Archive of Our Own

"He's too old for this nonsense! The boy needs discipline, structure—"

"Alexander, please. He's only eight—"

"Exactly! At his age, Theseus was already—"

Newt freezes, his hand on the doorknob. He wants to run, to hide in the woods until everyone forgets he exists. But then another voice cuts through the argument:

"Leave him be."

It’s Theseus. His tone is quiet but steely. At sixteen, he's the only one who can stand up to Alexander without flinching. Their father means well, apparently. He’s trying to protect them.

But then why is it that his older brother is also the one Alexander praises, the one Alexander notices? The one who Newt is compared to and always found lacking? Theseus is the metric used by the little voice in Newt’s head whenever he fails again.

Newt eases the door open. Three pairs of eyes snap towards him. His mother looks as she did when the first Hippogriff calf of the season was born still and unmoving. Alexander's jaw ticks like the collections of clocks he hoards around the house. And Theseus—Theseus looks at Newt with a mixture of exasperation and something softer. Something almost wistful.

Newt is eight when he’s told he’s different.

There’s an origin story for this reckoning: or two, or three. It hurts him that he was considered so unaware he needed to be told—and it also hurts that people are trying to wake him up to things he never thought were flaws.

It’s not just the once. It’s happened so many times that there’s only a quiet, dull shock in each judgemental word and mention of bad blood.

Part of him wants to ask, really? Do you really find me so odd? Does it really matter?

It’s an old story by now. Newt spends his time reading other tales—tales of changelings and ugly ducklings, where Theseus, according to their mum, once had panic attacks over myths and strings of fate and minotaurs not to be slain.

Now, there’s blood running down Theseus’s face, dripping from one nostril. His brother is standing stiff-backed and tall, towering over him.

Newt doesn’t know what to do.

He never seems to know what to do, whether it's with his family or the boys from the village. Theseus has a hard, intense stare, a face that doesn’t give much away when he doesn’t want it to, and his brother lets the sluggish trickle of crimson drip down his collar as if wiping it away would be an admission of weakness. He tracks Theseus’s lightly twitching fingers, observing his reddened knuckles and that starburst knuckle scar he’s had for years now, and waits.

Theseus tries to smile. Newt doesn’t smile back, his heart rate accelerating until it feels as though it could match the precise beats of a butterfly’s wings. Butterflies don’t live very long, no matter how beautiful they are, and Newt feels as though Theseus—like most of the adults around him—is slowly losing patience.

“Staying out for a little longer?” Theseus asks. He says it mildly enough, but it’s clear it’s not up for debate.

Newt blinks, his gaze darting between Theseus's face and the garden beyond. The summer air is heavy with the scent of blooming flowers and freshly cut grass.

"Stay out?" Newt echoes, his voice small and uncertain. "For how long?"

Theseus's smile tightens. "Just a few hours," he says. "Why don't you pick some wildflowers for Mum? You know how she loves them."

Newt nods, still hesitant. He wants to ask about the blood, but the words stick in his throat. Learned caution reminds him Theseus often looks tense; he has, according to their father, important things on his mind, more important than Newt and his silly problems. Newt, too, has nosebleeds sometimes, when he touches his nose too much or trips into tree branches, and they’re nothing to be afraid of—he has dismantled Horklumps and is far from squeamish.

"Alright," he agrees at last. "I'll find the prettiest ones."

"Excellent plan, little monster," Theseus says, reaching out to ruffle Newt's hair. Newt flinches slightly at the unexpected touch, and Theseus's hand freezes mid-motion before dropping back to his side. "Just...stay in the meadow, yeah? Don't go near the village."

Newt nods again, more firmly this time. He understands rules, even if he doesn't always like them.

As Newt turns to go, Theseus calls out once more. "Oh, and Newt? If you do a good job, there might be some ginger biscuits in it for you."

Something isn’t right and Newt can’t tell what it is. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, frustrated at himself yet again, at the way it can be so difficult to pay attention when people talk, at the delay between them speaking and his understanding, at the everpresent looping spirals of thoughts that steal his attention.

