Archive of Our Own ^beta

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NEW YORK CITY - NOVEMBER 1926

Jacob: What the hell is that thing?

Newt: It’s an Obscurus.

Jacob looks at Newt, who is momentarily lost in a bad reverie. Newt turns abruptly away and heads back toward the hut, his tone colder, more efficient, no longer happy to play about in the case.

Newt: I need to get going, find everyone who’s escaped before they get hurt.

The pair enters another forest, Newt plowing ahead, on a mission.

Jacob: Before they get hurt.

Newt: Yes, Mr. Kowalski. See, they’re currently in alien terrain, surrounded by millions of the most vicious creatures on the planet.

A beat.

Newt: Humans.

- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them  (Screenplay, 2016)

THE MOST VICIOUS CREATURES ON THE PLANET

I. Group Behaviour

October 1910
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry
Scottish Highlands, UK

Newt Scamander could never claim to have had a particular, in-born affinity with the human race. 

As a young child, he’d found people interesting and often entertaining—usually from a distance—but he’d always seen his own family as somewhat separate from the rest of humanity. He felt for others and thought about them and their lives, but he didn’t experience an inherent drive to approach them, unless they had a dire need he could fill. He hadn’t even noticed his own assessment of his fellow humans was at all odd until his parents started to worry in the years after Theseus left for Hogwarts, which had ultimately resulted in his father unsuccessfully bribing him to talk about anything other than animals, and in his mother spending hours over tea with her sister-the-mediwitch, until they finally dragged Newt to St. Mungo’s for ‘help’.  

But besides all that , Newt had simply learned at an early age that many people just didn’t like him. (‘You’re an acquired taste’, Theseus had once said.) Because humans had never exactly hurt him. Not as a group, or a species. They did so individually, yes (and often), but he was usually able to figure out the reason when he thought back on it later: Newt had startled them, or Newt had spoken out of turn, or Newt had asked an inappropriate question at the market, or Newt had run off without telling his mother, or Newt had put hands over his ears when the music went loud in the square (which was apparently very rude), or Newt had talked too much (or he hadn’t talked enough and that sometimes made people unaccountably cross)…  

However, he’d never found humans particularly cruel as a species until October of his third year at Hogwarts. 

(Humans: Confounding, yes. Generally hard to read. Sometimes surprisingly self-sabotaging. Often a bit mean. But not necessarily anything he’d call, exactly, vicious.) 

(Later, he’d realise what a privilege it was to live thirteen whole years before finding that out.)

But school — Well, school was different.

At school, Leta Lestrange often got harassed for things she couldn’t control—and, also, plenty of things she very much could—but she was a girl. And Newt found, after much observation of his peers in his very first year, that annoying boys and annoying girls were treated very differently…

You weren’t allowed to violently hex girls, for example. For girls, there was an expectation of at least clever—and usually caustically personal— spell-based or barbed verbal attacks, but at least girls didn’t really leave marks.

And, he’d also very recently noticed, you weren’t allowed to hit girls either.

Like Leta, Newt was also often picked on for plenty of things he couldn’t control (and a select few he could), but it usually didn’t bother him. Being an agreeable homework helper in the more natural magics (herbology, potions, creatures—even charms) meant lots of people left him alone because the benefits of accessing his help outweighed the negatives of tolerating his eccentricity. 

And his House, generally, liked him well enough. Which was nice, as he was fond of his housemates, even if he was infamously awful at showing it (and, still, infamously annoying).

But — there were times when the other House’s harassment did bother him. 

Because, apparently, you were allowed to hit annoying boys, something Newt was coming to very much resent. 

And, also—as he’d found that very day, outside, after lunch—you were quite allowed to hex annoying boys, too. And some boys—it turned out—were just as good at clever humiliation as the girls…

(Newt had always found the intricacies of human gender—outside of the body’s clear reproductive and sensory faculties—too confusing to think about for long, but he wasn’t naive enough to fail to notice how boy/girl delineations drove the majority of his classmates’ social decisions. And regardless of his own apathy toward gender-based loyalty and its associated posturing, he was still a boy, for all intents and purposes, and was - thus - judged against those standards and treated like one. [A bit of a nancy one, he’d heard someone whisper on the other side of the urinals once, which—he’d probably admit if he’d ever actually taken the time to think about it—was maybe not entirely untrue.])

So while Newt was annoyed and in pain, he also very much had enough knowledge of both magic generally and his classmates’ perceptions of him specifically to be pretty impressed by his harassers' ingenuity. (Their perceptions of him: Nose in a book, head in the clouds; facedown in the shallows with bulrushes as anchors. Grass-stained slacks, quiet voice and mud-scuffed shoes; pen in pocket, notebook within reach: clutched tight in his hand every  single  day.)

But regardless of their admitted creativity, Newt’s face was, now, throbbing something awful, his hand was very cold, and he was also getting very very incredibly bored.

“Uh uh uh — don’t you remove that compress, Newton Scamander!”

“Sorry, Madam Breit…” 

He pushed it back against his cheek and eye and mightily wished he’d bothered to finish learning the warming charm he’d found in the library the weekend before, or at least wrapped his sweater about his hand instead of discarding it in the patient cubbies...

“Just try to sit still for another few minutes. I think we’re almost there.”

He hmmed in acknowledgement and then leaned forward far enough to be propped on the table with one elbow, watching as Madam Breit readjusted his other arm before frowning fiercely at his hand for the third time in as many minutes. 

He’d given up frowning over it himself about three hours prior: It had immediately been clear to him—even as he dusted dirt off his robes, tergeo’d blood off his face, clumsily shoved his library books into his satchel—that whatever exactly had happened when he’d accidentally summoned his stolen notebook back from Blishwick, Black, and Clearwater; when Black had subsequently shot the thing with a spell mid-flight and then hexed Newt with something else in the half-moment before it returned to his hand —

Well , Newt had immediately known whatever it was was beyond his skill to repair… 

He’d ignored Leta’s demands for him to go straight to the Hospital Wing and followed her to Double Potions instead, where he made it through half the lesson with his predicament entirely unnoticed by tucking his hands in his bell-sleeves and reading the potion instructions aloud to Leta as she worked for the both of them. Unnoticed , that is, until Professor Cooke spotted him hunching over more than usual while uncharacteristically not participating in any of the practical magic, something he and Leta usually rather disruptively elbowed each other out of the way for, to be the one to get to do it… 

His arm had been grabbed at the wrist and lifted for all to see, then—leatherbound notebook appearing tightly clenched in one hand, though, in reality, the covers had melded and threaded themselves right into his skin—and then he had been loudly taken to task and firmly reprimanded for ignoring a ‘potentially dangerous curse injury’. 

