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Life is emotionally abusive
And time can't stop me quite like you did
Flying in a dream
Stars by the pocketful
And to hide that would be so dishonest
And it's fine to fake it 'til you make it
Now it's like snow at the beach
Weird, but fuckin' beautiful
I can't speak, afraid to jinx it
I don't even dare to wish it
You wanting me
Tonight feels impossible
- Snow On The Beach by Taylor Swift and Lana del Rey
The first time, it wasn’t even accidental. It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t coincidental, or any of those words that end with ‘al’. It just was.
It was a few days after Queenie Goldstein and Jacob Kowalski’s wedding, and you were still in New York. You’d just got back from a craft market you’d visited with Lally, and you were bloody freezing. Chafing your hands together, you hurry through the case looking for Newt. You’d bought a little chain of sparkly beads for Teddy (you’d been meaning to get the Niffler something ever since he and Pickett saved Newt and Theseus at the Erkstag).
“Will you please not do that!” You hear Newt’s infuriated voice from a couple of enclosures over, and change direction. The freckled magizoologist is trying to separate two Bowtruckles that were in, weirdly, boxing stances.
“What’s going on?” you ask, popping up behind him.
Newt nearly jumps out of his skin. “Merlin’s beard - do you have to walk so silently?”
“Sorry, I know.” He wasn’t the first person to complain about your habit of sneaking up on people. Several people had told you to wear a bell.
(You did, once, for a joke - a cattle bell, and somehow that scared people even more, because you walked so nimbly that the bell didn’t even ring).
“What’s going on?” you ask, standing next to him.
“Titus and Finn are having some…disagreements,” Newt huffs, blowing his fringe out of his eyes. “And I, I think they heard Jacob talking about Muggle boxing yesterday - So they thought they’d…” He gestures.
You resolutely ignore his rolled-up sleeves. Being attracted to your partner-in-crime has always been troublesome, but you’ve managed to repress it very well. Except for the past few days, when your jealousy got the better of you. Seeing Newt and Tina dance together at the wedding had been difficult. Luckily, you were great friends with Theseus - sometimes he felt like your long-lost twin - and you’d spent most of the evening with him or Lally.
“At least they’re not sumo-wrestling,” you say. “Silver linings and all that.”
“I’m…sorry?” Newt says incredulously. “S-sumo - what is that, exactly?”
You start to laugh. “It’s…Okay, how do I explain this - Er, two wrestlers wear these, these enormous pants, like insulated protection, and they fight.”
Newt stares at you. You laugh harder.
On the branch, Titus curls his arms into a defensive pose again, and Finn squeaks and tries to launch himself at the other Bowtruckle-
You and Newt react as one, both reaching out and scooping up a troublemaker. Titus squeaks, writhing in your grasp.
“What are they actually fighting about?” you ask, tutting playfully at Titus. Pickett, sitting cross-legged on Newt’s shoulder, blows a raspberry at Finn.
Newt looks utterly martyred. “They’re both, er, enamoured with Poppy.”
From an upper branch, another Bowtruckle squeaks.
“Ohmygod,” you say. “That is so outdated. Fighting over a female?” You bring Titus up to eye level, careful to keep him at a distance in case he tries to swipe your eyes. “Have you never considered letting the lady choose? She’s not an object, y’know.”
All four males are staring at you. You think that Poppy’s overhead contribution is approving.
Finn starts chirping. Newt tilts his head as Titus joins in. “They agree with you,” he says, sounding mildly astonished. He returns Finn to the branch, and you do the same.
As the two of you watch, the Bowtruckles shake arms, and then go their separate ways.
“I bet Poppy’s crushing on Marlow,” you say mischievously.
“I can’t believe it,” Newt says, rubbing the back of his neck and looking at you from the corner of his eye. “You just - You solved their disagreement.”
You grin sarcastically, chafing your hands together again. “Always happy to solve your dilemmas, my dear.”
You’re already turning away, desperate to make yourself a hot drink, but you still see Newt’s cheeks flushing beet red, and you nearly fall off the little walkway as you realise what you just said.
Ohhh, brilliant.
