Canon pairings. Some mild spoilers. Also, speculation ahoy.
Alternate Summary: A farewell, and a hello. And from there, more hellos. Six peeks into the lives of Tina and Newt, from his leaving New York onward.
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Becoming Mrs. Fantastic
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"We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already."
-Rowling
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She's Porpentina Goldstein, that long, fanciful name laden with historical and familial pride. Except that it's her inhabiting that name, so things feel a bit off. To her golden sister, she's the center of the world, but to the rest of that world, she's—
—well, Plain Porpentina.
Plain, good, serious, Auror Porpentina.
(She's grateful for that last title. She can't wish for anything more.)
So she's dutifully waving Newt Scamander off back to Europe, because that is her professional obligation, and yes, that is also what good people do for their… friends. Tina's meticulously brushed brown locks, ironed blouse, and severe shoes bid a most polished farewell to her comrade in arms.
Said comrade looks as fidgety as ever, when faced with his own species. Newt's freckles are alarming under the glaring natural light at the dockside. The ones dusting his pale cheekbones are shaded by his frumpish crop of hair as he cocks his head, inquisitively, at an angle—neither full child nor adult.
Their eyes flit towards one another, like an unexpected hug caught in midair.
Tina bites her cheek as Newt's eyebrows almost smudge together and his lips purse slightly.
(She catches herself. No. No.)
He won't meet her watery gaze, his eyes magnetically drawn to the space two inches to the side of her ear. If it's because of the persistent wetness (oh, for shame) tugging along her lower lash line, she imagines she should have worn that special mascara, the kind that Queenie swears doesn't rub off no matter what hell runs loose. They've all already seen hell run loose, and Tina is not quite sure she's prepared for the departure of the boy she'd faced hell with.
(Oh no. The realization stumps her, leaves her chewing the inside of her cheek, eyes watering again because this is so stupid, and she is so stupid, struggling to keeping silent.)
G'bye, Mr. Scamander. Just say the words. Say it, and be done with.
She blurts something else instead, something sincere and heartfelt and utterly incomprehensible.
She's almost glad she's ruined it, and the startled look he gives her is almost consensus that whatever 'it' was, has already been relegated to past tense.
(Wave, now. Bid him goodbye. She thinks she's made of sterner stuff. An auror from New York City should be, at least.)
The whisper of his finger next to her hair, next to her cheek, keeps her heart from dropping.
He's a man of action, and maybe his communication has always been better with animals because he understands their language, and they, his. Maybe she's the weird one, trying still to express what cannot be expressed in clumsy words, when it's a futile effort, and he's found something so much neater. Still, he humors her, and they bungle their way through words, while speaking so much more clearly in other ways.
One smile turns to two, a ghost of laughter tugging at her lip, and she's almost giddy, a feeling coursing through her threatening to turn into skips as she scarcely dares to hope.
She waves him off with a smile, because that's what plain, good, serious girls do, and Tina is learning to not be ashamed that she's all of those things.
When he comes back, he's a mess of nerves, and she's just a mess of overdue deadlines and busy, successful career.
Her sister's warned her about this. "I'm pretty sure career women are harder for men to talk to, on average," says Queenie. "I mean, Teenie, I love you, but just think about the missed opportunities if you keep working yourself to death!"
The younger Goldstein sister's advice is not always well taken, but at the very least, Legilimens ought to be given the trappings of wisdom and authority on all such subjects. Men. Tina does not deal in such topics, because she has no reason to. She deals in things like national safety, morals, public order. She's a serious, New York City-hardened Auror.
So even though there's a war brewing, and even though she's the most attuned to (buried in, really) the national crises of their day, nothing can truly prepare her for the weight of the book he thrusts into her hands after he lands in New York a second time.
"As promised," he breathes, and peers at her, concentration unwavering, as if she were a magical creature from his case.
"S-should I read it now?"
"Er," he intones. "Give it a flip if you like, but, I was hoping we could do food, first. Together." His soft green eyes are as wide and alarmed as she remembers—and as warm.
"Thanks," she says tersely. "Deli sandwiches, will that be fine?"
She hopes she hasn't scared him off, with her business-like air, and she wonders if Queenie's advice should have been sought after in picking her wardrobe. Her no-nonsense shoes trod the familiar streets with an unfamiliar skip (familiar, considering a year ago) and she leads him to his first rye and pastrami sandwich. ("Tremendous," he gasps, chewing happily. "Are these seeds, in the bread?")
"I have to go," she says, thumbing the pages of the book as he polishes off another half of the sandwich. "I'm investigating today."
"Oh?" Newt's lips purse again and he jumps to his feet. "What, precisely?"
"Stocks and securities fraud," she says, feeling boring as she stares at the quite literally fantastic title of his book. "There's been fraudulent trading between No-Maj's and our community."