But while Theseus might look mild-mannered at this moment, Newt knows that, like every other human person he’s met, there’s a beast inside his brother. Theseus can snarl, he can claw. Theseus, too, has raised his voice at Newt, has told him to behave differently, has tried to hide him away or put him on display when people from the Ministry come around. Oh, they all like Theseus. It’s impressive. They barely like his father, with rumours saying Alexander Scamander is strange, that his blood is bad, and isn’t it obvious looking at his youngest?

Theseus shines like a star in their eyes.

Newt tries to love him anyway, and finds it’s not too hard, when he isn’t thinking about how much he misses the Theseus from before.

The link between the beast inside and why the blood has painted tributaries of red down to Theseus’s trousers doesn’t yet occur to him. Mostly, he’s thinking about how Theseus will try to get out the stains. All his clothes are far more new and tidy than anything Newt will ever own. But those are dots a little boy cannot join by himself. This is all he has ever known. And he is so lonely that he’ll take what he can get. His mother loves him very much. More than Theseus, he suspects, because Newt is soft and kind where Theseus is harsh and private.

Perpetually feeling out of step with the world around him takes its toll. Newt hates its secrets and judgements and every suffocating expectation held over his head. Every expectation and his own lack: because even at this age Newt knows he’s unlikely to make anything of himself, being late to read or even conjure simple sparks of magic.

Not like Theseus, the voice reminds him.

There, is the problem. By staying so close to him, by being so watchful, Theseus seems to believe he isn’t destroying Newt.

The meadow just beyond the perimeter fence of the Scamander house is a riot of colour, dotted with flowers of every hue imaginable. Newt moves through the tall grass with the careful precision of a naturalist twice his age, looking for the perfect blooms.

He starts with daisies, their white petals and sunny centres reminding him of his mother's gentle smile. Innocence and purity, he remembers from the flower language book he'd pored over in his father's study. A good start for the bouquet.

Next, he spots a patch of vibrant red poppies. He is drawn to their beauty despite the uneasy association. Consolation, he recalls.

He adds sprigs of lavender to his growing bouquet, their soothing scent calming his racing thoughts. Devotion and distrust, an odd combination that seems fitting for the swirl of emotions in his chest.

As the sun climbs higher in the sky, Newt's bouquet grows. He loses himself in the task, finding comfort in the simple act of gathering beauty from the world around him. It's easier out here, among the flowers and buzzing insects. Nature doesn't judge him for his odd mannerisms or his struggle to meet people's eyes. The flowers don't care if he flaps his hands or mumbles to himself as he works.

Newt's hand hovers over a patch of marigolds, their bright orange petals a cheerful contrast to his darkening mood.

Grief, cruelty, jealousy.

He shivers despite the warm summer air. He doesn't understand why their father is always so angry, why nothing he does ever seems to be good enough.

For a moment, Newt is overwhelmed by a wave of loneliness so intense it brings tears to his eyes. Arms laden with flowers, decorated and beautiful like the natural world around him, surely he should feel at home. The birds are chirping; the sky is nearly cloudless. He sniffs. He is unafraid of crying—other than Theseus and their mum, very few people see him, anyway.

Theseus scares him, a little. But Newt also needs Theseus with a desperation he can’t quite understand. After all, he’s his brother, his big brother, the one who reads him stories and tries to teach him magic and cooks dinner when the rest of the family go without and they haven’t both been punished for Newt’s oddities.

Alexander wishes Newt had no beasts at all; Theseus tolerates them, giving Newt jars and buckets and looks of stern apprehension. Alexander tells Newt that the way he moves his hands makes him appear simple; Theseus tugs at Newt’s fingers in public and looks the other way when they’re studying together. Alexander snaps and shouts; Theseus simply studies Newt, in silence, expression caught between disappointment and resignation and something warmer.

But Newt feels as though he’s slowly being crushed by it.

He’s only eight. Some days, he hates them both.

Why do they bother? Either he’s normal, or he’s not. Young and incensed by these contradictions, the pain often makes him cry into his pillow, cry at the dinner table. He hates being this uncertain even around Theseus, who was the centre of his world before leaving for Hogwarts. And it hurts, because he knows there’s something terrified and irrational in this decision but also so reasonable, but Newt decides he will always have to be on guard against Theseus. Just like his father.

Being on guard means avoiding them. Being on guard means trying his hardest not to listen when Theseus’s achievements are detailed. For a while, being on guard means shouting at Theseus to go away whenever he tries to come into Newt’s room and apologise.

