#so sorry for the atypically poor syntax / grammar

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Hi

I hope you don’t mind me asking, but as you know I really enjoy reading some of your fanfic and love the way Newt’s family are written in your universe. I love how Newt’s parents are supportive, especially his dad. I think his dad and Theseus are my favourites.

Anyway I wanted to ask, in your world how would Helious and Rowan react to Newt’s expulsion from Hogwarts? What happened when Newt came home? Or when they were called in after the incident?

Did they treat him with kid gloves? Like go about it delicately like they did with the incident with his uncle in the ministry? Or maybe this time he’s gone too far (as far as they know), so they’re more disappointed and bit more firmer? He’s not a kid anymore so how would that go? Now that’s something interesting I think to explore.

Hello! Good to hear from you! I’m answering this from bed half asleep so forgive me for not going into a ton of detail. But if I put it off I’ll just never reply. Very happy you like how I write the Scamander family

And great question — because their reaction is different from how they treat him after the situation with Hesiod in “The Riot Act”. While still cognitively immature, there’s still a big difference between barely 11 and 16/17…. ‘Kid gloves’ are appropriate when dealing with certain issues at certain ages, but realistic conversation would probably be a better fit for the expulsion at 16.

That being said..

So I actually I have a few versions of their reaction to Newt’s expulsion I’ve been playing around with. But all of them involve Newt going back to live with Rowan eventually, but spending the first month avoiding home, living solely with his dad in London. I write him specifically requesting his father be contacted to pick him up, after which he informs his mother himself, while at Helios’. Newt knows she’ll be disappointed. And he ultimately chooses to figure the first few weeks after expulsion out with Helios precisely because Rowan is struggling to be supportive (and he likely feels ashamed). Rowan, meanwhile, feels she’s tried everything and still she’s ended up with her youngest son, expelled from school, just come of age with absolutely nothing going for him. She’s worried, and frustrated, and angry, and that can be hard for someone like Newt to figure out how to handle, especially bc I don’t headcanon he tells his parents about the entire Leta situation. Which makes him come across as far less sympathetic.

By this point, I write their dad as being somewhat “checked out”. He’s largely given up on parenting by now (I mean, Theseus is well into adulthood, but newt’s still young), as he’s been rather burned out by his own life and some particularly poor coping mechanisms. You can imagine the unspoken strain that puts on a family unit. Helios is of course upset with the situation but he’s not disappointed in Newt in the same way as Rowan (probably for obvious reasons, as he and Newt share a lot of personality traits in addition to some overlapping neurodivergence), so his reaction is pretty tempered. So it’s easier for Newt to hide there, with his dad.

Luckily for both Rowan & Helios, though, Newt immediately gets work at DRCMC and an apothecary in Diagon Alley, so he keeps himself busy, and largely out of trouble. He strikes me as the kind of person who does much better—in many ways—in the world than he does in school (I say, heavily projecting), so I imagine over the course of a few months, he and his mum come back around to understanding one another better. There’s a point at which one just has to accept that (a) this is the unfortunate way of the world and it’s necessary to survival to sometimes just accept it [Newt], and (b) this is just the way some people are — you can cry and scream about it but good luck trying to change something that perhaps just can’t be changed [Rowan]. Neither of them is entirely in the right, and I think they both probably know it, a little bit.

I do headcanon the expulsion as one of the first real cracks in N & T’s relationship, though. Theseus doesn’t abandon him and remains an anchor in an otherwise somewhat unstable family during this time period, but he doesn’t understand him, and it starts to get messy.

One of the reasons I love writing about Theseus and Newt is because neither of them is perfect. They both have canon flaws in how they deal with commitment and conflict. And I’m trying to figure out how to write the expulsion reaction for all of them, so I’ve just been poking at it for a few months, and waiting for it to shape itself out.

So that’s some rambling. Certainly it’s not all my thoughts because I’m in bed but. Would love to know your thoughts too.