Newt took Tina's arm with one hand and his case with the other and led her out the door that they'd used to enter the drawing room. Instead of going back toward the small arched door that led to the less magical part of the house, they continued on through the conservatory which was covered with exotic greenery through to a tiny kitchen that the family used and had a small breakfast nook off to the side. A narrow oak stair at the back was originally intended to be a servant's entrance upstairs, but like most things at Blethering it was done backwards since servants were the only people who ever used the grand staircase in the front hall. Instead, up this little winding passage were all the bedrooms in the east wing of the house, where the family slept. Newt was gratified to see that Tina was given a room in this area, not too far from his own. Hopefully Theseus' friends would all be assigned rooms beyond in the west wing, where the protections were not as thick and which was separated from the other parts of the house.
Tina stared interestedly around her on their way up, but had started to yawn when they reached the top of the stair. Newt hesitated. He wanted to take her to his room, but she did look very sleepy, and goodness knew what state his space was in. Gloriana was constantly threatening to take up weaving just so that she could fill up his whole room with looms and bobbins, but she never had thus far. He wouldn't have blamed her, but as they'd seen downstairs, her bluster covered up a great deal of sentimentality, so she probably hadn't. Yet to be on the safe side, he led Tina down the corridor toward the left—this part had been done in ancient yellow and orange striped wallpaper—and stopped by a dark wood doorway covered in carved brambles. Newt frowned at them.
"Come now, surely you heard Mother. This is Tina, and she'll be staying in here. I'm helping to care for her, so you'd better let me in too or we'll take ourselves off to my room and you can just carry on being empty."
He shook his head impatiently, and Tina looked interested enough to raise an eyebrow at his speech.
Thankfully it had its intended effect and the brambles slid away, leaving only a beautifully ornate open doorway covered with carved wooden roses. They stepped inside, and the room beyond was as rose-themed as it was possible to be, with everything from the color of the curtains to the pattern of the bedcovers to the wide vases in several locations around the room stuffed full of roses. A look behind them showed a door had appeared, with a handle that looked like a spray of blossoms.
"I'm impressed," he said to Tina. "It's looking much nicer than I can ever remember. Usually it's so unrestrained you feel like you've accidentally fallen into a bush, but the small roses on the wallpaper with larger expanses of white keeps it from being as garish as usual. Good show, Rose Room," he said, and the curtains fluttered in response.
Tina walked in with a laugh. She pointed down.
"Even the carpet is roses. It didn't hold back on this one." It was true. Newt looked down, and saw that the rug at the side of the canopied bed had a pattern of rose vines elaborately growing in a labyrinthine shape, ever-changing.
"I think it's a maze," he said, tracing a way in with the toe of his boot. "But it's so complex and changeable it's probably not worth the time to solve."
Tina, who was not normally what he would call a flower person, looked impressed at the dedication to a theme.
"There's even roses on the windows!"
The top portion of each window was done in stained glass with red, white, and pink roses and their green leaves styled together in wide clumps. Thankfully the room had left the bottom portion of the glass clear so that Tina could look out. This room also faced the back of the house, and they were high enough up that Newt could point out the direction of the hippogriff stables to Tina and show her a glimpse of the lake beyond the gardens.
"And to the right, back toward the wood, is the gamekeeper's cabin. Once you're settled in, I'm going to go over and discuss Mother's proposition with Queenie and Jacob."
Newt expected Tina to insist on coming with him, but instead she looked down at her hands. "I hope they take it. It would be great if Queenie could learn how to control her gifts."
Tina sniffed and sat down on the plush bed, which had more give than she was evidently expecting since she fell backwards. Newt gave her a hand and helped lever her back upright.
"It's my fault you know, that she's so secretive. At school, one teacher caught her, but I told convinced him not to say anything. You see, she read a secret—something bad he'd done. Nothing awful, just a lie he'd told his wife that could cause a lot of trouble. I…convinced him to keep quiet, and we wouldn't tell. As far as I remember, I'm the only one who's ever used Queenie's talent to blackmail somebody. Queenie really did study hard, and made her own mistakes on tests. She wasn't always in people's heads. It was emotional stuff that was easier for her to read anyway, when we were kids. But I told her that she couldn't tell anyone, because if she did we might get kicked out of Ilvermorny, and we had no place else to go."
Newt carefully sat beside Tina on the bed. He didn't want to underplay the seriousness of her confession, but he was very pleased that Tina was acting so familiarly with him. She peeked up at his face, and he realized that he ought to respond and not just stare at her like a moon calf.
"You did what you felt you had to do, and I think Mother can easily be dissuaded from writing to the headmaster. But it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for Queenie to now learn some of the legilimency etiquette that keeps people at least somewhat comfortable with them. My father is not so weak as all that, but he's been sworn never to take unnecessary risks with his duties, and an unpredictable legilimens is definitely one of them. Salsify has never been particularly closed off about anything, so I think she's going to have the hardest time shielding her thoughts. Who knows though, she might say the same thing about me, and I've managed. Not that I can do so without irritating Queenie. She seems to be completely annoyed with me."
