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December 1931
Newt had been waiting for two hours in the Arrivals section of the Ministry’s International Portkey Department, getting progressively more anxious at the hubbub of large wixen families traveling home for the holidays, before Theseus finally appeared, looking harried.
“Oh good, you’re still here,” his older brother said, and it became clear he was distracted when he didn’t even try for one of his uncomfortable hugs. “Happy Christmas, it’s lovely to see you—please tell me you brought that briefcase thing of yours, we have quite a…situation in the Auror Department, and our best guess is it’s some sort of creature issue.”
“Oh, so that’s why you were so late,” Newt said, a wave of relief passing over him. He reached down for the magically expanded vivarium/trunk in question, quickly Transfiguring a set of wheels onto it for maneuverability in the crowded halls. “I thought maybe I’d gotten the wrong time. Or day, even. I checked my diary several times while I was waiting.”
He stood and looked up with a smile, only to see Theseus staring back with an expression Newt had become very familiar with over his lifetime: the one that let him know he had, entirely without meaning to, just said something fairly hurtful or offensive.
“Yes, well, some of us have steady jobs, with responsibilities,” he said curtly, turning and leading the way toward the gold-grilled lifts in the Atrium. “Come along now, this issue is time-sensitive.”
It’s only one week, Newt reminded himself, inhaling deeply and counting to three—or was it four?—like Tina was always telling him. Seven days of ‘family time’ here in jolly old England, then you can go back home to ice skating in Central Park and Jacob’s rugelach and the farmhouse you’re fixing up upstate. He stepped into the lift; Theseus was already inside, jabbing at the button for the second floor.
“Dear Merlin, did that thing just trumpet?” the elder Scamander asked, eyeing the trunk warily.
*
Much to Newt’s surprise considering his past experience with the (in)competency of bureaucrats, the problem that had the Aurors all up in arms actually did turn out to be both urgent and creature-related. Over the past week there had been a spate of fires in a crowded, rundown neighborhood in East London, occurring with increasing frequency and proving near-impossible for the Muggles to put out. Undercover Aurors had tracked down a witness (dismissed as a drunk and thrown in jail by the bobbies) who swore up and down he’d seen “great bloody snakes of smoke and ash, with eyes like the Devil’s own brimstone” slithering away from the burn sites; they’d concluded, correctly, that the city was in the midst of a severe Ashwinder infestation, and immediate action was needed before things escalated into a second Great Fire.
“Awful creatures, Ashwinders,” one of the junior Aurors growled once he’d finished briefing them. “They’dve been banned six times over by now, except of course there’s no way to stop the things multiplying…can’t very well tell people to shut down the Floo network…”
“They’re a greatly misunderstood species, and incredibly fascinating,” Newt corrected him firmly. “Even after thousands of years of evolution, they’re still one of the only creatures to have developed such an extinction-proof method of reproduction—and so cleverly symbiotic with wixen, too. As for the danger, studies have proven that simple fire-safety education campaigns cut the incident rate nearly in half, it’s cold most of the year in Scandinavia and yet they’ve managed to—“
Theseus cleared his throat loudly. “What we need to do,” he said, Summoning an armful of maps from a nearby filing cabinet, “is identify the point, or points, of origin for all this. The original magical fire—and, ideally, the wix who left it burning irresponsibly in a Muggle neighborhood.” His mouth was set in a grim line, but he looked energized at the prospect of bringing in a wrongdoer. “There are no registered wandholders within a five-mile radius, so we’re thinking it’s probably a foreign national—just a bumbling tourist or a malicious terrorist, that’s the main question…”
“Or a child,” Newt pointed out softly.
“What?” Theseus was busy rolling out several maps at once, affixing them to the tabletop with Sticking Charms.
“A child. Too young to own a wand, but with accidental magic powerful enough to start fires that spawned the Ashwinders.”
The junior Auror sneered. “I believe your brother just said there were no adult magicals in the area, so unless wixen children have also developed the ability to spontaneously generate—“
Newt regarded him levelly. “Of course they haven’t, not that I currently know of at least. I was referring to a potential Muggleborn child.”
The room went silent for a moment, as everyone absorbed this possibility that they had, seemingly, never even considered. Newt was, unfortunately, not surprised at all by this fact. Muggleborn children were so very rarely considered worthy of notice in their prejudiced society, to the great detriment of wix Britain as a whole.
One week, he repeated, mantra-like. Then back to the States, and Tina, and home.
*
The first time had been an accident.
