Stranger in Your Eyes

Summary: She loved two brothers. (Still does, always will.) OneShot- Leta Lestrange. Introspection.

Warning: Introspection.

Set: Before and during Fantastic Beasts – The Crimes of Grindelwald

A/N: Title from Billy Joel's "Stranger".

It hits her like a killing curse.

The first time she sees him (again), he stands in the light of one of the few lamps in the dingy pub that she works in and surveys his surroundings.

She had thought she would be safe here.

A muggle pub is a place where the non-magical relax, where there is laughter and stories and occasionally a brawl. It is not a place any wizard or witch would be found seen dead two miles off, much less stepping into the place. The work is simple and hard, the people – men – easily drunk and both in awe of her serving their ales and their whiskeys and in contempt of her working the bar. The first week, she hexed three men. Of course, they never knew, but they know enough to remember. They learned to respect her, even if she is neither sweet and kind nor severe and ugly. They learned to accept her, in that dingy pub, and nobody would ever be the wiser, nobody would ever know her true name. Here, nobody knows her family. Nobody knows her history. Nobody cares.

And then, one night, he walks through the door.

Brown, almost blond hair, curly at the edges where it needs to be cut. Blue eyes, light skin, high cheek bones. The gangly figure, the shoulders she would recognize anywhere –

Leta's first instinct is to turn on her heel and Disapparate.

She does not.

(Years later, she wonders. What if– )

"I cannot let a lady walk home all by herself at night," he says, and the cadence of his voice makes her shiver. So familiar. The way he peers at her from underneath his lashes – curious and reserved all in once – forces the breath from her lungs.

"You and I know that I won't be walking home," she says, and makes no attempt to keep the ice from her voice. "And, by the way, if you had not stayed this long just to wait for me you would not need to let me walk home alone."

It's you, Leta.

"Please. I insist."

She relents, because she is fed up, because she is annoyed, because she is just. So. Exhausted. Of fighting; of arguing. Contrariness is her second nature, but she is also familiar with the concept of hating herself. She relents, because it is easier to let him do it than to hex him and having them find her, of being dragged back by her hair to a place she hates more than she hates life, back to the people that scorn her more than she will ever be able to scorn them. Something tells her that it will not be any good, anyway: if he is only a bit like his brother, he will be a skilled duelist.

"I am taking my leave here."

The night is cool. It is refreshing after the heat and stuffiness of the pub that is her sanctuary and her personal hell at the same time.

"Please." His hand does not exactly touch her, but it is close. It hovers over her arm, too polite to actually touch her, yet driven by something. Maybe, she thinks distantly, it is curiosity. Or, worse: pity.

"Do I know you from somewhere?"

Her heart beat suddenly hammering in her ears almost drowns out the sounds of a motorized vehicle passing. Leta clenches her fists, feels her nails bite into her flesh.

"Did you, by any chance, attend Hogwarts?"

"You would not remember me," she answers, her voice cold and distant even in her ears.

"I think I would," he replies. Some smiles, she thinks, are precious because they are so rare. This is not the opposite: not rare, mind you. But it is also not a smile full of arrogance, nor of misguided confidence mingled with pity and disdain; the type she has seen often enough on men. This is simply a smile, calm and curious and a little bit intrigued, the smile of a man wanting to know the woman in front of him.

The pain burrows like the sting of a Blast-ended Skewt, poisonous.

It is his smile.

"See, I have a little brother, and he used to have a friend –"

"Good bye, Theseus Scamander," Leta says, fast and without thinking. "Go safely."

The uneasiness of Disapparating almost makes her forget the sensation of falling.

It is always the same dream.

The door is slightly ajar, a light shining from the room. She can see the cradle, rocking slowly with the motion of the ship. The blanket covering it is of a creamy, white material that makes her think of the fur of the little lambs Irma took her to see last summer. Warm and comforting.

Corvus' wailing is almost drowned out by the voices of people shouting, running.

The room before her is calm. No sound comes from the cradle.

