On why the US was definitely a better place for Newt, according to the deductions of MACUSA's Director of Magical Security.
The report on the Briton's past in England was on Graves’s desk in the morning.
After a lovely dinner with Newt the night before, it hadn't been the best way to start the day.
Percival had flipped through the pages Fontaine and Abernathy had compiled from the dossier the Ministry of Magic had sent when Scamander was hired at MACUSA, and as those same pages passed through his fingers, anger made one of his eye’s twitches.
The whole damn document was populated with not at all concealed remarks from his partner's superiors who let slip that they had not appreciated Newt's abilities and particularities at all, neither in his personal life, nor in his work.
"Low willingness", "inability to perform complex asignments", "socialization problems", "transfer recommended", "supervision board requested", "license suggested", "proposed a review by mental health of San Mungo”.
An endless list of complaints and little hidden attacks.
That had as a finishing touch the fact that, not satisfied with evaluating a subordinate negatively, these superiors had forced Newt to sign at the bottom of each page in which they had taken it upon themselves to vilify him.
MACUSA's Director of Magical Security took a deep breath, while outside his office Queenie Goldstein could be heard telling his second-in-command, Abernathy, that "the boss needed him."
Said Director closed his eyes and stroked the cocoon of Swooping Evil that was on his desk, while letting the rage transform into something more useful than just a total loss of energy.
“Chief?”
Graves at hearing the voice opened his eyes to see the legilimens poking her head inside.
“Tell him to come in, Miss Goldstein and, I would appreciate it if...”
“Coffee for two”
The girl smiled using her skill, to which Graves replied with a smile of his own and a nod.
“I suppose you have already read the report…”
Abernathy observed as he entered the office and sat down.
“This isn’t a report” explained Graves, gently tapping the document with a finger “It’s an incredibly childish defamatory construction”
“Fontaine and Weiss think the same” admitted the auror “And the worst thing is that they sent it with total impudence to Scamander's new job”
“What surprises me” Percival commented, while the office door opened again letting a coffee service levitate in, which leaned on his desk “is that Newt's brother is... someone important in the Ministry and it shows that he appreciates him, because he is always talking about Theseus with joy”
Abernathy sighed in agreement as they both poured themselves a cup of coffee.
It didn't seem appropriate at all for the older Scamander to allow his fellow Ministry members to mistreat his younger brother in such a way.
“Maybe he can't” said his second in command after a few minutes “defend Newt, I mean”
“How come?”
Percival questioned raising an eyebrow.
“Boss, not for being cruel at all, because the boys and I seriously appreciate Newt, but... there is something strange about him” the auror commented, shaking his head “With us and, especially with you, he is affectionate and kind and a little distracted and clumsy and super capable, but when it comes to dealing with people outside of the professional, Scamander just withdraws, you know?”
“What’s Weiss's evaluation?”
Percival asked bringing the fingers of one of his hands to the bridge of his nose, because he feared, but he believed he knew where Abernathy's reasoning was going, regarding his partner.
“As a specialist in wizarding psychology, Weiss believes that something serious in Scamander's childhood conditioned the way in which he relates to the world and how that same environment responds to him”
The Director of Magical Security lowered his hand and sighed.
He didn't need to ask for any suggestions on how to approach the subject: he had to dig into his partner's youth in the most discreet and least intrusive way possible.
Which put him in a bind, since he wasn't just acting as Newt's boss, but also as his boyfriend, which clearly represented a conflict of interest.
Percival’s second in command let him reason for a few moments, before his gaze would rest on the copy of the magizoologist's book that had on his desk.
Perhaps the answer wasn’t in asking about past traumas, but talking to someone who wasn’t related to the brown-haired man and who, unlike his compatriots, really appreciated the magical creature lover.
“How long would it take you to obtain an international portkey?”
Graves inquired his subordinate.
“Twenty minutes tops, can I ask where in England?”
