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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Beasts from the East: Chapter 9 [FINAL]

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Newt Scamander x OC (Rosalind Leitch) Word count: 2.3k Synopsis: Rosalind Leitch is perfectly comfortable being a muggle, hiding away in her village in Scotland and tending to her magical plants. But when Newt Scamander asks her to journey across China with him in search of the Qilin, she cannot find it in herself to say no. Warnings: none! Note: final chapter ahhhhh;; if you wanna read the angsty older sister version of this, i'm gonna be posting a shorter oc x sebastian sallow (hogwarts legacy fic) - the oc is the person who made the china map in this fic!!

Read on AO3 Beasts from the East Masterlist < Previous Chapter

They woke up the next day squished together, cosy under the sheets of one of the single beds in their makeshift house. Ros had already long been awake; she was propped up on one elbow watching Newt flit between sleep and wakefulness. She had thrown on Newt’s shirt, it being long enough to cover her entire body, although she’d made a lousy job of doing up the top buttons. When Newt finally came to, blinking away sleep and focusing his eyes on Ros’ exposed collar bones, he pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and rolled to face the wall. It only made everything worse, for he could see everything from the night before in vivid detail behind his eyelids.

Newt dropped his hands and turned to look at Ros reluctantly. “Good, uh…. morning?” he choked out.

“Morning!” Ros grinned. She found Newt’s actions bewildering yet endearing; she would have liked to lean down and kiss him, but she worried it would make him explode. Instead, she jumped out of bed, her feet meeting the old wooden floor with a creak, and pretended not to notice how Newt was definitely not looking at how the shirt fit around her. “I’ll take care of the Qilin this morning,” she said while lazily pulling one of her skirts on, “you can lie there and recuperate, for now.”

Ros smirked, and Newt pulled the coverlet over his face with a huff.

He was quick to recover. He dressed fast, tying his bowtie a little too tight, and came across Ros playing with the Qilin in its pen. “He loves this torn bit of cloth,” Ros mused to Newt absentmindedly. He watched with a smile as she threw the bundled up rag, with bits of shredded fabric hanging from it like a ghost, to a random corner. The Qilin pounced on it in half the length of a heartbeat; Ros frowned as she exited the pen, her eyes still drawn to the Qilin gnawing at its tatters.

“Is something wrong?” Newt reached for a lock of brown hair that shadowed her eyes, no doubt from a lively morning with the calf. He brushed his fingers against her cheek slowly, revelling in the electricity that flowed between them with every touch, before he set the strand behind her ear and reluctantly parted.

Ros shrugged, “I liked that shirt.” The one that was torn by those poachers. She said nothing else, and the rest of the morning passed quickly with the both of them making the rounds between all the magical beasts. Finally, Newt sat down at the shoddy picnic table just outside his shack with a quill and paper, to draft an entry to his inevitable second book. He pulled some books for reference towards him: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Chinese Folk Truths, and Beasts from the East. Newt paused at the last one—he couldn’t recall that title in his collection.

But Ros did mention that her sister had given her all sorts of obscure books about magic, and it made sense to him, considering Celia’s apparent relations with the merchant in Hong Kong, that she’d have an old Asian one. The chewed-out piece of card still bookmarked the page that Ros showed him weeks ago now, with the simple, moving sketch of a Qilin. Now Newt would be able to write about the rare beast with vibrant colour, all thanks to her. Wanting to see what Shen Fu Tsong had to say two hundred years ago, he grinned to himself as he opened the book, slamming its heavy and dusty front cover on the table, to its saved page.

But the illustration of a nimble Qilin chasing a butterfly that Newt remembered was not on the page; he saw, instead, another drawing of the same style. But the Qilin was spilled onto its side with a gaping wound slashed across its torso, the quick-flow of blood crudely drawn in squiggles and scrawls. The drops slid further down the page, they filled up a vial on loop. And then a man on the next page, dressed in traditional Chinese dress with a scribbled out face, was drinking from the vial. Rubbing at his eyes, Newt traced the text with the pad of his finger, a translation spell placed upon it caused the characters to morph into English letters in front of his very eyes.

I come from Nanjing, and so I sought out a companion during my travels throughout South China. Despite living so close to the Qilins’ birthing nests, none of the wizards wanted to join me for fear of disturbing the area. Faxian was the only one who volunteered himself: a squib who could no longer abide by their, apparently, pointless rules. However, when we successfully found the pregnant Qilin, Faxian lashed out at it with his knife. He drank its blood by the handful.

All of a sudden, he was able to do magic. He pried my wand from me and stormed back to Wuzhou. He laid it to waste. Transformed into the wizard he always wanted to be, perhaps he could have gone on forever. But guilt seemed to catch up to him too quickly—I found him at the village’s south entrance, dead by his own hand. Faxian’s story is tragic, but I believe it is not just a stroke of luck; if the conditions are right, a human may be able to turn himself into a wizard with just a vial of Qilin’s blood.

Newt slammed the book shut, unable to burn that wretched illustration into his mind any longer. Something vile burned within him, so hot that he didn’t dare question it; book in hand, he stomped over to where Ros’ plants were housed. There were four long tables in a perfect square, except for one set diagonally so as to create an entrance. That’s where Ros was, surrounded and shielded by all her plants, with her palms pressed into the table for support as she leaned into a blooming Gaseous Orchid. Then she heard Newt’s heavy footsteps and stepped out from behind the blossoms, her eyes wide and curious. And then she saw the book in his hand. Her innocent surprise crumbled and fell away.

“Did… did you see it?” her lips trembled. Newt’s face was impenetrable, but he didn’t wear a frown. He just looked at her, sadness wavered in his eyes like dying candlelight. It flickered, and blew out. He nodded.

“You—You lied,” he spat, but still there was no malice. Newt leaned against the table from the other side, shoulders slouched and defeated; he plonked the book down in front of her and averted his gaze. “I thought you were wanting to make a difference. But you just came all this way for its blood.”

“No!” Ros burst out, desperate. She breathed in deep in a futile attempt to soothe her aching, pounding heart. Newt looked up at her with his mouth parted slightly at her sudden outburst. “I didn’t lie to you,” she continued, her fingers now traced the edges of the dusty book, “Really, I wanted to make that cure and, more than anything, I wanted to get out of Oban.”

Newt sighed. He believed her; the calf and its mother’s body have been so close for the past few days, she could have taken blood at any time. And no matter how desperate she was to learn Charms and Potions in the past, Ros had long grown out of that. For her to become a witch, to join the people who looked down on the so-called trifles of muggle suffering, was unthinkable. She had lived twenty-nine years just fine without wielding magic, and all the better for it, for she actually made a difference. Magic was useless, worthless; Newt knew her feelings well, and he hated that he doubted them. But he had to make sure, “Why was that page bookmarked?”

“Clarke gave it to my sister, who gave it to me, a few months ago. It’s the last remaining copy, apparently,” she said, and slowly she made her way to Newt from the gap between the tables. She took his large hand in both of hers and turned it over, observing the pads of his fingers distractedly.

“I would be lying if I said it never piqued my interest at all, maybe that’s why I left the bookmark there,” Ros’ brows knitted together at her own words, her eyes hung low and concentrated only on Newt’s hand. Then she finally resolved to look up at him again, “but my sister, we haven’t talked since she gave me this book, because...”

Newt could see it unfold behind her eyes. She stared down at a woman, the very reflection of herself: long brown hair, unkempt and coarse like hay that cascaded around green eyes. Two lonely sisters, for years unwillingly separated, with only one difference between them. Tears pooled at the corners of Celia’s eyes. She blinked them away furiously; they spread across her eyes and gave them a new, filmy and resolved shine.

Ros recounted how she held that dusty book, with the same bookmark, out to Celia, asking her to take it back. She refused—she would find a way for them to be reunited, fully, once more, where their separate worlds could no longer tear them apart. No matter how much Ros struggled to explain: being a muggle is just who she is, she is better used in the regular world… Celia would not listen, for she was forever eleven years old, stuck in her first week at Hogwarts.

She would write to Ros several times a week back then, the ink of her letters always blotched from tears, and her handwriting mere scrawls as she wrote secretly by dim candlelight. There was no end to the depravity of her classmates, it seemed; she was the only muggle-born Ravenclaw in her year, and the students made sure she knew it. Once upon a time, Ros was desperate to become a witch, not for power, or for fun. But because her dear sister needed her.

“I gave up on the idea of wielding magic during the war, but Celia never did,” Ros dropped Newt’s hand and stepped back—a breath of fresh air, a weight lifted from her shoulders.

Newt sighed and wrapped his arms around her, he pulled her in tight and close and rested his chin on her head, “I’m sorry I doubted you.”

Thankful that her face was hidden in his embrace, Ros could feel something stinging at her eyes, threatening to spill over and stain Newt’s shirt. She buried her face in his chest and breathed in deep his smell of earth and wood; her words came out muffled, “Once we set the Qilin free, will you help me with something?”

“Anything,” he smiled into her shoulder.

“I think I’ve proven to myself that I’m capable enough—I’d like to find my sister,” she pulled away from him—only slightly, so that their lower torsos were still connected—to show him the determination steeled in her face.

He nodded and planted a kiss on the crown of her head, “Let’s do it.”

When the baby Qilin proved itself capable enough not only of walking, but pouncing (rather annoyingly) over its pen’s fence the next day, Ros and Newt took it out of Wuzhou by moonrise. At the top of one of Guilin’s smaller rocky peaks, a small and white cloud gathered out of thin air close to the ground. The cloud hovered patiently, inviting the Qilin in, and once it finally planted one nervous hoof on the solid vapour, hundreds more spilled out in front of it in staggered formation. Stairs leading to the heavens, where the Qilin belonged, Newt assumed.

Yet the calf stepped back from its endless staircase, and it staggered painfully into Ros’ shin with a high-pitched squeal. It did not want to go. Ros crouched down with a sigh and scooped it up in her arms; she placed a kiss delicately on the quivering scales atop its head, and then she set it down carefully on the first step again. “You have to go, little one,” she said, softly, “you belong up there.”

With its head hung low, the Qilin snorted sadly to itself before turning its gaze up to where the steps disappeared into the cloudy sky. It began its ascent, slowly, planting two hooves on each stair gingerly yet firmly before daring to go further. Before it was even any higher up than Newt, it turned back and chirped sadly. A smile of amusement grew on Newt’s face as he waved. Ros stepped back to join him, slotting her hand in his, and waved at the Qilin too. Satisfied, it looked away for the last time and bounded quickly the rest of the way, leaping over several steps at a time, before it finally disappeared into the midnight sky, no more than a shining star.

With Newt by her side, Ros tore the two pages about Faxian out of Beasts from the East and threw them onto the hungry flames of a Firebush; they watched in silence until the fire devoured and licked up every last scrap of paper, until only fine black dust remained.

They were back in the bustling streets of Hong Kong just two days later, thanks to Newt’s carefully spaced apparition. It had only been just under a month since they were here last, but Clarke’s disastrous evening ball felt like an entire lifetime ago. Still, the gleaming polish of his emerald green door, and the daunting face of the golden dragon knocker with its nostrils blown wide, was enough to put Ros right back in that room—the mirror, the dusty pink couch—

“Are you sure about this?” Newt piped up.

“Yes,” Ros responded, without even a moment of hesitation. Before she could question herself anymore, she reached for the knocker and slammed it against the door, two and two, like a heartbeat. She turned back to Newt with her eyebrows creased in concentration and said, “We’ll find her.”