****
You’d been working with Newt for years, even after Hogwarts - when he had been in the Ministry, you’d been an intern at Gringotts, and you would meet up in the evenings and talk about your lives, your dreams, and creatures; then, when he went on his field-trip, he invited you to come and be his, as he put it, ‘human liaison’.
Which was kinda funny, because you were quite a diplomatic person by nature, but you weren’t very socially-adjusted. It was why you got on better with goblins than witches and wizards.
But there Newt was, basically asking you to be his shield against the myriad agonies of human interaction.
Still, you agreed. But instead of going to New York to release Frank, you went home, because you’d received bad news.
You left the ward at St Mungo’s for the final time, tears streaking down your cheek, just in time to overhear Theseus Scamander and Torquil Travers arguing about the international-travelling ban placed on one Newt Scamander.
When he did decide to break that ban, he left you out of it. By that point, he’d hired Bunty, and you had been, temporarily, feeling like a bit of a spare wheel in his life. You were still grieving, shutting yourself away from comfort; going to work with the acerbic goblins was the only thing you could face. Theseus dropped by just long enough to tell you Newt was now in Paris, and then, next thing you knew, Leta Lestrange - one of your long-term friends - was dead, and both the brothers were in pieces.
You tried your best to be there for them, even during your own bereavement. Theseus dealt with his grief in surprisingly healthy ways. He got drunk with you and recounted stories about Leta. He gathered up all the pictures and made a beautiful album of them. He talked, and cried, and hugged you. Gradually, you opened up about your own grief; sitting on the floor of your little flat in Diagon Alley at one in the morning, nursing hot chocolates laced with Hangover Potions, mutually helping each other.
Newt, obviously, shut up all his emotions, shut himself up with his creatures, and tried to pretend he was fine. You nearly broke a pencil over his head once when he was insisting on sketching and not talking about his feelings. In the end you tried to just be there for him, and you knew it was appreciated, up to a point.
When Newt went on his insane quest to Bhutan, he tried to leave you out of it again. Unluckily for him, you’d become a friend of Aberforth Dumbledore’s. You both liked goats and stupid Christmas jokes, and when Aberforth went to Bhutan to rescue his son, you went with him.
Which was where you finally met Queenie, Lally, Tina and Jacob. Queenie invited you to her wedding, and you travelled to New York with Newt and Theseus. (It had been a long journey for all three of you, for different reasons).
You were scared to lose the people important to you. There weren’t many of them.
Which is why you were now sitting on Tina Goldstein’s sofa, Newt’s unconscious head in your lap. It’s night, and the only light is from a small lamp across the room.
You have to keep flicking your hand up to catch your tears before they fall on Newt’s face. The front of his shirt is unnaturally bulky from where the bandages are wrapped; you can’t get the image of his pale, lean torso out of your head - and not for the normal reasons, but because this time, it’d been covered in a relentless torrent of blood, pouring from two stab wounds in his abdomen.
A fucking Snallygaster. Out in Arizona. And Newt, like the idiot he was, Apparated off to take a look at it without telling anyone. If he hadn’t managed to send a Patronus message to Queenie before he passed out, he would have died.
The Snallygaster had been gone by the time you and Tina showed up.
Thank God Tina was good at Healing spells. There had been a moment, when you were crouched over him, ripping away his shirt, your hands slick with his blood, that you’d honestly thought you’d lose him.
At least his breathing has steadied now. You inhale and exhale in slow sync with him, blinking rapidly to stop more tears falling. You aren’t even panicked now, it’s just the delayed shock.
You look down at him. You can see glints of stubble, and there’s one hair in his left eyebrow that’s pointing obstinately in a different direction from the others. His lips are slightly parted, and freckles are scattered across the bridge of his nose.
Oh God, you love him far more than you should.
Wait. Wait. Love??
You yank your eyes away from his face, staring at whatever thing was opposite you - you weren’t seeing it. Your cheeks feel red.
Attraction, right? Just a crush? Not - love?
“...mmm,” Newt murmurs, and you stop having a mental heart attack and pay attention to him.
“Newt?” you ask gently. “You awake?”
“...ugh,” he mumbles again, and opens his eyes.
He blinks rapidly at you, looking confused. “Y…Y/N?”
