He isn’t absent-minded, no matter what Theseus says. His mind is very much present, thank you; it’s just that he’s not always focussing on the things that the people around him think are important.
(The truth, which he’s never voiced to anyone, is that the Sorting Hat had been torn between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Newt is his own kind of brilliant, and the canny old hat had recognised this at once; granted this brilliance had never really translated itself into his school reports, which regularly read “could do better” or “not living up to his full potential”, but that’s because Newt was never able to work up very much interest in the academic study of Charms or History of Magic or Transfiguration – not when there was a whole forest full of fascinating creatures right there on his doorstep, waiting to be explored in secret late at night. And although he might have learned all manner of fascinating things about centaurs and redcaps and will’o the wisps on those moonlit expeditions, his habit of falling asleep over his cauldron wasn’t designed to impress his teachers with his intellectual prowess.
So – he was *almost* a Ravenclaw – but the hat had seen to the heart of him with its strange, leathery insight, and it had known that however erratically brilliant the freckled little ginger scrap of Scamanderdom might be, he was fiercely, passionately compassionate to the core. So: “Hufflepuff!” had croaked the hat, and Newt had pulled it off his head and tottered uncertainly over to a table full of students who would none of them ever quite understand Theseus Scamander’s little brother. In a House distinguished by its strong bonds of friendship and loyalty, Newt Scamander had stood out like an orphaned wyvern in a skitter of puffskeins: private, shy and socially awkward. He needed jokes explaining and had a habit of talking to one’s shoulder; his fellow Hufflepuffs might not have stooped to bullying, but they never grew to like him.)
He isn’t really absent-minded. But there are plenty of things to concentrate one’s mind on during the voyage across the Atlantic, between caring for his creatures and editing his manuscript, and so it takes longer than it should do for him to realise that the teacup that he’s been using for the past few days, with its delicate willow pattern, is one that he’s never seen before in his life.
Newt sets the cup gingerly down on its saucer and sits back, peering at it. Pickett, who has graduated from blowing tiny raspberries to treating Newt to frosty, dignified silence (but who has, nevertheless, flatly refused to leave Newt’s person since the escape from the speakeasy) makes a nervous little trill as he peeps around the edge of Newt’s collar. Newt lifts a hand and strokes him automatically, feeling the nervous tremble give way to the subtly different vibration of a bowtruckle purr.
“Where did you come from, hey?”
It’s a china teacup, not a weapon of magical destruction – but Newt reminds himself uneasily that Grindlewald had been here, running his stolen fingertips over Newt’s belongings and scouring the menagerie for possible weapons. Perhaps Newt should have been a little more conscientious about looking for traps: in truth it hadn’t really occurred to him to worry, once he’d established that all his creatures were accounted for and unharmed.
He’s realising now that this could have been a potentially fatal oversight, but for the life of him he can’t think of any threat that a teacup could be said to pose.
(Leta would have a list of a dozen ways it could be dangerous, he knows; Leta would have noticed it straight away, and probably reduced it to powder at once, just to be on the safe side.)
The design isn’t actually willow pattern, he sees. It’s the same bold blue-on-white, and the artwork looks vaguely oriental if one isn’t paying attention – pointy pagodas and neat little hump-backed bridges in the background – but instead of two fleeing lovers turning into birds, the artist has painted an incongruous Medieval European knight in armour in the foreground, clutching some kind of elaborate oversized wine glass. Newt cocks his head. The little knight is, for reasons Newt cannot begin to fathom, standing in the middle of what looks like a cemetery. This being wizarding artwork, he is also looking right back at Newt and waving. He looks rather cross, and Newt is abruptly conscious that he has drunk dozens of cups of tea over the past few days; he imagines his mouth descending, vast and terrible, towards the little knight and has to stop himself from apologising to the painting.
“…no, I really don’t recall buying you, or borrowing you,” he says, after a long, puzzled pause. Several months ago Pickett had co-opted his remaining unshattered teacup, with its pattern of badgers and snakes; he hasn’t left Newt’s person since they started the voyage, but Newt has been mentally categorising his badger teacup as a bowtruckle bath ever since finding the little fellow steeping himself in warm water one morning. He had been in the habit of playing catch-as-catch-can, washing out old potion jars or folding a banana leaf into a temporary origami cup with a swish of his wand whenever he felt the need for a reviving cuppa, but over the past few days he has been using this neat little china teacup without ever pausing to wonder where it came from.