"Well," Tina looked down at the space between their hands on the edge of the bed, then off to the side. "It has been pretty hard, being in a foreign country, not knowing where we'll end up. It's not so bad here, but you were so set on avoiding this place I didn't know what was going to happen to us."
"I wouldn't let you live on the streets," Newt said, half-laughing. Tina looked uncomfortable. Newt turned to her. He realized with some sadness that she really didn't trust him to be able to take care of her. He'd been so focused on not wanting to give in to the reasonable course of action and go see his parents that he'd made Tina, and maybe Queenie and Jacob, feel that they'd been in real danger of having no shelter.
"Really Tina. The worst that would have happened was we'd have had to set up house in a garret somewhere. It's not even illegal—not unless a muggle reports something strange. And with the case already expanded, we have a lot of space and furnishings to choose from."
"Why didn't you choose to do that then?" Tina asked.
"I thought about it. But we can't have the midwife coming round to some muggle's attic for a home visit. And there is the future fact of a baby…I don't know that there are any charms so complete that they could keep muggles from hearing the sounds of a baby."
Tina looked down again, and this time Newt caught a blush on her cheeks. He ought to back off—she seemed so uncertain. Perhaps hugging her in the drawing room was a grave mistake, because all he wanted now was to be close to her again. He turned, so that his knees were pressing toward Tina's on the bed, and held out his hand.
Tina stared at it, a little worried crease in the center of her brow. But she took a deep breath and slowly took hold. Newt smiled at her, and she smiled back. She slid toward him a little on the bed, and, aided by its sinking fluff, lost her balance and shifted into him. He caught her around the shoulders with his other hand, but the bed seemed to give a shiver, and they ended up flat on their backs on the bed, looking up at the canopy of red roses, strung on vines from the head of the bed to the posts at the foot.
"Weren't those pink a second ago?" Tina said.
"Oh dear." Newt sat up. He'd never actually slept in the Rose Room, having had a perfectly serviceable room to himself once he'd outgrown the nursery. He tried to remember who had stayed there. Cousins, maybe an aunt or two. All individuals from what he could remember. What on earth was his mother thinking? That it would embarrass him into leaving Tina alone? Or was this some sort of very awkward encouragement?
"I think this room has perhaps a little more developed in its personality than I had realized." He stared down at the rug at their feet. On one end a tiny figure was backtracking out of the maze. It looked like him. He lifted his head up. "Now, that's not funny," he said to the air.
"What is it?" asked Tina, sitting up and leaning her shoulder against his. Newt nodded at the rose-choked maze of vines depicted on the carpet, and Tina leaned forward to investigate. She pointed to a tiny figure he had not noticed on the opposite side of the maze.
"It's me!" she said.
Sure enough, the tiny Tina figure was wearing the same blue blouse and long black skirt. Her hair was in a bun at the base of her neck like Tina's. Where Newt's figure was now pacing around the entrance to the maze, looking agitated, Tina's was slowly advancing through it. Tina looked thoughtfully at it, and brought her arm, which had been trapped between them on the bed, up and touched his cheek. She watched as the Tina figure took off running toward the center of the maze.
Newt blushed crimson at the implications of such a scene and scrambled away.
"I can ask Mother to prepare another room for you. This one has clearly been empty for too long. It's developed ideas."
The room reacted visibly to this. Both little figures disappeared from the rug at the side of the bed, and the roses on the canopy of vines went back to pale pink.
Tina was also blushing as she realized exactly what was going on. "Did this room always…?"
"I don't know!" Newt said. "I can never remember anyone but a single spinster aunt or cousin at a time staying in here. Wizarding houses that have been active for ages are sometimes a little…unpredictable. But I think it will be quite comfortable for the moment, and you surely should rest for a while. I hope that you'll—I mean, someone will come get you before dinner. If you need anything, just ring."
He indicated the bell pull at the side of the bed. It wasn't really attached to anything, but it did work all the same, even though they no longer had house elves to answer.
Newt was not at all sure that he ought to leave Tina alone in the Rose Room, but he wasn't sure that any other place in the Scamander family home would be any better. He strongly suspected that the room was having a laugh at his expense, and that once he left Tina would find everything to her satisfaction. But the longer he stood there, looking at Tina, who was now leaning back on her elbows on the bed, looking up at him with her dark eyes flashing, the harder it was to leave. She was talking about her school days like they'd just happened, yet she looked just like the Tina that he had married, the one who was going to have his baby—and she was that person, but she also was not. It was all too confusing, and he had to leave before he made it even more so.
"I—I must go. Right now."
He turned on his heel and practically ran out the door, looking over his shoulder just long enough to see Tina frowning at him from the bed.
Newt bolted down the narrow corridor, pausing at the tiny staircase to look longingly in the direction of his room. He found he deeply wanted to know if Gloriana had changed it or left his things as they'd been the last time he'd stayed. But Queenie and Jacob were likely very unsettled and all their things were in his case. The least he could do was go try to smooth things over and see if they would accept his mother's proposal. He set off down the stairs, slipping out a door in the back of the pantry attached to the kitchen that led to the back of the house.
