So first I wrote this:
In reading all of these quotes about what the other characters think of Newt, it strikes me that so many of them want something from him. Dumbledore, and Leta, and even the Ministry to an extent, are drawn to Newt because he loves and understands monsters, and they want him to love and understand them.
I think it's so important that Tina is not one of these people. This is the crux of "She was a taker. You need a giver." Tina is not looking for validation from Newt. Instead, she has all of this kindness and determination and curiosity to give, and has never had anywhere but her sister and her job to place it. Part of what hurts about thinking him engaged is that he might not want what she has to give. And part of what's wonderful about his clumsy explanation is that he's so delighted she has read his book. He wants what she has to give, after all.
And then I had to fic it. I feel like this could have gotten longer and longer but hopefully it shows what I mean.
"Come on in, pumpkin." Tina pokes her head around the door at Mama's voice.
"You've got a little sister," Papa says, taking her hand and guiding her to the bed.
The baby is wrapped up in a knitted blanket, sleeping in Mama's arms.
"Go ahead," Mama nods.
Tina reaches out a hand to stroke tufts of blonde hair on the baby's head, her eyes alight when her sister shifts in the blankets.
She looks up at her parents in wonder, and they smile at each other, like they do when she asks for another story at bedtime.
"What do you think?" Papa asks.
"I love her," Tina says, quite seriously. Papa chuckles, stroking the top of her head as she holds onto his leg, and Tina is lost in the excitement of having a baby sister to play with.
A lot of sisters say they're close, but even at only eight years old, Tina Goldstein is pretty sure that she and six-year-old Queenie are closer than many.
Queenie comes into her gift quite young, and in the innocence of their bond and their youth, Tina's thoughts and emotions pour into her sister's mind.
She is there, as well, when Queenie realizes far too young that not everyone's thoughts are pleasant or kind. Queenie must take in everything around her, good and bad, and so Tina becomes her sister's protector, determined to keep her mind, bombarded with so much of both darkness and light, good.
Tina finally manages to stop crying that night. They both miss their parents desperately, but Tina has seen how it weighs on her eight-year-old sister, to bear both Tina's pain and her own. And so, a week after the funeral, Tina calms her own tears and sings the lullaby Mama had taught them. Queenie drifts off to sleep tucked into Tina's bed.
A sound from the sitting room draws her out of her bedroom.
Mama had always said that she and Aunt Florence were close growing up. Like you and Queenie, she'd explained, and she'd also said that they weren't anymore.
Why Mama? Tina had asked, unable to imagine it. Mama had not told her.
But she'd heard Grandmother and Uncle George talking at the funeral. If only she hadn't married him, Uncle George had said, and she's begun to understand that Mama was part of an important family of American wizards, and that she had gone to Europe and married the Jewish son of a poor witch and a no-maj.
And Mama's family didn't like it.
Tina walks softly into the sitting room, padding up to her aunt's chair. She places a tentative hand on her shoulder.
Aunt Florence jumps, and spins around. "What are you doing, child?"
"You were crying," Tina says.
"No," Aunt Florence quickly wipes away the tears. "I was doing no such thing. Go back to bed, Porpentina."
She hates that name. Papa used to call her that, but he was always teasing, happy. It sounds all wrong.
"Now," Aunt Florence insists.
Tina withdraws her hand and hurries back to bed.
"What's wrong?" Tina asks as she enters the dormitory.
Margaret drops into a chair. Though this is her fifth year living with these girls, she's never felt as though she knows them. "Sadie's upset because she didn't make the quidditch team," Margaret explains.
Sadie is sitting on her own bed, her eyes reddened from crying.
"I'm sorry, Sadie," Tina says, raising a hand to touch the other girl's shoulder. "At least you have two more years to try out."
"What do you know about it? You're horrible on a broom," Sadie snaps.
Tina flinches, her hand dropping behind her back. She picks up her bag and turns around. Maybe she'll find Queenie, or—but Queenie's friends seem annoyed sometimes, when she hangs around them. Intimidated, even, since she won that duel with a seventh year last spring. She'll go study in the library.
Determined. Quite capable. Tina flushes with pleasure as she reads the training report. Flying skills could use some work. Fair enough. Dueling is above average for her stage of training.
She has poured her time and energy, her determination and curiosity and wit into training. And her hands have become incredibly skilled with a wand, to the point that nonverbal spells come easily, and she could no more fumble a stunning spell or counter-curse than forget her own name.
She's at the top of her class that year: only the third girl ever as the men who train with her grumble. She becomes an auror the next.
Queenie makes new friends at work, and sees old friends from school who live in the city. But Tina is fine, with her sister and her auror's badge.
She takes pride in being good at her job. And she loves it.
"Auror Goldstein. I have to remove you from the investigative team."
