Snow Day
Newt woke at the change in the low snuffles coming from the crib at the end of the bed. He listened for a moment, wondering if those snuffles would turn into a full cry. He glanced at his watch on the bedside table, registering that it wasn’t Corvin’s feed time.
He was worried about accidently waking one of the twins, despite the regularly updated muffling spells between the Kowalski floor and the Scamander floor. The snuffling turned into a gurgle. Newt pushed himself out of bed, and stood looking down at his son, a week old and looking significantly less like a wrinkled baby bird now.
Corvin looked up at him with wide clear eyes, already turning a little grey and a little closer to Newt’s own eye-colour than the sky blue he’d been born with.
“Hello you,” Newt whispered, reaching into the crib and lifting Corvin against his chest. “Come on now, no waking mummy. She’s doing all the hard work you see. We need to let her sleep some more. You're keeping us up at all hours. Why don't we pop downstairs, hey? That sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Let's tuck you all in, you don't have fur so winter doesn't like you so much... there we go."
With Corvin safely wrapped in a knitted blanket that Perseus had handed to them the first day the baby had been born, a blanket that the Scamander patriarch had made himself with enchanted hippogriffs marching around the edge. Helena's blanket had broomsticks flying in a band of green. It was warm, Newt should know. He still had his own blanket from his infancy.
Newt carefully made his way down the stairs, taking Corvin straight through into the living room and setting a fire going. Tina sometimes teased him for being overprotective, but he didn't want any of the babies in the house to catch a chill, not in this weather. He wanted everyone to be healthy and well, human or creature. With an ease that came from helping with Aurie, then with Helena and the twins, but had become honed with his own son needing to be settled, Newt began to gently dance in the middle of the room, humming a half-remembered song from the radio. Where Aurie had liked movement, Corvin liked people to speak to him while he held them, to hum. Newt theorised he liked the vibrations, Tina told him to stop overthinking it and just get the damn baby to sleep.
And so he hummed, he hummed and he danced, one of Corvin's little hands in his own, a jazz song in his heart, the kind that he hadn't really heard before he'd met Tina all those years before. He was just completing another circuit of the room when he registered another presence. Queenie, standing in her long dressing gown, one of the twins being bounced in her arms.
"Hey," she smiled at him tiredly, the adults of the house all running on limited sleep and a startling reaction to a baby's cry. "Teen sleepin'?"
"Yes," Newt said softly, "But Corvin and I thought we'd have a dance till mummy woke up, didn't we?"
Queenie half laughed, settling herself down on the armchair and leaning back, laying her baby against her chest, "I didn't want Percy waking his brother up. Why did we think this would work, Newt? Four parents, four kids, one house and a caseful of creatures?"
"Better we have each other to support and be supported by," Newt replied confidently, "We're stronger together. You know, Tina and I met a group of wizards, I can't remember where, but they raised their infants together, the entire village pitched in. That's what we are Queenie, we're family. All of us, and all of the kids. And when Helena arrives in a few days we will adjust and accommodate and proceed as we should."
"You're a good brother to have Newt," Queenie said sincerely. Newt smiled awkwardly, returning his attention to a snuffling Corvin. They lapsed into a comfortable silence, each of them wrapped up in their own thoughts.
.........................................................................................................
He hadn't realised until he'd gone to wake Tina that it had snowed over the course of the night. Where he had crossed from the case to the house swiftly to avoid the chill, the garden was now a sea of light grey, blending into the sky above the trees. It highlighted every bump in the path, every rise and fall, the path invisible but for a smoother indentation than the grass either side of it.
"Oh," Tina sighed happily, adjusting her nightgown over a suckling Corvin to prevent her own skin and his from cooling. "It's proper snow!"
Tina had as many opinions about the snow as she did about the rainfall in Britain. She still resented drizzle, and she resented the dustings of snow, and she resented wet snow, or powdery snow. But this, a compact layer that turned their Dorsetshire landscape colourless, this was proper snow. Her eyes sparkled in delight as she leant back against Newt on the bed next to her.