“Yeah - you’re okay,” you say quickly, “well, you were a dumbass, but you’re fine now.”
Newt’s green eyes don’t leave yours as he frowns. He swallows, harshly, and then - “C-creatures? The…case?”
You point to the floor by the sofa; he doesn’t turn his head though. “Fine. Right there.”
Newt closes his eyes for a moment in acknowledgement. He’s barely awake, and you know he’ll be asleep again in a few moments. You’re unutterably relieved that he’s alive and coherent, though.
“...H-hurts,” he slurs, turning his head slightly toward you. One of his hands comes up and fists on your soft sweater, bunching it at your waist.
Your instinctual protectiveness kicks in, and you hunch slightly forward over him, placing one hand on his shoulder and the other on his forehead, fingers tangling through his soft curls. “I know, my poor love,” you whisper, running your thumb along his eyebrow, smoothing that singular hair down; “I know.”
He presses his face firmer against you, hiding it. For a moment there’s silence, and then, when his breathing evens out and you’re at liberty to return to your previous mental crisis, you realise what you just said, and open another mental tab to have a second simultaneous crisis.
****
It’d been a long day. A very, very long day. In fact, scrap that, at this point it had been two very, very, very long days.
Grindelwald had decided, in true Grindelwaldian style, to blow up part of Alaska and expose wizards to the Muggles. And in true Dumbledorian style, instead of alerting Ministries, Albus dispatched Newt and his team to stop him.
You had come along this time, because Theseus had insisted you needed a break from Gringotts. Your idea of the perfect holiday was not so much hunting down a madman as it was just curling up in your flat with an endless supply of hot chocolate and classic Muggle romances, but you didn’t want to miss out on the action.
Queenie and Jacob, even though they had only been married for four months, decided to join the adventure. Jacob introduced you properly to Yusuf Kama, who you’d only briefly met at the wedding. You thought that the sombre man looked at you with mild curiosity and possibly - possibly? - attraction. Which was a whole ‘nother thing to think about - right up there on your to-do list, after you slept for about eighty hours.
Grindelwald had been stopped, but there had been unavoidable casualties. Vinda Rosier had killed an onlooker Muggle; a young man who simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The terror in his eyes before the green jet hit him, and he fell, was haunting you, jarringly strong as you stand in front of the Occamies’ nest.
Newt is in his workshed, writing a detailed report for Dumbledore. You look back through the doorway. His shoulders are hunched with exhaustion, head bowed low over the parchment. He’ll probably blame himself for everything that went wrong, you think. You’ll have to take care of him.
Speaking of which…you walk back into the shed, your boots clicking on the wooden panels, and pause. Newt looks up. There’s an ink smear on his right eyelid.
“Shall I get you a tea?” you offer, your voice quiet like you’re trying not to disturb anyone, even though it’s barely two in the afternoon.
“Oh - yes, please, if it’s not too much trouble,” Newt says gratefully, giving you a wan smile. “That w-would be wonderful.”
You smile back, and climb out of the case into Newt’s hotel room. You can hear Tina and Queenie talking in the room next door, Jacob’s strident voice often interrupting with something light-hearted.
You get yourself a coffee - anything strong enough to keep you awake - and bring a milky tea back to Newt, climbing one-handed down the ladder.
His head is even more lowered, his curly fringe actually pressed against his report. “Newt?” you say cautiously, swapping the warm mug to your other hand.
“Mmph - oh, gosh - I must have fallen asleep,” Newt says, jerking upright wildly, almost knocking over his inkpot.
You put the tea down next to him, the rich aroma steaming into his face. You place your other hand on his shoulder momentarily.
“There you go, sweetheart.”
Newt’s muscles tense under your palm and then, blinking wildly and somehow managing to silent-stutter, he glances up at you.
But honestly, you’re so tired that you can’t be bothered to be embarrassed. He is a sweet-hearted man. If people can’t handle the truth, then they can go boil their heads or something.
Which is how you justify it to yourself just before you finally fall asleep in your hotel bed.
****
You’ve clearly been hanging around Queenie too much. You can actually hear the slightest bits of American accent in your voice, and there’s slight American touches to the way you dress and behave.
Well, just so long as you’re not more socially inept than you used to be, that’s a good thing.
