Leta was quiet today.

Newt peered at her through his mop of hair, squinting against the sun in an attempt to hide what he was doing. The grass tickled his bare feet, and he wriggled them, trying to allow his body to become cocooned with the ground below him, as they had so many times before through the years. It was warm, yes, and by all means it was a good day ― yet, something was amiss; Leta had always been reticent, but not to him. Never to him.

Peals of laughter pierced their silence, and Newt automatically glanced towards the Black Lake. Newt's mouth began to curve upwards, but the weight on his chest had crushed any desire to laugh out of him. He bit his lip, catching a glimpse of the girl who lay beside him, a glumness having stole all the glitter from her eyes. Something was evidently wrong; everything had been golden and amber before the Easter holidays, and Newt felt as though he was floating above the ground with a lightness akin to feathers and a whispered wingardium leviosa in a way that only Leta could create.

It was not to say that Newt had been an unhappy child: in fact, he had lead a conventionally normal childhood with his mother ― however ordinary life could be with a hippogriff breeder for a mother ― and his older brother Theseus. He would always remember his mother's roseate countenance turn ever redder with pride as he nursed a temporarily crippled hippogriff back to health. His relationship with Theseus was slightly more complicated, in the way that relationships with older brothers could often manifest. He was the golden boy, the perfect student and son with the promise to work at the Ministry. Newt had frequently wished he could bottle the wisps of inferiority that accumulated over the years of being . . . less and throw it into the centre of the Black Lake. He loved his brother, of course, but it did not help when Theseus exhibited his disapproval of Newt's pastimes.

He always felt less next to him.

However, he never felt that way with Leta: a fellow outcast and a lover of magical beasts, he felt that it was the most natural thing in the world for them to come together in friendship. He remembered how terrified he was when he first came to Hogwarts, cold and shivering, thinking that he was too eccentric for people to bother with. Several weeks later, Leta had found him jostling a puffskein in his coat pocket in the corridor en route to Potions. His body had frozen, his first instinct being to hide the creature in case the Slytherin had decided that today was not his day, and the second being a familiar fear that she was going to make fun of him. To his immense surprise, it was neither of these things. In fact, she had smiled widely at him, and motioned him to the Clock Tower. Albeit nervous, the tips of his ears red, he had stuttered answers at her questions, thrown at her wide-eyed interest into his hobby (was she making fun of him?). Eventually, the stiffness of his shoulders had died, and for the first time in forever, he spoke without preamble. For the first time in forever, he could look into someone's eyes without succumbing to the urge to move away. There, they had begun their friendship, in the way that two people only could in an attempt to avoid being given detention for truancy.

Leta took a sharp exhale beside him and he snapped his head so quickly towards her that he had to bite back a gasp of pain at the crick that had developed there, in the space between his trampled collar and the edge of his hair. Her eyes shone with suppressed tears and he denigrated himself silently for being so preoccupied with their past that he had momentarily forgotten about their present. "Leta," he breathed, sitting up and reaching a hand out to her.

She put a shaking hand up ― although it was without any sense of strength ― barring him from her. He had to swallow the hurt that grew from her ability to push him away, before she dropped it and turned her head away from him. From his angle, he could still see her blinking rapidly. Her tears fell on the tips of the blades of grass, and they shone like gems beneath the caress of the sun's fingers. Her chin wobbled in a way that Newt knew hurt with the singular strength it took to prevent the sentiments from spilling over lips.

He tried again. "Tell me what's wrong, please."

"I'm fine," her voice was unnaturally high, and yet, unbidden, a tremble convulsed a note that had fallen from her mouth. He could tell that she was embarrassed for it. Newt steeled himself, pushing the knot of his tie down, the fabric coarse. "You haven't been fine since you came back from the Easter holidays."

"I'm just . . . stressed." She blinked fast. "Because of the exams, and everything."

"You're lying," he said quietly, looking down at his palms. He hated feeling like this ― stupid, stupid, stupid! For all his care of great beasts, he had no knowledge of human comfort. "You were happy before you go onto the train―" (she had kissed him goodbye on the cheek and he had stammered, the place where she had touched turning splotchy) "―and then you came back and you weren't. Something happened with your family, didn't it?"

The chirping of birds swam through the field, and he could distantly hear the splashing of water.

"I hate them," she finally turned her head to look at him straight in the eye, and something in her abject brokenness shattered his heart. "Oh, Leta," he murmured, his breath leaving his body with the weight of it. She upturned her hand, still on the ground, and he placed his palm against hers as she threaded her fingers delicately around his. Then, she lifted their woven hands and placed them against the waltz of her cardiac organ.

There was something so remotely peaceful about this, Newt thought. Something so intrinsically right. Two neglected people who came from families who could not be more different, with a common love for all living beings, lazing beneath the radiant light listening to the thrumming of Leta's heart.

"Did they hurt you badly again?"

As expected, the girl bristled. She hated that word, and he knew it. She thought it to be normal, since all pure-blood children of the Sacred Twenty-Eight were often raised the same way. When she had first shown the dark marks on her body, Newt had been horrified. His dismay had scared her off, and he had to work hard ("did you know Jarveys eat gnomes? Gnomes? That's terrible!" and other variations of "the new edition of the Monster Book of Monsters has a foreword by Edwardus Lima!") to bring her back. Nonetheless, he deliberately used the word because he did not wish to normalise it. It was not normal, and it was not okay. She had to know that nobody deserved it (did she know?).

"Funnily enough, I would have preferred it," she snorted, and then, upon looking at his expression, sighed. She parted her lips, air whistling through her teeth as sound barrelled out into the world. He had the horrible sensation that this would alter everything. Her eyes flicked upwards, and then she uttered it: "my parents were talking at me of marriage prospects."

