Fortune Favours the Bold
1913
1 “She said what?” Leta was glaring at Newt out of narrowed eyes, her usually light-brown complexion flushed. They were in the middle of the Hufflepuff Basement common room, with a considerably large group of people lounging on the overstuffed, yellow-and-black upholstered armchairs and sofas, chatting amongst themselves, reading, or catching up on homework. A few were writing letters, presumably to their families. Some looked up when Leta raised her voice. She really was smack in the middle of the round, low-ceilinged room, the magical illusion of bright sunlight that came in through the oval windows illuminating her like a spotlight. She didn’t care, though; when she was angry, her surroundings always ceased to matter to her.
Trying not to show how self-conscious being put on display like this made him feel, since he didn’t want to exacerbate her outrage, he said, “She seemed genuinely worried that something unpleasant might happen to you,” not quite looking her in the eye.
“And she couldn’t tell it to my face? Or make that hook-nosed vulture she fawns over just, I don’t know, not follow through on whatever the hell he’s planning?” She almost shouted this, throwing her hands up in frustration. People were definitely pretending not to watch them, now.
Being familiar with her, he wisely did not make the mistake of asking her to take a deep breath and calm down. If there was one thing she never reacted well to, it was when someone condescended to her; that was never his intention, anyway. “To be fair, I probably would hesitate, too, were I in her place.” Squinting at her as if he expected her to hex him, he added, “She thinks you hate her and is a bit afraid of you, if I’m not terribly mistaken. Maybe if you talk to her, it’ll help?”
She snorted derisively and crossed her arms below her chest, before glowering at him. “Like I’m ever gonna grovel before the feet of a Slytherin Pureblood who thumbs her pointy nose at me every time I happen to walk by. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be forced by my family to attend those snooty official functions and just be ignored or laughed at every single time?”
“Well, no. No, I don’t.” He pressed the knuckles of his right hand to his lips and discreetly cleared his throat.
“Then don’t tell me to go talk to Celestia Prewett!” She laughed, and it was an unpleasant, hostile sound. “The ridiculous names those people have!”
“Don’t forget that her father is one of us, and-”
“I don’t care! She takes after the Black side of her family, then! That girl’s never done anything nice to me in her life, and now I’m supposed to trust her? I’m supposed to ask for her help? No!”
He realised that she was snapping at him because being upset made her go into defensive mode, and that it wasn’t personal. Being shunned by peers like she was would make anyone bitter. The thing was, it hurt to see her like this; it hurt quite a bit. Bracing himself for resistance, he stepped a little closer to her and – his heart thundering – reached out to very briefly touch her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? You didn’t do anything.” Then, after taking one close look at him, she all but deflated. Her shoulders slumped, the anger drained from her expression, and she sighed. “Don’t listen to me. I’m the one who should be apologising to you. You’re just being a good friend.”
“I am a good friend,” he said, smiling a little.
The light in the room became even brighter when she returned the expression. “I’ve been thinking. What would you say if I told you that I’m allowed to bring a friend to the Yule Ball? Would you be terribly inclined to run for the hills? Given the fact that it’s at Malfoy Manor.” After making a face as she spoke the name, she uncrossed her arms and reached out to take his hands – hesitantly at first, but with more confidence when he didn’t recoil.
Meanwhile, he was perfectly aware that his face must be red as a tomato by now. “Are you being serious?”
She nodded eagerly. “I am. When you came in here to tell me about your run-in with Celestia, I was gonna tell you that I spoke to my father over the fireplace. He told me I could bring a plus one if it made me happy, and I blurted out your name before I even realised what I was doing.” Her smile broadened. It was such a captivating sight. “He said yes. Will you not go with me? I’m sure nothing bad can happen if we’re there together, and I won’t be forced to admit defeat by asking that horrid Prewett girl for help.”
A little voice in the back of his mind told him that she was being a bit too prideful, and that Celestia hadn't seemed horrid at all but rather concerned, but this was all drowned out by an overwhelming wave of happiness. It didn’t matter that he was red in the face. It didn’t matter that everyone in here now knew about the sordid affair. All that mattered was that Leta was holding his hands and that when told that she could choose any person to be her plus one at a social gathering, his name had been the one to automatically pop up in her mind. He wasn’t much interested in grand, high-brow events involving prestigious wizarding families, granted, but that didn’t matter, either. He’d be there with her.
“I’ll go with you,” he said quietly, smiling. The two of them might as well be the only people in the room, in the castle, in the county, on the planet. “Gladly, I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, thank you!” Abruptly, she let go of his hands and hugged him around the neck.
After a moment’s hesitation, he very carefully put his arms around her delicate waist. Her skin smelled sweetly, somewhat like cinnamon. He closed his eyes. This was happiness, wasn’t it? It had to be.