They’d put Tom in the cellar again, this time for something he hadn’t even done—what reason would he even have to throw a baseball through the dining room window, it was cold and sooty enough in Wool’s without any extra help, that debacle was a Dennis Bishop job all the way through—and it was freezing down there in December, and pitch black. Tom wasn’t afraid of the dark and the great unknowable dangers it could contain, he wasn’t, but he was just so cold, his fingers growing numb and his breath coming in little white puffs, and he was getting tired too; he couldn’t sit down, the chill of the stone floor would seep right through his threadbare trousers and probably freeze him solid. Even his mind was moving sluggish like an icebound river, his thoughts revolving endlessly around fire, heat, warmth, please…
When the little orb of flame burst to life between his palms, he’d only been surprised for a moment. I always knew I was different, special, he thought, pride glowing within as surely as the fire warmed his body. I can hurt people who make me angry; the toys I want appear in my room. Why shouldn’t I be able to call a fire too?
Maybe the priests and the other children were right; maybe he was the devil’s own child. Right now, he was warm and didn’t care.
The great rush of power from his core had left him even more tired than before. He set his flame down on a dusty wooden crate in the corner—to his amazement, it sat atop the wood without burning or consuming it, simply maintaining a steady size as it flickered cheerfully—and curled up next to this little makeshift hearth, falling quickly into an exhausted sleep. The cellar floor was still hard on his underfed body, but the heat made it almost more comfortable than his cot upstairs.
When he’d awoken to the susurrus of soft whispering, he thought at first that someone had finally come to retrieve him; but instead opened his eyes to find himself being watched by a small snake, its body faded and crumbly like the long tail of ash at the end of one of Mrs. Cole’s cigarettes, a pair of ruby-red eyes the only color in its triangular face.
§Oh, you’re awake! Are you the one who made thisss lovely fire?§
§You—you talk!§ Tom blurted in confusion, scrambling back on his hands and knees.
§Me? That’s my line, young Ssspeaker! Now it makes sense, of courssse only a powerful wix would know our noble tongue…§
He’d thought for a few panicked moments that he was imagining this, that he was like the Little Match Girl in the book of stories, his body cold and dying while warm illusions played in his mind. But no, he realized; he’d done this before. Toddling in the garden the summer before last, having a whole conversation with a little adder under a hedge. The others had said he was mad or speaking in tongues but they’d been wrong, it was just another special thing they didn’t understand.
§My name is Tom Marvolo Riddle,§ he said proudly, relishing the way the sibilant sounds felt on his tongue. §What’s yours?§
The next hour or so passed in a strange but wonderful haze, as Tom got to know the first creature he could remember who wasn’t hateful or afraid of him. The snake seemed baffled by the concept of an individual name, but consented to being called “Ash”. She was newly born, she explained, created from the magical fire Tom had made, and had a child’s curiosity about all kinds of topics. They chatted and played for good amount of time; exploring the cellar no longer felt at all scary, with a strong light and the company of another. Tom wondered, in the secret place in his mind that he kept locked like the wardrobe in his room, if this was what it was to make a friend.
But all too soon Ash’s body began to crack and flake even more than usual, and the snake announced that her time was running short, and she had to leave to lay her eggs.
§What!? But you only just got here!§
§Our kind are not ssso hardy and long-lived as you, human hatchling,§ she told him, not unkindly. §Our time in this world lasssts only as long as the flame that birthed us; and before it passes away, we must carry on our line.
Emotion welled up in Tom, only his fierce will preventing it from manifesting in tears. How could he have been so stupid as to forget? Everyone left him eventually; his father before he was even born, his mother when she’d barely even met him (“One look at you was prob’ly more than enough,” the others always told him), the one teacher at Sunday school who never got angry about all his questions…
§No! Don’t leave me, I won’t—§
§Please don’t be sssad, little human,§ Ash said, nuzzling his cheek and leaving a sooty smudge like they did at church on Ash Wednesday. §I would ssstay if I could. But you have power I can only dream of—if you get lonely again, jussst build another fire, and another of my kin will come into the world.§
Tom, with his sixth sense for lies that hadn’t yet steered him wrong, had believed in her sincerity. Besides he didn’t want to beg, and he didn’t want to watch Ash die. So he squared his small shoulders and showed her a little pipe, too small for him but just her size, that led to the outside; and told her about an abandoned building just across the road that might just be the perfect place for a clutch of eggs.
§I’ll make more fires like you said,§ he promised as she disappeared into the narrow opening, leaving a trail of ash in her wake. §So your descendants will have plenty of company.§
And he did.