The door is open just a bit –

She wakes up, covered in cold sweat. The scream lodged in her throat buries deeper under her skin, acid that burns through flesh and sinew and bone and does not let go.

Not since the day –

She is worse than a coward; and she knows.

This is how Leta Lestrange gets to know Newt Scamander:

She hides in a classroom and eavesdrops on other students, maybe-accidentally-maybe-not, she hexes a girl and runs from Professor McGonagall, she finds a mysterious room that opens just for her and bumps into the boy who found it first, and that is that.

That is the beginning and the middle and the end, the story that was never told and always will be whispered of. The story that is her curse and her salvation.

Theseus Scamander.

Renowned wizard, hero of the War. The Scamanders are not members of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but there also are no known muggle relations in their blood line. An auror, famous for catching dark wizards during the war; believed to be the next head auror both by merit and position. His first impression is one of arrogance and belittlement; arrogance and exerted self-confidence; the second is not much different. He comes back to see her – Leta Lestrange, disgraced daughter of the pureblooded Lestranges – and he comes back and back again. Comes back for her, she knows because he tells her on his second visit. He might have been there for someone else in the first instance, but when he returns, it is for her. And where his brother was all honesty and straight-forwardness, he carries a layer of agreeability that is polished to perfection – but, at the end, he is Hufflepuff, as well. He stumbles over his words when he is surprised; his smile, quicksilver, is true. At the end of the day, when there are no rules to adhere and no playbook to follow, he is real. And he comes to see her.

She cannot help thinking that this feels achingly familiar.

"You know who I am?" She asks him, on his third visit, the venom lacing her voice so thickly it ought to have killed him.

He just looks back, curious, not understanding and understanding everything at the same time. "You are Leta Lestrange."

She slams his ale onto the counter and does not speak to him for the rest of the evening.

Still, he comes back.

It must be the blood, cursed Scamander heritage. Because she is drawn to him the same way injured dragons are drawn towards people that show them truthfulness and kindness, and she cannot help but hate him with the same intensity she tries to suppress her growing feelings for him.

But Theseus stretches out a hand, the soft smile so familiar, so beloved – and she comes.

Follows him out of the darkness of her self-imposed exile and right back into the maw of the beast.

Drowning, she thinks. You are drowning and you deserve it.

Leta joins the ministry family, as Theseus calls it.

Because he wants her to, wants her to so badly she cannot bring it over herself to deny it to him. It is a desire born from his urge to protect, she guesses, and, at the same time, wants to laugh at. If there is someone who does not need protection, it is her. Theseus is much like his brother, in that regard: gathering up strays. Protecting those who cannot do so themselves. But maybe, a small part of her brain/heart/mind whispers, maybe he also wants to protect her. It makes her happy, the thought, just so. Just a tiny bit. It warms her from the inside, in a place she had not thought could ever feel that way again until she wants to crawl out of her skin and run and hide.

So she leaves behind a dark room and drunken cat-calling and leering and emptiness in exchange for a brightly lit office and a place where magic is as natural as breathing; it is easier than she expected and harder.

Because she is a Lestrange, people at least do not talk about her when she is in listening range; they talk, nevertheless. About her father. About her mother. About her: disgraced daughter, unkind, impolite, improper. Muggle-lover, blood-tainter, whore. It does not take long for them to see the connection between her and Theseus, too, and that is where the rumors start. The first time she hears the gossip, she is tempted to hex the wizard to oblivion. The fact that Theseus, next to her, looks even more livid than she does and actually takes a swing at the offender forces her to stop because she has to keep a hold of him.

(One of them has to keep their head, after all.)

Separating herself from him, however, proves useless, because he comes after her. Again. It would be touching, if it was not so heart-breaking stupid.

She follows him back yet again, perhaps the ultimate mistake in her mistake-riddled life. And from thereon, for the first time in her life, Leta clenches her teeth and does not react when they taunt her. She bears it. She figures, she bore enough in her life, what does a bit more dislike, more gossip, more disdain matter?

