Chapter Text
By the time the bread caught fire, the kettle was already screaming.
Faye lurched across the kitchen, small bare feet slipping on flour and owl feathers, and yanked the kettle off the stove. Steam hit her in the face and turned the air into a hot, damp fog. Somewhere near her elbow, a teacup hopped to escape the chaos and landed upside down in the sink with a sulky clink.
"It's all right," Faye told it, because it felt like the sort of thing you ought to reassure porcelain about. "I know it's loud."
The teacup did not answer, but she felt it calm down a little. Or maybe that was just her.
The bread, however, was definitely on fire.
"Oops."
Faye snatched at the pan. A lick of flame darted up the side, singeing the hem of her too-long pyjama top. She hissed and flapped at it with a tea towel, which might have worked if the tea towel hadn't also decided to catch fire.
For a moment, the cottage kitchen in Dorset was all smoke and flailing limbs and Faye's high, breathless laughter that she couldn't help even when she was panicking. A mooncalf, who had wandered in through the back door and was chewing thoughtfully on a sock, lifted its wide, mournful eyes and blinked at her.
"I know, I know," Faye coughed, dropping the smouldering towel into the sink and turning on the tap. "Dad says no fire before breakfast. Or during. Or after. Or... ever, really."
"Faye?"
Her name floated down the stairs, sleep-rough and amused. Faye froze with one hand still on the tap, water hissing over blackened bread and stunned teacups.
"Nothing!" she called, which was the sort of answer that made grown-ups suspicious.
Her father appeared in the kitchen doorway anyway, hair sticking up in every direction, shirt buttons mismatched, one sock on and one sock entirely missing. Rolf Scamander paused on the threshold like a man stepping into a dragon's lair, took in the scorched pan, the damp towel, the flour on the floor and his ten-year-old daughter standing in the middle of it all with soot on her nose.
He exhaled.
"Is the cottage on fire again?" he asked mildly.
"Only a tiny bit," Faye said, and then spoiled her attempt at sounding grown-up by grinning. "I was making breakfast."
"Ah." Rolf scratched the stubble on his jaw, squinting up at the ceiling as if consulting an invisible timetable. "And how did breakfast feel about that?"
"Judgemental," Faye admitted. "The eggs burst. The bread... combusted. The kettle screamed. The kettle always screams, to be fair, but this time it sounded offended."
Rolf laughed, the sound warm and rumbling like something that lived in the hearth.
"Well, we can't have offended kettles before nine o'clock," he said. "International Statute of Domestic Peace. Step aside, chef."
He crossed the kitchen in a few long strides, dodging the mooncalf, who had shifted to chewing his missing sock with quiet determination. With a lazy flick of his wand, the charred bread lifted out of the pan and sailed neatly into the bin. The stove clicked off. The kettle sighed as he opened its spout to let the steam out.
Faye watched him with unabashed admiration. Magic looked different when her dad did it. Less like a trick, more like coaxing a shy animal out of hiding.
"I wanted to make it for you," she said, a small apology tucked between every word. "You were tired last night."
Rolf glanced back at her, his grey eyes softening in a way that always made her chest feel fizzy.
"And I appreciate that," he said, crouching until they were level. At ten, Faye was all elbows and angles and a fringe that refused to behave. Up close, he could see the soot on her freckles and the flour in her hair. He brushed both away with gentle fingers. "But we need breakfast we can actually eat. I haven't quite evolved to live on smoke."
"I gave some of the bread to the chickens," Faye offered. "They didn't mind."
"The chickens don't have taste buds."
Faye frowned. "You can't know that."
Rolf's mouth twitched. "True. I rescind my slander. We must apologise to them later."
He stood and moved through the chaos with the easy familiarity of someone who had learned long ago not to expect order from his household. The kitchen of the Scamander cottage had never understood the concept of tidy. Books lay open on the table beside jars of beetle wings and dragon meat substitute. Pencils and quills occupied the same jam jar in uneasy truce. A tea towel was draped over a cage with no obvious occupant. Outside the open window, a Hippogriff's shadow passed across the scrubbed wood floor.