When he gets back, Theseus’s face is clean. On edge at the quiet of the house, Newt doesn’t accept his brother’s offered hug, even if part of him wants to hold on tight and never let go, but he does take the biscuits.

”Here,” Theseus says. “I’m sorry if I scared you earlier—but thanks for listening.”

They both know the biscuits are a rare treat, Newt’s favourite. Theseus has done the forbidden thing of stealing from the kitchen to get these; they go soggy in less than an hour if not perfectly, neatly wrapped, yet Theseus has gifted them in the cloth that means he’s done just that.

Theseus almost ruffles his hair, but it’s more of a light ghosting of near-touch. “Good night, Newt. Love you.” The last two words are so quiet they’re a mumble. Neither of them know how to register it—but they also know it’s true.

Despite everything, they do love one another.

All his words dried up by the exhaustion of the hunt for flowers outside, Newt hides under his bed to eat his biscuits, relishing and hating the spicy-sweet taste of the ginger. They taste like love; they taste like control; and they are yet another secret.

Being on guard means knowing that resentment, one of the many emotions Newt finds hard to identify, sits in the pit of his belly like an impossibly deep ache. Based on what everyone around them says, they might as well not be brothers at all.

Theseus is eight when he suspects he's different. It's not a sudden realisation, but a gradual awareness, rolling in like fog on a cold morning. He notices the way other children laugh easily, the way they navigate social situations with an effortlessness that eludes him. He sees the proud smiles on parents' faces when their children behave properly, and he yearns for that approval with a desperation that frightens him.

The mirror doesn't lie, but sometimes Theseus wishes it would.

"Smile," he whispers to himself, watching as his lips curl upward. But it's not right. The smile doesn't reach his eyes, which remain wide and anxious. He tries again, stretching his mouth, but now it looks more like a grimace than a grin.

Theseus sighs, his breath fogging the glass. Is that enough? Too much? He wishes there was a rulebook for these things, a clear set of instructions he could follow.

He's been told he looks bored or angry when others are speaking, even when he's deeply interested in what they're saying. So he arranges his features into what he hopes is an attentive expression: eyebrows slightly raised, head tilted, lips curved in a slight smile. But as he holds the pose, he can feel the strain in his facial muscles. How do people do this all day, every day?

In the mirror, he sees a little dark-haired boy with tired eyes and pinched eyebrows. This, he thinks, is the real him. But it's not a face the world wants to see.

The thought distresses him, so, over the next few days, he spends hours in his room, meticulously arranging and rearranging his detective books, his newspapers, his Quidditch models, his stones he likes to compare to Mary Anning’s fossils and arrange in the shape of constellations. But when his father catches him, the disappointment in his eyes cuts deeper than any physical blow.

"Why can't you just be like other boys?" Alexander asks him quietly, as if his heart is breaking. "Why do you have to be so...so odd?"

At night, lying in bed with his thoughts racing like startled birds, Theseus makes a decision. If he's different, then he'll simply have to try harder to be good. To be normal. To be what everyone wants him to be.

By the time he's twelve, Theseus is a bundle of anxiety and repressed emotions. He suffers from frequent headaches and stomachaches, his body rebelling against the strain of maintaining his facade. He's exhausted all the time, the effort of being normal draining him in ways he can't fully articulate.

The anxiety that's been his constant companion since childhood grows into a monstrous thing, threatening to swallow him whole. He develops rituals and compulsions, desperate attempts to exert some control over his life. He counts his steps, touches door frames a certain number of times, and recites spells under his breath like mantras.

Normal. Alright. Is this what alright feels like? This constant tension, this fear of being found out?

His little brother is born very, very early in the morning.

It takes him and Mum and their father days to come home. In that time, Theseus paces anxiously in the living room, flipping through the colour-coded chapters of books about children he’s rescued from the intimidating depths of his father's study. He hopes Newton will like him. Not everyone does. He hopes Newton cares about the interesting things he does: that Newton doesn’t find him boring or weird.

He is determined to make sure the baby is happier than he is.

When the door quietly unlatches—Theseus has the hearing of a wolfhound—Theseus races around the room once, twice, his heart pounding in his ears, then follows the homecoming party to their parents’ bedroom. His mother is helped into bed, her auburn hair damp and tangled, but her eyes shining with a joy Theseus has never seen before.