2 “Dearest Miss Prewett, what stories I have heard about you! Hardly to be believed, and yet, the irksome voice of doubt nags at my poor, tortured mind, dejectedly whispering, ‘could it be’?” Alastair plopped himself on the chair next to Celestia, facing her, giving her a look so mockingly tortured, she couldn’t help but snicker.
“Go annoy someone else with your horrible attempts at drama,” she said, not even trying to sound like she meant it, but pretended to be focussed on her History of Magic homework all the same.
They were in the relatively quiet Slytherin common room. A good chunk of their housemates was at the Quidditch pitch, watching the team train, but neither Alastair nor Celestia cared much for sports, nor had they ever shown any aptitude for Quidditch in particular. They’d of course cheer for their team during matches, but freezing their toes off out there to watch them train was asking too much.
“Do you not wish to find out what has me clutching my pearls so badly?”
She made a face at him. “That was so bad.”
“I know,” he said, wagged his eyebrows, and briefly kissed her lips. “Anyway, I hear that you, my lovely, have been entertaining intimate conversations with Hufflepuff hippogriff.”
“Don’t call him that,” she said, lightly punching his bony shoulder. “And there was nothing mysterious going on, there. I just asked him to tell Leta Lestrange that she should watch her back at the Yule Ball.”
It was his turn to grimace. “Seriously? You just ruined all our fun. Now Apollo and I will have to improvise.”
Shifting her weight on the chair in order to be able to look at him properly, she said, “Can’t you just leave her alone? She’s harmless.”
“No,” he said, stretching the syllable, and took her hands into his. His skin was always so much warmer than hers, that to her it felt like he was constantly sporting a fever. “No, we can’t just leave her alone, because she is an arrogant, snotty brat who constantly sours every single party of ours she attends.”
“Alley…”
He shook his head, suddenly serious. “It won’t be terrible. All we want is to give her a slap on the wrist, remind her that she’s not, in fact, queen of us underlings. Maybe she’ll get the message and come around, stop being so annoying.”
She pressed her lips together and broke off eye-contact. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think this will backfire badly.”
“Relax, darling,” he said, and gave her hands a gentle squeeze. “I’ve got it all under control.”
3 It was really cold – cold enough for the frozen grass to crunch under booted feet – but thankfully sunny when Celestia made her way from the castle to the greenhouses, where her father’s office was. His family and Mother’s – the Prewetts and the Blacks – had arranged their marriage for a number of reasons, the most important of them being that Estella Black and Morgan Prewett were only barely related to each other. This was a bit of an issue for pureblood families: after so many centuries of interbreeding, most of them (if not all of them) were related by blood. It was important that family lines continued and that they be kept pure, and so, it usually took copious studies of family trees to find two people who could breed healthy offspring and keep certain names from dying out.
Estella was a little older than Morgan, and had been hesitantly courted by a Nott boy at first, but she’d not objected to her parents’ plans once they took shape – nobody did. That was what was best for the families, and family was the most important thing in a wizard or witch’s life. Luckily, Estella and Morgan were highly compatible and developed a good relationship very early into their marriage. Their first child, Nocturna Prewett, was born a year later; Celestia followed three years after that. Celestia herself was glad to have found someone to love deeply as early as her Hogwarts years, especially because she and Alastair were not too closely related; all right, he was her third cousin on the Black family side, her second one, once removed, via the Prewetts, but that wasn’t too bad. They hadn't even known each other very well as children. Neither of their parents had so far objected to the relationship, which was definitely a good sign.
She was also very glad to have her father around at school, given the fact that as a little child, she only ever got to see him on weekends and during the holidays. Sometimes, she, Nana, and Mother visited the old castle and stayed with Father for a week or even a fortnight. Those were the best times. Hogwarts was an amazing place filled with unlimited potential for adventure, and neither Nana nor Celestia could wait for the time to come when they’d finally be allowed to attend the school.
Now, the roles were reversed: Celestia saw Father almost every day, but Mother only on weekends and over the holidays. Nana had left England after her graduation and was learning dragonlore somewhere in Eastern Europe (sometimes Romania, sometimes the European portion of the Russian Empire). She wrote letters, but that wasn’t the same. Celestia hadn't seen her for three years, now, and it hurt to think about how carefree their childhood had been.
Pulling her cloak closely around her shivering body, Celestia marched across the field, down the slope to the greenhouse in question. Inside, it was a good deal warmer, which felt like heaven, even though the air was very humid. The high, slanted windows and the domed glass ceiling let the pale sunshine in, and it fell on the many rows of potted plants in thick beams. She smiled as she made her way toward the back of the building, where Father’s office was. The air smelled green and earthy and alive. It was a scent she’d always associate with excitement and happiness, no matter how old she got.
