Newt slouched further down in his chair, eyes half-heartedly skimming the pages of his book on Nicolas Flamel.
"Stop squirming, you'll make it worse!" hissed Tina. Newt stopped squirming.
"Don't cut too much off," he mumbled to her over the sound of the radio. He couldn't see if she nodded or not, but he could hear her scissors snipping quietly behind him.
"I won't. Queenie would be worse."
"Hey!" snapped a voice from the kitchen.
"She cut off a whole chunk of my hair a year before you first came to New York," Tina continued, gently snipping away. "And I cut it again after you left."
In the small, grubby mirror, Newt stole a glance at her new cut. He'd noticed it when she'd first arrived in England- a short, elegant bob. Queenie hadn't done this one- it looked like she'd been to a nice salon, perhaps...
"Hm."
"Normally, using magic would be easiest... but it'd look better if I just did it manually. In fact, you mi- stay still!" chided Tina again. Newt hadn't even realised- he was swinging his legs.
"He doesn't like having his hair cut," contributed Theseus from across the room, watching the pair with amusement.
Newt gently urged her once again not to cut away the fringe.
"I'm not, I'm not... just trimming a little," she defended. "All those months in hospital let your hair grow quite a bit, that's all."
Tina shuffled over to the front, dusting off her blouse and carefully beginning to snip at his fringe, nibbling her lip in concentration. Newt found himself hosting a smile.
He'd been smiling a lot recently. Especially with being able to come home and be with all of them again. But this particular smile was just for the brilliant young thunderbird before him, carefully trimming his fringe and occasionally telling him to stop wriggling.
"Is Nicolas Flamel a seer?" Tina questioned absently, eyes focussed on her silver scissors.
"Nope," he replied.
Nothing else could be found on José Velázquez, bar the simple entry in the book Jacob found. That didn't help, apart from handing them another mystery name. Nicolas Flamel.
No one found anything more on José, so the six of them turned to researching his relative, in the vain hope that they could find something about the mysterious prophecy.
Nothing so far.
"Why are we even doing this?" Theseus moaned from the living room, dropping his book and slouching right down the couch until he was sitting on the richly coloured rug.
Tina sighed, exhausted with dealing with both Scamander brothers at once. Her sister wasn't much help- she was busy preparing dinner (it was a popular demand that either Jacob or Queenie always made their food). And Jacob had gone shopping for groceries, with Leta tagging along out of curiosity of seeing a muggle grocery store.
"We're doing this," Tina sighed, "because we need to know who made the prophecy in order to give us clues."
"But why?" Theo moaned again, dragging out the second word with emphasis.
Tina screwed up her eyes in concentration, and Newt tried to stay as still as possible to make her job easier.
"Because..." she began to answer him, dusting off her blouse again. "... This means something to us. It involves some of us. We kinda have to figure out what it means."
"I still stand by what I said earlier," contributed Newt. "I don't understand prophecies. People should be able to shape their own future without the pressure of a foretold story weighing them down."
"Yeah, well..." Tina chewed on her lip while she tried to think of a response. "... You just don't get to decide some things in life. It's crazy... we just have to work with what we've got."
She finished his fringe, then stepped back to admire her work.
"Alright?" she asked Newt, holding up the little mirror for him. He gave a nod, another smile inching across his face.
She'd only trimmed what she had to. His hair looked almost the same as it did when they first met, albeit a little shorter.
She contemplated him for a bit, wondering if her sister would've done better or worse than her finished work, but ultimately decided that if Newt was happy with it, then she was happy with it.
Tina leaned forward and brushed his fringe further back.
There. That was better.
Was it? Maybe it looked better the first way... she went to touch it again, but Newt jerked away.
"It's fine, Tina," he said quietly, smiling once again.
Now that he'd moved, though, she could glimpse some stray curls of hair at the back that stuck out, and picked up her scissors again.
Newt gave up and resumed his original position, slouching back in the chair as Tina continued to snip at his hair.