She’s holding Newton.

Newton. The name rolls around in Theseus's mind, unfamiliar yet already precious. He's been waiting for this moment for months, ever since his parents told him he was going to be a big brother. His hands twitch at his sides in a way—he taps his fingers in a familiar rhythm that would usually earn him a sharp look from his father. But right now, no one's paying attention to Theseus's little oddities.

He wants so badly to do this right, to have someone who will look up to him, who might even love him unconditionally. The thought makes his chest tight with hope and fear.

There, cradled in her arms, is a tiny bundle wrapped in a soft blue blanket.

"Come here, love," his mother calls, her voice hoarse but warm. "Come meet Newton."

Theseus approaches the bed cautiously, his eyes fixed on the small, wrinkled face peeking out from the blanket. As he draws closer, the baby—Newton, his little brother—opens his eyes, blinking owlishly at the world around him.

Something shifts in Theseus's chest, a feeling so big and warm it almost hurts. Without thinking, he reaches out a finger, gently touching Newton's tiny hand. His eyes prickle.

Look at him, Theseus thinks. He’s so perfect.

From then on, they are inseparable. Theseus is there for every milestone in Newt’s little life, doing everything his mum can’t when she gets ill. His hands become deft at caretaking; he relishes his new knowledge of how to be gentle, even as he knows that when Newton is old enough, he may also have to become his keeper.

Newton quickly becomes Newt.

He talks and talks to Newt, does everything he thinks Newt might want. When his father warns him that the Ministry might think Newt is too volatile like his father once was, that they might take Newt away if he has explosions of accidental magic like Theseus had—knocking out sets of glassware, always glass—Theseus has nightmares of faceless people taking baby Newt away.

After those, drenched in sweat and shaking, Theseus always pads to the crib and just watches Newt sleep. While he’s not allowed to paint or draw much—Alexander wants him to study, not waste time, not play—he painstakingly makes lettered cards for Newt’s birthday in February. Having no pocket money, Theseus gives him the sweets saved from his own, which takes place only a month before, far too close to Christmas to be exciting. But he is the good son, marked out to be the better one thanks to his normality, and receives appropriate gifts. They mean so little to him he wonders why anyone bothers. Yet he would never forget Newt’s birthday.

Newt is a quiet baby. When he’s not playing football in the village or at Hogwarts, Theseus likes to sit in Newt’s bedroom, knees tucked to his chest on the floor, and read the newspapers. There’s something about his little brother’s presence that calms his anxiety, if just for a moment. And this way, if he starts to cry, Theseus will be there in a heartbeat to hold him.

Newt gets just a little older. Old enough that Theseus is taking him to the toilet rather than changing his nappies. Old enough that Theseus is boiling and mashing fruit and vegetables rather than taking the milk bottle from his mum. Theseus notices the way people look at Newt, the whispers and sidelong glances, and the peace he feels in his little brother’s presence is replaced with deep fear. He sees the frustration in his father's eyes, the worry in his mother's, and he knows what's coming.

It's at this point that Alexander decides it's time for Newt, now three, to see a specialist. Newt becomes increasingly agitated as the tests wear on. What Alexander doesn't realise, so focused is he on Newt, is that the doctors have taken an interest in Theseus as well.

They pull Theseus aside. He almost fights them with his fists rather than be separated from Newt like this. When they’re out the door, and his parents can’t see that he’s not a good son at all, he tries to wrench his way out of the healer’s hands. He makes it almost to the door before they grab him and nearly pin him to the floor, until he is cowed and polite and remembers all the right words to say.

Leaving his little brother alone and bewildered under the clinic’s bright lights makes his chest tighten in an all-too-familiar way, and by the time he’s sitting on the metal table of a closet-sized room, teeth and temperature being checked, he can’t pretend at all.

They won’t let him out to drag Newt to safety before his little brother has to endure the same humiliation. By not letting him be what he should—a protector, a shield, all for Newt—they become enemies in his eyes.

But he’s too upset, and they’re enemies he can’t guard himself against.

In their questions, they invade him. In their eyes, he fails. At twelve, Theseus doesn’t trust anyone. He is posed as a potential problem in each phrasing and twist of words, and no matter how much he justifies himself—he is good, useful, dutiful—he sees that, in their eyes, the skeletal outlines of the careful answers he builds only mark him as more wrong.

