—and then settle down beside her to draw while she continued to fume. He would later put on a record, cook them dinner in silence, and then offer to read to her from his draft until she fell asleep (which she eventually did). 

The next morning, Tina had woken up on the couch covered in her grandmother’s quilt, pale morning light slanting through the tall windows to illuminate Newt—case in lap, feet on table, head tilted back and very much asleep—slumped in the armchair beside her. There, on the coffee table, among his mess of manuscript notes, he’d left her a glass of water, which she drank as she watched the morning paint him gold (the shadows of birds occasionally darkening him as they winged themselves across their still life, out beyond the glass). 

Later that day, he would walk her to the atrium of MACUSA, and he would place the gentlest of kisses upon her cheek as they neared the elevator, for all to see. Then, promising her his love and as many letters as he could muster, he left her with Red — left her behind —

Left her to travel back across the sea, to Europe.

Tina ran a hand down her face and looked at the photo Queenie had framed for her on the mantle: the four of them smiling for the camera (though Newt watched her), Theseus and Lally standing off to the side, occasionally popping into the frame to tease. 

It was fine. 

It would be fine. 

They’d only had one verified Grindelwald incident in America in two months; and Newt was off on research, not for Dumbledore; and Theseus was keeping Tina apprised of auror happenings in Europe via weekly memos or chats; and Queenie was recovering (wasn’t she?), and Jacob was happy, too, and she wasn’t worried—

She wasn’t worried at all. 

But Newt…

She stood up abruptly, tossed her ice pack into the sink, and then proceeded to rummage about in the kitchen to make a peanut butter sandwich—

She hadn’t heard from him since that July package, and it was beginning to make her twitchy.

So, really —she thought—it was perfectly reasonable to feel that - 

Well, Newt couldn’t get there soon enough. 

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter 11: August 15, 1933

August 15, 1933
MACUSA Atrium
New York City, USA

Tina adjusted the levitating microphone and glanced toward MACUSA’s press secretary—Robert Apis—who hovered at her shoulder in a black-striped button-up like an oversized bee. 

This was absolutely her least favorite part of her job. It was only Tuesday, and it had already been a long week... She had not only concerns about Grindelwald and employee management dominating her thoughts, but Newt’s still unexplained absence simmered at the back of her mind.

So, in short, this particular press conference was far more fiery than usual—she had already unintentionally roasted the crime columnist for Spellbound within an inch of his life. 

“Only four more now, Chief Goldstein,” Apis murmured, shifting closer to be heard over the clamoring reporters and very much looking like he wished he could pin her down and force a calming draught down her throat.

She gave an imperceptible nod and looked back at the crowd.

“You’ve only given three to the Ghost, Goldstein! You’re killin’ me here!”

The lead editor at the New York Ghost had become increasingly aggressive at press conferences since the situation in Bhutan, and Tina had lost her patience with him approximately six months ago.

“Listen, Burl—” she snapped. “I gave you answers on beast smuggling and the Most Wanted updates, which is what you were yammering on about last week. Let someone else ask the good stuff this time or I’m kickin’ you out.”

“Giles’ flat tits, Goldstein! I swear to—” [1]

She flicked her wand, encouraging him with a summoned flock of pigeons to flee to the back of the crowd.

“All right — small papers and special interest reporters, that’s all I wanna here from.” 

She turned sharply to a man moving in from the margins.

“If you try to pass yourself off as a burgeoning press one more time, Spinelli,” she snapped pointedly, “I’m banning you through Christmas—Hanukkah if you’re lucky, Thanksgiving if you’re a saint. Though if you can get Tim to stop printing prisoner gossip, I’d be willing to let you back in closer to Samhain. Got it?”

Spinelli immediately backed off and slunk away to stand beside the Ghost’s snubbed editor.

“Sheesh, all right…” she muttered.

A smaller group of journalists had moved toward the front of the room and she took a deep breath that rattled the winged microphone, centering herself again before beginning.

“Okay, is Harlem Wizarding Times here? The Shalom Standard? I cut you both off last week so let’s hear it.” 

She paused, then pointed behind them as the two reporters were coming forward. 

“And you, Walsh — Draíocht Daily, you’re up, too.” [2]

A thin, gray-haired wizard with oversized glasses and a comically colorful tartan scarf skittered forward to take his place beside the finely dressed reporter with perfectly coiffed coils from Harlem (whom she didn’t know) and the young, bright-eyed man from the Shalom Standard, Hal Abadi.

“On the arrest and planned prosecution of the acolyte you reported in your answer to the Ghost—” 

Virginia Tillman, new reporter, straight out of Ilvermorny – Apis leaned in to whisper into Tina’s ear, far enough away from the microphone for it not to pick up — and well-loved stepdaughter of Jefferson Broussard. Ah. One of the DMLE’s biggest financial supporters nationally, Tina knew, for the Broussards were an old and exceptionally powerful Cajun-Creole family who’d kept the Louisiana wizarding community afloat almost single-handedly since the 1801 Purchase, with occasional help from the infamous New Orleans Laveaus and the German-Cajun Leblancs— [3]

She tuned back into the question —

“—can you give us a timeline for when that prosecution might occur, and how citizens might expect such a case to affect them?”

Well, too bad for all Virginia’s considerable connections, Tina regretted; Graves could chew her out later—

“I’m sorry, Miss Tillman. That’s classified information while the related investigations are ongoing—I’m sure you understand.”

“So, you mean, until this entire Grindelwald business is over then?” The Draíocht Daily reporter adjusted his glasses and coughed into his scarf. “Our folks overseas in Belfast, Galway, and London have reported elevated tension abroad.”

“An unfortunate way to use your question, Walsh,” Tina sighed into the floating microphone. “Because, like I said, classified until we can unclassify it...”

Walsh dropped his head and shuffled back as Hal Abadi veritably bounced forward, notepad in hand and quill at the ready, waiting patiently for her acknowledgement.

“Yes, Mr. Abadi?” she prompted, and she only resisted gritting her teeth by reminding herself she usually found Abadi’s boundless enthusiasm for his career overwhelmingly endearing, much like she’d felt the first time she’d truly seen Newt.

“Auror Goldstein,” he said, “do you think the wizarding world should be concerned about the potential overlap of power in Europe, with Grindelwald regaining followers across the continent as Hitler’s Reich further codifies legal persecution of minorities—” 

She opened her mouth to reply but he had apparently only paused to take a breath—

“—including laws designed to keep Jewish children out of schools—propaganda-riddled as they are—and to forcibly sterilize racial minorities or any people at all with genetically inferior conditions?” [4][5][6]

Tina suppressed a smile at his gall—for there was a low muttering suffusing the room now—as she acknowledged his question. “I do think we should be concerned, Mr. Abadi, and I’d encourage American witches and wizards to keep minding those travel recommendations from the Office for Public Information, particularly those who share characteristics of those being persecuted in Germany or by Grindelwald’s acolytes.”

Hal Abadi nodded eagerly and his pen sped across the page of his notebook.

“And this also seems like a good opportunity to assure,” she continued, “minority witches and wizards—including half-bloods—that the American Auror office is in constant contact with our counterparts in London and Paris, and we’ve got informants we're unable to discuss elsewhere, as ever. MACUSA isn’t turning a blind eye to No-maj concerns that affect Wizards both overseas and at home.”

“And at home?” Abadi slipped in the follow-up question before anyone could stop him; and, though there was an exclamation of unfairness from the very back of the room (probably Burl), Tina raised her hand to shut him down even though she could feel Apis practically buzzing behind her.

“Well,” she paused for a pregnant moment, in which the room hushed once more. “I’d personally encourage non-Jewish witches and wizards to do their duty in supporting their Jewish brethren. We have a long tradition of that, refusing to bow to No-maj beliefs—we don’t uphold Jim Crow codes in the Wizarding World, for example, do we?” [7]

Tillman, the Harlem reporter, shifted minutely behind Abadi and Tina continued— 

“Or, rather, most of us don’t,” she fairly acknowledged. “And since MACUSA can’t be everywhere while antisemitism continues to be a problem—even in our own city where, you know, based on No-maj counts, about 1 in 6 of us New Yorkers are, in fact, Jewish—” [8]

Abadi was scribbling so rapidly he eventually gave up and let the pen finish itself with a well-whispered charm—

“Well, we all have our own duties to do, to protect each other. Like we’ve all been doin’ since they tried to burn and drown us into submission in 1692.” [9]

Spinelli—whom she’d earlier banished to the back of the room by the New York Ghost—called out into the silence:

“Is that an official MACUSA statement, Auror Goldstein?”

Apis had stepped forward to stand beside her with his hands held tight behind his back as he attempted to surreptitiously get Tina’s attention by sidling into her peripheral vision—

“That’s an official Tina Goldstein statement, Mr. Spinelli, as I can speak only for the Auror Office and myself and am unauthorized, as you know, to announce policy for higher levels of our Congress.”