"Chop all his hair off!" hollered Theseus helpfully.
"Oi!" Newt shot back.
Tina grinned, biting her lip to stop herself from bursting into laughter. Theseus smirked, resting his head on the coffee table while he sat on the floor. For a few moments, all that could be heard was the quiet snip snip of the scissors, and Queenie's radio, belting out some kind of old love song.
"What's the actual prophecy again?" Newt asked, throwing the question into the open for anyone to answer.
The first response came from Theseus, still sitting cross-legged on the carpet, and banging his head lightly on the coffee table out of boredom with every few words he spoke.
"The tides- bang- are shifting- bang- A storm- bang- is brewing- bang..."
He sat up, rubbed his head, and continued the rest without sound effects.
"To run is a fool's mistake. Weapons will be cast, war will erupt, souls will be turned. But only when the true to heart heal the blind victim, only then will the alliance begin its downfall."
Newt and Tina both thought for a moment before the latter spoke up.
"Souls will be turned?"
"Someone's going to change their mind about the prophecy thing?" Theseus suggested blindly.
Newt went to shrug, then remembered that Tina was still at work behind him. She told him to stay still anyway.
"Maybe," he said instead. "Someone- as in... one of us? Or one of them?"
"Well," started Tina. Newt almost turned around to face her, then remembered that if he did, he'd get poked in the eye by her scissors. "Right now we don't even know who 'them' is... but I can tell you that none of us are leaving."
"Right!" Theo piped up again. "We're with you, whether you like it or not."
"We need each other," added Tina with a smile. She gently snipped away at the last of the long curls and placed her scissors down for good.
Newt felt a great surge of affection for all of them, knowing that they'd stick by him. Through the good and bad- they'd hold fast to each other.
"Until the end?" he asked spontaneously as Tina handed him the grubby mirror again.
His hair looked the same as when she last asked if he liked it, but he thanked her nevertheless. He supposed that it looked a little different from the back anyways.
"Until the end, and after it," she answered him, taking the mirror back. She moved around to face him and found a radiant grin already across his face.
Just for laughs, she abruptly ruffled up his hair, then made a break for it before Newt gave chase.
Unfortunately for her, he shot right out of the chair and high-tailed it after her, but Tina made it all the way to the drawing-room before Newt caught her and tackled her to the floor.
They fell to the carpet in a giggling mess, and Newt immediately grabbed the closest pillow and whacked her with it.
"Only- big- brothers- are- allowed- to- do- that!" he wheezed, whacking her with each word. Tina only laughed harder each time, until she finally snatched the pillow from him and smacked it over his head.
It promptly burst open and showered a hurricane of feathers all over the drawing-room, like a severe, fluffy blizzard. Coincidentally, right as Theseus skidded to a halt in the doorway holding his new camera.
Tina and Newt tumbled to the floor again, now coveredwith feathers, and laughed and laughed until their throats felt sore and theywere crying tears of hilarity, while Theseus stood stock-still in the doorway,gaping at his ruined drawing room (and pillows), and numbly filming the entiretime.
Yaaayyyyy fluffiness ^^ and exploring the prophecy's meaning a bit more...
Here's the second chapter for today :) I hope you enjoyed. This is based off a comment I saw in one of the previous chapters. There was a sentence I wrote where Newt randomly noticed that he was running his hands through his hair a lot because it was getting a bit long, and someone commented on how cute it would be to have a scene where Tina cuts Newt's hair for him. I'm so sorry, I cannot for the LIFE of me find that comment again, and I can't remember who wrote it because it was a good few months ago :(
If you suggested that, please tell me so I can personally thank you. It was a great idea. I hope you don't mind me writing something on it since I gave credit.
Please leave feedback- I'm always looking for ways to improve and it's easier to do so if I know what your thoughts are :D
The next chapter will be the second to last in this book, so look out for that. (Hint: there's more Newtina fluff <33)
Cateye992, out!