Christmas Day
Tina woke before her husband and her son on Christmas morning. Newt was sprawled across the bed next to her, one leg hooked out over the duvet, one stripy clad arm thrown above his head. To her, it looked awfully uncomfortable, but Newt always seemed to end in one of two positions: Snuggled up to her, or sprawled like he'd been stunned. Both made her smile. A quick peek into the bassinette, and Tina had to press her fist against her mouth to stop herself from laughing aloud and waking her boys up. Corvin had one little fist thrown above his head, his face turned into it, just like his father. Both of them all long limbed and not sure what to do with them.
Once she was awake, Tina found it incredibly hard to just sit around in bed. She had to be up, moving, dressed, day going on. If Corvin wasn't hungry, well, she wasn't going to complain. On the landing, she heard a muffled sound from the door opposite, to Helena and Hippolyta. She strained to hear for just a second, catching a few words fluttering past before releasing them. It sounded like Hippolyta was reading Helena a story, probably Fountain of Fair Fortune. Tina turned resolutely, giving mother and daughter some space.
Hippolyta was leaving on the 28th. Her and Newt would be celebrating their first wedding anniversary by waving goodbye to their sister, and gaining a surrogate daughter. Happy anniversary. But there was a war on, these things couldn't be helped. Tina took her coffee out to the garden, not wanting to wake the little ones in the house, and hoping the grown up ones got a little more sleep than in recent weeks. It was hard, having a chain reaction of newborns. There were some pros - the trio of boys tended to amuse themselves and Aurie was endlessly fascinated by them, and by Helena who was perhaps the calmest baby Tina had ever seen.
It was dark and cold in the garden, a fine layer of frost lighting the trees better than firelight charms, giving everything sharp edges and somehow softening the landscape at the same time. A plume of smoke curled from her mug, and she cradled it a little closer to her chest, watching her breath freeze in clouds in front of her. It was endlessly fascinating, blowing plumes of steam into the air and watching it freeze before her very eyes. Her chest ached with the cold, but the warming spell on her jacket held, and she was quite snug on the back porch. She wondered how long it would be till she was joined by human or non-human companionship.
It wasn't long at all before Dougal appeared silently beside her, eyeing the frost covered ground in contempt and alighting on the bench next to her, folding his hands gently into the blanket across her knees.
"Mornin' Dougal," Tina smiled down at him, remembering a time when she couldn't believe Newt had named a freakin demiguise Dougal, but now not able to thing of anything else that she might have called him. He was kind, faithful Dougal. Dougal looked up at her with his unblinking orbs before resting his silver head against her shoulder and crooning gently.
Tina loved quiet moments like this. When she was in the Aurors in MACUSA, she had craved business, the silence in her head never more deafening than in the quiet spaces between day and night, and night and day. Now she felt quite differently about quiet moments. She lead a life that was full of so many different things, some good, some bad. Moments like this helped her take stock of everything, to list all the good things to remind herself that they were still there, still fighting, no matter how hard the fight ahead seemed. She never imagined that the quiet would be sat with a silent demiguise, both of them watching the horizon lighten to navy before their very eyes, as the stars seemed to flicker and retreat to another night.
You look peaceful," Newt said softly, interrupting the silence and the solitude. It was still mostly dark, almost light but not quite. It might have been the latest the infants (and definitely Aurie) had stayed asleep. Newt had Corvin wrapped up against his chest, holding him swaddled tightly with one hand, the other levitating a pair of mugs. "I made fresh tea."
"It is peaceful," Tina sat the empty mug down on the other side of Dougal and relieved Newt of his burden of beverages, to allow him to sit down and arrange the blanket over his knees. "I like watching the sun rise. I haven't been able too since before Corvin was born. You have to shush, or it won't be magic."
"You're a witch," Newt chuckled lowly, snaking an arm around her shoulders and snuggling them all together, his fingers gently stroking the back of Dougal's head. "Our everyday involves magic."
