Well, folks... This is it. The final chapter. To say that I'm emotional about this would be an understatement. But I've got a list of one-shot ideas that's getting longer by the minute, and to quote Cher (because I'm a music nerd and the song carries great meaning), God willing, "you haven't seen the last of me."

To my faithful readers and reviewers, you guys made this possible with every kind comment and hit on my (not so) little brainchild - you'll never know how much that means to me. And to my best friend, platonic soulmate, and beautiful beta...well. This one's for you, iirie. Here's hoping this last chapter means as much to you guys as it means to me.

(Side note: I listened to "West" by Sleeping at Last the entire time I was writing this chapter. I highly recommend giving it a listen, because holy hell, the feels are strong with this one.)


December 16th, 1926


Newt Scamander is no stranger to leaving.

Once upon a time, when the world was simpler and he was young, he bid his first temporary farewells on the solid ground of Platform 9 ¾, his mother's lips against his forehead and his father's arms around him, Theseus's palm broad against the jut of his shoulder as he took a glimpse into the face of the unknown. He boarded his first train bound for everywhere and nowhere at once, trepidation and anticipation and adventure a heady mixture that saturated his blood and filled his lungs. In that moment, in that dizzying spread of his horizons, he learned as much about himself as he learned about his school, about magic, about the dark-haired girl with caramel skin and nightshade eyes that sat next to him in the banquet hall and made him smile when no one else could, and he clung to that sense of belonging because it was steady – once upon a time, he would have believed that it would never change. But over the years, the departures and homecomings shifted, until doors closed and windows opened and his heart learned to accept truths that cracked his chest even as they resonated in his mind, and leaving was the only thing that made sense in the chaos of it all. So he learned to leave, mile after mile, country after continent, searching for misunderstood and broken things, seeking freedom even as he thought of Mother and Father and Theseus and Leta and home, and each step back into that first world made his heart pang and marrow whisper to begin the search once again. At the core of himself, in the spaces that exist between his ribs, Newt Scamander, brother, son, magizoologist, and friend, is no stranger to leaving.

But he's not sure he wants to leave this time. And despite all his experiences, despite every step he's taken since Platform 9 ¾, he finds he does not know how to say goodbye.

(He's terrified by the fact that, for the first time, it is something he does not want to learn.)

Something has shifted, somehow. Something has changed. It is a nebulous certainty that seeps beneath his skin; he does not understand it, but it is there, stuttering in his chest. It is a paradigm that's altered, a tiny tear in the fabric of who he is, or was, or what he's becoming. It's nothing and everything all at once, intangible yet sure. He's different somehow – different from the boy who left for school on a train, different from the teenager who broke himself to fix another and only succeeded in wounding them both, different from the young adult working in the Ministry to hide the stain on his name, from the man bleeding from unmarked wounds as he cradled a lifeless child in his arms. He is a mess of flaws and scars and fracture lines and pieces that are jagged and dulled; he is not, despite his gentle heart and lingering awkwardness, the same Newt Scamander that stood on that platform all those years ago, waiting for what's on the horizon, waiting to become something he's never been. But somewhere in the mess of chaos, somewhere between losing his Niffler and nearly losing his life, he found fragments of something that feel like himself – older and wiser, but less damaged. More sure. He found things he didn't know were missing in Jacob's laugh, in Queenie's smile, in Tina's eyes – he wasn't looking, but somehow, he thinks he found home, or a part of it that fits in the empty spaces he's kept long buried. It scares him and warms him and twists him into a knot of indecision, because he can't stay, but he can't leave, and he shouldn't need this much after only ten days in a city that isn't his with people that, in many ways, he barely knows.

But he does need them, in ways that he can't begin to explain himself. So when Queenie wraps her arms around him and makes him promise not to "be a stranger," and when Tina walks him every step of the way to the docks with too-bright eyes and a careful smile, he thinks that, perhaps, there's a part of them that might need him, too.

He can't focus as his feet lead him through the crowds of people that are leaving or returning or bidding their loved ones goodbye, as he feels her presence next to him, somehow both tentative and unwavering at his side. He can't focus as he runs out of footsteps and there's too little dock and too much gangplank and the words he can't say are backing up and forming a dam in his throat, choking him, writhing unspoken and anxious beneath his skin. He turns to her and watches the corner of her lip tug free from between her teeth in a smile that is as radiant as it is bittersweet; he looks at her until it hurts him and he's forced to look away.

"Well," he begins, and it's too much and not enough and nothing of what he wishes he were brave enough to tell her. "It's been, umm…"

"Hasn't it?"

His eyes dart up to take in her expression, watching as the smile that lights her features dims and something like reservation or embarrassment replaces it. She gives herself a little shake and focuses on her feet. "Listen, Newt, uh…" She pauses, as if warring with herself. "I wanted to thank you."

He's so flabbergasted by the notion that she feels she needs to thank him for nearly getting her killed that the words come tumbling from his mouth on their own. "What on earth for?" he quips, though it is flat and self-deprecating and he can't bring himself to meet her eyes.

She shrugs shyly. "Well, y'know." He is prepared to protest but her expression halts the words on his tongue. "If you hadn't said all those nice things to Madam Picquery about me, I wouldn't be back on the investigative team now."

The gentle gratitude in her gaze is too much for him. Yes you would. He does not question the assurance – he's certain of it, certain of her. "Well, I can't think of anyone that I'd rather have investigating me," he says; it's only after the words leave his mouth that he realizes how they must sound.

("You're brilliant" is caught somewhere between his lips and tongue, but he can't think around her, not now, not here, not when she's looking at him like that.)