Nothing. It matters nothing, it is nothing to her. She can bear anything if they just leave Theseus alone.

She does not say anything when they bait her, when they whisper and jeer and mock. It helps that Theseus is there, every time. A warm, steady presence at her side. His easy smile and his calmness are a constant in her days. Whenever the mass of people gets too much for her, she pictures him standing in the light of the dingy pub, his blue eyes so sure and trained on her. Maybe she just does not want to disappoint him. There is something in him, something that makes people want to please him. One would think that this would make him arrogant: it does not. Scamanders, it seems, are incorruptible.

Leta fists her hands and swallows the anger sitting right there on her tongue, and.

It seems to help.

The people get used to her; or does she get used to them? It is hard to say.

(Sometimes she wonders. How much of Newt is in Theseus?)

She makes her way through the ranks; and, unexpectedly, manages to snag a position as assistant to Travers Torquil. She does not like the man, but the work is just as well.

Theseus takes her out for dinner that day.

The door is slightly open.

The light is warm, soothing, inside, silence promises relief she has sought for the past weeks and that has yet to be found. The soft shuffling of a blanket almost makes her cry, the tears scrape at the back of her throat and she feels like she is itching, like she is winding out of her skin with this feeling that she cannot place, cannot name.

The silence is soft, calls out to her like a living thing, and Leta lifts an arm to push through –

The light changes, soft gas light to steady daylight shining through and reflected from large window panes. A small corridor, mercifully empty, merging into a larger one in the distance.

The door is different now, polished hardwood with simple wood work, a door that tries to be unassuming but fails to do so, just as the one inhabiting the rooms behind it –

Steps in the distance; voices.

Leta bolts.

She does not look back.

This is how she falls in love with Newt Scamander:

She picks fights all her life.

It is what she does.

She picks fights with her father and the professors and students and goblins. She learns how to disappear and to glare quietly when caught and how to throw a hex so nobody can tell where it came from and how to keep her gold close at hand. She learns how to gloat wordlessly. She learns to nurse her injuries all by herself.

"Leave her be!" The other girl yells at her friend. Millie Abbott is nice, and kind, and Leta cannot help thinking that, in another life, she would have liked to be her friend. But she is sixeen and one hundred and sixty and she does not need friends.

"Listen to her," she half-snarls, half-yeers. "I don't need your pity."

The girls leave, Millie glancing back just once. The silence that falls over the corridor is soothing. Leta can feel her own heart beat pounding in her broken ankle. She closes her eyes.

(She should not have reacted, but that cow had asked for what she'd gotten. And, besides, if Leta looked bad right now, you should see the other one –)

Silence. Darkness. The ground is cold and hard, but she knows from experience that it is more comfortable than her bed in the Slytherin girl's dormitory will ever be. They chose this corridor for a reason: not even Caruthers will pass by here until tomorrow. The gruff janitor will not report her – but he will take her to the infirmary, anyway, and Leta does not need Madame Mirabeau to tut-tut over her again, her displeasure clear in the stark line of her eyebrows caught in a perpetual frown.

The silence grows loud, and then quiet again. Her ankle throbs.

Steps.

Quick, familiar.

Her heart picks up quite suddenly, unexpected, and she knows who will turn the corner: red-and-brown hair, curly and unruly, his robes askew, his scarf trailing behind him. Eyes down-cast and more alert than anything Leta has ever seen; and she is the queen of wariness.

Newt.

He kneels down next to her, his warmth washing over her. "Lumos." His hand touches her foot in the same way he touches an injured animal; careful, sure. He mutters something, and she feels her bones straightening again, another spell, and her ankle is wrapped tightly in rough, warm bandages.

"How did you find me?"

Leta chose this corridor for a reason.

He does not look at her. "Abbott." The light of his wand is warm. It shines into his face, past it; there is a mirror on the wall that mirrors her wide-eyed stare. With a start, Leta realizes how she must look: she has a gash in her face, her hair is tangled and bloody, her uniform ripped. She is a mess, and Newt looks at her with steady, calm eyes.

