The Erkling

Newt Scamander

Newton had been having a run of exceptionally bad luck. Honestly, it all started back in 1927 right after he'd published his ever-famed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them. If Newt thought that publishing a widely acclaimed book, that would be used in Hogwarts for the next few decades would be his big break, he was terribly short-sighted. After publishing the book of course, word really got out that there was a wizard out there, crazy enough to go after any beast that he caught wind of.

So, at the age of thirty, when Newt heard about a Tuncamentam running loose in the Pacific Islands, Newt was determined to prove the source (Elladora Black, who, after the whole 'mounting house elf heads' thing, Newt would take any chance he could to prove the senile bird wrong) completely wrong, since Tuncamentam neither existed nor ran-loose anywhere. If a Tunca was real (which Newt was firmly certain they were not) then it would be rooted to the ground with iron feet, halfway to the center of the earth. The other reason Newt knew she was wrong (and completely batty) was because the island he was supposedly going to was completely uninhabited, as in, it never had been, never will be inhabited. It's entire population was three seagulls, a palm tree, and apparently a Tuncamentam. It would be a tight squeeze for Newt to fit on the island amid all that chaos.

However, to dear old, batty, completely off-her-rocker Elladora Black's benefit, she was completely right, which left Newt utterly gobsmacked as he landed on the island. He fell over from the jolt of the portkey and actually landed in the water, but was careful not to let go of the hairbrush that was his key. There, not three feet in front of him was what could possibly be the last known Tunca in the world, about to be erroded away along with the rest of the island in the ever changing architecture of the pacific islands. For several long minutes Newt wasn't even sure what protocol was with this. He had his suitcase with him, but the Tunca was rooted into the ground halfway to Spain, and just chopping at the root would probably kill the poor beast.

As it was, the Tunca looked a lot like the head of a moon-calf with its body buried under the sand, and it was whimpering softly when Newt arrived. Several thousand years ago these guys grew in crops of a hundred, but if they bit a human they died immediately-and unlucky for the poor Tunca, its bites were rumored to house venom that caused immortality. Of course, this was never proved as all the humans who claimed to have been immortal were killed pretty quickly, but still Newt didn't quite know what to do.

Kneeling in the sand in his brown tweed trousers Newt held out a hand to the Tunca, gently caressing its face, he cooed soft things to it along the lines of 'you're just lonely aren't you?' and 'where have all your friends gotten to?'. The Tunca couldn't respond but its large eyes drooped responsively and its small mouth opened appreciatively. Newt trailed a finger down to softly scratch its cheeks, and in a moment of utter stupidity, he went from stroking the animal to having the entire tip of his middle finger bitten off by it, from the nail up.

And that, was where Newt's troubles had all began.

Lacking the tip of his middle finger he had used his port-key to get back to New York, holding his rapidly-draining finger against his wool jacket. Newt remembered the experience fondly, as the single most painful thing that had ever happened to him.

Porpentina had been waiting patiently on the top step inside MACUSA as Newt had told his new wife that he would only be gone fifteen minutes at most and he had promised to take her to dinner that night. As it was, Newt had been gone for a grand total of six minutes and as he rushed up the stairs towards her, she stood up to meet him, only to be greeted with a thick spurt of blood from his finger when he'd pulled it out to show her. Being the no-nonsense woman she was, Tina hadn't even taken a moment to consider how ruined her white (well, now red) shirt was before ripping off one of her sleeves and roughly bandaging Newt's finger. Tina gave him a 'we'll talk about this later' look and marched him towards the floo.

After the magical doctors were baffled by the fact that Newt's heart wasn't actually pumping blood, gravity was just letting it fall out of him (with a few squirts of course, like the one he'd nailed Tina, and now Queenie too with) and the medi-witch simply told him to hold his finger up, instead of limply pointing it down, and the blood stopped. A few spells later and his finger had been returned to its former glory, save for the fact that the tip of his middle finger was a slightly different skin shade from the rest of his hand, and his heart was apparently no-longer pumping any blood. By the standards of the medi-witch, and four muggle doctors that Tina took him too (then promptly bribed to keep their mouths shut, such a charming lass Tina was) Newt was dead, and all of his blood was sluggishly rushing to his extremities, the doctors suggested that he lie down, but then often argued with themselves if that would just make his blood settle in his back.

Tina certified that Newt was laying down for twenty-four hours a day from there on, and the second day this rule had been instilled Newt passed out, for five days.