“Hogwarts, Abernathy” the American said getting up from his seat, while holding the cocoon of Swooping Evil and the copy of the book that the British had gifted him “I'm going to visit Hogwarts”
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Noon had barely passed when MACUSA's Director of Magical Security arrived at the gates of the School that his beloved had attended and in which, according to his deductions and those of his subordinates, resided the key to what by all accounts it seemed to be a sad and hard past for Newt Scamander.
Graves looked up and saw how the trees of the forest that surrounded the place, as well as the lake that was nearby, were covered by the first signs of autumn.
He didn't deny it. The place had its charm. However, and not to belittle Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but with everything and the Scottish landscape, he didn’t feel that it surpassed Ilvermorny in beauty, as Newt had exhaustively assured him.
“Director Graves. Welcome”
He was greeted by a woman with a haughty look and perfectly coiffed hair, opening the gates of the educational establishment.
“Professor McGonagall, I suppose”
Answered the Director by extending his hand, which the woman squeezed with hers, returning the greeting while nodding.
“The Professor is waiting for you. Follow me, please”
The lady expressed letting go of his hand to turn around and go through the gates of the castle that housed the famous British school.
Percival peered at the ancient details of the building, clearly imbued with the power of centuries of witches and wizards who had passed through its halls and chambers, following the witch through the halls.
"So, this is the place where Newt studied."
Thought a few moments later when saw a group of students laughing and chatting through one of the parallel galleries to which they were passing.
The auror smiled imagining how adorable his young lover must have looked in that robes, which seemed to be made for a little Scamander to put at least a dozen creatures in his pockets.
“We have arrived” the Professor announced, knocking on a door with her knuckles, to then open it and let him in “Nice to meet you, Director”
“I say the same, ma'am”
Graves greeted her with a nod before entering the room.
“Percival Graves?”
The gentleman inside asked, coming over to greet him.
“Albus Dumbledore?”
Percival questioned him in turn, extending his hand, which the man squeezed with a broad smile.
“Yes, please take a seat”
The Director accepted the invitation, settling in one of the chairs that were located in front of the desk, while the teacher sitted on the opposite side, without ceasing to observe him.
Graves resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the scrutiny, since he was able to use the time to do exactly the same with his future interlocutor.
His conclusions?
Grindelwald was absolutely right to fear the guy.
The middle-aged man had an affable expression and was an impeccably dressed handsome English gentleman, but the auror didn't need much to tell that was extremely dangerous being. His eyes were closely guarding certain points in the room which spoke of someone who was aware of how to use his environment to defend or attack, while two of his fingers were in constant contact with the wand that was hidden on his wrist. That type of reflexes, added to the notorious vibration produced by the teacher's magic and his performance record, revealed that he wasn’t an ordinary wizard at all.
“As out of the ordinary as Newt is…”
Percival murmured with a low chuckle, causing his partner's teacher's eyes to sparkle with amusement.
“I presume that our magizoologist is the reason why MACUSA's Director of Magical Security has decided to be present at our School unexpectedly”
Dumbledore commented, crossing his legs.
“Officially? I'm here to complete certain observations necessary for the file about the capture of Gellert Grindelwald” Percival answered as he took out of his pocket the report that his aurors had given him, his copy of Newt's book as well as the cocoon of Swooping Evil that he rested on top of it the teacher's desk “Unofficially? It could be said that I’m torn between the auror who thinks should file a formal complaint with your Ministry for mistreatment and the boyfriend who can barely contain himself from bewitching the very ones he would file the complaint for"
Albus Dumbledore raised his eyebrows in astonishment at the auror direct approach to the facts, but Graves shrugged.
He had no time for British niceties.
His international portkey would be activated again in a couple of hours.
And in New York they didn’t consider it productive to go around beating the bushes.
The professor, then, came forward and after seeing the cocoon of the creature out of the corner of his eye, picked up the report and the book, reviewing both conscientiously.
“No wonder…” acknowledged sighing later, while pointing to the ministerial document “Our system is… old. Ancient. Hard to change. Although I admit that it’s… extremely hard that they have him to…”
“Sign each and every one of those evaluations?” Percival questioned “I don't know what world you live in, but in the rest, that's workplace bullying, Professor”
“That's why he left this world, right?” the man replied “How’s Newt?”
