A/N Hi all! If you've forgiven me for the angst last week, here's some generally lighter stuff with a funky format to make up for it!

Thanks to all my readers, and thanks especially for your review, Raven, I haven't read the Shannon Messenger series but I will have to check it out! As for your question, I'm very glad Frodo didn't die, I think perhaps the destruction of the Ring could only have happened the way it did, defeated by Frodo's compassion in choosing to spare Gollum's life. However, that's a cop out, so probably Sam, I think, since he manages it well when he does carry it?

Things to note in this chapter:

According to FBAWTFT, jarveys are ferret-like creatures which constantly spew a nonsensical stream of coarse language. In my headcanon, the only way to tame one is to impress it by creatively using even fouler language yourself; hence the only situation in which our mild-mannered Newt might have cause to use that sort of vocabulary!

I'm assuming that legilimency, the ability to 'read minds', is limited by language for the purposes of this fic, because Queenie says that Newt's thoughts are difficult to read because of his British accent in the first FB movie. So she can sense Maglor's general emotions but can't understand his specific thoughts, since he's framing them in Quenya.

Given that we've only got two movies so far and things are looking pretty bleak for Jacob and Queenie, we don't know if they're both going to survive and forgive each other. However, since the idea of 'forgiving the unforgivable' is a huge element of this fic, I thought it would be very interesting to have them both alive, married and having worked through everything that happened, as a little bit of inspiration of true redemption in action. We only get a small taste of it here, but this will be developed later, I hope. Also, as previously noted, I like happy endings.

Words, Part One

Alphabet

On his second day in the suitcase, Newt had taught Maglor the alphabet. Once he had decided to stay, the latter was surprised at his own excitement when he realised that now he would get the chance to master this language and writing system properly. Newt discovered him sitting outside Laila's enclosure one morning, writing out an alphabetical list of English words in the sand with a forefinger, trying to work out the transcriptions of those he'd heard but not seen written. He would still be able to hold a quill if he had to, but it would be awkward with his damaged fingers and this way didn't involve demanding supplies.

Newt seemed impressed with his work, praising it, but corrected the spelling on lots of the words. Maglor was sure he'd followed the phonological rules in his transcriptions, but apparently this language had far more complexity than he'd first thought. Newt couldn't answer his insistent inquiries as to 'why' certain sounds could be written in so many different ways, instead giving an apologetic shrug and saying 'that's English', as if that explained everything. Either there was some sort of hidden code that he kept missing, or this infuriating language broke its own laws more than it followed them.

Whatever the issue was, though, the Noldor's greatest poet was certainly not going to be defeated by this mere 'English.'

Later that day, a flat expanse of sand appeared next to the pool outside Maglor's hut, along with a few long sticks, rounded and polished so as to cause the least possible discomfort to his hands. He took a moment to be amazed all over again at Newt's thoughtfulness, then picked one up and got to work.

Before

Maglor instantly saw the utility in the word 'before' when Newt introduced it in his lesson on tenses. He attempted to use it in an explanation of his past to Newt on more than one occasion over those first few days. It seemed only fair that Newt should know exactly what kind of a person he'd chosen to shelter. But each time he'd tried to start a conversation on that topic – usually opening with something along the lines of "Before, I did bad things. Hurted the Eldar," – Newt would tell him to wait. He would listen later, he elaborated, but he didn't want to understand it wrong, so he wanted Maglor to get better at this language before he told his story. As if he needed another incentive, that only made his desire to learn this 'English' all the stronger, so he could get the painful revelation over with as soon as possible. But privately, deep in his mind, he was relieved by the excuse of his poor English, so that he might have just a little longer in this gentle and welcoming place.

Curse

Tina, as a responsible auror, was very concerned by the injuries to Maglor's hands. She seemed to suspect some sort of foul play –how ironic it was that she assumed he was the victim – and questioned him on it. He tried to set her mind at rest.

"Was it a wizard? With a wand?" she asked, showing him hers.

"No. It was not a wizard. It was…" He was hazy on units of time in human culture in general, let alone in English. "Much before," he settled on, wincing at his own clumsy phrasing.

"A long time ago?" Tina asked, grabbing the dog-eared timeline from the mess of papers on Newt's desk and pointing repeatedly in the 'before' direction.

"Yes. It was a long time ago. You do not need to…" he gestured vaguely. Where was the word 'intervene' when you needed it?

"I know, but I want to help," she insisted, an edge appearing in her gaze that reminded Maglor a little of Galadriel when she had set her mind on something. It was, in all honesty, slightly terrifying.

"Was it an object? A thing? Something you touched?" she continued, picking up bits of random paraphernalia from Newt's study to illustrate her point. Resigning himself to not getting any peace until he'd settled this, he tried to explain.