Apis deflated in relief beside her with the sound of a bee who’d lost one wing spiraling to the ground—

He didn’t stay that way for long, though, for at the next out-of-turn interjection from the crowd, he was once more buzzing at her shoulder, though she paid him absolutely zero mind.

“You act like you care about this Germany stuff, Goldstein—”

G-ddamn Burl. 

“But word is you don’t even go to Synagogue. Whaddaya have to say to that?”

Tina answered before she could think, and she was sure Apis was veritably dying behind her.

“One, it’s none of your business, Burl. Two, we live in America and it's called freedom of religion. And three, synagogue or not, at least I’m not an asshole.”

There were a number of gasps and sniggers that Tina wholeheartedly ignored in her pique–

“You , meanwhile, won’t be at the Press Conference next week under threat of forceful expulsion and you can schlep down to the Lower East Side to get your headlines directly from the Shalom Standard. Ain’t nobody else giving you info, either, ‘cus I’ll know about it.” 

She glared at the rest of the reporters momentarily. 

“Got it?”

“Tina, you can’t—” he started with real anger -

“Don’t—” she said harshly, and it was a sudden reminder to all attending why generally compassionate Porpentina Esther Goldstein had been promoted to director of the Auror Office so very very quickly. “Don’t Tina me. You know my damn name.”

“Yes, ma’am, Chief Goldstein,” he grumbled from the back, and then Robert Apis had finally stepped in front of Tina with a pointedly outstretched arm to take over the quivering microphone.

“And that’s it , folks! Let’s go – there’s new news tomorrow and another conference next week!”

The crowd started to disperse, though smaller publications talked amongst themselves, comparing notes as they shuffled off to the side to get out of the louder crowd as Apis continued to yell at the general congregation.

“C’mon! Shoo shoo, scram! MACUSA’s got things to do that aren’t—”

But Tina had utterly quit listening, for she was dragging herself off the stage toward the elevator, which led her directly through a small group of the reporters from the special interest publications, namely Walsh, Tillman, and Abadi, who very much appeared to be conspiring together.

“You small presses work on your questions next time,” she hissed as she passed through them, barely slowing. “You’re sharp, Hal, even if you’re clumsy as all get-out—” she pointed at him as she turned slightly to keep eyes on them as she passed, “but you guys were weak. You get the whole floor to yourselves here—who the hell else does that?—so you really oughta use it.”

She didn’t look back when one of them tried to holler after her, disappearing instead as fast as she could into the elevator at the rear of the atrium, which was already occupied by one Achilles Tolliver.

“DMLE?” Red asked as she stepped in. 

“Thanks, Red.”

She ran a hand through her hair and glanced at Achilles—

“Hey, Tolliver.”

—whom she got along with perfectly amicably, despite having once thrown a highball in his face (and even if, for purportedly non-Tina-related reasons that neither seemed willing to acknowledge, Achilles and Newt could not endure professional contact with the other for more than five minutes at a time).

Achilles leaned against the bars of the lift as it rumbled into life and raised an eyebrow at her obvious exhaustion, jerking his head at the still chattering atrium as it sped away. “That bad, Goldstein?”

“You want a promotion?” she joked.

“Absolutely not.” A wry smile.

They got off at the department and Tina waved over her shoulder. “Look, I’m headed out early. Owl me if something comes up, capiche?” [10]

“Yes, ma’am!” he called at her retreating back.

And so Tina picked up her things, locked her office door, and trudged back out into the No-maj world.

She waited at the docks—again—for an hour, and when the last straggler from Britain disembarked and it still wasn’t Newt, she tried very hard not to drown in worry.

.0.

It was far far easier to choose frustration.

Tina often stopped by Kowalski Quality Baked Goods after work, to check in with Queenie and Jacob. They ate dinner together, more often than not.  (At least, they did when Tina’s brain wasn’t focused on ‘disturbing work things,’ because—on those days—Tina had found her patience for the way Queenie occasionally pulled disgusted faces while picking at her potatoes embarrassingly low. What she saw at work was no worse than what Queenie had seen at Nurmengard, but that was not a thought she particularly liked to have around her sister. It was uncharitable to them both.)

Today, though, they were locked up by six, so Tina slipped inside with a silent alohomora. 

“Teeeeeeen!” Queenie immediately squealed at the sound of the tingling bell, and Jacob gave her a genuine, if tired, smile (getting up at 3AM to start the ovens at four did not always sit well with him).   

Tina accepted—and reciprocated—the warm hug from her sister but then immediately scowled when Queenie held her at arms’ length with a pitying expression—

“Still not here, huh?”

Tina shook her head. She tried to ignore the flare of frustration she couldn’t quite understand, promptly failed, and—consequently—ground out, “Can we talk about something besides me and Newt? I am right here. I have a career and a life and—”

Queenie gave her a look that was half-frown, half-smile, and very much all idealistic—if somewhat still traumatized—younger sister.

“Yeah, yeah, your impressive but creepy job, Teen. But that’s not the thing you’re most worried about right now, and I wouldn’t be a sister if I didn’t focus on– Well.”

She paused, and they looked at each other for a very long second that felt very much like it was about more than this singular moment in Jacob’s bakery.

“Still,” Queenie finally concluded, voice taking on that soft tone it did when her legilimens-driven empathy was close to spilling out. “I’m sure Newt has his reasons.” 

Tina threw up her hands in exasperation just as Jacob jumped in, not having watched the sisters’ interaction close enough to notice the potential warning signs of continuing down a Newt-related path.

“Yeah, you know how he is —” Jacob started, and he tossed a soiled rag into a bin at the far end of the counter and reached down for another, still not looking up. “Probably got caught up in – I dunno, saving a dragon or – or crawling round a cave for nifflers or somethin’ – and just forgot to write.”

“There aren’t dragons where he is but thanks, Jacob.”

She eased herself onto one of the stools running the sides of the bakery and crossed her legs at the knee as she prepared to ask them both about their days, but Queenie, apparently, had other plans.

“Now, don’t forget to switch out of auror mode when he gets here, Teenie.”

Tina’s head snapped up and she frowned.

“Morrigan’s ass, Queenie - What part of ‘talk about something else’ don’t you understand; and, also, what do you even mean ?”

“Well, you know,” she answered, with that sing-songy quality that meant Tina just knew she was about to say something so bluntly honest it was bound to be insulting... “When you’ve had a tough week and you get here, to the shop… Well…It’s just that—some days - maybe like today—you’re still real tight and direct. Real commanding, right? Like you’re still in the office with the guys. And you know how Newt is when he hasn’t been around—well—humans in a while. Real jumpy, ya know? Tongue-tied. And he’s been off - where? Greece or somethin’?”

Tina rolled her eyes and tried to keep an even tone as she responded— “Thank you for educating me on the care and keeping of Newton Scamander, Queenie, but I really think I can handle it...”

“I’m just sayin’, honey,” she hummed quietly, her voice rising in something like a trill at the end. “This boss auror vibe?” And she waved a hand at her cross-armed stance. “Now don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive. But don’t you go spookin’ ‘im, Teen.”

Tina looked over at Jacob for input, but he immediately held up flour-dusted hands as if to say: This is a sister thing - Newt’s my pal - This ain’t my problem in precisely that order.

“Wise choice, sweetheart,” Queenie said with a quiet laugh, finally flipping the door sign to closed and then crossing to Jacob to loop arms about him from behind. 

Tina sighed.

“Yeah, yeah,” she conceded. “I hear you, Queenie. All right.”

She frowned and fixed her sister with a look, though, before suggesting a gentle counter-argument:

“But it would serve him right being late with no letter and no word at all. Bucked the tracking spells, too.”

“Tracking spells?” Jacob muttered incredulously, though he immediately returned to uselessly  wringing a rag within the confines of Queenie’s hug at Tina’s immediately cutting glare—

“Oh, he’s a grown man, Teen, c’mon— You’re just worried. You’ll forgive him the second he shows up on the steps of that fancy new apartment of yours,” Queenie said with a kind smile over Jacob’s shoulder, and Tina looked fleetingly away. 

“He’s already seen the fancy new apartment, Queenie.”

“That’s not my point and you know it. You can always telegram his brother if you’re that worried, hon.”

“I don’t want him thinkin' I’m being overbearing—”

“One,” Queenie cut in, “do I gotta remind you you just admitted to trackin’ your boyfriend, which is not only ‘overbearing’ but about three different kinds of illegal, Miss Head Auror?”

Tina blushed.

“And two — Better you come off as overbearing to his overbearing brother who can maybe calm you down, than you let that anxiety keep buildin’ and buildin’ until you make an international mess by hexin’ Newt to bits when he inevitably shows up with some harmless story ‘bout an injured goat three days from now.”

Tina actually laughed and looked at her sister fondly. 

“It just wouldn’t be a good look for you, Teen,” Queenie finished with a smile, somehow, tinged with sadness. “You’ve both had enough near executions to last a lifetime.”