Leta speaks, the words dropping out of her mouth, foreign and flat with hopelessness.

"I cannot go back there."

It is their second-to-last year. Leta has suffered through each single one and thought she could take it; take these last two, make it to the end. Suddenly, she is not so sure anymore.

Newt just looks at her, silent. Gets up, dusts off his trousers. Blinks into the corridor and then turns back to her.

Offers his hand.

And Leta – damn her, damn her, she should never have reacted at all – takes it. Follows him. Back down the corridor, into the flickering light of the torches lining the next corridor. To the Room of Requirement, where he puts a salve on her cuts and re-checks her ankle, and then conjures up a soft bed for her to sleep in.

Only later, she realizes: His eyes were soft. Those were the eyes he used when looking at injured creatures.

She would follow him everywhere.

"Come on."

Theseus knows he does not need to check back because she will be following him, anyway. But this feels strange to her, so she hesitates.

"Where are we going?"

"I want to show you something."

Flourish and Blott's is full of dust and shadows and, while Leta never was a great reader, she can appreciated the silence that usually lingers in between rows of books. But today, there are people milling around, clearly waiting. Stacks of books are neatly piled up on a desk; a blonde woman lingers, brushing off nonexistent dust. Theseus takes her towards the back and into the room adjacent to the shop, and Leta's heart knows even before her brain catches up. It hits her like a particularly vicious spell, right in the solar plexus.

He is taller than before.

Not something, she thinks, distantly. Someone.

Newt wears a black suit and a maroon vest; it matches his eyes handsomely, and an expression of surprise when he sees his brother that morphs into something that is not quite terror, not quite fear. Next to each other, the brothers look like sunlight and shadow.

Theseus knows they were friends, once.

He does not know their history.

His smile does not waver when she glances at him; he loves his little brother, she knows that much. Deduced it from snatches of conversation with his mother, from newspapers lying open with certain articles last-read, from the way his eyes soften when he talks about him. Theseus worries about the world, muggle and wizarding world alike. He worries about homeless people and orphaned children and abandoned puppies, about disgraced witches and about his baby brother, and nothing will ever stop him. This is an intervention, she thinks, he wants them to reconnect. Because he loves his baby brother, and he loves – he loves her.

The realization is too large to comprehend right now, so she gags and binds it viciously and leaves it to rot in the darkness.

But Leta knows Newt and knows herself, and this. This is… They are…

Broken.

It's not you, Leta.

"Theseus-"

"I thought you might want to talk."

But of course, there is no time for that. The blonde woman from the store shuffles in, apparently she is Newt's assistant. Leta watches her from the corner of her eyes: the woman is smitten with Newt. She cannot even feel any anger at the realization. She cannot feel anything.

"Mr. Scamander! Mr. Scamander! It is time for the picture!"

Suddenly, they are herded outside, back into the main shop. Someone is setting up a camera. A little woman with a hooked nose tugs at Leta's robes and Theseus' cravat and drags Newt to the front, and the camera clicks and–

When she looks at the pictures later her hand is on his arm and she cannot remember having put it there. Still, the phantom sensation of Newt's warmth burns itself into her memory and refuses to leave.

"You loved him."

Theseus sounds matter-of-fact.

She is silent. The things that usually choke her from the inside are suspiciously absent, and all the louder for it. Sometimes, no answers answer everything. Sometimes, silence is not gold but poison.

"Do you still love him?"

The silence creeps in silently, burrows under her skin. Eats into her.

"Do you love me?"

And expands.

Why is it so easy to make decisions for herself, but not when others are concerned?

"I won't accept this."

There is something like unshed tears in his voice, broken confidence, perhaps even hurt pride. But no, nothing of that sort, no hurt pride; because this is Theseus and Leta knows the depths of his feeling; the truth of him.

"You lash out, Leta, when you're hurt. Go on. Rage on me all you like. I know that this is not you; that it is your fear speaking. I will wait for your answer."