"We should take the kids out," She said dreamily, "We can teach Aurie how to build a snowman, and the boys can see their first snow!"
Newt privately thought Corvin would be far too young to remember his first snowfall. And it would be ever so cold for the children.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked hesitantly, his mind already wandering to the case, to whether the spells to protect their creatures from the whims of the English weather were holding well enough.
"Stop worrying," Tina snorted, causing Corvin to stop suckling in surprise. A moment later his appetite got the better of him, and breakfast was breakfast after all. "We'll wrap the kids up warm, Queenie and I will wrap up warm, you can go out and check the creatures, and we probably won't stay out all that long because the kids are so little. Stop being so over-protective! He ain't gonna get sick. Look, why don't you go out to the case, check on the other kids. Corv won't be done for a while yet, we both know his appetite is more like mine than yours. Merlin our son eats like a graphorn."
"He's a little neater than a graphorn," Newt defended Corvin with a smile, "Are you just trying to get rid of me for a bit?"
"Absolutely, stop hovering," Tina replied, pressing a brief kiss to his lips. "Get goin'."
And eventually Newt did make his way down to the case, his boots laced and his coat pulled tightly around his body, ready to be discarded once in the case. The case was warm, a direct contrast to the stiff breeze beyond the protective enchantments. He wanted to make sure that the spells would be enough, the creatures having spent previous winters inside the case itself, where the chop and change of English winter was in less direct contact. The temperature had to be just right across each enclosure of the garden, to ensure that his creatures were in environments best suited to each individual need. The residual snow on his boots melted quickly.
He strode through the creatures, Jingyi perched on top of his hut and watching his progress into each enclosure to check each of the creatures. He figured he might as well do a health check on them all while he was there, it turned out having three under six months in the house as well as a toddler took up a lot more time than previously expected. Hardy, it seemed, had been officially told to move out by Laurel and Bennie. Else, the young niffler had decided that he wanted to redecorate a section of the burrow with all of his shinies, while Bennie and Laurel were re-organising their own side. Newt chuckled, and offered Hardy a piece of polished tin he'd found while taking Aurie for a walk into the village a few days previously.
The occamy hatchlings were no longer hatchlings, their legs starting to grow in and their tempers fraying meaning they were kept in their own environment away from the others, happy to squabble and prance in peace. They were fairly self-sufficient as a species and this was usually when Newt and Tina would travel to the reserve and see how the various hatchings they had conserved across the years were doing, But this year, the reserve was sending someone to them. Newt was incredibly reluctant to leave Tina and Corvin, and they had agreed that Corvin was far too young to be travelling with them. So the reserve were sending someone in the new year. Newt checked them over briefly, checking for dull rather than gleaming plumage and finding a perfectly healthy, if a little irritable, set of waddlings.
The bowtruckles tree needed a little pruning, but they were in good health, and the grindylows were on fine form, having spat water on him as he checked their water temperature. Everything in the case seemed to be ship shape and under Dougal's watchful eye. Despite Dougal having been the one to escape in New York, he had become a competent gatekeeper, and Newt and Tina had barely discussed it before giving Dougal access to the gate to fetch them if needed. He tended to use it when he and Jingyi wanted human company.
He'd emerged into the cold air, the sun bright and low on the horizon, to find his wife sat in a chair, Corvin bundled up and fast asleep, a bonnet low over his face. Tina looked so happy, chatting to her sister as Jacob puffed after Aurie, the little girl screeching in delight as her brothers napped.
Newt loped over to Tina, draping an arm over her shoulders for a brief, affectionate squeeze, her eyes lit up, and reassuring him that she and the baby were fine. Newt handed her his wand, declaring loudly that he was the master of snowballs, did Aurie want to be on Uncle Newt's team or daddy's?