There absolutely cannot be a hanging case at Hogwarts tomorrow morning.
"Pop!"
Newt Scamander suddenly clapped his hands at this moment. "I suppose you must be Mr. Ian Prince. Albus has mentioned you more than once in his letters to me—speaks very highly of you, actually. Now I finally understand why. The way you talk, it's just like him."
Seeing that Ian didn't refute,
Newt Scamander grew pleased with his own accurate judgment.
"You're not that old, but you sure have a lot of opinions. For me, though, this kind of advice is actually quite meaningful." The sadness on old Queenie's face brightened a bit.
When she finished,
She turned to Newt Scamander, tone a touch reproachful. "See? That's how you comfort someone, not like you, coming at me from a biologist's point of view, telling me my husband can't feel the cold in his grave, and then blaming me for putting treasures in his grave because it'll only make the body rot faster."
Clearly.
Newt Scamander hasn't improved much in emotional intelligence after all these years. Honestly, the biggest miracle ever to happen to him was getting married.
"Treasures? You really shouldn't just stuff treasures in a grave. They're like petroleum—good for breeding all sorts of things they shouldn't." Ian glanced up at the three old folks in front of him.
"See, I'm not the only one saying it!" Newt Scamander, who'd looked horribly awkward before, suddenly found a lifeline and eagerly echoed Ian's words.
He and his wife and sister-in-law clearly hadn't understood what Ian meant.
"Ha!"
Old Queenie snorted, full of indignation.
"Alright, alright, you know Newt, that's just how he is—he really didn't mean to upset you." The other old lady, Tina, chimed in, playing peacemaker. The three of them added up to almost two hundred years old, yet here they were still bickering. Honestly, it was kind of hilarious.
"Crack, crack~"
Ian took out some sunflower seeds.
"You're really just sitting there watching the show now!"
Old Queenie shot the Little Wizard a glare.
"Want some?"
The Little Wizard offered his sunflower seeds to the three old-timers.
"..."
Old Queenie was momentarily speechless. Her personality was pretty different from her youth, though whether that was due to widowhood or maybe post-menopausal personality shifts, who knew?
"I'll have some."
Tina happily accepted the sunflower seeds from Ian.
"Who are you here to see?"
Ian seized the opportunity to ask why the three had come to Hogwarts. He knew that Newt Scamander's usual residence was a long way from here.
Not really the time of year for a social visit, either.
"We're here to see Nicolas Flamel. Do you know where his office is?" Old Tina replied, beginning to ask the Little Wizard about Nicolas Flamel's whereabouts.
"Over there."
Ian pointed in the direction of Nicolas Flamel's office.
Upon hearing this, old Tina immediately thanked him and looked over at her husband.
"Let me rest a bit longer. The trip from Dorset to here has nearly done me in." Newt Scamander had been leaning on a nearby stone pillar the whole time, and he actually did seem pretty wiped out.
No wonder, really, that so many shonen manga avoid drawing the hero after marriage and kids. One look at Newt Scamander now and you totally get it.
"It's not the journey that's worn you out—it's that suitcase you just can't set down." Queenie cast a helpless glance at the suitcase her sister was carrying for her husband.
Of course, she wasn't talking about the weight of the suitcase, but all the ruckus from the Fantastic Beasts inside.
"They're just little guys. I'm not as energetic as I used to be, and I'm more careful, too. My suitcase hasn't caused... any big trouble in years."
Newt Scamander quickly replied, immediately defending his suitcase. He even snuck a glance at Ian, as if trying to salvage his image in front of the younger generation.
"Like, Thunder Dragons? Fire Dragons?"
Ian also glanced curiously at Newt's suitcase—this suitcase had always been something of a legend; it was said that in its prime it had nearly legendary one-for-one combat power.
"They're all still small... really small..." Newt Scamander answered evasively, proving he was terrible at lying.
However.
Tina, as his wife, immediately called him out.
"That Occamy you rescued on the road wasn't small. You could've just handed it over to Ministry of Magic rescue workers." Tina jostled the suitcase she was carrying for her husband.
"I don't trust the Ministry of Magic here. They only just falsely accused Albus... The Occamy is very well-behaved. It's already shrunk down very, very small."
Newt Scamander seemed to have redefined what "little guy" meant.
"I love raising little creatures, too."
As soon as Ian heard "Occamy," his eyes lit up, trying to bond with Newt Scamander. His own Enlargement Charm was currently stuck due to a lack of Occamy skin. Of course—Ian wasn't the type to kill an Occamy just for a bit of skin. He had a special Magic Potion that could speed up an animal's healing.
"I can tell. You were taking care of Tree-dwelling Leprechauns when you were in school—you must be just as obsessed with Fantastic Beasts as I am." Newt Scamander immediately jumped on the shared topic.