Poison, poisonous words.

For the first time in her life, they fail her, for the simple fact that Theseus refuses to feel them.

How can she save him from herself if he does not believe her?

It is not the question she fears, not the certainty of what his eyes tell her when he asks her, again and again, to marry him. It is not the question that makes her want to scream, scream, scream until her throat is raw and her voice is broken.

It is the absolute trust he has in her: that she loves him enough to promise herself to him. That her feelings for his brother are in the past. That she will not disappear, like ashes, like smoke.

And the worst is: he can read her answer in her eyes, despite her contrary words; despite her harsh actions.

Leta dreams of doors and monsters and decisions, and each and every nightmare she deserves, rightfully. She wakes up with screams choking her, her heartbeat pitifully fast in her ears, and the doors never change, never open.

Somehow, she is both relieved and devastated.

Theseus wears her down.

Aurors live dangerously, and so does he. One night, he does not come home.

That is when she has no choice but to say yes.

"You know they're never going to accept me."

He shrugs, with a nonchalance that is both attractive and annoying.

"My parents do not care for superstition and gossip."

Leta glares at him, covering herself with their blanket, and he smiles disarmingly.

"Your family, however, will run in circles like a crup after his own two tails trying to curse you back."

The thought makes her laugh out loud, once. Sharply.

"My family does not care for me."

"But they do care for their status."

"Well." She lays back, feeling the familiar urge to scream itch in her bones. "They can care all they want. I have made my decision."

His eyes are soft, so, so soft. It makes her squirm. It fills her with warmth, impossible, impossible warmth, and makes her want to run and never stop and never look back.

"I am the luckiest man on earth."

Theseus invites Newt for dinner many times.

He never comes. When they meet, there is a stranger looking at her through his eyes, and yet she cannot shake off the familiarity. It is strange how her fiancé reminds her of his brother, even though they are completely different. Where Newt is awkward and shy; Teseus is charming, confident, even commanding. Theseus is stuffy and by-the-books, boring, even, on occasion. But people forget that he is Hufflepuff. Or maybe they do not forget as much as misunderstand: there is nothing boring and simple in a Hufflepuff. Leta yet has to meet people with larger hearts, more integrity and morals as incorruptible as theirs, and that.

That is, in itself, a marvel.

The way he kisses her tells her volumes, tells her of stars and universes and eternity.

This is how she loses him:

She forgets to lock the cage of the Jarvey when she leaves, angry after an especially bad day, four deep gouges in her arm and a silent, disappointed look from Newt. Three students are badly injured, a classroom is ruined.

Newt is called out on it in front of the entire professor's board.

"Do you understand the gravity of your offense," Professor Dippet says, looking down at Newt. His white beard and long hair gleam in the silver light and Leta feels something strange: an urge to fight, something that she takes for anger, hot and irrational and burning.

Newt does not move.

He is looking at a spot a few centimeters next to the headmaster's head, staring at it intently. Meeting nobody's eyes. His fists are clenched; she knows he is listing magizoologic species in his head, alphabetized. He has infinite lists of them, and she knows them all.

"Mister Scamander, plenty of students have seen you harboring and training creatures. Your altercation with Professor Prendergast is well-known. Have you kept a Jarvey among your creatures?"

It takes something like an eternity for Newt to just nod, once, jerkily.

"Jarveys are dangerous creatures. Your lessons in Magizoology covered that. Which makes you responsible for the injuries and destruction that occurred."

No.

Leta opens her mouth to say something, anything.

She wants to scream, to shout. It's not him! It's me! She wants to set this right, needs to, just needs to say the word and they will let him go. She was the one who forgot to lock the cage. She was the one who is responsible for the hurt of three other students. It is her, her, her –

She meets Professor Dumbledore's eyes over Newt's shoulder.

He knows.

Or, at least suspects, because why else would he request for her to be present?

Newt follows the professor's gaze, turns. Looks at her. And stands there, waiting for her to say something – tell them the truth, explain herself. Take her share of responsibility, as she has always done.