“Fine. Adapting” Graves explained “MACUSA is a different entity from that of your Ministry”
“I heard that your President personally convinced him to stay and work there”
“You heard well”
“And yet” signalled out the teacher pointing to his copy of his partner's book “the one who has notes and comments in Newt’s handwriting in one of the few copies of an out-of-print book, as well as one of his creatures, is you”
Percival nodded in response, picking up the cocoon again. This, being stroked as Newt had explained, caused the Swooping Evil to unfurl to rest on Graves’s chest, basking in the attention.
“Director” said Dumbledore laughing low “Are you aware that that creature feeds on human brains?”
“Alastair was raised in a certain suitcase, without contact with the usual type of food consumed by his kind”
Clarified to the Professor, while the animal, after being pampered for a few moments, returned to its original cocoon shape, which the auror put back in his pocket.
“What do you want to know?”
The man asked handing him back the report and his copy of the book.
“I'm not interested in the reason why Newt was expelled. That’s something that he, if he wishes, at some point, will tell me” Percival explained “What I want is that you, who got to know him well enough for him to ask you years later to write the prologue of his book, to tell me tell everything you remember about the Newt Scamander who studied in these rooms was like, without sparing a single detail”
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“Would you go dinner with me?”
The Director asked Newt upon returning from England.
“Now?”
“Hi, Pickett” Percival laughing greeted the bowtruckle that was peeking through his lover's hair when he tried to accommodate the curls behind the brown-haired man ear “I don't know if you've seen the time, but…”
“Oh!” Newt exclaimed when realized that the day was over “I haven't fed anyone yet! I have to…! Sorry, but I can't...”
“I ordered take away” the auror explained showing him the bag he had in one hand “The Goldsteins are waiting for us and they say that as long as you give me asylum in your suitcase, there is no issue with me staying there”
The magizoologist's face broke into a broad smile as he nodded, and Graves couldn't help but recall one of the sections of the conversation he had had with Dumbledore just a few hours before.
“Living in our part of the world, for certain people like Newt, means having to accept that you're not going to be able to enjoy some of the things that others enjoy without a problem. Closeness and contact, for example. The youngest of the Scamanders learned early that for someone like him, being openly honest, as well as trusting others, was going to be very difficult”
Which meant that the Newt they had been able to meet on their team at MACUSA was one that the rest of humanity didn't know. One who trusted Percival and his aurors enough to allow himself to actually be himself, share his creatures, and even seek to woo the Director.
Therefore, it depended on all of them, but especially on Graves, that the resident magizoologist never close himself off as he had done in England and that, little by little, through physical contact and good treatment, he could also flourish outside the offices of the American aurors.
“Do me the favor of sending this envelope to Theseus Scamander” he told Abernathy, who had also been late in leaving to catch up with his own reports “Under the classification of urgent”
The auror nodded, as Newt searched for his coat and suitcase, calling after the Director so they could apparate near the sisters' building.
The next day, Percival was sure that in Europe there would be several people surprised, among whom would be the oldest of the Scamanders, at receiving two letters of formal complaints, one from President Picquery and another from her Director of Magical Security, in which they severely questioned the behavior of the English Ministry of Magic regarding the employer/employee treatment, evidenced in the copy of the document that they had the audacity to send to New York, and of which they hoped to have guarantees of the destruction of all its other copies otherwise, they would recommend Newt Scamander, MACUSA's permanent magizoologist, to initiate legal action through the Magical Congress of the United States of America for workplace bullying against his former employer.
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Like always happened, what was a beautiful period of uninterrupted courtship, in which Newt and Percival continued to build their relationship smoothly and pleasantly, couldn’t last long without going through a storm.
And it’s that, the life of an auror, always put these challenges ahead of each of them.
In Graves' case, his weakness was children.
Nothing disturbed him worse than seeing children suffer at the hands of criminals.