Waking to the blinding light of the sun coming through the thread-bare curtains of he and Tina's apartment, Newt groaned and tried to move. For a moment, he couldn't, until he slowly moved each extremity, then moved up until he was sitting, then standing. Rushing him around to several more doctors, this run including a medicine-man and a faith healer from East India, it was found that Newt's heart was, in fact, pumping blood but defying all odds because Newt's body temperature was a chilly 24 degrees Fahrenheit, and blood froze at 28.

Again, Newt passed out, this time for ten days, hooked up to magic that kept him alive, and when he woke up, he was warm and his blood was pumping completely normally. Everyone thought that he was totally fine, save for his close friends who knew what was really happening.

Within ten years, Newt convinced Tina to find someone else and he moved back to London, frequently visiting his old friends, but immersed in research on how to make himself not immortal.

Within twenty years, Newt was certain there was absolutely no cure.

Within thirty years, it came to the public's knowledge that Newt Scamander, famed magizoologist, was completely immortal.

From then on Newt accepted a position at Hogwarts for Care of Magical Creatures, working up until the battle of Hogwarts, in which he had become a war hero for saving the lives of Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks. Newt had stated that he no longer owed Elladora Black anything.

Newt had worked at Hogwarts for 41 years, had somehow never gotten over his slight stutter and shyness, and was now picking up his research again. He was a little bored of being cooped up at Hogwarts all these years, and the summer were never enough time to gather all the new Magical Creatures that he wanted for his suitcase.

Harry Potter, goods friends with Newton, after the whole saving Remus thing, tipped Newt off to a possible dangerous beast situation in Del Norte Colorado. Harry had been traveling America, and had promised to let Newt know if he saw anything.

Newt made short work of hopping on a plane and landing himself in Del Norte, California. Finding himself in a motel room with his suitcase securely on the bed next to him, Newt brought up his computer and started research. It was only at Hermione Granger's insistence that he got one, and Newt had been more than skeptical of course, but it was so much easier to just research things on google than to have to dredge up books. Newt was fairly sure that after 1926, 2006 was his favorite year (although there was a lot of acid in the 70s that would be sad to hear that).

Harry hadn't exactly told him what he was after but the word around town was that two ten year old kids had been eaten, and their families poisoned, comatose in the hospital. Being 109 years old, Newt had a lot of knowledge floating around in his head, and his first thought was what he was going with. An Erkling.

They were ugly things, native to the Black Forest in Germany. Shaped like a house elf with a cone shaped nose, they were ugly little beasts and they liked to eat children and shoot unsuspecting adults with poison darts. To Newt's knowledge, the last Erkling attack had been in 1965 on a young boy named Bruno Shmidt who had hit it over the head and killed it-but that had been in Germany. How an Erkling made its way to America, he truly wasn't sure.

According to lore, they were related to house-elves so there was a possibility they could apparate anywhere, but the majority of (if not all) Erklings were kept under lock and key in Germany, preserving the species, but not allowing them to use magic. Newt supposed it was possible that one got out of the anti-magic cells they were kept in and with a surge of magic, popped itself to Del Norte, Colorado.

It was six in the evening and Newt estimated that there were 300 children in Del Norte that were an age the Erkling would want to kill, which didn't give him any leads. What he did know, however, was that if the Erkling was from the house elf family but was 'rabid', for lack of a better word, it would be leaving a mess wherever it went. Felled trees, knocked over garbage, dented cars, you name it.

Newt opened his suitcase and climbed down the stairs, rooting around for something that he could use. Newt definitely intended to capture the Erkling alive, but just in case he slid a dagger into his waistband, concealing it behind his wool coat, he wore the exact same outfit from 1927, save for a pair of jeans, rolled at the ankle, that were wildly more comfortable than those tweed pants he'd been wearing. He also grabbed a burlap sack and a portkey for MACUSA, they would take the Erkling for him, and they weren't incredibly strong so the burlap sack would work wonders.

With all of this, Newt closed his suitcase, and headed out of the motel, into the night.

Dean Winchester

Dean had been a little reluctant to go to Del Norte, Colorado for this hunt. First of all, he didn't think it was anything supernatural that was doing this but Sam had given him the 'please, please, this sounds really interesting eyes' and Dean acquiesced, driving them 200 miles for this. After surveying everything they could find, Dean was actually glad they had come, monster hunts weren't too common nowaday.