You’ve spent the last six months in New York, doing a transfer between magical banks. This one is only partially goblin-run, so you’re working a lot more with humans. Wizards, mainly. Some of which get it into their stupid, permed noodles that you’re an attractive woman.
And then they feel the need to verbalise these thoughts, and try to ask you out. Which is utterly unwelcome and unnecessary.
Once or twice you’ve wondered if you should say ‘yes’ - some of these men are decent, good-looking, and kind. But then you ask yourself, what would you do with them? You try to imagine having a conversation with them and you just can’t see it going well. Which wizard would be interested in your passions for Muggle literature, magical artefacts history, or magical creatures?
Except for, of course, Newt Scamander?
The man himself is currently visiting, staying with Queenie and Jacob. You’ve actually been renting Tina’s apartment with her. The two of you get on well in a weird, understated way. You don’t ask about Tina’s relationship with Newt. You’d rather not know.
Tonight, Queenie has cooked dinner, and Jacob has prepared desserts, and Lally’s come to visit. It goes well. Newt is sitting next to you, and every now and again, your arms brush. It feels companionable, at least until Tina, who is sitting opposite him, locks eyes with him for just a little too long.
You excuse yourself - supposedly to the bathroom, but actually, you leave the building entirely and step into the night, hugging yourself against the cool autumn air. It’s still busy - well, it’s always busy. You thought you knew urbanity from living in London. Turns out you didn’t.
You still prefer the quietude of absolute wildernesses, like you’d seen during that magical year with Newt.
He might have gained new friends, but your relationship had suffered for it. You aren’t as close as you used to be. He’s moving on, but you feel stuck in the past, when it was just you and him.
You can’t see any stars, or even a moon. You lean back against the wall, watching the headlamps from cars, and the people bustling by.
Gradually, you feel more serene. Okay, you’re hopelessly in love. So was every heroine, ever. Some of them got happy endings, some of them didn’t. But one thing is for sure. You don’t need Newt to love you to be content with life. Hell, you didn’t need a boyfriend at all. You had friends you would die for, and you believed they would in return. Obviously you felt a bit more melancholy right now, but it would pass. You only had a month left and then you’d go back to London, and you would finally start on your book, which you planned to collaborate on with goblins. They would finally get to tell the Wizarding World the truth about the beautiful objects they’d made, which had been as good as stolen from them.
“H-hello.”
Ironically, you hadn’t noticed Newt approaching. You smile at him, warmth still spreading across your chest at the thought of your book. “Hey, honey.”
You both stare at each other for a moment, equally startled, before you let out a loud laugh. “Ohmygod, I need to get away from Queenie. She’s a bad influence.”
“She’s certainly an influence,” Newt agrees, chuckling. He rubs his nose with the back of his hand, and you glimpse his red-tinged ears. “Are you alright, Y/N?”
“I’m fine. Just admiring the constellations,” you say sarcastically, pointing up at the sky. Newt smiles at that.
“It’s rather cold out here,” he says, and hesitantly, he tries to shrug off his blue overcoat. You, already suspecting that he’d try and be chivalrous, grab his elbow, making him freeze. “No,” you say sternly. “I don’t need motherhenning, Newt.”
He nods, sheepishly. “Alright. Sorry.”
You stand in silence for a minute; you’re watching the passers-by, and you think Newt might be looking at you.
“The creatures miss you, you know,” he says quietly.
“Do they?”
“Yes, t-terribly. Dougal does - and the Bowtruckles - and even the Mooncalves do, I think.”
“Do you miss me?”
It slips out, falls onto the pavement between you, and then leaps up like an undead fish to slap Newt in the face.
“Y-yes,” he stutters; you can’t look at him. Your cheeks are burning enough to heat the entirety of the brownstone building behind you. “Of course I do, Y/N, that’s - That’s actually a silly question,” he says, sounding progressively more bemused. “I couldn’t not.”
“Oh,” you say helplessly. “I just wondered.”
“But - surely you didn’t think I wouldn’t?” Newt asks, bewildered.
“Well.” You cut yourself off, neon red danger! signals going off in your brain. Don’t answer that, there is simply no un-awkward, right answer to give.