Sadly, he had been through too many situations involving infants during his career and knew that in his remaining years at MACUSA, he would see many more.
In Newt's case, his weakness was obviously magical creatures.
Nothing could throw his partner off his axis worse than seeing a helpless magical creature suffering at the hands of some wretches.
“Scamander!”
Roberts exclaimed after appearing in the offices drawing everyone's attention.
In her hands, there was a filthy box and the woman's despairing face indicated to the Director as well as to the magizoologist that injured magical creatures had been found in the raid the team had attended.
For a few seconds, time seemed to stop, only to start running again immediately after as Newt ran towards the box and Percival gave the first orders to his aurors.
“Kenneth take Mr. Scamander's suitcase to my office. Goldstein have potions on standby in case their help is needed. The others, contact the rest of the areas for them to stand by and don't bother us until the victims have been treated. Move!”
His staff quickly got to work clearing the path to the magizoologist who, upon hearing that his suitcase was being transferred, went with the box in his hands and Roberts commenting on the details of the case.
“A group of magicians had them captive. They were used to scare and confuse No-Maj, we were told. Creating designs in crops”
“Thank you, Roberts” the Director told his auror when he saw that the British man was only concentrating on getting to his suitcase hut as soon as possible, where he surely had the necessary elements to assist whatever came in the box “We we'll take over from here”
“You're welcome” the woman answered, holding the Director’s arm before he closed the door to whisper to him “Boss, they are in very bad condition…”
Graves sighed and nodded to Abernathy, who nodded in response. The office was officially in command of the second and the aurors should defer their inquiries and permissions to him.
Turning around after thanking Roberts again, Percival discovered that the magizoologist wasn’t in the Aurors Chieff office, but that the suitcase remained open, clearly an invitation for the Director to join his partner in the process of assisting the creatures that had been rescued.
The American, then, went down the stairs, making sure to close the lid of the suitcase, knowing that it was much safer for both of them, since Queenie would make sure that it wasn’t touched by anyone.
“Dehydrated, malnourished, beaten...”
He heard Newt mutter as he descended to find the Brit's back facing the table in his study in the shack where, on a cloth, he was inspecting three small mooncalves.
A chill ran down Percival's spine as he saw the image unfold on the wooden surface.
The calm creatures that, in the habitat that his partner had in his suitcase, used to have their big eyes open and be very active, always curious about what the American was doing or bringing to Newt Scamander's personal world, in this case, could hardly be recogniced as members of the same species.
Very thin, with marks on their bodies, eyes closed, breathing hard, and with their legs almost in bare skin, they were, as Roberts told him, the spitting image of something that wouldn’t last long.
However, if he had learned anything from those months of quasi-living with the brown-haired man, it was that Newt Scamander could face any adverse situation and beat all the odds.
“Tell me what you need” he said to his boyfriend supporting him with a hand on his shoulder “I'll help you save them. You're not alone”
The British nodded and after taking a deep breath and exhalation, answered.
“Water, I need to wash and disinfect them first”
Graves took off his jacket and hung it on the coat rack, only to leave the shack, rolling up his shirt sleeves, to find the demiguise holding a bucket.
That had been the beginning of four days in which the mooncalves had hung by a thread. The Director, during that time, had assisted his lover as much as possible, sporadically leaving the suitcase to check that nothing serious had happened outside and to look for food for both of them, as well as for the other creatures, since Newt had concentrated all his energy into the three small bodies.
For Graves the process had been extremely difficult and revealing, since he hadn’t been able to avoid drawing a parallel between the kidnapping of the mooncalves and his own kidnapping at the hands of Grindelwald.
Both the creatures and he had been taken from their environment against their will by criminals. Both the creatures and he had been poorly fed, poorly supplied with water and mistreated to the point of endangering their existence. Both the creatures and he couldn’t at first identify that they were safe when they were rescued. And both the creatures and he had been treated during their recovery by the careful hands of the youngest of the Scamanders.
