Cycles of Sun

Hippolyta receives the note a little after Helena’s been settled down for her morning nap. It is very short, in Tina’s efficient handwriting, and simply says “come as soon as you can, TS.”. It’s lacking any of Tina’s usual politeness, her attempts at being more English and less American in her writing style. The lack of pleasantries makes Hippolyta worry more than she thought it ever would, and she has her wand packing her day bag and Helena grizzly but awake, knocking on the door to the little cottage in Dorset before the clock in the house can chime ten thirty.

Tina opens the door, a big shirt bunched tightly around her stomach, a faint pink flush on her neck. A wave of warm air flies over Hippolyta, contrasting sharply with the late Autumn chill. Tina looks simultaneously surprised, and unsurprised to see her.

“When I said come as soon as you can, I meant after Helena’s nap,” Tina said wryly, opening the door wider for them to enter. “Good timing though, Queenie just put the boys down. She’s pretty much passed out on the couch right now though, so don’t go expecting a hey.”

“You’re alright?” Hippolyta checks, adjusting Helena to cast a worried eye down her sister-in-laws body. Tina looks perfectly healthy, if a little flushed and uncomfortable. Tina frowns, glances down at her hand on her stomach and twigs.

“Oh, yeah, baby’s fine,” She promises, “C’mon, let’s put Hellfire down to stop her grizzling. I swear if she wakes the twins, Queenie won’t be held accountable for her actions. We ain’t getting no sleep right now. If one wakes, the other does. And when they wake, everyone wakes.”

Tina does look tired. She pauses on the stairs ahead of Hippolyta to turn back, lips quirking in a self-deprecating smile, “Not that I’m sleeping much anyway with this here fantastic beast I’m cookin’.”

Hippolyta can’t help but smile at that, Newt and Tina’s easy use of fantastic beast to describe their unborn child, mocking the magazine’s use of the term. She’s envious of how quietly comfortable Newt and Tina are with their life, never seeking more, always just content to be there together. She has trouble believing sometimes that she could ever have wanted Newt to marry anyone else.

Hippolyta followed Tina down the hall, frowning slightly when they bypassed the door where Helena was usually put down for a nap, Aurie’s room. She glanced around again, wondering if that door had always been there, or if the hall had been reconfigured in the week since she’d been there to celebrate the twins birth. Tina continued down the corridor a little further and then stopped outside a plain door.

“We moved the rooms around a bit,” She admitted, glancing back down the corridor. “We moved all the Kowalski’s upstairs, added a few rooms on. That door leads up to all them. Means Queenie and Jacob get a bit of privacy, I mean, it’s kinda not fair on them to feel like guests, even though they been here for months now.”

The corridor looked a different shape. A little wider perhaps? It certainly looked lighter.

“Newt and I got that door there,” Tina pointed at a door with a little handwritten sign saying “Newt and Tina” on it, like they were all children again. “Baby’s gonna have a room in there too. Kinda like a little apartment I guess. You don’t really need to see my room though. I wanted to show you this one.” Tina jerked her head back to the door behind her. “Cuz we don’t know how long you’re gonna be gone for, we wanted Helena to have her own room. And somewhere for you to stay with her when you come back.”

It sounded like a promise when Tina said it, her assurance that Hippolyta would return to them all, despite everything, despite Theseus having not returned all those weeks ago.

“You, er, wanna take a look?” Tina asked hesitantly, and Hippolyta realised she had paused too long, that Tina was looking worried, her teeth moving to her lower lip and her hand rubbing her bump a little uncomfortably. “I mean, we can change it if you don’t like it or anything.”

Hippolyta pushed open the door gently, finding a light airy room, with a cot and a dresser and a rocking chair, almost the image of the baby’s room at her own manor, the one Theseus had been so excited to put together, and had fallen asleep in many times, just staring down at Helena’s rising and falling chest. Hippolyta laid Helena down in her cot, the little girl asleep again almost instantly, and when she looked up, she saw a couple waving at her and smiling.

“Where did you get this?” Hippolyta picked the picture up, seeing herself holding their daughter, Theseus alternating between kissing her forehead and waving at the camera.

“We took it that day when Newt’s third edition was launched, and we all went back to mom and pops afterwards because we were all tired,” Tina’s lips quirked in a half smile, likely remembering her own terrible morning sickness and Theseus’s fussing over whether Helena was warm enough, if Hippolyta needed a rest. “Newt took the picture, and we thought it would be good for Helena to have as many photos of you both so she won’t forget you.”

Hippolyta had been on the verge of welling up anyway, but when Tina moved over to the little dark wood bookshelf and pulled out a photo album, Hippolyta couldn’t stop the drop from rolling down her cheeks.

“We liked that one best though,” Tina pointed to the frame in Hippolyta’s hand. “We printed another version for you if you want one?”

“Yes please,” Hippolyta looked down to when they were happy, tired but happy and Theseus was alive and she wondered if the stabbing pain would ever go away. “Thank you, Tina.”

Tina shrugged a little self-consciously.

“Come on,” She half-ordered. “I need to talk to you before Queenie or the kids wake up. About your trip.”

