Her Brother's Keeper:
Author's Note/Disclaimer: I have taken some extremely liberal liberties with this. This is just a small thing that I came up with while I was supposed to be working on a paper. So, paper is done and now you all get this.
All characters, except those of my own making, belong to Warner Brothers, J.K. Rowling, and anyone else who is not me that has ownership.
She'd always looked after Newt, even when the rest of the family had all but forgotten about him. Her older brother Theseus told her she babied him, especially since the Lestrange incident. He liked to pull himself up and tower over her small frame, look down his nose at her, and tell her that "Newt was a grown man. He can take care of himself."
She was inclined to agree with him. Mostly. The situations that Newt put himself in would make their mother's hair even more grey than it was and their father would blow a gasket. She'd seen Newt put himself between children and angry centaurs, walk headfirst into a cave holding a pissed off occamy mother, and throw himself off a hippogriff flying about two meters off the ground in order to rescue a scared niffler being chased by several teenagers.
No, Newt could take care of himself when it came to his creatures. When it came to people…
The mother of the children who had been threatened by the centaurs had taken one look at Newt bandaging her daughter's ankle, thought the "strange Scamander boy" had been hurting her, and given him a concussion from the frying pan she'd wielded. The traffickers who'd held the occamy had used a dozen hexes on him when they'd discovered him stealing her back, petrified him, and made him watch as they killed the "useless monster". The teenagers who had been chasing the niffler had actually tried to drown him in the nearby lake.
The problem was, Newt related to creatures more than he related to people, unless it was her, but they hadn't spoken in years. No, she kept her distance, supporting her brother as best she could, and doing her best to keep him from getting in too much trouble.
Once when they were kids, he'd tried to hex the neighbor boy for hexing a kitten; she'd had to threaten to tell the boy's mother where he went when he was supposed to be in class to keep him from getting Newt in trouble. When the kids at school called him weird or freak, she'd make sure to catch those kids alone later and explain to them, firmly, why she wasn't going to stand for it.
When he'd taken the blame for Leta's "accident", she'd gone straight to the head of her house, Professor Dumbledore, and pleaded with him to help Newt. The best Dumbledore had been able to do was to keep him from having his wand snapped in half, but it'd been more than she'd dare to hope.
When he'd punched his commanding officer during the war for wanting to use pregnant female dragons in combat, she'd used her connections with the Ukrainian ministry to keep him from getting court marshalled. When he'd stood in front of the minister and called him a "bloody idiot" for wanting to exterminate a group of house elves the ministry had deemed "unfit for duty", she'd appealed to the minister himself not to throw Newt out into the cold; she'd had to accept a job with MACUSA to serve as a liaison between the United States and Great Britain in the Muggle/No-Maj Relations department to appease him.
It was in New York, sitting at her desk, when she heard the rumors.
"…a case full of monsters…"
"…heard he's…Grindlewald fanatic…"
"…insisted they weren't dangerous…"
Persephone Scamander, Persephone Stuart as she was known as in New York, lifted her head up at that last part. That'd always been Newt's excuse; "they aren't dangerous, they're just misunderstood and scared…" had always preceded the explanation every time she found him frightened and hurt, clutching some terrified creature to his chest.
She stood up, straightened her skirt, and walked out into the hallway.
Her heels clicked as she followed the two women in front of her, still talking about the strange man with the case of monsters. She pulled her long, dirty blonde hair over one shoulder as her hazel grey eyes looked searched for any sign of Newt while she marched towards the President's office. It was then, out of the corner of her eye she saw a woman in a blue dress drop a tray of coffee all over the floor.
Persephone stopped for a moment, thinking maybe she'd been frightened by one of Newt's creatures that had gotten loose, hoping if something did get out it wasn't the erumpet.
She wasn't sure she remembered the mating dance to calm her down well enough to get her back in the case.
The girl, Queenie?, turned quickly and started hurrying in the other direction. Persephone's instincts had her change direction and begin following her instead. When she intercepted a muggle about to be obliviated, using a quick threat to get him away from his handler, she remembered who she was then. Queenie Goldstein, the coffee girl.
And a legilimens. Persephone had never had official confirmation of that, but it took one to know one.
She wrapped a mental wall around her own thoughts to keep herself hidden, hoping Queenie would be more focused on what she could hear, rather than what she couldn't. When the muggle turned to the side, Persephone could see the angry red bite on his neck, and she grimaced; it was definitely Newt's work.
Reaching out with her mind for the muggle, she got a brief "Newt...", "Tina…", "Graves…he has the case…", "…Gosh she's beautiful…" before she pulled away. Turning quickly, she raced down the stairs ahead of them, already searching for Percival Graves. Her powers weren't as strong as Queenie's but she could still get a brief touch of Graves before she lost him, but it was enough to find him, sitting at his desk in his office.
"Mr. Graves!" she called as she burst through the door. "Come quickly…the President! There was a creature…"
Graves was up and out of his chair before she'd finished, racing for the President's office, brushing against her as he went. The hair on her arm stood up on end when he touched her, and she shivered. Briefly forgetting about her urgency, she frowned after him, knowing something was wrong. As she reached for him, she heard footsteps behind her.