…A swish of his wand.
Transfiguration had never been Newt’s strongest suit at school, but his chosen line of work requires a fair bit of improvisation, and he had ample opportunity to improve on his lacklustre OWL grades through practical fieldwork during the war…
Newt bites his lower lip, frowning at the little blue knight.
“I’m going to feel very silly indeed when this doesn’t work,” he sighs, and casts the spell to undo a transfiguration.
But it does work, and so instead he gets to feel very silly indeed when he promptly trips over his own feet recoiling from the sudden appearance of a dishevelled and tea-scented American auror on his work bench.
Pickett makes a startled noise and curls back behind Newt’s collar as Percival Graves glares at them both, wild-eyed and rumpled as he scrambles down from the bench. He is barefoot, and his pyjamas are the exact same shade of blue as the little painted knight had been. His wandless fingers twitch into fists, and for a moment Newt thinks he’s about to be punched in the face.
“You’re not – “ begins Newt, assembling his thoughts with bewildered haste. “That is – no, of course not. Obviously. Right. Goodness me.”
“Where is he?” says Percival Graves – the real Percival Graves, apparently, because of course Grindlewald must have been keeping the man alive in order to keep brewing up polyjuice potion. Silly. Should have thought of that – but Newt has rarely been very interested in humans, and Graves had been quite unpleasant. Except, of course, that that was Grindlewald, wasn’t it? Grindlewald all along, large as life and twice as terrible.
“Where IS he?” Graves repeats, and Newt reacts automatically to the hoarse edge of repressed terror in the man’s voice and the promise of violence in his posture. This is familiar territory after all.
“Gone,” he says, gentling his voice and shifting his stance to be as unthreatening as possible. He pockets his own wand and raises his empty hands, telegraphing harmlessness; he realises, with some surprise, that he is rather taller than Graves, and he slouches down a little in an attempt to underplay it. He forces himself to make fleeting eye contact, because among humans this means honesty, not challenge. “Imprisoned by your countrymen. You’re safe now.”
“You’re from Europe.” Newt blinks at the nonsequiteur for a moment, before realising that this might seem significant to a man recently imprisoned by the resolutely unAmerican Gellert Grindlewald.
“Yes, well – yes, obviously. But I’m not on his side. I’m British. And – you know, not evil.” He gives a short laugh that quickly falters in the face of Graves’s suspicious scowl. “No, really – not at all evil, genocidal or fascistic. Quite harmless, I promise. And you’re perfectly safe here. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The look Graves gives him, taking in his uncombed hair, his ink-stained fingers and mismatched socks, is withering. “You’ve got THAT right,” says Graves, squaring his shoulders - but Newt knows an injured animal when he sees one. And besides, he’s used to receiving that kind of disparaging look from humans. Water off a selkie’s back. (He doesn’t really like metaphors – strange, slippery things designed to confuse rather than communicate - but he’s heard Theseus use that one often enough that it’s almost a charm in its own right. That is what sneers and slurs and insults are: water off a selkie’s back. They don’t matter. It’s doing that matters, not seeming.)
“Did he…” Newt asks, but his voice trails off and his wand hand clenches as muscle memory gifts him with the ghost of the Cruciatus Curse. He winces. “He hurt you,” he corrects himself, his voice uneven – because that was Grindlewald’s nature. “Obviously. Sorry. But – look, you’re safe now, and he’s the one in prison.” He darts a quick look at Graves’s eyes, then looks back at his shoulder. “I suppose you’ll want to know what’s been happening. Um.” He glances around at his work room and is struck by the belated realisation that it probably isn’t the most welcoming of places for an important foreign wizard, let alone one currently recovering from unspecified traumas. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he asks, because that is what one says when bad things happen. And then he winces, and glances back up at the man’s face. Graves’s eyes have widened incredulously; he’s looking at Newt like Newt is some strange new species of animal. He knows that look. “No, sorry, of course not. Tactless. Sorry.” He grimaces. “I’m not very good with people. We’ve sort of met – or – well, I met the other you. The Grindlewald you. You condemned me to be executed, and then later tried to do it yourself. Himself. Not a very auspicious beginning to a friendship, but obviously that wasn’t really you, so….”