Faye watched all of it with fondness. To other people, it might look like a mess. To her, it was a map of their life. Every scuff, every burn, every stray feather was proof that the house was not just a house, but a living, breathing thing that had agreed to let them stay.
She moved to help, stepping around the mooncalf to retrieve plates, coaxing a Bowtruckle out of the cutlery drawer with a sleepy murmur.
"Not there," she told it, letting it climb onto her wrist. "You'll get stabbed. Dad would be very upset if I brought a fork-wounded Bowtruckle to the breakfast table."
The Bowtruckle clung to her fingers with twiggy hands. Faye had the sense that it sighed, but maybe that was the wind flickering through the open window. Animals didn't talk in words. They hummed and rustled and moved in ways she understood without needing anything as clumsy as syllables.
"Do we have jam?" she asked.
"We always have jam," Rolf said around the bread knife he was holding between his teeth, because his hands were busy guiding slices of fresh loaf through the air with his wand. "Your grandfather firmly believed any crisis was manageable with enough jam."
"He also believed Bowtruckles should have voting rights," Faye pointed out, depositing her passenger onto the rim of a potted fern.
"Yes, and?"
"Nothing." She smiled. "He was right."
Rolf's gaze flickered to the corner of the kitchen where Newt's old field journal lay, edges frayed, pages stuffed with pressed flowers and sketches of creatures whose names Faye could recite in her sleep. For a heartbeat, the laughter in his face thinned into something else. Something like missing a step on a staircase.
Faye felt it as clearly as if it had been spoken. Grief was like creature-sense too. It moved in the air; it prickled her skin.
"Can we have the marmalade?" she asked quickly, because Rolf always shook off the heaviness when she tugged at something practical.
"Of course," he said, snapping back to now. "It's your big day. You can have any preserve you want. Even the one your Aunt Queenie made with those suspicious berries."
Faye's hand hovered over the jar with the pinkish, glittery contents. "The one that made Uncle Theseus sing?"
"The very same."
She giggled. "Maybe later. I don't want to start the day hallucinating."
"Fair point," Rolf conceded.
They worked side by side in the warm, cluttered kitchen as the morning slipped in through the windows. Somewhere outside, Hippogriffs called to each other in shrill, fluting cries that made Faye's heart twist with longing. She could almost feel the wind rushing past their wings, the earth far below, the way the sky smelled different above the orchard.
She went to lay the table, setting out two mismatched plates, two mismatched cups, and the jar of safe, sensible marmalade. The Bowtruckle abandoned the fern and clambered up onto the back of a chair to watch.
"Are you nervous?" Rolf asked casually as he flipped the eggs. They sizzled obligingly but did not explode.
Faye considered. The word felt too small. Her stomach was fluttery and tight. Her thoughts were loud, overlapping each other: Hogwarts, and wands, and houses, and portraits, and the giant squid she'd heard about, and the train, and the Sorting Hat, and whether animals were allowed in the dormitories, and whether anyone there would like her.
"A bit," she said. "Not about the magic. That's just... there." She waved a hand vaguely and sent a spoon rolling along the counter purely by accident. "It's the people part. People are more complicated than Kneazles."
"Kneazles are fairly complicated," Rolf said. "But I take your point."
He plated the food with a surprising tidiness that always made Faye suspicious he'd done something unconventional to achieve it. She slid into her chair and tried to anchor herself with the mundane act of buttering toast.
"When you went to Hogwarts," she ventured, "were you nervous?"
"I was terrified," Rolf said promptly. "I was convinced they'd take one look at me and send me home for being too strange. Your grandfather bet me a jar of jam that I'd love it by Christmas. He was right, of course. Infuriating man."