Newt had bumbled his way through an excuse at that (head ducked to obscure the swelling on his face best he could), until Leta cut him off and dragged him from the classroom (losing them both ten points for ignoring a teacher and leaving behind a mix of horrified Hufflepuffs, snickering Slytherins, and a suddenly smoking cauldron in their wake).   

And, so, here he was: perched on a cot and studying his hand with Madam Breit, because Leta had had to run off to Transfiguration almost immediately after shoving him through the Hospital Wing doors, waving an overdue essay over her shoulder and summoning Newt’s own assignments from his bag to deliver to the Charms Master on her way. 

Madam Breit suddenly pressed her wand hard at the spot directly where his fingers fused to the book’s spine, and Newt scrunched his nose in response. He grit his teeth hard—the tiniest of sounds buzzing at the back of his throat—when her adapted removal spell shocked his palm like cascading lightning. His stomach turned slightly and he swallowed.

“Huh, that ought to have worked,” she murmured, glancing up at him and then gasping. “Georgs Geist, Newt—you’re white as a ghost! Did I hurt you?”

“No! Er— no, not exactly...”

“Mr. Scamander,” she intoned sincerely, and she turned his hand over awkwardly to run her wand along the palm (or, rather, the scarce part that was accessible via the tightly clutched notebook). “You have to say something when that happens, or I’ve no way of knowing.”

“I thought I did - sorry,” he said, barely above a whisper, shoulders relaxing as she soothed away the tingling electricity with an enchantment.

“No, you hummed, love.”

Newt blinked beneath the compress. “Oh.”

“So I’m going to need a bit more help if we’re going to get this off without hurting you further, all right?” she insisted quietly. “So you’ll talk to me as we work, through the rest of it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She nodded with satisfaction and then handed him another potion to further combat the growing headache, before reinvigorating the numbing charm she’d set on his hand a half hour before.

Newt squinted at the gaps between those places the leather seemed to have painlessly twisted tendrils into the epidermis and bit his lip in thought.

“Did you — ” he offered slowly. “Did you try transfiguring the - the dirt on the covers to oil? Or something slick? Maybe there’s enough debris on it to disrupt some of the external fusion. See, I’d been outside —”

“When aren’t you, child?” she muttered under her breath, but Newt ignored her and continued—

“—and the sketchbook was on the ground right before all this happened, so –”

Madam Breit hushed him and murmured another spell under her breath, and then another, and then she’d summoned over two books from her office and ruffled through them before trying three more. 

Newt was watching her eyebrows at just the right second to catch that moment she resigned herself to defeat. He glanced away when she let her wand clatter softly on the table beside him.

“Well, it was an excellent idea, Mr. Scamander, and it certainly helped minutely. But there’s just something odd here…” She adjusted the long cap covering her hair before continuing, and Newt saw the edges of it twitch against her robes from the corner of his vision. “ Look, Newton— Are you quite certain you don’t want to just tell me who cast it? It might make determining or constructing a counterspell significantly easier.”

“Well - I guess it doesn’t —” He readjusted his grip on the compress and flexed his fingers. “Everyone saw, so I suppose it’s not a secret... It was Perseus Black, ma’am. Or it could have been Allendum Blishwick. Or—” He paused. “Well - sometimes…” He trailed off. “You know how - how sometimes my magic does that - thing?” He didn’t pause or wait for affirmation, instead barrelling forward with barely a breath. “So, I’d summoned my notebook away from them without even meaning to while all this was happening, so I can’t be sure, you see, that – ”

He stopped abruptly and began bouncing his heels when he felt Madam Breit look at him pityingly.

“Well,” she said soothingly, and she crossed her legs at the ankle beneath the table between them. “I’m going to suggest Headmaster Black have a chat with his little cousin Perseus, and I’ll send for some of the professors to have a look at your hand, too.” She paused. “Now, if none of them can do anything for it, Newt, I’m afraid I’ll have to write your parents and transfer you to St. Mungo’s for a spell.”

Newt’s stomach flipped again, but he nodded and looked away, blinking hard as he gazed down the long hall to a far-away window, where he could see clouds skittering yellow and flat across the late-afternoon sun. 

He suddenly realised he was closer to tears than he had been all afternoon, and the eye under the compress pulsed with the rising beat of his heart.

Madam Breit obviously realised this too and, much to his chagrin, she ducked her head in an attempt to interrupt his distant gaze. “Is there something wrong with that, Mr. Scamander?”

“I just — I just don’t like St. Mungo’s very much,” he managed around that tight pressure in his throat. “Or hospitals generally. Hate them, actually.”

“Oh, Newt,” she sighed, and she patted his hexed hand and gestured at him to sit back on the bed instead of hunching over the hard worktable. “I know you do... But I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to them if you keep on like this. Between the creature fixation, your absolute recklessness on the pitch, and all these issues with —” 

She paused and seemed to bite her tongue, and then concluded uselessly:

“Well.” 

Newt felt her studying him hard then, and when he glanced up he knew enough about faces and human-specific behaviours to understand she was not sure precisely how to proceed… 

“Madam Breit,” he finally said, “l know I’m odd.” She seemed to deflate in relief that he’d saved her from actually saying it. “I know that people don’t always like things that are - are different. And it’s okay, you know. I’m okay with it.”

She looked like she was about to sit down on the bed beside him and say something soothing, so Newt was very glad when she caught herself halfway through her movements, and didn’t. 

“But you shouldn’t have to be, child,” she said instead in a sad voice, and Newt immediately shrugged, lifted the hand fused to his notebook to cradle it against his chest. She spelled the compress he’d finally abandoned to float alongside his face. “You shouldn’t have to be okay with it.”

“I think it’s just the social behaviour of humans.” He pulled his knees up toward him and watched a shadow on the far wall. “I think there’s something about - about human adolescence maybe — in particular — that elevates the need for - for social cohesion within groups.”

