Graves was half way up a tree when he came to the realization that he honestly wasn't looking forward to going back to America. Newt had decided that the erumpent really needed to have some mineral supplements, and the erumpent had decided that she emphatically did not want to take them. Newt and Graves were now waiting out her temper tantrum up one of the trees in her habitat.

"She's moody because she didn't find a mate while she was in season," Newt informed Graves in a soft voice as if he didn't want the erumpent overhearing him and having her feelings hurt.

Graves just nodded. He was too busy breathing through the breathtaking adrenaline rush of outrunning an erumpent without magic to care about the exact cause. He'd missed this since becoming head auror. It had been too long since he'd truly been out in the field. Graves had never been particularly fond of desk work. He had, when he was still a young auror in training, blown up one of the origami paperwork rats once after a particularly long and stressful case with an exploding hex. With age and experience had come unflappability and self-restraint, but Graves was often still sorely tempted when one of the wretched things scampered onto his desk and unfolded right before he was about to head home for the night. Enjoying order and organization was not the same thing as enjoying filling out forms.

Next to him, Newt was frowning down at the erumpent with concern.

"This doesn't become you at all, you know," he told the massive beast as she continued to stomp circles around their tree. "You'll feel much better with some extra potassium and iron in your diet. It'll stop your feet from getting cramps." The erumpent let out a trumpeting snort sound. Newt let out the sigh of a put-upon parent dealing with a particularly temperamental child.

Graves couldn't help himself. The corners of his mouth pulled up minutely. They'd been doing that an awful lot over the last five days. Probably more than they had in the past year.

And then the realization hit him.

Oh, hell.

He didn't want to go back.

He didn't want to go back to his cold, lonely apartment and his desk covered in paperwork surrounded by fellow aurors who didn't know him well enough to spot an imposter. He wanted to stay here with this mad, British magizoologist and his menagerie of dubiously legal magical creatures.

And that was a problem, because Graves was also aware that he had a duty to MACUSA and President Picquery. He was the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He couldn't just abandon his position. He couldn't stay here. He had to go back. They'd be reaching France tomorrow.

Damn it.

Newt was not looking forward to arriving in France as much as he'd thought he would. He'd been anticipating sending his first draft of his manuscript onto his publisher and then heading back to Africa or possibly central Europe or Australia to continue his research. One year in the field was only the beginning. His contract covered at least another year of field research – possibly two if his first edition was well received – and Newt wasn't about to waste that time on something as mundane as editing. But now….

Well, humans came and went. Shouldn't he have learned that by now? Only creatures stayed. Either way, they'd be arriving in France tomorrow.

Newt tried to refocus his attention on the diricawl and her chicks. He was doing his best to track their progress as they gained a better handle on the apparating. Pickett was perched on his shoulder and holding onto his earlobe, watching the diricawls distrustingly. Two of the other bowtruckles, Finn and Poppy, had hitched a ride in Newt's hair, because in their opinion Newt was a warm, walking tree that Pickett shouldn't get to monopolize. Newt's quill scratched across the page of his notebook. Three weeks old and the chicks could already apparate two feet in any direction.

He'd really been enjoying having someone to share his creatures with.

On the morning of their arrival in France, Graves awoke to the now familiar, warm weight of puffskeins and niffler on his chest but also to a strangely lumpy mattress. The workshop's cot wasn't the most comfortable thing ever created, but it certainly hadn't had hard lumps in it when he went to sleep the night before. What in the blazes?

Graves shifted and rubbed sleep out of one eye without disturbing the sleeping creatures sprawled across him. As he shifted his weight, something clinked. He paused and then reached down and pulled a hard lump out from underneath his ribcage. The lump turned out to be a gold coin. Graves stared at it in puzzlement for a moment. On his chest, Walter stirred. It lifted its head, squinted at the shiny disk of metal, and then plucked the coin from his fingers and tucked it back beneath his ribcage. Walter huffed and flopped back down again, knocking a puffskein over and causing the ball of fluff to roll off the cot and bounce across the floor. Graves sat up. The rest of the puffskeins rolled away, and Walter plopped into his lap with an indignant noise of protest.

In the indent left by Graves's shoulders and back, there was a small treasure-trove. Several gold coins and copper no-maj pennies, a costume jewelry brooch, a particularly glittery necklace, a highly polished belt buckle, a bronze statuette of a dog, and a familiar silver cigarette case lay on top of the sheets. Graves stared at the collection blankly for a moment and then turned to frown down at the niffler still sitting in his lap. Walter blinked up at him with an expression somewhere between hopeful and sly.

Several minutes later, Graves was fully dressed, and Walter was still watching him with that calculating expression. There was a rattle from above and then Newt was descending the ladder.

"Good morning!" There was a forced sort of cheerfulness to Newt's voice. "We're about two hours from port, and then it's only a few apparation points to Paris." Newt was fidgeting uncomfortably with some of the viles on his desk now.

Graves crushed the urge to frown at the mention of Paris. Getting an international portkey back to New York was for the best. Instead he just nodded in acknowledgement and greeting.

