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They were all sporting cuts, bruises and extensive burns and the fight had gone out of them so when Professor Kettleburn suggested they retreat to the castle and return in the morning with reinforcements, the headmaster accepted without much protestation. He would not look at Newt on the way back and instead muttered about changes being needed and how he had pandered to the students for too long.

Newt barely noticed. He was almost glad he had been expelled so unceremoniously. Better that than have to worry about what was going to happen to him. At least this way it was the heavy lumpen dread of certainty in the pit of his stomach rather than hot writhing fear. Not that he wasn't feeling fear, but it meant that he could allow his blinding terror about Leta to expand and fill every inch of him like a coiling, tumbling Occamy. She couldn't be dead, she just couldn't. He'd know. He'd have felt the earth wrenching free of its axis, heard the grinding of every stone into dust, noticed every drop in every ocean boiling away to nothingness. She couldn't be dead because the world without her in it was an impossibility.

As they reached the side door, Dumbledore cleared his throat gently, "I feel it would be prudent if I take young Mister Scamander to the hospital wing and get that burn seen to," Newt started, he hadn't even noticed he had been burned, "after all, it wouldn't do to send him back to his parents looking like that, would it?" and Dumbledore smiled so benignly at Phineas Nigellus that he had no choice but to grudgingly agree.

They walked briskly in silence to the hospital wing, Dumbledore's singed robes billowing out behind him, Newt having to almost trot to keep up. As they approached the heavy wooden door, Dumbledore held Newt back gently, his face sorrowful, "Although you aren't a student any longer and don't have to listen to me, I'd appreciate it if you could wait here for me for just a moment."

Newt just nodded, afraid that if he opened his mouth he would beg to go in and see Leta, or even burst into tears. Dumbledore slipped inside and left Newt alone in the silence that grew and grew until it made the air thick and hard to breathe. His heart pounded painfully in his chest but in contrast, the nasty looking burns on the backs of his hands didn't hurt at all, as though they were someone else's hands he was looking at. After a few moments, or perhaps a hundred years, Dumbledore returned with his phoenix on his shoulder, smiling cautiously,

"Miss Lestrange was very grievously hurt and I must confess I feared that her injuries would overcome her. Dragon venom is very hard to make a successful antidote for. Fortunately, Fawkes here decided to take a flight to the hospital wing. She will make a full recovery."

"His tears," breathed Newt, stroking the feathery plumage on the birds head as it dipped its head, half closing its eyes in pleasure.

Dumbledore nodded, seeming pleased that Newt knew about the healing properties of Phoenix tears, "She is still unconscious but will hopefully awake in the next few days and be able to tell us everything that happened."

"You mean, who attacked her?" Newt asked, thinking of the flask of dragon venom. Perhaps she had stumbled upon the person who was harvesting it and they had used it on her after stabbing her or…

"You saw the wounds, they were inflicted by the dragon," Dumbledore's eyes were suddenly cold and steely.

Oh yes, silly old Newt, he had forgotten that, in his attempts to piece a palatable story of events out of the decidedly unpalatable facts, "Perhaps the dragon was so enraged when she came across them that it went for her. After all, you have to torture a dragon to get it to release its venom. Perhaps she was trying to stop them."

"Perhaps," Dumbledore conceded, "Now, unless you have a particular wish for me to remain, I am going to visit the headmaster. I would advise you not to forget to apply some burn salve to your hands after you have checked on Miss Lestrange."

So, after I've seen Leta, should I just go and pack or…?" Newt trailed off uncertainly.

"I think you should also visit the headmaster's office. The password is hemlock."

He pressed open the door, feeling the cool rush of herbal scented sterile air wash over him, and stepped inside. His eyes immediately zoned in on Leta, looking tiny and fragile in one of the narrow, iron framed hospital beds, the rise and fall of her chest. However, once he was able to see she was alive, the rest of the room came into focus to him.

"What are you doing here?" Newt asked, too shocked to be nervous, as his eyes slid over Leta's sleeping form, to Abraxas Malfoy sitting by her bed, holding her hand proprietorially.

Malfoy rolled his eyes, "Mother made me come, she was with Leta's mother when she got the news that Leta had been hurt and she owled me straight away. It's bad form, apparently, to leave your betrothed lying alone in a hospital bed. Even when you can't stand each other. Or when it's more than likely it's her own dam fault she's in here. Oh, er, you did know we were betrothed didn't you?" he asked belatedly, as Newt's mouth dropped open in dismay.

"Yes," he nodded sadly. So it was true. Leta was to be married to Malfoy. Not that he had expected her to settle for him. In truth, he hadn't even dared. But the thought of her as a society wife, smiling politely and sipping her cocktails while underneath her porcelain veneer she was raging and burning, as he knew she would be, made him almost sick with grief. He felt it like a body blow. The sight of Malfoy's pale skinned hand, even daring to as much as touch Leta's delicate olive skin made him want to curse it off, or run away, whichever he could do quicker.

"If it's any comfort, I'm sure she'd much rather be betrothed to you. Hell, I'd rather be betrothed to you," Malfoy attempted a laugh although it was hollow and forced.

"I've er, I've got to go" he backed up against the door of the infirmary, scrabbling for the handle in his haste to get away.