This back area was vegetable and fruit production for the family and the animals, with wide neat beds interspersed with fruit trees trained into dividers. The greenhouses were off the far side of the potting shed, where the gardener, a squib named Sikes, had been lurking for longer than Newt could remember. Salsify had her own greenhouse now, Newt noted, since it was nigh on impossible that Sikes would have ever consented to the frivolous brass-and-glass beauty that looked like it held every sort of exotic flowering shrub, all going at once. The sides were heavy with condensation, and the air felt warm as he passed by.
"Newt!" the girl herself bounded out of the brass door and threw her arms around him in a brief hug before stepping back. "I can't believe it—you finally showed back up! And what a spectacle you have provided us all with! A legilimens! A muggle! And a wife! And all this just after what's happened in the village! What on earth is going on?"
"Sally, please don't call my friends a spectacle. It's rude They've traveled a long way under very difficult circumstances."
He paused.
"Wait, what happened in the village?"
"Somebody's apparently seen one of the creatures."
"A hippogriff?" Every one of their creatures had invisibility cloaking regularly reapplied just in case they got out.
"No, it must have been something smaller—it was apparently inside the Cooper's shed. Now you're here though maybe you can help mother with it if she's not too miffed to speak to you after embarrassing her in front of strangers like you did."
"I had hoped to speak with Mother privately before having them all put up before the entire family. It was never my intention to make a scene."
Newt knew he sounded a bit sulky, but he couldn't seem to help it. Something about the air here had him acting like a teenager. First he could scarcely control his thoughts around Tina, and now he was shifting blame.
"Oh that was us," said Salsify breezily. "Corwin was so excited when he came into the stable that I just had to see what had got all the hippogriffs riled up. And then Theseus saw me bolting around the house and chased me, and then Mummy and Daddy looked so serious, we just couldn't help but force ourselves in on things."
"Well now we've all made a mess of things. After upsetting all my friends, Mother wants me to convince Jacob and Queenie to fill in as kitchen staff for Theseus' guests, and I've got to…well, I'll tell you now, I brought Tina from New York to London because she's been injured."
He looked down at the gravel path beneath his boots. Whenever he was confronted with this reality he was struck anew with the feeling of loss. Where had Tina gone? If she were herself, how would she be feeling about the prospect of a baby? If she hadn't wanted one, why hadn't she taken a potion to prevent it? And if she had wanted one, why hadn't she said anything? These issues unsettled Newt, since he was certainly as guilty as Tina. But with no way to know what she was thinking, he was left wondering how they would ever come out right.
Salsify, in the meantime, had gone on speaking.
"Ah. That makes more sense. She did seem a little, well, terrified. I've obviously never seen you involved with anybody, so anyone whatsoever is of course a surprise. Wouldn't she have to be able to manage with graphorns and thunderbirds and such? You coming out of nowhere with this timid shrinking shy violet type was very strange."
"Tina's not timid," Newt said defensively. "Not usually, anyway. She does just fine around thunderbirds. She's an auror, but she was injured while investigating some suspicious activity in New York, and now she can't remember much of her adult life. That would be enough to handle on its own, but the memory charm was not done properly, so sometimes it all goes off, and she can't make any new memories at all. The trip over here was difficult, but she's been doing very well since we got here. The healers suggested that a new environment is spurring her to be more present with us."
"Oh goodness, how awful! Isn't there anything you can do?"
Salsify's hand had gone over her mouth.
"I did find something—you'd be interested Sal—it's a plant that I found under swooping evil's nesting grounds."
"Swooping evil? Isn't that that brains-eating yo-yo you shoved in my face at breakfast last time?"
Newt could not help himself—it really must be the air up here—he reached into his pocket, grasped swooping evil's coccoon and flung the creature up into her face where she'd been leaning against her garden spade.
"Ack! Blech! You git!" She jumped back and scowled. "So much for married life making you more mature!"
Salsify stuck her tongue out at him as he tried to resist smirking. Newt decided she was right, so to make it up to her, he summoned one of the little seedlings of the mbwo that he'd potted up.
"Here—" he tossed it to her.
Salsify let go of her spade in surprise and scrambled to catch the terra cotta pot. She did, and then stared at the specimen.
"What is this?" she asked.
"The locals called it mbwo—their word for evil, and for witchcraft. It's got a very dark reputation. While swooping evil's venom removes bad memories—"
"This brings them back?" Salsify stared at it. "Sounds dreadful. You really want to give that to your wife?"
She made a doubtful face.
"I would never give Tina anything that would hurt her," he said reproachfully. Yes, his last and only other attempt at romance had ended very poorly while Salsify was still a little girl, but was it so inconceivable that he could have a healthy relationship?
"I wrote to the new Hogwarts Potions Master," Newt explained, "and he came down to St. Mungo's to meet us this past week-end. He's promised to do the thing safely."
"Slughorn? I've heard he's dreadfully full of himself."
"He has an excellent reputation. Dumbledore himself referred me."
