000

Against My Nature
Newt/Harry, Timetravel Shenanigans, Canon Divergent

His plan was to avoid changing the timeline. He knew he wouldn't be able to resist if the opportunity presented itself. So he fled to Africa, where opportunity found him instead.

000

Chapter Fourteen

Foxface went down under Harry's boot at speed, and the Gryffindor was already running back the way he came before the rest of his compatriots realised what was even going on. He apparated mid-stride, and flickered back into the middle of their room at the wayhouse.

Empty. Harry whirled around in distress, the suitcase was gone, their belongings were still there, just to avoid suspicion from the muggle cleaners, and – note.

He snatched it up and scanned it quickly before cursing under his breath, and apparating again.

He whirled into place at the mouth of the magical district, almost upsetting a few English gentlemen and what looked like one of the Chinese Ministry's officials as he sped past them with an apologetic shout, sprinting through the stalls frantically, frantically searching for that – one – flash – of blue-

There!

Newt was stood just inside one of the alleys, confronted with a pair of unpleasant looking men. They were shorter, but a lot broader than the lanky Hufflepuff as Harry sped forward – there was a knife in one's hand, and a wand in the other's.

"Newt! Down!" the Gryffindor barked as he jumped.

The Hufflepuff ducked as Harry sailed over him, planting his foot into Knife's face and riding him down to the ground, stamping on his skull hard enough to break his nose and knock him unconscious even as the Gryffindor pivoted and kicked the legs out from under Wand. He went down, and then out when Harry punched him in the temple.

"You alright?" he asked his husband breathlessly, eyes flicking over him carefully as he shook his hand out. Not even a loose thread, good.

"Yes, what's going on? Those men said you'd been hurt," he explained, upset as he caught Harry's arm, eyes searching him in much the same way for injuries.

"Probably to get you to come with them. They're Triads, Newt. Organised crime. I've gotten you caught up in something annoying again," the auror explained with a grimace as he roughly kicked one of the men. "They got pissed off about a westerner having access to phoenix product. Ah shit, here come more! Let's go!" he exclaimed, grabbing Newt's hand as he caught sight of the same group of men that cornered his earlier apparating into the market – and suddenly the whole place was freaking out.

The two raced into the chaos of screaming stall owners and panicked customers, apparently any incursion of Triads was one to be hysterically terrified of apparently.

Harry vanished the cage around a small flock of doxies as they ran past, several beekeeping charms falling from his lips as he hit them with an attractor, and then slapped the first of the Wo Hop's trying to corner them with the attractant – the man's head was suddenly plastered with the furiously biting poisonous insects. He went down screaming as Harry and Newt passed, skidding down between two stalls on the right.

Newt animated the wall-scrolls in the next stall to snatch up another Triad. Hoisting him into the air, and tying him up like a scene from a horror movie.

Harry vanished a glass tank around a nest of venomous pit vipers, "Attack the big two leg with the scale markings!" he commanded shortly. Snakes couldn't really differentiate human from human without someone there to physically point them at a target, so Harry could only thank the Triads for being so copiously tattooed and making his life easier as three vipers suddenly lunged at one of the men following them.

He screamed, and both Harry and Newt had to duck and dive into one of the stalls as a hex shattered one of the wooden support poles.

The Hufflepuff worked quickly, transfiguration wasn't his strong point, but inanimate to animate? There was no one actually better in his entire year group, because he was the only one who knew creatures from the inside out.

Which was probably why the Triad member that tore the fallen canvas cover of their stall off with a little too colourful spell suddenly screamed in horror when a pygmy Ukranian Ironbelly lunged at him.

It was absolute chaos in the market place, only made worse as suddenly Chinese law enforcement apparated in, and an all-out war kicked off between the crime family and the aurors. Even those English men were joining in the fight, much to the official guiding them's horror as he practically cowered behind – Harry very nearly tripped as he and Newt raced down another gap between stalls.

That was his grandfather. Charlus Potter.

His inattention cost him.

A blasting curse clipped him in the shoulder and he went flying.

Winded, he managed to twist in the air and get his feet under him, wrapping charms around himself as he hit the ground, serpensortia summoning multiple cobras, pit vipers, and coral snakes to his defence as he came to a stop – physically throwing one of them at the Triad that he had been blasted at.

Harry whipped around – just in time to see Foxface hug Newt from behind and vanish in a flash of apparation.

000

The temper of a Gryffindor was something to be feared, and Harry was now out for blood.

The next Triad that went for him was unceremoniously grabbed bare handed by the throat and slammed into the floor, hard enough to choke him. He began to hyperventilate as Harry hissed long, low, and lividly at him, the snakes wrapped around him slithering free to drape over the Chinese man's body.