You can feel Newt blinking at you. At last you turn to him, giving him a forcefully cheerful smile. “C’mon, honey,” you drawl, in your strongest American accent, “let’s go back in.”
****
On the anniversary of Queenie and Jacob’s wedding, they come to London. It’s a gift to Jacob, apparently; he’d always wanted to visit properly or something. You don’t quite understand the whole backstory.
Theseus single-handedly makes an entire dinner, with several courses and even two types of forks. When you arrive, you look around, half-wondering if he’s stuffed a few house elves in the broom closet or something.
Since Theseus had gone to all the effort, he’d insisted on ‘black tie’ formal clothing. None of the guests had a problem with that, apart from Newt. Of course.
“You did this to torture him, didn’t you?” you ask. You’re the first guest to arrive, and you hang your coat up in the hall and lean against the kitchen doorframe, watching Theseus place bottles of wine on the table.
Theseus grins. “Of course I did.”
“Your honesty is charming,” you deadpan.
“You’re charming,” Theseus says. “My little brother’s jaw will disconnect the moment he sees you.”
You look down at yourself. You’re wearing a dark red dress; it’s long-sleeved, and comes up to your neck. It stops just above your knees, made of a thick linen material that is good protection against the cold winter evening.
Before you can try and respond, there’s another knock on the door. You answer it for Theseus. It’s the guests of honour themselves, and while you’re all laughing and exchanging greetings, Newt pops up on the open threshold, looking uncertain.
You spot him first, and grin brightly. “Welcome, Mr Scamander!” you say with a playful flourish. He’s wearing the same tuxedo that he did last year, and he looks just as uncomfortable. “Welcome to Theseus’s den of sin, multiple forks, and poshness.”
“Oh, Merlin’s beard,” Newt says, laughing as he steps inside and closes the door. His hand brushes your shoulder as he hangs his coat up over yours, and you convince yourself that you can get through this dinner without embarrassing yourself. The butterflies in your stomach think otherwise.
But you do well, until afterwards, when everyone moves to the sitting room to relax. Jacob suggests playing charades, a game which you’re familiar with from Jane Eyre.
“I’ll be one team-leader,” Theseus says immediately. “Y/N can be the other leader.”
You look around the room. Theseus has already claimed Bunty.
Your eyes lock with Newt’s, sitting in the armchair opposite you. You point dramatically.
“You’re gonna be on my team, gorgeous,” you say, going for a slightly seductive, dangerous gangster attitude. You’re completely un-self-conscious until Jacob cuts himself off mid-speech and you realise the room has gone quiet, and Newt is blushing redder than you’ve ever even thought possible.
“Ohmygod!” you exclaim, more infuriated than embarrassed. You blame Theseus’s ‘after-dinner Firewhisky’. “Would you all please stop acting like I’ve committed a felony or something!”
Theseus nods quickly, then literally turfs his brother out of his chair and across to you. “Over there, Newt. You belong to Y/N now.”
And that literally does nothing to stave off the awkwardness.
****
It’s bad luck that your book launch had to be on the 1st April, but it’s far from being a joke, or written by a fool. You’ve poured everything into researching and writing this book. You’ve gained the goblins’ respect, which is an impossible feat. You’ve shed light on the injustice and crimes committed by wizardkind over the years to other species’. You’ve done something important.
It means a lot to you when both Scamander brothers turn up and flank your desk like the flying pigs on the Hogwarts’ pillars. You sign books the entire day, remembering when Newt was in your place. You quite like signing books, it turns out. And the queue is continual.
A few witches try to flirt with Theseus. After all, he’s still a famed ‘war-hero’. He politely shakes them off.
One witch tries to flirt with Newt, and he promptly excuses himself, disappears for five minutes, and reappears with a hot chocolate for you, looking as flustered as if he’d run a whole race in the meantime.
Afterwards, there’s a little celebration in the Hog’s Head; you all Apparate there. Aberforth hasn’t put up bunting, thank God. He does give you a complimentary Butterbeer. His older brother is there, and immediately drags Theseus aside to gossip about the Ministry.
It’s a weekend, so the pub is busy. Newt starts talking to a man on his right about Welsh Greens, and so you slip down from your barstool and go out into the night.