By the end of it, there are unshed tears drowning his vision, blurring the lines of his hands so desperately clasped together. No one will come to save him. He holds his own hand tighter, because he has always loved being held more than any young man should.

He vows to fight harder for both of them.

When they stop putting Newt through this, too—when the healers let him go back through that door—he will give his little brother the biggest hug he can, to remind himself they’re both real, that they both have more to them than being file names and case numbers and potential threats to the Statute of Secrecy.

Theseus and Newt are sent out of the room while the healers talk to their parents. With one sticky hand, Newt clings to Theseus’s leg, hiccuping as he gnaws at the fingers of his free hand. While the sight of his little brother like this hurts Theseus, he slumps forwards and presses his ear against the wood. Newt’s frantic, rattling breathing, shot through with panicked whimpers, seems to fill the cool corridor.

Whatever has been said, Alexander is furious. He rages at the doctors, at Theseus, at the world in general.

"I've spent years teaching him to be normal," he says, voice tight with suppressed pain. "And you're telling me it was all for nothing? One is bad enough. We can’t have two."

Theseus stands there, feeling as though the ground has dropped out from beneath his feet. All his efforts, all his careful pretending, and still he's been found out.

Newt doesn’t stop crying until practically twilight.

For Newt, Theseus thinks, he will be normal.

He tries harder.

If Theseus is normal enough, maybe Newt will be able to be free. It takes a minute, but he remembers his promise, made to Newt across time and space, of the hug he desperately wanted to give. In another world, the hug could convey how he wants to promise little Newt it would be okay; though now, he’s not sure at all. He stoops down—he will never, ever break a promise to Newt, spoken or unspoken—and holds him as delicately as a fine teacup, because he knows Newt doesn’t like being touched.

Theseus is getting older than twelve, and losing himself. But it doesn’t feel like there’s any going back. People aren’t quite happy with what he is, how he is, but he is too scared to think of the alternative. In Newt, he sees how people are almost afraid of what they don’t understand, and he’s terrified and proud of his little brother in equal measures.

His father has started to hit him, frustrated at his rebellious nature, his incessant questioning, his rigidity when it comes to things he believes are wrong. By necessity, Theseus keeps this secret. He doesn’t want to worry anyone. Part of him is ashamed. Part of him desperately wants them all just to be together, to be happy. The slaps are done with an open hand. They humiliate him, they hurt, and his body jerks and flinches before he can remind himself he’s old enough to take it.

But it’s fine. He has Newt to look after, to think of—even, Newt to avoid infecting with his strange behaviour, as his father reminds him every time he catches Theseus in one of his neurotic attacks.

Newt, with his untamed curls and bright, curious eyes doesn't mind when Theseus needs to retreat to the quiet of his room, overwhelmed by the noise and chaos of family gatherings. For now, Newt accepts Theseus's awkward, stilted attempts at affection without judgement.

It won’t always be like that.

In Newt, Theseus sees a reflection of himself: unfiltered, unapologetic in his differences. His little brother struggles with the increased scrutiny, the attempts to mould him into something he's not, and Theseus feels a deep, aching guilt. If Newt loses this, a tiny part of Theseus still hanging on might die, too.

Because in Newt, Theseus sees what he might have been if he hadn't learned to hide so well. Newt, who still flaps his hands when excited, who talks for hours about magical creatures with a passion that lights up his whole face. Newt, who doesn't understand why he needs to make eye contact or engage in pointless small talk.

It won’t stay like that.

He will protect Newt in the ways he knows how, and hope it is better than how he learned. Maybe Newt, unlike him, doesn’t have to turn normal. Maybe he can keep that little candle flame of hope safe, and just pretend. After all, he knows what the snuffing out looks like, feels like.

Teaching Newt how to act at least a little normal breaks Theseus's heart, but he tells himself it's for the best. Better this gentle guidance from a loving brother than the harsh correction Theseus himself endured.

"Look at people when they're talking to you, Newt," he says, tilting his brother's chin up. "I know it's hard, but it's important."

Newt tries, his gaze flickering up to meet Theseus's before darting away again. "It feels funny," he complains. "Why do I have to?"