For a moment, his mind was tantalisingly empty until, like a club at the back of the head, the gravity of what she said pummelled into him. His chest tightened, and, humiliatingly so, warmth burned in his eyes. The world fell away at his feet, and had he been standing, he feared he would have collapsed. The sound of his laughing classmates muted out as if he were in a bubble, and his stomach turned as though he'd been levicorpus-sed. Unknowingly, he had begun to draw away from her, but he was brought back, in an explosion of colour and cacophony, into the real world when she clutched his hand back against her skin like Newt was her anchor, her eyes shining. "Newt ― please don't ― don't walk away from me. Not now. Please." He had never seen her like this before.

"Never," he did not even need to think about it.

When she smiled at him, albeit through a haze of shattered glass, Newt thought she was the most beautiful person he'd ever seen.

"But you're so young." That's all he could think of, the injustice of it. "You have so many years ahead of you, so why are they talking to you about this now?"

"I am a Lestrange, and my father's heir." She replied tonelessly, the wind ruffling her dark hair. "I have a duty to do." Then, she laughed loudly, bitterly. "I am to get married to a man I do not care about, and push out eight babies and try not to kill myself out of misery in the process."

Newt winced at her acridity, something within him plummeting at the thought of her father capturing her free, adventurous spirit and shackling her to what he believed were her duties to the Lestrange family.

"When are you ― h-how are you ―" the words stuck in his throat. Leta simply looked at him, and seemed to know what he meant as she visibly deflated. "When we graduate Hogwarts." The bite had escaped her, and all that was left was hopelessness.

He clenched a fist at his side. He wanted to scream.

"Newt," she spoke, suddenly agitated, "I won't be the only one. Eireen is after me. Eireen ―"

If it were possible, the feeling that had been clawing at his throat, that horrible strangling feeling, gnawed at him until he was red and raw. He opened his arms instinctively, and although awkwardness gnashed its teeth at him, when she wilted against him, her forehead against his neck, he knew he had done the right thing. He embraced her fiercely, blinking, hoping he was not failing miserably at comforting his only true friend. He held her, and they swayed on the spot, as he tried to press back all her pieces into the cavities of her body.

"We'll look after her," he said, his words reverberating. "I promise."

He could feel her smile sadly against his skin. "I believe you mean that."

Of course, both of them knew that these were hollow vows: Eireen was as trapped as Leta. And like Leta, her baby sister was manacled to the ancient, gripping roots of the Lestrange's family tree. Especially after Corvus Jr. was lost to the winds of the Americas, and Corvus Sr. had lost his only male heir, there was no facilitating the metamorphosis of his daughters' wishes.

Leta leaned back and looked at him. "Newt, I-I wish . . ."

Newt's hard thudded so loudly that he flushed red at the thought of her hearing it. "I want you to choose life."

"What?"

"You have so much love to give," her voice was soft, and the most vulnerable it had ever been, "the world would be a much better place if it had more people like you in it."

"What, awkward, bumbling-everywhere, clumsy-footed Newt's of the world?" He scoffed, not unkindly.

She gave him that signature Lestrange smile, that she somehow made all hers. "You think of yourself too little. What I mean to say is that you should be happy. Choose to do what you love." What she said next was spoken so softly that Newt thought he had imagined it. "―even if it means leaving me behind."

The thought was so otherworldly, so bizarre and so utterly nonsensical that Newt could not even formulate a coherent sentence. A world without Leta Lestrange. "Are you ― are you completely out of your mind?"

Heat slapped him, and he struggled to keep the outrage from his words, at the offence she caused him at merely insinuating he could drop her, and his memories of them, as easily as a first-year alohomora.

"We've always wanted to find out if mooncalves really existed. You're going to have to make that trip on your own." She was speaking so quickly that her words nearly strung together in an inelegant bow. "Or an Antipodean Opaleye? You're going to have to save up money to visit New Zealand."

"Leta, stop."

"You need to send me a photograph of a sea serpent from the Atlantic. I've always wanted to see those. Um, pun unintended of course."

"Stop."

"You need to be okay! Otherwise everything will be for nothing!"

The laughter from the lake stopped, and he could feel their eyes on them. Abruptly, frothing heat arose to the surface. Couldn't they mind their own business?

"You never met a monster you couldn't love."

Newt stilled.

She sniffled, and pressed her hand against his shoulder to the ground. Consequently, she placed her head on the corner of Newt's chest, his heart beating wildly at the barrage of information that had been flung at him in a matter of minutes. "I'm tired, Newt," her voice was barely audible. "I'm tired of thinking, of resisting. I just ― I don't want whatever's happening out there to interfere with us. You're the only one I can . . . be myself with. So, can we just be, right now? Please?"

"Leta, I ―" He could not say it, but perhaps that's why he was not a Gryffindor. She was silent for so long that he thought she'd let it go, but finally, she murmured, indistinct: "I know. Me too."

And Leta, once more, fell into silence.

I've been fascinated with her ever since Leta was introduced to Fantastic Beasts. Much to my astonishment, there are numerous people from the fandom who seem to hate her even though she's never even been in the film corporeally. Then again, I don't know why that should surprise me: this is often the case when a female character is introduced who could potentially alter the dynamic of the leading romantic pairing (I'm looking at you, Riverdale). I've seen adult women (well, I assume they're adults? But they could be younger) slut-shame her, and call her all sorts of names, and vilify her even though they portray her as a 13-year-old in their fanfiction.

Anyway, I've sort of created my own Leta in my head, with her own relationships and experiences separate from the canon franchise. I don't think she's a saint, but I wrote this in one sitting where she's at her most vulnerable; this is how I interpret her.

I hope all of you enjoyed this little character study of sorts. This is the first time in a long time where I'm publishing something. Let me know what you think!