aethelar:

Newt Scamander is not just a magizoologist, he’s an inventor. I mean, look at that suitcase. Those charms? The habitats? This from a guy who got expelled from Hogwarts, come on. He didn’t copy them out a book, he made them up on the fly, probably with a griffon nipping impatiently at his shoulder and yes I know beautiful, you need your mountain just give me a sec a mountain is a difficult thing to fit in a suitcase and he keeps coming back because I found a way to grow actual real trees without any soil, your mountain looks better with trees and what do you think of this new weather charm, do you like it? Oh no that’s a no, hang on let me rework it and try again and everything he does has to be invented because no one has ever thought to do it before.

But it’s all for his creatures. All of it. He pours his heart and soul into their habitats and their diets – their diets! Did you know that he spins the mooncalf pellets out of pure magic and cocoa powder? He doesn’t know if it has to be cocoa powder, but that’s what he had on hand at the time and so that’s what he used to create the spell. He moves heaven and earth to defy the impossible because he never stops to consider that he can’t, and in his suitcase he creates entire worlds for his rescued strays.

One of his rescued strays is a dragonet with great tears through the membrane of its wings. They won’t heal – they were made with acid, they’ve scarred over. The dragonet lives in a permanent state of panic, trapped on the ground with legs too weak to carry it to safety, and it flaps its wings in a futile attempt to escape whenever Newt gets close.

So he builds it new wings.

Individual copper scales mould to the arms of its existing wings, each one carefully charmed to flex and move like real scales, and between them, a living metal membrane – he melted it and trapped it in the stage halfway between liquid and solid, and when the dragonet stretches out its wings the new membrane flows and glints in the sun as it takes flight. Newt laughs and waves and watches it go; he’ll stick around to make sure it works, but the metal should grow as the dragonet grows, and he anchored it to the creature’s own magic rather than his own so there’s no chance of the spell running out. He’s happy to let the dragonet run free with its new metal wings.

He turns his attention instead to a fwooper, one whose voice box has been removed with a crude vanishing charm. The fwooper’s beak gapes endlessly and soundlessly open as it follows Newt around while he gathers the bits he has around – oh, a tin whistle, that’s perfect – until he’s built it a new voicebox. He houses it in a collar until he’s sure that it works, this strange mechanical collar with levers and gears and a set of tiny bellows blowing through the tin whistle, but when he goes to fix it more permanently the fwooper flaps huffily away. It likes it’s collar. It’s keeping it.

There’s a sleipneir that’s had four of it’s legs hacked off to disguise it as regular horse; Newt collects ice and lightning and builds it four new ones, and the sleipnir stretches it’s eight legs and crosses an ocean in one glorious stride.

There’s a crup with its tail docked, such a simple and common procedure but the crup doesn’t like it so Newt weaves him a new one out of a blanket and a tattered rope chew. It’s not soft enough, not quite right, so he uses a couple of strands of his own hair and – yes, that’s it, that’s perfect. The crup uses his new tail to sweep everything off Newt’s table and onto the floor, and spends the rest of forever chasing it in delight.

Then there’s a selkie, her husband stole her skin and she wants more than anything to leave him but she can’t – so Newt sews her a new skin and when he throws it over her she barks a laugh and flicks her tail and drags her husband into the sea to drown.

A gorgon shows him the ruined mess of her hair, the limp headless bodies of the snakes that some wandering hero stole from her; Newt builds each snake for her individually and gives them steel blades for their spines and they writhe around her head in untouchable glee.

And – one day – a person, just a regular person, but she was born with only stubs in place of her feet, and she’s not even magical but remember that Newt is kind and Newt doesn’t care all that much for following the law. Her builds her new ones from the living roots of the walking vines and she takes her feet and bares her teeth at the world and shows it what she can do when she runs.

Newt smiles after her and wishes her well, and turns his attention to the siren, the wampus cat, the old man, the child – he keeps going and keeps creating and every time he meets someone that the world has given up on he cocks his head and thinks no, they just need something to stand on. 

So he builds it.