It’s colder than it was in London, but you can see the stars. You count the little twinkling balls of light for a few minutes, wandering up and down the alley that the Hog’s Head is on.
The pub door creaks open behind you. You recognise the footsteps.
“What a day,” you say, still facing away.
“I’m p-proud of you,” Newt replies softly.
“Really?”
You don’t mean it come out as insecure and small-voiced as it does. You clench your jaw, wishing you could take it back and replace it with a simple ‘thanks’.
You feel Newt stepping closer. “Of course I am, darling.”
You freeze. You literally cannot move, until you whip around to face him, much more dramatically than you intended to. Newt’s mouth is opening and closing, like a goldfish’s. You can feel your cheeks burning as you stare at him. You’re not an especially small person, but from this close, you have to look up at him, and it’s utterly unfair, how attracted you are to him, in that moment.
Newt actually mouths ‘s-sorry’, but it doesn’t form properly as an audible word. You stare at each other, equally at a loss.
Then you remember what you wanted to say, before. “T-thanks,” you stutter lamely.
Newt looks even more terrified. “I’m sorry,” he blurts out. “I didn’t mean to - That was completely improper of me, I should have-”
“It was kinda sweet, actually,” you mumble to your shoes.
“R-really?” he asks.
“Yeah.” With an unexpected spurt of bravery, you tip your chin back and meet his green eyes, luminous in the orange glow from the pub’s windows. “I like it.”
“Oh. Well.” Newt scuffs his boot. “T-that’s good.”
A silence falls. You’re doing all sorts of rapid calculations in your head, of probabilities and mathematics and likelihoods.
“Newt?” you ask at last, hardly daring to believe you’re doing this. “Are you actually in a relationship with Tina Goldstein?”
His head jerks up, and he blinks again at you, before shaking his head. “N-no! No, I’m not, I don’t think - R-really, we wouldn’t be-”
“Newt?” you say again, emboldened by today, by right now, by the ‘darling’ now permanently knotted under your ribs. He stops talking and looks sheepishly at you through his fringe.
You take a deep breath; then, just like the first time you swam in the Great Lake, you just throw yourself in. You grab his coat lapels. When he doesn’t immediately push you away, you stand on tiptoes. You can smell dry animal feed, and fresh mint, and something warm, like Christmas spices.
Newt’s staring at you as your face comes within an inch of his. For a moment, your cardiac system nearly convinces you to either faint or flee, but you decide to fight instead.
Just as Newt tentatively wraps both his arms around your waist.
You nearly jump into outer Space with shock, but then your lips are crashing against his, and he gasps, and then tilts his head slightly and kisses you back.
He tastes of Butterbeer and, somehow, familiarity. You tangle your fingers in his hair, and he lets out that little half-gasp again. You feel electrified; you can’t believe this is happening, that he’s actually kissing you back.
You pull back. Newt cradles your jaw, pressing a gentle, somewhat chaster kiss to your lips. He looks utterly shell-shocked, but he’s smiling, too.
“I…I wasn’t expecting that,” he whispers.
You lean your forehead against his, standing in the middle of the alley outside the Hog’s Head. “I wasn’t expecting you to kiss me back,” you admit.
“W-why on earth w-wouldn’t I?” Newt asks, astonished.
You laugh at that. “I’m a dunce.”
His fingers dance across your cheek, tucking your hair behind your ear. “I’d politely like to disagree.”
“I could’ve kissed you years ago,” you lament half-heartedly.
“W-well…” Newt shrugs; you feel his shoulders move and this time you don’t need to suppress your attraction. “No time like the present, I suppose?”
This kiss is different; like another shade of an entire spectrum of colours. You feel like you’re flying, and dreaming, all at once.
It ends abruptly when you hear raucous laughter from the pub doorway. You break apart and see Theseus, leaning against the doorframe. He toasts both of you, grinning.
“Really about time!”
“Thank you, Theseus,” Newt mutters, scarlet cheeked, and then he turns back to you, his arm sliding around your shoulders as though it has for years.
“Shall we go back in…” He hesitates for only a split second, “darling?”
Your grin is irrepressible. “Yes please, Prince Handsome.”