Please reblog and follow if you enjoy my work! It's greatly appreciated ✩

Another Note: if anyone is interested (? lol) i might post the list i made of all the plants mentioned in the fic, where they're from, and what they do (as well as which ones are the ones i made up, and which already exist in HP)

#newt scamander x oc #newt scamander x reader #fantastic beasts #fantastic beasts oc #newt scamander fanfic #newt scamander drabbles #newt scamander fluff #newt scamander imagines #newt scamander #harry potter #fanfic #ao3 #newt x reader #newt x oc #keifanfics

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Lazy fuck who just sucked blood immediately takes a nap

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Beasts from the East: Chapter 8

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Newt Scamander x OC (Rosalind Leitch) Word count: 3.4k Synopsis: Rosalind Leitch is perfectly comfortable being a muggle, hiding away in her village in Scotland and tending to her magical plants. But when Newt Scamander asks her to journey across China with him in search of the Qilin, she cannot find it in herself to say no. Warnings: description of injury; suggestive (but not explicit smut! imo)

Read on AO3 Beasts from the East Masterlist < Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

The second blaze of fire never came. When she gathered the resolve to open her eyes again, Ros breathed a sigh of relief at what she saw and heaved herself onto her knees again with newfound vigour. The woman with the white band who casted that torturous spell on her was bound up and gagged by the same white fibres from earlier, her wand pried from her and tossed to the ground. Her underling spun around and came face to face with Newt: he clutched the case tightly at his back and had his wand pointed directly at the remaining poacher. He stood unusually tall and straight; like one of his beasts, he was always calm and docile, making himself small to avoid hassle. But some threats called for a different approach. He did not quiver in his decision to take a more aggressive stance—his companion was in danger.

“Depulso!” he cried. Ros blinked, and the woman with the black band had already been flung to the other side of the clearing. She disappeared between the bushes, comically, while the other woman struggled recklessly against her glowing binds. Each movement was futile, for when one strand snapped, another two would curl up from thin air to take its place.

Ros planted one foot on the floor and pushed her weight through her leg as best she could; she had barely lifted herself up at all before she wobbled, teetering between standing and kneeling. She collapsed. Newt was quick over; he placed a gentle hand on her dislocated shoulder and grimaced when he realised. His mouth twitched, he wanted to say something, but Ros looked up at him with empty eyes. Even if she wanted to ask for help, she was not present enough to do so. With an arm around her back and one final, bitter glance at the imprisoned witch, Newt waved his wand and disapparated them both.

He dragged them back through the cliff face from mere hours ago, into the safety of Wuzhou’s forever darkness. Newt did not bother with the tent; instead, he found the least rotten house—a single room—and cleaned it out with magic. There were still no windows, but there was no need as the wind didn’t blow there—the weather didn’t even change. It was only ever dark. Two single beds were pushed to opposite corners of the wall and the rounded stove in another corner was cleaned of its dust and cobwebs. With a wave of his wand, he fixed a small table with two simple wooden stools, and finally he placed his case gently in the remaining corner.

If Ros was conscious or aware of anything happening around her, she did not show it. Newt had her sit on one of the beds and, accompanied by a symphony of profuse apologies, he pushed her shoulder back into place with a loud crack. Ros flinched, the closest thing to a reaction she gave that night, but she did not scream. Then he pulled her dirtied jacket off her shoulders, put it to the side, and laid her down carefully since she could not seem to do it herself. He didn’t go to touch the rest of her clothes, of course, but he did catch a glint of silver beneath the tears of her collar. It was that strange military necklace, no doubt. Newt knew little of muggles and their wars, but he met enough of them to know that only soldiers received those chains, not the nurses. He turned away from her and drew the magically starched sheets over her.

Newt did not—could not—sleep that night. He disappeared into his case, the lid left open should Ros have needed him, and first he tended to the baby Qilin that shook and wailed for its mother. It tried to leap about the place, but still it was not strong enough to walk far on its own, let alone return to its pastures above the mountain peaks. When he finally soothed the Qilin into a gentle sleep, Newt began plucking the fine, silver hairs from the dead mother’s mane, her body naturally preserved in the hard-to-reach corners of his magical case.

~*~

“Morning,” Ros croaked at him; Newt spun around in alarm. Among the forever-darkness of the enclave and the always-light of his case, he hadn’t noticed the equivalent of a night passing. He stared blankly at Ros for a moment, recalibrating. She folded her arms over her chest, retreating into herself a little, and smiled meekly at him, “...I think, anyway.”

“Are you… feeling better?” he approached her slowly, as if a step too thunderous could shatter her. Ros waved one of her hands in front of her face and scoffed, “Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she said, more to herself than to him.

Finally, a smile shattered through his desperate face. “Of course,” he resolved not to pry any further. It was clear to him that the last (nearly) two weeks of walking finally had its way with Ros: dark circles pooled underneath her eyes, her shoulders sagged with the simple weight of holding herself up, and she was somehow paler than when they started. “We’ll hideout until we’re sure the poachers are gone,” Newt continued, “and, in a few days' time, we can hopefully set the Qilin free.”

Her eyes had been avoiding it this entire time, staying focused on Newt’s face, but Ros’ gaze finally fell on the dead mother behind him. It was no longer silver and gold, now it looked more like one of the many rock formations they encountered in their flight before: dusty and grey and crumbling. She wondered how long it had been alive, how many children it had before—how many years were Qilin meant to live for? Newt stepped in front of her sight once again, motioning for her to walk away with him. “We did what we could,” he said.

They waited three full days before they dared to venture out of the abandoned enclave again. Newt eventually figured out what to feed the Qilin through trial and error while Ros fashioned toys out of the rags of her now-torn shirt. It acted more like a playful deer, a sweet and unnaturally friendly creature from a fairy tale, rather than a divinely majestic being. After one particular day scavenging edible food in the wilderness, they returned to a horse-like squealing, and Newt flew into the case, throwing his coat mindlessly on the straw-covered floor, before jumping the barrier into the Qilin's pen.

The little beast calmed in his arms instantly, ceasing its thrashing and curling into Newt’s side. He held its twitching hind leg tenderly in the palm of his hand, the limb still thin as a wand, and found a long and frayed wooden splinter had torn into it deep. Ros caught up just in time to watch Newt crouch and urge the Qilin to lay down, he extended its leg out on the floor before rolling up the sleeves of his work shirt. “Ros, please could you pass me the emergency kit from my coat pocket? I can’t remember which side…”

“Sure, sure,” Ros picked up the blue coat and hung it on one of the fence posts. She put her hands in both pockets at the same time, though she nearly fell flat into the fence when she did. “You even cast a charm on your coat?” she laughed, her eyebrows pushed together in bewilderment, but she kept searching. Newt only hummed his response half-heartedly—all his attention was on the calf weeping in front of him, its tears glittering in the case’s fake sunlight.

Even though the pockets were endless, there wasn’t much of note inside: many pencils and pens and quills long forgotten, a few handkerchiefs, bits of paper so old they’d practically dissolved, and—finally, with her arm elbow-deep in the pocket, Ros hit something more solid, like a box. She fished it out, but it was no emergency kit. A simple photo frame of silver rested between her hands. It had rounded corners and a lightly engraved damask pattern. More importantly was the photo inside, its colours so vivid that Ros felt the subject was really there with her; a young woman with dark skin, her black hair falling like silk around her shoulders with her slight movement. Yes, Ros had forgotten for a moment that magical photos could move. The woman smiled politely at her on a loop, but her eyes were without shine, hollow.

Ros quickly stuffed the frame into her own jacket’s pocket, half of it still sticking out, when she dived back in to retrieve the kit before Newt noticed. She entered the pen and hovered over him, passing tweezers of different sizes to him when he requested, and watching his operation anxiously. The main splinter came out with a piercing howl from the Qilin, and then pus oozed out of the wound left behind. Except it wasn’t ordinary pus, it was Qilin blood; it shone gold and stained the rags Newt wiped at it with warm glitter. Ros blinked at the dirty cloth that had just been handed to her, if it could be called dirty at all, and then she looked back at the wound. Newt was removing the remaining, smaller and finer, hairs of wood, each one leaking a bead of gold too.

“So this is what they were after?” Ros asked, her eyes still entranced by the shimmer. She thought back to the bookmark in that book from Celia, and she remembered the story of Faxian well enough. It would be so easy to—

“Just one vial of it,” he mused, pushing himself back onto his feet. Ros tore her gaze away from the bloodied rag, watching instead as the Qilin nuzzled its head against Newt’s ankle before limping away. “The rest of the potion is easy. Then you can wield unlimited magic, although such an amount is sure to kill you quickly,” Newt opened the gate and let Ros walk through first before shutting it behind them.

“But that Faxian… he was able to survive,” Ros said.

“Nobody knows why,” Newt shrugged, “he was supposedly rather clumsy with his spells. Perhaps he didn’t wield enough magic in the first place.”

She hung her head in thought for a moment, her eyes trained on the straw-packed ground beneath her boots. But Ros eventually lifted her head up and waved her hand about, brushing the topic away. “Well, anyway…” Her voice was upbeat now; her skirt swished playfully as she perched on the bench overlooking the paddocks, kicking her feet like a little girl. Newt sat next to her, their hips close to touching, and asked with a small smile, “What’s gotten into you?”

Ros retrieved the photo frame from her pocket and showed it to him; his face dropped instantly. Newt snatched the frame from her and placed it face-down on the other side of the bench; a sudden cold wind bit at Ros’ shoulders, the bright sky around them seemed to darken. “Sorry,” she sighed, her eyes darted somewhere, anywhere, other than his face, “I just wanted to know who she is—it was in your coat pocket.”

Newt wanted to tell Ros about her. He was going to eventually… probably. But he moved his mouth, open and shut, to no avail. Nothing came out. He palmed nervously at his knees, but a cold hand wrapped around his, soothing. When he looked up, he was met with her green eyes. Ros pulled the silver chain out from underneath her shirt, revealing the two dog tags hanging from it. “I’ll go first,” she said, and all he could do was nod—he would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested. Her eyes shifted back to the scenery in front of her, but to her it felt as though she were looking into the past, a little pocket of time in 1917.

“We rotated out of working the ambulance train often, so I was stationed at the hospital base in Salonika for the early spring of 1917. Most of the men that came through, I only ever saw once: dead, or wounded enough to be transported home. If a man was well enough to go back out and fight, he always returned, dying, eventually.

“But there was one man—no, he was basically still a boy: Teddy, he said his name was. He enlisted while he was still seventeen, because all his friends were already old enough to go fight, and so he lied to the enlistment officer. When he came into the hospital the first time, he’d been shot in the thigh. The bullet only skimmed off some flesh, and so the doctor would have had him return to the trenches.

“Except I always altered the documents where I could, to send as many boys home as possible, you see. I did the same to him, but he refused; he said he would stick around, so that he could ask to marry me. I thought he was being ridiculous, of course, but I let him stay—I didn’t need him drawing attention to what I was doing.

“And he returned several times after that, actually. Each time, he had a minor cut or graze that’d been infected, and he would lie about the pain just to be treated by me. Whenever I had the night rounds, I’d sit with him after to talk. He told me he was from Edinburgh, and that he’d come and sweep me away from Oban when the war ended. I thought it was silly, but it was a nice idea: one that kept us both going. With the number of times he had been in and out of hospital beds, I half-expected him to really do it.