"Because that's what people expect," he says finally. "It's just how things are done."

Theseus himself isn’t sure. His problem, almost the opposite of Newt’s, is that he doesn’t know how to look away. When expected to be polite, he counts to seven and then examines a person’s ear, before snapping back to their irises. All he knows is, with a bone-deep certainty, that the world will not be kind to Newt if he remains this way.

He pushes harder. He tries to teach Newt the tricks he's learned, showing him how to fake eye contact by looking at the bridge of someone's nose, how to give short, acceptable answers to common questions, and how to recognise when his passionate monologues are causing others to lose interest.

But Newt resists these lessons, in his own quiet way. He continues to be himself, unapologetically different, and Theseus can't decide if he's more terrified or in awe of his little brother's resilience.

If his little brother could only learn to pretend when it’s needed—not as if it’s necessary to breathing, Theseus would never wish this on anyone else—maybe Newt would be happier.

Safer.

Happy and safe? They’re rarely, Theseus has learnt, the same.

Why be happy when you can be normal? his father will tell him nearly four years into the future, when Theseus considers ending his life.

For now, though, when his father shouts at Newt, Theseus draws his attention. When his father needs someone to hit, Theseus knows it can be him. All he has to do is offer: prove he needs it. Anything to keep it away from Newt, who’s nearly entirely his responsibility. When his father is praising Theseus, he’s not—for once—thinking about Newt and the family disease he apparently represents.

Their mum tries teaching Newt to read, before she realises it’s difficult and her lupus consumes all her good intentions as it eats at her skin.

It becomes Theseus who walks Newt to and from the village school, who thinks his little brother should go while their mum drops off the face of the earth. It’s Theseus who realises, when Newt comes home with bruises on his arms, how the teachers deal with boys like Newt. Theseus, who can’t find the words to comfort his little brother, tries to press them all into a mug of mint tea and an awkward silence.

Because Theseus learned everything he knows from his father.

From his mum, too, of course—to be gentle, to be careful, to ignore that subconscious instinct that surely this isn’t the only way a family can be, because she loves him and she looks the other way when he’s bleeding and bruised. But he also knows when an inch is given, a mile is taken. That he must give every mile of himself to gain those inches of affection and love. And that change can only be pushed onto stubborn little boys, not done voluntarily—because those little boys want to be who they really are.

Everything will hurt, in the end.

So, Theseus never raises a hand, bites his tongue until it bleeds after he raises his voice on rare occasions, and gives up everything he can for Newt. Holidays that could be spent at school; dreams that don’t shield him; and the dregs of freedom he’s earned from his perfection, against the well-meant discipline of their father.

Books lie scattered around Newt, pages crumpled and torn. A broken inkwell stains the carpet with a slowly spreading dark pool. But it's the muffled sounds coming from his brother that truly alarm Theseus: whimpers, frustrated growls. It confuses him; when he’s this upset, Theseus usually folds in on himself entirely, entering a state of hazy catatonia, pretending right until he practically blacks out.

What is this? Some kind of inbetween state? Does this mean he can help, can fix this?

"Newt?" Theseus calls out, taking a cautious step into the room. "What's wrong?"

At the sound of his voice, Newt's head snaps up. His hazel eyes are wide and unfocused, tears streaming down his flushed cheeks. Before Theseus can react, Newt lets out a strangled cry and brings his arm to his mouth, sinking his teeth into the flesh just below his elbow.

"No!" Theseus whispers in horror, crossing the room in three long strides. He drops to his knees beside Newt, gently but firmly pulling his brother's arm away from his mouth.

Angry red marks stand out against Newt's pale skin, some already beginning to bruise. Nothing is broken; there’s no blood. Thank Merlin for that.

But Newt struggles against Theseus's grip, his whole body trembling. "Too much," he manages to choke out between sobs. "Everything's too much. Make it stop, Thee. Please make it stop."

He doesn’t know how to make it stop. He doesn’t know what to say. When he takes Newt into his arms and tries to tell his little brother that he’s safe with him, that he would make it stop if he had the power to do so, Newt stiffens like a spooked Kneazle, breathing hitching, and pulls away to run headlong from the room.

Theseus will learn years later that you shouldn’t touch someone when they’re that upset. But it’s a wakeup call to how miserable their lives can get, even for someone as dreamy and hopeful as Newt.