Faye smiled around a mouthful of egg. "Was he strange when he was little?"
"Oh, unbelievably." Rolf's eyes crinkled. "Your mother used to say that if there was a boggart in the wardrobe and a baby dragon under the bed, your grandfather would be the sort of child who tried to make them both hot cocoa and ask about their childhoods."
Faye laughed so hard she nearly choked. The Bowtruckle clicked disapprovingly from the chair back.
"And Mum?" she asked, softer now.
Rolf set his fork down. "Your mother," he said slowly, "was the bravest person I've ever known. She loved very hard and very quietly. A bit like you."
Faye's chest went fizzy again. Tears pricked, stinging and unwelcome. She didn't remember much about her mother, not clearly. Just flashes—warm hands, a whisper in her hair, the feeling of being tucked between two heartbeats when she'd fallen asleep between her parents on the sofa. The memory was so soft it almost didn't feel real.
"Do you remember..." Her voice trailed off, trying to find the right place in her mind. There were so many memories, some hers, some stories people had told her so often they'd become hers too. "The Christmas? The one with all of them."
Rolf knew without asking which one she meant.
"How could I forget?" he murmured.
And just like that, the kitchen blurred at the edges, letting the memory step through.
It had been snowing that year, the fat, heavy flakes that made the countryside go quiet. Faye had been five, small enough that the world still looked like it might tilt if she jumped high enough.
The Scamander cottage had glowed from the inside out. Fairy lights had tangled in the rafters. Bowtruckles wore slivers of tinsel like reluctant crowns. Mooncalves had left hoofprints around the back door where they had tried to eat the wreath. The Niffler had made off with three baubles and Aunt Tina's hairpin.
Newt had sat in the armchair by the fire, his hair more silver than not, his hands still as gentle as ever as Faye perched on his knee. He smelled like parchment and wind and something indefinably wild. He had been reading her a story about a herd of Mooncalves who danced so beautifully the stars themselves had stopped to watch.
"Creatures always know who is kind, Faye," he'd said, tapping the page lightly. "They will always know you, even if you don't know yourself yet."
Faye hadn't really understood, but the words had sunk in anyway, like seeds in soft soil.
"Theseus, stop trying to put tinsel on the Hippogriff," Aunt Tina had called from the kitchen, where she rattled pans and sang under her breath. "He doesn't like it."
"He does like it," Uncle Theseus had insisted cheerfully, backing away from the disgruntled creature with only a few feathers stuck to his jumper to show for his efforts. "He told me."
Queenie had laughed, the sound bright as bells, and swept through the room to charm the fairy lights into changing colours. Rolf had been by the window, watching the moonlight on the snow and the way the Hippogriffs moved in the field beyond, his expression soft in a way that made Faye think he was seeing more than what was actually there.
Her mother had been there too, of course. Faye remember her mother's hands most of all—quick, clever fingers that had braided Faye's hair and mended Newt's jacket and smoothed the worry out of Rolf's forehead when he frowned too much. She had worn a soft green jumper that night, the same colour as the moss in the orchard, and Faye had fallen asleep with her cheek pressed to it, listening to the low rumble of grown-up voices and feeling entirely, perfectly safe.
It had been the last Christmas before everything split. Before illnesses and accidents and the slow, inevitable way time sometimes unspooled people from each other.
Sometimes Faye thought if she could just remember one more detail—a joke, a smell, the exact way her mother's voice had dipped on a certain word—she could stitch it back together. But memories didn't work that way. They were creatures too. Fickle. Shy. Sometimes cruel.
The kitchen came back into focus with the sound of Rolf clearing his throat and the distant shriek of a Hippogriff protesting something or other. Faye blinked hard, chasing away the bright prickle in her eyes.
Rolf looked at her for a long moment. One corner of his mouth lifted.
"They would be very proud of you, you know," he said. "Your mother. Your grandparents. They'd make a terrible fuss about today. Your grandfather would insist on coming to Hogwarts with you and giving Hagrid unsolicited advice about Blast-Ended Skrewts."
