A/N: Hi all! Some of you asked for a continuation of Slow Dance, and while I totally didn't expect it to come to fruition, it's totally happening. This is going to be a compilation of 3 short (2k words) vignettes from what I imagine Crimes of Grindelwald might be like after Slow Dance. That said, I do recommend you read it before these stories as the events in it provide the context for Newt and Tina's complicated relationship in these vignettes. It will also often be referenced here as that thing that happened a few months ago.

Since Eddie Redmayne said that CoG is set 6 to 8 months after the first film (although Yates said during press for the first film that CoG would be set 3 months after, during the spring), I'm going to set this at around June/July 1927. Slow Dance is set in March 1927.

"You're too good, Newt. You never met a monster you couldn't love."

Leta's chestnut colored hair had fallen down to disheveled waves after their long and arduous encounter with an escaped ZouWu that had caused a ruckus in the middle of a Parisian street earlier that evening. She had been eager to help tame the beast and had been doing very well alongside him until she'd overstepped a boundary of sorts in attempting to coax the irate creature, and it lashed out by whipping its long, feather-like, red tail (evidently much harder and heavier than it looked) at her, sending her flying back and tumbling to the ground.

Tina, who had been helping civilians that were hurt by the ZouWu's disturbance and along with Jacob had been getting them to a safe distance away from it, heard Leta's cry and immediately rushed to her side. Newt turned back briefly to meet eyes with the auror, who assured him with a hasty nod that she would take care of Leta while he the ZouWu. Leta had sustained no serious injuries from the fall, apart from a sore body and scrapes and bruises that Tina took care of with healing spells.

After he'd finally coaxed the beast into his case, Tina approached with Leta and insisted he bring her along to a safe place so she could recover, while Jacob and herself would stay behind. The baker was several meters away, crouched down to comfort a man who sustained a leg injury from the ZouWu's outburst. Tina would stay and assist the French aurors in obliviating as many non-magique witnesses as they could, and she and Jacob would meet up with the two of them later.

The tension that permeated the air between the three of them was anything but imaginary, he knew, and he is unable to keep the memories of a night nearly four months ago from emerging from the back of his mind (where he'd been trying to keep it these past months, and where they had briefly gone to during his encounter with the ZouWu). Once realized, they landed with an agonizing thud in his chest and settled there; a cold, hard and heavy weight that now seemed even harder to ignore than the last time he'd felt it.

Tina's hair was still in the same style she'd worn it those months ago at the engagement party: short and sleek, and dark and lovely like her eyes. Some pieces had strayed from where they ought to be from all her running about, but she quickly fixed it with a brush or two of her fingers.

Newt gripped his case handle more tightly as the memory of touching her hair and the urge to do it again swept over him unforgivingly. He started to look everywhere except towards her.

"Get well, Miss Lestrange," he'd heard her say.

"Thank you, Miss Goldstein," replied Leta, genuinely grateful to her for her help.

After clumsily giving Tina an address of where to meet, as well as a feeble goodbye, he took Leta by the arm and disapparated them to the flat he'd rented out in Paris. It was dimly lit and still looking very recently moved into as he hadn't bothered much with unpacking; and though he'd managed to expand the interior of the flat just enough to make it feel less cramped, it remained a humble abode.

Once they landed, he let go of her arm and hastily set his suitcase down on the floor while telling her to make herself at home. Relieved by the opportunity to distract himself, he opened his case and excused himself before disappearing into it. It was later after he emerged with a cup of tea, a vial of Pepper-Up Potion, and a small tub of Murtlap essence that he found her still standing up, back turned to him.

Her words and the softness and vulnerability in her voice rooted him in place. They sent an all too familiar twinge coursing through his heart, which hadn't quite recovered from what had happened a few months ago.

Setting the cup, vial and tub down on a nearby table, he decides to stop running away.

"You're not a monster, Leta," there's a rasp in his own voice he hadn't expected, and he swallows the lump that had formed in his throat. "You never were, and I never thought you were."

She's turned her head to look at him and manages a small smile, but the sadness still hasn't left her dark, almond shaped eyes. "You've always had the most remarkable capacity to see the good in everything…in every one . It's always been your best trait. But I think, at times, it's also been your undoing."

When he doesn't say anything she continues, turning her body to face him and speaking firmly but softly, "You believe in them so much – sometimes maybe too much – that you put yourself at risk for them because you know that they are simply misunderstood."

"But sometimes, even after you've saved them, they continue to let you down." She pauses, and Newt sees the look in her eyes for what it really is – regret. Her next words are barely above a whisper but he hears them loud and clear: "I'm so sorry, Newt."

She'd already apologized to him in January when she came into his office at the Ministry with a diamond ring on her finger, a few days after Theseus told him about his plans to propose. But compared to this moment, that apology now seemed strained in comparison. She had been in her usual impeccable state then – hair in sleek curls and attire neat and freshly pressed. Such a state was part and parcel of the mask that she had gotten so good at wearing that it only occurred to him now, as she stood before him baring her heart – disheveled state and all – that she'd still been wearing that mask (or at least a somewhat watered-down version of it) the first time she apologized.

Struck by her sincerity and vulnerability, Newt tries to find something to say, mouth opening and closing several times as he struggles to find the words.

