Fantastic Weed and Where To Smoke It
Written for the Character of the Month event
Prompt: Jacob Kowalski
A/N: I did a bit of research on this, looking up animals that get high then writing about their magical equivalent in the wizarding world. Because Newt is a Hufflepuff, so you know somebody had to write about this eventually.
He smelled him first before he saw him coming. The fragrance, a pungent aroma reminiscent of dry straw, fish food and an overabundance of feathers, mingled with something odd, something less familiar.
"What the hell is that?" Jacob Kowalski wrinkled his nose in disgust. It smelled like a skunk had just wandered into the bank. He then spied the shabby wizard from across the building, turning circles while looking this way and that.
"Can I help you, sir?"
"No, I was just... just... waiting..."
Jacob tried to hide the mild sense of revulsion he felt as Newt sat down on the bench beside him. After all it wasn't proper. This man, with his untidy reddish-brown curls and battered suitcase, might be perfectly friendly despite the unpleasant aroma wafting from his clothes.
He decided to make small talk while they waited.
"Hi," Jacob said, trying his best to sound cheerful. However, the nervous tremor in his voice said otherwise. "What brings you here?"
Newt coughed into his closed fist and cleared his throat. "Same as you..." he replied, his gaze dropping to the floor, intensely focused on his shoelaces.
"You're here to get a loan to open up a bakery?" Jacob queried, sounding somewhat skeptical.
"Bakery?" Newt echoed, suddenly alert at the mention of food. He began to salivate at the thought, imagining loads of cream filled donuts and freshly baked pies. "Oh, I love a good cake. Red velvet in particular. With a pint of whipped cream and hot fudge on top."
Jacob scooted sideways on the bench, trying to distance himself from the smell of Newt's clothes. "Hey, pal, you alright there?" he asked, watching the young man staring off in distance at nothing in particular.
Newt shook his head, a few strands of reddish hair falling into his face. "Yes," he said simply, still drooling down the front of his shirt. "So sorry," he muttered, his thoughts clearing momentarily. "You wouldn't happen to have something to eat, would you?"
Jacob couldn't help the grin that spread across his face. "Yeah, I guess you could have some of this," he said, placing his suitcase on the bench and opening the lid.
He couldn't resist offering this strange man a taste of his pastries. After all he had to get his start somewhere. Might as well hand out a couple of free samples and see where it went from there.
This, however, turned out to be a mistake. For as soon as he opened the suitcase all of Newt's creatures detected the aroma of baked goods, the sweet smell wafting through a gap where the occamy was attempting to pry open the lid on Newt's case.
At that moment everything stopped.
The hippocampus, who was diligently munching locoweed in his watery habitat, lifted his head, greenish stalks dangling from his mouth. The mooncalves, who had eaten far too many poppies and were spinning in circles in a field, crashed into each other and lay sprawled in the grass, sniffing and staring at the opening of the suitcase.
Even the nundu, who was lazily chewing on a ayahuasca vine, stopped what he was doing and fell out of his tree, splattering just inches from where Dougal was rubbing his shaggy coat with the hallucinogenic oils from a passing millipede.
They all smelled the pastries and they all had the munchies. Because their owner was a Hufflepuff who cultivated his own variety of herbs in a secluded area to the left of the niffler's habitat. And when Newt got baked so did every last one of his creatures, inhaling the fumes or using their own natural stimulants found throughout the various habitants.
All at once the fantastic beasts threw themselves at the lid of the suitcase, craving a taste of the pastries they had whiffed. They had to have it. They were positively famished. And when they erupted out of the case, Jacob screamed and nearly leapt out of his skin.
He slid off the bench and tumbled onto the floor, watching as Newt joined his creatures, the whole lot of them converging on the baked goods like a team of vultures.
The last thing he remembered was an oddly shaped creature, looking like a cross between a naked mole rat and a sea anemone waddling across the floor. This creature had smelled the scent of cocoa powder and vanilla on Jacob's clothes, and it lunged at him, taking a bite out of his neck before the No-Maj passed out amid the stampede of magical beasts.