“Then I was put back on the ambulance train. The failed assault happened in late April, and again, we were much too busy to save everyone. It must have been the fourth time the train returned to Salonika, I finally had my first sleep in days when I woke to more injuries, more men screaming and dying. Teddy was there, in the fifth carriage, crying in silence. I think he had wailed his throat dry; a hole had been blown through one of his arms, awaiting amputation. But the tourniquet at his shoulder had been tied so badly that he’d already lost enough blood—he didn’t make it to the doctor in time. And I had slept through it all.

“Still, he managed two words to me: ‘Marry… me?’ I almost didn’t catch them, but when I finally looked up at him and nodded, he was gone. We cleared out his body like he was worth nothing; I had to strip his uniform from him for the next recruit in his size. I don’t even remember what he looks like anymore, I just have his dog tag,” Ros jingled the chain between her fingers, the two silver pendants clashing together as they swung back and forth in her grip: ‘Theodore Adair,’ was engraved in the tag on top.

“So… Well,” Ros returned to swinging her legs back and forth absentmindedly, her eyes stinging and too reluctant to look back at Newt just yet, “Boys like Teddy are why I despise the Ministry for not stepping in. There must have been a way to help, somehow.”

“Her name is Leta,” Newt gestured to the photo, still face down on the bench. His smile was forced, it pushed almost painfully at his cheeks, “Neither of us really fit in at school. We only had each other, I suppose. I kept a lot of beasts, secretly, during my time there. Otherwise they would wander around and often they would just get exterminated by the groundskeeper. So I kept them, against the rules, and Leta helped me from time to time.

“We found a Jarvey at one point. They’re aggressive things, and terribly difficult to keep secret, but we tried our best anyway. Leta was caring for it during a free period, while I had a class, and attempted to smuggle it across the castle grounds under her cloak for its weekly bath. Then, the story goes that a group of students began calling out horrible things to her.

“That was very normal, but the Jarvey didn’t appreciate such aggression. It jumped out of her cloak and right at one of the students, clawing at her chest and face. She was hospitalised for days, and even Dittany couldn’t do much for her—she still has deep scars in her face.

“Leta only ended up in that position because of me. She couldn’t have known how to stop the Jarvey from doing that, so I took the blame. One of the teachers stood up for me, and so I wasn’t officially expelled and I was able to keep my wand, but I had to leave Hogwarts.

“I lost contact with her after that, and I supposed it was too strange to try and reach out again. Perhaps I did feel something for her, something stronger than friendship, but it was a long time ago; I have no memory of that feeling anymore. Besides, she, uh, recently became engaged to my brother.”

Ros was nodding gently, smiling softly along to Newt’s story, until that last line. Her expression twisted into one of shock, of hesitation and not knowing what to say. But then Newt laughed. First, with unease. Then Ros joined in, and his shoulders sagged, relaxed at last, the picture frame already long forgotten, “It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

“Yeah…” Ros said, catching a breath after her fit of giggles, “Older siblings, huh?”

She wasn’t sure which one of them moved first, but the gap between them on the bench had closed at some point; Ros could feel Newt’s warmth seeping through her clothes where their shoulders and thighs touched. She leaned into him, her head resting on his shoulder, and sighed, content. But Newt was nervous still, his heart pounding through his chest so loud that he was certain Ros could hear it. The picture of Leta had haunted him for enough years now; a reminder that he was too meek, too shy for no reason, and so he just… let everything go. And neither he nor Leta were any happier for it. If he sat there and let that moment pass in silence, he might once again find himself comfortable in saying nothing… for years. So he took Ros’ cheek in his hand, turned her up to face him and said, too bold for his own liking, “Can I kiss you?”

Her previously drooping eyelids burst open, the green of her iris swallowed whole by her pupils. They stared at each other, still as rock, but Newt’s heart danced and thrashed around in his chest; it hammered an endless rhythm of longing. He took Ros’ silence—her lack of immediate disgust—as his motivation. If he stopped moving now, it would be for forever. So Newt swooped down, pressed his lips to hers, and kissed her.

His hand caressed her cheek once and then moved to her nape to pull her in closer. The thought that there was no rulebook to follow for this was both intimidating and exhilarating. It was just like approaching one of his more ferocious beasts—he just had to do what felt right. Except, it was more than that. He wanted more. It was an odd sensation, to completely surrender himself to any whim, every desire; he wanted to take something—he didn’t yet know what—for himself. And somehow, with Ros, he knew it was okay.

Once the shock had finally washed over and through her, Ros reached out and wrapped her arms around the back of Newt’s neck. She kissed back, and pushed her way in deeper; they explored each other desperately, as if it was the last thing they’d ever do. Newt’s cheeks turned hot, and surely bright pink, but he was beyond caring, too wrapped up in the feel of Ros—the taste of her. Just two weeks ago, it was impossible to imagine doing such a thing to the girl in the bookstore at all.

Yet when Ros pushed him to lie down against the bench, he didn’t stop her. When she straddled his waist, he didn’t stop her. And when she started peeling their clothes off—his shirt unbuttoned, hers long-discarded on the floor, their trousers and skirt forgotten between laboured breaths—he didn’t stop her. She lay on top of him on that bench, their bodies knitted together at the hips, and he still hungered for more, as if becoming one with each other wasn’t enough.

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Beasts from the East: Chapter 7

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Newt Scamander x OC (Rosalind Leitch) Word count: 3.3k Synopsis: Rosalind Leitch is perfectly comfortable being a muggle, hiding away in her village in Scotland and tending to her magical plants. But when Newt Scamander asks her to journey across China with him in search of the Qilin, she cannot find it in herself to say no. Warnings: description of injury

Read on AO3 Beasts from the East Masterlist < Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Wuzhou, the next enclave, was only a two day walk away, but they did not need to pass carefully through this one. Decrepit houses lined the streets, the corners of their roofs upturned and reaching for the sky. The cobblestones were overtaken with yellowed grass and moss, yet not a single source of light could be found. Paper windows had long ago been consumed by dirt and rain and mould—they were replaced by cobwebs layered thick; visions into dark and forgotten rooms. Inside, there were more growths of sickly blue and green than furniture. Even though it was daytime when they entered, the sky was black in its endless stretch above; it was not just any night sky for it showed a world in which there was no moon or stars—a world without hope or dreams.

Ros recalled what Villiers’ map said: Wuzhou, many villagers were lost during the opium crisis and their families migrated to Zhaoqing. She frowned. Her Solas nymphs surrounded them in a disorderly circle of oranges and blues as they trudged across the slippery streets. Two carried on further ahead to only reveal more rotting houses. “You know, if it’s withdrawals from opium that were the problem here, you can treat that with just four drops of combined Henbane and Twin Flower,” Ros said, shivering. The village was not cold, but the silence and darkness may as well have made it so, “I used it to quit smoking after the war. It’s also good for nightmares.”

“I thought that magical plants in high concentrations could kill a muggle?” Newt asked, his brows raised.

Ros shook her head, “I seem to have the same physiology as a Wizard.” She laughed drily but was silenced upon passing yet another particularly rotten house.

“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“No, it feels more like a kick in the teeth,” Ros looked up at Newt, and he berated himself for instinctively looking away. “I could use Oleander essence to burn the Influenza out of myself, but I couldn’t do the same for the soldiers. They somehow survived the war and then—” she instinctively reached for her silver chain. The touch of cold metal put a pit into her stomach, but it calmed her too. Newt thought to ask about it, but then he thought better. Ros quickly switched back to the less personal, more pressing topic at hand. “Regardless, the Twin Flower can only be found in Scotland. It wouldn’t have helped them.”

“Well, the Ministry could have easily organised some to be sent over,” Newt admitted. His eyes darted around, very much focused on making sure nothing was lurking in the numerous dark alleyways they passed. “I assume they didn’t because of the Deus Pulveris situation.”

“So, Wizards aren’t above politics,” Ros scoffed.

Newt said nothing; his lips twisted at one corner, threatening to tug a smile onto his sullen face, but he held himself back. Ros found that charming and frustrating at the same time. She wanted to see him smile fully. “Well, with the Qilin hairs, I’ll find a way to make magic plants useful,” she resolved.

Newt nodded, absentmindedly checking the map once more, “The exit is just to the left, and then we should be at the right place.”

“Wow,” Ros sucked in a breath as they rounded the corner and, sure enough, the blue Solas nymphs ahead had illuminated an empty wall. It was painted white in a former life, large portions of the paint had already decayed and peeled away to reveal unfeeling grey bricks underneath. They would probably withstand time, emotionless, for many more generations. Any magical trace had all but faded away, underneath bushes of ivy which creeped their way up endlessly. Once Newt had identified the portal, his hand seeping partway into another reality, he stopped and turned back to Ros, “What will you do after?”

She stared at him blankly. “I hadn’t thought about that. My boss is probably furious,” but no matter how much she reached around her mind, that was all that remained for her to return to. Sir Radley, Dunollie Wood, and the greenhouse at the back of her wardrobe. She almost wished she hadn’t left at all, so that she couldn’t have learned what she’d be missing out on. But Newt held out his other hand to her, his smile soft between the clash of orange and blue around them. Ros linked his fingers with hers and followed him all the way through the wall—she thought that she might follow him anywhere after this.

The dilapidated wall spat them out in front of a jarringly different scenery. Behind them was not a brick wall, but a rocky ledge so tall it covered half the golden sunset sky. When they took a few steps back, standing on the border between the gravel shore and a winding river of clear and calm blue, they finally understood where they were.

One great jagged mass of rock was clear to them. It towered directly above to a dizzying height, as if it were truly trying to kiss the sky. Every piece of land on top that was remotely flat spawned trees and bushes that covered up its dull greys—even the cliff faces weren’t exempt from being trailed by thick green vegetation. Ros and Newt barely had a chance to marvel at it, for a rumble echoed so loud throughout the surrounding plains that it nearly shook the ground. The Qilin was already here.

Newt sprang quickly into action. He dashed into the endless shrubbery ahead, between this mountain and the next, and spurred onwards. Ros sprinted after him at first, but he ran too far and too fast for her breath to keep up. Whenever he did not break line of sight for a while, she resolved to walk before he inevitably darted behind another rock formation again. All the while, the rumbling grew louder; they sounded closer together now and for much longer each time. The closer Ros got, the more she thought it sounded like weeping, or purring, groaning.

When she rounded a particularly bulky thicket of bushes, Ros was alarmed for a moment at Newt’s absence. The sun was long gone now, darkness and starlight stretched above the mountains. She was so sure she had seen him slide around this corner, but not even a trace of him remained. And then something tickled her nose, she looked down: an orange Solas nymph. Satisfied that it caught her attention, the little ball of light darted off to the side and hovered in the air for a moment, as if it were a child running ahead and yelling behind for her to hurry up. Ros rolled her eyes and continued on, through the shrubbery, rather than around it. She hacked at branches endlessly with her arms and legs, dreading the mess of leaves and twigs that had doubtlessly taken root in her hair, and finally entered a clearing most magical.

It was a near perfect circle of dry grass, surrounded by the wild bushes she had just climbed through. The orange ball zipped past her and merged itself with a ball much larger in size—it hovered gently above the centre of the glade and beamed bright with light in endless colours; hundreds of Solas nymphs bundled together. Despite its intensity, it only made the small area all the more cosy, for the edges were more shaded by bushes than they were touched by light. Ros could easily imagine herself curling up to sleep there, and she wasn’t the only one.