Madam Breit was folding several small squares of paper into birds as he spoke, and then she’d tapped them with her wand to bring them to life and sent them away with messages to the headmaster and professors. 

“So I—” Newt was saying. “I think maybe I do have to. Have to be okay with it, that is. Because I think, maybe — at a species level — this is a fairly typical experience…. One that’s probably - Well, it’s probably actually evolutionarily protective.”

He let his eyes drift away to the window again, where the thin cirrus clouds had cleared, and its frame was filled instead with the brilliant, boundless blue of a cold autumn sky.

“The exclusionary behaviour is protective, I mean to say. And then the - the corrective action, for those who stray from the pack… It teaches the lone member a lesson, and it reinforces the expectations to everyone else. Which I’d imagine, really, is an incredibly effective tactic.”

(After all, by the time Newt had gotten over his surprise enough to trip up the Slytherin boys with enlivened roots and a well-directed gale of wind—by the time Leta had set to screaming at her housemates—an impressively large number of students had already gathered: a corrective action turned immediately to group reinforcement.)

Madam Breit pulled off the charmed compress as he thought, and he knew the swelling was finally down enough for her to sense the state of the bone beneath. He could only imagine his eye was an impressive shade of violet, because he’d been half-paying attention to the feel of skin stretching over bruise and edema for the better part of two hours.

“I’ve read that dragons do the same thing,” he continued suddenly. “I don’t like it, personally —” 

(He knew he was rambling at that point, but he also knew it wasn’t ideal to sleep so soon after such a good wallop about the head—even though he was very very tired—and he was also beginning to suspect the potions were, unintentionally, significantly loosening his tongue...) 

“– but I think I understand it. Scientifically. Even if I’d like to think we have an innate capacity to change that cruelty, as a species.”

He flinched and screwed up his eyes when Madam Breit pressed hard at his cheek, and then there was the warmth of a spell passing over him. 

“You are a Hufflepuff through and through, aren’t you?” she murmured to his last statement, and then a second wave of warmth passed over his cheek and up his brow as she assessed him.

When he opened his eyes again, she had a hand on her hip and was frowning. 

“It appears you do have an incomplete fracture here, Newt. I’m honestly not certain how you’ve so casually tolerated it for so long…”

“Oh,” he said with surprise. (He always forgot he was less expressive about discomfort than people expected children to be...) “Well – er - I don’t feel great, Madam Breit. I mean – it was hard enough to shatter one of the lenses in my omnioculars, so - ?”

She shook her head and tsk ed, and he looked down at his lap, eye tearing up against his will without the compress.

“The eye piece is probably what did it, then.”

Newt nodded.

“Well, it’s a fairly easy fix, but we’ll wait until Albus and Galatea and whomever she brings have had a look at that hand. Don’t want to overdose you, after all, if we can help it.”

That elicited a very quiet chuckle, and Madam Breit smiled as she glided away, returning a half-minute later with another small spoonful of potion, which Newt took immediately and without question. He knew he was a bit better at potions than the average third-year, and he could taste the main ingredients, one of which was likely to push his exhaustion right over the edge into sleep within a handful of minutes—

“I’m sorry, er — Am I allowed to…?”

“Yes. You’re fine. I’ll wake you when they get here.”

Newt held his hexed hand tighter to his chest and lowered himself to bed, curling on one side, his uninjured cheek pressed into the flat cotton pillow. 

“Is it the zygomatic arch?”

“No,” she answered quietly, and she was summoning a blanket, draping it over him just as his brain began to slow like a rock skipped fast across a lake before suddenly starting to sink—in loops and swirls of cushioning current—far beneath its surface... “But it is part of the zygoma, Newton, and the arch itself is nice and bruised, too, so I expect it does feel like it.  You can have three points to Hufflepuff for being that close in your assessment without a mirror, though—well done.”

“I rearticulated a krup skeleton once,” he heard himself saying, and he shrugged the blanket up to his ears with his shoulder, no longer exactly sure why the words were coming. “She must have been hit in the face at some point, before she died, because…”

Madam Breit tugged the curtains closed around his bed—

“Because on her skull — But Dad - I told him what to fix… — Madam Breit, I’m very tired.”

—and filled a water glass on the sidetable.

“I know, child.”

“But my dad , he charmed the bone with –”

She was casting muffling charms about the borders of his mattress. 

“I’ll let you look at it yourself later,” he vaguely heard her interrupt. “So you can learn about the injury on living flesh, hm?”

“Mmhm, please.”

“I’ll even teach you about primate facial bones. But for now —”

“We had these –  Madam Breit, we had these little muggle screws—” 

“You’re not going to need any screws, Newt. Go to sleep.”

“And Dad - and my dad —  He…”

But then—in the comparative darkness of the curtained bed, wrapped fully in Madam Breit’s thoughtfully cast silence (the promise of a healing lesson on a near horizon)—the potion finally won, and Newt was deeply asleep.

.0.

He dreamt of lizards, and of riding dragons, and of running the backward length of evolutionary time all the way to creation’s dawn, ducking and weaving between phylogenetic splits, leaping from species to species like skipping stones upstream—like those fish in America that beat themselves to death to ensure their own continuation: a sacrifice each spring—until he’d gone so far back he’d swum through the shallow waters of a warm Cambrian sea, until he’d melted deep down into the core of the earth, from which he exploded (in a billion pieces) backward, chasing the gas at the beginning of the galaxy as it spun across the empty night, rapidly uncondensed like history in reverse: he floated in tiny little atoms through space and through time, until it started all over again, until he was bent over the bones of a dinosaur (somewhere in Peru), bent over the nest of a dragon (somewhere off an Inca trail), bent over an injured creature he’d never before seen deep in a subarctic forest, a creature he’d never even read about, his body and his wand and his magic the only thing between its life and its—

He woke abruptly to a hand on his shoulder, and to early evening light. To blurry shades of purple and ecru and then, blinking, to Albus Dumbledore: his clear blue eyes, his concerned but brilliant smile, his plum-coloured waistcoat like a quintaped’s iris.

Newt wondered aloud then—before he’d realised it wasn’t still a dream—if all non-mammalian, magical synapsids had zygomatic arches and orbital rims, too.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled, and he promised he’d ask Professor Stump and get back to Newt by breakfast.

“But for now, let’s see this hand, hm?”