Faye's lips twitched. "And Aunt Queenie would charm all the sweets trolley sweets to follow me around on the train."
"And Theseus would argue with the Sorting Hat," Rolf agreed. "Yes. They'd be impossible."
Silence settled between them, the comfortable sort that came from years of learning how to sit with the spaces between words. Faye scraped at the last of her egg. The Bowtruckle climbed along the back of her chair until it reached her shoulder, pressing its small, twiggy face against her cheek.
"Do you think..." She hesitated. "Do you think Hogwarts will like me?"
Rolf's answer was immediate. "They'd be very foolish if they didn't."
"That's not the same."
He sighed and leaned back, the chair creaking. "No," he admitted. "It's not. Hogwarts is full of all sorts. Some kind. Some not. Some who are frightened of anything that isn't exactly like them." He paused. "But there will be people there who see you. The way your mum did. The way your grandfather did. The way I do. It may just take them a little longer to realise how lucky they are."
Faye nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek.
"And if they don't?" she asked quietly.
"Then," Rolf said, "there are always Hippogriffs."
That made her laugh, a startled, bubbling sound that bounced off the beams. The Bowtruckle clicked approvingly.
She was about to say something else when someone knocked on the front door.
Not the frantic three-rap of the postman, or the hurried sequence of Ministry officials who sometimes arrived to ask Rolf awkward questions about licensing and dangerous species.
This was a slow, measured knock. Three taps. A pause. One more, softer.
Every part of the cottage seemed to listen. The cups stilled. The Bowtruckle went quiet. Even the kettle hushed itself as if to hear the outcome.
Rolf's expression shifted. Not to fear—Faye had seen that before, twice, and it hollowed his face. This was something else. A strange mixture of surprise and a kind of old, familiar sadness.
"Stay here," he said.
"Why?" Faye whispered, which was very different from arguing.
"Because I asked," he replied gently.
He squeezed her shoulder as he passed. His hand was warm, grounding, steady. She pressed her own over the spot after he moved away, as if she could trap the reassurance there.
The cottage hallway creaked faintly as Rolf walked down it. Faye slid off her chair and padded to the doorway, just far enough that she could see the front door but not close enough to be properly telling lies if Rolf asked whether she'd stayed in the kitchen.
He opened the door.
Cold air spilled in first, carrying the smell of damp earth and Hippogriff feather oil. And beyond that—for a moment, Faye thought it was snow, but it was only light; white, pale, softer than sun—stood a tall man in deep blue robes.
"Good morning, Rolf," said Albus Dumbledore.
Even at ten, with no Hogwarts stories yet etched into her, Faye knew his name. Her grandfather had spoken it with a complicated mixture of fondness and exasperation, the way someone might talk about a wayward mooncalf that kept wandering into the wrong field.
Rolf blinked. "Headmaster," he said, sounding younger than Faye had ever heard him. "You came yourself."
"Of course," Dumbledore replied simply. His gaze lifted over Rolf's shoulder and landed on Faye, who was doing a very bad job of looking like part of the doorframe.
His eyes were the strangest colour Faye had ever seen. Blue, yes, but not like sky or water. More like the inside of a spell.
"Good morning, Miss Scamander," he said.
Faye stepped out from behind the jamb, because it felt rude not to if someone addressed her directly. The Bowtruckle on her shoulder shifted, peering at Dumbledore from under her hair.
"Good morning," she replied. It came out thinner than she'd intended.
It tumbled over her then, all at once: the stories of Hogwarts Rolf had told her; the way Newt's eyes had gone distant when he'd talked about the castle.
Her heart slammed against her ribs like a trapped Golden Snitch.
"The owls usually deliver the letters," she blurted, before she could stop herself. "My friend down the lane, Isla, her brother got his last year and the owl knocked over the marmalade."