Tina glanced at the door and Queenie paused for a half second before moving on with more enthusiasm: 

“Well in that case, Teenie, if you aren’t gonna stay for dinner—” 

“Could you not do that for half a minute!”

“—at least take some bread.”

Tina shook her head and stood, beginning to move toward the door–  “Oh, I couldn’t, you guys - I —”

“Look, I insist!” Jacob said above her protest. “You don't wanna offend the baker, Tina.” 

So instead of arguing and prolonging the experience of Queenie poking about unintentionally in her frustrated brain that she was too tired to keep her out of, she thanked them profusely and popped up her collar and hood, turned to pull down the blinds and ready herself to apparate—

“Hey, Tina!” Jacob called suddenly, though she hadn’t even gone anywhere yet. She turned with raised eyebrows. “I’m really sure he’s fine—I mean, this is Newt we’re talking about! Guy’s made of rubber!” 

She snorted, thanked him for the unnecessary reassurance, and disapparated from the shop to the alley outside her apartment.

.0.

Tina wrote Theseus in front of her unlit fireplace, hunched over a cheese toastie she’d made from Jacob’s fresh bread. She took another aggressive bite and was, immediately, mildly annoyed that Newt’s approach to melted cheese on bread was better than her own. (As were most of the things he cooked, if she were completely honest with herself—even when it was just her and Queenie in their great great uncle’s house when they were kids, she’d always been focused on more important things for the two of them than cooking: that was all Queenie. She’d always assumed Newt had spent so much time alone he’d gotten culinarily decent as a way to both not starve and pass the time.) As she filled in Theseus’ Floo address and scribbled her own Floo account for payment with an overly expressive jab of the quill nib, she pledged to let the ‘cheese dream versus cheese toastie’ debate die to protect her own pride. [11]

If Newt were, you know, alive to continue the good-natured argument, of course. 

She hated to admit it to herself, but she’d recently become less comfortable with his research trips, for they often seemed to turn—somehow—into reconnaissance for something he’d never even meant to be doing in the first place, for Dumbledore, that man that neither of them, technically, worked for.

But that involvement was really no one’s fault but his own, she supposed.

(And they’d had this discussion at least twice now— neither of them were supposed to interfere with the other’s work, whatever the type.)

(So, really, the issue should be as dead as the toastie argument.)

She finished her meager dinner, spelled a fire, and sprinkled Floo Powder into the grate before tossing the telegram in on a wing and a prayer. She next opened a book and laid out on her couch where she’d sat many times with Newt in recent months, watching the sunset or having tea in the morning before he insisted on walking her to MACUSA—a pattern as reassuring as a well-kept clock—and then meeting her at the end of her day to hear all about it…

Tina abandoned reading Mrs. Dalloway when she got to the bit about Septimus’ post-war insanity for—for all Newt’s very clear, consistent sanity —some of Septimus’ stuttering and flaws set her on edge with memory ("He could reason; he could read, Dante for example, quite easily [‘Septimus, do put down your book,’ said Rezia, gently shutting the Inferno], he could add up his bill; his brain was perfect; it must be the fault of the world then—that he could not feel. ‘The English are so silent,’ Rezia said. She liked it, she said” ); [12][13]

And so she reached for the next book on the stack—All Quiet on the Western Front —but it was by no means any more soothing ('These first minutes with the mask decide between life and death: is it air-tight? I remember the awful sights in the hospital: the gas patients who in day-long suffocation cough up their burnt lungs in clots’). [14][15]

She’d given up on literature and resigned herself to one of Queenie’s odd No-maj romances (“‘Not a very human girl,’ laughed the American. ‘She was sure meant for a boy and changed at the last moment. She looks like a boy in petticoats, a damned pretty boy—and a damned haughty one ’”); [16][17]

Before scoffing at the reminders of her own childhood and moving on again to something more familiar, which somehow managed—though it never had before—to remind her of a heartlessly cold version of Newt (damn him!) and, somehow, Jacob of all people (“‘But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession,—or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.’ ‘The only unofficial detective?’ I [Jacob] said, raising my [his] eyebrows. ‘The only unofficial consulting detective,’ he [Newt] answered”). [18][19]

So when her grate finally jumped back to life and a pristine telegram in Theseus’ classic navy ink poofed into existence and floated easily to the floor in those last vestiges of evening light, Tina leapt to her feet with a gasp of relief and tossed all four books across the room in disgust.

She picked up the telegram; unlocked its contents with a charm Theseus had gotten from Lally after the Wizarding Gossip nonsense the previous winter; and waited for the letters to arrange themselves properly. She then read it with a rapid hunger while gulping down a full glass of water.

Miss Goldstein — 

Checked the outgoing ship manifests and Newt’s not been listed on any of them, including the one he bought the ticket for. Although that really means nothing. As you know, he has a way of getting in and out of countries without being noticed. Went to his flat and he’s not there either, though there’s evidence he has been: mail’s opened & organised, instructions for Bunty are pinned up in his work room downstairs, dated yesterday, 8 at night. Case gone, too. Teddy & Pickett, as well.

Per the evidence—despite the manifests—I’d expect him to show up any day now... Let me know when he does. (And perhaps remind him, for your benefit, that telegrams have existed for nearly a century at this point.)

Absolute nightmare, he is. So sorry he’s your problem now, too. (I’m mostly joking.)

-Theseus Scamander

Jesus. 

She scrawled out a reply (Thank you, Mr. Scamander. I look forward to our more substantial inter-office communication on Friday. Will let you know when your recalcitrant sibling emerges from the wilds); and snorted as she noticed some of the similar verbiage between the two very different brothers (‘I’m mostly joking’); before sending off her telegram and wishing she didn’t care so very much about the well-being of a man who had demonstrated time and again he could (mostly) take care of himself…

She glanced at the photo of herself, Queenie, Newt, and Jacob on the mantle, and then slipped into pajamas in her bedroom, charmed her alarm, and summoned her Sherlock Holmes book before crawling straight into bed. 

However, Tina lay awake for some time fingering her mother’s locket, though she only opened it once to gaze upon the family portrait she kept within, from the year before her parents left her to watch Queenie for an afternoon while they popped over to St. Nick’s but then never returned. 

She held her thumb firmly over the opposing side of the locket as she traced the edges of her mother’s smile with her eyes, for she knew what she would find there, across from that image of the family she’d already lost, more times than she liked to count—

It was, of course, Newt’s author picture from the first edition of his book, and then five little words with three tiny punctuation marks she kept stacked atop each other, affixed beneath his lopsided smile. He’d cut them out of a dictionary and pressed them into her hands one at a time one day at the park, a romantic gesture that said more than his spoken words ever could:

my fire – forever, i hope.

She snapped the locket shut and thought firmly of her sister’s return, of unlikely endings and how she herself had always risen against the odds and from the ashes, how Newt had, too: his own particular brand of quiet, peerless passion. 

(Her and her salamander eyes; him and his salamander qualities — “Szapira said that I reminded him of salamanders because I was the only one the Ironbellies didn’t want to eat—fireproof, you see—so I was - er - I was Salamandra instead.” )

She closed her eyes then and drifted off, and she woke before her alarm with the rising of the sun.

She went about her day: from tea on the couch, to her walk to MACUSA, to the thousand things she had to do on a day packed full of meetings.  

(Locket under blouse - over heart - between breasts: Newt and her silly anxiety locked far away in the back of her mind.)

The department’s case review, Graves told her that afternoon, had never been more ruthlessly efficient.

Tina wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not.

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter 12: August 17-18, 1933

Pier 86, W 46th St.
Manhattan, New York City, USA
Thursday - August 17, 1933

Tina stood on the docks near the exit for the Wizarding Immigration Office at 5PM, for the fourth day in a row. A ship from London wasn’t meant to be coming in, but—at this point—she couldn’t entirely trust Newt to have actually left from London as he’d originally intended. Tapping her foot anxiously—arms crossed and squinting at the stream of no-maj's and wizards exiting the buildings—she was still not entirely sure whether she was worried, angry, or hurt. Sure, Newt Scamander could be distractible, but he was hardly unreliable, and since they’d officially begun dating he—

She jumped at a light tap on her shoulder and momentarily cursed her failed auror instincts for being too in her head to feel another’s approach. But when she whipped round to find Newt standing there—case white-knuckled in one hand; keen eyes tired in a sun-kissed and heavily freckled (yet somewhat pinched) face; gray-checked shirt tucked in with no waistcoat but a tremendous bunch of impossibly fresh flowers clutched to his chest…

She didn’t much care she would’ve been dead had such inattention transpired in the field.

“Newt!” she exclaimed. “You’re all right!” 

He smiled broadly and allowed her to pull him into a loose embrace, before she took a step back and—putting away thoughts of how his eyes caught each color of the harbor in the early evening light—finally scowled.

“So where the hell were you?”

“Er - now, that’s a long story.” And he shifted on his feet, holding out the wild bouquet stiffly.