Over the next few weeks, Tom slipped off to the cellar whenever he could. He’d kneel in the corner and concentrate until he found that small but potent core of power within him, then draw it out carefully, forming a little miniature blaze in his hands; then he’d set it down and pass the time with a book he’d brought along. Just as Ash had promised, it was never too long before he’d get to meet another new friend, who would be happy to spend some time with a “great Ssspeaker” before heading off to complete their painfully short life cycle. They all had distinct personalities of their own, and an endless variety of patterns and hues in their dusty skins. He gave them all names—Smoke, Ember, Coal, Brimstone—and kept them preserved in his memory once they’d gone. It was, by a large margin, the happiest time of his life so far.
He did not notice, or at least did not appreciate the significance of, the series of fires being reported around their neighborhood of the East End, the radius expanding by the day, the caretakers growing worried as they scanned the papers and gossiped with the neighbors.
That is, not until December 21st (a day that, not too far in the future, he’d learn to call Yule), when he was saying goodbye to Hestia, a particularly lively female, after one last game of ‘hide-and-scent’, and the strange man with the battered suitcase appeared at the top of the cellar stairs.
“Well, hello there,” he said with an affably surprised air, apparently not alarmed by the crackling, green-tinted fire Tom had going on a bundle of rags. “Who might you be? My name is Newt Scamander, and I’ve been looking for you for quite a while now.”
*
It had taken Newt the better half of two days to track down the Ashwinders’ point of origin in the cramped, warrenlike alleys of the East End, trying to coax answers from Muggles who were highly suspicious of his ‘fancy’ accent and sloppily transfigured fire inspector’s badge. He’d had multiple close calls with clutches of eggs that were just seconds away from sending entire row houses up in smoke, and now had a good number of them stored in his trunk under freezing and stasis charms. They might come in useful the next time he needed to brew an Edurus Potion—or bribe a stubborn border guard.
But he’d finally followed the smell of burnt wood (and faint but sharp magical presence) here, to this rundown orphanage with an air of unhappiness that went far beyond mere scarcity. This wasn’t a good place for a young wix to grow up; everything he’d seen so far made that quite plain, from the disinterested matron reeking of gin to the children’s grim faces and the crucifixes on every wall. The Ministry was lucky it only had a simple Ashwinder infestation on its hands, and not a full-blown Obscurus.
The boy now peering up at him in the light of the flames, though, bore none of the fear and repression that had haunted poor Credence Barebone. He stared Newt down with an expression of pure defiance, pride even. It was rather charming, actually, reminiscent of his own younger self, on the many, many occasions he’d been caught sneaking his pets into Hogwarts or the Scamander estate.
“I didn’t do anything,” the child said, as if he could simply will it to be true. “And what kind of name is Newt? Isn’t that some kind of amphibian?”
Newt found himself smiling as he descended the steps, shutting the door and casting a nonverbal privacy ward with the wand tucked in his sleeve. “Yes, it is,” he said pleasantly. “A type of salamander, more specifically. I always thought it fit me rather well, seeing as I love animals of all kinds.” He set down his trunk and took a seat on it, maintaining a nonthreatening distance. “You must like them too, to know a word like ‘amphibian’ at your age.”
“I’m turning five next week. But yes, not a lot of people around here use their vo-cab-ulary,” the boy enunciated, nearly preening under the praise he must be starved of in this place. Then his expression turned suspicious. “How come you know fancy words? I don’t recognize you.” He took a step back, towards the wall where Newt was quite certain he’d seen a live Ashwinder disappear into a pipe a few minutes ago. “You’re not a doctor, are you? Are you from the asylum? I’m not mad, I won’t go anywhere with you—!”
“A doctor? Merlin, no, I haven’t the people skills nor the test scores,” Newt answered plainly, remaining calm where he was seated. “What I am—and what I’m very nearly positive you are as well—is a wizard. And I do hope you’ll trust me enough to take you away from this place when I leave, though certainly not to an asylum.” He waited, expecting questions, skepticism; was this perhaps how Hogwarts teachers felt, delivering letters to Muggleborns? But the boy merely stared at him even harder, until his dark eyes were practically boring into Newt, and then—
—a presence, a brush against the edges of his mind, familiar from long relaxing afternoons at Queenie’s flat, where she could intuit his feelings without need for imprecise words. This touch was rougher though, blunt where Queenie was featherlight—
“You’re telling the truth,” the child said, sounding awestruck, his presence retreating from Newt’s mind but his wide eyes still locked on his face. “You really are a—a wizard, is that what you call it? You can do…special things, like me?”
“Yes, precisely!” He was very pleased by this development; things always went so much better when the other person could tell you weren’t lying. The Mind Arts was a skill he’d wished for himself more than once, terrible at reading body language as he was. “And, you, it seems, are a natural Legilimens—a mind reader—much like my dear sister-in-law. But perhaps before we talk more, we can make it a bit brighter in here?” Slowly, watching the boy the whole time for signs of discomfort, he drew his wand and murmured softly, “Lumos.”