"You're going to tell me where that foxfaced dog has taken my husband, or I will make you beg for a death I will ensure you never receive," he promised darkly in sibilant Chinese as one of the pit-vipers bared its fangs within his eye-line.

The man gibbered fearfully, blurting out an address not far from the Magic quarter, unable to tear his eyes away from the viper as it slithered up his chest to wrap around Harry's forearm lovingly. Harry bared his teeth unpleasantly, instincts thrumming. He had to be certain. He wasn't going to allow for another Sirius situation. He rummaged in his pocket for his potions kit. After the incident in Africa with the poachers, he had made sure to brew some truth serum up, just in case. He hadn't thought he would need to use it so soon, but it was just his luck now, wasn't it?

He stabbed the phial into the side of the man's skull. The glass shattered, sharp, jagged edges slicing through tattooed skin as Harry purposefully dragged it down his face, shredding his flesh and introducing the potion directly to his bloodstream.

The man screamed in pain, the potion burning in the open wounds. Which was why Harry had done it that way in the first place.

"Where. Has your. Organisation. Taken. My. Husband?" he repeated again, slowly.

The man sobbed as he blurted out the answer, an address significantly closer to the docks than previously given – much to the man's horror when he realised. The Gryffindor smirked nastily as he deflected several spells without looking, the two of them were on the ground between a pair of stalls, largely out of sight of the all out war occurring overhead. But one of the man's compatriots must have seen them, well, he wasn't seeing much of anything right now given how Harry had reflected those spells straight back at him. The triad was sweating like a pig, his eyes darting everywhere wildly as Harry ruthlessly wrung him for information, what kind of building he would be in, what was in there, how many people, what wards, spells, enchantments, back doors, secret passages, who ran the place, where would Newt be held inside, etc.

Harry practically purred in satisfaction as he got to his feet. He had everything he needed.

"Thank you for your cooperation," he mocked before booting the man in the head hard enough to knock him unconscious immediately.

A wand lit up a few inches from his right, one of the Chinese aurors glaring at him, "You are under arrest for civil disturbance, duelling in a public location, destruction of property, and theft. Hand over your wand, High Nose!" he commanded nastily.

The Gryffindor treated him to the most disdainful look he could muster, taken directly from Narcissa Malfoy. He hissed at the snakes still wrapped around him, the real ones slithering away to escape within the chaos, and the conjured ones he created vanishing into wisps of smoke.

"Mei," he called, turning away from the now gaping auror entirely, ignoring him as the phoenix flamed into the air on his left with an eager trill, "Some men have taken Newt, bring me to him?"

Little berry black eyes widened, and the phoenix trilled furiously, she puffed herself up angrily before swooping down, digging her claws into Harry's shoulder, and flashed them away in a blaze of scarlet and gold flame.

Completely unaware of the political shitstorm they had just caused.

000

Not very good at fighting, these Triad people, Newt decided as he jogged down the warehouse corridor as silently as he could. The gentleman in the red had apparated him into a dark, unpleasantly dirty little room, but had been completely unprepared for the elbow the Hufflepuff introduced to the bridge of his nose – or the point blank stunning charm that followed.

He could hear the familiar sound of creatures near-by, defensive and aggressive calls and shrieks, Chinese shouts and calls, the smell of potions and blood was thick in the air as he followed the long corridor down. The warehouse was a bleak thing, huge, flavoured and warped at the edges with poorly cast expansion charms, it wouldn't take much to bring them down, Newt noticed with an unhappy grimace. He would have to be careful in his escape.

A shout went up behind him, a pair of men at the other end of the corridor, the gentleman in the red with a bloody face and a furious snarl between them pointing at him.

Newt picked up the pace, skidding around one of the metal corners and – into the biggest Potions Black Market he had ever seen.

It was largely empty save for the vendors, but there were caged upon cages upon cages of beasts and creatures, rows of plants, pots, clippings, bottles, stands, from floor to expanded ceiling with multiple levels and rope-bridges crisscrossing the ceiling.

Newt dove in, unlocking cages as he went.

Summoning charms ripped wands from startled vendors, unlocking charms, vanishing charms, it was absolute anarchy.

And if Newt was perhaps a little more vicious in his spell casting towards a few of those stall owners, he doubted any of the creatures there would be upset to see them battered, trussed up, and crammed into the cages they once were trapped in. He was in a fine temper by the time he reached the biggest of the cages, a tired, badly injured Chinese Fireball piled up on itself within the tiny confines. And of course it was a lock he couldn't spell open, none of the charms he knew worked, and even levitation manipulation of the pins inside wasn't working.

