Chapter Text
Newt really didn’t feel like talking about it.
He’d been expelled and his family was shamed and he could never show his face to Professor Dumbledore again no matter how polite the man had been about the whole affair.
Newt had nothing else to say and so really he’d much prefer if Theseus would stop asking him if we wanted to talk about it.
He did not.
Come early autumn Newt would be shipped off to Durmstrang to complete his last two school years. He would earn his wand back - which had been handed over to the Durmstang headmaster - and then Newt would visit home, gather all his possessions, leave a note, and never step foot in Britain again.
Newt had the whole thing planned out very carefully in the way which would have interacting with others come to a complete minimum. He would have to speak to the boy, Percival, (a year older than him and aiming to be an auror) whom his father had ‘secretly’ tasked to spy on him, from time to time but other than that he didn’t plan to speak to anyone at all lest he ‘damage his family’s name and titles any further’.
Newt would keep his head down, do his school work well, and care for Pickett.
Pickett wasn’t supposed to come with him. He actually wasn’t supposed to have Pickett at all but he kept the bowtruckle (who was mildly obsessed with him and would never leave his side either way) as a last stitch effort at rebellion.
Every other hour almost on the dot one of Newts parents or Theseus would politely barge their way into his room to ‘check on him’ (or as he suspected remind him that because of his mess up he had lost the privilege of privacy and would not gain it back until he left for good) and so, every other hour on the dot, Newt’s family would find him sat on his bed, journal in hand, sketching creatures he had observed from memory. And so on and so forth until the day he was shipped off, trunk in hand and his mothers kiss on his forehead.
Percival Graves was handsome - something Newt did not account for. A blush formed on his cheeks and grasped his ears every time he looked up to find the older boy staring at him.
That was a thing he did too. He stared. Newt wasn’t used to staring. Newt was only used to people not seeing him. He was used to eyes glancing over him as if he was a stain on the wall.
‘You’re not invisible Newt. I can see you, you know.’ she brushed the tips of her fingers across his cheekbones and ran the pad of her thumb down his jaw.
Newt wanted to say something to make him stop staring but every time he opened his mouth to he found no words to come forth.
And so Percival stared the whole ride to the portkey. And then stared more the whole walk up to the castle. Newt could tell becuase even though he was clumsily walking in front of Percival, Pickett stayed uncharacteristically quiet and still in his pocket. And really Newt ought to stop thinking of Graves as Percival, they really aren’t that close yet.
Yet.
‘No, there will be no yet.’ Newt reminds himself. because Newt has vowed to keep to himself and keeping to yourself involves not getting close to undercover spy classmates.
A pebble caught on Newt’s shoe and he very nearly face planted into the gravel, only able to catch himself at the last second. It was embarrassing and newt really would have happily melted into the ground and never lived another day.
Newt frowned the rest of the way up the biting forest into the school.