He misses Jacob. It had been – restful, having a Muggle. Having a person who could be helpful, and who looked at Newt and saw somebody interesting and special, someone rather wonderful - rather than somebody strange and second-best, the way that Graves is doing right now. Not that one could keep a Muggle as part of the menagerie, of course – Muggles are people. But then, really, all his creatures are all people in a way…
“Newt Scamander,” he says, thrusting his hand forward a little desperately. “I said the part about not being very good with people already, didn’t I?”
Graves chokes out a huff of startled laughter. He still looks shocky and somewhat suspicious, but there are faint laugh lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, and his body language has softened. After a moment he accepts the handshake.
“Scamander,” Graves repeats, looking at him searchingly. “You’re not with Grindlewald,” he says, as if he’s only now deciding it. Newt nods fervently. “He’s really been caught?”
“He was being marched off by MACUSA last time I saw him,” says Newt, relieved that the conversation has carried him back into the safer territory of facts rather than feelings. “They seemed quite adamant that he was going to pay for his crimes. Impersonating an auror, and so forth. Trying to provoke war between wizards and muggles. No-majs. Using Unforgiveable Curses, turning people into crockery, that kind of thing.”
Graves lets out a shaky breath and rakes a hand through his hair. It’s rather longer than his counterpart’s was. Newt had, of course, only known the ersatz Graves very briefly, but he still finds it curious how like and not-like this man is. It must have been an excellent impersonation to have fooled all his colleagues, but still – this Graves lacks the edge of polished threat that Grindlewald exuded. He seems tired, and a little bit broken; Newt isn’t sure whether that is a result of his captivity or something innate.
“Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea?” he asks, because he cannot help being British, and he has long since learned that tea cures all social ills. This time Graves does laugh.
“Very sure,” he says. Newt reflects that this is probably just as well, because Pickett would almost certainly be cross about having his bath stolen back. “But if you have any Firewhiskey…?”
Ah, of course. Americans. “No, but – I think there’s still some Snapdragon Brandy? It’s medicinal, really, makes a good emetic for hobs and unseelie fay when mixed with ground asphodel and flobberworm slime, and it works as a decent surgical disinfectant in a pinch, but I suppose…?”
Graves is nodding, and so Newt reaches into the cupboard for the bottle.
FILL 1/2 Re: Gen or Real!Percival/Newt, There's a Graves in my Suitcase
(The truth, which he’s never voiced to anyone, is that the Sorting Hat had been torn between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Newt is his own kind of brilliant, and the canny old hat had recognised this at once; granted this brilliance had never really translated itself into his school reports, which regularly read “could do better” or “not living up to his full potential”, but that’s because Newt was never able to work up very much interest in the academic study of Charms or History of Magic or Transfiguration – not when there was a whole forest full of fascinating creatures right there on his doorstep, waiting to be explored in secret late at night. And although he might have learned all manner of fascinating things about centaurs and redcaps and will’o the wisps on those moonlit expeditions, his habit of falling asleep over his cauldron wasn’t designed to impress his teachers with his intellectual prowess.
So – he was *almost* a Ravenclaw – but the hat had seen to the heart of him with its strange, leathery insight, and it had known that however erratically brilliant the freckled little ginger scrap of Scamanderdom might be, he was fiercely, passionately compassionate to the core. So: “Hufflepuff!” had croaked the hat, and Newt had pulled it off his head and tottered uncertainly over to a table full of students who would none of them ever quite understand Theseus Scamander’s little brother. In a House distinguished by its strong bonds of friendship and loyalty, Newt Scamander had stood out like an orphaned wyvern in a skitter of puffskeins: private, shy and socially awkward. He needed jokes explaining and had a habit of talking to one’s shoulder; his fellow Hufflepuffs might not have stooped to bullying, but they never grew to like him.)
He isn’t really absent-minded. But there are plenty of things to concentrate one’s mind on during the voyage across the Atlantic, between caring for his creatures and editing his manuscript, and so it takes longer than it should do for him to realise that the teacup that he’s been using for the past few days, with its delicate willow pattern, is one that he’s never seen before in his life.
Newt sets the cup gingerly down on its saucer and sits back, peering at it. Pickett, who has graduated from blowing tiny raspberries to treating Newt to frosty, dignified silence (but who has, nevertheless, flatly refused to leave Newt’s person since the escape from the speakeasy) makes a nervous little trill as he peeps around the edge of Newt’s collar. Newt lifts a hand and strokes him automatically, feeling the nervous tremble give way to the subtly different vibration of a bowtruckle purr.
