Seamus told Rolf to think of this as an affair. The wife didn't need to know; in fact, if Rolf really, really wanted to know, Luna pushed him to speak with someone else because he needed to keep things separate. Of course, Rolf never had the opportunity to swing both ways, so this might be quite fun.
"I'm your other boyfriend?" They met for breakfast at nine o'clock in the evening at an authentic Italian place. Rolf ordered risotto with porcini mushrooms, and Seamus stuck lasagna; the waiter dropped by with a basket of bread and poured the wine with a generous hand. "I like this place."
"Yeah, you really wouldn't know it was here," and Seamus, relaxing with the challenge at hand. He liked his food, and as Rolf was a self-confessed foodie, a session at table made them happy. Seamus committed the sin of ordering a cappuccino at night; the waiter, his opinion written all other his face, stood there and waited for the stupid Englishman to change his mind. "What?"
"In Italy, you don't order a cappuccino after ten-thirty in the morning," said Rolf, clearing things up as their server stormed away. Rolf didn't speak Italian any better than a small child and he never milled around as a tourist anywhere. A waiter set a plate of spaghetti carbonara on the table and nodded at the chef. Rolf expressed his thanks and gawked when he recognized a face. "Giovanni!"
The chef, balancing a lot of tasks like an organized octopus, saluated him at the pass.
"Do you know everyone?" Seamus found no complaint about the buried table. Rolf shrugged. The fame came with the name, and Luna honestly knew more people because people loved her enthusiasm. Shifting the risotto aside, he attacked the pasta instead. "You're like a fat kid in a sweetshop."
"I like food." Rolf acted like a garbage disposal, a Muggle contraption he knew about. He found clean silverware and spun spaghetti with a fork and spoon, a trick he'd picked up from his grandfather and offered it to his counselor. "Taste."
Seamus savored the meat, clapping his hands together and getting down to business. "Good. So, here's what I've observed. You're not doing your homework."
Rolf frowned at him. Where in the world did he get this impression?
"Your vices. And correct me if I'm wrong here." Seamus put down his napkin and sipped his wine. "Food and sex."
"I don't…" Rolf sat there for a long time. Giovanni plied them with gelato and more wine after the dinner ended. What if Rolf didn't place his stuff a box and lock it away or whatever? His tongue thick, Rolf simply went with deny, deny, deny and found speech difficult with his thick tongue. "What does that matter? You put it in the box. Take your emotions and shove them deep, deep down. I did."
"No. That's not what I said," Seamus disagreed softly, raising his hands when Rolf, glaring at him. "I am trying to help you, Mr. Scamander, there's no fixing this if you don't do the work. Where are you going?"
"Home." Rolf paid for the meal and got to his feet. Seamus shrugged sadly at Giovanni and followed Rolf outside. Rolf, a little intoxicated, stumbled through the cool air. Seamus switched subjects, trying to be conversational and managing to travel by Side-Along Apparition.
Luna stood outside underneath an umbrella and tended to midnight meconopsis, a blue Himalayan flower best tended late at night. Rolf frowned at her. For settling down and no longer living out of suitcases, she liked their house in Dorset. She'd braided her hair, talking to the plants as they approached.
Seamus gave Rolf a look. If he expected Rolf to return it, he didn't. "She's still weird. Great."
"You've never been out of the country. You're weird." Rolf tapped Luna on the shoulder, scolding her lightly for staying in this position. He bent and kissed her on the cheek, leaving her to her work despite the fact it was dank and darkness fell. "How are you?"
"I hear you got in an argument with Miss Skeeter today." Luna frowned when Rolf rolled his eyes at the sky. He started walking away and doubled back, helping her to her feet with a flat apology. "Newton."
"Fine," he said, cutting to the end.
He simply didn't want to deal with this tired, old argument before it even started. Luna recited her usual line, If he didn't want to chain himself to a desk, this was perfectly fine, but it helped nobody when he entertained the pigeon and fed it. Seamus pulled a genuinely confused look as they headed inside. Luna, barefoot, covered the tiled floor with dirty footsteps. A draft of a manuscript lay on the kitchen table.
"You write?" Seamus turned down a coffee when Rolf headed into the half bath.
