#i remember i had a panic attack when watching squid game because

[very-uncorrect]

I'm gonna die one day oh my god holy shit fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck there's no afterlife oh holy shit fuck help oh my god no no no no no

[leta-the-strange]

yay! newt/leta first kiss? preferably hogwarts era.

Oh, cute! Thanks for this one. I know its a bit long but I always get carried away :(  I still have two in my inbox to get through but feel free to send me more Leta prompts/hcs/ships. 

“I can’t believe Professor Dumbledore is letting us dothis!” Newt exclaimed with excitement, getting his head stuck in his shirt inhis hasty attempt to pull it off without undoing all the buttons.

Leta chuckled and helped pull it over his head. Shehad moments ago shrugged out of her own uniform that she had worn over the topof her emerald green school issued swimsuit and was wrapped up in her navy robe whilethey waited for the rest of the class to make their way down to the Great Lake.

She threw his clothes over the branch her own shirt, tie,vest and tartan skirt were hanging from. “I’m not awfully surprised,” she digressed.“Dumbledore has always possessed the inane ability to get his students to dohis bidding by framing it as a fun exercise.”

“Well, even so…” Newt said, aware of the distrust thatradiated from his best friend toward his favourite teacher. “…at least we’re notstuck in the classroom all day.”

“I suppose that’s true,” she mumbled unconvincingly andher shaky hand starting fiddling with the clasp of her robe. 

Newt wanted tokick himself.

He had been so eager at the prospect of looking for Grindylows thathe had not thought how terrified Leta must feel about having to go so deep inthe water. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t made progress through the years. The firsttime he noticed her, at the young age of eleven, she had been surrounded by somesnickering students and an out of his depth groundskeeper, huddled on the groundwith her hands over her ears, sobbing and shaking and absolutely hysterical atthe idea of having to get into one of the boats that traditionally carried thefirst years across the lake to the castle. For a while, she would sit under thetrees if he decided to walk or swim in the lake, slowly getting closer to theedge each time until, one year, the giant squid he had been petting tenderlywrapped one of its tentacles around her ankle and dragged her in too. He had hastilypulled her up and was surprised to find her laughing joyfully and since thenshe would join him, provided he held her hand or she gripped on to his arm. Sofar, the deepest she’d managed was up to her waist which wouldn’t be any helpto her in today’s exercise.

He noticed her other hand was clasped tightly in afist and he quickly took it in his own before her fingernails could cut anydeeper into her palm again. He made a mental note to swipe some dittany fromProfessor Prendergast’s stores later that night.

“I’ve got a plan!” he announced staring back out overthe lake.

“How many detentions can we expect from this plan?”she quipped, holding her wand between her lips while she pinned her hair out of her face. “Obviously, I’m in but I need to shift my timetable around if we’readding more punishments into the week on top of the regular ones.”

“A plan for Dumbledore’s challenge today,” hecontinued. “I’m going to have jellylegs after swimming and catching the littlebugger so if you wait by the waters edge, you can run him to Dumbledore.”

Leta doe-eyes looked both in awe and full of sorrow asshe stared up at him and she squeezed his hand appreciatively. She cleared herthroat and quickly snapped back to her playful self.

“Well, at least I’ll see you coming!” she jested athis Hufflepuff yellow swimsuit.

Their laughter was interrupted by the raucous noise oftheir Defense Against the Dark Arts class whooping and yelling as they tumbleddown toward the lake with Professor Dumbledore strolling along behind them.

Newt angled himself between Leta and a group of Gryffindorsthat had set their sights on her from the moment they had seen her panic attackin first year as well. He felt Leta’s hand go slack, but he kept ittightly clasped within his. For a long time, he assumed her always sidling awayfrom him around people was because someone like her would be embarrassed to beseen with the likes of him but eventually, and far more horrifyingly,discovered it was because she felt far too poisonous to inflict herself on him especiallyin front of other students who may turn their attention to him as well. And ofcourse, he wouldn’t let that stand.

Leta used her free hand to wrap her robe more tightlyaround her as they smirked and leered at her like a dugbog hungrily seeking outa mandrake.