Newt knelt with his arm around a… Ros thought it might be a deer made of scales, and then a dragon, but the equestrial creature that lay in front of her turned its head to face her. Two big, wet eyes blinked at her in doubles: a normal set of eyelids, and then a clear, lizard-like set. Little silver hairs decorated the top of its snout, reaching all the way around its head before receding into a single mane that cut through the shimmering golden scales on its back. Two long and thin tails hung from its chin on either side, they formed a beard of some kind. It looked nothing like the drawing in her textbook—the Qilin was so much more regal in real life.

Ros practically fell to her knees at its head, across from Newt, who remained silent as he gently stroked and hushed the quivering beast. She dared not to move and instead just held her hands open in her lap aimlessly, watching the Qilin’s black eyes carefully. And then it flopped onto one side, legs and hooves stretched out away from its body, and it curled its head onto Ros’ lap. Newt reached his hand underneath its belly, but Ros was much too focused on stroking the Qilin’s mane; it seemed soothing, for it closed its eyes and paid no attention to Newt’s workings.

They stayed like that for a while, and then the Qilin rose abruptly, stamped a front-hoof once, and began slowly trotting and grazing across the small area of its nest. Ros looked back to see Newt staring, bottom lip caught in his teeth, at a mass of translucent jelly on the ground. It glowed slightly gold and made an unpleasant squelching sound every time it squirmed. The baby inside cooed like a bird as it struggled for freedom, for its life, while its mother prodded at the grass nearby. Then the egg burst open, and the jelly splashed onto the grass and dissolved in an instant. Only a baby Qilin remained, eyes closed and legs still too thin to stand—it gave it a valiant try, only to slip on the egg’s remaining fluids. Its hind legs gave out, and it fell flat on its backside.

The mother circled back around and began to lick the baby’s scales clean of remaining slime. Newt looked at them, unblinking, for a few moments, just drinking in the entire scene. To him, a moment like this was worth everything. “Beautiful…” he gaped. Then he remembered he wasn’t alone anymore, and he turned to Ros to finish his sentence, “isn’t it?”

She only nodded, an affirmative hum caught in her throat. The baby Qilin’s eyes slowly opened now that its egg slime had been cleaned away. It shot Ros an unreadable glare; it already knew just how beautiful and powerful it was, and yet it did not care with such trifles. Newt dragged his case forward and opened it with a click, “Time for the tricky part,” he whispered, “but it’s for your own good.”

But both Newt and Ros were so enraptured by this rare sight, the endless possibilities and responsibilities placed on them for coming so far, that the cacophony of rustling leaves and snapping twigs in the surrounding shrubbery did not phase them. That was, until the mother went flying backwards into the walls of her own nest. She twitched and reared her head and screamed and shone a brilliant, violent green as she went. Just as she hit the ground and tried to scramble onto her shaky legs, she was shocked again. Another crackle of green, it reeked of loss and fear, death and the sterility of that godforsaken ambulance train.

Ros snapped her head around to where Newt had cast a protection spell. Spindly white vines wrapped around each other in front of them, each thread reached out and deflected any curse thrown their way. Two pale women dressed head-to-toe in black uniform, in trousers and nearly militaristic, were scowling at Newt through the glowing fibres. They were beginning to tear through them slowly, one by one, with fire and scraps of ice. The baby Qilin made a break for its dying mother. It attempted to leap on feeble legs only to fall flat.

Ros’ brain was still struggling to comprehend what was happening—the green light, the two wizards attacking them—but her body knew better. She scooped the baby up in her arms and set it down in the case as gently as she could, for she was moving urgently and with trembling fingers. Calming herself would have to come another time. Newt did his best to bring forth more protective fibres from his wand, but the spell seemed to be draining him fast; the women would soon tear through the shield completely, and Ros would see that green flash again.

A large leaf shot up from her hand, which she held out with a long, strong stem; the umbrella plant replaced Newt’s shredded shield in the nick of time. He jumped back and took the case in hand, pulling Ros with him into the surrounding maze of bushes. She let go of the umbrella, rather than have it tangle in the bushes and give them away. Just as she did, that green flash wrapped around it. It shrivelled and went all shades of brown and grey; it peeled and flaked away into nothing right in front of her. Ros whipped her head back around and ran after Newt.

They took many sharp twists and unexpected turns, they jumped in and out between jagged rock formations and bushes so tall they may as well have been trees. Neither of them knew where they were anymore, but they eventually realised they had run the poachers in a circle when they inched up a hill they had descended only moments ago. They paused for a moment, overlooking the two women casting tracing spells in a clearing nearby. Ros crashed against a softer looking, moss covered rock, and wheezed desperately, her lungs gradually opening up to taste the air again. “We have to go back,” Newt spat between his own gasps, “if they go back for the Qilin’s blood, they can make Deus Pulveris.”

Ros tilted her head at him, her mouth hanging open slightly as her breathing finally stilled. “They must be with Clarke,” she wheezed, finding no other explanation for why two white women would be wandering the depths of South China. Her lungs still burned, screaming at her for their painful endeavour, but Ros determined she was breathing well enough to run again. After some thought, she gave Newt a nod, “Go and put her in your case, I’ll keep them away.” The women were beginning to exit the clearing now, disappearing back into the bushes that led uphill, towards where Newt and Ros currently stood.

She was already trotting down the hill when Newt called out to her. “Are you sure?” he stuttered, “We can find another way—”

“Go!” she turned back to him suddenly, flinging her arm out behind them and gesturing for him to go back the way they came.

He caught his lip between his teeth, and Ros could see him shrink away from himself within his eyes. But then he pressed his brows together and, as he ran back to the nest, he called, “I’ll be back!”

Only when he was out of sight did she release her pent up sigh. It came crashing over her heavy, but its release made her feel so much lighter. Ros looked down at the empty clearing again, where the leaves rustled slightly from the poachers’ movements, and she did not think twice before hurtling herself down the hill. Half running and half tumbling, it wasn’t long before Ros skidded to a halt right in front of the women.

One of them blinked, and then the other blinked too. They definitely had not expected their target to be delivered to them on a silver platter. Ros used their amazement to her advantage, ducking past them and sliding further down the steep hill right into the clearing—far away from the Qilin’s nest. Nettling sprang forward from her hands, draining the life and nutrients from the shrivelling Bear’s Breech attached. One witch had beaten her companion into the clearing and, with her wand-hand outstretched, silently shattered the hairy green vine into a thousand fibrous strands of green.

A shockwave rippled through the air in front of Ros, testing the very fabric of reality, and the leftover force of the spell that shattered her plant sent her flying backwards. She landed on her shoulder with a painfully loud thud; pain ripped through her arm in a sickly warm wave, and then it dulled, tingling under her skin. The second witch caught up, slowing to a trot and panting as she entered the clearing. With no chance of getting up and running, Ros now noticed the difference in their uniforms; the one who had arrived late donned a white band tied to her left sleeve, while the other wore a black one, barely standing out against her black clothes.

The black-band waved her wand again, this time opening her mouth to sing her curse, “Avada ke—”

“Stop,” the white-banded woman gripped her partner’s shoulder hard, “she doesn’t have the case,” she gestured to Ros’ trembling form, and the black-banded woman lowered her wand. She glanced at who Ros guessed was her superior before stepping back completely.

Rounding on Ros with her face set cold and hard, the superior rested on one knee to stare her victim in the eye. Ros was struggling onto her own knees now, gripping onto her injured shoulder for dear life. Her nails were digging into her skin, through her shirt, and drawing blood, as if that would ease the pain. It was a welcome distraction, for she had yet to notice the throbbing in her arm was because it had just been torn from its socket in her fall. “Where is the case?” the woman asked.

When Ros did not deign to reply, the woman grabbed her by the collar and pulled her up with such force that the top two buttons of her blouse ripped straight off, forgotten on the ground. “You will tell me where that man went.” Her face was so close that her breath tickled Ros’ dirtied cheek; it was unpleasant and cold and all the things that hatred could make someone feel. Ros remained silent. Her interrogator tutted and dropped her collar. She remained upright on her knees, but not for long.

“Crucio!” the woman called, and a bolt of red light zipped towards Ros, squarely onto her chest.

Fire filled her. Something boiled impatiently inside her, clawing at her insides. Magma slid excruciatingly through her veins and burned her from the inside out; needles pricked the backs of her eyes and she squeezed them shut to no avail. Ros’ entire body, every inch of her skin, was scorching and burning blisteringly hot. She kicked and scrabbled at the dirt with desperate, broken fingernails, but nothing could cool her down. She was certain she was screaming, but her throat already felt so rough and dry, and a crackling flame roared in her ears so loud that she could hear nothing. Somewhere in the distance, she was sure that the two women were laughing, howling at her writhing form; they prodded and poked at her with their wands and repeated, over and over, “Where is the case?” “Where is the newborn?” “Tell me where that man went!”

Eventually, the fire sizzled and started to die down; Ros pried her eyes open and gasped for cool, fresh air to fill her charred lungs. Of course, she hadn’t actually been set on fire, but the feeling was not unfamiliar to her—Oleander burning the sickness away from inside her stomach acid, slowly working its scalding way up to her chest and heart and behind her very eyes. She had experienced it enough, but here she was again. The thought occurred to her, then, that maybe she should just give in and tell them. Newt couldn’t really fault her for that… wouldn’t he do the same thing?

He would never. Ros knew that well, even in her fatigued haze. She felt as if she was being smothered by murky fog, the remains of a Firebush branch that burned bright under their campfood every night. Screwing her eyes shut once more, she shook her head ‘No’ and prepared for the second blazing onslaught.

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Beasts from the East: Chapter 6

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Newt Scamander x OC (Rosalind Leitch) Word count: 1.8k Synopsis: Rosalind Leitch is perfectly comfortable being a muggle, hiding away in her village in Scotland and tending to her magical plants. But when Newt Scamander asks her to journey across China with him in search of the Qilin, she cannot find it in herself to say no. Warnings: tooth rotting fluff :)

Read on AO3 Beasts from the East Masterlist < Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Stunned at her own outburst, Ros fell silent, looking between the useless wand in her hand and Newt, who was no closer to unmerging with the wall. He had done his best to keep his head out, but his ears were quickly dissolving into the solid brick, too. Ros patted down the very last of her pockets and retrieved the dry and flaky Moly bulb, looking much like an onion. She had never actually tested it, but she had to tell herself it would be foolish not to try her chances now. Newt’s eyes began to disintegrate between cracks in the cement in veiny streaks of vibrant blue, but his mouth had yet to retreat. Ros placed the bulb on his tongue, held his chin up, and looked away as she felt him weakly crunch down on it.

More frenzied shouts sounded from around the corner: any second now, the villagers would find their friend bound up in the street, and they would find Newt and Ros too. She refused to look around, to even attempt to calculate an escape route, before Newt could emerge from the curse. When he finally did, he staggered forward on one leg as if he’d forgotten how to use it, then he planted his hand against the opposite wall to steady himself. Ros pulled him up with one arm in front of his torso, and he looked at her without recognition, without that usual spark he held in his eye for her. Had the curse melted away his memory too when his head merged with the wall, or did her foolish revelation stun him that much?

