Chapter Text
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Older, or Two Brothers and a Train Station
Introduction
Winter 1897
Theseus Scamander was eight-and-a-half years old when his little brother was born. His parents had chosen to call the child ‘Newton,’ of all things, which seemed a bit silly, given his mum (Rowan) and her sister were named after trees; and he and his dad (Helios) and his dad’s siblings and his dad’s dad and then his dad’s dad’s dad (and on and on and on) were all named after people in Greek stories or history.
But Helios had liked ‘Newton’. And Rowan had liked that it reminded her of springtime— (‘Salamanders, Theseus love!’ she’d explained) —and, so, his little brother Newt was named and born.
Besides being very quiet (at first) and hardly ever sleeping, Newt was everything his parents had told him a little baby would be. That first year was full of lots of smells and sounds, but Newt got remarkably more interesting as the months progressed. By the time Theseus himself had turned nine in August, Newt was six months old and nearly sitting on his own; and, while he didn’t do much more than sleep, nurse, stare at the trees, and babble, Theseus found himself inexplicably attached to him...
His parents had said that would happen, of course—that being an older brother was a gift he mustn't squander—but he was still a child without many points of comparable data; and he had thus never before experienced the kind of feelings he would soon realise he’d developed for his brother: a drive to teach and love and protect, even if Newt could be pretty gross and, also, very very annoying sometimes.
(But he was a baby, and Theseus therefore knew that wasn’t actually his fault.)
By the time Theseus was ten, they’d moved to a new house and Newt had taken to determinedly toddling about the place, to the point Theseus had already lost count of the number of times he’d found him somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, or touching something he wasn’t supposed to touch, and—usually (always)—covered in dirt from head to toe. His mum and dad had taken to calling him “Newt Patrol,” for Theseus seemed to have a sixth sense for the child that even they didn’t have, at least when both were absorbed in their work.
But, regardless of how much Theseus had come to love his little brother, he still found him very very confusing. He’d heard his mother talking with Aunties Willow and Hippolyta, one afternoon, about how early Newt had started talking, but Theseus couldn’t help finding it strange that Newt didn’t actually speak much at all—even when he needed something—especially for a child who very much had the ability to do so. (There had certainly been times when he wished he would Please, dear Merlin — hush up, Newt!)
No one really seemed concerned about it, though, because while Newt was more accident prone than the average toddler (Theseus had fetched him out of the stream with an improbably sprained shoulder just the week before) and full of a boundless, quiet, burning energy that their parents were highly amused by, Newt could entertain himself for hours, with very little oversight or interference.
He was almost perfectly normal—(if, well, different from other children his own age, according to their Aunt Rowan who was a children’s healer at St. Mungo’s)—and that was what mattered. No one worried much about Newt. He was largely left to his own devices, until he made a mess of his father’s workshop or snuck into his mother’s barn or trailed mud and debris through the house when no one was paying attention.
But that’s what children did, or so Theseus had been told. Typical things, he thought.
So by the time he left for Hogwarts in 1899, Newt was a quiet—if somewhat mischievous—two-and-a-half year old child. On the platform, Theseus had pried Newt’s pudgy little hands away from his ears long enough to whisper a promise of writing every weekend.
(He didn’t think Newt was old enough to understand how long a week even was, but it seemed like the brotherly thing to do.)
Unfortunately, by the time Theseus returned at the end of his First Year, things weren’t exactly normal anymore.
A pall of worry had settled over his mother, which he could see at the corners of her eyes when she watched Newt from the kitchen window; and, once or twice, he’d even caught Helios observing Newt as if he were a puzzle, with something like guilt pinching at his lips…
For, you see, Newt was now old enough to be truly immovable when immersed in a task, and Theseus understood why his parents would become frustrated by that, especially when Newt barely even blinked if he was interrupted while flipping over stones in the garden, hardly even paused, even when addressed by name. Further, it was difficult to get him to sit still long enough to finish a single meal—near the end of dinner one evening, Theseus thought his mother might be on the verge of ripping out her hair, for Newt had slipped out of his breeches for the third time that night just to escape the sticking charm on his chair. Helios had then tiredly advised her to let him go (because ‘yelling never works on him, remember?’ ), whereafter Newt spent the last hour of sunlight—in only cotton underwear and a linen blouse—on the swing at the edge of the wood. [1, 1] When Rowan went out to bring him in—tucking gentle hands beneath his armpits to hoist him up and off—he’d thrashed and shot off like a dragon, bouncing his way up the steps, quiet in his defiance but ever out of reach of her touch.
Helios eventually plodded up behind him, armed with two fingers of whiskey, for the fortification it sometimes took to wheedle him into the tub.
Later that night, long after Newt was asleep (and after he had been meant to be, too, if his books on quidditch weren’t so interesting), Theseus found his mother crying into his father’s chest in the kitchen.
“Sometimes I wish those changeling myths were true, Helios,” he’d heard her say, muffled by his father’s waistcoat and her tears, “because that we could fix… But this?” [2, 2a, 2b, 2c, 2d, 2e, 2f, 2g]
His father had only hushed her, then, and run a tender hand down the back of her head, eyes skimming the details of the kitchen walls as he rocked her, until they’d skittered to where a pyjama’ed Theseus had hidden himself at the doorway.
As his father’s eyes met his, he held up his hands and swore up and down he hadn’t meant to eavesdrop and had only wanted a glass of water (please believe me).
And they had.
Rowan walked him back up to his bedroom, right beside Newt’s, and tucked him neatly in; while Helios picked up his books and locked them in the study until morning, because ‘growing children need sleep, my dear’.
His parents—particularly his mother—however, worried all summer long, all while Newt only grew more enthusiastic and less conscientious of his physical safety, while simultaneously becoming more withdrawn, off in a world where—sometimes—only Helios could reach him… (That was the summer he had walked into Father’s workshop to find them both leant over a small square of enchanted parchment, intently focused, side-by-side. According to Helios, Newt was practising using the paper to communicate during his “quiet moods”, something Theseus admittedly found odd but couldn’t judge too harshly; for the moment a childish sentence inquiring about arachnids webbed itself like vines across the page, Newt had clapped his hands together with a cry of joyful relief. Newt was only three, after all, and no three-year-old was reliably communicative, he told himself—he’d undoubtedly grow out of it.)
Their worries were not curtailed when Newt's magic properly showed up which, coincidentally, occured while Theseus was home for the Spring holidays his Second Year. As Theseus had come to expect of his odd little brother, it was equal parts surprising and utterly unassuming. Newt was four, Theseus was twelve, and it was the first time he’d ever seen their mother truly speechless.
It was also the first time he’d ever seen magic quite like that—none of his friends’ little siblings had announced their magical abilities by growing three square metres of bulrushes just so a knot of tadpoles might have somewhere to hide from the birds… (Who the hell did that? Newt apparently.) Theseus himself had only stopped his face being burned upon tripping while carrying a bowl of soup, and he’d quickly learned how to keep his magic “quiet” after that, to prevent himself from getting into trouble.
Unlike Theseus—even quiet as he often was—Newt never learned to be quiet when it mattered…
And, Theseus learned alongside him (far too young) it did very much matter, because (it turned out) a lot could happen between the ages of four and eleven…
Theseus certainly didn’t see it all as it progressed, but he was a big brother, after all—
It was his job, at the very least, to follow along.
And follow along he did.