"Yes. It was the Silmaril. It was a…" he moved his hand to the pendant around his neck to demonstrate.

"A necklace?" she asked, sliding a finger under the striking silver chain she wore around her own neck.

"No," he moved his fingers to isolate the ruby and present it.

"A gemstone?"

"Yes. A gemstone. I wanted it too much, I touched it, I was too bad, it hurt my hands."

There. Crude, perhaps, but an apt enough summary of what happened. Hopefully now they could lay the subject to rest. Tina, however, looked pained.

"Maglor, I don't think you understand. It sounds like this Silmaril was cursed by a wizard. That's why it hurt you. Not because you were bad."

"Cursed?"

Tina pursed her lips, then cast a spell to levitate a book down from a high shelf.

"That's a spell. A good spell. It's helpful. A curse is a bad spell. Meant to hurt. I think a bad wizard cursed the Silmaril, and it hurt you."

"No. No bad wizard. I know this," he insisted as he saw the disbelief in her expression. "The Silmaril was good. Like sun, stars, moon. Eldar touched it, not hurt. The Silmaril was not cursed."

Impressively, she maintained eye contact throughout his explanation. He hoped she would register the deep understanding in his gaze and realise that he was not misinterpreting the situation as she'd initially assumed.

"The Silmaril was not a curse," he repeated, driving home his point. "The curse was me."

Deserve

About as often as Maglor attempted to explain his history, Newt attempted to examine and treat his maimed hands, and met with a similar lack of success. Maglor refused to let him waste his time trying to heal unhealable wounds that were an entirely just punishment for his crimes.

"The hands hurt because I did bad things. It is good they hurt," he managed to communicate on one such occasion, hoping that Newt would cease his efforts if he understood the reasons behind his refusal.

"You think you deserve to hurt?" Newt had asked, looking stricken.

"Deserve," he said, testing the new word, "means you do bad, get bad, do good, get good?"

"Yes, that's what 'deserve' means," Newt confirmed, pale-faced. Maglor regarded his hands.

"I deserve this," he announced.

"No, you don't," Newt argued. "Nothing you could do is so bad as to deserve that. Nothing."

Maglor flicked his eyes to Newt's and attempted to hold his gaze, but the latter, troubled by the intensity of Maglor's stare, looked away.

"You don't know what I did," Maglor told him, his voice taking on a hint of the darkness that once made him the nightmare Sindar storytellers warned their elflings about. He'd flipped the onus of conversation back to Newt now, leaving him without an argument unless he asked for a tale he didn't think Maglor was ready to tell yet.

Newt couldn't find anything to say to that.

Encyclopaedia

Tina enthusiastically joined her husband in his teaching efforts, and one day presented Maglor with a huge illustrated book. He leafed through it, seeing that it was a catalogue of some sort, like a bestiary or a herbarium, but with a seemingly random list of items all mixed together. It was an encyclopaedia, Tina explained, and she'd bought it to help him with his English. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, she sat down next to him, and opened the book near the beginning to a page entitled 'auror', illustrated with a wizard casting a shielding spell around a group of others.

"Like me," she grinned, and started reading to him, following along the lines with her finger. He revelled in the satisfaction of linking the signs to the sounds and listening carefully to the rhythms of each sentence. He'd reached a good standard of pronunciation with individual words now, but the stress patterns were very different from the musical cadences of Sindarin or Quenya: they were far more flexible than he was used to. So he listened closely as he learned more about the wizards whose job it was to protect their fellows, trying desperately to keep his mind on the linguistic features and not on the bittersweet thought that Tina and her colleagues were everything the Fëanorions could have been, had they used their fighting prowess against Morgoth instead of their own kin.

Fantastic

They made it through the entirety of Fantastic Beasts: For Budding Magizoologists with impressive speed, before moving on to the more complex version. Newt looked hurt when Maglor shuddered on seeing the magically animated illustrations for both 'Acromantula' and 'Dragons', and explained that they could be gentle and friendly; they just needed to be understood. Maglor tried to put aside his prejudices and remind himself of how Newt's creatures had already surprised him, he really did, but privately he knew he would only believe that any spawn of Ungoliant or Glaurung could be tamed when he saw it with his own eyes.

It was only when they had finished the book and started putting it away that Maglor noticed the name of the author.

"Newt Saca- no, Scamander," he read, then looked to Newt. "This is you?"

"Yes," he said, looking vaguely embarrassed about it. "I wanted to tell people how fantastic magical creatures are."

"Fantastic, that means very good, yes?"

"Yes, it does, and also a bit different, out of the ordinary, unusual. I suppose I've always been a bit fantastic myself, in that way."

"In the good way too," Maglor added, his respect for the magizoologist only growing as he discovered that Newt, in his own way, was a storyteller too.