"Do you know why Walter felt the need to hide things in my bed last night?"

"Who?" Newt looked up from his fidgeting, his eyebrows knitting in confusion.

Ah, that was right – he hadn't told Newt that he'd named the niffler.

"The niffler. It reminds me of a petty thief I used to arrest quite often."

"Oh!" Newt turned to look at where Walter was still perched in the middle of the cot, watching Graves intently. He smiled. "It does suit him, doesn't it? I usually just call him 'pilfering pest' or 'thieving bugger.'" Newt's eyebrows rose as he took note of the shiny trinkets lying on top of the blankets. "I, uh." He started fiddling with the button on his coat sleeve. "I think he's trying to bribe you."

"Bribe me?"

"To stay."

"Ah."

Smuggling Graves through muggle customs was no harder than smuggling his case through muggle customs ever was. Side-along apparating wasn't a problem for Newt either, and he had roped his case shut just to be completely sure that no one escaped to run amok in Paris. Explaining to the goblins at the Paris branch of Gringotts why Graves should be allowed into the bank when he didn't have so much as a passport to prove his identity was a touch more exciting. A great deal more exciting than Newt had anticipated, actually. It took close to an hour of talking and two complicated magical identification spells before Newt finally found himself standing in front of a large communication mirror waiting for someone in MACUSA to answer the mirror's summons. Graves was standing off to one side after they had agreed that it probably wasn't best to completely startle whoever answered the mirror.

What time even was it in New York? Newt hadn't thought of that. Paris was several hours ahead, wasn't it?

Before Newt could ponder this further, the mirror in front of him swirled and three faces were suddenly staring back at him. Two of them were familiar.

Bugger. He'd really been hoping that he wouldn't have to talk to President Picquery. At least Tina was a friendly face. The third person was a dark haired man that Newt couldn't recall meeting before.

"Mr. Scamander," President Picquery's voice was as smooth and calm as ever, "I wasn't expecting to hear from you for at least a year."

"Ah. Yes. Well, about that. It would seem that I found something that you lost." Newt shuffled sideways and beckoned Graves over. Graves squared his shoulders and strode confidently forward. It struck Newt that he looked far stiffer than he had the past few days. He nodded to each of the figures in the glass,

"Madam President. Goldstein. Harper."

There was a very long moment of shocked silence. Tina and the unknown man were both gaping. Even President Picquery's eyes had widened slightly.

"Mr. Graves?" Tina finally managed to choke out.

"His identity has been has been verified?" asked President Picquery, ever practical, her eyes flicking over to Newt.

Newt nodded,

"Twice over by the goblins."

"Then I must say it's good to see you alive, Mr. Graves."

"Thank you."

Explaining to the president of the Magical Congress of the United States of America that you had been held captive in a cigarette case for three months and then accidentally rescued by a magizoologist when his niffler had tried to escape to rob the passengers of the boat the magizoologist was traveling on was just as embarrassing as Graves had anticipated. He didn't let any of that show on his face, of course – he was a professional.

"I haven't noticed any lingering side effects from my imprisonment and am ready to take an international portkey back to New York as soon as possible. I'm sure the paperwork on my desk is beginning to acquire foothills," Graves finally concluded. Just the thought of how much paperwork this mess with Grindelwald must have created made him internally cringe.

President Picquery hesitated just a fraction of a second before speaking, but Graves had known her long enough to notice the minute tells of discomfort in her shoulders.

"Percival," oh, this wasn't going to be good – she almost never used his first name, "we believed you to be dead. LeRoy Hunt has been made head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Your personal possessions were put into storage."

Graves stared at her blankly. The first thought that popped into his head was, Hunt's not a bad choice. His interrogation technique could use a little work, though. His second thought was that his job was gone.

"I see." Well, what had he expected? For them to wait around for a dead man's return? But… it was his job. For well over a decade now, it had been his entire life's purpose, what his every waking thought had revolved around, and just like that it was simply… gone. Cold dripped down his bones until his entire body felt numb. He opened his mouth, and for the first time in years he floundered.

Silence stretched out.

"Um, you know," Newt finally spoke up. He was picking at a loose thread on his cuff. "My research budget has provisions in it for an assistant." He paused and shot Graves a sideways glance and then looked away again just as quickly.

"An assistant?" Feeling started to leech back into his muscles.

Newt gave a half shrug.

"Or a bodyguard. Professor Dumbledore suggested that. I'm not entirely sure if he was joking or not." Newt straightened up and stopped picking at his cuff. "All my creatures like you, and you're good with permits, so why not?"

There was that smile tugging at the corners of Graves's mouth again. Well, he hadn't wanted to leave in the first place, had he? He turned to face President Picquery.

"If you'd be so good as to have my passport, wand, pocket watch, vault key, and a suitcase of my clothes sent along by international parcel to the Paris branch of Gringotts, I'd greatly appreciate it. It seems I won't be coming back to New York for a while."

A/N: Every time I think that this story is done, I turn around and discover that I've written another chapter.