"Will you help me work on uncle Abretan?"

"Sure." He agrees before even fully processing the words, charmed by the boy's easy enthusiasm, and spends the next five hours seriously listening to the boy's chatting as they try to turn Uncle Abretan into a functional Inferi.

"He was trying to do experiments on himself," Newt, at one point, probably past the three hour mark, deigns to explain briefly.

His wand somehow stays between his teeth, lumos illuminating the tip, and his eyes are completely focused on drilling a small hole into the corpse's skull with a rather crude muggle instrument of some sort, all while Percival dutifully pins the corpse's gray hair out of Newt's immediate work surface.

"Oh?" Percival lifts an eyebrow. He's not in the least surprised, but they've been having trouble with the curse for a while now, so some insight could prove useful.

"Mhhm. Eugh. His brain's mostly liquid. Do we need an intact brain to make an Inferi?" Newt mutters to himself, clearly not expecting an answer.

Even so, Percival hums thoughtfully. "I wouldn't think so. I haven't made an Inferi before, but from what I know, rotten corpses are just as good as fresh bodies."

"Oh." Newt shifts to blink at him. "So it's the technique that is flawed."

Percival shrugs. It is interesting, but he is no expert.

Newt hums and takes a hold of his wand, jabbing it into the broken skull and swirling the goop inside it like a particularly disgusting soup. He makes an interested sound as the goop dripping from the hole turns vaguely green and quickly pulls out a notebook to scribble something in it.

He then shifts his gaze back to Percival's face. "I think, at one point, he was trying to make the Inferi - or, well, himself really - immune to fire. It didn't work. It did not work. But. I-um, I think I can maybe do it. Eventually." He squints up at Percival while fiddling with the wand as some sort of nervous tick, seemingly looking for approval. Percival nods seriously and Newt's face breaks into a shy, but excited grin.

His words come even faster now, ideas formed yet not refined spilling past his lips almost faster than his speech can keep up. It's quite charming. Percival resists the urge to ruffle his hair, if only because his hands are still occupied.

"I think he was experimenting with the wrong type of spells," Newt says, fingers rapidly flicking through his little notebook, trying to find the right passage. "Most of the spells just aren't designed to work on living beings, certainly not permamently at the very least- oh! It is however probable that he managed to find a temporary fix, but we don't really know how his research progressed past a certain point - his journals got seized by the Ministry you know, truly a tragedy, especially since they mysteriously vanished after that one raid-"

Percival listens seriously, nodding in the appropriate places and making interested sounds to keep him going. Eventually the boy huffs and shakes his head.

"Oh, that went way off topic, sorry to subject you to that. As I was going to say, Uncle, after dying and if he had succeeded with finding a permanent spell - maybe it's better to call it a curse, hmm - well, he wanted to be invited to all of the family gatherings," Newt pauses briefly and adds with a confused frown on his face: "which he already was anyway, so I'm not sure why that point was even made, it's not like weren't gonna dig him up for those, that would be just rude." He jabs his wand back into the brain and pulss it out to give it a cursory sniff.

Percival doesn't bother to suppress a small grin that steals over his face at Newt's clear perplexion that his Uncle would not be invited to the gathering due to such a minor inconvenience as an actual death. But such is the way of their family, so of course it doesn't stop them.

"Of course." He encourages.

"Yeah. So, he wanted to be invited to the family gatherings," Newt repeats, clearly distracted by trying to do multiple things at once. "And he wanted to be set on fire each time, during every gathering. Like a living torch. Hmm..."

"Why did he want to be set on fire at the gatherings?" Percival asks, feeling only mildly curious. Nothing can surprise him anymore, but he's always interested in hearing about his family's various shenanigans.

Peverell's excuses tend to range from wanting to leave an impact on the history and screw with everyone, to simply being bored as all hell and maybe becoming a tiny bit unhinged from it.

Or a lot. He wonders if his cousin Aurellia ever managed to escape the asylum her family had left her at, after immuring her into one of the walls.

Which also reminds him of his great-aunt Loretta, who should still be at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, after she refused to leave due to losing a rather valuable piece of jewelry after a lover's spat. Well, either that, or someone had actually trapped her under a rock and no one had bothered to check up on her after the first 120 or so years.

Percival makes a mental note to check on her out of curiosity, and the fact that she had lent him one of her silver and bone necklaces for Necromancy practice, that he really ought to give back sometime this decade.

"Oh, I think he thought it would be funny." Percival blinks, not realising he had sunk quite so deep in his thoughts. He's about to apologise, but Newt simply gives him a knowing look and waves it off. "His will describes it in more detail, er, at least in the parts we managed to recover. It's something about wanting to provide light and guidance even beyond the grave, if in a rather literal manner, and we all know he was a great scholar who also had a rather peculiar sense of humour."

Newt finishes hos explanation and flicks some brain goop from his wand and hand on the floor, where it immediately begins to dissolve the rock with a hissing, sizzling sound.

.

The hole it makes leads to a deeper level of the basement and Percival can hear muffled cries and screams that had previously been obscured by what he assumes to be many, many stacks of muffling charms.

"Oh bugger." Newt mutters. He crouches down near the hole, trying to peek through it and waves at someone below. "Sorry!" A groan answers him.

Newt looks back at Percival, he flushes to the tips of his ears, which he once again finds strangely charming.

"Sorry Mister Graves. Seems I've disturbed Lurch at the Lethifold feeding time."

"Don't be." he says easily. "Also, call me Percival, please. I think we are quite well acquainted by now and I'm not that old yet." He tries for a light, teasing tone and is pleased when Newt ducks his head lower hiding his face, but there's an unmistakable smile pulling at the corners of his lips.

He's been enjoying the boy's company way more than he first imagined he would, and the surprise that comes with the realisation is pleasant.

"Shall we continue then, Mister Scamander?" he inquires, and almost gives into the urge to laugh out loud at Newt's boggled stare as the boy stammers to 'just call him Newt, really, please and thank you'.

A/N. This is something reallly old from like 2019? 2018? I think. I actually have no memory of writing this lmao. I've cleaned it up a tad and edited it when compared to the ao3 version where it was published a few years back.