The dragon's mouth was belted shut so tightly he could see where it had barely been able to breathe, the thick reinforced leather cutting into its scarlet hide.

And that was the scene Harry flashed into, Mei on one shoulder.

Chaos, Newt pissed off, creatures running around everywhere, terrified Chinese, and a fireball in bad shape in a cage that wouldn't open no matter what.

"Go deal with the Triads! I'll handle the creatures!" Harry commanded, "Mei, help him," he told the little phoenix who chirruped and fluttered to Newt's shoulder.

The Hufflepuff nodded, he set his suitcase down next to Harry, and moved off. Neither of them would be able to calm all these poor animals down and get them medical help if those – those bastards were throwing spells left and right.

While Newt rampaged, Harry simply conjured acid and melted the hinges of the cage door, lifting the whole thing free from the lock with minimal effort. He ducked in fearlessly as he climbed over the dragon's coiled body to reach its face, murmuring soothing nonsense as he began to carefully cut the belt off from where it had become embedded into the dragon's muzzle, his fingers wouldn't have the strength to pick it out and unbuckle it.

It was slow going, cutting the belt, from the corner of his eye he could see Newt rampaging through the warehouse, hunting down each and every human inside with ruthless efficiency. Well, he had been in a war, his ability to keep his head in such a madhouse was very good.

"sSThere we go,Ss" Harry said as he finally cut the last of the belt off, and carefully oh so carefully, peeled it out of the dragon's face. "sSNow if you could please not kill me, let's get you in the suitcase and settled down somewhere comfortable. How does that sound? A nice big bucket of something meaty and bloody, all the whiskey you can stomach, and no more cold metal bars,Ss" he continued to croon, as the dragon gingerly opened and closed its mouth, a little bit at first, and then more and more until it was comfortably snapping its jaws with only small hisses of pain.

"sSMy eggs. They have taken my eggs,Ss" she hissed at him, nearly making Harry fall off from where he had been perched on her back.

"sSHoly shit you can talk?!Ss" Harry yelped, before slapping himself. Never mind that, nesting mother dragon whose eggs had been stolen. That was bad. "sSRight, stupid question. Let's go get them back,Ss" he declared strongly as he swung his leg off the dragon and drew both wands.

Mei flamed in beside him with a trill, landing on his shoulder a split second before he tore the cage from its base, shattering it open like an egg, and allowing the mother dragon to stretch out to her full size with a roar.

The sound of the dragon breaking free lit a fire under the people still remaining, screaming filled the air as the anti-apparation wards began to work against them in the tight confines. Frantic, terrified, and furious creatures filling the air, and attacking them as they desperately tried to scramble for safety – and Newt, prowling through the shadows, locking them into the very cages they had once housed their merchandise with ruthless satisfaction.

Foxface screamed something foul at him, a savage light of satisfaction in his eyes, he couldn't hear it over the ringing in his ears from the mother's scream, but the man's bloodied face stuck out in Harry's mind because he knew that ruin was something that Newt had done to him. And he couldn't help but laugh, fierce and proud, at the very idea. It served him right.

Whatever Foxface was thinking when he realised that the fireball wasn't going to be attacking the English wizard, Harry didn't know, because in that exact moment he flung his whole body forward and tore into the Chinese man with a vengeance.

"Where are the dragon eggs?" he demanded shortly, gripping the broken criminal by the front of his blood covered robes.

"Sssuck y-your mother's dog fart o-out," Foxface wheezed viciously.

Harry tipped his head a little in amusement before presenting him to the dragon, "How about you try to suck hers?" he asked cheerfully, watching the man's eyes contract in terror as the fireball huffed at him.

"They are kept in incubation. Back of the warehouse. You won't get there alive, high nose, if you think she is the worst we have here – "

Harry felt it then. The familiar creeping touch of cold mist, nails on his heart. Like bad static in his ears, his mother screaming, Hermione under cruciatus, Molly sobbing on Fred's broken body.

He gave the Chinese man a look of disdain, "You stupid pig-fart. You really think a Dementor is going to do much more than bore me? I'm from England. We regularly put criminals in prisons manned by these creatures," he exclaimed with a scoff even as he hurled a patronus out, and immediately felt the cold diminish.

Foxface fell into thin lipped furious silence, and Harry rolled his eyes before banishing him harshly into one of the small cages, locking and fusing it shut.

"sSYour eggs should be towards the back of this metal burrow,Ss" he told the dragon, taking off at a run with the great beast barrelling in his wake, heedless to her bulk destroying various stalls as she forced her way through the narrow rickety passages between them. Mei piped encouragingly to them as she swooped on up ahead, flipping in the air every now and again to make sure they were keeping up before she would dart down another path, leading them to the back of the warehouse.