Rolf listened, taking his time relieving himself as Luna talked about her books. She worked with Newt Scamander on the fifty-fifth edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Few people knew this because she preferred to have nothing to do with it; Newt had slowed down and insisted this his greatest work, a living, breathing thing.
"Oh, this isn't mine." Luna searched Rolf's face when he stepped back into the kitchen. He said nothing. She touched the brown paper covering, a trademark of Obscurus Books. "I suggest you thank your grandfather."
"For?" Rolf cleaned the espresso machine by hand.
"There's a dedication in there that will make you cry." Luna found the Demiguise on the couch and led it away like a small child after Rolf peeled oranges and placed them in a small bowl. Sam clung to Luna, his new momma.
"You've got an invisible monkey?" Seamus gawked at Rolf. Rolf left out the part about Sam the Demiguise having his own bedroom; he slept in a cubby in the wall. "Can I get one?"
"No." Rolf laughed, his anger already forgotten. Seamus asked questions about the Demiguise. "I found Sam trafficked in India and offered him to my grandfather. He's a furbaby."
"Your practice child?" Seamus jumped.
Damp and ruffled, Sam scurried into the kitchen and cuddled with Rolf, inviting himself to be carried around. Sam signed crudely in American Sign Language. He didn't know a lot.
Rolf chuckled, correcting Sam lightheartedly and raising his voice. "Tricking is unfair, Luna! No baths!"
"Your problem," she said, her voice muffled.
Rolf signed with Sam and kissed him on his damp fur. Rolf walked around the kitchen, cleaning the kitchen with simple spells. If Seamus decided he'd stick around, he might as well take these as billable hours. Luna returned, looking like a drowned rat as she dried her damp hair and wore new clothes.
"I got a shower," she said brightly, dumping a basket of soaked towels in the laundry room. "That's a hard no."
"Sam, this is Seamus. Oh, don't." Rolf frowned when the Demiguise shimmered away. "That's hello. He loves Grandpa and Charlie."
"Yes. Who doesn't love Grandpa?" Luna signed to Sam; the Demiguise buried his face in Rolf's shoulder. "Yeah? No."
"I'm the favorite."
"I got a bowl thrown at me." Luna stuck to this argument and sit down at the table. She waited for them to start whatever. Someone knocked on the door. Rolf motioned for her to stay seated. Luna liked physical activity. This whole pregnancy thing threw her off.
Rolf called at the visitor to wait for a moment as he rushed to the front door. No surprise there. Newt, who lived a hop and a skip down the road, smiled at him from underneath a yellow umbrella. However Charlie might argue Newt Scamander may outlive them all, the old man and his wife experienced bumps and bruises along the way. Newt had draped his vintage Klein blue coat over his umbrella along with his Hufflepuff scarf.
"What happened?" Newt's infectious smile turned upside down.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Rolf took the old man's things and stepped aside.
"You're lying. Haven't I told you you read like a book? These are yours." Newt expected a better reception and acted a little put out. Rolf thanked him. Newt limped inside, closing his umbrella and using it like a walking stick. Newt waved away Rolf's excuses and ambled into the kitchen. "You got any coffee, or sugar, or coffee?"
"Are you out of the essentials?" Rolf considered coffee a top priority.
"Yeah. Ooooh, espresso. When did you get all fancy?" Newt fidgeted with the machine and went way past the state of confusion. Luna pointed at Rolf and the machine, illustrating the proper solution to this problem. Seamus grinned. "Yes, you, whippersnapper. Fix this."
"Not presumptuous," said Rolf, qualifying this statement.
This wasn't going to be a newly acquired nickname because he already had a handful of those: Scamander, Jew, Little Newt. The old finely ground stuff got dumped and he made three espressos as Seamus slid comfortably back into professional mode and opted for silence as Newt twiddled his thumbs and studied something new on his hand.
Rolf sipped his drink and waded through a pregnant pause. "What're we doing? Grandpa sat through first session. Quiet as a church mouse, Mr. Finnegan."
"He can." Seamus, sorry, pointed at Luna like he felt bad turning her down. "She can't."
Luna's silvery blue eyes got really big. "He tells me everything."
"Yeah. No, he doesn't. No husband tells his wife everything." Seamus drummed his fingers on the table. The therapist stuck to the raw deal, which is why Rolf liked him. Luna bowed out gracefully, but she edged back in when Seamus revved up again. "He's a really boring read."