But she finds her words sooner. "I knew how you felt about me when we were in school," her bluntness shocks him more than the words that leave her lips. After having more than a decade to think it over, he'd be lying if he said he hadn't considered that she knew, but hearing the words straight from her mouth feels like watching a storm finally start to clear. "I knew, and I used it against you because I was a coward."

"I meant what I said when I came to your office months ago. You don't have to forgive me now, or even for a long time. For what happened at school…and for now," she briefly glances downwards, and Newt doesn't have to follow her gaze to know she looked at the diamond on her left ring finger. But then she lifts her gaze again to meet his. "In fact, I'll understand if you never do. I know that's probably what I deserve."

"Miss Goldstein…she's good for you," she says it gently and almost tentatively, as though she knew it was a sensitive topic; but at the mention of Tina his heart still twists all the same — it twists so tightly in his chest it nearly knocks all the air from his lungs. "I know that she cares for you. And I know that you care for her."

But I've already buggered things up with her, he thinks as he fixes his gaze back to the floor.

The pain must have been written all over his face because she seems to understand immediately. From the corner of his eye he sees her take a step closer to him, and surprisingly his heart gives no sign of protest – it's hurting over someone else now.

He looks back up at her when she says his name, and sees her eyes are as pleading as the tone of her voice. "I only want you to be happy, Newt. What I don't want is for the past to keep you from what you could have."

For a moment he wonders whether she's developed a talent for Legilimency she hasn't told him about, before remembering that such abilities aren't always necessary – people are easiest to read when they're hurting.

"You'll make things right with her, Newt, I know you will," Leta smiles, and though it's small it meets her eyes.

He searches her eyes and wonders when people started to have so much faith in him – Dumbledore, Leta, even Theseus of all people – and why. He'd tried his hardest to stay out of people's way, traveling for months – years – on end and spending his time exclusively with magical creatures if he wasn't on his own. Was it the fame or just coincidence? He never wanted attention, but he was honored and humbled that it meant many people were reading his book.

And now here he was in Paris, thrown in the middle of a storm because his old teacher had an absurd amount of faith in him; and he still wasn't completely sure what exactly he was doing and what to do next, but proceeded all the same. (Dumbledore, kind and generous as he is, has a uniquely maddening way of talking so much whilst saying hardly anything at all; and while he's clear enough about one or two things, one always feels as though they have more questions than answers after conversing with him.)

There was only one thing Newt really wanted to, and he felt like he was already failing at it.

His mind wanders towards the photograph in his case, taken from a copy of The New York Ghost before he left in December. He had just finished the final draft of his manuscript, and to him the photograph was a treasure; it represented the promise he made (to her and to himself) to see her again.

In April, a few weeks after the engagement party, he'd given up on the many drafts of letters he'd attempted to write and decided it would be better to come see her; for there was no guarantee that she would even want to read a letter from him. But his travel permit to the United States was rejected, and even after asking Theseus if he could pull some strings (something he never imagined himself doing), he remained stuck in London.

It was then that he placed the photograph on the inside of his case cover, leaving himself no choice but to see it more than once each day. It was a reminder for how he'd broken her heart and how he vowed to himself to mend it somehow. It was a source of both happiness and self-inflicted pain, which he felt he deserved after so callously taking her smile away – the smile he'd come to draw much of his strength from. Now the mere memory of it would have to suffice because she could barely even look at him.

It's even more difficult to tap into that memory now. Everytime he tries, it's the memory of her tears – tears that he had caused – that surface first, and after he's ploughed through it, he finds that even the image of her smile is now tinged with some amount of melancholy.

"I hope you're right," he tells Leta, managing a feeble smile. Her own smile widens and turns warmer, and when he lets out a breath he feels a weight he'd forgotten he was carrying leave his shoulders. There's still some weight there, and there's still a pull in his chest he can't shake, but it's the most relieved he's felt in a while, and he starts to think that perhaps there is hope after all.

His smile widens the slightest bit, and the air between him and Leta shifts to something more comfortable than it's been in years.

A/N: Thanks for reading! To my Twitter followers/mutuals who voted in my poll about the archives and the circus, thank you so much for your help but I got the idea of setting this vignette after the ZouWu scene instead of after the archives scene at the French Ministry (where Newt and Tina appear to be saving Leta from something). So for this fic, what I have in mind is that the ZouWu scene happens after the archives scene.

I've also read (I don't remember where from though, but possibly SnitchSeeker) Zoë Kravitz say that Leta has a scene where she and Newt face a beast together, so this is what I decided to make of that.

Despite his boggart, I still imagine Newt has an office or at least a desk at the Ministry that's very rarely used, and in Slow Dance I explained that he was there to submit the final draft of his manuscript.

The next vignette will focus on Tina and Jacob, a duo I hope we'll be seeing more of (and I have a feeling we will) especially after that shot of Tina protecting him in the trailer. It will be set shortly after this scene, and will see Tina and Jacob having a heart-to-heart conversation of their own.

Also, this entire fic will be absolutely spoiler-free. I was one of the people who was able to watch the Heyman and Yates interviews, but I will not be adjusting this story to adhere to what they revealed about CoG knowing that there are those of you who were not able to see and also would not have wanted to see those interviews.

For those of you who are wondering, I will definitely still be posting the alternate happy ending of Slow Dance, but it will be delayed as I've been entirely distracted by this.

Once again, thank you and please let me know what you think! You can also find me on tumblr clairfoye and on Twitter mrsmaisels.