"Well in that case I suppose you had little choice but to try it. Did it seem to make any difference so far?"
Newt had started back along the path to the gamekeeper's cabin, and Salsify took up her spade and trotted alongside him.
"This was the first Slughorn had seen of the mbwo, and he said he needed time to study it. A fortnight." Newt sighed heavily.
"Ah, so that's why you're here. You forgot that human beings need care and feeding that can't all be provided in a box." She kicked out at his case, which he snatched back from her muddy boot.
"Watch it," he snapped. They were getting close to the forest. Salsify really shouldn't get any closer to Queenie. He stopped and turned to his sister. She was slender like the rest of them, but she only came up to his shoulder. Her hair gleamed more brightly than anyone else's in the family. Briefly, Newt wondered whether the baby would have his coloring or Tina's. This somehow embarrassed him as a thought to have around his little sister. Newt definitely did not want to tell her about the impending baby. Salsify, at least, should get a chance to know Tina before there were any more shocking revelations or miscommunications about timing.
"Shove off now. And Sal—be careful with that plant. I've only just begun to learn about it. I don't have any information about its growing patterns or whether or not it's invasive."
Salsify nodded slowly, and hefted her spade over one shoulder. "Thanks, I'll be careful."
Newt straightened his shoulders, and set out on the dirt path into the woods toward the cabin where Jacob and Queenie were staying.
Newt knocked politely on the rough-hewn wooden door of the gamekeeper's cabin. It was just far enough into the forest to give it a little privacy from the house, but it was a very short walk. A thud sounded inside, and after a long moment, Jacob came to the door and opened it slightly.
"Um, yes?" he said.
Newt looked around him. Why was Jacob sounding so agitated?
"I brought your things," he said, holding up his case.
"Alright, just a minute," Jacob said, shutting the door in Newt's face.
Uncomfortable, Newt set his case on the path and opened it.
"Don't get any ideas, you lot," he said. "I know it smells good out here, but believe me there's things in this forest that could eat the fiercest and quickest of you for breakfast, so stay put."
He levitated out Jacob's modest suitcase, and Queenie's trunk, two suitcases, and a hatbox. They were a matching set, and he could only surmise that Queenie liked the look of them, because there was no other good reason for not putting an expansion charm on one of them like he'd done for his case and Tina's trunk.
Finally the door opened, and Queenie stood there looking perfectly put upon. She had her arms crossed, and Newt could tell that whatever had transpired in the cabin, she was still very hurt by his words in the drawing room.
"How's Tina?" she asked shortly.
"She's well—she's resting in the house."
Queenie sniffed.
"I hope you're finding the cabin satisfactory," he said, looking at his shoes miserably.
"Are you kidding?" said Jacob from inside. "This place is amazing! It looks like it grew right out of the woods! One of the bedroom walls is six trees with plates of glass between them!"
"It's nice," Queenie admitted.
"I'm sorry for telling my mother so abruptly that you were a legilimens," Newt said. "I didn't want Mother to think that it was Tina who was trying to read her mind, but the reaction was very extreme. Things tend to spiral quickly out of my control in this house."
He looked up at Queenie, and even tried loosening his tight grasp on his mind enough to let his sincerity become obvious.
Queenie looked at him hesitantly.
"I do need to ask you though—why did you try to read Mother? I'd just asked you not to look at anybody's thoughts. Why on earth would you do that to someone you'd first met? Especially when I've been telling you that there are—very boring!—things that my family is not to disclose to anybody."
Newt realized that his opening himself up to Queenie to prove his honesty was working against him rather, because when he was honest with himself about his feelings, he had to realize that he was still frustrated with Queenie's behavior.
Queenie looked away, and Newt was panicked to see that she was wiping away a tear from the corner of her eye.
"Look, I'm sorry for speaking sharply. I hadn't realized quite how frustrating I found this. And I want us to work through it."
Jacob stepped up to the door, putting his arm around Queenie. "Why don't we all come in," he said, running a hand through his disheveled hair.
Queenie turned on her shoe—she was back to her strappy heels—walked to the sitting room that adjoined the entryway and sat on a sofa with a huff. Jacob went to sit beside her. Newt waved his wand, and the luggage precrded him into the cottage while he picked up his case, double checking the latches.
The gamekeeper's cabin was a compact but comfortable cottage that had once housed an actual gamekeeper and his family. Sometime before Newt was born, however, the last one had died and had never been replaced. Instead, the cabin had been available to guests and the occasional lingering family member who they wanted out of the house. Off to the right from the entry was the dining room, and beyond it the door to the kitchen. To the right was the sitting room, and then behind it was a room that served as the library and study. All four bedrooms were upstairs, though there was a workshop and a mudroom by the back entrance for the performance of gamekeeping duties, though they stood neglected now.
Newt stepped inside, and walked over to a chair across from Queenie and Jacob. The living room furnishings were newish and comfortable. Newt recognized a couple pieces as castoffs from the house when his mother had renovated after his grandparents had retired. The walls were plastered a cheerful white and the glass on the several small windows across the front was many small panes put together in diamond shapes. There were a few ancient taxidermied animals on high shelves that ringed the sitting room. They were mostly mundane, though Newt thought he spotted a snorklack in there. He sat, and turned nervously to Queenie and Jacob.