Persephone quickly hid around the corner, almost turning her ankle on her high heel in the process. When she'd caught her breath, she peeked around the corner to see the muggle kick down the door and the two of them rush inside. They were only there for a moment before Queenie came out holding two wands and the ratty old suitcase she'd enchanted for her brother as a birthday gift when they were sixteen.
Queenie tilted her head for a moment, and then raced back the way they came. Persephone followed at a distance, wondering who these people were and what they had to do with her brother. She caught up to them just as Queenie was shutting the case, the muggle nowhere to be seen. She turned around and froze when she saw Persephone.
"Do you have them?" Persephone asked, not sure who "they" were, but knowing there was more than just her brother. "All of them?"
Queenie frowned, obviously noticing she couldn't read Persephone's mind. "I don't know…"
Persephone fixed her with a stare, the same one she'd used on Theseus the last time she'd spoken to him about Newt. "Stop trying to read my mind, and I'm not here to take you in. Do you have them? All the creatures? Newt?"
Queenie hesitated for a moment before nodding her head. "They're safe, but who're…"
Persephone shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Get your coat, take the case, and walk out the front door. Give whatever excuse you can, but leave the building. That case is too dangerous to be left here."
Queenie stared at her for a moment longer, and Persephone let out a quiet "please..." in her head, putting behind it all the emotion and fear she had for her brother behind it. It wasn't hard. She knew where they were, and the rooms they were closest to.
If Queenie had picked Newt up there, then someone had ordered him dead, and Persephone just couldn't deal with that just then.
Queenie finally nodded and briskly walked toward the end of the hallway. Persephone turned quickly towards the other direction, wanting to be in the main hall before Queenie got there in case she needed to provide a distraction.
"But the execution rooms…" she thought, before swallowing the bile in the back of her throat and focusing on other things. She knew if she let herself think how close Newt could have come to death she wouldn't be any use to anyone.
Theseus had asked her once why she "babied" Newt. Persephone had shrugged her shoulders and turned away. She didn't need to use her magic to know that Theseus didn't understand.
Her parents didn't either, even though her mother was in the care of magical creatures. No one understood, and that was the problem.
No one saw Newt.
No one saw how he pulled in on himself when anyone called him a freak for defending the defenseless animals he picked up. No one saw how he tried everything for approval, and was shot down every time. No one saw the scars, the tears, the bite marks, the bruises, or the hurt every time a human let him down.
Newt wasn't the problem, she'd realized the day she stood in the doorway of the headmaster's office and watched as Leta Lestrange headed back to her dormitory without a single look back at the friend she'd betrayed. No, the problem was Newt was too kind for the world he was trying to live in, and instead of creating a shield to protect himself from the world, he used it to shield his creatures.
Persephone had pinched her lips together that day, and turned back to her twin, determined to be shield enough for the both of them.
Later, lurking in the shadow on the rooftop of one of the older buildings across town, she saw Queenie open the case and her brother climbed out, followed by the muggle and another woman who might have been Queenie's sister. He'd grown since she'd last seen him. He was probably close to six foot now, and the thin build he'd had had become more lean. She could see the exhaustion on his face, and how he pulled in slightly as he turned toward the woman with the dark hair. Newt looked at her like he was expecting to be hit, and even though she'd been ordered by her father to stay away from Newt she was more than ready to reveal herself if needed to defend her brother from anyone who wanted to hurt him.
It was then that the woman stepped closer to her brother, and the light shone off her face enough for Persephone to see that the woman could see Newt. The longer they spoke, the more uncurled that Newt became, although his shoulders still hunched with worry. Persephone started to relax bit by bit as Newt did, and was amazed to see the muggle and Queenie interact with him kindly as well.
Newt had friends she realized with a start, and then a well of pride built up in her chest.
It was then that she saw the side-long glance Newt gave the woman when he thought she wasn't looking, and the one he got in return the second he turned away.
She smiled to herself, and Queenie's voice echoed in her head, "We got him honey. Teenie ain't gonna let nothing happen to him."
Persephone smiled a little more and shook her head, awed at the fact Queenie could sense her under all the walls she had built up around her mind to keep Queenie out.
Reaching for Newt gently, she gently touched his mind, not wanting him to know she was there. He was singularly focused, something that hadn't changed in the ten years since she'd last seen him. There was a steady litany running through his head, and Persephone managed to catch snippets of "Creatures…Tina…Dougle…Tina…Picket…Tina…Dougle…Dougle…Tina…Tina…Tina…Sephy?"
Persephone pulled back at that last thought and quickly disapparated off the rooftop, for the first time trusting others to look after her too kind brother. When she apparated in an alley way just outside of MACUSA headquarters, she took a deep breath and leaned against the wall.
Newt had friends. Newt had people looking after him, people who could actually see him. Newt had people who cared.
Persephone smiled a little, a small portion of the worry she always had in her chest when it came to her brother lifting a little.
"If you worry, you suffer twice," she'd remembered telling her brother once. Newt had taken it to heart and she'd held on to the worry for the both of them; it was necessary. She'd always been her brother's keeper.
Now though, it seemed her brother had three new keepers and she could still hear the truth in her head as Queenie assured her Teenie would look out for him.
With a sigh, Persephone pushed against the wall as she turned to go into the building and back to her desk, her thoughts lingering on her brother and wondering what in the name of Merlin's beard a Dougle was.
It was then the sirens went off.