+1.
The instant Newt comes out of his suitcase he knows something's wrong: Percival doesn't seem to recognise him at all.

"Is that really Mr. Graves?" he hisses to Tina as they're lead down to the dungeons, wincing at the tightness of the binds around his wrists.

Tina stares at him, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Newt says, "has he been acting strangely? Memory loss? Polyjuice? Anyone want to cast a revelio or two?" He glances back at the Auror holding him, whose steps have slowed. "I just don't believe - he promised he'd do his best to keep my case from being impounded, and now - "

"You know Mr. Graves?" Tina asks, looking startled. "Personally?"

"Well," Newt says, awkwardly, "he's friends with my brother, you see, and Theseus is, well, and every time we see each other there's always something - I mean, I don't know if we're friends, exactly, but when you wake up in the same bed enough times it's - "

"You've slept with Graves?" asks the Auror escorting Tina, giving up all pretense of not listening in. "Graves?"

"That angry guy, with the," and Jacob makes a tilt-of-the-head gesture that doesn't quite work with his hands bound behind his back.

"No!" Newt exclaims. "I mean, I suppose technically, but not in the - carnal sense, though not for Theseus's lack of trying. My brother's been trying to set us up for," and he pauses to think about it. "It must be years."

"Set you up," says Tina's Auror. "With Graves?"

"He's not all bad," Newt says, feeling a little ruffled at the extent of this disbelief. "I mean, objectively, he's quite handsome, and kind enough if nothing's breaking his bloody laws - all that fuss about permits, honestly! - but out of his jurisdiction he's far less uptight. He's very clever, and a good conversationalist, and he always seems interested in hearing about my new creatures. And he's very good with a wand. Or without one," Newt adds, remembering the pieces of wandless magic he's seen, nothing flashy but still astounding in his complete control. "Quite amazing, really."

"Newt," Tina says. Her expression is a cross between a smile and outright disbelief. "Goodness."

"Are you sure you're not sleeping with him?" asks Jacob's Auror. Newt narrows his eyes at him. "I'm just saying..."

"Saying what?" Newt says huffily. "Just because I realise Percival isn't quite as bad as you lot make him out to be - "

Newt's Auror stops suddenly. The three exchange glances. "Percival," Newt's Auror says.

Newt can feel his face warm. Tina's practically staring at him open-mouthed. It can't be that much of a surprise that Percival has - acquaintances who call him by his first name, for Merlin's sake. Theseus even calls him 'Percy'. He opens his mouth to say something of that sort but is interrupted by Tina's Auror, who says, "There have been a lot of inter-department reshuffles lately."

"McMahon's been transferred to desk-work, customs."

"And Goldstein - sorry, Goldstein - "

"You don't think..."

"Well," Newt says, "if you could get me my wand," and they exchange glances again. Jacob's Auror sighs.

"Fine, I'll do it."

They start walking again, but if Newt's not mistaken, with far less hostility; when the Aurors lock them in their cell, they give him an almost-friendly nod. "We'll be coming by later, for your questioning," says Jacob's Auror, and raises his eyebrows significantly at Newt. "I'll have you."

"Yes," Newt says, and at a nudge from Tina, "yes, thank you."

"If he has been replaced," Tina's Auror says, on the way out, and is quickly quieted by her fellow's elbow.

Tina herself, in the cell, has no such silencer. "You really think Mr. Graves has been replaced?" she wonders. "How did I not know you were dating?"

"We're not - dating," Newt says. "And, I don't know. But it's really very strange. He would at least be blaming Theseus for this all prematurely."

Tina shakes her head, obviously paying no attention. "Dating," she repeats, amazed.

"So," Jacob says, looking utterly lost, "what's all this about Mr. Graves? And what was all that about an obscurus, or obscurial, or whatever?"

Newt takes a breath, and explains.

It's more than an hour before they get called back upstairs for questioning. Newt, led by the Auror who previously guarded Jacob, falls into a the chair with his wand slipped up his sleeve. Someone's told him, is the first thing Newt thinks, because the man wearing Percival's face gives him a quick smile, too wrong and completely insincere. It's like he's watching one of those Muggle rubber masks over his face, the strangeness of it, and Newt fixes his gaze on the man's shoulder and doesn't meet his eyes.

"Newton Scamander."

"Yes," Newt says, quietly.

The man follows with a list of Newt's - many problems, his expulsion (as though Percival hasn't once seen the photograph of Leta in Newt's suitcase, as though he hasn't heard Theseus calling foul on it far and wide), and Newt lets his wand slip into his palm and closes his fingers around the hilt. He's not the best at silent spells, but Newt thinks the tight, tense feeling in his chest, his magic stirring around his fingers with the growing ball of panic stuck in the back of his throat, will make him good enough. Revelio, he thinks, and then meets the man's gaze as his disguise slides away.

Newt drops to the floor, Pickett's tug strong for a bowtruckle, and just in time as Grindelwald's expression turns dark and spells start flying through the air. A spell splashes against a shield he didn't cast as he retreats to Tina's position, her wand in hand as she casts another incarcerous, overdone with the Dark Lord wrapped in a half-dozen chains.