And Leta – does not say anything.

She looks at Newt, and then looks away again. Copies his stillness, his mask. His shoulders slump as he understands, and she is glad that he turns away again. She is a coward, always was. Always will be.

Her best friend – who could have been more, perhaps maybe – and the only person in the entire castle who understands her – is expelled, and Leta cannot help but think that this is the way it should be: she cannot have nice things, anyway.

The door is plain, heavy, the wood dark with age and wear.

Voices in the corridor.

She freezes.

Two – three – students pass by, laughing, teasing, not noticing her in the shadows of the statue of Roland the Ravager and his tame chicken. She holds her breath until they pass, their steps loosing themselves in the distance.

A heartbeat. A breath.

Under Leta's hand, the metal of the phoenix door handle feels strangely alive. The words twist in her mouth, choking her, dark and acidic in their uncertainty. Why, she wonders, does it feel so impossible to do the right thing?

It's you. It's always been you.

She stands before Professor Dumbledore's office, once, twice, three times, until she stops counting. She never knocks.

Newt is expelled. He gets to keep his wand; small mercies, and he never responds to any owl she sends him, never returns her letters.

Shame stops her from trying further.

She dreams of ships and corridors and doors that open and are closed, and she never walks through them.

"Be careful," she whispers into Theseus' neck.

The curve of his shoulder blade is cut out perfectly for her; she can hear his heart beat. She can feel the warmth and strength of his arms.

"I will be," he promises, and his blue eyes are full of love and earnestness. "You be careful, too."

"I am just going to the French Ministry."

"Anyway."

He kisses her, and Leta falls into him.

There is nothing Theseus Scamander is that she does not know. Eyes that are windows to his soul and heart, face like an open book, hands like whisperers of greatest secrets. It grates on her. It eats her up from the inside, like a nameless spell that kills without words and without sign, dissolving from the core to the outside in agonizing slowness. How can he be so careless, how can he trust her with the enormity of it? How can he smile at her like that and yet accept her with all her secrets; all her untold, mourning history? He, son of a respected family, who made his way in the world, is now willing to throw it all away for a woman with a bad reputation and too-many secrets, and he does so, gladly.

It is especially mad regarding the current situation.

Grindelwald is clearly preying on the pureblood wizards, trying to gain supporters for his anti-muggle plans. And, even more: there are rumors of a boy with raven-black hair and Lestrange eyes, l'étranger, the stranger. The baby risen from the depths of the ocean of death to grow up in a loveless home, with a power far greater than anyone can imagine: he is back, he is here. The streets of Paris whisper-shout of his presence, resonate with his steps. Leta never believed in prophesies. (Memories: hours and hours in the dark rooms of Hogwarts' divination teacher, because Leta called her lessons a handful of stinking Hippogriff dung. And Newt had nodded– ) Leta also never believed in fate: her brother is dead. Drowned by her own, selfish hand; the fact that someone found a piece of prose and fit it to reality makes her laugh. Makes her want to scream. Makes her doubt, sometimes, in the darkness of a lonely bed when Theseus is out and she worries and worries. There is only one way to prove that this boy, Credence, is not Corvus Lestrange. But that way would mean to reveal something of herself that she has never, ever, told anyone.

Leta wonders.

Is she going to retrieve the Lestrange family tree to show the world that Grindelwald is a liar? Or is she on her way to destroy this last, damning piece of evidence of her own cowardice?

She never gets to answer this.

The Lestrange vault is empty, the last evidence of her sin gone.

Instead, she finds –

Newt.

And someone else.

"Leta Lestrange. Porpentina Goldstein."

The woman looks at her, suspicious. Cool.

Be nice, Leta reminds herself. An American. An Auror, if she guesses correctly, from the way she holds herself, from the way she reacts to the Matagors. From the way her hand keeps close to her wand, at all times.

The way Goldstein looks at Leta is very different from the way she looks at Newt.