In the hospital, he and Sam had found puncture wounds on the necks of the parents of the eaten boys. Single holes, like from a needle, and the children had been seriously eaten. Like, Tiny Tim lost more than just his leg for christmas, type of eaten. So Sam, always quick on the ball spewed those things into the ether of the internet and somehow got back a concrete answer on what the thing was. An Erkling.

"I don't know man, dads journal doesn't say anything about these things and there's really not a lot of lore on them." Dean said, flipping through the loosely binded pages.

"Well, it's our best lead, and everything I've found says they're easy to kill, anything will kill them. I figure if the Erkling killed two boys right next door to one another, he'll be going for the next kid down." Sam explained and told Dean the address, a couple more houses down from where the other two boys had been killed. Dean wasn't exactly sure what the game plan was for something they'd never dealt with before, but he grabbed his pistol and put it into the waistband of his jeans, grabbing the keys to the Impala and heading out the door with Sam close behind.

Upon walking out into the night air Dean catches sight of something, and holds an arm in front of Sam in a 'hold still' type of way. Dean holds a finger to his mouth and watches a young man with a peculiar gait and style of dress walk out of the motel room about ten down from them, not noticing Sam nor Dean, the man bypassed all the cars in the lot and walked steadily towards the street corner.

"Dean, what's up?" Sam asked after Dean's arm dropped.

"Was it just me or did you see a friggin Buster Keaton wannabe walk out of that motel room, strapped, he had a knife on him." Dean said, having noticed the handle of the dagger when the moon reflected off of it.

"So what, Dean? Isn't vintage style in or something?" Sam asked, obviously not thinking of this as a problem.

Getting in the car, Dean was still mulling over what he saw. "Okay listen, this Erkling or whatever, might be real, but what I know is real, is that creepy fucking dead-eyed guy that just walked off into the night. I say we follow him, it gets too late, no suspicious activity, we head to the kids house, but I have a seriously bad feeling about him." Dean said, trying to convey his best 'i'm not fucking around' tone to Sam.

Sam looked as if he wanted to argue, but didn't, blindly agreeing with Dean who pulled out and followed after the man, creeping at a snails pace when he could just slightly make him out in the setting sunlight. "Dean, look up ahead a little, under the street lamp." Sam pointed towards a sea of trash being highlighted by the flickering light.

"Raccoons?" Dean asked, mostly to himself but watched in wonder as the gangly man from the 1920s stood before the pile of trash, stopped for a long while actually, seemingly perplexed by such chaos, before Dean noticed another garbage can on the block being knocked over, wobbling from side to side before finally tipping and spilling its contents. The tall man pulled the knife out of his waist and stood ready, as Dean pulled the car off to the side, parking it.

"I really doubt it's raccoons." Sam said knowingly, getting out of the car and slipping his gun into the waistband of his jeans. Dean followed suit, keeping his steps quiet as they approached the man, who seemed to be on edge, Dean could tell that he was in a defensive stance, obviously keeping his eye out for something.

With a series of eye gestures and small flicks of their hands, Dean and Sam approached the strange man, who was completely oblivious to them, even as they crunched leaves and generally did a lousy job of sneaking. From behind Dean could tell that the man was wearing a knee-length blue coat with light washed blue jeans underneath, and boots laced up on his slim ankles and calves. From behind the man was attractive, with a skinny frame how Dean liked his men, but this wasn't exactly a time for Dean to be appreciating the mans figure.

There was a flash of a blade and then a high pitched squeal that sounded almost like the chuckle of a child, endearing in a way and haunting at the same time. Sam had told Dean that this was how the Erklings loured children to come with them, by mimicking the sound of a child. The tall man had knicked the Erkling with his dagger and was now grabbing the ugly beasts hands behind its back, immobilizing it and shoving it into a burlap sack, where it eventually stopped screaming.

Sam and Dean shared a look that interpreted as 'what the fuck' before continuing to approach the man. Dean didn't really care what the mans reasoning was, he couldn't just take a dangerous beast alive, it had already killed two children and put four parents into a coma. "Hey!" Dean called, making the man freeze, his fist clenched tightly around the top of the sack as the creature squirmed, and turned around.

"Can I help you?" The man asked, his eyes wide and not meeting neither Dean nor Sams, and his stance wide but neither protective nor defensive.