Queenie was examining her fingernails, so Jacob spoke up. "Queenie thought your mother was keeping something from us. She was acting all severe, but Queenie could tell she was worried about something—"
"I would imagine having a party of strangers appear on one's lawn including a witch that one's estranged son had married without one's knowledge or consent would induce worry," Newt said, feeling all the worse for being in this situation and bringing all this to his mother's door. They had their own issues, of course, but it was not Gloriana's fault that everything here was so secretive and intense.
"No," said Queenie. "It wasn't that. It was something from before we got here, because I could tell when we first saw her that she was so glad you were home. Overjoyed, really, under there. But also relieved."
"Relieved?" Newt thought this over. "I suppose she must have been glad to have the chance to resolve our argument from the last time I'd visited."
"I don't think that was it. It was like the answer to her problem—whatever she was worried about," said Queenie. "But if I'm supposed to just stay out here in the woods away from everybody I'll never find out."
This brought Newt to what he had to say. "Mother would like to convey her apologies for her strong reaction. And I'd like to try to assuage your curiosity if I can, so you understand why a legilimens here is such an upset. As I've said, there's a bunch of stuffy old passwords and protocols and other boring things that most likely will never need to see the light of day in our modern world. It's all left over from a royal decree in the sixteenth century that set us up officially here with the house and land. Since this was about a century before the official adoption of the International Statute of Secrecy, we are sort of grandfathered in as an exception in many ways.
"My family are supposed to act as go-betweens, you see. Theseus has a position at the Ministry of Magic, but he also sits in muggle Parliament. The idea originally was the mixing of our societies, but now it's more that none of the London muggles knows Theseus is a wizard, and he's responsible for making sure they don't blunder into any of our houses, settlements, sporting events, etc. After he finished at Hogwarts he had to go for two years to a muggle school called Harrow, so that he would know all the right princes and ministers and such. I very, very, narrowly avoided the same fate, but since I was never going to be Lord Warden it didn't really matter. Anyway, most of our family difficulties center around this awkward reality."
"Oh." Jacob said. He and Queenie shared a wide-eyed look. "Then he must be pretty important."
Newt snorted. "He certainly thinks so. Theseus is a selfish git. Somehow going to that muggle school as the only wizard made him feel so superior that he came out champing at the bit to become Lord Warden. And that's what our argument was about. Two years ago, my father retired early and handed the post to Theseus. I did not think that was a wise decision."
"Sounds like you still don't," said Queenie.
"Theseus was supposed to be training—well, that's probably a little more than I can tell you. But I maintain that he hasn't met the requirements, and it should be Father who's in London. After the war, Father seemed to think the job was unnecessary, but now that Grindelwald is out there, trying to stir up trouble on the very issue that the post concerns…"
Jacob and Queenie again looked at one another.
Hesitantly Queenie spoke.
"But you didn't like what your parents had to say about your concerns either, did you?"
"No," he said.
Newt stood up, suddenly too agitated to sit anymore. Was Queenie reading his thoughts? He clamped down on his mind, not at all wanting to rehash all of these tumultuous feelings. He went over to the window and looked out.
"But there's nothing to be done about all that. In any case. Mother wanted to apologize and offer an olive branch of some training in formal legilimency."
Queenie looked surprised. "Is she a legilimens? I wasn't getting that from her."
"Of a sort. As she said, she communicates with animals."
Queenie smiled, despite herself. "That's where you get it then."
Newt ducked his head. "I get it on both sides—my parents are very well suited in both their talents and interests."
"And romantically? Do they have a good marriage?" Queenie asked.
Newt looked at her a bit strangely. He'd never really thought about it. When he'd been a child, Gloriana had ruled the house and stables George had commuted to London, coming home late and leaving early. Yet they had always presented a united front, and even though Gloriana had been called to deal with muggles who expected things of her that she had no way of knowing how to do, such as raising funds for a new roof for the school or giving out the prizes at the nearby girls' school. They'd had to figure out how to patronize the county fair, just like any other residents of the local "big house". It had driven them all mad, since muggle social norms were not really wizards' strong suit, and the first time any muggle was confronted with a hippogriff they would inevitably faint, so they had to go to all manner of trouble to hide things under layer upon layer of illusions. Still, for all the inconvenience that went with the Scamander name, Gloriana had never given any hint that she regretted signing up for the job. And for George's part, when Gloriana decided to start breeding hippogriffs, he'd merely had another stable built and told the winged horses it was their own fault for being so stuck up. The Aetherions, which were a traditional part of the Scamander family's work, just had to lump it and share their pasture and their second stable with the hippogriffs.
Now that Newt reflected on it, that sounded like a fairly good marriage to him. He shrugged and gave a nod.
"Huh," said Queenie, and New wondered if she'd been looking inside his head. But he hadn't felt a thing.
"I told Mother that Jacob owns a very fine bakery." Newt changed the subject.
