Suzu: I'm posting en masse and I apologize for all those who suffer through ff . net email notifications.

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Ministry of Magic Classification

X: Boring

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She brushes a hand, carefully, to his brow.

"You English. I can never understand."

Newt's forehead is cooling off, his soft freckles no longer burning to the touch.

The small lines next to his eyes—laugh lines, Tina likes to pretend, not stress lines, not worry—relax, and he breathes a low sigh that's felt deep in the marrow. Tina feels it too, and it blankets her bones with a soft, not unpleasant fatigue. She leans forward onto the coverlet, face inches from his.

"Tina." Her name sounds almost worshipful, from his lips. "You're my fiancée." His green eyes crack open, a bit watery and hazy. "There's a right way to do this. Properly. What would your family think?"

"As far as I'm concerned, no Goldstein's ever been introduced into Society. In America or elsewhere, wherever my ancestors roamed," she says matter-of-factly, as she plunks the basin down by the bedside.

"I just don't want your late mum and dad to think you've gone off and… and married a wild man."

Tina looks at him balefully. He cuts a tragic figure, sometimes. "You may try, Newt, but you're more of a brain than a brute."

He's in a veritable mood now. His I-must-try-to-prove-good-enough-to-please-my-fiancée moods are amusing, but mostly induce eye-rolls from said betrothed.

"Just think," Newt wonders, eyes growing increasingly wet. "They must be talking. The calling cards, Mother replied to them all last week. What will they think, when we don't show?"

"You have a fever." She wrings another drop of water from the towel and perches it precariously on an agitated Newt. "Lady Bulstrode will just have to cope."

"She's not the coping type," he whispers fervently. "It's all my fault. It's because I was up late all week feeding the Glumbumbles."

"You look it," she acknowledges, stifling a laugh at his answering stricken look. "But, to be honest, I'm glad to have some time alone. Your parents and brother are always dragging us off to these high society events."

His morose expression shifts a bit. "It's Season."

"It's awful. They're all awful, from that first ball to the last charity cocktail we went to. We're at war, and these people insist on drinking their champagne in metal goblets encrusted with rubies! I don't see how you can stand them."

Newt looks thoughtful. "They're not all bad. The Longbottoms are alright."

Tina thinks of the plump young man with the penchant for snowy owls. "Was he your childhood friend?"

"Maybe." Newt hums. "Unlikely. My friends growing up were mostly… non-human."

She waits patiently, for him to process. Newt's demons run far deeper than Leta, deeper than Hogwarts days, and coming here, to the Scamander Estate, she's realized just how much Newt differs from children of other European wizarding families—or rather, English purebloods—and how much that difference matters, here. The insular circles upset more than just Tina's American sensibilities.

"Why do you care about us going, then?" she insists, trying to cheer him up. "I don't want you to relive those experiences. You're an established magizoolist now, for Merlin's sake. You should be turning your nose up at them."

His warm, calloused hand comes to rest on hers, almost shyly, as is his custom. She squeezes.

"They can call me a freak until the end of my days, Tina, but I won't have them calling you that, too. I'd do anything." She hears the 'for you' he leaves out, and, like his still-tentative touches, it breaks her heart.

"They can call us both boring, then," she decides. "Far too boring for their elaborate 'Season' parties. Just tell them I'm American, and I will never understand, and am proud of that. Aren't you?" She blushes at her audacity in this foreign place her fiancé calls home (at least in name). "I mean, I assume you are, since you could have just picked an English girl closer to home."

He stares at her wonderingly. "I—" he starts, but flushes red, and doesn't have the words to finish.

"I love you, too," Tina finishes for him, not meeting Newt's starstruck gaze.

"You, Newt. Just as you are."

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