Right in front of the door, someone was waiting, leaning against the wall, face almost buried in a thin, cracked, well-read little book. It was Newt Scamander, who didn’t even notice he wasn’t alone anymore.
Celestia stopped a few paces away from him, unsure of how to proceed. A few days had gone by since she’d gathered all her courage and talked to him about whatever prank Alastair and Apollo were planning to pull on Leta Lestrange during the Yule Ball. She knew it was pretty cowardly, but she always had difficulties addressing people who very clearly had no fondness for her – and this was her being euphemistic in the case of Leta and her sweetheart. He seemed like a nice boy; he certainly was pleasant enough. Still, he obviously didn’t like Celestia or any of the Slytherins, and it showed. Hufflepuffs in general avoided Slytherins, but Leta’s hostility had undoubtedly influenced Newt, even though he didn’t have any concrete reason to dislike Celestia and her friends.
But that was loyalty, wasn’t it? To take the side of someone beloved, no matter what? It was definitely an understandable, human reaction.
Finally, feeling silly and childish, she said, “Are you waiting to speak to my father?”
A bit startled, he looked up, but then tried to smile a little when he saw her. It seemed to be his go-to response to being talked to by people who weren't Leta. “Oh. Yes. Yes, I am. He asked me to be here at eight.”
“It’s the end of your detention?” she said. He nodded, and so did she. “Good. So, erm…what are you reading, then?”
He blinked at her twice, obviously still shaking off the concentration-induced trance. From what she’d been able to observe, so far, he was a bit of a dreamer; he was always sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to interact with a variety of scary or repulsive animals or, alternatively, with his face glued to a book about them. It was admirable, this fascination he had for the study of magical beasts. This was something rather alien to most of his peers – well, most of everybody, really. “I’m reading a book about the Hibernus Horridus.”
“Ah,” she made, briefly considered pretending that she had any idea what that was, and then decided against it. “What’s that?”
After wiping some of his unruly, reddish hair from his forehead, he held the book up so she could see the misshapen, white-blue scaly monster thing drawn on its leather cover. “It’s a mystical creature that’s related to dragons, although the author posits that it might actually be a mammal. It’s believed to have been hunted to extinction five centuries ago, although I doubt that that’s true; at least I don’t want it to be true.”
Grimacing a little, she said, “Looks and sounds terrible. I’m sure people had a good reason to hunt these things?”
The look he gave her was sad, almost a little disappointed, but then again, maybe she was projecting. “It’s said that in extreme situations, the Hiberni develop the ability to project their strength and energy into their hearts, and create a replica of that outside of their bodies – you know, every time their species gets threatened too badly. Those materialised projections, the frozen hearts, allegedly have great power for destruction, which is one of the reasons the poor beats were hunted far and wide.” He cleared his throat. “You know.”
She didn’t know, but also didn’t want to come across as rude, especially since he was making an effort to answer her questions politely. “What good does that do them?”
“Well,” he said, perking up, smiling again, a spark in his eyes. This was a boy in his element, and no mistake. “It keeps their species alive even if they die. The heart materialises in a hidden place and remains frozen and functional for about two years. If it’s re-united with a dead Hibernus’s body during that time, it’ll revive the beast and, incidentally, reverse all the damage that it might have caused with its powers.”
“What do these things do?” This was almost like attending a lecture – pretty fascinating stuff, to be honest.
“They spit cold and freeze people.”
“So they are, I mean they were monsters who froze people to death and who could keep alive even after they were killed. Doesn’t sound like the perfect pet to me.”
“That’s because they’re not meant to be pets. Besides, the freezing doesn’t kill instantly; it takes a good long while, according to the book, and the Hiberni only used it to defend themselves in extreme situations.” Almost defiantly, he added, “They’re not dangerous.”
“Comforting to the frozen people and their loved ones,” she said, and briefly looked down at her shoes. “I apologise. I didn’t meant to be rude.”
“It’s all right.”
An awkward little silence ensued.
Finally, she could take it no longer. “So…have you spoken to Leta about, er…about what I told you?”
“I have.”
Was there more coming, or was she supposed to guess? She crossed her arms in an attempt to warm her numb, clammy fingers. “What did she say?”
He wasn’t quite looking her in the eye when he replied, “She wasn’t very happy.”
“Nobody is happy about this, so she’s in good company.” She chewed on her lower lip. “I’ll talk to the boys again.”
“I hope it helps, because if it doesn’t, Leta won’t take any bullying without defending herself.”
Why did people have to be so obstinate? Why couldn’t they all just sit down and talk to each other in a civilised manner? It was to despair. “I’m sure she won’t.”
That was when the back door to the greenhouse was opened; it must be Father. Thank God. Continuing to fumble with words regarding the awkward subject of Leta Lestrange was not something Celestia considered to be high entertainment.