“Where did you come from, hey?”
It’s a china teacup, not a weapon of magical destruction – but Newt reminds himself uneasily that Grindlewald had been here, running his stolen fingertips over Newt’s belongings and scouring the menagerie for possible weapons. Perhaps Newt should have been a little more conscientious about looking for traps: in truth it hadn’t really occurred to him to worry, once he’d established that all his creatures were accounted for and unharmed.
He’s realising now that this could have been a potentially fatal oversight, but for the life of him he can’t think of any threat that a teacup could be said to pose.
(Leta would have a list of a dozen ways it could be dangerous, he knows; Leta would have noticed it straight away, and probably reduced it to powder at once, just to be on the safe side.)
The design isn’t actually willow pattern, he sees. It’s the same bold blue-on-white, and the artwork looks vaguely oriental if one isn’t paying attention – pointy pagodas and neat little hump-backed bridges in the background – but instead of two fleeing lovers turning into birds, the artist has painted an incongruous Medieval European knight in armour in the foreground, clutching some kind of elaborate oversized wine glass. Newt cocks his head. The little knight is, for reasons Newt cannot begin to fathom, standing in the middle of what looks like a cemetery. This being wizarding artwork, he is also looking right back at Newt and waving. He looks rather cross, and Newt is abruptly conscious that he has drunk dozens of cups of tea over the past few days; he imagines his mouth descending, vast and terrible, towards the little knight and has to stop himself from apologising to the painting.
“…no, I really don’t recall buying you, or borrowing you,” he says, after a long, puzzled pause. Several months ago Pickett had co-opted his remaining unshattered teacup, with its pattern of badgers and snakes; he hasn’t left Newt’s person since they started the voyage, but Newt has been mentally categorising his badger teacup as a bowtruckle bath ever since finding the little fellow steeping himself in warm water one morning. He had been in the habit of playing catch-as-catch-can, washing out old potion jars or folding a banana leaf into a temporary origami cup with a swish of his wand whenever he felt the need for a reviving cuppa, but over the past few days he has been using this neat little china teacup without ever pausing to wonder where it came from.
…A swish of his wand.
Transfiguration had never been Newt’s strongest suit at school, but his chosen line of work requires a fair bit of improvisation, and he had ample opportunity to improve on his lacklustre OWL grades through practical fieldwork during the war…
Newt bites his lower lip, frowning at the little blue knight.
“I’m going to feel very silly indeed when this doesn’t work,” he sighs, and casts the spell to undo a transfiguration.
But it does work, and so instead he gets to feel very silly indeed when he promptly trips over his own feet recoiling from the sudden appearance of a dishevelled and tea-scented American auror on his work bench.
Pickett makes a startled noise and curls back behind Newt’s collar as Percival Graves glares at them both, wild-eyed and rumpled as he scrambles down from the bench. He is barefoot, and his pyjamas are the exact same shade of blue as the little painted knight had been. His wandless fingers twitch into fists, and for a moment Newt thinks he’s about to be punched in the face.
“You’re not – “ begins Newt, assembling his thoughts with bewildered haste. “That is – no, of course not. Obviously. Right. Goodness me.”
“Where is he?” says Percival Graves – the real Percival Graves, apparently, because of course Grindlewald must have been keeping the man alive in order to keep brewing up polyjuice potion. Silly. Should have thought of that – but Newt has rarely been very interested in humans, and Graves had been quite unpleasant. Except, of course, that that was Grindlewald, wasn’t it? Grindlewald all along, large as life and twice as terrible.
“Where IS he?” Graves repeats, and Newt reacts automatically to the hoarse edge of repressed terror in the man’s voice and the promise of violence in his posture. This is familiar territory after all.
“Gone,” he says, gentling his voice and shifting his stance to be as unthreatening as possible. He pockets his own wand and raises his empty hands, telegraphing harmlessness; he realises, with some surprise, that he is rather taller than Graves, and he slouches down a little in an attempt to underplay it. He forces himself to make fleeting eye contact, because among humans this means honesty, not challenge. “Imprisoned by your countrymen. You’re safe now.”
“You’re from Europe.” Newt blinks at the nonsequiteur for a moment, before realising that this might seem significant to a man recently imprisoned by the resolutely unAmerican Gellert Grindlewald.