Tina narrowed her eyes at the stilted movement.

“You hurt then?”

“Not really, no,” he said immediately, and he shook the flowers slightly until Tina actually took them. (Vibrant coneflower and black-eyed susan studded with sprigs of lavender and chive, delicate bursts of lisianthus and baby’s breath, a smattering of ranunculus, a single blood-red poppy, all bound with a rope of honeysuckle. He had remembered and somehow—in the middle of the ocean—procured her favorites, but that did not mean she wasn’t still irritated…) “I got back late from Greece and then there were a multitude of letters from my father and Mr. Worme, and then also the Department, so I had to - um - take care of some things. Before I could leave.” [1]

“And you couldn’t Floo ?” she asked incredulously, eyebrows raised. “I’ve been making up excuses to my department for leaving early all week! Yesterday I heard them taking bets on whether I was dying or pregnant, which is entirely inappropri—”

“It didn’t occur to me at the time to Floo, though I realize—”

“ Newt—”

“—now — I realize now, of course, Tina,  that that was utterly thoughtless and—”

“Newt.” She stopped him with her tone. “You weren’t even on the passenger lists.”

“Ah.” He blinked and shut his mouth for a few long seconds before attempting explanation, a flash of guilt flickering across his face. “So I’d actually used my Muggle research identity to leave out of Southampton, not London. My proper name’s - maybe - currently flagged by a foreign government, due to a slight mishap while traveling in—” [2]

“Hold on—” That slowed her down. “You used your what ?”

“My - my muggle research identity?” he repeated, before justifying: “I have to be able to slip into scientific communities worldwide, you see, so I’m a bit of a faux expert on non-magical—”

“Sweet Morgana, forget it,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand, but at the distraught look on Newt’s face she immediately rushed to clarify. Shifting the bouquet into the crook of her arm, she grasped him firmly at the elbow and ducked slightly to look him straight in the eyes: “Hey, look, it’s okay. I’m over it.”

He looked up and tilted his head with slight suspicion.

“Okay, fine. I’m still kinda mad but – Let’s just grab dinner and get you out of all this bustle first, yeah?”

Newt released a massive sigh of relief, and Tina felt her heart momentarily beat double-time as his tension burst and he failed to bite back a brilliant smile. Her cheeks burned and her lungs felt too full—stars at the edges of her mind—when he swooped forward to place a grateful kiss at the corner of her lips, flowers pressed close between them.

“You are Guanyin embodied, Tina Goldstein,” he breathed against her cheek, and she laughed as he pulled away, slipping her arm through his to lead them to the apparition point. [3]

“Newt Scamander,” she declared, as he trailed slightly behind her, “I have no idea what that means. That a creature?”

“Oh no, she’s supposedly a god of sorts.” And he took two quick steps so they were walking even. “Of compassion - mercy.” Another half-step skip to make up for the way the case pulled him off center. “Though, come to think of it, she is associated with a now-extinct, lion-like creature in Chinese mythology, as well as certain dragons.”

His eyes tracked a ring-billed gull over the Hudson as she tugged him around a wailing child.

“Well, and the Qilin,” he continued, glancing at her, “which Muggles may have just thought was some sort of lion, actually. There’s just no way to know, really.” [4]

“Well, you can tell me all about it at the restaurant,” Tina answered, dropping her hand from his elbow to knit their fingers together, for they’d arrived at the very front of the apparition queue.

Newt really looked at her for a moment, searching her face, and then he seemed to move as if to offer to carry her flowers, but the attempt was aborted at the small smile Tina allowed to cross her face.

“But after that —”

And she gripped his hand even tighter in preparation to leave, and he very purposefully looked down from her eyes to focus on her collar.  

“Well, Newt. We’re gonna have a long conversation about improving the consistency of your communication skills.”

He barely had time to swallow before she’d twisted them off to Hall & Harrison Square for supper. [5]

.0.

They finished dinner with far more speed than she’d intended, for it quickly became clear—at least, following her unintentionally provocative press conference on Tuesday—that dining in a Jewish wizarding deli as Chief Auror Goldstein with her eccentric, gentile, beau Newt Scamander was anything but conducive to a meaningful, private conversation... [6] (Newt hadn’t even been able to finish telling her his story about the fellow in Greece who’d tried to sell him hair elixir infused with unicorn blood.)

Tina, meanwhile, had nearly jumped out of her skin when one Hal Abadi of the Shalom Standard slipped into their booth with a strained smile, an apologetic stack of black-and-white cookies, and a whispered promise to cover them if they wanted to slip out. (Tina had apparently been very visibly wearying of tossing up eavesdropping deflection charms every few minutes as people pointedly peered at her over their evening broadsheets; and Newt’s face had long settled into a resigned grimace, though he continued to crunch determinedly at an oversized pickle.) [7]

Tina took Hal up on the offer—promising him the first question at next week’s press conference in return—before wrapping up her unfinished pastrami in a transfigured wax bag. She gratefully tugged Newt away from the table as Abadi cast a subtle series of misdirection spells behind them, all the way to the door.

Outside in the late summer air, Newt collapsed against the front of a bookshop with a confused grin and—half-obscured beneath a hanging basket of sprawling, magenta petunias—huffed out a breath. He tightened his grip on his case before fixing her with a direct but querulous look:

“I’m almost sorry to ask, Tina, but... What in Merlin’s name has been going on over here?”

She crossed her arms tightly before reaching down with a spit-slicked finger to rub a splotch of dirt off her oxfords. He was still looking at her when she straightened back up. 

“It’s a — long story…”

He gazed at her imploringly from behind the petunias. 

“Look, it’s one that’s probably better saved for whenever you decide to share what I’m sure is a gripping tale regarding your late arrival. But elsewhere,” she clarified. “In private.”

Newt watched her for another long moment and Tina watched him back, but he eventually nodded, ducked out from beneath the plant and offered her his arm, after which they proceeded down the street with a relatively comfortable silence between them.

They walked the length of Hall & Harrison Square to reach the public Floo hearths (for Newt was not in the mood to be dragged along again via apparition so soon after three days on a boat), only stopping once at an apothecary for him to pop in and replenish a handful of ingredients. 

In the end, Tina only had to threaten to jinx one journalist on their way, a fellow who wanted ‘just’ a statement on one of the Auror Office’s ongoing cases. 

Plus an update on Grindelwald. 

And then also a response to the lecture Tina had given the New York Ghost regarding antisemitism on Tuesday…

Now, in her defense, Tina had not actually threatened the reporter until he’d tried to send a message to his photographer when Newt emerged from the apothecary behind her—balancing a spray of vibrant wolfsbane and dried knotgrass on one hip while clutching several bulky wax bags to his chest—for the journalist seemed to think the two of them would make excellent Spellbound material…

Newt had found the whole thing overwhelming but – also – endlessly amusing. At least, until Tina had threatened to hex him, too, at which point he’d disappeared into his case—in the middle of the damn promenade—faster than Tina had ever seen.

Nevertheless, a few minutes later, he emerged ingredient-less with a fond smile that warmed her chest and lit him all the way to his eyes.

Tina had had to shake her head to regain concentration, before reaching deep into a trouser pocket for the Floo powder.

They disappeared from the Square in a burst of flickering flame.

Tina Goldstein’s brownstone
New York City, USA
Friday - August 18, 1933
7:05 AM

Tina was unsurprised to dress and then shuffle into the main living area to find Newt’s makeshift bed on the couch not only empty but thoughtfully organized, quilt neatly folded and placed atop his pillow. On the coffee table, however, there was an empty teacup and a half-eaten apple already browning at the bites, a note in his thick cursive pinned beneath it, mindless of the juices. His case sat open on the floor beside it all.

She enchanted her coffee to brew before settling down by his folded blankets—where she vaguely noticed a telegram from Bunty; a letter from Theseus to the left of his teacup; and an envelope with handwriting she recognized but couldn’t quite place (all quickly skimmed and discarded, apparently, in favor of Tina, and his work)—to read the note.

My dear Porpentina —

Join me in the case if you’ve a moment before work. If not, that’s perfectly fine — just yell for me and I’ll pop up to see you off. 

Newt xx

Tina waited for her coffee to finish before pouring it into a mug enchanted to withstand jostling on the ladder, and then descended into what she had come to fondly think of – (at least usually fondly) – as Newt’s particular brand of chaotic organization.

She was half-convinced the office space in his shed correlated directly with the amount of order dominating his mind at any given time, so she was pleasantly surprised—this morning—to find his various tools and souvenirs largely organized: maps and a handful of sketches spread over only half his desk, just one cauldron bubbling merrily away on the worktable. 

However, she came up short as she crossed the space to the shed’s door, for there was suddenly a small slip of paper floating in front of her. It bounced insistently until she took it.

Follow these notes, please.