"Yeah?" said Jacob, a little uneasily.
"And that Queenie is an excellent chef," he continued.
"Why?" asked Queenie.
"As you can probably gather, my family would prefer to shift for itself and remain isolated with our creatures and our other work. We are expected to keep up the house, so a woman and her daughter usually come up to look after the front parts of the house, while the rest of us manage the back between us. This lady and her daughter are at the beside of a dying relation at the moment, and Theseus, the showy ponce has as usual put everyone in an awkward place by inviting up colleagues from London who are expecting the full wizarding English Christmas, complete with feasts and probably—" Newt shuddered "—archery."
"Why is archery a problem?" asked Jacob in confusion.
"It's not, usually. Just that wizard archery competitions can become so petty. Eating animals for food is one thing—it's part of our biological history and optimal for our physiology, as well as providing the continued existence of domesticated livestock. But shooting at things for…fun…" He shook his head.
"Okay, so you're going to have wizards here in a couple weeks," said Jacob, returning to the matter at hand. "Does your mother want us out of here by then?"
He sounded a little reluctant, looking around as he did at their comfortable surroundings.
"Not at all. Instead she was hoping to offer the two of you lodgings, tutoring for Queenie, and a reasonable wage if you would cook for the party while they're here. She promised there would be no domestic housework involved—just purely dealing with the kitchen. We have two—one that's been used by Mrs. Simmons, who is not a witch, and another that we use in the back of the house. You're welcome to whichever you'd like."
"So now that we can be useful your mother doesn't mind us sticking around?" Queenie asked skeptically.
Newt held up his hands.
"I know, it's not ideal. But I hope it would not be too much work for you. Since she's been friendlier," Newt tried not to blush, he really did, "I can do most of the looking after Tina. We did learn at St Mungo's that novelty was likely to encourage Tina to stay aware, and there's plenty here to show her that should keep her occupied."
Queenie and Jacob looked at each other.
"That's a good point, honey," Queenie said to him. She turned to Newt without explaining. "Okay, we'll do it, at least through the Christmas holidays. That'll give Tina a place to be for a while, and your Slug guy some time to come up with something to help with Tina's memory. But I want to be able to see Tina. I don't want her stuffed up in your castle."
"You'll be able to see Tina whenever you'd like," Newt assured. "I'm so relieved that you'll agree. We'll figure out something for dinner this evening. Let me speak to Mother and I'll either bring Tina out here, or I'll take you both back up to the house."
Newt ran back up to the house, since it was impossible to actually aparate inside it. He could probably have got a little closer from the gamekeeper's cabin, but Newt needed the walk to help him figure out his next move. Tina might want something, though he hadn't been alerted by the bell pull charmed to notify the right person for the job. Perhaps it was instead that he wanted to see Tina. On the other hand, in the flurry of activity since arriving in Blethering, he hadn't yet been able to send an owl to the midwife. Even though he'd rather check on his wife, he decided that he'd better do that before he ran out of day. Thee owlery was, as in most castles, at a high point that was clear of any other towers, giving the birds the best possible start on their journeys, but it was a bit of a climb.
Newt was walking briskly past the stables when a throat cleared behind him. Newt froze, fearing that his older brother had already caught him alone. He turned sharply, and saw that it was actually his father leaning against a tree. Goodness, but he and Theseus had similar voices. Newt had never though so growing up. It was probably that Theseus had finally perfected copying it. Both boys had idolized their often distant father growing up, but Theseus' admiration had been poisoned by his jealousy around the position he was to inherit. Theseus would only be made Lord Warden when George retired or died. George knew that this was a difficult prospect for a small boy to understand and make peace with, but despite all their ways of explaining Muggle inheritance all Theseus could see was that George stood between him and the power that he coveted. And so, instead of keeping that power out of the hands of someone who coveted it, they'd just given it to him as early as possible.
George did look well though. He'd always been tall and somewhat lean, though the suits had left him looking highly formal most of the time. Now his hair was a little longer, and still a bright ginger, though streaks of white had started to show at the temples. He was wearing a green jumper and boots, and looked remarkably comfortable in them, especially when contrasted with the formal picture Newt held of his father in his mind. Newt wondered unkindly if George had just been so glad to get the responsibility of the job off his back that he'd been thrilled that his eldest son had been so interested in it. But then, Newt had never wanted to learn anything about being Lord Warden, and had joined his voice to Theseus' when he'd been forced to sit in protocol lessons "just in case". Never had the brothers been so united in purpose. George had an enormous deerhound with luminous eyes at each side.
"Walk with me then?" George asked.
Newt hesitated. "I've got to see to the creatures, and then I've an owl to post. Something about Tina's care. Did mother tell you?"
George nodded, and smiled tentatively.
"It seems we're to be grandparents at last."
Newt ducked his head.
"And what should be a happy occasion is clouded by our own family arguments and your wife's injury."
"It's all so much," Newt admitted. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you and Mother about Tina. She has no family other than her sister, and they're very close. I thought it would be better to get married, and then visit, since you don't travel anyway. And then we were traveling and then MACUSA summoned us back to New York, and I never thought to send an owl. Then I found Tina—all bloody and broken, and all I could think about was anything that might help her condition."