“Please don’t ruin my notebook, Professor,” he murmured as he pushed himself up, peeled the rough edges of the cover away from where they’d stuck to his cheek in sleep. “I’ve just finished six pages on semi-sentient plants, and my arithmancy revision is in there, too.”

He was awake and felt much better, but Galatea Merrythought and Professor Cooke and Madam McGonagall and a Charms teacher he didn’t even know all stood behind his unlikely mentor, and there was a feeling distantly building in his chest that he’d managed to put off all day. 

Newt blinked, swallowed, and stared at the blanket bunched on his knees. 

This was a new situation and he immediately knew he was not fond of it.

“Well, Mr. Scamander, we’ll see what we can do.” Dumbledore smiled gently, and held out a hand, patiently waiting for Newt to offer him the offending body part. “Though as excellent as I know your extracurricular research to be, I quite hope you value your hand more than your writing... One is infinitely more replaceable than the other, after all.”

Newt shoved himself against the rickety headboard and he might have told Dumbledore his order of operations was debatable, were he feeling more cheeky. As it was, he pulled his knees toward his chest again and extended the hexed hand and associated notebook, momentarily glancing at his professor’s face. 

“Now, Newt, I’d like you to look at that window way down there, please, and I’ll need you to count to twelve, and breathe.” 

“Yes, sir.”

One - two - three - four —

“Find a pattern in the wall when you’re done counting,” Dumbledore suggested quietly, running a hand over his own.

— five - six - seven - eight —

He traced fingers over the exposed leather of the notebook, and there was a radiating pulse as he pressed down.

— nine - ten - eleve—

There was a sudden surge of magic up his arm and Newt jumped so hard he hit his mouth with his knees and tasted blood.

“Ah,” he choked out, for his eyes had skittered away from the window and he couldn’t find a pattern anywhere in the granite. “Um, Leta - please.”

Dumbledore pulled the magic back from his arm—he felt it rushing down his shoulder, syphoning out his fingers: back into his teacher. 

Newt shook his head and focused very hard on his lap and on quieting that feeling in his hands, because his skin was buzzing like the air after a lightning strike and his mind and his magic were utterly on edge, far too tired right then to entirely stop it—

“I’m so sorry — ” His vision flickered at the edges (discomfort, humiliation). “Can you find Leta? Leta — please, professor.”

Dumbledore held up his hands to emphasise he’d stopped examining him, and he leaned back to add another few inches of space between them.

“Madam Breit will send for her,” Dumbledore murmured evenly, not looking away, and Newt could feel him prodding gently at the energy jumping at the borders of his mind, trying to figure out how to roll it back. “Leta Lestrange, Madam, from Slytherin House, if you please.” 

Newt heard the swish of Madam Breit’s dress as she retreated, so loud it was like the waves that beat the shore between storms that year their father took them to Lyme Regis on holiday—  

“Newt—”

He jerked in surprise but kept his eyes on his knees, well away from that group of people he barely knew standing behind his mentor, that group that watched him and breathed out loud and, that flooded the room with far too much energy — 

“I’m going to let Professor Fletcher—that’s the Charms teacher for O.W.L.s, Newt—” His voice was dulcet, even, carving through the buzzing in his brain like an icebreaker in winter— “layer some spells on you to keep you calm. While he does that, I’d like you to count to ten for me, and then I’m going to ask you to count back down, Newt, skipping back by threes, all the way to negative eleven, hm?”

Newt clenched his hand on his thigh and tilted his head just enough to let Dumbledore know he was listening.

One - two —

Magic that wasn’t his dancing on his skin.

— three - four - five —

A sudden surge of lightness in his chest that he hadn’t even asked for: the release of the vice like oxygen to fire for that restless energy flickering out of his control.

—six - seven - eight- nine-ten-seven-four-one —

Someone tried to shove an image of the lake into his head, as if it would be soothing even though it was all wrong , because the wind didn’t whip patterns on its surface and there was no stirring from squid or from —

— negativetwo-negativefive-negative-eight —

—grindylows, or even frogs, and the sky was flat with no depth — no gradient — and the wrongness made him feel sick sick sick—

— negativeeleven eleven eleven —

“All right, Newt. Your—” Dumbedore’s voice loud in his head, and Newt could feel his heart in his feet and he was burning as much with embarrassment as with uncontrolled —  “—magic is striking out, my boy. I need you to try your best to look at me.” 

Dumbledore patted his cheek slightly and Newt jerked under the touch, the sparks about his hexed hand flaring so hard he felt warmth all about him like small, licking flames.

“Newt, I need you to let me help you. We need to coil the magic back up inside you—like an occamy, hm?” He grasped hard at Newt’s shoulder and pulsed his hand minutely; it reverberated through him like a pebble down a well. “You need to let me in to do that, Mr. Scamander. I promise you I’ve done this for others before, so I need you to trust me now— Show me your eyes so I can open the door.”

But Newt could only turn away from the disaster that felt like it was happening very far away, very far away and to someone who couldn’t possibly be him, for he was watching the whole thing, now, from the ceiling as if he were an actor in a play…

“It’s focusing on the notebook right now, Newt, and we can’t have you hurting yourself by damaging it while it’s still attached to you, can we?”

No, no – not his notebook, either. He couldn’t burn his notebook.

“I’m sorry –” Newt finally bit out, and he was surprised the words shook out of him, vibrating like bone-dry leaves in a winter wind. “It hasn’t happened like this in - I’m - So - I’m so sorry.”

The door creaked open—

“She was waiting in the Entrance Hall, Albus.”

Dumbledore nodded and waved Madam Breit in, Leta trailing slightly behind her, though she took off running when she saw Newt hunched on the bed in the centre of the hall.

“Professor, why are you touching him? Let go!” 

Newt’s head snapped up, for there she was. 

There was Leta, so suddenly on the bed beside him. 

Leta with a hand floating just beneath his chin, not touching at all but forcing him to focus, forcing him to look at her as the air buzzed like electricity around them and his chest was too light for his body— 

“Take off the spells,” she hissed insistently. “This isn’t nerves. Can’t you see they’re making it worse?”

There was a rustling of robes and then Professor Fletcher had lifted all the charms in a heartbeat. Leta scowled at each and every one of the adults in turn before scooting slightly closer, making the headboard clatter metallic against the stone as she moved. 

