"You look beautiful in the moonlight."
Tina turned to look at Newt, who stood beside her on the roof of her building. He was holding her hand very tightly, shifting from one foot to the other. Though he often wrote and said lovely things to her, this obvious kind of compliment (the kind lifted straight out of one of Queenie's romance novels) was not like him.
It had been thunderstorming all afternoon, and the skies had finally cleared over the city. However, nearly all of Manhattan was experiencing a power outage (Tina knew that it was of what No-Maj's called 'electricity') as an after-effect of the tempest. Though the wizarding community of America did not need or rely on electricity for power, they knew how to mask that fact from non-magical eyes.
It was Newt, who was visiting, who suggested seeing what the newly-clear sky looked like without the harsh city lights. Indeed, it was a beautiful sight, with the full moon and the light it made on the still-wet streets below and the ocean just beyond.
The only damper on this peaceful moment was Newt's unnatural nervous demeanor. Newt was not a worrier, yet Tina could feel anxiety coming off him like waves. This romantic observation of his was the last straw – Tina had to know what was bothering him.
Facing him fully, Tina made sure she was holding his gaze and both of his hands before speaking in the most reassuring voice that she could: "Newt, please tell me what's bothering you. No matter how bad it is, I can handle it, I promise."
Newt let out a breathless laugh, tugging her closer to him. "No, love, there's no bad news, nothing like that. But what's on my mind is…well, it is quite substantial and…it would ask quite a lot from you…"
"Since when have you known me to do anything by half?" asked Tina, smiling at him as encouraginly as she could. "You can trust me, Newt. You know that you can. I'll always catch you just like you always catch me, I promi –"
"Will you marry me, Porpentina?"
Oh.
Once his question had been spoken, with all of the hope and love in the world, time seemed to stop for Tina. Something Newt had said a moment ago played in her mind: It would ask quite a lot from you…He was right. After all, they were from two sides of the ocean. Newt had already planted his roots with his cottage in England, and he could never be happy living in a large city like New York. And moving to England would mean moving away from a career that she loved and had worked hard for at MACUSA. And, of course, it would mean putting an ocean between herself and Queenie, the only family that she had left.
But with all of the questions her mind brought up, her heart had the answers. She could just as easily be an auror in England as she could in America; the job was essentially the same in both places. And though she was a born-and-bred New Yorker, she had been to England several times by now and had grown to like it more and more. As for Queenie, of course she would miss her sister, but her sister was happy with Jacob, especially since the law no longer made their relationship illegal.
Looking into Newt's blue eyes (shining silver in the moonlight), Tina knew her answer: he was her home, whether they lived in England, America or the bottom of the ocean. Home must truly be where the heart is, because her heart belonged to him.
So, Tina smiled and didn't hesitate in her answer: "Yes, I will, Newton."
In a split second, the two of them were wrapped in a tight embrace. Tears were shed, words of love and gratitude were murmured, and tender kisses were shared. Their only witnesses were the full moon and stars above them – the former smiled and the latter danced.