Generous

It was when Newt brought in an intricately carved chair for Maglor's home, then resized it to suit his height, that the latter found himself frustratingly short of adjectives. Newt didn't even have chairs in his own cabin, only a single stool by his desk and assorted crates he used to perch on. Possibly this was because when he didn't have company, the man just didn't stop, but still he was expending far more energy furnishing Maglor's home than it looked like he'd ever spent on his cabin, and there was something just plain wrong about that.

"You give too much," Maglor informed him levelly. "What's the word for 'give too much'?"

"The word is 'generous'," Newt replied easily, "but I'm not, not really. I gave you something you needed. That's common decency. 'Generous' is when you do more than that."

Maglor considered this for a few moments.

"You are generous," he declared.

Nothing Newt could say would convince him to change his view.

Honey

Once he'd settled comfortably into life with the Scamanders, he was introduced to Tina's little sister, Queenie. It seemed that not all the old arts had died out, for she was able to speak with her mind – legilimency, it was called – although how similar it was to the osanwe he once knew remained to be seen.

Tina escorted the woman with a halo of bright golden curls into the living room where he waited with Newt. She gave a small gasp on seeing him, and stumbled a little, grabbing her sister's arm for support with one hand and pressing the other against her head. Ignoring Tina's anxious questions, she steadied herself and strode over to Maglor, reaching up a hand to cradle his face. He froze, unsure of what was going on.

"Oh honey," she breathed, "what happened?"

He could feel her mind, a light, gentle presence observing his, not intruding, and he reached out to it with all his questions and explanations, things about his past that his hosts needed to know, but Queenie screwed up her eyes and shook her head.

"You're thinkin' in your language, honey, and it's real pretty, real sad too, but I can't understand it. I'm just gettin' feelin's, not thoughts. And whatever it is you're carryin', you gotta let it go."

He had so many questions for her, but her accent was more pronounced than Tina's and it was taking him a while to sort through it. But there was one thing in particular that was perplexing him.

"I do not understand. Why do you call me like food?"

Insomniac

Maglor didn't have a particularly extensive knowledge of human habits, but he was fairly certain that they were supposed to sleep for most of the night. The Eldar didn't need as much and could get by on letting their minds drift even whilst they were on the move, but it still nourished the fëa to dedicate time to complete rest every now and then.

Neither Maglor nor Newt seemed particularly inclined to follow the pattern of their species in this matter. Maglor finally brought it up in the early hours of one morning when he found Newt still up, observing the mooncalves.

"Why do you not sleep?"

Newt smiled wryly and flipped the question back to him "Why don't you?"

"I do not need it. Not much. Humans do, yes?"

"Well, yes, in general. I'm a bit of an insomniac, though."

"Insomniac?"

"Can't sleep at night," Newt explained. "Too many interesting things I might miss! Like now, Cassie and Lyra are teaching Cygnus how to dance." He pointed to the trio of mooncalves, the little one frolicking around in imitation of his two aunts, who were nudging him in the right direction and correcting his balance as he stumbled. They watched the mooncalves fondly until the lesson was finished, Newt making rapid sketches and jotting down notes. The little family returned to their cave; Cygnus, tired out, had wheedled a ride out of his aunt Lyra and was given a lift on her back. Once they'd gone, Newt shot a few furtive glances at Maglor, like he was weighing something up.

"And since the war, I have nightmares too. Like flashbacks, but asleep," he confessed a little hesitantly, at last. "Now your turn. You don't sleep as much as you should, I'm sure of it."

Newt was right, but Maglor wasn't really sure how to explain it. The way that most elves rested was by escaping to a pleasant place in their minds, but his was like a gloomy forest overgrown with brambles. It was very rare that he could find a way through the violence and death and heartbreak to a place where he could let his guard down. He also thought of the Doom of Mandos, the specific phrase which he knew must apply exclusively to him, the only one of his kin not to meet an end in violence or flame, fated instead to wander restless for eternity, finding no peace.

"Nightmares, also. And I like the stars," he said at last, and Newt gave him a nod which suggested that he was aware of the unplumbed depth behind those words, before settling in to wait out the night with him in their strange, silent camaraderie.

'Jarvey words'

The jarveys had been rescued the same night as Maglor and he was still bewildered by their vocalisation. It sounded like English, but there wasn't any pattern to it, they didn't observe the grammar, and he'd never heard Newt say any of the words they used. It was most odd.