“Would you like me here, or gone?” she asked in an urgent voice near Newt’s ear.

“Here.”

The mattress bounced slightly, and he and Leta sunk down as Dumbledore rose and stepped away from the bed ( post-glacial rebound: like Sweden, like Scotland : like sea levels he felt himself think somewhere far off in his head, and then—)

Leta.

“Pressure or space, Newt?”

“Pressure.”

She pulled him to her chest, forced the uninjured side of his face to her sternum; she squeezed both arms round his back and linked them.

“If you could give us a moment, I’m certain Newt will be ready to continue his meeting in a few minutes,” Leta said as directly and primly as she could manage, with her best friend burning scarlet against her chest, breaths erratic and hand still flickering with angry, violet sparks. “And please, what are you looking at? I know how to handle this, and you are certainly not helping.”

Newt watched from beneath her arm as Dumbledore and Cooke and McGonagall and Breit and Fletcher and Merrythought all stepped away from the bed like some multi-organism mass, moving as one to the bed beside them. They talked amongst themselves yet still, surreptitiously, observed.

“Ignore them,” Leta said quietly, and there was an underlying bite weighing down the dismissive demand: a welcome anchor to Newt’s heart. “Here, I’m going to tell you what I had for dinner and about stupid Marianna, and then you’ll tell me about the life cycle of squids, all right?”

He nodded against her, and she tucked his hexed hand between them and went back to squeezing.

Four minutes of focused quiet later and Newt’s head had quit buzzing, his magic had retreated far back within him, and he was sat up straight, legs criss-crossed in front of him, hair pushed out of his eyes and breath even. 

Leta gripped his healthy fingers so he wouldn’t lose his centre, and then she gestured at their professors to return. 

She forced Newt’s eyes to stay on their clasped hands the entire time he was poked and spelled and potioned and prodded, one teacher after another after another.

She prompted him with questions when his voice caught or it faltered, and she transitioned him from talking about squids to considering kelpies to describing the doxy nest on his family’s property whenever he ran out of facts.

Within a half hour, the examination was done, and Newt had profusely apologised for his earlier behaviour, which Dumbledore waved away as quickly as he’d done the rest of the professors. However, he did inform him that he was very sorry, Newt but they were going to have to owl his parents after all, which—yes—probably meant hospital.

A truly odd hex  he told them. And probably not even entirely on purpose, since it had been cast by a fourth year—with his own magic caught up in it, too—but since it involves two types of animal cells, perhaps Newt might be interested to learn about it while we wait?

Leta saw Newt’s mournful glance at his fused and useless notebook as Dumbledore began an impromptu lecture, so she summoned her bag and took out her own. 

She scribbled notes for him as Dumbledore drew diagrams in the air and extensively explained—

Later, when Leta ripped the pages from her own book to press them nonchalantly into Newt’s lap, Newt accepted the notes with a genuine smile and several long seconds of lingering eye contact.

Leta thought he looked at her, then, like she were the kindest creature he’d ever known to walk the planet.

.0.

While Newt had done his own fair amount of relatively harmless spellwork in return, he was still very relieved to hear Headmaster Black—who was anything but fond of him—explain to his parents he would not be held responsible for magical retaliation so clearly tied to self-defence. (And Newt was pleased, also, to hear Dumbledore compliment his creative spellwork to Theseus when he thought he wasn’t listening...)

All in all, his family reacted to the tale of the incident exactly the way he expected: Theseus had been livid; his mother was ruefully unsurprised; and Newt hadn’t seen his father look quite so sad since he’d pressed a kiss to his hair before apparating away from the farm in Spring 1905.

(By that point, Newt thought everyone was making an unnecessary fuss of the whole thing. Certainly, the last few remaining vestiges of the species-level trust he’d placed in his fellow human beings had gone up like birch-bark parchment in a housefire, but he was, ten hours later, mostly just upset—and exhausted and hungry—that his head was still throbbing and that he was likely to lose at least the first and last fifteen or so pages of his notebook by the time all was said and done…)

His mother pulled strings with her sister—a mediwitch at the St. Mungo’s Children’s Ward—to send a healer from Spell Damages to Hogwarts, so they wouldn’t have to ‘deal’ with Newt at hospital.

(Normally, the euphemistic phrasing would have ruffled him in a distant part of his self-awareness, but for now he decided his aunt Willow deserved at least a letter at Christmas…)

In the end, Newt had lost none of the work in his notebook, but he did lose nearly a half-centimetre of flesh from the palm of his hand, a few millimetres from each finger. The healers had numbed him enough that they let him watch as they did it, and he took notes in his head as to how to combine magical spells with medical instruments to most swiftly and carefully separate skin.

(Not that he would be telling anyone that.)

Theseus stood beside him and disbelievingly shook his head at his evident fascination, while Leta ran across the room to vomit in the washbasin—

Newt only watched and watched.

(It took longer to knit the flesh back over threaded vein and tendon, and he did decide that part was fairly offensive to the senses.) 

Eventually, his hand was well-bandaged and his cheek well-repaired, and he was tucked into bed with a moderate dose of Skelegro, a kiss to the forehead from his mother, and a charm for dreamless sleep.

Newt was back in his lessons the very next day, Leta and a veritable wall of upper-year Hufflepuffs (half of whom he didn’t even know) chivying him to every class, a book about prehistoric skeletons—anonymously delivered to the Hufflepuff table that morning at breakfast—pinned firmly beneath one arm.

It took a week—with two applications of murtlap essence and a dose of dittany a day—for the bandages to finally stay off and, when they did, the skin was still slightly indented, a pearly expanse of smooth and delicately healing pink where he’d once been able to trace each line on his palm…

It did, at least, get him out of half of the lectures on palm-reading in Divination at the end of term. (A subject he would fail out of by exams, anyway.)

And, so, Newt Scamander’s first impressive scar was not from a doxy, or a jarvey, or the other dozen creatures—magical and otherwise—he’d gotten himself bitten by in his thirteen short years inhabiting planet earth.

Newt’s first impressive scar was from humans.

From humans working in tandem to harm.

And—even as a dragon bore down on him six years later at age 19 (fairly roasting the lifeline from his other palm, too)—that first deep scar was not something he was ever likely to forget.

Chapter Text

.