The incubator was little more than a huge fireplace at the back of the building, a kiln stolen from a muggle artisan, now used to store dragon eggs.

Of the fireball's twenty three eggs, only seven remained.

000

Newt was not a man of anger.

It took a lot to upset him, but mild frustration was as great as it got. He had only been driven to rage a few times in his life; not long after he was expelled from Hogwarts, his brother had been ranting about the evils of Slytherins, of Leta in particular, and told Newt about his letter threatening the Lestranges with a blood-feud if ever that woman came near him again. Newt had screamed at him, furious, hurt, confused, why would his brother do something like that to the girl he loved? Leta didn't mean – it must have been for a good reason – she wouldn't have just – he never heard her side of the story! And, being a Slytherin, and a Lestrange, her punishment would have been worse! Newt got off lightly because he was from a neutral family and – it was better that he had been blamed instead of her! Theseus hadn't known how to react to that, but he had told their parents, and it was their father that sat down to talk Newt out of his sullen stony silence. To help him untangle himself. And for years he had allowed Leta to be a festering blackened wound in his chest. But apart from that one time, she had never been able to stir his temper, to her defence or to tear her down.

Once during the war, that was the incident he considered his most shameful. The one and only time he had ever cast an Unforgivable. He had snuck into the war, and found himself shuffled to the Eastern Front when he displayed more than a passing knowledge of animal husbandry, originally he was just a field medic for the Hippogriff cavalry. He had been the one to sooth the battle weary and frightened birds, patch them up, tend to their hurts, and in the end, he had to be the one to say whether or not they could be taken back into battle or not. He learned to stop saying they shouldn't go back when their rations got tighter, and those birds that couldn't be ridden, ended up being eaten. He had caught his commanding officer brutally beating his injured hippogriff when the shell-shocked bird wouldn't obey him, wouldn't fly back out onto the front lines. Newt couldn't remember what he said, but the Ukrainian was a generally unpleasant man who was liberal with his curses, when the Hippogriff screamed – Newt made the man scream with it. He didn't even remember pulling his wand, or casting the spell. But he remembered the black eye he received and the promise of facing the gallows for insubordination that followed. It never happened. His hippogriff took a mortar. They both went down and...

The latest was Harry, that cliff, even to this day the very thought that if he hadn't been so lucky that Harry might have been – it chilled him to the bone and made his blood burn furiously.

But this? What he was seeing in this place was definitely setting his teeth on edge. His jaw ached from clenching them as he viciously took out every single person he saw. For every species of beautiful creature he saw in terrible condition, another one of those fiends ended up in their own cages.

He was fairly sure he had managed to get them all, but he had yet to see the gentleman in the red who had first abducted him, though if he were right in his assumptions, the man had probably gone after Harry as soon as he arrived.

With all the humans locked up, the warehouse seemed to have calmed down from absolute anarchy to a general chaos that was just typical of frightened animals in enclosed spaces, a kind of pent up energy that was slowly bleeding off now that the primary threat was gone. It helped that Newt could hear Mei singing towards the back of the warehouse, attracting those creatures with neutral and light affinities, and repelling those with darker or more demonic natures.

The last thing Newt expected to see was a Dementor.

He cast around, spotting a bottle, he snatched it up and cast a vacuum charm on it as he lunged for the creature.

Ice immediately began to mist on the bottle as the demon turned to claw at Newt as he held the bottle out, sucking it into the glass. It's flesh was cold, clammy, and a little wet, like a corpse pulled from water. He grimaced as a sharp nail scored a line on his cheek, cutting his skin.

And then with a pop, it was in the bottle – and trapped as he shoved a cork in the top, and began to ward it to hell and beyond. That was one dementor that would not get getting out and about!

Setting the jar down, he continued winding his way through the shattered shanty town of market stalls, eventually he found Harry.

The Gryffindor was at the back of the warehouse in an oasis of calm amongst the creatures, a Chinese fireball curled up behind him, a tiny clutch of seven eggs between her forelegs, Mei was sat on his shoulder singing comfortingly as he gently rubbed ointment into the sore painful looking skin of a half-naked demiguise. In his lap was a niffler tightly wrapped in a slightly bloodied towel, clinging desperately to a shiny silver coin with both hands and feet, shivering violently as it practically burrowed into the back of his knee. All around him were various creatures, birds, and insects just sitting or lying down and basking in the phoenix' song.

"Careful Newt," the Gryffindor murmured just loud enough to be heard without startling the creatures around him, "The crups are rather aggressive right now. I haven't had a chance to deal with them," he explained gently even as he continued to carefully tend to the trembling demiguise that watched the slowly approaching Hufflepuff with wide, terrified blue eyes.