Quietly, he tries to support Newt where he can, when his father isn’t looking. He covers his ears when they go out, makes excuses for why Newt doesn’t need to attend Ministry functions when Theseus so obviously must. He turns a blind eye to the creatures that don’t cause too much mess—and never, ever tells on Newt to their father, even when he has to scold his little brother for staying out past sunset, for making him hunt for him for hours on end in the woods. Maybe these small pockets of freedom buy Newt the time Theseus doesn’t have.

He pushes down the residual envy, the longing, and focuses only on how much he truly loves his little brother.

It's around this time that Theseus notices the change in Newt. He has become more withdrawn, more wary of Theseus's attempts at connection. Theseus realise, with a pain that takes his breath away, that Newt is starting to see the artifice in his behaviour. The easy acceptance of childhood is fading, replaced by a growing awareness of the differences between them.

Theseus wants to explain, to tell Newt that he understands, that he's the same underneath it all. But the words won't come. He's spent so long burying his true self that he's not sure he knows how to unearth it anymore.

So, Newt’s childhood admiration of his brother, the comfort he finds in his presence, starts to grow more complicated than not. The scales don’t know which way to weigh. Most days, Newt seems like a skittish creature of the kind he so adores, even when he’s sobbing into Theseus’s arms. It's not ideal. It's not even close to what Theseus truly wants for himself or for Newt.

But for now, it's the best he can do. And so he soldiers on, even though there’s no easy end in sight.

Theseus sees the hurt in Newt's eyes when he gently redirects his brother's enthusiastic ramblings about magical creatures, or when he insists on Newt making eye contact during conversations.

"Why are you different now?" Newt asks one day, his voice small and confused.

Theseus feels his heart break a little. "I'm just growing up, Newt," he says, forcing a smile. "And you will too, one day."

Theseus, since he was about fourteen, has been neat, precise, and marking out lines on his body with his beloved Muggle razor. His feet are the fairest game, after his father sees his arm. A deep breath, a drag of pain; it grounds some of the seething unease he feels at everything, punishes him when he fails again. Increasingly, his self-disgust comes not from his oddness, but from feeling so trapped this is the only way he can prove he has any agency at all. If only he could run into the wilderness and howl at the stars. It is only when he gets to the Auror Academy—

—where he receives everything he wants and nothing at all, because it turns out strange boys who can solve patterns like nobody's business and have burning senses of justice and can focus on something for ten hours at a time are good detectives; where he realises that here, he can become a fighter in every sense of the word, and use that ability to protect, protect others; where everything he’s meant to be and wants to be have collided on some lucky, predestined course—

It is only then that he changes to cigarettes.

Under the stars, sitting on the roof of the Academy dormitory, cigarettes offer pain and pleasure in one. They’re messy, provide a dull buzz. He's not so interested in the impending addiction as the warmth on his wristbone like circled fingers from the Sun. Holding it for seven seconds, as he must limit his eyes, his gaze, leaves such a wound that for moments he wonders what he has done to himself, so he reverts to a quick press, enough to light his nerves, enough to leave him feeling human and cleansed for just a few moments in the breathless after.

The relief is unmatched, even if having left Newt behind in that house with their father—who he now knows is cruel—is a pain that doesn't ease. He likes to collect the little half-moon stamps by the bones of his wrist, just above where his sleeve ends. He relishes it when the scars heal messily, when they ruin him, just a little.

He and his little brother stop being able to see one another, and not in the conventional sense.

Theseus, with years of gut instinct honed to sense impending disappointment, feels the change—and it terrifies him. He is a collection of failures and successes, held together and approved by convention—but he has never been allowed to remain unaware, and never is. Always better to watch. Always better to know. These traits make him a good Auror. He remembers every detail.

But the cracks in his facade are starting to show. The constant performance leaves him drained and irritable. He snaps at Newt more often than not, as he goes toe to toe with his father and shows all the signs of love that no longer lands in a household as fraught as theirs. Newt is quiet, arguably depressed. The guilt that follows his own outbursts is overwhelming, driving Theseus to redouble his efforts to be the perfect older brother, the perfect son. He listens to Newt and worries more than ever. Newt no longer comes to Theseus’s room when he has nightmares, no longer curls into the corner or climbs into Theseus’s bed. With the effort of a barber surgeon stripping out rotten teeth in a back alley, Theseus becomes so careful not to bite, so careful to avoid the violence of his father he’s tried to protect Newt from.