"I'll tell her you called by,"

Newt gazed down at Leta, her skin sallow and lacking the luminescence that usually made her look as fresh and shiny as a polished apple. The dark circles around her eyes. The paleness of her lips. Her robes were rumpled in disarray, pulled down to reveal the swathe of bandages at her shoulder. In the dim lamplight, a necklace glinted at her throat that Newt had never seen before – a curious symbol that looked like a triangle with a circle in the middle of it, threaded onto a black leather cord.

"Would you mind…" he teetered on a knife edge of indecision. On one hand was goodness, and the way, whilst not smooth, was straightforward, and on the other way was Leta, but the path was thorn twisted and flanked with fire and lightening, "…not," he finished, agonised.

Malfoy just shrugged indifferently, as though his misery would be unaffected by what happened between Newt and Leta.

He was almost out the door when Malfoy called after him, a strange kind of casual camaraderie in his voice, "Oh, I almost forgot, she had this in her hand when she was brought in. Is it yours?"

Newt turned slowly, feeling so weary that he could barely stand to see Abraxas holding out a silver knife, tipped darkly with dragon's blood. That final blow, the final hammer point of humiliation made him feel like a little child, desperate to run and hide under his covers from this world of adults that he didn't understand.

"At least now you know what she's capable of," Malfoy sneered and Newt realised that it wasn't him that Abraxas was trying to hurt but the dark sleeping girl in the bed. Knowing that he was just collateral damage in a cruel game that had decades to play out, didn't make it hurt any less though.

oOoOoOo

When he approached Headmaster Black's office, he could hear raised voices – Dumbledore's pleasant baritone, interspersed with Professor Black's reedy tones, shrill with anger now. They were arguing. He muttered the password to the gargoyle and a narrow stone spiral staircase opened to him which he dragged his feet up wearily.

Dozens of portraits gazed down dolefully at him, some of them even shaking their heads.

"Ah, Mr Scamander, you've bothered to join us at last!" the headmaster waved his arm theatrically, clearly in his element. Too late, Newt realised that he had not applied any salve to his hands and they were starting to sting, "Not that the rules apply to you do they, you think you're more important than the rules don't you Scamander?"

Newt's stutter which had improved to almost non-existence as he'd got older, returned with a vengeance, rendering him almost unable to say anything to disagree with the Professor Black's acerbic assertion.

"I can only assume that must be the case, otherwise why did you think it was appropriate for you to disarm the headmaster? Hmmm?" and he crossed his arms and stared so expectantly at Newt that he saw red and tasted dizzying magic on his tongue for a second before he was able to calm himself down.

Still, he wasn't able to stop himself from answering in an overly sullen manner, "I was under the impression that unforgiveable curses were…well…unforgiveable. Sir."

"These were exceptional circumstances!" small flecks of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth.

"I just didn't want you to kill the dragon. It wasn't like it asked to be in the forest." He crossed his arms over his chest.

"You seem to know an awful lot about how it got into forest – is there anything you want to say on the matter? I understand you're fond of creatures, perhaps you wanted a pet? Thought you could handle it did you?" Professor Black was pacing up and down the office now, glancing up at the portraits from time to time to see how they were reacting to his interrogation. Most seemed to be nodding along, although Newt could see a tufty haired wizard whispering to a wizened-faced witch, both glaring at Black and tutting.

"No – No! Of course not! I love creatures! There's no way I'd be that cruel. Peruvian Vipertooths are completely unsuited to the British climate, let alone confined spaces. Let alone confined spaces made of wood!"

"Well then how did you find it?" Professor Black was leaning over him now, the corners of his mouth turned up cruelly.

"I'd rather not say," Newt could feel the dull flush rising up his neck no matter how hard he wished it away.

"I'd rather you did, or do I need to fetch veritaserum?" Newt felt his stomach drop away. He knew he needed to keep the whole truth from the Professor, even though he barely knew of it himself. The little truth he knew would only lead to investigations and scandal, "No Sir, it's like this…erm.." A rustle in his pocket and a leafy head emerged. His heart leaped with joy to see Pickett looking disgruntled but unharmed, "I found this bowtruckle…in my belongings. He sometimes likes to stow away in my pocket – he's fond of me," Professor Black snorted derisively as though he found the idea of anyone being fond of Newt unbelieveable, "and I thought I had better return him to the forest like Professor Kettleburn keeps telling me to."

"In the middle of the night? A likely story! And was Miss Lestrange with you?"

"I don't know why Leta was in the forest," Newt admitted sadly.

"Stop lying! I will fetch the veritaserum this instant, and use it on you. Then when your friend Lestrange wakes up, I'll use it on her just to make sure!" Phineas was raving again, his robes billowing like black smoke around him as he paced, his arms flailing wildly. Dumbledore had been silent the entire time, watching Newt keenly but making no attempt to intervene.

A drum roll of desolation started up in the pit of Newt's stomach and yet his head was clearer than it had been for hours, the path ahead illuminated for him.

"Alright, alright. I found the dragon in the forest. I don't know how it got there but I'd been trying to take care of it myself. I had an idea about trying to tame it but it seemed unwell. I asked Leta to come with me after curfew to take a look at it. She begged not to go and it was against school rules but I forced her into it. I said I'd never speak to her again if she didn't come with me. But she didn't know anything about it until we got there and she panicked and ran off into the forest so I came back to find help. She must have got lost and the dragon tracked her down somehow. If you want to punish me, then fine, but leave her out of it."

He looked up from his boots, his face burning. Dumbledore was gazing at him in a kind of horrified despair but Professor Black looked satisfied at least.

"Very well, you can go and pack now, I want you gone before morning."

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