II. Dyadic Analysis, Part One

November 1910
Hogmseade and Hogwarts
Scottish Highlands, UK

Two weeks later, Theseus had insisted Newt meet him in Hogsmeade, requested via a series of abrupt but well-meaning messages delivered by an overworked Ministry owl—whom Newt doted upon—every morning for a week. He had therefore reluctantly cancelled his plans to help Head Seznec with mandrake research on Saturday and trudged into town with the rest of the school instead.

Outside the bookshops, he promised Leta he would formally introduce her to his brother before returning to the castle (for she insisted vomiting in a washbasin was not the way to impress her best friend’s elder sibling, even though Newt had repeatedly told her Theseus couldn’t care less), before bidding her farewell. He then wandered toward the bench where he guessed he would find Theseus, for it was right between his brother's proclaimed favourite restaurant in the village and the sports goods store, all kitty-corner from his preferred stationary supplier.

(And Theseus was there, of course, because—contrary to popular belief—Newt was not entirely oblivious to patterns of human behaviour; and he had long been skilled at predicting his brother.)

As he rounded the corner, Theseus at first frowned at him with concern but then beamed, leaping up, calling out his name, and pulling him into a quick, hard hug. 

Newt’s hands automatically clenched but, as always, he let his brother hold him...

When Theseus pulled away, he gestured at a small wooden crate Newt hadn’t noticed on the bench behind him, and then tugged at him slightly to get him to sit down.

“Hi, Theseus,” he murmured.

“I got you something.”

Newt blinked. “You did? Why?”

“Because I’m your brother, Mud. What a daft question.”

Newt smiled slightly and then squirmed when Theseus shifted the heavy crate (regrettably unmoving, which meant something not quite so exciting as a creature) into his lap. It was covered in an undyed bandana, and Newt glanced at Theseus before pushing off the bandana to reveal its contents. He felt his eyebrows go up and his head tilt to the side of its own accord, for the crate was filled, he estimated, with about twelve handsome, leatherbound notebooks, his name stamped in the bottom right corner of each.

“New notebooks,” Theseus declared, unnecessarily, “with sketch and lined pages in every one. And they’re spell-proof to all but you. I’ve charmed them to react only to enchantments matching your magical signature.”

Newt blinked hard in surprise. He had to learn how to charm like that one day. (Though it did not escape his notice that Theseus had apparently studied him enough without his notice to be able to reproduce his magic for protective spells…) Nevertheless, he picked up one of the notebooks and flipped through it as Theseus continued. 

“And, Newt, I had an older colleague put a right nice tracking spell on them before all that, too—”

Theseus pulled a thick chain from his pocket, plucked the hand not busy with the notebook out from between Newt’s knees, and then laid the glistening gold in his palm.

“You can use it for a pocket watch when you’re older, but for now it’s spelled to sort of… direct you to wherever your ‘active’ notebook is, if you’ve left it behind somewhere, or it's gone missing. It’s pretty intuitive, so I’ll leave you to figure it out. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the challenge."

Newt stared at the chain and then looked back up at Theseus.

“I just, Newt — I need you to be thoughtful about using it, though. If you were to realise you hadn’t just misplaced it and someone had actually taken it, for example, like last time—”

Newt immediately looked back down and closed the cover with a controlled snap.

“—you get help instead of charging in alone, all right?”

He busied himself with slipping the notebook back into its place in the crate, straightening the edges—

“I think I can — I think I can take care of myself, Theseus.”

“Newt.” 

A huff of exasperation, and Newt had tucked his chin to his chest and was rubbing hard at the deep scar on his palm without even realising he was doing it. 

“Newt,” his brother said again, more firmly.

When wand-calloused fingers tilted his head at the chin to redirect his attention, Newt forced his eyes to focus somewhere in the region of Theseus’ left ear just to get him to stop touching him.

“You are thirteen years old,” Theseus intoned. “You do not have to always take care of yourself. Not yet.”

Newt bit his tongue for there was a phrase circling in his head (‘I think you’ll find that I do’) that he knew would open a Pandora’s box for which he had neither the energy nor words. While Newt knew Theseus often meant well, he also tended to approach each of Newt’s concerns with the same sledgehammer—instead of a purposefully selected, finer tool—and Newt had therefore begun to find it easier to just verbally assent during their conversations and figure it out on his own later.

“All right then,” he therefore said aloud instead, and he doubled the chain and wound it round to fit his wrist, holding it out toward Theseus in a wordless request to charm it closed like a bracelet.

Theseus complied, and Newt immediately went back to looking at the notebooks.

“These are - they’re really beautiful, Thes. And the charm work is great. I really appreciate it. I do.”

He looked up to find Theseus beaming at him again, and he shifted slightly under the observation before jumping to his feet and heaving the crate into his arms. 

“Thanks.”

Theseus rose to meet him and extended an arm dramatically, allowing Newt to lead the way to his favourite table in his favourite pub: a booth nearest the kitchens in the Three Broomsticks, in a corner very subtly under the watchful eye of the kindly matron.

Later, when Madam Keena brought Newt a free butterbeer while charging Theseus full price for his whisky and chips, Newt pretended not to notice… But he couldn’t help muffling a snort in his mug when his brother huffed in annoyance, ran a hand through his hair to check for flyaway curls, and then downed his Ogden’s in one.

.0.

That night after supper, in his dormitory, Newt looked more closely at the chain Theseus had transfigured into a bracelet about his wrist; and he was surprised to find it charmed shut with a transfigured gold: two medals about the size of half-knuts were affixed to either side of the chains, keeping them from tightening about his arm or rubbing too hard, pinning the looped layers in place. His own initials were printed on the front—NAFS—and, when he flipped the medallion to the back, there was a tiny globe with a newt wrapped about it, a subtle sun cresting behind it all like a sunrise.

He hadn’t realised Theseus was that good at nonverbal magic. 

(Or, frankly, that good at transfiguration at all . But he was an auror, now, and not just an older brother, he supposed…)

Newt hmm ed and cracked open the notebook that had been on the top of the stack. As he patted about his satchel for a pen, however, the thing sprang to life with the sound of Theseus clearing his throat, before cracking its own spine, laying itself flat on the bed, and flicking through the pages as if caught in a whirlwind until it settled on a well-inked page.