She felt her face move into something between a smile and a frown, and she proceeded into the habitats, releasing a surprised chuckle when the note in her hand immediately shivered and folded itself up in a flurry of corners, wriggling out of her cupped hand until a small paper heron stood on her palm. It took off into the air and she instinctively followed it into the case.

She trailed it through Frank’s abandoned habitat to where the nundu had lived before Newt quit traveling with the majority of his charges. There, she watched with the kind of wonder particularly artistically-infused magic still somehow managed to inspire in her, for the little heron had disappeared in a pop of vapor, a puff of wind revealing a second bobbing note in its wake. She put a gentle finger beneath it to still its movement.

I had every intention of arriving on time. I had been counting down the days to see you.

And then before she could even grab it fully, the paper folded itself into a moth and took off toward the niffler den, leaving Tina to hurry after it. 

At the den, Teddy lounged in his hoard, Newt’s familiar pocketwatch chain disappearing into his pouch. Tina snapped it up before it could be fully squirreled away, offering him a golden-tinted, bronze peseta from a pile for his trouble. [8]

The moth fluttered its wings and then disappeared as they closed above its body, leaving another floating note directly in front of her. 

I can imagine disappearing and not coming back is upsetting to you. For a number of general and more personal reasons. I don’t pretend to be intuitively understanding enough to explain how I surmised as much. But I can offer explanations—not excuses—whenever you’d like. 

Tina huffed, but there was nevertheless something in her chest deflating as she did so, memories of evenings spent with heads pressed together on the couch with hot toddies, or outside his tent beneath the stars, exchanging short sentences—kaleidoscope pieces of their life-stories—like children swapping secrets on the stoop.

The paper folded itself, then, into an angularly sleek dragon and made two grand swoops and a loop about her head before taking off again, leading her through the empty runespoor habitat, past Pickett’s tree—(who leapt for her with a desperately happy chitter, swiping and nearly missing her lapel, so she had to lift him onto her shoulder)—and then through the bamboo to an area of the case she could have sworn hadn’t been there when she saw him in Scotland in May.

There was a rock face at a bend in a trail past the bamboo, and the dragon doubled in size before bursting into glorious flames, a final note — etched in gold — in its place.

I was thoughtless and I’m sorry. There was a period of time, when I was much younger — before the War, but after Hogwarts — when Theseus and I were at our worst odds. He often said, then, that I never took responsibility. For my actions. That I was selfish and short-sighted, that while I said words that sounded like apologies, I didn’t actually know how to take the actions to make them match. (We certainly understand one another better now.) These days, I try to take responsibility for my actions, but I’m still not always sure what that looks like, to others. So, Tina, this is me trying. 

The levitating note flipped itself over with a flourish—

Around the bend and to the right, if you don’t mind.

It folded itself up into a flower and tucked itself behind her ear, and Tina genuinely laughed, progressing forward tentatively until she was peering around the rock face into an artificial, morning sun.

And there was a field of flowers there, under a soft sunrise. 

There was his rickety card table and two old chairs, a batik table cloth and a simple American breakfast spread out across it.

And there was, also, Newt, looking both remarkably contrite and notably tired—

“How’d you get the case on American time already?”

It popped out of her mouth before she could stop herself, and she momentarily felt like an idiot, but when she looked away from the flittering butterflies above the flowers to Newt, he was smiling at her crookedly, mildly puzzled but more clearly bemused.

“Er – Well - I’m quite used to the spellwork at this point. So I just - I just got up early. Earlier.”

Teddy suddenly dashed in at high speed behind them, and Tina whipped around just in time to see him charge the blooming flowers as Newt shook his head—

“I toss trinkets in there. To keep him busy while I’m working; it’s silly but—”

“It’s not.”

Newt stared at her and she pulled the enchanted paper poppy from behind her ear and held it out to him—

“It’s not silly, Newt.”

Finally, he closed the space between them and took the folded flower, and then they both comically moved to pull the chair out for the other, and would have ended in a pile of knotted, lanky limbs if Newt hadn’t hopped on one foot to get out of her way, waving his wand at her chair so it pulled itself out as he righted himself.

“You didn’t haveta do all this,” she said, sitting down, and Pickett chittered in what Tina could only hope was agreement.

“I hope it’s not too—”

“No, Newt, it’s great. Listen, it’s – I love it,” she clarified. “And you - you remembered all the flowers I told you about—"

She gestured to the field of mixed cultivated and wildflowers while Newt stuttered out some version of 'Of course I remember.'

"I’m just glad to see you," she clarified. "And, I mean, I forgave you the first time you apologized.”

“But last night you still seemed—”

“Yeah, because my face is catching up to my brain, Mr. Scamander.”

“Right.” A beat. “So all this…” He waved a hand absently. “I thought it might diffuse the tension if I explained some things in writing, before you got here. To breakfast, I mean. What with you being more reasonable than most when it comes to me —middle-head and all that—and me, with how my words sometimes get stuck. Behind my teeth.”

Tina reached for a piece of toast and Newt took the cue and buttered his own, too.

“Well, it’s worked for now,” Tina said, very poorly hiding her smile behind a cup of coffee, for Newt caught it, and smiled broadly in return.

“That’s wonderful.” And he picked up his own cup.

“We can talk more later.”

“Right, and so for now —” He folded his napkin and peered into the flowers momentarily for Teddy. “For now, I have plans for us tonight. If you don’t mind - and nothing comes up for you, with work. Plans for your birthday.”

Tina raised her eyebrows and pushed away her own plate.

“What kind of plans?”

“A short trip.” He traced the rim of his mug. “I’ve - er - taken the liberty of asking Queenie to pack a bag for you this afternoon, as I’m not entirely certain what you need for a weekend, and I’ve some errands of my own this morning.”

“You just got here,” she pointed out, amused.

“Yes, well — ” A shrug. “I’ll meet you in the atrium at 6 o'clock, if all goes to plan?”

“Yeah, sure. And Newt?”

He looked up from his coffee expectantly.

“Want to finally finish that story about the man who tried to sell you illegal curl potion?”

“Oh yes! And I’ve been absolutely on edge trying not to tell you about the Phoenix I met in Egypt.”

She crossed her arms. “I thought you were in Greece?”

Pickett dropped from her shoulder onto the table and crossed to the sugar bowl, peeking inside. 

“Well, I just popped over the Mediterranean for a bit.” And Newt tossed the bowtruckle a few dried pill bugs from somewhere in a trouser pocket.

Tina narrowed her eyes. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with why your name is currently flagged for international travel, would it?”

“Uh - yes, it absolutely would. But that’s a tale for another time.”

“Go on and tell me about the Phoenix then,” she conceded with a purposefully performative sigh, and his face lit up to match the overhead sun.

“Largest wingspan I’d ever seen, Tina. Nearly as impressive as Frank—you remember him—which is unheard of in phoenixes. When it spread its wings you’d have thought a full oasis could spring up in its shadow, that’s how clement the breezes felt. The contrast between—”

And Tina leaned back in her chair and watched him talk, nodding appropriately throughout, eyes on his hands that danced in the air in front of him as he wove a description of fire and heat and wind and healing; of unexpected, assisted apparition back across the sea to the heart of a trafficking hideout he’d been seeking for days: his words a picture off the page, tongue as silver as the gold on the folded flower that lay on the table between them...

She hoped he could tell, from the way she was looking at him, that she treasured him just as much as he did her. (But that—also—would be a conversation for another time.)

He finished, and she filled him in on her plans for the day, and then he stood in a flurry. Slipping on a waistcoat and light summer jacket she hadn’t noticed on the back of his chair, he offered to walk her to work.

And so they left together—with Pickett in his pocket but the case left behind—and walked half the distance to the Woolworth Building just so they could spend a few more minutes in one another's presence, before apparating to a wizard-safe spot in an alley near MACUSA, a sign advertising The Yeoman of the Guard looming on the wall behind them. [9, 9]

Tina thanked Newt for breakfast and took him by the arm to slow him enough to press a kiss to his cheek before she sent him on his way.

They would both be surprised, however—three hours later—to find themselves in a DMLE conference room with one Achilles Tolliver, Newt’s birthday plans for Tina temporarily postponed, his Mediterranean misadventures on surprising center stage.

Chapter Text

.

WITH ITS HEAD UNDER ONE WING

Chapter Thirteen: August 18, 1933

A half hour later
Friday August 18
MACUSA Woolworth building

By the time Tina had made it to Major Investigations—not even ten minutes after parting ways with Newt in the atrium—the DMLE’s Magical Threat clock presiding over the aurors’ main common room had risen all the way from Zero to Two, and the exposure and obliviation counts had ticked up by one and four respectively. She found herself instinctively glancing at the real-time national Hex Indicator on the far wall and the Five Boroughs magical map to her left, just to be sure it wasn’t something Newt had done, before deciding if it wasn’t her boyfriend’s fault—and thus, by association, hers —she could spare a half-minute in the kitchenette for a cup of coffee before rounding everyone up for a meeting. 