There was little time to dwell on it. The men would turn into the street at any moment. “Can you run?” she asked. Newt only nodded in return, but he seemed to know enough about himself to pick up his case and take his wand from her. The walls narrowed towards the end of the alley and so they had to shimmy and pry themselves out, but it bought them some time for the villagers did not even think to check between the narrow passageways at first. Newt and Ros ran as far as they could around the backs of the houses before slowing to a trot, the northern exit still a few miles away. Ros opened her mouth, she wanted to say something, like ‘I’m sorry for lying to you’, or, ‘I’m glad you didn’t get sucked into a wall’, but nothing felt right. So they beat on in silence.

Eventually, they were forced out onto a wider street, but nobody in this area seemed to have caught on yet. The trek went steeply uphill, and Ros’ ankles were screaming before they’d even made it a third of the way. But then a white brick wall with no entrance, much like the one they entered the village through, bobbed more clearly into view with each step, perched at the crest of the cobbled hillpath. Just as well, for a door slammed open behind them, and the shrill voice of a young woman called out that phrase again, “Wai guo ren, ah!” And when one door opened, dozens more soon followed. Newt had trailed a few steps behind Ros this entire time, but she grabbed onto him to make sure he could run once again.

Lightning must have struck through her body, because every muscle screamed with every futile step up the hill. Even though she was most definitely running—her breathing laboured and her heartbeat pounding—she felt like she was no closer to the top than before. But then Ros could finally see where the wall joined to the floor, and she noticed how the centre of the cobbled path led right up to the middle of it. She wouldn’t have time to stop and feel for the exit, lest she end up truly going into the brick, so she closed her eyes and pushed her feet against the ground harder, faster.

For a moment, the world went blank. Something hard beat against her head, her shoulders, her torso, her legs, and she thought she had truly just run them into the wall. Then she waded forward, and the sharp pain dulled away. She would still much rather be treading through water than brick, but when she finally tumbled out on the other side, she heaved a sigh of relief. With her eyes too heavy now to open, Ros swayed left, right, and then she tipped forward. Instead of the cold, hard ground, she felt herself fall into something soft and warm. Before she could process what it was, she fell limp.

Ros woke up in her sleeping bag in the tent. The only thing she could hear was the aggressive crackling of the firebush outside. It was already night. She emerged slowly, still holding the tent flap above her head when she found Newt sitting crossed-legged on a broad leaf plucked from her greenhouse, his coat long-discarded and his back turned to her. He had set up the cooking kit—a cauldron hooked on a metal frame above—above the firebush, and he was stirring a basic soup inside. Ros didn’t love it, but she had grown accustomed to it over the past few days.

She didn’t move a muscle, yet Newt perked up all of a sudden. He withdrew from the fire and, making a point not to look in the eye, twisted himself to beckon her over to the empty leaf next to him. Ros complied reluctantly, and the silence settling between them threatened to boil up like the cauldron in front of them until, finally, Newt broke it. “So, you’re not a witch,” he said, absentmindedly stirring the soup.

Ros was partly relieved that his memory was intact, but another part of her might have wished that it wasn’t. This was her own doing though, she realised, so she sighed and nodded at his statement, “I lied. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not upset. I just- I suppose…” he furrowed his brow and dropped the spoon back into the cauldron with a clatter. He readjusted to face Ros properly, enunciating carefully as if he still wasn’t sure of what he was saying, “I would like to know why?”

“Because my sister was the one lucky enough to be born a witch,” Ros already felt herself seething, “even though she can’t do anything good with it,” she winced at the memory of that night in Hong Kong, which felt so much longer than just a week ago now. She wondered if Celia wanted the map for the Qilin, too; she wondered how Celia could put up with Clarke’s grubby hands all over her, just for that map. Ros shuddered.

“All I can do is grow plants. Magic will always be separate from me. But I still wanted to do something, to be useful,” she said with her eyes trained on the ground, or on the fire in front of her, but never on Newt’s face. “In the end, I could only make men die painless deaths.” The corners of her mouth were pulling a smile onto her face, but her eyebrows collapsed on her, and her eyes brimmed with water. She was leaning backwards on her palms, but she shifted her weight and brough one forward to her neck, to the silver dog tag around it. Newt eyed her as she began to fiddle with the chain but he resolved to say nothing about it.

Before he could talk himself out of it, Newt had reached his hand out to hers, the one that still supported her. He looked over and knitted their fingers together, just slow enough that Ros could pull away if she wanted. She didn’t. “But you’re here,” he said, “you’re still trying.”

“I don’t know,” she still refused to look at him, although she felt herself squeeze his fingers, “I don’t follow the same laws as you, but sometimes I think that maybe the Ministry does have a point. Maybe we are too cruel to deserve the help of magic—but there’s got to be a better way.”

Newt hummed, “I think you’ll find it.”

“Do you really think so?”

“You’re stronger and more creative than most Spell-casters I know,” he replied, his gaze drifting back to the fire, “and they’re all wizards.”

Something snapped and, finally, Ros turned to face him. His blonde hair had been pulled up in all directions by the day’s events, and his freckled complexion was made warmer by orange firelight, although it cast dancing shadows across one side of his face. Then she realised that she’d left the silence for too long, because Newt turned back to face her; his eyes were searching, partly longing, and Ros had only just noticed it. She leaned over and did the unthinkable—she kissed him.

Newt broke away the second their lips touched, and Ros instinctively scrambled back too. Then she stood abruptly and spluttered, “T-that was a mistake. Goodnight.” Her cheeks were burning red now and she hoped the warm light of the fire was enough to hide it, but then Newt stood up too, and he didn’t physically stop her from leaving, but Ros felt that she just couldn’t now. And thank God she didn’t.

He tripped over his own words terribly at first—he couldn’t even finish one before he decided to switch to another, only for that one to roll off his tongue poorly too. Ros eyed him nervously all the while, and eventually Newt just closed his eyes and inhaled deep: the feeling of her lips soft on his, for just a moment, was enough to drive him into action, for words never did him any good anyway. Newt snaked one gentle hand around the back of Ros’ neck and urged her to come closer; she met him the rest of the way, and their lips united once more.

As they eased into it, Ros was the first to finally move against him and pull them deeper into each other, they both wanted more. Newt couldn’t believe what he was doing, that he was really kissing the cute, green-eyed Herbologist he met at the bookstore, but he pulled her body closer to him by the waist and resolved to make the most of it. Ros wanted to tangle herself together with him even more, she reached up at his chest and toyed with the open collar of his shirt. She thought about how many buttons she could get away with undoing, or how he might have looked in the river if she poked her head out the tent last night.

The fire seized up, crackling and popping, and Ros and Newt had to pull apart to save the soup from overspilling. Nothing else happened that night except for dinner and sleep, for they had lost their bubbling momentum, but longing glances and suppressed smiles plagued them both until morning.

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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just got 2 more kudos on my newest fic on ao3. i have more on other ones i’ve posted but seeing the one i put my SOUL into get just a little bit of love… oh man

#keirandom #ao3

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Beasts from the East: Chapter 5

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Newt Scamander x OC (Rosalind Leitch) Word count: 4.1k Synopsis: Rosalind Leitch is perfectly comfortable being a muggle, hiding away in her village in Scotland and tending to her magical plants. But when Newt Scamander asks her to journey across China with him in search of the Qilin, she cannot find it in herself to say no. Warnings: none! i think Note: there's a bit of a random namedrop, for the person who made the map, but it's foreshadowing another fic i've written which i'll post soon (it's for our boy sebastian sallow from hogwarts legacy!)

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When Newt finally came to, it was because the first golden rays of the sun were spilling over the horizon, setting the dark sky ablaze and burning light into his skull. Ros was asleep herself; she had initially rested her head on top of his, but now she lay heavily with her head curled up in the centre of his lap. At least she was facing away from him, he thought, but he still panicked and shifted backwards slightly at the very concept of her resting so peacefully on him. He leaned back onto his palms to steady himself, but winced and remembered last night’s wound.

Looking over his shoulder, Newt found himself smiling at the careful bandaging around his arm. Although it still stung, he felt better already. Ros’ work again. He stilled in his frantic movements and decided to let her sleep for a little while longer. The sky kicked up a mess of colours—ashy light blue blanketed an orange fire that settled slowly, recedeeding behind the city’s skyline. That’s when Newt finally, and regrettably, resolved to nudge his newfound companion awake.

She pushed herself up away from him with both palms planted solidly in the dirt. Ros moved so quickly that she nearly took Newt’s chin off with her. His chest and side felt underwhelmingly light without her there, but her weight returned in a wholly different way when he looked into her green eyes. They were every bit a reflection of Dunollie wood, with the very same shade and texture of the lichen that blanketed the forest floor. But her eyes cracked open wider with sudden realisation, beautiful green swallowed up by her pupils, and she rushed to pat down the back of her hair while she hammered on in a frenzy, “Apologies, I haven’t slept since… Uh, I didn’t know how to set up the tent—”

One look down at her dirt-dusted peacock dress sent Ros shivering. She had seized Newt’s coat from him in the night, but it now lay in a sad, slightly grimy heap in her lap. With her bare arms and shoulders exposed to the frigid morning air, Ros folded her arms over her chest for both warmth and decency. Newt stood and, with his good hand, flicked open his case and extended an arm to Ros. She took it gratefully and followed him carefully down the stairs into his briefcase. The lid snapped shut behind them.

They were both relieved to be back with their plants and beasts at last, and even more so to change back into regular clothes. Ros’ skirt was short and better for walking, but it still covered her just enough; she cleared a little space from the table in the shack and spread the map across it, smoothing the yellowed paper over with her hands. There was no space for a chair, so she had to make-do with leaning.

It covered all of China’s territory and revealed all eighteen of its enclaves. Each was much larger than any Wizarding village Ros had ever been to, and the map gracefully zoomed into each one with sliding ink at the touch of her thumb. Entrances were clearly illustrated and some villages in the north spanned so large that a Wizard could travel from one end of the province to another in just a day. Newt signalled his arrival, still adjusting one of his suspenders, with the creaking of the wooden door. He was very much fully dressed, but Ros tore her gaze away from his slightly dishevelled appearance immediately.

Newt stared for a moment, his eyes falling upon the rather childish signature inked in cursive in the map’s corner. “Desdemona Villiers.” He said, “I wonder how long it took her to make.”

“And how it ended up with Macao rather than the Ministry…” Ros drew her brow, then she swivelled to face him with such speed he almost took a step back. “I think I need to have a very difficult conversation with my sister the next time I see her.”

Newt didn’t say anything, he just tilted his head to the side slightly like a confused puppy. She swallowed the lump forming in her throat and continued, “Clarke injured that Zouyu to capture it, and my sister lied about it,” her frown started to pull the rest of her features down now, “and they seem to have a relationship that’s more than, uh, just business? I found out the hard way.”

She had said it all so fast that Ros couldn’t be sure he caught it all. But then he straightened his neck, and suddenly worry had spilled into his eyes, glistening at the surface. Pity. She hated that. “No,” she pursed her lips together, desperate for him to stop looking at her like that, “I’m fine.”

It wasn’t often, if it were even possible, that Newt felt angry. He might feel mildly annoyed or inconvenienced at times, but nothing ever sent such a visceral reaction through his body that could drive him to move recklessly. And yet he felt something just then, a tugging at his heart and a looseness in his fist that made him curl his fingers into his palm. But it flooded away when Ros turned back to the map and asked where they were headed—if the fiasco bothered her at all, he couldn’t tell, and so he let it go.