But if the man playing at being Percival is Grindelwald - then where is Percival himself? The Aurors are calling in back-up, Grindelwald levitating wandless in the air, and Newt steps not-too-close and says, "Where is he? Where is Percival Graves?"

Grindelwald looks at him and laughs.

He doesn't stop laughing until they drag him away. Newt's pacing, thinking of locator spells, magical creature tracking and trying not to think of Percival pale and cold and dead. "It was Polyjuice," Tina reports, when she returns to him in the corridor.

"Then," Newt says, and she nods, mouth firmed in a thin line.

"Mr. Graves might still be alive."

Newt has - things, of his, but his suitcase is still impounded somewhere, his creatures shut away. He could owl Theseus - should owl Theseus, but in the middle of that thought Pickett climbs up to his shoulder and tugs on Newt's hair. Newt frowns at him. "What is it, Pickett?"

Pickett makes a quiet chirping noise and plucks at the chain around Newt's neck, then goes back to pulling on his hair. "Alright, alright, I'm going!" Newt tells him, and Pickett gentles his grip slightly even as Newt speeds up his pace. "I don't - this pendant, he wouldn't have made it himself, you know, it's probably some sort of standard Auror issue or something, Pickett, you're just going to get me in trouble again - "

"Pendant?" Tina asks, jogging along next to him, and Newt pulls it out from under his shirt. "Oh," she says. "Um. Wow."

Newt slants her a look. "Wow?"

"Definitely not Auror issue," she says. "Is that real platinum?"

Newt examines it. "Maybe?"

Tina's eyebrows are raised, but when Newt glances at her she just shakes her head and smiles. "Newt," she says, and then, as Pickett's tugging comes to a stop, "Wait. We're at the Apparition point."

Newt looks around the room, the crack of people coming and going, and then to Pickett, tugging at his pendant. "Pickett," Newt says, slowly. "You're not saying..."

Pickett chitters, tugging on the pendant again, and Newt gives Tina a beseeching look. "I think he wants me to Apparate, but I'll be doing it blind," he says, and she bites her lip and sighs.

"Side-Along me? You know I can't let you go alone."

Newt nods and closes his eyes, wrapping his hand around the pendant and trying to feel out the magic in it. He's hardly as good as Pickett, who could probably trace someone across an entire city, but Newt's learned some tricks in tracking down creatures, and he thinks he can feel it out. Tina's hand lands on his arm and Newt remembers destination, and he spins on his heel and lets the tug of magic pull them away.

Wherever they land, it's dark. Tina lights up her wand and as soon as they see the figure, reeling away from the light Newt hisses, "Nox, nox!" and Tina extinguishes it. Newt feets a tiny tendril of magic into his own wand, until its tip shines with a low fluorescent glow, and Tina follows his example as he steps forward and crouches down at Percival's feet.

Percival blinks at him in the low light, his hair scraggly, his face thin, and Newt swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. "Hello," he says, quietly, "sorry about the wait."

"Let me guess," Percival says, his voice hoarse. "Theseus again?"

"No," Newt says. "All me this time, I'm afraid."

He taps his wand against Percival's chains, but Percival shakes his head, then looks like he's already regretting having done so. "Magic-proof," he says, and Newt glances down at his coat sleeve but Pickett's two steps ahead of him already, clicking open the latches of his handcuffs.

"Not bowtruckle-proof, luckily," Newt says. "Come on." He helps Percival's hands out of the cuffs, and murmurs quiet numbing and healing charms over his shoulders as Percival grits his teeth and wrenches them back in place; he offers a hand, then an arm, then a shoulder as Percival struggles to his feet. Pickett jumps to Newt's hand and then to his head, and Newt says, "It's because of Pickett that we found you, truly. Bowtruckles are fantastic at picking out individual magic traces. I didn't realise he was so fond of you."

"Really," Percival says, quiet. He studies Pickett, who stares right back at him. "Well. Thank you."

Pickett makes a chirping noise and hides himself in Newt's hair. Newt tries to give him a reproachful look, aiming it over his shoulder, but thinks he misses. "I've found the exit," Tina calls out, her wand a slightly brighter point in the room, and Newt takes most of Percival's weight as they take the stairs up careful and slow.

"It's good to see you, sir," she tells Percival, and he inclines his head.

When they finally exit it's from a tiny silver pillbox in Percival's living room. Newt's unspeakably glad he's there holding up Percival's weight for the way he stumbles at the sudden bright lights, the rush of noise, the change in perspective, and catches him before he falls. The house is teeming with Aurors and they're held at wandpoint in a sudden silence. Percival tilts his head at Newt, the tug of his mouth wry, and Newt coughs to hide his smile.

"Yes," Tina says, voice raised, "this is the real Director Graves, medical would be great, anytime - "

She's lost in the sudden din, people rushing back and forth, and Newt steps back when Percival's carted off to proper healers and thinks, longingly, of the house before: open and quiet, Percival with his sleeves rolled up and a pan minding itself on the stove.

It's a thought that makes him want to trace his steps back there, to Percival's kitchen and his comfortable bedroom, to his small library of interesting books. There's a place for his case there, enough room for a Niffler's small den and a nest of baby diricawls and a bowtruckle who thinks Newt's his home tree - but it's a silly thought, Newt knows. His case is impounded, and he still needs to send Theseus an owl.