The bluish-white light filled every corner of the dank room, illuminating the boy fully now, as a ravenous, almost rapturous look of hunger bloomed on his pale features. And not for food, although he was—like all the children Newt had seen in this forlorn place—so very, very thin.
“My name is Tom,” he said, voice wavering just a little but determined. “I don’t like that name very much either, honestly. But I like the way it sounds when the snakes say it. They said I was magical too—that I was something called a ‘speaker’…”
Newt listened, fascinated, to this singular child he’d found. He answered Tom’s questions, and asked some of his own; he added a few more new words to the boy’s expansive vocabulary. Like Parselmouth, and magizoologist, and Hogwarts.
After a time, as the afternoon slipped into evening and Tom’s fire burned low, they left the basement, side by side.
*
“Expecto Patronum,” Newt incanted, once he’d made certain he and Tom were alone in the narrow alley they’d turned into a few blocks after leaving Wool’s. He was enveloped by a sense of peace and happiness as his silver Bowtruckle Patronus emerged from the end of his wand and perched on his shoulder. Tom, for his part, looked near-ecstatic—but then again, that had been his reaction to every display of magic Newt had treated him to in their brief time together.
“Will I be able to learn to do that?” he demanded, this question also an oft-repeated refrain; Newt answered, patiently, as he had each previous time.
“Yes, I imagine, once you’re a bit older. Yours might look a little different, though.” Or a lot different, he thought wryly. A Bowtruckle, shy and small but protective, was an unlikely Patronus form for this child with a will of iron and an insatiable mind. In fact, unless he was very much mistaken, it would probably be some type of snake—perhaps even an Ashwinder.
“What is it? One of your creatures? Or is it an illusion, like the one you showed Mrs. Cole when she asked to see your paperwork—“
“One moment, Tom, I need to send a message.” Tom snapped his mouth shut at once, and went as still as a statue. It was almost unnerving; as if he feared Newt would change his mind if he stepped a single toe out of line. Ah well, there’ll be plenty of time to work on that.
“Theseus,” he said to the sticklike creature now playing with his hair, “I’ve found the source of the infestation and neutralized it. It turned out to be…almost exactly what I’d predicted, actually.”
The Patronus scuttled off, and only moments later Theseus’s Border Collie came bounding back, his brother’s voice issuing from its snout:
“Thank Merlin, Newt, you’re an absolute lifesaver. Someone leaked to the Prophet that ‘Ashwinders’ were behind the fires, but the moonmind reporter misunderstood and now they’ve printed that Rookwood’s gang from the 1890s is on the loose again in London…”
Newt half-listened to the rest of the message, once again renewing his appreciation for why an office job was his personal Boggart. He focused instead on readying Tom for his first Apparition, securing his small bag of possessions and the buttons on his coat. When the aetheric dog faded out again, he sent one more message back:
“It was no trouble at all, Theseus, I’ll be back at the Ministry shortly. Is the cafeteria still open, by any chance? Oh, and if you really want to thank me”—he gave Tom a reassuring smile and a little wink, and was met with a serious furrowed brow—“you might introduce me to some of your contacts in the Family Services and Adoption Department; I have some proceedings I’d like to expedite as much as possible…”
*
The sun was bright over the New York City skyline as Newt and Tom exited MACUSA headquarters on the first day of 1932. Their wait in the Portkey processing terminal had been mercifully short this time; the perks of being married to a decorated Auror with a fearsome reputation were not to be underestimated.
Ah, Tina. He could hardly wait to see her again in person. They’d had a few long discussions via Floo over the whirlwind of the past five days (Newt had called her that first night braced for shock and apprehension, but she’d just smiled fondly and said, “By now I’ve gotten fairly used to your habit of taking in strays, Newton. We always knew we wanted kids—and I this way I won’t even need to take maternity leave”), but there was nothing like the comfort of coming home to your person after even a short time away. And he couldn’t wait to introduce her to Tom; the two of them shared a cool sternness that perfectly balanced his own, more flighty nature.
“I don’t need you to hold my hand,” the boy in question (his legal son now, Merlin, he’d gone to England to see family and come back a father) protested yet again, tugging at their linked fingers. “I won’t get lost, I went round London by myself all the time.”
“Oh, I’m sure you did,” Newt replied, hiding his concern, as he often did when Tom mentioned disturbing details of his former life at Wool’s. “And you’ll soon have your bearings here as well, no doubt. Just remember that the Bronx is up, the Battery is down, and the best pastries in the city are”—he cast a quick Point Me, still occasionally disoriented himself even after five years in the city—“right this way. Come along, Jacob should just be taking out a fresh batch of rugelach…”
END