She refused to expand on what, exactly, she needed to talk to Hippolyta about until they had reached the kitchen, made tea, and made their way out to the door to the creatures. Tina opened the door enough to let the two strange demiguise creatures through (Hippolyta found their huge knowing eyes a little unnerving) and sat down on the bench looking up to the house.

Knowing what she did about the additional rooms upstairs, Hippolyta was surprised to find that the house was still reasonably well proportioned, although it looked a little stretched with the additional floor, more like a house than a thatched cottage. It suited them, and it suited the countryside.

“So,” Tina blew on the top of her tea, before resting the mug against her stomach. “Now Queenie can’t hear us, we really gotta talk about you going to France when Scamander Junior here comes along. Because I have a few issues with this.”

“I’m going, Tina,” Hippolyta said firmly, and a little irritably, feeling as if she had been called under false pretences, and that her wounds had been prodded too much for one day.

“Oh, I know,” Hippolyta looked at Tina sharply, “I ain’t saying you should stay. You’ve got to do what’s right for you, you’ll get no judgement from me.”

And Hippolyta knew she wouldn’t. Tina was very rarely judgemental. Angry, yes. Opinionated, always, but rarely judgemental.

“No, see, what I want to talk to you about is this network you think you’ve got,” Tina continued, as if they were discussing the weather, the chill in the air despite the warming charms around the bench. “Who you planning on telling when you get all your information?”

Hippolyta had been planning on telling someone in the auror office. Pettigrew, most likely, the unassuming successor to her husband’s position until a more permanent replacement could be found.

“Pettigrew’s got enough on his plate,” Tina stated as if reading Hippolyta’s mind. “And so has Barry, and god knows Merriweather can’t keep her mouth shut. I don’t think you should go to the Ministry. Not directly anyway.”
“Well, what would you suggest?” Hippolyta challenged defensively.

“What’s your cover?” Tina pointed out, “Are you pulling the grieving widow, angry at the world and just trying to get away for a bit and oh, look, I’ve stumbled into a spy network, how bout that? Or, have you got a second identity stashed in your mind? Look, I don’t need to know the details, you’ll be safer than that. But Theseus wasn’t the only Scamander in the auror office.”

When Hippolyta looks up at Tina, she finds her sister’s brown eyes are filled with hurt.

“You shoulda come to me first,” Tina said gently, “It makes way more sense. You can tell people that you’re talking to your sister about your daughter, or if you’re pretending to be childless, asking about mine. It’s an easier cover to sell than you talking to someone random through the ministry.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” Hippolyta admitted quietly. And the truth was, she hadn’t. When she had been laying the foundations for her removal to the continent, she had seen Newt and Tina as people to look after her daughter, but not necessarily seen Tina as the capable auror she was. Theseus had been proud of his sister, had told Hippolyta that he thought Tina would go far if she played her cards right and didn’t break the statute of secrecy as she had in MACUSA. She was a good auror, and more than that, she was kind and believed in protecting people.

“I know,” Tina shrugged. “But it makes sense. You’d have a reason to talk to me. We can make a code or something. And I have contacts too, far more than Pettigrew or Barry or Merriweather.”

“I don’t want you all getting hurt,” the argument sounded weak, even to Hippolyta’s ears, and Tina’s head popped sideways in that birdlike way she had when she called you out on being foolish. “Helena…”

“Will be here, safe and sound, with all her cousins and the creatures, for when you get home,” Tina said firmly. “And Hippolyta, maybe it’s selfish, but I want to be able to get hold of you, to know where you are, to know you’re ok. I’m not sure this family could take losing someone else.”

“Will you tell Newt?” Hippolyta mulls the proposition over, knowing that she had already agreed. Tina was right, it was objectively and emotionally the most logical course of action, and made use of Tina’s considerable expertise. Hippolyta was better at subterfuge, but Tina was finding things from a home base, she and Newt had proved that time and time again.

“I’d rather not keep it a secret from him,” Tina sounded a little uncomfortable with the idea. “But what if I tell him that I’ll be the one keeping an eye on you, but that I won’t be able to tell him anything?”

“Do you think he’ll agree?”

Tina shrugged, “He will,” She was certain, “He wants to keep you safe too. You may not have gotten on for most of your adult lives, but you’re still his sister, and he’s a little clingy about losing someone else. If he thinks that it’ll keep you safe, he won’t ask questions.”

Hippolyta contemplated the situation for a few seconds, before nodding firmly, and holding out her hand for Tina to shake.

“Excellent,” Tina wriggled forward on the seat to stand up. “Now that we’ve got that sorted, I really need to go pee.”

Hippolyta laughed, a proper, open laugh like she hadn’t really laughed in a while and it startled her.

“See, knew you still had it in you,” Tina praised, already waddling off towards the house.

Hippolyta followed, relieved that her daughter would be loved, looked after, and wouldn’t be allowed to forget her. To begin with, Hippolyta hadn’t intended on returning. But now, now she felt that she would fight to come back, back to the ragtag bunch she’d reluctantly accepted as her family. She expected she’d come back to a daughter half grown running about with a stick insect flying from her pigtails, but she no longer expected to return to her daughter calling Tina mama, or Newt papa. And that was as great a relief as knowing that Tina would be the one having her back, as the American’s put it so eloquently.