"Ah," Dumbledore said, and if he found being told how his own school worked by a small girl at the edge of Dorset offensive, he did an excellent job of hiding it. "Yes. The owls are very hardworking. However, there are some errands one feels one ought not delegate. Especially where old friends are concerned."
He reached into the folds of his robe and drew out an envelope. Faye recognised the creamy parchment before she saw the ink. Her name was written in sloping green letters that seemed to lean toward each other, like leaves reaching for sun.
Miss F. Scamander
The Small Bedroom Under the Sloping Roof
The Cottage of Wild Things
Dorset
Her throat went tight.
"I owe it to Newt," Dumbledore said quietly, looking at Rolf. "And to Tina. And to your mother."
The words lay in the air between them like something fragile and precious. Rolf's expression flickered, that stepped-missing feeling flashing across his face again.
"Come in," he said hoarsely. "Please."
Dumbledore ducked under the lintel as if the house were greeting him with a playful cuff. His gaze skimmed the chaos of the cottage—the boots, the books, the faint scorch marks on the ceiling from an experiment gone wrong—and his mouth twitched in what might have been amusement, or nostalgia, or both.
A Hippogriff's shadow drifted past the window. Dumbledore's eyes followed it.
"You've continued the tradition," he murmured.
Rolf's shoulders relaxed by a fraction. "It seemed... wrong not to."
Faye stood very still, the letter cool in her hands, the weight of ink and promise sinking into her palms. The Bowtruckle clung a little tighter to her ear as if it, too, knew the house was holding its breath.
"May I?" Dumbledore asked, inclining his head toward the back garden.
Rolf nodded. "Of course."
They stepped out together, and Faye followed, because it was her garden, her creatures, her home. The air outside was crisp, the kind that nipped at noses and made breath visible. The field stretched out from the cottage in a patchwork of rough grass and half-tamed wildflowers. Hippogriffs grazed alongside stubborn, ordinary goats. Mooncalves blinked from the long grass, their huge eyes reflecting the pale sky. Somewhere near the pond, something that was mostly a duck and partly not-quite-a-duck made offended noises at the cold water.
The nearest Hippogriff raised its head as they approached, feathers ruffling. It was a beautiful creature; slate-grey, strong, its beak curved and sharp. Faye had named him Rowan when she was seven because he had looked like the rowan tree by the gate—beautiful and slightly dangerous.
Dumbledore stopped a respectful distance away and, to Faye's delight, bowed. Rowan eyed him beadily, then dipped his own head with a short, dignified motion.
"You see?" Dumbledore said softly, not looking away from the Hippogriff. "Even the proudest of creatures remember kindness."
Faye didn't know if he was talking about Rowan or her grandfather. Or both. Maybe both.
Rowan's gaze slid to Faye, and something like curiosity passed through it. He shifted closer, talons sinking into the damp earth.
"You may say hello," Dumbledore told her. "If you like."
Faye didn't need the permission, but she appreciated it. She stepped forward, bowing low in the way Rolf had taught her, one hand pressed to her chest, the other hanging, empty and open, by her side.
Rowan considered her.
Then he bowed back, deeper this time, the feathers along his neck shivering. When she straightened, she placed her hand gently against his beak, feeling the warmth of him, the way his breath gusted out against her wrist.
"Hello," she whispered. "I got my letter."
The Hippogriff huffed and shifted his weight, as if this were exactly the sort of thing he had expected to happen all along.
Dumbledore watched them with an expression Faye couldn't quite read.
"Your grandfather used to do that," he said. "Talk to them as if they understood every word."
"They do," Faye replied automatically, then flushed. "Sorry. That was rude."
"Not at all," Dumbledore said. "I find people who assume understanding are generally more pleasant to be around than those who assume ignorance."