When Newt placed the pad of his finger on an approximate location in the Guilin mountains, a trail of footsteps revealed themselves. They started their slow and steady crawl from the edges of Hong Kong along the bottom of the Pearl River, crossing it to enter the enclave at Zhaoqing. That would cut most of the distance for them, with Wuzhou directing them further north up the Gui river to their destination. Guilin, the description on the map read, by water, by mountains, the most lovely under heaven.

The journey was estimated to take them ten days: just enough time not to rush, but too little to relax completely. Ros fixed one of Newt’s old belts up with pouches of her precious Bear’s Breech and various other seeds and saplings, and then they started their hard and steady pace. It took most of the afternoon to get close enough to the river to follow, and the precious light of early evening was part-wasted on changing Newt’s bandages. The marbled purples and reds of the evening sky were pretty, but it stopped their tracks earlier than they would have liked.

Only when she built a fire out of Firebush and Bear’s Breech did Ros sit down and soak in just how tired and sore her muscles were. After eating a humble campfire dinner, she kicked off her shoes and desperately massaged any blood she could back into her feet. Tomorrow would definitely be much worse.

Of course, entering the tent Newt has just set up revealed a much more spacious inside. It was still cramped, and they would be sharing the room, but Ros was not concerned with his nervous eye lingering on her until he drifted to sleep. She kept darting her gaze around the space instead, counting in her head how many beds would fit, stacked three high. At least twelve, maybe fifteen. If the Ministry could have only used such magic on her ambulance train from Salonika, how many more men could have made it back home? The calculations were useless, running wild through her mind and seeping horror into every crevice and fold they could find. She didn’t remember closing her eyes or falling asleep, only the constant rumbling and occasional screeching of a train hurtling down steel tracks.

They ached all over the second day, and Ros felt she was really beginning to test her ankles—they would snap if she wasn’t careful. When they set up camp again for the night, she distilled a simple syrup of Bear’s Breech for rejuvenation and Juniper berries for swelling. It tasted so much more bitter than expected, but it helped to set them ahead of schedule the next day. When evening rolled over the hills a few days later, Newt set up the tent on a bank overlooking the river while Ros brewed another simple concoction. They watched the water bob gently on its way; pebbles and sticks were swept up in an endless and forlorn tango downstream.

Dots of orange and yellow gently speckled the distance on the other side of the river, where the clustered weeping trees swallowed up all of the moon’s light. The enclave of Zhaoqing wasn’t far away, and Ros was hopeful that they could rest for a day after cutting out most of the journey. They only needed to figure out how to cross the river: its current was no problem, but it was most certainly too deep and wide to safely swim across.

While Newt retreated into his case to sweet-talk his Kelpie, Ros folded her clothes neatly on the dry grass of the riverbank and waded as far as her feet could comfortably find purchase on the gravelly ground. The water’s surface rippled against her stomach. She pulled her hair in front of her shoulders and crouched to submerge herself up to her neck, turning to face the tent. Newt had assured her he would only leave when she re-entered, but a part of her didn’t trust him; or maybe she secretly hoped he would poke his head out.

No. She was supposed to be bathing, and maybe even finding a way across. Ros splashed some water over her face, the cold droplets refreshing as they rolled down her neck. The silver moonlight was scarce, especially underneath the particular Golden Larch tree she had chosen to bathe behind for extra protection, but she felt—rather than found—something. She grasped at it with shivering hands: it felt like a large leaf, lying flat on the water’s surface. On top was a soft and damp flower of some kind, and underneath it was connected to the riverbed by a singular, long stem.

Bracing herself with a deep breath, Ros plunged herself underneath the icy water. Gripping onto the plant’s stem like a rope and using its unnatural strength to pull her downwards, she quickly reached its root. One pull, two pulls, a great mass of bubbles escaped her mouth and nostrils with a burn, and she successfully wrested the stem free on her third pull. It floated with her back to the surface, where she dragged it—and herself—out of the river. It turned out to be a large lily pad, big enough for two carefully balanced feet, with a stem still intact after all her tugging. The flower that accompanied it had petals of dark pink at the tips that slowly paled towards the bud. Ros had read about the Tiger Pad in one of Celia’s old books, but she didn’t expect to get so lucky.

It was just as well, for Newt was doubtful the Kelpie would return so readily once freed from his case. He only disappeared to clean up when Ros returned, as he promised, and she absolutely did not think about the very simple action of folding back the tent’s opening just a little bit for a peek at the river. She put herself to work, de-seeding the few more Tiger Pads she’d gathered before her fingers started to prune. With no time to let them propagate and grow roots naturally for use of Bear’s Breech, she added pure Breech essence to the water instead to speed up the process. During the initial outbreak of Influenza, she had used this technique, but using too much Breech before the plant had even sprouted only seemed to decrease its efficacy. She could only hope the Pads would be strong enough, regardless, to hold them the next morning.

Ros had to go first in order to seed the Tiger Pads. When she threw each latched sprig into the steady stream in front of her, she had to carefully aim to the side, for each plant was carried in the gentle current for a few seconds before taking root. Each pink flower unfurled itself in uncountable petals, the elaborate intricacy of a ballerina’s tutu marking that the Tiger Pad was strong enough to step on. Newt copied Ros exactly: he steadied one foot in the centre of the broad leaf first, and only lightly set his second foot down next to it—that would be used to take the next step.

It was a painstakingly slow way to cross such a small distance. Ros dared not to look back for fear of shifting her weight too much, but the hill where their tent once stood would undoubtedly still dominate the horizon from the river’s other side. Ros sighed; she thought she must have been nearing her hundredth Tiger Pad seedling when she fumbled around in one of her belt pockets to find… nothing left. They had stepped on every single one already, and a good few strides remained until they could safely step into the grass on the other side, shaded from the dazzling early morning sun by another Golden larch. Ros peered in the abyss below. Wading the rest of the way was not an option.

“Ros?” Newt said meekly, his voice was barely audible over the water’s gentle course. He had been waiting for her to plant the next seed for a while, holding his case flat against his legs in front of him with heightened apprehension.

She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. “We need to jump,” she said.

“But-” he did not get to finish his sentence. Ros had exhaled on the count of three, and launched herself from the Pad with one foot outstretched as far in front of her as possible. She just barely caught the edge of the bank, flung her arm out to grab at the roots of a nearby Larch tree, and heaved herself away from disastrously wet shoes. When she rolled over, brushing patches of grass and mud off her front, she saw the Tiger Pad had snapped. The leaf had tipped partly into the water, sagging and slowly losing its pink petals to the river.

Then the flower went hard and still; it stopped swaying in the docile breeze, no longer responding to the river’s whims. The droplets that fell from its underside, now half out the water like a sinking ship, stopped partway and froze over into glistening icicles. The water around it followed: from the centre of the Pad to the very edges of the river, ice engulfed the surface in flawless ripples. Ros looked up at Newt, who now tread carefully onto the makeshift bridge, and she felt her face turn immediately numb from resentment. “Could you not have done that earlier?” she asked, leaning back onto her palms.

Only when Newt finally stepped onto the bank did the ice behind him start to melt, dissolving into the water as if it were never there. The broken Tiger Pad remained, too, as it was. “Surely, you remember that spell is difficult to cast under the sun,” he explained, tucking his wand back into the inside of his coat, “And over such a large body of water…”

He held a hand out. Ros took it with indignation, standing up and brushing herself off once more. “Yes, of course I remember,” her voice hiked in pitch, but she turned on her heel and started walking towards the village; smoke rose from a few humble chimneys in the distance, guiding the way. Newt creased his brows ever so slightly but quickly hurried after her anyway.

The streets were far different from anything Ros had seen before. Roads were made of cobbled-together stone, bits of grass and moss poking up through the cement, just like back home. Yet the houses had windows made of paper, and curved roofs with pointed edges. But they could not go further, for they heeded the map’s warning: Zhaoqing, make sure to pass unnoticed. They stayed on the outside of the village’s stone wall, the open entryway their only window into a whole other way of life, and instead felt the cracks between the wall’s bricks—there seemed to be no recent magical activity, and so they had to try the entrance by hand. Newt was the first to find the opening. His hand dipped seamlessly into the white wall, and he pulled Ros in by the hand to follow him, pushing the rest of the way though.

Even though it was definitely the entrance to the enclave, each step made Ros feel as though she were repeatedly running into a brick wall. Dust pricked her eyes and lodged itself into her throat, and she was ungracefully hacking for air by the time they finally stepped through. The street they stepped into looked almost identical to the human village they were just in. Notably, each house had an empty cart in front of it and a makeshift sign in Chinese hung in front. It was a market for magical goods, and they had successfully just about missed the busy hour.

Ros turned back to look at the wall they just fell out of, partly to marvel at how she just physically passed through brick, but mostly to curse at it in her head. She noticed that, even though the entrance from the outside was off to the side, the space they had just come through was dead-centre of the street.

Newt waited patiently for Ros to recover, although an unwelcome feeling began to gather in his stomach now. The last time he’d had such a visceral reaction to stepping through a portal was in his first year of school—how was this seemingly experienced Witch struggling so much with basic transport? But his budding courage to ask her about it was soon beaten back by another voice, coming from a few metres in front of them.

“Wai Guo Ren?!” It was an old man: he had more wrinkles than skin and his back was hunched so far forward that he might topple over. He gripped a cane in one hand for support, and the shoddy table of his vegetable cart with the other. He had still been packing away today’s stock, much slower than everybody else. He blinked his milky eyes once, then shouted louder, “Wai Guo Ren! Lai lai lai!”

Newt and Ros turned to each other. Their hands were still connected, hanging low at their sides, but they had no time to blush or stammer out apologies. Front doors started swinging open in alarm, a cacophony of voices joined with the old man’s yammering. At first the new faces switched their gazes between Ros and Newt in pure intrigue, then their features twisted in fear, spurring them to stretch their arms out and aim their wands. Newt tore away from Ros’ hand to draw his own wand, but their welcoming hosts all chanted unfamiliar spells in unison, and they did not stick around to find out what they were.

They broke into a desperate sprint, scrambling through unfamiliar streets in what they remembered from the map, vaguely, to be the right direction. But every time they turned a corner or darted into an alley, more neighbours would emerge aggressively waving their wands. The enclave was supposed to be easily crossed in one day on foot, but when they finally ducked between two houses on a particularly quiet and decrepit street, Ros unfurled the map to reveal that they had already neared the end. The warning stared back at them: make sure to pass unnoticed. “I didn’t think it meant the enclave, too,” Ros whined, immediately dropping her complaints in volume when she remembered where they were, “why are they so hostile here?”

“I was never amazing at history,” Newt panted. He was slumped against the wet stone wall of one of the houses, pausing now and then to listen for pursuers, “but the Ministry accused the Chinese Mandate of violating the International Statute of Secrecy, by interfering with the muggle government during the Opium Wars. It disgraced them on a global scale, and now Chinese wizards have all but retreated.”

“Is secrecy really that important?” Ros deadpanned.

He blinked, “I… Uh. Well,” he paused to think, and to catch his breath some more, “You know it’s not that strict, because muggle-born families in Britain aren’t Obliviated. But, well, they were colluding with the Muggle government on a massive scale and making Deus Pulveris.”

Ros’ ears perked up. “Is that—I’ve heard of that. There was a boy from the next Enclave, Wuzhou, who took it. What was his name?”