He waits until the pang of embarrassment has faded to cautiously find her eyes. There is something he can't identify in their depths, something hesitant and soft and bright that begins an ache deep within the cage of his ribs. He watches her lips form a tight smile. "Try not to need investigating for a bit," she tells him; he seizes the opportunity to speak because it's so much easier than thinking about the barely discernible tremor in her voice.

"I will. A quiet life for me, from now on." (It's more than half a lie.) "Back to the Ministry, deliver my manuscript…"

"I'll look out for it," she promises. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them."

He lifts his gaze from her mouth to her eyes, intent on thanking her.

Somewhere between the stuttering in his chest and the jagged vulnerability on her face, it hits him that he is not ready to leave her behind, and he can't bring himself to look away.

He's not ready to go back to the him he was before he stepped off a steamer and into her orbit, he realizes as he stands there, drowning in indecision, drowning in eyes that are liquid and open, that see him for what he is. He's not ready to go home to his office at the Ministry and his empty flat, to his family's arms and his publisher's prompting and the ghosts that have haunted him for more than a decade. He's not ready to give up the warmth and acceptance he's found for solitude, because he's tasted both and weighed each experience and he knows, deep down, which one he prefers. He's been from one corner of the globe to another and found so much more than he ever hoped in running, but now, for the first time since he boarded that train, he finds he's tired of being the one to leave. Everything is different, just a little, but it's enough for him to feel his axis tilt, for his compass to seek out a new true north.

He is what's changed. And perhaps, at the core of it all, she is part of what's changed him.

("You need a giver," her sister had told him, and he wonders if she knows how much he's already been given.)

She is the one who pulls him back from the abyss of his thoughts, the indecision in her eyes a direct counterpoint to the indecision in his chest. He finds nothing but trepidation and honesty reflected back at him. He's looking at her, he realizes, not the layers of hexes and steel she wears about herself as armor. Her breath catches just a moment before she speaks; the words waver with emotion he is afraid to place as they stumble from her tongue. "Does Leta Lestrange like to read?"

He knows the answer to her question the moment she stops speaking, long buried memories of carrying abandoned schoolbooks back to the Slytherin common room brushing against the back of his mind like ghosts he cannot abandon. But he's so taken aback by the sound of that name on her lips he cannot register what she's asked, and he blinks in shock, because he can think of nothing else to do. "Who?"

He watches her pull back into herself, the tremor in her voice vanishing even as her gaze seeks to hold his. "The girl whose picture you carry," she says, shoulders rigid as if she's bracing for something unforeseen. He swallows around a sudden tightness in his throat, an unknown piece within him fracturing at the sight. He is all at once sure of what he needs to tell her; the words are a jumbled mess in his mouth but he pours everything he has into making sense of them.

"I don't really know what…Leta likes these days." He searches out her eyes, willing her to understand something he's only just learned himself. "'Cause people change. I've changed… I think. M-maybe a little."

And he has, he knows he has, because he's still standing here in front of her. He's holding her gaze and struggling to make her believe him, searching for words that will explain what's been happening in his head, in his heart since she found him, took him in, accepted him for what he is. He is the same in the ways that matter, but he's different in the ways that needed to heal, to change.

("You've changed me" hangs unspoken in the space between them, clear and glassy with truth. But he does not know how to tell her in a way that they can both believe, and when the last call for boarding echoes mournfully from the steamer's throat, he tears his gaze away from her so he won't see the saline rising in her eyes.)

"I'll send you a copy of my book, if I may," he tells her, after the ache behind his sternum is buried and her lips are once again curled back in the too-bright outline of a smile. She accepts with words strained by emotion, nodding even as her breath hitches and she tries to piece together the armor she's let him see beneath. He reaches out with trembling hands to let his fingers ghost across the plane of her cheek, memorizing the feel of warm skin beneath his fingertips as he brushes back the dark, soft waves of her hair, unable to speak beneath the weight that crushes his lungs. It takes everything in him not to reach for her, not to fold her against him and breathe her in because he knows what she feels like in his arms and he also knows that to touch her right now would shatter them both, and they're not ready for what that possibility could bring, not with so much distance between them. He steels himself and turns away, because it is the right thing to do, because it is the only thing he can do, and he is about three steps from the gangplank when he realizes he can't get on that damned boat without knowing that, someday, he'll see her again.

"So sorry," he says, as she looks up at him with wet eyes and a stunned expression, feeling his own eyes begin to burn as he brings his gaze up to meet hers. "H-how would you feel if I…if I gave you your copy in person?"

He finds his answer in the curve of her lips, the shift of her posture, the lone droplet of saltwater that stains her skin and leaves a path of silver in its wake. "I'd like that. Very much," she says, and he holds on to the memory of her watery, gentle laughter as he turns away one last time and forces himself to leave without saying goodbye.

He won't say goodbye to her. He won't say goodbye, because months from now, perhaps fall, perhaps the middle of summer, he will return bearing a battered leather case and two books, and she will cradle the second in its freshly-pressed splendor as her fingers rove the loose-leafed, handwritten pages of the first, and they will spend hours talking and laughing and remembering until she looks up into his eyes and realizes their proximity and he wonders, for the first time, how her lips would taste. But for now, he forces himself to take one step after another, up the gangplank and away from her, until the wind caresses his face and tugs at his hair and begins to soothe the ache deep in his soul.

He's coming back, someday, as certain as the tide rises and falls. And when he does, be it weeks or months or years, perhaps he'll be brave enough to love her as much as she deserves.


Reviews are a first-edition copy of Newt's book and the promise of his heartfelt return.