"Miss Goldstein! Miss Goldstein!"
One always hopes to hear one's name called urgently along a crowded railway platform, but it is still a surprise when it actually happens.
Tina, hunched on a wooden bench with her travelling bag, looked up and saw Newt's blue coat through the throng.
He arrived in front of her, breathless, hair wild. "What are you doing?" he said. "Don't go."
She stood up. She could not think of anything to say which would not open wounds.
She began to walk along the platform, thinking that she would step behind one of the enormous iron roof pillars, and apparate away. She could have done that in the first place. She was only using the train to reach the docks at Southampton, because the railway journey would pass the time.
"Wait. Miss Goldstein. Please."
She stopped, smoke swirling at her ankles, shafts of late afternoon light slanting among the crowds, and waited while Newt darted around to face her.
"I read your letter," he said. "Please stay. -The dubbalum is fine, she's going to be absolutely fine."
Hope uncoiled in Tina's heart like an occamy leaving its egg. She clamped it back down. "I know what I did was dangerous. But I didn't know what else -"
"You're an auror," he said. "You have to make those decisions. To protect people."
"I would never deliberately harm an animal -"
"I know. I know that."
They stared at each other.
The whistle shrieked for passengers to board the train. The air was filled with shouts and footsteps, the clatter of luggage carts, and the raucous brakes of trains chuffing into the terminus.
Newt said, "Can we-" He stopped. "May I -" He lay his hand over his wand.
"Ok."
He lifted her bag, then wrapped his hand around her elbow and whisked them away.
Fresh clean air brushed Tina's cheek. She saw trees, and railings. "Where is this?"
"Oh. Hyde Park."
There were deer. Red deer roamed free among yellow February grass, and on the horizon, through a haze of oak and beech trees, Tina saw crowded buildings.
It was dusk, a clear evening, and the sky glowed halfway between pink and lilac. To the east the colour deepened into night. Bright dots of light twinkled overhead, a miracle after the smoke and chaos of London.
"Shall we... walk?" Newt ushered her towards a gravel path.
"All right."
For a while there was only the sound of stones under their shoes, and a last thrush calling itself to bed. They passed beneath some trees, and into an open meadow with a wide sky overhead, stretching down towards a distant view of the city. Tina breathed in cool night air, so different to New York.
Newt seemed content to walk beside her, hands clasped behind his back, his head turning this way and that at every chirrup.
Tina let the quiet calm her. She had come to England to help Newt Scamander, and now she had helped him. That must be enough. The ache in her throat, the soreness that she might not see him again - it would pass.
She glanced at Newt, and caught him glancing at her. They exchanged embarrassed smiles, and walked on.
After a while, she said, "There aren't thirty-six steps. For the finickactus. There are thirty-seven." She stopped, and turned her face to the sky, then back to Newt.
He drew his brows together.
"It's the first step," she said. "At the very beginning. Consent."
His mouth formed an Oh.
"No girl wants to sit through a load of lovemaking if the guy hasn't even asked her if she's free. I mean." Tina shrugged. "She might be washing her hair."
His eyes lit up. "Consent! That makes sense. In their other interactions, the finickactus have a complicated performance which establishes the hierarchical position of everyone there before any transaction can take place -" He stopped.
"You missed it, I think, because of how you are. But we saw Chaplin ask permission," she said. "To help comfort the dubbalum."
"So we did." He shook his head. "Well, I stand thoroughly corrected... Miss Goldstein."
"Tina."
His eyes flicked to her face and away, then back, a look of naked hope that made her blush. He ducked away again.
"Look," said Newt, "stars."
Stars. The word rang a bell. With a tremor, Tina remembered: they'd talked about it when she'd first arrived, and were watching the finickactus. Was that only a day ago?
They had watched the female finickactus' rejection of Chaplin, and Tina had sketched how humans went about courtship. Dinner, dancing, a walk under the stars.
"Oh," she said. Things fell into place. Newt's cupboards were stuffed with food, yet he took them out to eat. There was dancing in the pub, interrupted by Fox's thugs. Then dancing at the House of Commons, too - even though Newt must have already known that the dubbalum, if anywhere, would be in the chamber. "Oh."
He walked beside her, looking slantwise into her face.
She thought of his first letter, before the trouble started. She still had it, brief and stilted - but he must have sent that wire the moment he reached land.
He said, "What do you mean, because of how I am?"
She smiled. "You always ask," she said.
He gazed at her, open-mouthed.
"And now I think," she said. "that you, sometimes you... like to be asked." She had never been bold, even though he had done everything to encourage her.
She said, "May I?" and stepped close to him.
His gaze slid sideways and back. His mouth twitched a smile. "Yes." He tilted towards her, folding his hands into hers, then closed his eyes for her kiss.