You end up at Hogwarts, of all places, because of your mother. She sends you off with the strong held belief that it would be good for you. Good for what part of you escapes you, but Hogwarts is surprisingly pleasant.

You meet a girl on the train, alone in her own carriage, fidgety and nervous. She has a rather odd creature in her teapot - an Occamy, you learn later - and seems unable look you in the eye. You hold an extremely one-sided conversation with her, and she speaks up rarely, if ever.

The only certain thing you get out of her is her name.

You do not dwell too much on Newt Scamander, being in houses that purportedly were polar opposites in values. (Many are wrong in this respect, you think. Slytherin and Hufflepuff were known for being fiercely loyal to anyone they cared about. It just so happened that the former would kill for them and the latter would be supportive to the end.)

A vast amount of your friends are in Hufflepuff, and the few that are not are scattered among the houses. It is absolutely not your doing that you have made so many friends in so little time, you insist to your mother. It isn't your problem that people here were eagerly trying to befriend you. Well, perhaps not you specifically. But eager to befriend, certainly. Who were you to deny them that?

(You cannot help but notice Newt Scamander off to the side, alone. Wringing the life out of her poor scarf. You are bustled away to the Slytherin common room before you can approach her again.)

Hogwarts, for the most part, is vastly more interesting than anything you've seen in the moving castle. It is new to you, that is to say, and so you find yourself staying out the year. Your family was not really one for celebrating holidays in their religious context, after all. Not that these other holidays - Christmas, Easter, and the like - were very widely known in Ingary, or very celebrated.

You return to Ingary over the summer, and forget all about Newton Scamander until seventh year. She stutters out a hello before squeezing past you into Potions, looking as terrified (and as alone, you notice) as she had in first year.

She is scared of you, you realize, when you see the way her hands shake. It is not surprising, with all those rumors floating around about you. You are a veela, a Dark wizard, a vampire, a werewolf - at least according to the students of Hogwarts. The teachers have surely heard them and don't believe them, but still keep their distance. It is the only thing, you think, that is a similarity between you and Newt: this isolation of sorts.

For you, though, it is hardly isolation when you have a plethora of friends. Newt is not a fish out of water the way you are.

You almost feel sorry for her.

You end up being friends with her, afterwards. In a school year, Newt changes from that little girl you remember on the train. Nothing about her changes, really; only your perception of her does.

She strikes you as the kind of person who doesn't know how to stop giving. (A waterfall - it is the only thing you can think of that endlessly gives but cannot receive, for all that rushes out of it.)

You find yourself staying at the Scamander estate the summer after seventh year. Newt manages to get you down to her great-grandfather's suitcase; a challenge given how many times they get stopped by her family.

It is an entire world, that suitcase, and you cannot help but be amazed by it. It isn't hard to see why Newt - both of them - loved it so much; it is easy to forget the outside world in here. It is such a stark contrast to England's dreary weather with its plethora of habitats that, upon leaving, it feels like waking from a dream.

You look at Newt, so gentle with these creatures, so besotted with them, and think, Yes. I want to her to look at me the way she does these creatures.

"She never will," Newt's cousin Queenie will say to you later. "She will always love those creatures more than anything."

"She will," her namesake says. "Perhaps not in the way you want, but she will look at you with an endless determination that she loves you."

You spend yet another summer - another year - with Newt, although you travel between Ingary and her frequently.

You spend more time in Newt's company in the past four years than you ever did at Hogwarts. You bring Newt along for the ride occasionally when you travel to Ingary, and she is as fascinated by the moving castle as much as she is with anything else. (It won't do to have a taker, she faintly remembers her mother saying. You need a giver.)

It is another summer you are staying in England when Newt's great-grandfather dies. He leaves her with his suitcase and his wand, and the place in Dorset to his own children. Newt sequesters herself away in that suitcase, and you join her on occasion, but you worry.

Newt seems so exhausted these days. Her family whispers of the depression she is falling into.

"Those creatures are the only thing keeping her alive," you say. It is obvious how much of lifeline that suitcase is. It's terrifying how literal that was at the moment.

Slowly, surely, Newt recovers. It happens over the course of five years, but Newt recovers. Lorcan and Lysander tease the two of you about dating. It's a funny thing, because for all that Newt protests it, you know that she doesn't really mind that people think you and her are together, and neither do you.

It's an odd feeling.

It's close to the end of the year when you ask after the silver ring on her desk in the suitcase. It was her great-grandfather's, she tells you simply, clearly expecting it to end there. It doesn't, because you're nosy.

"Did you ever try it?" you ask not so innocently, knowing full well the answer.

"Of course not!" Her tone is mildly indignant and defensive, still tinged with grief at the edges.

You watch the ring curiously as it glints and shines in the mix of lamplight and the light of the fire. It glows like moonlight. Gently, you take Newt's hand in your own, and slip the ring onto her finger.

Newt forgets to take the ring off. It's not surprising that she forgets, given how absent-minded she is, but her family assumes you proposed. It is Lorcan and Lysander who notice first, of course, and after that the whole ordeal is just a mess.

You don't think it particularly helps that you swing an arm around Newt's shoulders and confirm it.

Newt is as red as Lily Potter's hair, but you do not miss the small smile she tries to hide.

You end up with the Dorset house, shortly after the new year begins.

You remember how, when Newt Scamander had died and willed the house in Dorset to his children, there was a great deal of bickering over what would be done with it in between worrying about the depression your own Newt had begun to sink into.

Unfortunately, this was also the year you return to Ingary more permanently than before, temporarily taking your father's place as one of the two Royal Wizards of Ingary while he attended to more pressing matters, as the letter so put it.

Newt frowns at this, pointing out how Ingary had two Royal Wizards - surely they could do without one?

You know this to be true, but the King so happens to need both Suliman's and Howl's magic for what he has in mind - bringing the Waste back to life, after the ordeal with the Witch of it - and it is very hard to get away with ignoring royalty.

You leave Newt with a soft kiss and a goodbye, promising to be back come next spring.

(You only find out Newt has taken on an odd job at Ilvermorny to be their guest lecturer for the year until it is close to when she has to leave. You feel a small surge of pride, and remember the little girl on the train, alone. But that memory is bittersweet now, and both of you have changed tremendously since then.)

You finally marry the spring you both return; you from Ingary and Newt from America, with her cousin Queenie in tow.

The wedding is eventful, and larger than either of you thought it would be, but that is to be expected with a family as well rooted in the wizarding world as the Scamanders.

You never really decide whose last name to take. Instead, you take Newt's in England and your own in Ingary, only ever causing confusion when someone from Ingary visited England, or the other way around.

Your travels between Ingary and Dorset become more frequent, and Newt is still as fascinated by the moving castle as ever. Your mother glares at you and hisses under her breath, "If you dare hurt this girl-" You go pale, quick to agree, not wanting to find out the threat your mother has in store.

"Ah, yes, I'm afraid your mother will beat Death themselves to you if that happens," her father jokes, narrowly missing the look her mother gives him.

You look over at Newt, as fascinated and besotted with the world as ever. You need a giver, the memory of your mother whispers in the back of your mind. And so it seems you have finally found yourself one.