“Tolliver! Ramos! Smith! Prep the conference room, please!” she called down a hall as she passed into the kitchen, summoning and shaking the percolator to check it wasn’t empty before splitting the remains between two levitating mugs. 

She stirred sugar in one and directed a splash of milk into the other, after which she ducked back out of the golden arch framing the kitchenette, checking in with her secretary on the way.

“Good morning, Miss Baker.” She sat the creamed coffee on her desk with a small, genuine smile, which was immediately returned.

(Tina had quickly learned leadership was a lot easier when the people who kept the office afloat were happy with you, and she and Wanda Baker had thus become fast, friendly acquaintances, even though Wanda was far her senior and had watched Tina struggle through her early years in the department like a “baby giraffe finding its legs,” she’d once admitted, with no small amount of amusement.)

Tina leaned against the desk and sipped her own coffee. “Has the President been informed of the threat, yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Any of the directors or assistant directors? Graves?”

“They’re in an administrative meeting, so I’ll bet they know by now. You know how Calderon-Boot is. Worse than you with maps all over his walls.” [1]

Tina smiled.

“Would you like me to send them a message?” Wanda prompted, sitting down her coffee and preemptively reaching into her desk for one of several pre-made mouse memos.

“Oh no, no,” Tina waved away. “I’ll Floo the Chicago office and get briefed on the situation first.”

“From what I’ve gathered from the papers coming through my desk, Chief, it’s like to be both extremists and beasts.”

Tina grimaced— “Well, isn’t that just lovely?” —Only realizing with the threat of her trip with Newt being canceled how much she’d already begun to look forward to whatever he had in store for them.

“Well, it certainly does promise to be an invigorating day, at least.”

Tina caught herself before she could snort in amused agreement, straightening from where she’d leaned against her secretary’s desk. 

“Yes…” she said instead. “If the Midwest field office hasn’t cleared this all up by 10:30, I’ll call for Mr. Scamander, who — before you ask — yes, did arrive yesterday evening.”

“You didn’t hear me saying anything,” Wanda answered with a conspiratorial grin, and Tina grinned back, both knowing full well that the department gossips would be disappointed to realize her recent afternoon absences hadn’t been for anything so salacious as a terminal disease or — heaven forbid — a pregnancy.  

“If you could go ahead and send that memo now, please, Miss Wanda?”

“Of course, ma’am.” And she immediately busied herself with drafting a message on an unfolded rat memo in her neat, well-trained script. “And Miss Tina…”

Tina raised her eyebrows and waited, but Miss Baker didn’t look up from her task.

“You tell that sweet boy I say hello.”

Tina felt herself flush and absently reheated her secretary’s coffee with a flick of her wand, before waving a hand at Wanda with dismissive embarrassment and disappearing into her office to call the Chicago liaison.

.0.

After an hour in a protected Floo call with the Chicago field office, an hour planning with her own Investigative Team, and then an unfortunate update from the Midwest office at 10:30 (one of the No-maj’s they’d recovered during the investigation had regrettably succumbed to his injuries at the DuSable-Fontaine Magical Hospital minutes prior), Tina inevitably sent for Newt at 10:35. [2]

However, when she did so, she certainly hadn’t expected to hear her own voice issuing from her patronus in the unused conference room right around the corner from her office… 

She scrambled from her desk, dashed down the hall, and stuck her head through the door, only for her mouth to fall open when she found both Newt Scamander and Achilles Tolliver lingering beside a malfunctioning enchanted chalkboard (which had, apparently, unintentionally been doodling its own interpretation of their conversation all over itself as they talked, though its illustrations were utterly incomprehensible—she’d have to have Wanda call for Maintenance before next Case Review).  Newt stood awkwardly to the side—hands jammed deep into his pockets with his suitcase slung across him like a soldier's satchel, an old canvas strap fraying at the attachment points—while Achilles Tolliver leaned against the wall nearby, arms crossed tight.

She felt her eyebrows shoot up as both men whipped around in surprise when she cleared her throat.

“What exactly is going on here?” 

Newt’s expression momentarily approximated a fish out of water before he and Achilles glanced at one another and answered simultaneously: 

“Catching up.”

Tina tilted her head to the side and blinked, before repeating inquiringly:

“Catching up? ”

Silence.

“Excuse my disbelief, gentlemen, but the last time you two ‘caught up,’ you —” 

She pointed at Newt. 

“—were inviting him into the case to meet your ‘perfectly tame nundu’—”  

Newt had the good grace to look mildly sheepish.

“And you —” 

She turned to Achilles. 

“—had declared him a bumbling idiot and — I quote — a ‘bonafide menace to society’.” 

They both stared at her until Achilles glanced at Newt again—who offered him absolutely no encouragement in return—clearly fishing for something to say, until he eventually placated with:

“Okay, but it wasn’t all that bad now, was it? I mean, it had been a stressful day for all of us, what with Scamander Jr.’s training getting interrupted by that raid.” [3]

Tina crossed the room and pulled out a chair at the conference table, settling into it primly. “By the end of the day, I’d had to talk you both out of misdemeanors and Newt had a new mark in his immigration file for your black eye—”

“How many times must I tell you it was the demiguise ,” Newt muttered, and Achilles rolled his eyes before catching himself and straightening his back, pointedly putting on an air of faux professionalism. “I don’t make a habit of hitting people, you see. The poor thing was frightened.”

“Okay, listen,” Tina redirected. “Whatever. I don’t care. But…” 

Newt had set his case down on the table and was busying himself tucking something—entirely unsubtly—into one of the internal pockets as he waited for her to continue. After a moment, he reached in up to his shoulder only to reemerge with Pickett clinging to one finger. Meanwhile, Achilles had taken a seat himself and begun to precisely roll a cigarette on the polished table, so she folded her hands in front of her and continued.

“Look , I need you both today, so if you could get over whatever personal and communication differences—or whatever this is—that make being in the same room as you borderline intolerable—”

“I’m so sorry, Tina—”

“Hey now, we didn’t mean to—”

“Fantastic !” she praised pointedly, and she rather felt like she was back to mediating Queenie's disagreements with other children in the park when they lived with Uncle Arnold. Pickett meanwhile—who had swung himself onto the back of Newt’s hand, forcing him to leave it hovering awkwardly in the air in front of him to accommodate the creature—tapped his spindly fingers together to create a noise like a tiny marionette clapping. “Something you can both agree on...” 

But then she found herself blinking in confusion, for Newt had wordlessly lit Achilles’ cigarette with a subtle twist of his wand when he’d failed to locate his preferred lighter, though she chose to outwardly ignore the bizarre moment of jarring camaraderie to forge ahead—

“So,” she said firmly then, “the Chicago case we met about this morning, Tolliver—I’ve got an update that requires we catch Newt up, and then I’m sending you two out with a couple others, all right? If you’re amenable to working for us briefly, that is, Mr. Scamander.”

Newt went quiet in the way Tina had learned meant he was trying very hard to formulate his unfiltered thoughts into the sorts of words least likely to cause offense. She waited with somewhat baited breath until he finally inquired (with that now familiar tone of cautious politeness that never failed to amuse her):

“I don’t suppose there’s anyone else, is there?”

“Newt,” she said with mild exasperation, and Pickett—who had dropped from Newt’s hand to the table in consternation—chittered harshly at her, before sitting himself firmly on top of her notes with comically crossed arms. “Do you know anyone else who is an expert on chimeras?”

“Actually, yes,” he answered immediately. “In Imbros. Chronos Chrysostomides is quite the —” [4]

“America, Newt. Anyone in America.”

“Ah well, no, not really. That’d just be - I think that might just be me...” A beat. “But, actually Tina, I was referring to the aurors I’d be traveling with, you see. I —”

“No,” she interrupted sharply, though her heart constricted to reprimand him in front of Tolliver, when there was already such strain between them. 

The handful of times the two had interacted, they seemed to either be unintentionally speaking entirely different languages, or else explicitly intent on deliberate misinterpretation simply to gall the other, like some strange, social display of alpha dominance... (A strange, social display of alpha dominance that was very out of place on someone like Newt Scamander of all people, who only ever seemed to posture when creatures were involved.) 

“Look,” she explained in a more gentle tone, for Pickett had blown a raspberry at her in Newt’s defense, leaving Tolliver to stare at the creature with an expression seesawing between amusement and confusion. “Achilles is second-in-command here, and because I’m needed at MACUSA right now in the event more aurors need to be deployed, it’s got to be him.” 

“Ah, right, yes - Pity.”

Tina jutted her head forward in slight surprise before she could stop herself, expecting Newt to at least attempt a follow-up sentence to make himself sound slightly less disdainful…

“No no, I don’t mean to sound rude,” he stuttered quickly, and his eyes momentarily caught hers; and damn, if he wasn’t always so transparent, because in that half second of connection she could easily see his sincerity. “You and I just work well together, while—frankly—Mr. Tolliver doesn’t like me.”