Somewhere deep inside, in an old, weary corner of her heart, in a place far away of the current of worry and fear that is tugging at her – for Theseus, for her secret, for Newt – Leta mourns.

The white lily wraps around the young, slender tree that is Corvus Lestrange V and suffocates it.

And Newt looks at her.

Looks straight at her, his eyes blueblueblue, looks at her like he has not done since their encounter in the corridor, years ago, when he reached out to her and she followed him back into the light. In his eyes, she can read all the things he remembers, and she knows he must read them in her eyes, as well.

Behind them, Goldstein shifts, pity stark in her eyes, but Leta ignores her.

Looks at Newt.

"You didn't mean to do it. It's not your fault, Leta."

It's not you, Leta.

It makes her smile.

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

A conversation.

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

They are sixteen, the world is their enemy, and both have invisible wounds and horrid scars and memories too bitter to bear. They are sixteen, and sitting on the ledge of a window in the astronomy tower, feeding owl chicks with pieces of mice and worms. They never touch. Newt never looks at her directly. They never speak about this.

"People don't hate you."

He considers his words as he always does. It is what she likes in him: the fact that he thinks before speaking; never rushes.

"People don't exactly like me, either."

Leta shrugs. "Seems good enough to me. I wish I could do it, as well."

"It's nothing special."

Her frown must have told him what she thought about that answer. Newt shrugs, as well.

"It's not you. It's them."

Sometimes, Leta just… Just. She wonders.

She realizes it, years later.

The icy flames in her back, a voice in her ears that promises salvation and lies at the same time. Grindelwald sounds so sure, so understanding. So wrong. In her life, she has heard many promises, and this man is one of the best. Still, she can hear the falsehood in his words, shining even through the undeniable truth in them. Despised. Hated. Mistrusted. She stands there, ghosts dying all around her. I have no daughter. The figure of a baby, drowning in the green ocean light. Bitch. Disgrace to your family. Whore. Faceless people, jeering, taunting. You are expelled from Hogwarts, Newton Scamander. Silence, loneliness, endless days stretching out before her after Newt is forced to leave. Until Theseus, there was no light in her days, and before that, it was Newt.

Poor girl. Come with me. You are welcome here.

As if to make a point, Grindelwald lets go of her hand. The ghost of his touch remains; the sensation of his hand on hers. Foreign, cold. One last look and he turns away. He knows how to ensnare people, how to find their innermost fears and insecurities and to play on them. She knows how this works, can see the threads of his story, the faults in his arguments. She can see the lies in him as clear as a day, as clear as the salvation he offers. To care for nothing and nobody, to finally be free of the weight on her shoulders. Is that not what she always wished?

"Leta!"

Theseus shouts her name. Newt is next to him, silent. Looking at her.

And Leta stands there, looking back at them through the blue flames: the man she has loved since her childhood, and the love of her adult life.

The urge to protect them is so strong she almost mistakes it for anger.

She had been unable to defend Newt all those years ago, had hidden behind her cowardice and her nightmares and her fear. And he had known, but he had never called her out on it, had never rejected that part of her. Theseus had accepted her the same way; with his whole heart, his entire mind. He had smiled when she had lashed out at him in the beginning, and had come back, again and again, to win her heart once and for all.

She feels it like fire in her heart, like thorns, like shards of glass burying themselves in her flesh, over and over. She sees them, and she sees their love. It burns away the dark stain of Grindelwald's touch. It burns away years of insecurity, of shame and hatred and despise. It burns away nightmares, desperation, hopelessness; it burns away the image of an infant, swaddled in blankets, drowning in the green of the ocean.

She smiles; lifts her wand. At the end, there is no hesitation.

"Go!"

She never feels Grindelwald's flames.

There is a door.

Through the small opening, a sliver of light falls; silver, soft. Nothing bright. Warm, if anything, and calming.

Welcome, daughter.

Leta lifts her hand; knocks. Waits a second and opens it. When she peers through, she feels her lips stretch into a smile; tiny but true.

And then, she walks over the threshold.