"But Sir—"
"Do you have any idea what might've happened if we hadn't reacted quickly and obliviated everyone? The magical community in the entire city could've been exposed."
"She was beating a child until he bled. To demonstrate that it's good for them. That it builds character. And sir, I really think she's up to-"
"This isn't up for discussion, Goldstein." Mr. Graves grips his chair. "Go pack up your desk."
Tina feels frustrated tears pressing at the back of her eyes and holds them back.
"We'll...find you something. I know you and your sister don't have—"
She stands abruptly, angry. She doesn't want his pity. Just the job that she's worked so hard for. But not at the expense of watching a child suffer.
Tina feels lost as she comes home that night. Queenie doesn't need to ask. Even if she hadn't been able to hear her sister's thoughts, the story had been all over the office. She wraps her sister up in a hug. "You had to do something, Teen. You're too kind and too determined not to."
She doesn't cry that night, but she holds onto her sister and wonders how she's supposed to turn off the leads and investigations and instincts that fill her mind.
"Newt, are you okay honey?"
Tina follows Queenie's gaze. "What's wrong?" she asks her sister.
"It's—fuzzy. I'm still not used to the accent. But he feels weak as a kitten."
Newt blinks sluggishly as Queenie reaches to support one of his arms. "Actually, kittens can bite quite firmly if provoked." Tina bites her lip to cover a grin. "Graves—er—Grindelwald may have used a few curses."
Tina takes his other arm, and at her sister's nod, apparates them home.
An hour later, she looks up from her book, frowning. "Where are you goin'?"
Newt stumbles out of his chair. "Need to feed everyone," he explains, looking unbalanced.
Tina stands just in time to stop his fall, and grips his arm to keep him upright. She drops her book onto the sofa and gestures to the case. "Mr. Scamander, you'll explain. I'll feed."
He stares at her, his weight still partially supported against her arm. She waits for him to express concern about letting someone else near his creatures.
He doesn't.
"Newt," he says. His eyes are beautifully bright this close, and the way his fringe falls across his forehead…
Tina blinks. "Okay," she agrees, "Newt."
Tina's stomach flutter when she sees it. New! the broad sign in the bookshop window announces, by British magizoologist Newt Scamander: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
He was supposed to-but he must be busy, she tells herself. Just because he hasn't come, yet…
His next letter is there to greet her when she gets home that night, a copy of his book in hand. She devours the letter eagerly, savoring each paragraph on new patients in his menagerie. There is no mention of the book at first, but his letters often seem to be written piece by piece, when he thinks of something to share.
Near the end he lingers on frustrations with his brother. Theseus insisted I come to another meeting today. Now he's saying that the Ministry want access to my notes because they're trying to protect the beasts. No doubt the aurors have other plans. A bunch of careerist hypocrites, really.
She bristles. It has been wonderful to have her old job back; to have purpose.
Still, she realizes as she reaches the end, nothing about the book. Nothing about travel.
On the paper she retrieves from her desk she begins a passionate rebuke of his opinion of aurors. It turns into partial agreement as she writes. She leaves the letter once she realizes that she's filled two pages, waiting until she can better phrase a question about his trip, and reaches into her bag for the book. She touches the beautifully embossed letters of the title, and then cracks open the spine and begins to read.
It is so full of him: detailed to a fault, generous. She misses him as much reading these pages as she does when opening his letters.
Still, she opens her letter and begins a list of questions. Have you actually met an acromantula? How did you figure out what kappas like to eat?
She can almost see, in the words of his letters, the tears gathering in his eyes as Jacob stepped into the rain, can almost feel his hand clutching hers as they ran through MACUSA, can almost hear his determined promise to Credence, and recall the heat radiating from his hand as he touched her hair.
And reading his book, she can even come close to remembering what it felt like to stand inside his case and watch him with his creatures, part of his extraordinary world. She writes more questions. She wants to know everything.
A week later, Queenie comes home late from an evening out with friends.
"Your magazine came," Tina tells her sister, flipping the page of a report from work.
Queenie opens the parcel, and, a few moments later, freezes. Even though she isn't looking directly at her sister, Tina feels the change in the room.
"What?"
"Nothing." Queenie's voice is unsteady.
Tina looks up. "What is it?"
Queenie shakes her head, brow furrowed as though in confusion as her eyes skim across a page.
Tina stands and, with an auror's agility far superior to that of a sister in heels, manages to glimpse the page. "Newt," she breathes.
They read the article together. Her stomach bottoms out.
I don't know what Leta likes these days.
"But I thought—" Her training kicks in, after a fashion. Her sister's conversation with him in his case. The picture he carries. The ring detailed in the article, and Leta Lestrange's hand on Newt's arm…
"Teenie you don't know if this is—"
"Don't—don't read my—" Tina breaks off, pressing her lips together. You'd hardly known him she tries to remind herself, but it's horribly unconvincing. She'd thought she had.
