Find the Cost of Freedom
Would that the human heart was something that you could mend as easily as the artifice of schoolyard magic would have you believe. She recalled briefly how simple it had been during her own girlhood, the warm Massachusetts springs at Ilvermorny. The school had been a home to both her and her younger sister, a place where they could belong, where they could fit in after the death of their parents—a place that asked no questions of them, that made no judgements. The best school in the world, she had told Newt Scamander when first she met him, only moments later to be greeted by his weird, unwaveringly British loyalty to Hogwarts, despite never having completed his education there.
They were strange like that, the British, she thought, standing on that stone bridge, the ancient castle against the blue skies before her, every window open, the faces of children peering down at her.
She would never have children, she promised herself in that moment. Certainly, not now, not now that things had changed irreparably—not now that hearts were broken and lives had been lost.
In New York, a year ago, she had felt something, and then spent months telling herself it was nothing; in Paris, she had felt something again also, only for her to watch the shape of the other woman with whom she had spared for the affections of that notably awkward young man go up in smoke and flame. How could she compete with that?
Even if she had wanted to get close to him, he was inseparable from his grief now, haunted by the sacrifice of a woman that she knew she would never be. In the dark of the lonely night, on the way back from Paris, she had wanted to go with him, she had wanted to talk to him, she had wanted someone to make sense of what Queenie had done, but that man, that awkward young man with his weird, unwaveringly British loyalty, had no time for anyone living any more, only the memory of a woman now ash, a woman he had never confessed his feelings to.
That was fine, thought Porpentina Goldstein, Tina to her friends; that was fine, because the last thing she wanted was to be a nuisance, a bother, a burden, or any number of other decidedly British words used to describe intrusiveness, and yet the weight of the feelings that ground her down could not be argued with either.
She had not meant to involve herself, but in that long trip across the Channel, in the dark outside Newt Scamander's cabin, her fist raised, unable to knock, she had turned her away at the sound of crying, drawn to a door several steps further down the hall, quietly letting herself in, quietly putting her arms around the sobbing woman, quietly sharing her grief.
The handful of nights and days that followed, the loneliness of their arrival in Britain, the densely packed dirtiness of London, the train that rattled through King's Cross and York Road and out into the green countryside beyond, there had been peace in those moments—not a perfect peace, but sort of gentle peace nonetheless.
She was a maledictus, the other woman had said, her voice accented, hesitant, and Tina had known what she meant instantly; a woman under a curse, something passed down, a girl not raised as a girl, but treated as a beast. What must puberty have been like, she had wanted to ask, but felt too ashamed to voice the question, to hear words confirming the awfulness of it, the sadness of growing up as one thing whilst knowing you are another, the desire to be treated as a girl when all around you saw but a monster. It was enough to break her heart anew.
Sometimes, she would awake, and in her sleep, the shape of the other woman would have contorted, and Tina had at first struggled not to scream, finding herself ensnared by a serpent, and then felt ashamed that she should feel such fear. It was ingrained, this disgust with a body unlike hers, and she did not want to carry that forward with her in life, she wanted to leave that behind in Massachusetts springs, in cruel summers were spiteful children repeated the words of dispassionate parents, stories of maledictuses who posed as 'real women' to fool men, to walk in places where they did not belong. The world was cruel, and it was all right to feel a sort of contempt for such underbeings, as they were called, not quite one thing, not quite the other, neither women nor animals.
She didn't want that, didn't want to be someone who believed that others were lesser because they were not like her, that the serpent in her arms was any less of a woman simply because of the curse she had been born under.
Snakes were teachers of wisdom, the old ways taught, they were beings of beauty and knowledge, cunning and wise. Tina Goldstein, were her arms around the other in the morning light, fell in love not with the shape of another, but with the heart of another.
Standing then on that bridge, beneath the gaze of school children, as grieving Newt Scamander approached his old teacher, she reached out, she sought the other, and felt the other seeking her also.
One hand in the other, Nagini's touch was warm, she thought, as warm as the touch of any other woman she had known.