Newt narrowed his eyes, shoved the pen between his teeth, and swallowed a swear, because this was so very dramatically and obnoxiously Theseus. He leaned forward and took in his brother’s Ministry-influenced script:

Little brother,

I lied. I didn’t charm these to react to only your magic until after I put this charm on myself, so it would open to my letter when you finally sat down to write. And since I know you’re probably quite ready to write whatever you’ve set out to, I’ve tried to be very direct and jump straight to the point:

Newt, I know life is hard for you sometimes. And I also know that sometimes Mum and I push you a little too much to change. (I know you know why we do that, and I know you’re rolling your eyes right now, but please bear with me.) I’m bringing this up because I hope these notebooks serve you well, for what you want to fill them with (which I have no illusion is anything but beasts, though it would be a lie to say I’ve relinquished all hope of you one day falling in love with a slightly less dangerous and significantly more socially acceptable subject).  We’re different, you and I, but I am trying to respect that, because I think you know you’re a bit different from nearly everyone else, too. Different isn’t bad, and I hope you believe that…

But different is hard, Newt.

And different will get you hurt. 

It will get you hurt now, and it will get you hurt later, and it will probably get you hurt for the rest of your life. 

And since I can’t persist in asking you to entirely stop being who you apparently inherently are , I will ask you to be as aware of your surroundings and the intentions of others as you can possibly be. I know you defended yourself well—and without hurting anyone, which is truly an impressive feat—during that fiasco a few weeks ago, but you could do to develop a bit better sense of self-preservation. Specifically when it comes to other humans. Do you understand?

Please don’t hesitate to write me. I’m still living at home, but I get post at Father’s address in London, too. And Albus Dumbledore, of all people, has made it quite clear to me that he is very fond of you, so you mustn’t hesitate to lean on him, either.

I didn’t say any of this in person because I’m honestly not sure if you actually hear me when I talk, and because I know you prefer the written word. I hope you know that me not saying this to your face doesn’t reduce the sincerity at all. I am proud of you. And Mum and Dad are, too, even if, recently, they’re a bit odd about showing it. I think they are preoccupied. Dad’s just …dad . I have no idea what fills his mind half the time, plus he has been utterly enamoured of those enchanted writing balls and typewriters that were distributed across the country after that Muggle estate sale. (If you haven’t read about it, try to grab a Prophet tomorrow. It is never good when our secrecy is threatened, of course, but the papers are having a riot – in fact, Dad had a rather funny one-line jab on the front page last week. Uncle Hesiod thinks he’s not taking it seriously enough, but Uncle Hesiod also sometimes needs a toad in his seat, if you know what I mean.) 

And you know how Mum is, Newt—she worries about you so much, and I think sometimes she can’t see past all that worry to appreciate the rest of you. 

(Now, being proud doesn’t mean I won’t still send you a howler, though, if Black catches you in the forest again. Please , Newt. I’d guess you’re on thin ice through the end of term, so it would logically behove you to act like it…)

Anyway, take care, Mud, and please accept both my well wishes and my love. 

Your brother,

Theseus 

P.S. - Your new friend is very pleasant, even if her family is objectively distasteful and out of step with our own values. Now, I don’t mean to condescend but I do know these sorts of things don’t come naturally to you, so please tolerate this string of unsolicited advice: Don’t forget that friendships need tending, just like a mandrake, or a tentacula (or an entire branch of bowtruckles). To make this last, you’ll have to be sure to pay Miss Lestrange the same kind of mind she pays you , even if you must remind yourself to do it. Put it in your schedule, if you need to, like homeworks. Here’s some ideas: 

1. Any time you see her, you might use easy prompts like this: “How was transfiguration?” or “You look [some emotion]. Would you like to talk?” 
2. When Miss Lestrange initiates conversation with you or shares something, you should offer questions throughout, like “What makes you feel that way?” “What happened next?” to show her you are listening. I personally find people like this, especially when they know I’m not even personally invested in the topic of conversation. It shows commitment and care.
3. You may find when Leta helps you with something, it is appropriate to return the favour within a reasonable amount of time (say, a week). One option: Take note of whether you share the same strengths academically and, if you don’t, that’s a clear, easy way for you to reciprocate. (I don’t mean to do her work for her, of course. I just know herbology and potions and the like come far more easily to you than, say — being a shoulder for a girl to cry on.) 
4. Miss Lestrange clearly knows your interests fairly well, so you could try to learn more about hers, too—the ones you do not share. This also demonstrates you care, and it will build a foundation of trust and shared experience over time. (Because I know you care, Newt — but sometimes others will need you to be far more explicit in expressing it. Does that make sense?)

Anyway, glad you met her, stay out of trouble, give her my regards. - TETS

Newt stared at the paper, digesting the advice, and then flung himself across the quilt for the stationary box he kept under his bed. He pulled out a sheet of plain paper with an elderly cat printed in the corner and hunched over to reply.

Dear Theseus,

Thank you again for the notebooks. The detail you added to the watch chain is really handsome. I just noticed it. The design on the back is really thoughtful and unique. I’d like to learn how to transfigure like that some time. It’s almost like art. Perhaps you’ll have time to offer advice over the holidays.

Also, I’m glad you like Leta. I think she’s quite misunderstood but utterly brilliant. (The fact that I don’t annoy her is an added boon, of course - ha.)  We like a lot of the same things, and she can see things about people and problems the same way I can see things about creatures and environments. It’s really interesting. She understands the value of science even when other people laugh and call it a Muggle pastime, and she can really be quite funny herself. Actually, she told the best joke about dugbogs last week; and she has made it her personal mission to get those boys who hexed me into as many detentions as possible, which is, incidentally, also fairly humorous to observe. 

So thank you for the advice on friendship (even if your postscript was nearly longer than the letter itself). And I didn’t think it was condescending. I think earnestness and transparency are kind. Everyone seems to assume we are all born with this inherent, species-specific social instinct, but I don’t really think — 

What I mean to say, brother, is that I do appreciate explanation in the form of actionable guidelines. Instead of vague suggestions. Guidelines can be followed but also subsequently tested, I think? Which is nice. Mostly, though, I’m grateful because I really don’t want to unintentionally hurt Leta. She is kind to me, and I think she makes me happier. 

To assuage your concerns: I’ll of course let you know if I need anything. Please give Mum and the hippogriffs my love, and maybe assure her I am trying my best to behave. And tell the same to Dad, if you visit. (And yes, I’m not sure what exactly Dumbledore sees in me but he’s been forward with his kindness. He let me help him heal a phoenix last year. I’ll enclose a copy of my sketches next time.) 