Tina poked him with a teasing smile and a "hush, not like that." She rested her head against his chest, the full mugs discarded so she could turn Corvin in his fathers arms, towards her and the dawn. "He's a baby bird," Tina murmured, returning her eyes to the horizon and resting against her boys. "He'll like the sunrise."
They watched the sunrise in silence, how the sun crept up on the sky, a weak pale sun shedding a muted light on the surroundings, light that danced with the frost and chased away the shadows. Maybe that would be how they won the war, with a creeping light that flooded all at once and dispelled the dark. Of course, that analogy meant that the dark would come again as the sun waned towards dusk, but Tina didn't want to think about that, not when the sun seemed so promising, here with the people she loved the most.
Queenie disturbed them half an hour later, both quietly absorbed in their tiny little family. She let them know that she'd put the breakfast on with Jacob, that they had time to visit the creatures before Diana and Perseus arrived and the day really didn't stop. The Scamanders didn't need telling twice, slipping away like the darkness to say hello to the rest of their family before meeting the human contingent for the Christian holiday that religion was actually redundant for.
.....................................................
"Sweet Merlin, he looks just like Newt!" Diana stared at her grandson with wide eyed astonishment. "He didn't last time I saw him, he was till all scrunchy and red but how he looks like a dark haired Newton as a baby."
Newt flushed in embarrassment, coughing awkwardly and hovering uncertainly behind Tina's chair. Tina supressed a smile. Diana filled every room she was in, and right now she was doting completely on her grandchildren ("All of them" She had said pointedly, scooping Aurie up for a spinning hug first) and passing them silver tree gifts and helping Aurie re-tie the bow in her hair while Queenie was pre-occupied with the mid-morning feed. Perseus and Jacob were making dinner, Jacob carefully explaining how to make a strudel the muggle way, and Perseus's confused voice asking why muggles had to make everything take so long.
The radio was playing, Aurie was dancing in circles chasing a charmed bubble. Hippolyta lounged gracefully against the arm of the sofa, Helena sat at her feet in a dark green dress, a ribbon in her hair. To think she'd once hated Hippolyta and Theseus, now she watched Hippolyta carefully out of the corner of her eye - watched how the corners of her eyes didn't crinkle when her lips turned up, how she was keeping Helena within arms distance, and her eyes looked distant. They'd come a long way. There was a hole in the room. They could all feel it, feel the edges flapping in their tableau. Theseus wasn't here. Perhaps next Christmas Hippolyta wouldn't be either. It was a painful reminder of the war they were in, one that had existed as if in a dream-world while the babies were so small. A world that they would have to get back to soon enough.
"Paris?" Newt said, drawing Tina back into the conversation, relieving his mother of Corvin as Percy was passed into her arms instead (one thing was for sure, Diana wouldn't spend any time without a grandchild today). "Tina and I went to Paris back in '27. Queenie and Jacob came too. It was...well... it's not a story for Christmas that's for sure..."
Tina could feel the waves of discomfort roll off Newt, as he realised what he'd bought up, a story they hadn't told his parents because it had been kept out of the press. A story of facing Grindlewald again, of things they'd lost and things they'd gained. She rested her hand against his arm, hoping to comfort him in whatever way they could. She noticed Diana narrow her eyes, and she hoped that for once Diana would curb her naturally frank mind and just enjoy bouncing the baby in her lap. She was relieved when Diana let it go.
Their Christmas was noisy, but it was noise designed to cover the silence that they were all so aware of, the silence that should have been Theseus, that should have been Hippolyta letting the last dregs of her Malfoy upbringing retreat a little and laugh at one of Jacob's muggle jokes (to the surprise of all). It was a careful noise to ignore the loss, to try and move forward, to enjoy a day and take many, many photos for little Helena's photo album. If she couldn't remember her first Christmas with her mother, then they would provide her with stories, would provide them all with stories and proof that for one day surrounded by glittering candles, they were relatively happy.