George sighed. They walked up toward the stables.
"It does seem that a great number of things are happening at once. On our end, your mother and I were thinking about swallowing our pride and sending for you anyway. You see, we're having a bit of a problem with our wards."
Newt recalled what Salsify had said. "Oh, you mean the something that got into the village?"
"Not something, but somethings. We've been able to keep it quiet thus far. Most of the locals are still at least partially aware of who we are and the fact that there are things in these woods that are quite unlike the things in the woods of Cormel Castle up the way, but it's one thing to hear stories and an entirely different one to be confronted with a murtlap in your dressing room."
"Oh dear," Newt said, nervously tightening his grip on his case. His mind raced. He'd been so careful to keep the clasps shut, and even the niffler had not been able to get round them. When it had escaped, it had waited for Jacob to go down, who was easier to dodge. But Newt had held the case the entire time they'd been here. "Wait, I heard that is was in the Coopers' shed. That's what Sally said, anyway."
"I'm afraid it's all true. The murtlap was a week ago Saturday," George said, "and the doxies were early this morning. I was down in the village dealing with them when your mother notified me that you were here."
"Last Saturday," Newt repeated. Thank heavens, that meant this wasn't his murtlap at least. But why would magical creatures be running about the village?
"I assume you've checked the wardings then?" he looked out toward the gate, where if he unfocused his gaze in just the precise manner, he could see the vague outline of their physical defenses. These would keep intruders out and creatures in. This was the front face of their security, but it was compounded by centuries of compulsion charms, most targeted toward individual animals to encourage them to stay in the proper areas, and to notify the family if something was off about their habitats that was causing them to try to relocate. Other spells were worked on the muggle townsfolk, to make them more accepting of what they'd seen, to discourage them from telling tales to outsiders, and preventing them from reacting fearfully if thy did come across an unusual creature.
"Yes, and nothing seems out of order. If anything, Theseus may have used too heavy a hand on the complacency charms around town. We don't want the farmers forgetting to do their work just because they're feeling so contented about the state of the world. We need those fields in good shape."
"And that shouldn't have anything to do with animals getting out," Newt said, "just the reactions of the muggles who find them."
"Mr. Cooper came up here immediately when he found trouble in his shed, so we've had a good chance to clean up after the doxies. Thankfully they weren't left alone for any amount of time."
They had reached the stable, and Newt set down his case at the end of a row of interested-looking hippogriffs. Corwin was not in his stall, but Silvana squawked in greeting. Newt nodded to her politely and reached down and opened it, and looking sideways at his father. He suddenly felt very bashful, like a first year showing off a school project.
"Would you like to—"
George nodded quickly, his eyes sparkling, and Newt preceded him into the case.
"Lie down Tigris, Euphrates," the elder Scamander said to the dogs, who then obediently curled up in a pile of fresh straw behind the case. Newt was already down the stairs, looking around to see if perhaps there was anything he ought to have tidied up and being met with several months worth of mess that he hadn't bothered to sort out yet.
"Could you shut the lid?" he called up to his father.
"Of course." George had been inside once before, but it had been years ago, when the case was much newer and far less impressive. Newt nervously waved his wand around, causing books to fly back to their shelves and papers to reshuffle themselves on the desk.
George took a quick look around, leaning toward a picture which had been tacked to the wall of Newt, Tina, Queenie and Jacob that had been taken at Coney Island. They were eating ice creams, smiling widely, and waving madly. A red eyebrow raised, but George said nothing, and Newt opened the door to the rest of the case. He really only wanted his father's opinion of the best way to proceed with the injured hippogriff, but now he was here, Newt felt like he was showing off. Or like he wanted to show off. It was making his heart rate accelerate.
George stepped up behind Newt, and the two of them looked out over the activity that occupied Newt's case. Fwoopers swooped and scooped up insects from midair, while grindylows splashed in their pool. Ethel the erumpent made a trumpeting noise—she had likely been feeling neglected by all the activity of the past few days, the poor dear.
"Are those—graphorns?" George had already started toward the enclosure. He turned to Newt, beaming. "I read the Ministry report stating that there were no more in Central Europe. The potions makers suddenly woke up, as if we hadn't been sending them warning notices for years that they needed to support conservation measures if they didn't want to be out one of the most standard ingredients of western potions lore, but now they're furious. They've been rationing their stores, which is a good idea anyway, I'd say. But now to find out—"
George had hopped up into the pen and was stroking the heads of graphorns as they approached him. Some sugarcarrots appeared in his hands, and the pups munched them happily.
"I got the mare off a trader, but the stallion was very canny. He'd been hiding in the forests of Eastern Hungary, and I had to use her to draw him out. It didn't take long before we had the next crop of graphorns. I was able to get a second stallion, from a trader in Beijing who hardly knew what he had on his hands. That one's in isolation now, as he came to me in pretty rough shape, but one or the other fillies will likely be ready to be bred in the next little while, and we'll need to find ways to increase the gene pool…"
"But this is wonderful!" George said.