Oh - I forgot to mention - We have an intramural match next Thursday! I’ll write to let you know how it goes. I was moved up to centre chaser last week. Breit says it’s all right to play as long as I wear my gloves and the referee approves the one-off use of a cushioning charm.

You’ll also like to know: Hufflepuff captain (Clement’s older brother, Macmillan) likes to watch our games and he says I “fly like a bat out of hell”. He asked me to try out for the proper team next year. I told him that was quite kind of him but that I have no interest at all in practising every single day, because when else am I meant to be on the grounds? 

He doesn’t seem to understand the importance of good light at forest edge. Which is his loss, I think. Really.

With love,

Newt

P.S. - Notice I said “forest edge ”, Theseus! No howlers this term, please.

P.P.S. - I’m surprised you’ve heard a word from Dad at all if he’s as immersed in that case as I’d guess he is. I will have to nip into the kitchens and ask the house-elves if they’ve burnt the papers from last week yet. I’d like to read a quote from Dad on the issue. For better or for worse, anything that irks Uncle Hesiod usually amuses me... 

He folded up the letter, slipped into shoes and an old sweater, and headed to the Owlery in that last hour before curfew, still thinking on Theseus’ letter as he walked. The family issues, life lessons, and lectures on his own peculiarity were less interesting to him than the advice on maintaining friendships, and he mulled it over even as he crooned to one of the Hogwarts owls to convince her to take his missive. Alone in the cold Owlery, Newt petted one of the young ones and watched a star and a planet peek through the thin clouds visible from the highest window. 

He leaned his head on the frigid stone and stared, thinking back, then, to the hospital wing two weeks before: on the way Leta had let him listen to the beat of her heart as he listed ideal temperatures for giant squid mating. How she had veritably shielded his humiliation from their teachers with her very own body. 

How he hadn’t yet figured out how to say thank you.

(Or ‘return the favour,’ as Theseus had put it).

He bid the owls goodbye, poked about in their refuse for a pellet with an interesting skeleton to excavate some day (if he got bored), and then hurried off to the library for a few books he thought might convey his thanks to Leta if he properly managed it.

He went to bed with his alarm clock charmed for dawn, his galoshes tucked up neatly beside his satchel.

.0.

And, so, the next day at lunch—admittedly covered in a moderate layer of mud up to his knees—Newt walked directly up to the Slytherin table and wedged himself into the space beside Leta. He pulled out a copy of their herbology textbook and slid an additional, dog-eared library book toward her, too.

“If you use these marked pages—” 

He rummaged in his bag for the bit of amphibious vine he’d procured that morning from the edge of the lake. 

“And you dissect this —”

Leta was staring at him, spoonful of soup halfway to her mouth.

“You should be able to finish those ten inches of herbology in time for duelling club.”

She didn’t say anything for another few seconds and Newt dropped his eyes from her face to her soup.

“Why, Newt?”

“What?”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Oh!” And he looked back up at her then, ignoring the stares of the Slytherins up and down the table. “Because you’re my friend. And—” He held up his scarred hand and gestured at his head with it. “—you helped me, too. Remember?” 

One of the older boys who’d initiated the prank-turned-assault was laughing at them down the table, and Newt whipped round with what was meant to be a glare (but he was fairly certain it only worked because Leta was actually giving a proper glare, too). 

“Come on,” she finally said, scooping up the books and grabbing a cheese toastie off a centre dish to shove toward Newt’s face. He took it without question and scrambled to his feet. “I learned this excellent warming charm last week, so we can work by the forest.”

“But - Leta , some plants are sensitive to magicked atmospheres and I’m not sure—”

“Newt, come on!” 

“But I’ve got—”

“No, you haven’t,” she sang.

And Newt grinned, because she was right—he was ahead on his assignments, and he had gotten far too used to locking himself in his cupboard or sketching beside the lake during down time, as if he had absolutely no need for human companionship. (As if he did not get anything at all out of the pleasant buzz of sitting with a person he liked, as they each attended to their own separate tasks, in silence.)

And Leta would visit the cupboard with him after Duelling Club anyway, and he would take notes on his creatures’ health then. Make a plan to release them back into the forest then.

And so Newt let her tug him by the elbow, laughing. They dashed to the grounds, hand-in-hand, beneath the cold November sky.

Newt Scamander spent years being misunderstood and occasionally hurt—physically and emotionally—by humans.

From his youngest memories when he’d peered around the kitchen cupboard as his mother sobbed into his father, wondering what to do with a child as obviously 'afflicted’ as him; to when he would continually have his magic ripped from his hands (which hurt), for letting it get away from him in moments of stress or fear. From being forced to sit in painful silence across from a witch he didn’t know at St. Mungo’s, who had taken away the parchment his father had charmed to help him speak, who underlined every failure to look her in the face with a subtle shock across the seat of his chair; to the little wizarding friends he had made in the village, who eventually got tired of his urging to quit playing duels and go into the woods for adventure, and—when they finally did—they’d left him alone at dusk beside a jarvey den, and Newt had (much to his bittersweet delight, actually) listened to the creatures tear him down til dawn. 

And all that before Hogwarts.

Even though Hogwarts was where he would decide humans could be vicious.

And it was also where he would discover he had the potential to harm people, too. And it was where he would learn his honest confusion meant nothing in the face of the pain he was also capable of causing…

And so Newt learned, also, how to make unspoken sacrifices. He learned how to reciprocate favours ‘within a reasonable amount of time.’ 

Which was exactly how Newt found himself without his N.E.W.T.s just months before his 17th birthday, splitting his time between a desk job in the Office for House Elf Relocation and evening shifts at an apothecary: nights in his childhood bedroom staring at cracks in the plaster, counting down the days until he would have saved enough gold to travel the world…

(Which he wouldn’t actually have to do—saving, that is—snapped up as he was by the Beasts Division when the ECW approached the Ministry about dragons in 1915. He was shipped off to eastern Europe the very next winter.)

Humans were vicious, but Newt Scamander was a quick learner and, for a Hufflepuff, he was also surprisingly good at being cunning. 

And — perhaps most importantly — Newt was very good at running. 

He was very good at running, and never looking back.