Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a traveling wizard by the name of Newt Scamander lived in a small house on top of a small hill. His home was cozy and the hill beautiful and blossoming, but Newt's real love was spending time in exotic places and exploring mysterious jungles and forests. His lifetime passion was discovering new and magical beasts from across the globe, and he was very happy doing so. Until one day Newt's brother, a famed war hero by the name of Theseus, became very rich and very important in a stroke of luck. Theseus loved his brother very much and decided to gift him with a great surprise: an enormous castle-like house with dozens of servants, and a princedom over the nearby land.
Newt did not care for the princedom and even less for the bountiful castle with its ready and eager servants, so he did what any coward would do; tucking his royal coronet away along the castle's treasures, he gave the servants freedom until his return and fled with his case full of his favorite magical beasts. The area flourished without him, occasionally struck by the Plague but recovering in weeks and moving on. It seemed both Newt and the land would continue with their lives forever.
But then one day, in a faraway land, Newt and his beasts came across a curious young wizard by the name of Credence. The young man was quite troubled and hurt, and when Newt questioned him, revealed himself to be a dangerous and mythical Obscurial. Forced to contain his wizardry talent throughout his life, Credence's magic exploded through him in the form of a murderous Obscurus. Newt tried to save Credence from himself, but all the means of his aid failed and he found the boy dying in his arms.
Credence, damaged by the Obscurus, was not a forgiving wizard. With his last shuddering breath he cursed Newt for not managing to save him, casting a dark spell on a nearby rose. Credence's last words were sharp and black, warning Newt of a torturous future; the young Obscurial's magic would bind Newt to his castle forevermore, his beloved case of beasts exiled to the corners of the earth. To prevent any attempt of Newt's to leave the castle, Credence created out of thin air three malicious monsters of shadow that would follow Newt everywhere and slaughter every person in the land if he ever stepped out of the front doors. To others' eyes it would seem as though Newt was the horrible creatures' master, despite his future hated of them. But Newt's punishment did not end there; his servants, cursed into various household objects for no explainable reason, would provide meager company, and no soul could stay in the castle for long before the monstrous creatures would rip them limb from limb.
As Newt sat, shocked by his sudden fate, Credence dying in his lap, the young Obscurial wizard found a part of him that wasn't destroyed by the Obscurus. He murmured a last addition to the curse before dying, attempting to ease Newt's torment: if Newt would find true love by age thirty, and before the last petal on the nearby enchanted rose would fall, the curse would be broken and Newt would be free.
At once a great gust of wind swept Newt off his feet and tumbled him across miles and miles and miles, until he found himself lying on the floor of the entrance hall in his gargantuan castle home. The doors blew shut behind him, and the nearby servants stared in surprise before gasping in pain and shrinking into assorted cutlery, kitchenware, and one grand piano. Despite the oddity of the moment, Newt found himself weeping as the poor men and women were reduced to stout and breakable china; particularly a cook name Mr. K who had been a friend of his, now a round teapot with a pattern of dark swirls.
And then a growl, and out of the shadows formed the three terrible creatures that Credence had created as he died. The monsters looked even more horrifying as they approached him, and Newt was appalled as he realized he'd seem their master to the outsider's eye. These dreadful beasts were of the sort he would never approach or study in the wild; they were too horrid and murderous to share with the world.
But Newt knew the worst part of his newfound fate: Credence's attempted kindness- his murmur that true love before age thirty would break Newt's curse –was in vain. Newt had never been the heartthrob of the family nor of the village, and no girl had ever fancied him; now, along with the creatures that followed him and threatened to butcher thousands if he stepped outside the castle, he would never see another human again (to say nothing of women).
And so Newt began his dismal future as a figurative beast, trapped alone in his castle for what he thought- incorrectly –would be eternity.
But it wasn't.
As Newt neared his terrifying deadline alone in his castle, two sisters lived together in a village across the dark woods surrounded his home.
The older sister was named Tina Goldstein. She had hair like a raven's wing and soulful eyes, deep with knowledge and plenty of worry. Tina was a responsible and serious young woman who was rumored among the villagers to have only smiled seven times in all her dwelling in the village, both times at her sister. Said sister was the reason Tina was so concerned and in charge; her name was Queenie, and she was a charming blonde with sparkling eyes and not a care in the world. Both sisters had been orphaned as children, and Tina had taken upon herself the burden of making sure Queenie grew up happy as the other girls in the village. But Queenie saw the good where others didn't and quickly became the most joyful and beautiful girl in town, never leaving her sister behind and preferring Tina's company to all others.
And thus the sisters grew until their mid-twenties, and the day Queenie went out to look for berries in the woods and pulled Tina along with her, headlong into Newt's cursed fate.