It’s too late for Newt’s gut instincts towards humans as a whole, and it’s not entirely Theseus’s fault, not by a long way. Shitty brother or not, he’s always been roughly on Newt’s side. The fact is that his best intentions aren’t enough when Newt, unlike him, is visibly different. Is this not a reality they’ve both known for years? Given the bullying, the ostracism, no matter how many scrapes Theseus patches up, Newt is already more scared of people than he ever was.

Good things happen, too, and Theseus is half-glad for it. At Hogwarts, Newt makes some friends, or a friend, and gets rebellious. The hurt is old, remembered, ghost-like. For a while, Theseus is no longer mean. Was he ever? He was trying to get them both through, have them both survive, but that doesn’t hold up in the court of a younger brother who needed something, someone better. No longer does he act like someone with much fight in them. He’s purely conventional, a normal older brother, an Auror in the works. At drifting odds, the unspoken distance between them seems utterly implacable.

Yet, when Newt is expelled, that they’ve entered a death spiral is abruptly revealed. It's not that they don't care about one another; it's that both care far, far too much, striking twin killing blows in the argument that follows. His little brother, the one who loves Bowtruckles and Hippogriffs and dreams of travelling the world far, far away from Theseus and everything he represents, is pushed hard enough to say I hate you.

And has he truly given up everything for Newt to hate him? It doesn’t bear thinking about; he can’t, he simply cannot, because it feels as though a knife is being ripped slowly through his sternum, tearing him apart into bloody pieces. High on fear and rage and what is, terribly, a deep love, he calls Newt a disappointment.

Better not to question why he’s cradling a broken arm as he says this.

Newt, if he had still liked talking to Theseus, would have described how eagles fight when airborne, locking their talons together, intertwining even as they fall out of the sky.

Part of Theseus wants to dismiss the significance of the expulsion. What does it matter? Why do they have to keep caring about what others think when Newt clearly has talents elsewhere? They love Newt; they’ll find a way, and maybe it’s okay for his little brother to get a taste of how people like them get hurt, when they’re not careful.

Like us comes so naturally he barely notices it pass in his spiralling thoughts, between frantic pennings of letters to Headmaster Black asking him to reconsider. Never like you, Newt, but like us, because aren’t they still brothers despite the mess they’ve become?

The other part of him wants to run back through time and slap a different kind of sense into his twelve year old self: before the belief in Alexander’s discipline and normality became all the justification he needed to stay silent.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? By now, Theseus is twenty-four and it’s too late for him. He was twenty-three when war was announced. He can forgive Newt, of course he can. There was never any doubt about forgiving Newt, little Newt, who has suffered so much where Theseus has failed to protect him. But never can Theseus forgive himself: not for this. Not in all their sixteen years together has he said anything like that to Newt.

The regret for that single moment of anger—the words he’d never mean, had never meant—the words that had burst from him on a hot wave of white fury—requires true penitence.

Newt doesn’t accept his apologies: not at their father’s funeral, not as Theseus helps Newt move out of the house into a London flat, the deposit paid for with a full year of his Junior Auror salary. It is as simple as the breaking of any other kind of trust. Theseus would know. After being hurt once, the world shifts. After being hurt for the last time, there’s no returning to the halcyon period of before. Since 1901, this has been an imprinted fact on the sad stamp of his life.

As 1914 approaches, Theseus tells himself it’s okay that, while they laugh together at the Ministry, while they manage awkward lunches and hospital appointments and the occasional debacle over creature-related paperwork—

—that even as time passes, even with all that, Newt doesn’t look at him like he used to, when he was barely as high as Theseus’s knee.

There’s no use asking again for forgiveness. The world needs Newt as he is, exactly as he is: compassionate, gentle, sensitive, and unafraid to be different. Theseus, in comparison, feels like a blind man stumbling in the dark when he tries to think of his place under their shared set of stars.

A solution—because that has never been beaten out of Theseus, that desire to seek answers, to try and try and try—presents itself shortly afterwards.

March, 1915. Theseus breaks Evermonde’s decree, and joins the war.