"Thanks." Rolf grinned.
"Look, Luna, if you're married as long as Tina and me, you're going to find out eventually." Newt pulled up a chair and shrugged when Rolf soaked up the guilt. "Tell her."
"Francis is an ass? The end." Rolf smirked when Luna seconded this assessment. If she'd not been pregnant, she might've skipped down the corridor. Instead of clinging to her usual dose of happiness, she poured herself some green tea and ecapsed with the draft of Fantastic Beasts.
"The honesty in your relationship? Top notch." Seamus made a note in his head. Seamus conjured his notes and flipped through the pages, taking them back to the mid-eighties. "Okay, so Frank left you at the magizoo and got carted off to jail a month later. You were thirteen?"
"He left me for him." Rolf shifted Sam on his lap and pointed at his grandfather and perched himself on the counter. Newt nodded, not bothering to comment on his eldest son because he really had nothing nice to contribute to Francis's character. "Say something, Grandpa."
"Following the golden rule," said Newt kindly.
"Yeah, I dunno why. He found *Longbottom Leaf in my jeans." Rolf spelled it out quite plainly. Rolf suffered from anxiety and abandonment, and he'd experimented with stuff because his father had found it easier to plant traces on a teenager. Rolf shuddered. "I took care of Francis … I wiped away the filth, and the sick …"
"That's not fair." Seamus paused again, testing the waters. He waved in Luna's direction, indicating the two on the way. Seamus acted as a roadmap and helped Rolf along gently. "Remember when I said something about we are who we are and we are who we were?"
Rolf nodded. Sam reached up and gazed at Rolf's tearstained face. Newt cried silently, too.
Seamus crossed his legs and sat up straighter, shifting his weight. "Life isn't fair. Francis offered his contribution, but a sperm donor doesn't make a father at the end of the day, Mr. Scamander. Francis said you're not his son. So what? An ass is an ass is an ass."
Newt dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief and blew his nose loudly.
"This man. This man." Seamus pointed his quill at the elder magizoologist. "He's your father."
Seamus viewed everything as an outsider, merely giving Rolf a not so gentle nudge out the door. When they hugged and Newt patted his grandson reassuringly on the knee, Seamus shrugged like he'd seen this coming.
"It is a privilege, sir, and I'm not saying this to simply say it, sir, but I'm sure you get this a lot." Seamus shook Newt's bruised hand and set his cup on the table. "To meet the man who raised this humble bastard from scratch. A Hufflepuff, he's dripping with the friendliness."
Newt shuddered with nervousness and handed it down to a team effort. Rolf was raised by his grandfather, his grandmother, his great-aunt, and his aunt. Seamus tapped his wand on the table and magicked a box out of thin air. It was a box of homemade honeycomb.
Rolf enjoyed a piece, nibbling on it thoughtfully. Seamus, his job done for the evening, gathered his things and asked to see Luna. They found her in the nursery, fast asleep in the rocking chair, the manuscript in organized piles. After he switched the clothes over to the dryer, Rolf saw Seamus outside.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled, ashamed of his earlier behavior.
"One step forward and two steps back is progress in my book." Seamus decided to let Luna sleep. "Can I tell you something me mam, Savvy, shared with me the day I fell outta the tree?"
Rolf said yes.
"'Seamus, it's what you do after you fall down that counts.'" Seamus adopted another person's brogue, imitating his mother and bothering to put his hands on his hips for good measure before he returned to himself. "I'm going to hug you now."
Rolf stood there and felt strangely comforted and lighter when Seamus held him a little too long. Seamus patted the Demiguise awkwardly on the shoulder, cleared his throat, and said good night.
Rolf and Newt went back towards the bedroom. Rolf, biting his lip, opened the book and thee pages bound themselves as the shuffled back into place. The Demiguise curled up with Luna, all forgotten and forgiven. Rolf, glancing at his grandfather, flipped past the initial publication pages and read the introduction.
"'To the love of my life, the one who isn't my wife, I promise to never leave your side,'" Rolf read aloud, glancing at his grandfather as he cleaned his glasses. He continued, his voice steady as he went on. "'You are the one who makes my life fantastic and magical.'"
*Longbottom Leaf is a reference to "The Lord of the Rings", a tobacco leaf, pipe-weed