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The book says he graduated from Hogwarts, and Newt is rather put out by it.
“Maybe it was an error.” She’s fixing his tie for the ninth time this morning, because he won’t stop pacing and fumbling with it. Their train had arrived in Hogsmeade the night before, and Tina doesn’t think he’s slept much since. “You can always have them fix it in the next edition.”
“I could just try to go back to school,” he muses.
“You’re thirty, Mr. Scamander. You could teach those children.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to do that.” He toys with the cuff of his jacket. “Children. Different breed of animal. One, perhaps, completely fine. But several classes, much more difficult.”
“So we’ll just have the one, then.”
“Two, perhaps. Possibly three.” Newt smiles. “I only had one brother, and I always wanted a sister.”
“Ah, so you married me for my family structure.”
He leans forward and kisses her forehead. “You’ve found me out. Terribly clever,” he murmurs. “Aren’t you?”
Newt had told her Hogwarts was nothing like Ilvermorny, but also very much the same. They shared a history, he had said, a deep connection. Tina quite liked the idea, lying in bed with her husband, thinking of a thread trailing through the ocean, connecting his past to her own.
“What house were you in?” she’d asked, right after he’d returned to gift her his book.
“Ah. Hufflepuff.” Bits of his dinner hit the table, and Tina had giggled. “What’s funny?”
“Hufflepuff?”
“Said the Wampus,” he’d teased, and they’d both fallen into a fit of laughter.
Now, Tina says the names of the Houses her husband had told her about over and over – Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin.
“You’ll get to meet him,” he says suddenly, hand squeezing hers as they walk toward the carriages.
“Dumbledore?”
“Yes. Yes, him.” He shakes a bit, then smiles. “I owe him a great debt.”
Tina frowns. “For advocating on your behalf? I doubt someone like Albus Dumbledore thinks you owe him much of anything, darling.”
Newt shrugs, goes quiet. He does that, when the conversation isn’t pleasant. This one, Tina suspects, ends here. Which is just as well – the carriages aren’t being pulled by the horses she’d been expecting at all. It throws her, just a bit.
“Thestrals,” Newt explains. “You can only see them if you’ve witnessed death.
“That’s awful,” she blurts out, and almost stops him from touching one.
“Don’t afraid,” he says. “They’re quite gentle. I used to visit them. They like sweets. Fruits, too. Apples, mostly.” He pulls one from his pocket, the one he’d grabbed from the bowl in the inn on the way out the door. “They won’t bite.” He twists the apple, and it splits cleanly down the middle. Tina takes a half, holds it out for the thestral. It snags the fruit and chews it in one bite. “See?” Newt takes her hand, helping her into the carriage. “Completely harmless.”
Their arrival, apparently, has been rather expected, and celebrated. They’re greeted by the caretaker, who limps up the stairs in what appears to be his best suit, mumbling something about snooty heads of state and high society dribble and what’s to be found in a damn book that you can’t find with your own damn eyes – all to Newt’s amusement.
“It’s Mr. Priebus,” he whispers. “I don’t think he recognizes me.”
“I recognize you, Scamander. Can still hear, thank you very much.” Priebus glances over his shoulder and scowls. “Can’t believe they’re lettin’ you back on the grounds.”
“I do love the constantly shifting sentiments of authority figures,” Newt says blandly, hooking Tina’s arm in his own. “And it’s good to see you in such wonderful health, Mr. Priebus.”
“Whatever. Stand here, wait for Dippet to say your name.”
Newt sighs. “It’s Dippet now, is it?”
Tina raises a brow. “You didn’t say we’d be such honored guests, Mr. Scamander.”
“I didn’t know.”
She believes him. Newt doesn’t pay attention to these sorts of things, and isn’t often bothered by them either. She sighs, squeezing his arm. “Are you happy with all of this?”
“I’d have been just as pleased with a nice letter, thanking me for my contributions to academia, along with an invitation I could have refused.” There’s a bit of a hanging, silent, but, Dumbledore asked that he’d only barely managed to mutter some weeks before all this, never to be said again.
Tina leans up and kisses his cheek, just as the headmaster says, “Please join me in welcoming Mr. Newton Scamander, and his wife, Porpentina.”
He looks delightfully frazzled the entire length of the Great Hall, and Tina is incredibly pleased with herself as they take their seats.
She’s also grateful that they don’t ask him to speak. Kiss or not, it would have been unpleasant for everyone involved, most notably her husband.
Tina has this to say about Hogwarts – they certainly know how to entertain. She’s escorted, aware from Newt, to a rather large room teeming with faculty and house elves, and handed a very full glass of honeyed wine. An elderly woman with glasses precariously perched on the end of her nose attempts to strike up a conversation, but Tina is concerned for the whereabouts of her husband, and his general well-being.
“—is the most requested book in our library,” the woman says. “And the Care of Magical Creatures professor has put in an order for his curriculum next year. You should be very proud of your husband.”
“I am,” Tina says. “Quite.” She is also relieved when Newt finally appears, head bowed, speaking to a man with auburn hair and bright eyes. To Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore looks around the room, looks for her. She can tell Newt’s been talking about her.
He always looks a certain way when he does.
Dumbledore manages to make the space feel quieter, as she is introduced by Newt to a very good, very kind wizard, as a skilled and practiced auror for the Magical Congress of the United States of America, a most talented witch, and, of course, “My wife. Recently so,” he adds, freckles going dark with a flush. “Tina is very talented. Very strong.”
“And has quite a firm handshake,” Dumbledore says, chuckling. “My congratulations to you both. Have you visited our Ministry?”
“Yes,” she says, unsure of how to look at a man like this. She sees, now, why Newt is so enamored and endeared. Why he says his name with reverence and just ever so quietly.
She also, gently and within herself, does not quite trust this man, but cannot explain why.
A personal problem, to be sure. She suspects all great wizards such as Albus Dumbledore have had to make hard and terrible choices at some point. The auror in her reminds her that she has had to make them as well, though she does not, despite Newt’s words and machinations, consider herself to be so great – but then, still, this is all a personal problem.
Albus Dumbledore is kind, and makes her husband smile. She decides to trust him enough.
And if anyone will understand, later, it will be Newt.
Back at the inn, he is scribbling something down, and Tina is considering growing out her hair. “Would you like it long, Newt?”
“Hmm?”
“My hair, Newt. Longer.”
“Your hair is dead bits living at the top of your head.” He stands and crosses the room to her, burying his face in her neck, inhaling deeply. “It is beautiful no matter how you wear it.”
“Newt.”
“Ah. You want specificity.” He nods. “It would look very beautiful long. If that’s how you’d like it.”
“I might,” she says, lifting his hand and kissing his palm. “You did very well tonight, I wanted to say.”
“Did I?” He leans down to wrap his arms around her. The wine, she’d realized some time ago, makes him a bit looser, easier to touch, to be touched by. “I’d rather be home.”
“Which one?” They have a flat in New York, and one in London. Neither is particularly homey.
“Well.” He pulls back, undoing his tie and smiling. “If you must know.” Another kiss, this time at the back of her neck, before he disappears to change. “It’s you. So I suppose right here is just as good a place to be as any flat of ours.”