“Faxian?” Newt answered in disbelief. Before setting out to find the Qilin, Newt had done as much research as possible, and that name had come up a few times. He didn’t know the boy’s personal story, but he knew he was the first person to succumb to the potion.

“Yes!” Ros hushed her exclamation. “But it killed him, didn’t it?”

Newt wet his lips. “Yes,” he confirmed, “the potion strengthens a Wizard’s magic at the cost of their life and sanity. I don’t know why they were bothering to use it on muggles but—”

Ros cut him off. “To be fair, the English hadn’t exactly done China any favours with the Opium Wars.”

“We can’t just get ourselves involved with non-magical affairs like…” Newt trailed off, his eyes falling to Ros’ makeshift utility belt of magical herbs, her wand nowhere to be found. He wondered what it looked like, what wood it was made out of and—

“I know,” Ros finally huffed. She gazed out the gap at the other end; it was clear. “I read that in the papers so many times when the war started. But now they’re saying nearly ten million died, I wonder if you lot could have done something, or anything.”

“Us lot?” Newt questioned. There it was again, that feeling clawing at his stomach. And it was pulling at Ros too, pulling her closer to an imaginary ledge each time she saw Newt cast a spell, or act so memorably un-muggle-like. He was just so different from her.

When she finally worked up the courage to look at him, he saw fire dancing behind her green eyes; a blazing sunset covered by the interlocking leaves of trees towering up ahead. But the fire was soon snuffed out, and her pupils were blown wide. “Newt!” she called a warning, ducking and desperately scrambling for her pouch. Too late.

He had dropped his wand and case. His arms were pinned up against the wall, now sinking in slowly. The edges of his clothes were being stretched out, moulded and meshed into the brick; the rest of his body began to do the same thing. Newt was gradually and, if his choked grunts made anything clear, very painfully melting into the brick house behind him. Still crouched on the floor, Ros threw her attack anyway—the shoot of Nettling landed at the singular wizard’s feet. Confused, he kicked it with his toe once, then twice. It shot up and twisted around him, tightening around his mouth first to stop him screaming, before binding the rest of his body together. The man soon fell bodily backwards.

When she turned back to Newt, he was already halfway one with the wall, yet he still managed to croak at her, “Wand—use my wand!”

Ros picked it up without thinking, turning it over in her hand once as if she’d never seen such a thing before. There was a simple counter-spell for any hex like this, she knew it well from all the pranks Celia had played and unplayed on her in their childhood. But it didn’t matter how much she knew—she couldn’t cast it. Ros pressed her lips together and looked up at Newt, her brows drawn. “I—I can’t,” she said, dazed.

But there was another way that she could help him. Ros thanked her past self for stuffing a singular Moly bulb into her utility belt. It was a bit overkill, since it was mostly used to counter higher-level enchantments, but they had no other choice. As long as she could get Newt to eat it somehow, it would bring him back from becoming one with the wall. All Ros had to do was stop fretting over the fact that, if she refused to use his wand, Newt was realising that she clearly was not a Witch after all. Ros wondered if he would ditch her for her Muggle status, or because she lied. She tried not to think about it and rummaged around her pockets instead.

Newt scoffed, desperate to get out of his bind as soon as possible. Between gasps, fighting for air, he said, “I don’t think the Ministry will mind. Just,” each word took all of his energy to rasp, “the spell, finite!”

“I’m not a witch!” Ros cried.

wai guo ren = "foreigner" in mandarin

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onekeii · 2 months ago

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Beasts from the East: Chapter 4

Fandom: Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Newt Scamander x OC (Rosalind Leitch) Word count: 4.1k Synopsis: Rosalind Leitch is perfectly comfortable being a muggle, hiding away in her village in Scotland and tending to her magical plants. But when Newt Scamander asks her to journey across China with him in search of the Qilin, she cannot find it in herself to say no. Warnings: gross man gets a bit handsy, alcohol consumption, animal cruelty, description of mild injury

Read on AO3 Beasts from the East Masterlist < Previous Chapter | Next Chapter >

Newt trailed carefully behind Ros as she led the way to the ballroom. She didn’t really know where she was going—asking for directions would give her away—but following the sound of music and chattering laughter was easy enough. They went back down the stairs into the parlour and passed through a corridor made even more narrow by the paintings lining its walls; many beady eyes followed the pair all the way through. The ballroom itself took up most of the residence’s first and second floors, for the ceiling was so much higher than it needed to be. Two identical chandeliers hung gracefully equidistant from each other in the rectangular room, itself a departure from the rest of the house’s dark and moody colour scheme.

The ceilings were brightly white, walls a mix of beige and cream and peach drapes tied elegantly over the many small windows. Gold was used sparingly to make it all the more classier. Of course, the lacquered wooden floor was clear for plenty of dancing, save for a few interesting plant features pushed to the walls. Just one second in the room and Ros could feel a lump form in her throat. She had half a mind to claw at it and pry off the non-existent hands strangling her, but it was the tender intrigue of every English wizard in Hong Kong that was suffocating her. At least all the women were dressed the same as her—prettier, even. Of course. Ros hoped that her bland appearance would give her enough wriggle room. She turned and whispered something to Newt one last time as a rosier cheeked Clarke approached, “I’ll snatch the map when they trade, then you summon your case on my signal, okay?”

He nodded, just in time for Ros to spin back around and beam at Clarke, “Tony, a pleasure to be back in this room.”

The man shot Newt a sidelong glare, so frigid it could no doubt freeze, before turning warmly to Ros and, rather forcefully, taking her hand. He led her an uncomfortable distance from her ‘colleague’, a throng of guests crashing between them like the sea. Ros believed in no God, but she said a small prayer in her mind before switching herself off, allowing her purest survival instincts to pilot her.

“Before we, uh, dance, you must tell Macao the story of the Zouyu. He won’t hear it from anybody else,” Clarke said. Ros did not appreciate the way he lingered on that word—dance—but she was hardly in the position to question it. Clarke himself seemed to be in some shade of desperation, but he definitely wasn’t anxious about the deal; he couldn’t seem to wait to get it out the way, for something else clearly occupied his mind for now. Ros felt something twist and turn and refuse to settle in her stomach; the blaring music and ingratiating voices seemed so far from her now, as if she’d just dipped her head underwater. She nodded at Clarke, digging deep into her brain for every scrap of detail her sister mentioned in that letter ages ago.

When Macao greeted her, it was with disinterested eyes and a bow only out of courtesy. He probably wanted to be there even less than she, although he had the comfort of the two uniformed henchmen standing behind him. Silver strands betrayed his real age; Ros would have guessed him to be younger than her, but Celia’s attempted dealings with him indicated quite the opposite. Once she had curtsied and greeted the wizard properly, Clarke immediately set her upon the infamous story of the Zouyu capture, her audience a tough crowd of one, more still than a statue. Ros had no choice but to try.

She locked eyes with Clarke for a long moment before beginning—a big mistake. Something was burning in their cool blue hue, waiting, hungering. It was much like Sir Radley’s eyes whenever Ros’ skirt exposed her shins in shocking summer heats. But then she began talking, her focus only on impressing the statue. And getting her hands on that map.

I was originally only in China for petty business. I was finishing up a job for Gringotts and was eager to send the package back to them as soon as possible. However, Tony and I just so happened to cross paths—he was also camping out in the same secluded mountain in Henan as I. He wasn’t exactly hard to miss—he’d brought an entire entourage, complete not only with other English wizards eager to catch a glimpse of the Zouyu, but their wives and children too. The bank had left me in a desperate position once again, and their camp gladly took me in for food and rest.

Tony later explained how he’d received a tip of the Zouyu being in the area. It was news to me—I’d never heard of such a beast. My only knowledge of the wizarding community and magical fauna in China was that they had all but disappeared from international affairs. Of course, I had to follow him and help him glimpse the thing; we thought it best to go up ahead of the camp to avoid scaring it, and to avoid potential injury, too.

We were just in the nick of time! When we emerged from behind some rocky peaks, there the Zouyu was: a feral lion-like thing with four protruding tusks and paws like an eagle’s, though its body was striped as a tiger. Its tail was long too, decorated by protruding spikes you see only on sketches of dragons. She is still as beautiful and marvellous to look at even now, you know.

But something was clearly very wrong. At first we thought it usual that she moved in jitters, crouched low to the ground like some Acromantula. Soon we realised her leg was pierced badly, and not by anything natural. One of those terrible poachers must have gotten to her first, for a wand of twisted Yew had been blasted into her right hind leg, perhaps in a fit of desperation. Maybe, upon so foolishly losing his wand, the poacher decided not to risk his life as well, and so he simply ran away. She was definitely lucky we came looking at that time.

It was a challenge, but we managed to put her at ease and retreat to the campsite. The people swarmed but we were adamant to keep them at bay, and we did all we could to heal her. The wand is gone now, discarded, but the Zouyu still walks with a limp. Still, we believe she’ll make a great mate for your male Zouwu. After all, we want nothing more than for these beautiful creatures to continue in their prosperity.

Ros startled back to reality. It was as if Celia had possessed her. She had done a great job, she gathered, for Clarke was beaming at her with unnaturally white teeth. Even the impossible statue had moved forward in his seat ever so slightly, intrigued not only by the story, but by Ros’ impeccable prose. Well, it was actually Celia’s, but Ros’ perfect memory played its part.

The statue turned to one of his henchmen and nodded his head once. He stepped forward, hand fishing about the inside pocket of his jacket before producing a delicate, yellowed sheet of folded up paper. It was folded quite thick, indicating just how large the map was, and there were no rips or tears or imperfections despite its aged discolouration. Clarke took it with one hand, casually, as if he had better things to be doing, “A pleasure, Macao. She’s waiting for you in the back garden.” And then, before Ros could show any interest in the map, he shoved it in his own pocket.

He ushered her away from the dealings with a hand uncomfortably low at her back. With grace, as if he’d done it many times before, Clarke drained his glass and ditched it on a serving boy’s tray. Ros could not even muster a question or a sound of protest with how much determination he was guiding her further and further from the crowds in the ballroom. She looked around, desperately, searching for Newt. She found him in the corner among the potted bushes—they locked eyes for one helplessly long moment, and then Clarke opened one of the many side doors in the ballroom and pushed both Ros and himself inside.

The room was surprisingly small, yet it still followed the same delicate colours as the hall outside. Two identical couches of dusty pink brocade mirrored each other in the centre of the room and a lamp of soft yellow in the corner illuminated the cream walls. It made the large mirror fixed to the opposite wall, trimmed in gold like a painting, seem so much less daunting. In their reflections, strangely unfeeling blue eyes searched Ros’ own. She shivered.

Clarke was on her in an instant. He pressed his body up against her from behind, pulling her in tighter with arms wrapped around her torso, but they soon started to wander. His breath was hot and sickly on the back of her neck, she could feel the condensation standing and slowly dripping down. Her hands moved on their own, too. First, she struggled in her distress and reached backwards to his waist, her fingers fumbling about with the flap of his jacket pocket. She managed to push her hand inside for a moment—that was all she needed—before she quickly retreated. Then, with her free hand, she gripped one of his wrists and pried herself free. With the map in her grasp, she clasped her hands tightly at her back. Three steps back from Clarke wasn’t enough for her. His eyes were shot wide with disbelief: he was not expecting that.

Safe from him for now, Ros finally realised the true nature of Celia’s relationship with this man. The hairs on the back of her neck stood. What on Earth had she just gotten herself into? Realising that her sister’s lover was awaiting an explanation, she blurted out, “Come on now, somebody might walk in.”