"There's more," said Newt, getting excited. "I've got a nuudu here who's the last known creature outside of subsaharan preserve parks, and those are pitifully tiny, with only a few miles of prime Nuudu territory accounted for. And I've got a small school of shrake in a tank over here—"
George laughed. "It's amazing, Newton. This must have taken all the time since I was last here to do. You haven't been idle. Not that we thought you were, but you know how unkind rumours go around the office when someone's been out for such a long time."
Newt looked down. "Rumours do seem to follow me, yes," he said.
George hopped down to stand next to his son. "I'm sorry I put it that way. Your mother and I have always known what a hard worker you were. We were so pleased when you were sorted into Hufflepuff. Just the sort of attitude our family could do with a dose of, your mother said."
Newt gave a half smile. "Wasn't she disappointed none of us followed her into Ravenclaw?"
"I don't think so, no. And while I was pleased that Salsify and I share the same house—it's good to have a family member to root with you and quiddich matches—I never expected any of you to follow my path exactly. And Gloriana always says to look for balance in all things, and our family certainly has that."
"Sort of," Newt said, wondering if it qualified as balance even though he and his brother butted heads all the time that they weren't running away from one another as quickly as possible.
"Why's Theseus living here?" Newt asked bluntly. "I should have thought that getting the London House was one of his top reasons for signing up for the job of Lord Warden."
"Believe it or not, Theseus was sick for a time and had to be nursed here for a few weeks. While he was enjoying the last little bit of his convalescence, the Minister asked him if he could house a delegation from Mongolia in the Belgravia house while he wasn't using it. Theseus agreed, which surprised me, but he and the Minister seem to understand one another better than anyone else understands either of them, so it all seems fine, and we've adjusted to having Theseus here this autumn. It'll be odd when he goes, but if you and your wife and friends are staying here, that'll keep us from feeling the empty house."
They'd begun walking through the maze of pens, and paused when they'd come up to the area where Newt had built the little cabin for Tina. Somehow it embarrassed him to show it to his father. George, for his part, stepped up onto the porch, tested the post holding up the roof, and kicked at the entryway.
"Good solid construction," he said approvingly. Then he caught sight of the glinting lair of the niffler.
"Good heavens! Did you let him get hold of all that gold?" George frowned. "That is far more than I've seen any niffler able to hold onto. They usually steal it from each other until it's a little better distributed, and it gives them something to do outside of thieving from people."
"I know, but I've had this fellow since he was a baby, and I'm not sure how he'd do with other nifflers at this point. I never intend to let him out to treasure hunt, but unfortunately he seems to have a particular talent."
Newt grimaced. He really oughtn't to have let it go so far.
"You haven't been spending it, have you?" George said sternly. "That's the last thing you need your Uncle Ashley to get wind of at the ministry."
Newt chuckled bitterly.
"I haven't spent a farthing. If I had anything to my name after feeding this lot I would have been able to take care of Tina much more efficiently."
"Good." George looked very serious. "It's better that you came here anyway. Ashley has been having a time of it, trying to crack down on the anti-muggle sentiment that is growing with the spread of Gellert Grindelwald's ideas. He would certainly arrest his own favorite nephew if he caught you endangering the Statute of Secrecy in this fraught climate."
"Is it really as bad as all that? I've been involved in a few situations with Grindelwald, but they were all abroad, and he was contained.
"Perhaps his displays were kept from muggles, but his talk of 'taking our rightful place' has reached the ears of many wizards. More than I'd like to admit are sympathetic. They have forgotten the hard lessons of the past and want to step out of the shadows. It can sound very tempting, especially to people with a romanticized notion of muggles.
"No, it's good that you've come, especially since your wife's brother-in-law is himself a muggle, and an American at that."
Newt frowned.
"You don't think there's danger, do you?"
"I can't say. I haven't been down to London myself in months, but I am kept in the loop by several parties, and the situation is reaching a higher peak than was expected. But that's down in London. Up here, things are far less volatile. And besides our relationship with the muggles in the village is very different. This is the ideal place to be. It really is a nice place to raise a family, and there's plenty of grazing if you want to let your graphorns see the sunlight once more."
Newt looked at his father sideways. In a very roundabout way, this was getting dangerously close to the topic that had upset them all last time. He did not intend to stay at Blethering. Queen Elizabeth had conferred upon them all the muggle primogeniture succession rot, and he was not the firstborn son. He would ultimately have no say in the workings of the family estate were something to happen to his father, and he simply could not—would not—set himself or his new family up to be subject to Theseus's will.
"Let's go on to the far side. I've got an injured hippogriff I picked up in Moroco that I'd like to get up to the stables for Mother to have a look at."
George sighed, but allowed Newt to change the subject.
A/N: I'm so sorry for making such a mess of posting on here. I do it in little parts on another site, then try to lump them together as decent-sized chapters for ffn, but I've made lots of mistakes lately, so to say I'm sorry, here's another chapter. I hope you enjoy it! And please do let me know if I've made any more mistakes!