The sisters are close already, pressed together. Tina allows herself to be pulled into Queenie's arms.
She has poured so much of herself into their letters. It stings to imagine them pushed into the back of a drawer. No, she thinks, that's not right. Scattered haphazardly across a table. A passing distraction not significant enough to keep.
"Teen, that can't possibly be true," Queenie says, because of course Tina's mind will always be pouring into her sister's. "He was…enchanted."
"By Leta?" Tina asks, though Queenie can hear that it's not quite the question on her mind.
"No, silly" Queenie says, and Tina can feel her smile. "By you."
It's much more difficult to think of him as Mr. Scamander in person. She slips when she first sees him. Newt.
He is so extraordinary. She'd forgotten just how much. Funny and unusual and exciting, and wonderful for having her back on the run. It makes their distance bite.
He stumbles over his words as he explains, and for a moment she has absolutely no idea what he's going on about. Still, hope flares in her chest and her heart pounds.
Newt I read your book. All of her questions from that unsent letter come flooding back, and she wishes that they could pause here so that she could finally ask them.
He pulls a folded and well-worn picture of her from his pocket.
The words that she'd thought he'd squandered-everything she'd poured into those letters-are there, cradled close to his chest, as though they are precious to him.
They sit together at Newt's kitchen table in silence, both holding mugs of tea that they've barely touched.
After a while, Newt finally speaks, looking at the chair beside hers. "Tina, do you need to write to that auror? Let him know that—"
Her brow furrows. "Who?"
"Queenie—" He glances at her eyes as though to ensure that the name's alright, but it hasn't sunk in yet. That name and the woman she watched cross the flames last night are two separate people in her mind. "She said you were seeing someone else. An auror." He looks cautiously hopeful despite the recollection, and it makes her smile.
"Oh, him." Queenie had tried to make him jealous, Tina realizes. It makes her smile to imagine. And ache with missing her sister. "We had coffee once before I left for Europe. I've never really liked him."
"Oh." He smiles at the ground, then glances back at her. "Only you stopped writing, and after what I'd said about aurors I thought—"
She stares at him, surprised. "I stopped writing because I thought you and Leta..."
All these months thinking he'd forgotten all about her, and here he'd been, thinking the same.
Tina's teeth dig into her lower lip as she reaches out a nearly steady hand and cups his face. He lets out a shaky breath and reaches to cover her hand with his own, pressing into her touch. His skin is rough and calloused and covered in scars exactly as she remembers from when they ran with the Swooping Evil.
No one but Queenie, she realizes, has ever really let her—not since Mama and Papa died.
He smiles at her and she smiles back, melting forward. He must guess her thoughts just before she pulls away because he squeezes her fingers and whispers, "Don't let go. Please."
And so she raises her other hand, holding his face between her palms, and leans forward to press her lips above his brow. His hands curve into hers with the touch, his breath warm across her neck.
He's smiling when she pulls away, flushed and a little unbalanced. Her hands are in his now, tangled between them. He swipes a thumb over her palm and she shivers. Inexplicably, she thinks of her very first memory, of touching baby Queenie's little head for the first time. She thinks of the way her heart had opened to admit her sister. The memory has always been sweet, though bitter with the thought of her parents. Now it is doubly so.
Tears gather in her eyes, and he squeezes her hands as they fall.
"How is she?" Newt asks. Tina sinks into the menagerie hammock beside him. After years of marriage, the way that his arm winds around her waist, her hand settling on his neck, is instinct.
"Asleep. Finally." Queenie had fought rest for hours, fractured and, at moments, almost difficult to recognize. "We'll take care of her. She'll get better."
He hums and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.
"Newt?" she asks, sinking into him as his palm coasts up and down her back, "when we met…"
"You mean when you arrested me."
A few of her fingers cover his lips. "Shush."
He grins, but she feels in his intent eyes that he is listening carefully.
"You didn't have to show me the creatures. You didn't have to explain your book, or tell me the story of the obscurus…" she trails off, resting her head against his chest.
His fingers thread through her hair, his breath a light touch across the top of her head. "I suppose not."
"Why did you?"
"Because I liked you." Her hand drifts to his and he brings it to his lips. "Because you seemed less…blinkered than most people. You—kind and…determined. And curious."
"Yes," she breathes, lifting her head to see his face.
"Tina, when you cry I can't tell if—"
She interrupts him with a kiss, threading her fingers through his hair as they sink into each other.
Later, she goes upstairs to give her sister a hand to hold. Newt pulls up a chair beside her, grasping her free hand in his.
And she doesn't let go.