“Good afternoon,” Professor Dumbledore said cheerily,planting himself in the middle of the hostility. “As most of you have rememberedkeenly it seems, I’m in need of a Grindylow for my third-year class and thoughtit may be a great opportunity for you guys to dabble in some field work. As Isaid at the end of our last lesson, the first pair to stun and retrieve a Grindylowwill get a little prize. I have been able to procure some Gillyweed for thetask.”

There was a scuffle as the teenagers tried to pair upand Dumbledore peered around knowing that the class was an odd number, but hiseyes fell on Newt and Leta who had made no movement at all as the classshuffled around.

“Ah, Miss Lestrange, Mr Scamander,” he smiled at them.“Maybe we should give the other students a fighting chance this time and splityou both up. Just for fun.”

Just for fun?! Newt thought in horror andheld on to her tighter.

“Everett!” Dumbledore clapped and saw that theextremely competitive Hufflepuff Beater had been the left-over student which hewasn’t even offended by since he was very self-aware of his win or die trying attitude.

Newt sighed in relief knowing that Everett, unlike manyof his fellow House members, had no problem with Leta. He occasionally talkedto her when Leta came to watch Newt practice with the Quidditch team and evensourced a spare Hufflepuff scarf for her to wear during games. Everett would haveno problem leaving Leta up here if it bettered his chances of winning.

“We’ll show some House solidarity and spirit today. Newtand Everett, you can join up and Leta, if you’d like to tack on the end of a Slytherinpair.”

The Slytherins in their class were not as outwardlycruel to Leta as some students from other House were but instead showed theirdisdain, and slight fear, of her through avoiding or ignoring her entirely as if she were something particularly unpleasant.  

“I’ll go by myself if it’s all the same, Professor,”Leta said blankly and Newt turned to stare at her disbelievingly, but she smiledreassuringly at him.

“That would be fine, if that is what you’d prefer,”Dumbledore granted cheerfully and went about recapping all they had learnedabout Grindylows in their previous lessons and handing out portions of theslimy looked plant.  

Newt used the opportunity to turn to Leta with panicin his eyes. “You-you can’t go by yourself!”

“I won’t be,” she countered. “You’ll be down theretoo.”  

He couldn’t ignore the tightness in his chest when shesaid that so trustingly, but it did little to ease his own worries.

“Only if you’re sure, you can stick with Everett and I,but if you start to feel-”

“Uh,” she frowned but her smile was playful as she bitinto the Gillyweed. “So, you can both steal my glory when I catch the Grindylow? No way, Scamander.”

Newt scoffed and took a section for himself. “You’rehardly serious, right now.”

“We’ll see, I suppose,” she sighed and took off herrobe. “But remember, you’ve already divulged all your weakness to the enemy,Jellylegs, with no idea of my capabilities.”  

“That’s true, you do have the upper hand in someareas. You could always annoy the Grindylow until it lets up and just goes withyou,” Newt teased as he felt the gills start to spread across his neck.

Everett clapped approvingly as he jogged over to them,luckily for Newt, who had only just caught himself before he could tell Leta shelooked very pretty as her own gills blossomed across her neck and cheeks thoughshe had fortunately been examining the webbing between her fingers to notice him staring. 

“Yes! Finally, the Slytherin vs Hufflepuff showdown we’veall been waiting for,” he pitched as he dragged Newt away to the starting area.“The day has finally come where we find out who the superior budding magizoologistis.”

For all the tactics Everett had attempted to drillinto a preoccupied and inattentive Newt, the spirited and muscular Beater was swiftlyleft behind as he was easily the slowest swimmer of the lot. Newt naturallylooked around for Leta, but the sunlight only cast an eerily glow no further thana few feet in front of him even with the help of the Gillyweed.

He couldn’t see the particularly vicious group of Gryffindorseither which made his heart start to race but before he could panic, he decidedhe had a far better chance tracking a Grindylow and getting this whole ordealover with before anything bad could happen.

It didn’t take long at all for him to find the one hehad been tracking, tangled among roots and stems looking characteristicallydisgruntled. Newt apologetically cast a stunning spell at the creature but wincedwhen the poor thing was hit in the back at the same time by the same red jet oflight that Newt had cast at it. Newt glanced around to see who had cast the samespell and he was drawn to the blurry image of Leta who had been tracking thecreature from the opposite direction. It took her a little longer to noticewhere the other stunning spell had come from but her eyes widened when theyfell on Newt and he was about to motion if she was okay when she started swimmingquickly toward the stunned Grindylow.