Hearing a commotion from their enclosure, he strolled over from where he'd been sitting with Katarina to watch Newt herding them into a spacious pen with a ramp, presumably so they could be released easily from the suitcase. When one of them tried to dart away from him, he blocked it with his body and scolded it, using some of the 'jarvey words,' as he'd mentally termed them. Tina, looking on, giggled at this. The jarvey scuttled backwards, evidently impressed, and Newt was finally able to cajole it into the pen with its fellows. Neither partner had noticed Maglor there, as he'd forgotten to deliberately make noise again, and then he hadn't wanted to distract Newt from his work. Once it was finished, though, he decided that he wanted to clear this up once and for all, so he made himself known and asked,

"What is Merlin's blasted balls, you bloody bastard?"

It was several long moments before Newt and Tina stopped laughing long enough to explain.

Kindling

The Scamanders grew all kinds of magical and non-magical plants and potions ingredients in their back garden, which like Newt's case, was really rather bigger than it should be. Maglor enjoyed it as a change of scenery sometimes, sitting out and reading or meditating among the gently swaying fronds of the shrubs. One morning he found Hilpy out there, gathering tiny bits of twig and moss. She responded to his inquiry about what she was doing with a cheerful, "Collecting kindling for master Newt's new fire crab eggs, master Maglor!"

He recalled the descriptions of fire crabs from his reading with Newt, so pieced together the purpose of the wood and the definition of 'kindling.' He picked up a small piece of twig himself.

"Kindling, to make fire, yes?"

"Yes, master Maglor, that is right!"

"I understand. Does not Newt use his magic for this?"

Hilpy fiddled with the hem of her tea towel. "He can, he is not asking Hilpy to do this, but master Newt is a very strange master! He is not giving Hilpy many jobs so she is having to think of how to be useful all the time."

"Can not you rest?"

She looked genuinely puzzled.

"But why, sir? Hilpy likes to serve, she likes to be needed."

Looking at the sincere, busy little figure, Maglor thought he understood that.

"Can I help?" Before she could start insisting that it wasn't proper, he tried to explain. "If your people were mine, before, and you serve wizards, then can not I help also? And I… like to be needed, too."

She looked at him intently before acquiescing. "If that is your wish, master Maglor."

"It is," he replied gravely, getting down on his knees and applying himself to the familiar task. He knew already that he'd get a lecture from Newt on the work being too harsh on his hands, but decided it was worth it for the kindling camaraderie between him and his house-elf friend, perhaps the only other person in the household who could really relate to his longing to give something back.

Law

"Wizarding Law in Britain," Maglor read, picking up the hefty tome from the bookshelf. He was absorbing knowledge with the thirst of dry land long parched of rain and availed himself of the books in the study at every possible juncture. Tina, watching him explore, pulled a face at his choice, though.

"Just when I thought I'd got away from work," she grumbled, but stayed Maglor's hand as he moved to put it back.

"No, it's alright, I was joking, I love my job really. What did you want to know?"

"What is 'law'?" he asked first, thumbing through the well-read and annotated volume.

"People will give you lots of different answers on that," she said slowly, "but I think it's about protection. It's a set of rules people agree to live by to make sure everyone is safe. There are laws about cursed objects, for example, to stop wizards leaving them where they could hurt people." (Tina still hadn't completely given up on her hypothesis that the Silmaril was cursed.)

"What if people do not do the law?"

"That's where we aurors come in. We find the people who break the law, and stop people getting hurt. At least, in theory." Her face clouded a little with some dark memory. "It's not perfect, but we try. Do you want to know more?"

Maglor nodded, listening in fascination as she explained the legal process of arrest, trial, verdict and sentence, using examples from the book and her own experience to help.

Though he didn't say it aloud, he wondered what the Wizengamot would make of him.

Muggle

The introduction of Jacob cleared up a lot of things regarding humans and their new abilities. Though she couldn't read his specific thoughts, Queenie was adept at picking up on his emotions, and noted the confusion when her husband, a short, portly man named Jacob, laughingly declared himself 'as Muggle as they come.'

"Muggle means no magic, honey, we call 'em no-majs in the States," she explained, "And most of 'em don't know that witches and wizards exist. That's why I had to fight so hard to be with my Jacob, 'cause where we come from we're not allowed to even talk to muggles, not really. I messed it all up real good quite a few times tryna' make things work for us, but Jacob's an angel and forgave me more than he shoulda, so we got there in the end."

"And I sure am glad about that," Jacob murmured, pulling his wife in to his side and giving her a peck on the cheek, "and she didn't take much forgivin'. Made some mistakes, sure, but my girl's got a heart of gold and she came through when it counted."

Queenie could sense Maglor's mind reeling from what he'd just heard, affected by something far more than the story of how she'd met her husband, but she didn't immediately ask him. But later, her mind full of concern, honey-sweet compassion and a profound sort of understanding as it pressed against his, she stood beside him in silent solidarity while his hands trembled around the dictionary.

His eyes were glued with a desperate gaze to the entry for 'forgive.'