The lights of New York shimmered like a constellation trapped beneath glass. Yellow carriages without horses darted along the avenues, horns echoing between the high stone buildings, and even the air seemed charged with restless curiosity. For a moment, you just stood there, your suitcase in hand, dazzled by how different it was from the quiet greyness of Hogwarts.

Professor Scamander watched you with that faint, distracted smile of his. His coat was dusted with travel soot, hair a little wild from the Atlantic wind, but his eyes were full of that soft, greenish-blue excitement he only ever showed around magical creatures or students who truly understood them.

It had been almost two years since he started teaching at Hogwarts. You had loved Care of Magical Creatures long before he ever walked into the paddock, but when he did, everything changed. Lessons turned into adventures. Homework became fieldwork. He never treated you like “just a pupil,” but like a young naturalist whose curiosity deserved space to bloom. Evening teas in his office had become a quiet ritual—steaming mugs, a puffskein asleep on the bookshelf, parchment maps full of sketches and runes.

So when Dumbledore himself announced that Professor Scamander and you would represent Hogwarts at the International Symposium on the Preservation of Magical Fauna, it had felt like a dream.

Now, a week into your stay in the MACUSA campus guest house, the thrill hadn’t faded. Every morning meant lectures on transcontinental migration of thunderbirds, every afternoon, walks through New York’s enchanted Central Park with Newt explaining traces of local creatures. He was in his element—scribbling notes in his leather journal, pockets clinking with vials and crumbs for Bowtruckles.

But tonight, you were both exhausted. The symposium dinner had lasted too long; your head spun from the noise and lights.

Back in the quiet dormitory suite that MACUSA provided—two adjoining rooms filled with books, feathers, and borrowed terrariums—you finally exhaled. Your boots were dusty, and your shoulders ached from carrying the equipment bag.

“Tea?” Newt asked, already halfway into the little kitchenette, because of course he’d smuggled his favourite teapot from England.