He grinned and started kicking as fast he could aswell. Unfortunately for Leta, Newt was a good head taller than her and was ableto stretch out twice as far despite her head start. He reached out and Leta’s hand,a fraction of a second too late, came down on top of his as he grabbed theGrindylow. He beamed across at her with a triumphant smirk that saw her eyesnarrow and her nose crinkle up in a scowl that would look no more threateningon a baby mooncalf. With the hand covering his on the Grindylow, she threaded theirfingers together as best as she could manage with the webbing and yanked himforward with such force, he thought she was trying to headbutt him when shegently pressed her lips to his.

If he could muster a coherent thought he would wonderif he had been hit with a stunning spell, or perhaps the Gillyweed was wearingoff, either way he was completely frozen and it felt like all the air had disappearedfrom his body and even if he had not been floating in the lake, it still would’vefelt like he had been un-anchored from the earth. The situation finally washed through him and he felt so foolish for wasting what was, in reality, likelyonly a second or two frozen like the Grindylow between them.

Newt lifted his hand to weave through her floatinghair, or brush against her jaw, he hadn’t quite decided yet, and he leanedcloser to press into her kiss, clumsily squishing their noses together, but he felther smile against his lips before he got the chance to return her ministrationsand ended up kissing her teeth. A stream of bubbles escaped her mouth when shelaughed victoriously as she tugged the Grindylow from below his slackened hand,which he had sought to appoint to the far more important task of holding her faceinstead and kicked her way to the top of the lake leaving him floating dumbfoundedby himself.

“What happened?!” Everett rounded on Newt as theywalked back to the castle. “You were ahead! Then you were just floating about!” 

“Lestrange probably used Stupefy on him,” one of the Hufflepuffs muttered behindthem and a few nodded in agreement much to his annoyance but Everett let out asnort before Newt could turn around.

“Stupefy,” Everett scoffed. “Yeah, stunned bysomething alright but not by Lestrange’s wand.As if she would harm a single hair on his head…A sad day for Hufflepuff today,one of our own thwarted by the likes of pretty, Slytherin girl.”

“Aw, you think I’m pretty, Polkinghorne?” Leta exclaimedteasingly as she caught up with them. She had put her robe back on, but she wasstill dripping wet and Newt muttered a drying spell that made her hair twice asbig once he was finished.

“No,” Everett said curtly. “I think Scamander thinksyou’re pretty, but don’t let that get to your head either, Lestrange, he calleda Flobberworm ‘pretty girl’ the other day in Herbology.”

The other Hufflepuffs departed, shaking their head atNewt as they passed.

“Well, we certainly have something to discuss…”

Leta wentstraight into defence.

“What?! I’m sorry! It’s not fair that you’re alreadythe size of a Quidditch goalpost! That has no bearing at whether I’m better atzoology and tracking than you.”

“Mmm, but you using your…” he awkwardly gestured toher entire being. “…is?”

“Yes, actually. If you’re so easily distracted thanyou’re going to get gobbled up by a Kelpie or barbequed by a Hungarian Horntail.If anything, you should be thanking me. I don’t know why you’re so scandalisedactually, I am a Slytherin, you know. Resourcefulness.And it was a risk on my behalf, too, you know. Do you know Wesley Cavanaugh wasright behind you?”

The image of Leta, suspended under the lake in dappledsunlight with her hair floating like a siren around her while pressing sweet, tentativekisses to Wesley Cavanaugh’s lips nearly unglued him but he shook the thoughtaway and put his hands on her shoulders.

“If you would slow down, what I wanted to discuss was…you were under the lake!”

She looked as though she might ascend as Newt staredat her in awe and pride.

“I know,” she exhaled, in shock herself. “I’m postponingthe panic attack I’ve been on the verge of the past half an hour until I replenishmy blood sugar and then it’s just going to be tears and screaming for about anhour and then I’ll be good.”

“Okay,” Newt chuckled and led her down the corridor. “Well,then lets find some cauldron cakes and then go down to the Quidditch pitch andscream for a while.”