Percival couldn’t deny that he had ended up deeply moved when, when Newt deposited them, in the moonlit habitat of the other mooncalves, one of the rescued little ones, opening his eyes, had gently rubbed his face in his boyfriend's hand, as if appreciating the tenderness with which they were treated compared to the hell they had lived through before.
The British had responded to the gesture with a whisper in which he had asked the creature to save strength and go back to sleep, that everything would be fine, although neither of them yet knew if the little ones would survive.
How many nights out of those two weeks when Percival had been sedated recovering and that the magizoologist had barely left his side in the hospital in New York had had that same voice reassured him in the same way?
Had Newt ever doubted that MACUSA's Director of Magical Security would survive the consequences of his captivity?
The American had never wanted to think about it.
In fact, he had kept the medical report of his treatment in one of the drawers of his desk and hadn’t even wanted to go through it before burying it among other papers. So, he had thought that he had taken things as one more work situation. After all, how many times had he been seriously injured in the past? It was practically a condition for being an auror of a certain category to have an alarming number of visits to the Hospital.
Yet today he could see that what he had actually done was run from the truth.
From the simple and plain fact that he had been very close to not telling the story.
Which made him go through various states in a very few minutes.
Terror, because if his life had ended at that moment, he wasn’t sure that he would have done so at a time when he considered that everything, he had wished for had been fulfilled. Fury, because it had ended up at the hands of someone horrible. Disappointment, because the people closest to him at the time hadn’t been able to identify the impostor faster. And, finally, sadness, because he would have missed meeting Newt and experiencing living a new adventure with the magizoologist.
Because those days, in which concern for the little ones had made them almost retreat into the suitcase, had been a before and an after for Percival.
Busy in assisting the creatures, both had been able to virtually live together. Since they had shared meals and talks for much longer than they could allow themselves outside and had even slept together, when the American had been able to convince the British that they will place a spell that will notify them if there was any change on the patients, but that they needed to rest.
The brown-haired man, in those early mornings, had allowed himself to be dragged to the bed of his hut, where he had fallen exhausted, fully clothed in Graves's arms. The leader of the MACUSA aurors, those same early mornings, had stayed awake, not only to watch the patients out of the corner of his eye, but also to consider how he felt about what was happening between them and had come to the conclusion that he didn’t want to return to a cosy but extremely lonely house.
That, when the tension over the mooncalves was over, he would take the next step, because it was evident that Newt respected his timing and only responded to the movements that Percival made. As if he were one of his creatures, the specialist waited for the Director to hug him, touch his hands or invade his personal space, before reciprocating. And that had led the American to appreciate much more the efforts that the British made to make him feel comfortable and calm in the relationship they had.
The magizoologist, if he took into consideration the history that he had been able to learn by talking to Professor Dumbledore, probably still had doubts about his worth and couldn’t understand that, in full view of the whole world, who was benefiting from both, it was precisely Graves. Because, beyond the intelligence and the ability of the brown-haired man, his enormous heart and patience, they were much more than what a curmudgeon with a very bad mood like him, would have expected in life.
And, therefore, seeing how the magician's eyes went dark as the little mooncalf closed his eyes, Percival extended his hand for Newt to take, helping him to get up in order to dance softly under the artificial moonlight of the habitat.
“My mother taught me” he said to the boy, sighing in his ear "She used to dance with me whenever I looked sad or stressed to cheer me up”
Newt burst into giggles, probably imagining Percival as a child being led by his mother to dance and, like on that occasion when, days before, they had ended up hitting their heads due to the lack of coordination of the head of the aurors when trying to kiss him, the American laughed too.
But, as always, his special partner had managed to silence their laughter with an unexpected move.
As with the rescued little ones, the magizoologist had shown a tender gesture.
The kind that, Graves thought, had been left so far behind in time that he wasn’t going to relive them.
The Briton had gently rubbed his nose with his, causing his heart to jump out of his chest, while his face had turned red as a tomato even under the light of the night star.
“Thank you”
The one with the blue eyes told him in a whisper.
“It's my pleasure, Newt”
Percival confessed.