"Hm, I understand," he says, looking completely lost. "Stocks."
They exit the deli onto the New York February air. It's bitingly crisp and feels like frost, mixed with smog. His warm breath launches white plumes into the cobbled street.
"Maybe dinner," she suggests, feeling braver while glancing surreptitiously at the familiar sway of his coat and the familiar bow-legged walk.
"Excellent," he returns. "I'll wait for you. Perhaps I'll have a spot of tea and scones from Kowalski's, while I'm waiting."
You can't force the British out of a Scamander, she thinks with a smidge of unexpected sadness, no matter how much he likes dry rye.
After the crash, sugar is rationed out, and the American people are preparing for war in Europe. It's a time of leanness, and despite all of the anger on the streets, it's brought New York closer together. Kowalski's takes a break as Queenie and her new husband Jacob work on creating tastier canned war rations. With his heart and her intuition, their sales more than carry the Kowalski-Goldsteins through hard times.
Tina doesn't know if it's to escape the war, but Newt's visits are more frequent, and their dinners together are more urgent.
"I think," he says one day, walking back to her new flat from one of the finer establishments in town. "That you should come with me, to England."
"You're crazy," she quips back, her hand still grasped tightly in his. "Or as you would say, utterly daft."
His grip is strong, a magizoologist's grip. His steps are long, wide, as if he's trying to run away from himself. "I would say that I'm enlisting in the war over there, by myself, and won't come visit you for a while," he admits. "But you wouldn't let me do that, would you? Without your help? You're a much better duelist than I."
Oh. "This is very sudden," she gasps out, chest hammering out a rhythm against reason, her loafers tap-tapping against the sidewalk. "What would I do in England?"
His long strides settle into a thoughtful, slow trot—quite an improvement from the frenetic pace before. "Correspond on the English-States united front," he says in a hopeful tone. "We'll need a good MACUSA diplomat, someone with brains and guts."
She's never been good at accepting compliments.
"And what about after the war?" she asks. "Am I to wait around for you to come home, and then be your housemaker, like all good English wives do?"
"We English men can be traditional prats," he concedes, and comes to a halt in front of her flat. "But that's why I'd like to have you there with me, to investigate my shortcomings."
Her eyes narrow, and she puts a hand to the collar of his well-pressed shirt.
"Are you insinuating—" she starts. Stops. "Was tonight supposed to—" She stops again, assesses the painstakingly looped, special occasion bow tie Newt reserves for, well, special occasions.
(He's obvious and clumsy in the same way she is.)
"Mercy Lewis, you are."
His startled look melts off his face, and he grows serious. "Yes," he nods. "Will you? I promise it will be worth it, eventually. And I'll never carry you around in a suitcase. Promise."
Her face must have given away her answer. She's sure that Newt Scamander's never been more alarmed in his life, clutching a sobbing, laughing, New York City-hardened Auror hiccupping wet "yes's" into his worn blue coat.
His hand is trembling as he cups her cheek close. Steady hands, she thinks. Steady hands only for handling his creatures. She's different, to him.
"You're sure?" Newt breathes, incredulous, and his cheek brushes hers, testing her racing pulse.
Her smile moves up to his. Or maybe his, down to hers.
It's animal instinct, but it's also the second promise he's made to her.
There's a right time and a right place, but war complicates everything. Tina is content to wear a simple promise ring on her finger until he comes back. Without her sister, who is pregnant and safer in the States, she's one half of a Goldstein set. The rest of the Scamanders find her intriguing and exciting, perhaps because they've never met Queenie. Or perhaps because—despite Newt's mother's eccentric hippogriff obsession—they are a pureblood European wizarding line, and an American is the most exotic thing they expected their son to come home with.
"They're using animals on the front, Tina," Newt explains to her, as he dons his new uniform. "I can't let them get away with that. Mother understands, and Father will come around eventually."
At the train station, she waves him off with a smile, because that's what good fiancées do.
(And Tina is scared that will be the last image he sees of her.)
Tina learns several things while living with the Scamanders in the westernmost coast of England. She learns that Theseus is Mr. Scamander's favorite child, just as she learns that Mrs. Scamander dotes most on Newt. The tales of both sons' exploits in the war are riveting as much as they are stress-inducing. She swears that newspaper prints of Newt waving around his wand against Hungarian Horntails is going to give her eternal palpitations.
In her need to do something—be active, not some post-Victorian Era model—she signs on to help with the war efforts in the southwest, in Dorset. There is a chateau there that's been converted to a hospital, and the lucky ones who are shipped across the Channel are moved there to recuperate. Tina still writes regularly to Queenie about her life, but she leaves out the move, because she knows her sister will try to cross the Atlantic, heavily pregnant or not.