“Yes, well – yes, obviously. But I’m not on his side. I’m British. And – you know, not evil.” He gives a short laugh that quickly falters in the face of Graves’s suspicious scowl. “No, really – not at all evil, genocidal or fascistic. Quite harmless, I promise. And you’re perfectly safe here. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The look Graves gives him, taking in his uncombed hair, his ink-stained fingers and mismatched socks, is withering. “You’ve got THAT right,” says Graves, squaring his shoulders - but Newt knows an injured animal when he sees one. And besides, he’s used to receiving that kind of disparaging look from humans. Water off a selkie’s back. (He doesn’t really like metaphors – strange, slippery things designed to confuse rather than communicate - but he’s heard Theseus use that one often enough that it’s almost a charm in its own right. That is what sneers and slurs and insults are: water off a selkie’s back. They don’t matter. It’s doing that matters, not seeming.)
“Did he…” Newt asks, but his voice trails off and his wand hand clenches as muscle memory gifts him with the ghost of the Cruciatus Curse. He winces. “He hurt you,” he corrects himself, his voice uneven – because that was Grindlewald’s nature. “Obviously. Sorry. But – look, you’re safe now, and he’s the one in prison.” He darts a quick look at Graves’s eyes, then looks back at his shoulder. “I suppose you’ll want to know what’s been happening. Um.” He glances around at his work room and is struck by the belated realisation that it probably isn’t the most welcoming of places for an important foreign wizard, let alone one currently recovering from unspecified traumas. “Would you like a cup of tea?” he asks, because that is what one says when bad things happen. And then he winces, and glances back up at the man’s face. Graves’s eyes have widened incredulously; he’s looking at Newt like Newt is some strange new species of animal. He knows that look. “No, sorry, of course not. Tactless. Sorry.” He grimaces. “I’m not very good with people. We’ve sort of met – or – well, I met the other you. The Grindlewald you. You condemned me to be executed, and then later tried to do it yourself. Himself. Not a very auspicious beginning to a friendship, but obviously that wasn’t really you, so….”
He misses Jacob. It had been – restful, having a Muggle. Having a person who could be helpful, and who looked at Newt and saw somebody interesting and special, someone rather wonderful - rather than somebody strange and second-best, the way that Graves is doing right now. Not that one could keep a Muggle as part of the menagerie, of course – Muggles are people. But then, really, all his creatures are all people in a way…
“Newt Scamander,” he says, thrusting his hand forward a little desperately. “I said the part about not being very good with people already, didn’t I?”
Graves chokes out a huff of startled laughter. He still looks shocky and somewhat suspicious, but there are faint laugh lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes, and his body language has softened. After a moment he accepts the handshake.
“Scamander,” Graves repeats, looking at him searchingly. “You’re not with Grindlewald,” he says, as if he’s only now deciding it. Newt nods fervently. “He’s really been caught?”
“He was being marched off by MACUSA last time I saw him,” says Newt, relieved that the conversation has carried him back into the safer territory of facts rather than feelings. “They seemed quite adamant that he was going to pay for his crimes. Impersonating an auror, and so forth. Trying to provoke war between wizards and muggles. No-majs. Using Unforgiveable Curses, turning people into crockery, that kind of thing.”
Graves lets out a shaky breath and rakes a hand through his hair. It’s rather longer than his counterpart’s was. Newt had, of course, only known the ersatz Graves very briefly, but he still finds it curious how like and not-like this man is. It must have been an excellent impersonation to have fooled all his colleagues, but still – this Graves lacks the edge of polished threat that Grindlewald exuded. He seems tired, and a little bit broken; Newt isn’t sure whether that is a result of his captivity or something innate.
“Are you sure you don’t want a cup of tea?” he asks, because he cannot help being British, and he has long since learned that tea cures all social ills. This time Graves does laugh.
“Very sure,” he says. Newt reflects that this is probably just as well, because Pickett would almost certainly be cross about having his bath stolen back. “But if you have any Firewhiskey…?”
Ah, of course. Americans. “No, but – I think there’s still some Snapdragon Brandy? It’s medicinal, really, makes a good emetic for hobs and unseelie fay when mixed with ground asphodel and flobberworm slime, and it works as a decent surgical disinfectant in a pinch, but I suppose…?”
Graves is nodding, and so Newt reaches into the cupboard for the bottle.