Achilles laughed and countered around his smoke:

“Look, buddy – it’s not like you like me either.”

Newt frowned, eyes fixed on the table between him and Tina. 

“That’s not strictly true, Mr. Tolliver.”

Tina placed her hand in Newt’s line of sight and he looked up again.

“Anyway, right,” he refocused. “So, of course I understand why it's inappropriate for you to go, Tina. Achilles and I will be happy to work together, I’m sure.” 

“Great. That’s settled.”

She smiled and stood promptly, trying very hard to ignore the way Newt’s gaze lingered on the lock of hair she’d brushed out of her face as she turned. (She’d have to start pinning it back if they were going to spend more time together at work, because having him around after missing him for months was already distracting enough...) But she only said aloud as she started for the door:

“My office then, you two, because I’ve got a heckuva lot of explaining to do.” 

And she could hear the simultaneous scraping of chairs behind her at that, followed by the creak of Newt’s case on its hinges as he swung its strap back across his body. 

“You’ll be co-leads on this, because despite whatever the hell that is —” She waved a hand over her shoulder at the amorphous energy now trailing behind her. “—your skills are regrettably complimentary...”

There was a soft series of approaching syncopated scuffs as she entered the hall, and she didn’t have to turn to know which one of them now followed less than a step behind her.

A puff of air on that delicate space between jaw and ear, and then his voice, eager and tantalizingly close:

“So, you did say chimera, didn’t you?” 

“Oh, Mercy Lewis, Scamander —”

(A huff of exasperation from behind—)

“You don’t have to sound so goddamned excited about it, do you? Jesus H. Christ.” [5]

Tina bit back a laugh as she opened the door to her office with a flourish, after which she ushered them in and spelled it firmly shut behind them.

.0.

For all Newt’s detestation of social hierarchy and organizational structures—(or, perhaps, Tina mused more graciously, perhaps a true inability to track them…)—he certainly knew the politics and practices of creature and potion trafficking backwards and forwards, so it didn’t take long for she, Achilles, and Newt to arrive on the same unfortunate page. The men were even behaving somewhat gentlemanly toward one another, both admittedly consummate professionals in their own right, for as soon as the work had gotten started, all that queer tension melted away.

(If she weren’t so focused on the urgency of the case, it most definitely would have annoyed her. They really hadn’t had time for playground politics in the first place...)

She’d reviewed all the relevant documents with Newt while Achilles occasionally chimed in, explaining that MACUSA had been tracking a few suspicious goods importers based in Chicago, with connections at ports down the Mississippi into St. Louis and New Orleans, for a few years. However, it had been a 'back burner' case until that morning, when someone had slipped up while transferring a chimera, of all things, at the harbor; and a few of the criminals had thrown in the towel, abandoning two of their apparent No-maj test subjects in an empty house just blocks from the World Fair, which—apart from being inhumane—was extremely inconvenient for the Statute of Secrecy. [9] While one of them recovered immediately and was thus obliviated and dropped off at a no-maj hospital with no fanfare, the other had very suddenly and mysteriously died of apparent envenomation—despite not evidencing bite marks of any kind—two hours after arriving at DuSable-Fontaine Magical Hospital. While the chimera had also yet to be recaptured, it was rumored to have been spotted gamboling through the shallow waters of Lake Michigan, south of the Fair, just off of the Hyde Park neighborhood... To top it off, three No-maj police officers who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time; a homeless man poking through an abandoned picnic for some brunch; and two frazzled zookeepers who’d responded to frantic calls claiming their lion was on the loose had all had to be obliviated in just the past hour.

Newt immediately expressed his fascination with both the chimera’s unusual water-seeking behavior—given its feline and fire-producing qualities—and his concern with the deceased No-maj’s delayed (and extreme) response to biteless venom.

“So, Tina,” he finally said with sudden focus, once he’d finished quizzing her and Achilles on the man’s hospital records. “That case I was on for the Ministry, before your visit in January, with the quintapeds. I’ve been working it with Avery still, on and off, since then. It’s part of why I was late, actually—” [6]

Tina’s eyebrows went up but Newt obliviously continued. 

“See, they put Avery back on the case, you know, after the killing curse debacle —” 

“Wait, the what debacle?” Tolliver asked incredulously.

“My colleague killed the quintaped while it was on top of me,” Newt answered absently, seemingly unaware of the horror such a statement would inspire in someone who wasn’t exactly fond of beasts. “I mean, awful spell concussion on my end, but the real loss was the creature, because its behavior was so peculiar that—”

“Newt,” Tina interrupted gently, leaning forward to lay a hand on his arm.

“Right . Anyway. So I bring it up because we have suspicions that there was human interference that prompted the quintaped's behavior. While its ability to track prey — which, in this accidental case study, was me — based on residual venom does seem biological, the necropsy revealed abnormalities in the magical center of its brain. Traces of dark magic unrelated to its own natural reserves. Theseus may have our most recent report by now, actually, if you want it.”

There was a moment of silence, before Achilles broke in with a genuine question.

“Um. So. What’s this have to do with chimeras exactly?” 

Newt blinked and Tina watched him closely, curious herself, as she had never gotten a real update on the outcome of the quintaped case, and she’d been particularly concerned with Newt’s apparent nonchalance regarding how someone had managed to get a tip to him — past his heavy warding — in the first place... 

“Oh,” he said. “Well, it’s concrete support to indicate an increased attempt to use magical creatures for specific and targeted purposes, which is particularly salient given our society’s current contention with Grindelwald. Especially since, you know — taking into account this case, especially — Muggles are now being involved. It suggests this is really likely the work of acolytes.”

“Fair enough,” Tolliver acknowledged.

“Have you come across this sort of use of venom before, though, Newt? This time-delayed thing like we’re seeing here?”

Newt’s face lit up and he laid his case on the small coffee table between them, popping it open and kneeling on his chair to lean as far down into it as he could, before summoning something from the far corner of his shed: two notebooks, one labeled 1930 (Feb./volume 6) and the other 1933 (Jul./volume 12).

“Actually, I did have a similar thing happen in Greece. There’d been whispers about, well — I guess you might call it a biological weapon—” 

He settled back into his seat and tapped the 1930 journal.  

“—like gases in the War or the nundu’s infectious defense mechanism, except more targeted, deployable within a single organism instead of en masse. That Chrysostomides fellow turned me onto it, but we weren’t able to make any progress until this year.”

And he tapped his most recent journal then, before flipping to a center page filled with a sketch of skin and musculature, a small oblong thing that looked rather like a pill situated in a slit in what Tina assumed was the flesh of some unfortunate guy’s arm. Another page magically folded out to show a timeline of investigative events and gratuitous notes detailing the anatomical drawing. As Newt enlarged the page for them to see, Tina just barely noticed Achilles wrinkle his nose in understandable disgust out of the corner of her eye. 

“Now,” Newt continued, “the bloke Chrysostomides identified and who I then tracked down in—” 

But he paused suddenly, like he’d choked on his words; and Tina was reminded for a moment of the first time she’d caught him in a lie, back when he’d tried to pass off a billywig as an oversized moth in 1926… Two long seconds passed before she raised her eyebrows expectantly, after which he cleared his throat and pointedly continued, staring hard at the page while choosing his words far too carefully.

“The fellow I encountered ,” he said vaguely, touching fingertips to the page with gentle emphasis, “was experimenting with manticore venom—which, as you know, is fatal—in a fat pellet. The pellet would dissolve subcutaneously when triggered by a charm.”

“Mercy Lewis,” Tina breathed and Achilles looked appropriately disturbed, even querying:

“Well, what happened to the guy doing that?” 

“He - er - he’s no longer engaging in such dangerous practices,” Newt answered succinctly, tucking his hands between his knees under the table, face still turned toward Tina and Achilles but eyes very much still skimming his sketch. “And his venom source has been rehabilitated. And released.”

Tolliver snorted and Tina let it go, because whatever Newt had done to the would-be murderer was—after all—far outside her jurisdiction… 

“Great, well,” she breezed past, “does that mean you know how to — I don’t know, isolate the components in the hospital’s sample to help us identify origin? Or at least clarify whether there’s a new international source of trade, potentially associated with previously tracked acolytes’ geographical locations abroad? We just haven’t seen this combination or malicious use of materials before.”

“I mean, yeah, I can certainly do that.” 

A pause. 

“I mean, technically,” he clarified, and Tina watched him shut his case and then pick at a dent on its corner. “With some degree of difficulty, though, because North America isn’t my specialty. Botanically, that is. Or otherwise, actually. Apart from, well - apart from creatures.”

Tina raised her eyebrows again and Newt concluded —

“But yes, that’s to say, I can. Especially if you could lend me a potioneer.”

“Nakano’s in today,” Achilles immediately noted, scribbling a request on a memo and tossing it toward the glass tube connecting Tina’s desk to the larger MACUSA memo system. For her part, Tina continued without pause, trusting Achilles to get Newt a well-matched expert. 