"Uh, yeah, you have an extremely dangerous animal in that bag." Dean spoke, planning to continue but the man simply nodded his head sharply, eyes looking towards the ground and slightly dazed.

"Oh yes, I'm well aware. I assure you I can handle it properly." He spoke and Dean picked up on the fact that he was British, and extremely British, like this guy had just walked out of tea date with the queen.

Dean was a little taken aback by the statement, not sure if the man was really a hunter or not. He glanced over at Sam, who seemed equally as confused by the situation. No hunter Dean knew would take a monster alive, unless they were working with some bad mojo.

"Are you a hunter then?" Sam asked, he and Dean stepping a little closer to the man, aware that people were starting to come out of there houses from the ruckus that the beast had made.

"A hunter? Oh no, I could never kill one of my animals." The man said, stuttering over a few of his words, still looking rather vacant.

Several people were walking out into the street, eying the three of them warily, Dean saw a man go for his phone out of the corner of his eye. "Come on, we can ask question later." Dean said, grabbing the man by the arm and pulling him towards the impala. The Brits first reaction was to jerk away but Dean assured him that no harm would come, and Sam added that they just had a few questions. So, they piled into the impala.

For the entirety of the short drive back to the motel the man looked entirely terrified, holding onto the top of the sack and also the door pocket of the Impala, for dear life it seemed. Dean didn't speak during the ride, but glanced in the rear-view mirror a few times, almost to make sure the man was still there. He seemed odd, a little slow, and certainly socially awkward, but Dean wasn't sure about him yet. If he was a hunter, he seemed to be good, he'd gotten to the Erkling before he and Sam had.

At the motel, Dean ushered him into their room and Sam found a piece of string to tie off the sack, the Erkling seemed to be not putting up a fight at this point. He was discarded on one of the beds and Dean motioned for the Brit to take a seat in the black computer chair that accompanied the room, he and Sam opting for sitting on the bed, facing him. Dean didn't really see him as posing much of a threat.

"So, who exactly are you?" Dean asked, getting down to business immediately.

"Er, Newton Scamander." The man, Newton answered, his eyes not meeting Dean's nor Sam's again, looking blankly in the middle of them.

"Well then, Newton," Dean said the name like it was the strangest thing he'd ever said before, truly it was a strange name though, especially for a man that looked like he did. "If you're not a hunter how did you know about the Erkling?" Dean asked.

Newton seemed to consider things for a moment, his mouth lightly mumbling, before he apparently thought of a good enough answer. "It's my job, I suppose. Collecting the beasts and making sure that they're well taken care of, safe."

"Well you see our job is keeping people safe from these beasts or whatever. So we can't really let you just let this thing run wild."

Sam put a hand on Dean's arm, "Dean," he started softly, calming the man just a little bit. "What did you plan to do with the Erkling, Newton?" Sam asked, genuine interest showing in his eyes.

"They're native to the Black Forest in Germany, you see, this one here teleported itself here by accident. Truly he means no harm, it's just how they're made. I was planning on returning him to his enclosure." Newton spoke, slowly, articulately, trying not to stumble on his words, but an obvious passion shining through in his voice.

"And you just planned to put this thing on an airplane and whisk it all the way to friggin Germany?" Dean asked, one eyebrow cocked.

"Well no of course not, I planned-" Newton seemed to stop himself at that, and for one moment he made clear eye contact with first Sam and then Dean. "You aren't wizards?" He asked, confusion clear in his voice, with a lilt of alarm.

"Wha-? Wizards? No we're not dirty witches, do you see any dead babies around here?" Dean asked, motioning widely around the room.

"Oh dear, well then I suppose I've made a mistake in speaking to you. I hope that you boys stop killing these animals, give me a ring if you ever need help." Newton said, before closing his eyes tightly. First, a suitcase appeared in his hand, second, he and the Erkling were gone.

"Sammy, I think we're a little in over our heads with this one." Dean said, his jaw dropped. He supposed Newton could have a been a demon, damn, they didn't even check to see if he was.

"How exactly do we give him a ring if we don't have his number?" Sam asked, confused.

"A fucking wizard demon monster just stole an Erkling, and you're wondering how we're going to invite him to a lunch date?" Dean asked, standing from the bed he was sitting on.

"Well, there's not really anything we can do Dean, he's gone, we don't know where he is. Let's just call Bobby and keep hunting." Sam offered. Dean grumbled, but obliged.