He took a step closer, and then another, “That’s never stopped us before.” Much too close again—Ros stepped back once more. A frown slowly dragged across his face, not so playful like it was earlier with Newt, no. It was one of realisation, his eyebrows were pressed hard together too, his right hand reaching slowly into his jacket. Before she realised he was reaching for his wand, he had drawn it out hard and fast—two spines of Yew wood were twisted and bound together in an elegant braid. It looked exactly like the wand Celia so foolishly described in her letter. “Revelio!” Clarke called.

Nothing happened. Not in any way a muggle like Ros could comprehend, but it was enough for Clarke. He knew who she was now, and he was already waving his wand again, sparks scattering aggressively from the tip. Ros dove under his arm with impressive disgrace. She nearly tripped over the lamp by the door, but she had pushed down the handle and burst back into the ballroom just in time. Clarke’s next stunning spell was lost on her, and the bustling crowd outside was none-the-wiser.

Ros gasped in relief at Newt, now much closer than before. Being apart from him made her realise how much she didn’t know about him, yet she wanted nothing more than to throw her arms around him and squeeze tight. But Clarke was still behind her. She couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t tear up his own party when he searched his pocket and noticed what was missing. Ros wasted no time: she just pulled her hands in front of her torso to show Newt the map. Newt didn’t hesitate to draw his wand. “Accio suitcase!” He called, the distant sound of crashing and thumping, like a heartbeat, grew closer.

The large, dark wooden doors burst open with a deafening crash. Everyone in their room drew their befuddled gazes to the open doorway, but Newt’s case had already long-flown past. Just in time, too, for Clarke had now worked his way out of his self-induced daze and left the side room. He stared right at—no, through—Ros. He saw the map in her hand. But, in his reignited fury, he had not seen Newt unlatching his suitcase behind her, retrieving the parchment and dropping it safely inside. It was too late, but with his twisted Yew outstretched, he fired a shot anyway. Whether it was out of disbelief, desperation, or pure depravity, Ros couldn’t be so sure.

“Protego!” Sheer purple light erupted from Newt’s wand. It ballooned around the two of them and sent Clarke’s shot of yellow light scattering in yellow sparks. Ros could nearly have mistaken them for stars; she never did have the privilege of being targeted by a wizard before. But it wasn’t going to stop her yet. Frantic hands reached into the case still open on the floor. Newt was holding his own against Clarke well, but he was far too focused on shielding the two of them to make any offensive moves. Ros had to change that.

Yet her fingers shook and shivered and resisted all command. With gritted teeth, she gripped her wrist tight with her free hand and steadied herself with the vice-like grip of Devil’s snare. Spell chants and amused chatter faded to dim around her and she drew a steady breath in. Closing her eyes, Ros lurched deeper into the case and grasped at what she needed with both hands. When her eyes shot back open, she was assembling the thing before her hands even had time to leave the case. As if dropping a hot coal, she hurled it fast at Clarke with all her might: a Bear’s breech with its roots curled tightly around some baby Nettling. The breech shrivelled and dried in an instant, the force with which Ros had thrown it scattered bits of dead leaves on the floor, but the Nettling immediately grew long and thick. Broad leaves dotted with fine silver hairs bloomed across its stem which wound its way around Clarke’s feet. It climbed sporadically around him before he could do anything to counter it.

The leaves clung inwards onto his form and Ros knew that, even through his fancy clothes, he could feel the sting from every single hair. More importantly, he was in no position to stop them now. She turned back to the rest of the people in the room, but if they had even been there in the first place, Ros could not tell. Clarke’s frivolous use of curses must have driven them all from the ballroom in a hurry. All other senses, except for pure fire running through her veins, came back to her now, and Ros could hear the weasley grumbling of a now resigned Clarke. There was something else, too.

Newt, not one for causing trouble or drawing attention to himself, did his best to suppress a grunt, but Ros was so finely attuned to a man’s cry of pain. She snapped her head around and found him clutching his upper right arm. Unsavoury red liquid dribbled through his fingers at first, but with each step he took towards her, more spurted out in droves, painting his coat and the slippery floor. The culprit, Clarke’s wand, had rolled to a stop only a few metres away. Newt was lucky it hadn’t embedded itself into his arm just like it had with the Zouyu.

Ros didn’t need to make herself move; pure instinct drove her forward. She pulled at his slanted bowtie and wrapped it around his shoulder, just above the gaping wound that stared at her beneath his fingers, and pulled tight. Ros tried her hardest to remind herself that, despite the situation, she was not back on that ambulance train. Once she secured the knot, and her hands were drenched in his drying blood, Newt muttered through winces, one eye twitching uncontrollably, “The Zouyu—”

“What about her?” Ros was harsher than she intended to be, but she couldn’t help it. Newt had just narrowly missed losing all function in one of his arms, he had better things to be worrying about than magical beasts.

“It can take us across the city,” he said, “we should get her.”

Ros sighed. If they were going to traverse South China in time for the Qilin, they were going to need as much of a headstart as they could get. She nodded once, taking Newt’s case from the floor and following him out of the now-haunted ballroom. With the residence abandoned and Clarke bound up, it was easy enough to navigate the countless rooms of the unnecessarily large house. They made sure to retrieve their precious coats from the coat rack at the entrance before retreating back into the endless maze of rooms.

When they finally found the back exit and stepped outside, they found themselves in a garden of a dozen luscious shades of green. The moon peeked at them through the leaves of palms. Leaves swished rhythmically with the wind and gravel crunched under their feet. Yet they were certainly still in the middle of industrious Hong Kong—this garden had been enchanted, grafted onto the back of the residence much like Newt’s case or Ros’ wardrobe.

The gravel path led them to a tall hedge of bushes. A roar burst through the near-ritualistic humming of the trees and the frantic whispers of a few men. Ros felt even her insides tremble, but then there was the grinding and squeaking of chains being pulled to their limit. Newt grimaced at the sound. Desperate to hold onto the element of surprise, Ros slowly unclicked Newt’s case and rummaged through its contents carefully, pulling out another sprig of Bear’s breech and, this time, some scraps of Petalwort and Ivy. She thought to herself that she’d have to fashion a better storage system than this.

After a few hushed whispers with Newt, Ros was the first to approach from behind the neatly trimmed hedge. She peeped around the corner at first, only enough to see just part of Macao’s face and one of the henchmen, but she didn’t doubt the other remained obscured by the rest of the hedge. Before she could doubt herself, she flung the Petalwort in their direction, although slightly to the side to avoid the creature. It exploded with a sonorous bang, but Macao and his men had little time to react when Ros was already slinging the Ivy root at them with the Bear’s Breech attached.

It did nothing at first, and they were none the wiser, until one henchman went to prod at it with his toe. Then it sprang into action, thin stems burst out of the ground around them all and crawled up their legs, around their arms, and over their faces until they were reduced to three patches of writhing Ivy bushes.

The Zouyu roared again, although it sounded more like a whine: a cry of pain or a plea for help. Newt had already snatched his case back and thrown himself out into the open from behind Ros. It was exactly as her sister had described: a lion’s face and bedraggled mane with two yellow-ambers for eyes. With a bird’s claws and jagged movements like a lizard, and a dragon’s tail three times its body, she was equal parts terrifying and beautiful. When she crouched, all four knees bent and ready to pounce, Ros gasped.

One playful jingle of a bell, then another. Newt was still biting his lip to hold in his pain, but in his good hand he held a… cat toy. It was a simple wooden stick with a ball of feathers on top—arguably, a Zouyu itself—but it eased the beast in an instant. He moved to the side, rang the bell again, and the Zouyu pulled herself out of its crouch, eyes softening as she creeped bodily closer. Her tail swished happily, and Newt reached his arm out to stroke the side of her face. She obliged, resting in the space between his neck and shoulder as best as she could, gently purring with her eyes closed. Newt waved his wand once and her chains were broken.

Her nose wriggled. She had smelt the blood soaking through Newt’s coat sleeve. In one graceful motion, the Zouyu stepped back and lowered its front legs into a deep bow. Ros watched on, her lips parted slightly in amazement, until she was finally snapped out of it by Newt sliding carefully onto the chimera’s back. With his good hand outstretched, he helped a dazed Ros on next. “Hold tight,” he prompted. She did, winding her arms around his middle and clasping her hands together tightly. Ros pulled herself as close to him as possible and revelled in the warmth that seeped from him, into her. It wasn’t just physical warmth, but the feather-light feeling of safety finally teasing out the stress from each and every one of her quivering muscles. With his case balanced between his knees, Newt’s hands found purchase in the Zouyu’s mane. She lowered into a crouch once again and shot upwards into the fake starry sky above.

She shattered the illusion with her head alone—the garden was just a room as big as the ballroom, but emptier. After floundering around one of the higher floors of the residence, the Zouyu tumbled into a guest room and crashed through its window overlooking the mainstreet. Nobody seemed to notice the commotion—they were either too busy or too accustomed to such shattering noises. In her leap, the Zouyu turned the night-settled city into a blur around her. It was much more pleasant than apparating, or travelling by Port Key, for the speed with which they travelled didn’t allow Ros to see just how high up they were. She felt the refreshing wind on her face, combing through her dishevelled hair, and she only now realised just how tired she had been. With over a day’s worth of sleep deprivation behind her, it was a shock that she hadn’t collapsed in on herself yet.

With a thump heavy enough to start an earthquake, they landed on a tall, green hill. When Ros slid off the Zouyu’s back, she took a moment to admire the dazzling city below: golden street lights were still ablaze even late into the night, and crowds of people ant-like in size swarmed around the streets still. The gentle hum of their chatter and careless clatter could be heard, carried over in the wind, if she listened hard enough. When she turned back to the Zouyu, Newt had lowered himself and bowed at it. She nuzzled up against him, much like before, before turning to Ros. Seeming to sense Ros’ unease, she remained a distance when she stooped low into a bow. Ros returned the gesture rather clumsily. Then, with a playful spin on the spot, the Zouyu jumped upwards into the air and held itself there for a moment before jumping up again with unfathomable speed, disappearing behind the endless stars.

Ros was still looking upwards in awe when Newt slumped to the ground against a young Birch tree. His makeshift tourniquet wasn’t holding anymore and blood had started pouring out again at an alarming rate. He tried desperately to hold it in again with his fingers, but he shook so violently that there was no hope. Ros took his case from him and sifted through it again. First, she pulled out a distilled ointment of Twin Flower and encouraged him to drink. It seemed to work immediately, his muscles relaxing and allowing her to apply a few drops of Henbane to the wound, now oozing yellow pus. Although Newt flinched at first, the anaesthetic spread fast, and Ros was able to remove his suit jacket and clean his wound, stitching it together with the few proper medical supplies she’d brought with her. It was nasty work, Clarke’s wand having taken a wide chunk right out of Newt’s arm; luckily, it was not as deep as it looked. Just a flesh wound. She made sure to pack the dressing with Dittany before bandaging his arm tight.

Newt dropped off into a heavy sleep at some point during the process. Ros sighed as she was left to clean up the mess herself, retrieving Newt’s usual blue coat from his case and covering him with it before fishing out anything remotely edible-looking from his case. She settled down against the tree trunk next to the sleeping Magizoologist, his head silently falling onto her shoulder, and waited there patiently for his eyes to flutter open again.

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