“And could you do all that outside your case?” she clarified with quiet intensity. “So we can preserve chain of custody?”

“I’ve no clue what ‘chain of custody’ means, but I don’t see why not.” [7]

“Perfect. Then give Tolliver your passport and updated Ministry credentials for the consulting contract, please.” 

Newt blinked, and reluctantly pulled out a thin hemp wallet from his front pocket to hand over to Achilles. 

“Tolliver, grab ‘im another one of those short term consultant forms and a department handbook from the central office, too?”

Achilles was already spinning into motion, but Newt turned slightly to look at Tina before fiddling with something bulky just inside his case. 

“Oh, Newt,” she sighed. “You don’t have to actually read the thing. I didn’t give it to you last time because it was so last minute. It’s just protocol for me to say it.”

She thought he looked disproportionately relieved at that, so she added (under breath, as Achilles glanced at them on his way out the office):

“You really could at least pretend like you’re going to, though, Mr. Scamander. It’s me who’s finished, after all, if you louse up the—”

“I do believe I’ve heard this lecture before, love....”

Tina raised her eyebrows at that, and if Newt were a different person he might have been blushing but, as it was, he only rocked momentarily on his feet, one hand tapping out a rhythm on his case—

“Well, all right, honey,” Tina teased in return, and that elicited a genuine chuckle from him, which he immediately swallowed—nearly choking on it, in fact—as Achilles swept back into the room inordinately quickly, tossing him a thick handbook, which he stopped with a muttered deceleration charm and a surprised frown.

“Impressive,” Achilles acknowledged, glancing at where Newt’s wand was tucked safely in the loop on his trousers. “I’m beginning to get what she sees in you.” A beat. “And Wanda’ll send over that form here soon.”

In response, Newt only swiped the hovering handbook out of the air and shoved it into an extended pocket with a half smile, placating Pickett when he apparently began chattering to complain about his invasion of space (“Just stand on it, silly—you’ll be able to see better that way”). 

(Achilles’ reactions to Newt’s interactions with creatures was almost as good as watching a No-maj picture show—she could happily do it all day.

(Though she didn’t have all day, she reminded herself, which was exactly why Achilles was partnering with Newt and she wasn’t…)

“Well, I’ll leave you two to it,” she finally said, interrupting Newt’s still-ongoing one-sided conversation with the bowtruckle; and seemingly jerking Achilles out of some sort of deep, tortured consideration of the tiny thing. “Send a memo when you’ve finished with Nakano and have got Ramos and Smith ready to leave, yeah?”

They both nodded, and then Tolliver respectfully turned away—under the guise of organizing Tina’s documents—to give she and Newt a moment of privacy. (For all his rough edges, Achilles did try to be a gentleman. Tina prided herself on being able to identify actual bonafide jerks, which Achilles technically wasn’t... Newt just didn’t bring out the best in him.)

She stood from her seat and stepped around the coffee table to Newt, casting a muffling charm about them as she did so. Newt rose from his own chair and shifted so he was leaning just slightly forward. He inclined his head to prompt her when a few seconds passed and she still hadn’t spoken.

She cleared her throat.

”Look,I’d be real glad if you’d come back in one piece.”

“I haven’t come back in less than one piece yet.”

“You’ve just gotten here and we’ve got a lot more to look forward to. So if you could go easy on the heroics this time?”

“Heroics are never my intention,” he admitted dryly.

“That’s exactly what worries me, Newt,” she muttered darkly, reaching for his hand, which Newt offered freely.

Her eyes followed her fingers as she traced up his arm—wrist to shoulder—and just as she dared turn to look at his face, he looked at her just as sharp, keen. 

She knew he could feel the tracking spells reinvigorating under her touch, but he didn’t acknowledge them at all apart from an understanding nod. When she'd finished, he let her take his face into her hands to press a kiss against his temple.

He raised his own hands to cover hers and then wove their fingers together as he lowered them between them. 

“We’ll celebrate when I get back,” he offered quietly, hands warm about hers, though he had glanced away again, eyes flickering over a replica of the Hex Indicator map on the wall over her shoulder. 

She pulled away from his grip to adjust his bowtie, and then took in his ensemble more critically than she had when she’d just thought he’d be spending the day running around magical Manhattan. Her overt once-over prompted a look of dawning realization, and he transfigured his hippogriff cufflinks into imitation abalone, simultaneously spelling his summer waistcoat a less conspicuous shade of green (and a rather arresting one...).

“That really brings out your eyes,” she’d said before she could stop herself, and his surprised intake of breath in at her admission sent her pulse momentarily pounding like a galloping graphorn in her ears.

“Oh,” he said over her heart’s hoofbeats, and he seemed to unconsciously wet his lips before meeting her eyes again, his gaze far softer than when she’d been working the spell. “Does it?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “Yeah.” She felt a creeping smile. “Like ferns in the undergrowth. I saw ferns just like that once, upstate with Lally, when we were young… The light coming down through the trees— Well. It - it just suits you, Newt.”

He blinked hard and touched her cheek fleetingly (the barely there kiss of a wing in flight when his knuckles brushed her jaw).

“Well, that’s nice,” he finally responded. “Though, in all honesty, I was hoping to blend in.”

Tina laughed and he cracked a lopsided grin as he realized his unintentional humor. “Blending in is not your strength, Newton Scamander. Why Dumbledore insists on using you for espionage I will just never understand.”

“I suppose that’s not untrue,” he acknowledged with a huff of laughter, and she lifted the muffling charm with a wave of her wand, glancing at Achilles, who continued to politely busy himself at her desk. “Though I wouldn’t exactly say it’s yours either, Miss Goldstein,” Newt finished.

She gave him one last full, genuine smile before rolling her shoulders back and returning to her role as Chief Auror Porpentina Goldstein, the well-respected director of the American Auror Office and its 48 states. Newt took a step away from her and deferentially inclined his head, swiveling slightly to face Achilles, who had subtly turned back toward them with several fat manilla folders pinned under one arm.

“Shall we?” Newt asked him.

“After you,” Tolliver answered immediately, with no small amount of drama. He held the door open with great aplomb and Newt veritably scurried out, though his eyes were already scanning the common area for an open table for their work.

Tina watched them go, though neither turned around to wave or say goodbye.

She let herself plop into her desk chair and then pinched the bridge of her nose, before flicking her wand to shut the door and set the tea kettle she kept in the corner to heat.

She lifted a hand to her locket and clasped it until it was hot under hand, after which she popped it open and whispered an incantation over it just as the kettle shrieked, a tinkling of china letting her know her tea was already preparing itself to brew. 

She looked down, then, to take in the faces of her family — her mother and father, her little sister, Newt — clear as day, smiling from their tiny photographs, before a rush of even tinier golden numbers materialized, weaving themselves into the air until they shimmered directly above Newt’s portrait.

40.712222, -74.008056

Coordinates for the Woolworth Building. Exactly as expected.

A swoop of her wand with a quiet Occulta fenestra saw her office door dissolve into partial translucence, so she alone could see her staff bustling about the common room. [8]

And there were Newt and Achilles at a table in the far corner, the elderly Mr. Nakano shuffling toward them, hand outstretched toward Newt, who immediately shoved his wand between his teeth to shift a disorganized pile of parchment beneath his left arm, crossing to the potioneer to shake his hand firmly. Achilles subtly levitated several absconding pages of notes onto the table as Newt helped Mr. Nakano into a seat.

Well, the tracking spells were definitely working then, for Newt was undoubtedly right there , in the Woolworth Building… And whatever Queenie had said, it wasn’t inappropriate to use them in this circumstance. After all, all her staff were marked during missions, and a quick glance at the map on the wall saw Achilles’ employee number pulsing a dark green with the very same location.

She snapped the locket shut and nervously bumped it along its chain as she chewed her lip.

Oh, they had far too much to talk about when Newt got back. 

But — right now — she had far too much to do, first.

With a quiet finite that returned her door to its original mahogany, she summoned her tea and penned a message to Theseus on an International Floo Network telegram, requesting to reschedule their weekly information exchange due to an ‘ongoing situation requiring unpredictable spans of undivided attention.’ (A situation which she definitely did not mention involved his younger brother.) 

Folding the telegram into a tiny winged horse, she sent it soaring up the glass shoot to the main Floo-room.

.0.

An hour later, a memo charmed into the shape of a chimera squeezed beneath the door and scurried up her leg with its tiny paper claws, unfolding itself atop her paperwork with a muted roar.

On our way. xxxxx - Newt

She looked up at the map in time to see Tolliver, Ramos, and Smith’s pulsing dots wink out of existence, reappearing with coordinates for the Philadelphia field office, then Baltimore, then Pittsburgh, Columbus, Indianapolis, and—finally—Chicago within a matter of minutes.

As their dots solidified in Illinois, she flipped open her locket and stood in a huff of whirling silver jacket.

She supposed she'd just see if Miss Baker wanted to meet Queenie for a quick lunch.