She has a lung capacity to rival the most vicious, voracious fire breathing dragon and her favorite hour of attack is half after three, that nebulous hour that is too early to be awake but too late to get properly back to sleep and it should be maddening, should be frustrating, should be agonizing, but all Newt has to do is curl his daughter to his chest and the only thing it is is wondrous.
“You my dear,” he mumbles, sleepy and so filled with a reverent awe that he can scarcely keep himself upright, “are the most fantastic of beasts.”
She doesn’t respond to her father’s affectionate words so much as she continues her fussing in his arms, tiny little fists knocking into his collar as she protests and proclaims her hunger to an otherwise slumbering world. Head bent over her, thumb reaching so soothe her round and reddened cheek, he trudges out of the room with her cradled close, cooing in a way he once reserved only for his most wounded and needing creatures. “Now now little one, we don’t want to wake your mum. She’s had a long enough day as it is.”
Several days really, considering their daughter has clearly already proved more hers than his, coming two weeks early, completely on her own time and schedule be damned, and the pair have only been home from St. Mungo’s for half a day since. Neither had ever been remotely close to in danger, the healers had assured him, but it still feels like an extra miracle that they made it out at all (but perhaps Newt’s just projecting his own apprehensions and anxieties).
“There now Astraea,” Newt praises, a bit surprised and more than a bit pleased when she calms herself on the walk to the kitchen where he knows Tina’s left some milk just in case.
A quick warming spell on the bottle and a few long minutes of repeated, indecisive tests to check the temperature have her fussing again, tiny little chirps of displeasure that are silenced the moment that Newt decides the milk feels no warmer or cooler than it has after the last three spells and gives her the bottle. Silence settles save for the sound of her feeding and Newt’s long, content breaths as he watches her, his whole world somehow both tiny and enormous as it shrinks to this tiny little creature in his arms. “Truly,” he breathes, fingers brushing slowly along the arm she can’t quite manage to curl around her bottle, for all she’s already trying, “truly the most fantastic,” and his heart feels so full in his chest that it seems impossible it won’t burst.
“Newt Scamander,” a sleepy voice chastises, fond but faint as an exhausted Tina appears against the door frame, “you are not referring to our daughter as a beast, are you?”
He looks up, sheepish and avoiding her gaze the way he hasn’t done since the early days of their friendship and courtship, a pink cast warming his freckles in a way that still makes her insides go a bit swoopy, even after so many years. “I would never Tina,” falls very flat for the way his voice drops and stutters around the words, his gaze only reaching for hers in the briefest of moments following his statement.
But it falls back to their daughter and Tina can neither blame him nor deny the tug herself, so she lets the comment fall away with a fond smile and a tiny shake of her head. “She really is though,” she allows, pushing away from the frame to come and settle against his side, leaning closer as Newt readjusts to hold Astraea in one arm and curl the other around his wife.
“I can hardly believe we made her.”
There’s a moment when a smart remark dances at the edge of Tina’s tired tongue, her wit always ready for make itself known, regardless her level of exhaustion (Newt often teases she would have been a Ravenclaw for sure, all that clever snark and brilliant spell work), but she catches the way the words fall from Newt’s tongue and for a second she cannot help but remember the man she met an age ago, who could scarcely see the value of himself, who buried himself in his research and travelled the world alone and she knows that what he’s really saying is that he can’t believe she’s his, that he could have possibility contributed to such a wondrous thing and the only reply she can fathom as appropriate is to press a long, gentle kiss to his temple. “She already has your curiosity Newt, you saw her looking around when we got home. She’s definitely our daughter.”
His soft smile speaks of a head full of adventures he’s already planning for their little family: beasts to befriend and knowledge to glean and she can’t help but be equally excited to share the world with Astraea and Newt.