He turned then, looking at her properly. Up close, she could see the lines at the corners of his eyes. They weren't the sharp, angry lines of someone who frowned a lot, but the soft creases of someone who had spent a lifetime watching things he cared about and didn't always manage to save.
"Faye," he said gently, and her name sounded different in his mouth. Important, somehow. "Hogwarts would be honoured to have you. Not because of your family, though they were remarkable. But because you are."
Her fingers tightened on the envelope. "What if they don't like me?" she asked, the question spilling out before she could wrestle it back.
Dumbledore's gaze flicked briefly to the fields, the creatures, the cottage with its crooked chimney.
"There will always be people who do not understand what they have been blessed to know," he said. "Some will find you strange. Some will be wary. Some may be unkind."
He paused. A faint smile touched his mouth.
"But the castle is older than any of them. It knows the language of small things very well. I should not be surprised if it has already made room for you."
The words settled over her like a cloak. She didn't understand all of them, not yet. But they felt right. Like putting a hand on the flank of a Hippogriff and feeling the steady, reassuring pulse beneath feathers.
Behind them, Rolf shifted his weight. "Thank you, Professor," he said quietly.
Dumbledore inclined his head. "I will take my leave," he said. "There are other letters to be delivered. Other owls to be berated for stealing toast."
He began to turn, then paused and reached into an inner pocket of his robe. When his hand emerged, he was holding a small tin.
"Lemon drop?" he offered solemnly.
Faye blinked. It was such an ordinary question in the middle of such an enormous day that it made her want to laugh and cry at the same time.
"Always," she said.
Dumbledore smiled, eyes crinkling. "A child after my own heart."
She took the sweet. It tasted sharp and bright and a little like courage.
He left them with a soft crack of displaced air, the spot where he had been standing empty now except for a feather drifting down from where Rowan had flicked his wings.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of the wind in the grass and the distant, questioning trill of a Mooncalf.
Rolf stepped up beside her and rested his hand on the back of her neck. His thumb rubbed a small, soothing circle just below her hairline.
"Well," he said eventually. "You'd better open it."
Faye looked down at the envelope. Her name shone back up at her, green ink steady and sure.
Her fingers fumbled at the seal. The wax cracked with a tiny, decisive sound. She unfolded the parchment and let the words rise up at her.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore...
The rest blurred for a moment. She blinked until it sharpened again, tracing the lines that said term starts on the first of September, that she would ride a train from a hidden platform, that she would wear robes and carry books and a wand of her own.
That she belonged. Somewhere that wasn't just the cottage, or the field, or the space left by missing people.
"Faye?" Rolf asked softly.
She swallowed. "It's real," she whispered. "It's all real."
"Of course it is," he said. "You thought I'd been making it up this whole time? That's very rude. I'll have to write to your headmaster and complain."
She laughed through the tightness in her chest and leaned back against him for a moment, letting his steadiness sink into her bones. Around them, the creatures shifted—Mooncalves peering closer, the duck-that-wasn't-a-duck flapping indignantly at nothing in particular, the Bowtruckle on her shoulder clinging as if it, too, had just understood that something in their world had tilted.
"I'm going," she told them quietly. Not just to Rolf now, but to the Hippogriffs, the Bowtruckles, the Niffler peeking out of the herb bed. "But I'll come back. I promise."
Rowan huffed, as if to say, You'd better.
The cottage watched her too, in its way—the windows, the chimney, the skewed roof that made her bedroom feel like a secret. Faye had the oddest sense that the house knew. That it approved.
Later, there would be lists to read, books to buy, decisions about pets to make. Later, she would stand on a crowded platform and breathe in coal and owl feathers and other people's nervousness. Later, she would walk into a castle that was older than her grief and smarter than her fear.
For now, she stood in the field in Dorset with her father's hand warm on her neck, a Hogwarts letter in her hands, and a world of wild things around her.
The wind tugged at her hair.
Somewhere, far away, the castle turned its attention toward a small cottage and the girl in its garden, and quietly made space.