"Was that you talking?"
Newt's cheeks were flushed.
"It was me. I'm not some ghost or anything," the black cat replied.
"You're a Kneazle?"
Newt no longer had that shy stiffness he usually showed around people—he looked freer now, more focused.
"—Yes."
The black cat hesitated. Of course it was a Kneazle—at least, some of the time.
"That's wonderful," Newt said, excitement edging into his voice. "If you're willing to answer… where is this place?"
"Beyond the Veil. My borderland," the black cat said.
"So then, dear Bastet… you've come to guide me into death, so I can be reunited with my family?"
Newt went a little distant.
As a well-read wizard, he knew the borderland existed—death's country, the starting line of a great adventure.
And Bastet, in Egyptian myth, was the cat-goddess who embodied both war and family—two-sided by nature: gentle and virtuous, yet brave and fierce.
"No," the black cat said, shaking its head with oddly human clarity.
"Then I'm only a guest here…"
Newt turned, looking out over the place. Strange, uncanny fog-clusters drifted everywhere, and if you weren't careful, they'd slip right into a wizard's mind.
The black cat seemed perfectly at ease dealing with them—one sweep of its tail and the nearest cluster scattered.
"Wandering souls… are they real?" Newt asked cautiously.
"Maybe. If a soul doesn't want to leave, but also doesn't resist death, you might see them here," the black cat said, ears twitching as if thinking.
"Leta Lestrange. Have you seen her?"
Newt's expression was something the cat couldn't quite read.
"No. The wandering ones appear before dawn. By then, I'm already gone."
The black cat stared into the distance. It was daytime here—nowhere near night.
"Then… is there still a chance for me to meet her again?" Newt asked.
"That would take time," the black cat replied. "If you stay here too long, you'll get lost."
The cat's whiskers stirred.
"Yes, dear Bastet… if I want to do that, what would I have to give?"
Newt's eyes curved into crescents, as if they were holding light.
He'd always been good at reading answers out of magical creatures.
This black cat felt like it carried a power he couldn't even begin to imagine—something that could make such a thing possible.
"You miss her that much?"
The black cat didn't understand. It didn't know who she was.
"It's… us," Newt said, a little dazed.
And after a long moment, he finally allowed himself to admit it: he had been the one who captured Gellert Grindelwald.
Before that, like anyone who'd been hurt by war, he'd endured the wounds it left behind.
Leta Lestrange—his closest childhood friend. Even now, her photograph still sat in a frame inside the workshop of his magical suitcase.
He would never forget: 1927, Paris, Père Lachaise Cemetery.
By then, Leta Lestrange had become Theseus's fiancée. That same year, at Grindelwald's rally in Paris, she sacrificed herself—using a powerful spell to destroy Grindelwald's skull-shaped hookah and split his attention so Newt and Theseus could escape. Leta herself was swallowed by Grindelwald's fire.
And it was her death that finally made them all decide: they would fight the terrorist who had ended her life, no matter what.
"She was my friend—and Theseus's fiancée. She died saving people. She died in war…
"And war brings nothing but despair. It tears apart every family that should've been happy."
Bastet—war and family—you understand, don't you?
Newt didn't say that last line aloud. He only explained, softly.
He knew this was a dream, so he didn't bury his feelings the way he usually did.
He was lost. He was hurt. The polite curve at the corner of his mouth first froze—then, as if it couldn't bear the weight, slowly, irreversibly sank.
Suddenly, he felt a weight on his shoulder. The black cat had jumped up there, emerald eyes fixed on him.
"I'll do my best… to keep you here a little longer," the black cat said.
And Newt found himself thinking: even gods might have feelings.
"What do I have to give?" Newt asked quietly, hands clasped behind his back.
"Some knowledge."
The black cat caught its own tail, stopping it from flicking around.
"Gladly," Newt said, the corner of his mouth lifting again.
Sometimes Newt thought gods were funny—though he'd never really believed in them. He still didn't, not exactly. He simply treated today's dream as a powerful kind of magic: vast, rare, awe-inspiring. And in that case, it wasn't strange that the being behind it might be mistaken for a god.
He'd also read Dream Tales, and he knew that only the legendary Merlin was said to be able to do something like this.
And yet this miracle had fallen into his lap, leaving him a little unsteady.
Especially because—of all things—it was a cat working hard to learn spatial magic.
That was… absurdly fascinating.
Fog-clusters drifted back and forth. The clean, bright space was an endless whiteness.
Here, a wizard's magic failed completely. Only "wisdom"—taking shape as mist torn from the mind—could appear.
The black cat's understanding was simple: knowledge and desire clearly symbolized a wizard's reason and emotion—both of which had already shown up in magic and faith.
So the borderland's rule was to reveal the components of a wizard's magic.
And in Godelot's explanation in The Most Potent Poisons, magic existed in the wizard's soul.
That was why witches and wizards could become ghosts, and why they could enter the world beyond the Veil—because magic lived inside their souls.
Only when magic was stripped away completely—when the soul forgot both feeling and wisdom—would it become lost… and move on.
That was the borderland's rule.
The black cat seemed to grasp something. And the way it sat there, thinking so seriously, made Newt's mouth curl upward without him even trying.
At last, the fog thickened.
The black cat now understood how to use the Separation Charm. All that remained was practice.
It had also learned a snowstorm spell—a kind of weather charm—so it planned to open up a snowy field inside the Wizard's Book… or maybe a snow-covered mountain.
If it could lift a mountain—
"Goodbye, Professor Scamander," the black cat said, flicking its tail in farewell.
"I'll come here whenever I can," Newt replied with a smile. "Though I'd prefer it be by your invitation."
The black cat's whiskers trembled—clearly it'd understood the joke.
"Wizards live a long time," the black cat said.
Professor Scamander would still be alive in 2017, after all—since he wrote the foreword to the updated edition of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them then.
Ilvermorny's origin cottage.
The quill woke earlier than Sean did, scratching out neat words at once:
[Five minutes. Remarkable progress.]