It did not, however, move when the mythozoologist bent over to kiss Harry's forehead, taking a moment to just close his eyes and reassure himself the Gryffindor hadn't been harmed (he was aware he was worrying over a very, very small chance, out of the two of them he was more likely to get hurt in a fight, but he couldn't help but worry all the same). Harry continued to work, even as Newt sat down next to him, practically draping his longer limbs around the young man as he conjured bandages to wrap around the demiguise so he wouldn't end up licking the ointment off. Instead of skittering away, the demiguise hopped up onto Harry's knee and then around onto Newt's, shifting so he wouldn't be in the way, but so he could continue to hug himself up against the Gryffindor's side.

Harry trilled lightly, mimicking Mei for a moment before he gently levitated one of the crups into his lap, the creature whining and shaking fearfully even as the former auror gently stroked and patted it until it calmed before beginning to examine its injuries. Newt rested his chin on Harry's shoulder, the side that Mei hadn't taken up, and had to hug the man from behind.

Gentle was perhaps the last word Newt would have thought the auror after the last few months, but he couldn't – he had seen it with the young runespoor, but quite forgotten until now. Until he watched the man calm and tend to all of the tortured souls here.

"Newt, you're better at bone setting than me. Can you see to this little guy's fore-leg? It's a clean snap, looks more like they didn't want him able to run away very quickly if he got out before they could sell him. It should be a quick fix, but the tissue damage will take longer," the Gryffindor explained, soothing the animal as it whined in pain. Newt kissed the side of his neck, just under his ear.

"Of course," he agreed, and together they worked their way through the rest of the creatures in front of them.

000

Harry wondered why the Chinese aurors hadn't caught up with them yet, but paid it no mind as he and Newt scoured the rest of the blackmarket for any creatures left behind or unable to escape. Thus far they found more doxies, a room that had Newt turning around and walking straight back out in tears – Harry took one look and closed the door firmly, sick to his stomach. The Chinese really would eat anything.

Harry found a basilisk breeder, much to his horror, and smashed every egg before releasing the toads into the suitcase to try and find a place to live, or get eaten, which ever. They found several kneazles in some very sorry looking states at a breeding stall. Newt was tending to them as there was nothing that Harry could particularly do.

Which brought him to a rather large cage with a tree inside of it.

A tree that really should have had more than just the four bowtruckles on it.

Harry glanced to the stall it was attached to and cringed to see vegetables, meat, a chopping board with spices and herbs, and a large wok next to a soup pot.

Trying to spell the lock open was futile though.

He sighed, and looked up at the bowtruckle who were clustered in the highest reaches of the tree, watching him fearfully.

"Who wants to learn how to pick a lock?" he asked the four remaining creatures before producing a long thin length of metal and sliding it into the lock. Curiously, the smallest of the four crept a little closer, "if you know how to move the pins and the balls inside these locks," Harry explained patiently as he fiddled, "Then it doesn't matter what kind of locking charms they put on the cage door, you can always – open it!" he announced cheerfully as with a click, and a tug, the door opened.

The littlest bowtruckle burbled at him, and Harry grinned, holding a finger out to him, "I'll teach you how later, get you some padlocks so you can try it yourself, yeah?" he offered, waiting patiently for the little fellow to decide whether or not he wanted to trust Harry.

Eventually though, he warily climbed onto the Gryffindor's fingers, and Harry pulled him from the cage – only to set him down on top of it, instead of the chopping board on the table where he had no doubt seen many of his siblings meet their ends. With the littlest having proven his trustworthiness, the other three bowtruckles were somewhat easier to remove, and pop on top of the cage along with the first. Harry ended up having to bend the cage bars open and levitate their tree out though, he knew enough about the little insect creatures to know they didn't do so well without their hometree.

Almost immediately they were back onto it, peeping and burbling happily at each other as Harry conducted them down the broken alleyways towards Newt's case.

The bandaged demiguise was perched watchfully on the lip of the case waiting for him and practically lit up in relief, Harry chuckled and willingly opened an arm to allow the creature to climb his leg and perch itself on his hip like a child.

"How do you feel about having some neighbours?" he asked.

000

TA'DAH!

And here we have the rescuing of Pickett, Dougal, AND the niffler!

Still got the Erumpet, and Frank the thunderbird to go, but I have plans for them. Ahahaha, poor Charlus, Harry's caused a bit of a ruckus with the Chinese Ministry regarding the fact he's a Parselmouth, AND bonded to a Phoenix. That's going to be fun.