Being a trained auror herself, she has basic skills in binding and healing wounds. The more magical ailments get sent to special services, but Tina is unafraid of guts and amputated limbs, and she can cook and clean with the best of them.
Strangely, stories of Newt's magical exploits and his creatures are a big hit with the wounded. She memorizes information on ashwinders and bowtruckles by heart, and even supplements those stories with some American legends about pukwudgies. It's worth her halting, imperfect attempts at storytelling. She watches her patients heal. Scamander's American, the staff and patients take to calling her. Or, Mrs. Fantastic Beasts.
In the spaces in between the constant busy-ness, she breathes in the Dorset fog and thinks about Newt. She is learning to not be ashamed about these things. She loves him, and that's fine. She wraps herself in the stories and thoughts that remind herself of him, and that's also fine.
Eventually, Queenie sends word that she and Jacob have welcomed a healthy baby boy. Tina is too overwhelmed by the immense honor and terror that is being the aunt to the first mix-blood baby in America in a long, long time to dip her quill in a response letter at first.
(But she overcomes it, because she knows that Jacob's heart and Queenie's intuition will give the child everything he needs to know to thrive—to avoid the fate of another child, all those years ago.)
Her sister's letter is as effusive as expected, only capped off with a warning about waiting too long, and about men's typical straying on the battlefield, distanced from their wives and fiancées. Queenie misses her, and wants Tina to come back, to at least visit her new baby.
But Tina has always been the dutiful career woman. There's too much to be done here to leave right now. Instead, she thinks about acquiring a copy of the Fantastic Beasts book and sending it to her new nephew, but the reading level is still much too advanced and Tina imagines Newt will have added to his book by the time the youngest Kowalski comes of age. Maybe she'll ask Newt to write a children's book, someday.
Someday comes quicker than expected.
Thumbing through the well-worn first edition of Fantastic Beasts, as is her daily morning ritual with a new bedside patient, she is surprised to hear a familiar chortle and awkward chuckle from the bed.
His angular, freckled face is mummified in white gauze, hair just a singed tuft on top.
But his eyes are the same soft green—warm and wide and incredulous at the sight of her, just as she is of him.
"You're back," she whispers.
"Landed this morning," he grins weakly past the gauze. "I demanded to be wheeled here first thing to see you."
She wonders if he's still the same Newt, if he still wants her, if he found comfort in other women on the battle front, and if they'll go back to his family's estate, now. The war is slowly ending, and everyone acknowledges that the healing will take very long, so it's best to get going about it.
"Dragons?" she asks, looking at the raw red peeking past the gauze on his legs.
"Romanian Longhorns," Newt says longingly. "And such beauties, they were."
She laughs, assured that he's scarcely changed, at all.
After the wedding, they settle in Dorset, where the English wizarding community has long accepted Tina, and has also heard and loved much about the now-famous Mr. Scamander, magizoologist and ambassador for magical creatures everywhere. After the war, his book is more popular than ever, knocking down political borders where force could not.
He spends most of his income from book sales on field research trips across the globe, and when he's not traveling, he's poking his head in some book, reading or writing. Tina is the housekeeper of the family, and she finds that she quite enjoys it—it's a legitimate, challenging full-time career for women in England, and Tina is a career woman, through and through. She's corresponding with MACUSA regularly, too, officially an ambassador for goodwill in post-war American-European magical relations.
"Do you think," she asks her husband one day. "We could fit another body in this house?"
He peers up at her from his armchair, grin infectious and eyes dancing. "I don't see why not," he says. "Another Kneazle, perhaps? Mauler gets so lonesome." He nods soberly at the cat-like creature purring up a storm at his feet. "Attachment issues, this one."
She shakes her head at him, and points to her still-flat belly.
(Maybe because they're both people of action, and the language of show has always been more effective, just between them.)
Newt expresses his joy in wide-eyed, stupefied outbursts of incomprehensible words. She's glad she's just plain Porpentina (his) when her husband jumps from his chair, and, eyes dancing, proceeds to waltz her around his study, out into the anteroom, past the stairs, and into the light of the evening dusk, outside, in their spacious yard.
"Tina," he says tenderly. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."
(He is an appallingly eloquent man.)
"For what?" she asks, because she's never handled compliments well.
He doesn't answer, merely presses her close, utters a soft mating squawk in her ear, and dislodges Mauler from his trouser leg before waltzing her back inside their house.
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End
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Suzu: Ugh, watched this beauty-of-a-movie tonight and couldn't go to sleep until this was written, in one breath. Critique and a helpful eye to point out issues would be wonderful, because I am far too enamored with all the characters to be a useful self-editor.
Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Now has a completed companion fic: Newton's Taxonomies.