#huffinpuffle

You walked hurriedly down the corridors of Hogwarts, your nose buried into your Care of Magical Creatures book. You just couldn’t get enough of it! This must be your third or fourth time reading it, but each time you picked it up you found new details that you had missed the previous time. Care of Magical Creatures was by far your favorite class at school. How could it not be? Actually getting to interact with and care for Magical Creatures. Amazing! You received a great deal of harassment from other students for being so absorbed in the subject, most people said that you cared more for animals than you did humans. It was quite annoying, but you didn’t pay it any attention. You had your friends and your creatures, what did you care what others thought?

Just as you were getting to a particularly interesting section on Horklumps you collided with something warm and solid, papers and your book flying every which way. You felt the burn on your knees as they hit the stone floor of the corridor and the flesh was scraped against it. Thank goodness that your hands broke part of the fall so your head didn’t crack open! You could hear the laughter of other students around you as the person you collided with scrambled to help you up.

It was Newt Scamander. A fellow outcast. He had been scribbling more notes onto a roll of parchment and was not paying attention, thus resulting in the dramatic collision the two of you. Parchment was sticking haphazardly out of his pockets and his satchel so when you ran into you parchment flew everywhere. Newt had a tendency to float along in his own little world when he was taking notes on creatures. Your guess was that he had just gotten back from examining some creature in the Forbidden Forest and was updating his findings.

Newt clumsily got up first, robes and hair in complete disarray from the fall, and crouched down beside you. “Are you okay?” He asked nervously, his eyes not meeting yours. He stood up and offered his hand to you.

You accepted his hand gladly and allowed him to pull you up. “Yes, thank you,” You replied just as nervously, your face flushing red. You brushed your hands over your robes to get off the little bit of dust that had gotten on them. You hissed as you once again noticed the pain in your knees and hands. Newt seemed to notice too.

“Oh!” Newt said. “I’m so sorry. Here, let me.” He took out his wand and pointed it at your knees. “Episkey.” Your knees felt very hot and then you felt a cool sensation and the pain there evaporated. Once that was taken care of he gestured awkwardly to your hands and you held out your palms to him. He cast the healing spell on those as well. Was he blushing too?

Without looking at you, he picked up your book and handed it to you. Before you could even thank him he was about gathering his own scattered papers. You stuffed your book into your bag and began to help him with picking up.

You both straightened up and you were much closer to him than you had expected. Your nose was almost touching his adam’s apple. You blushed an even deeper shade of red than you had before and you became extremely aware of the other students watching you. You took a giant step backwards and extended your arm to him, your hand filled with his notes. He accepted them clumsily.

“I’m sorry that I ran into you,” You mumbled to him, your eyes darting anywhere but Newt.

“No no,” New said, “I’m the one that should be apologizing. I should have watched where I was going. Plus, you’re the one whose knees got all bloodied up.”

You pushed a stray hair behind your ear and felt more color rise into you face and neck. You must have looked like a tomato at this point! “Really, Newt, it’s okay.”

“You know my name?”

“Well, of course I know your name!” You said. “How could I not? I think you’re the only person in the school who like creatures as much as I do.”

For the first time, Newt’s eyes met yours. Quite excitedly too. “You like creatures?”

You felt a smile creeping onto your face and you nodded, not quite knowing what to say. You and Newt were truthfully very awkward and the growing number of people watching your exchange with him was not helping.

You glanced around you at all the curious eyes and embarrassment flooded your stomach. “Well,” you said, “I really should be going now.” You gathered up every little bit of nerve that you had in you and stood on your toes, placing a small kiss on his cheek. “Thank you again and maybe I’ll see you at dinner.” Before anything else happened you turned on your heel and began to walk away as fast as your legs could move.

Valerie walked into the room she shared with Newt in their flat in London and immediately took notice to something. Every object that had any bit of shine to it was missing. She sighed. This had to be the work of one of her and Newt’s nifflers. Valerie and Newt had been travelling the world together as Magizoologists, Finding creatures and studying them. Somewhere along the way they had fallen in love and when they weren’t out discovering, they home to London.

She put down all of her journals and materials on the desk by the window and was about to start searching for the niffler just as something came crashing into the room. Of course, it was Newt wrestling with the bugger who had taken all of their valuables.

“Come on, now!” He said as he rolled around, trying to get the niffler to cooperate. “Give it up! You have plenty of of shinies in the suitcase!”

Valerie watched fondly as Newt continued to try and wrangle and negotiate with the little animal. But after a few moments of him rolling around on the ground and knocking over objects in the room, making a mess, she decided to put an end to it. She plucked the unsuspecting niffler off of Newt’s chest and held it up in front of her, tickling it playfully until all of their belongings fell out of its little pouch. She stepped over Newt and into the living room, placing the little troublemaker back in the suitcase.

After she had stood up, Newt came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her. “What would I do without you, Valerie?” He sighed lovingly.