Re: [Hall Way: Patrick & Newt]
The Hall Way was always brimming with activity the way many magical spaces were. If there weren't wizards, witches, and others about, then the paintings were gossiping, the trees humming snatches of popular songs, dishes washing themselves lazily. It was a world full of movement and flurry, careen and career, clutter, clatter. It was rather a macrocosm of the microcosm of Newt's suitcase, where things fluttered and flew about unassisted, where pages ran amok in the shape of mice, and where the unexpected had to be, in a sense, expected. Newt found himself much more comfortable among this sort of chaos and madness than that of, say, Jack's bar, where it'd all felt quite hemmed in and he on the fringes. Which wasn't to say Newt wasn't rather extreme and eccentric, even for a wizard, as he was, but, well, it wasn't quite so stark a contrast. To Newt, as well, the Hall Way was something like home, though there were the expected differences—the Americans were much, much less socially organized, for example, and Newt wouldn't've trusted Patrick's darling tree not to be nicked.
But, no one seemed inclined at the moment. Instead, Newt was surrounded by a loose knot of people. He glanced up in a nervous flit of amber gaze to watch Patrick (who was looking quite handsome himself) sidle into the queue and then he nodded at the woman who'd started in on leithfolds and how she'd seen a black sheet once and she'd... "I'm sorry," he said, interrupting her with what surely looked to be his excessive Britishness, and he glanced at Patrick again as the man moved in closer now, closer, with a smile that moved along the same nerves lit up by the crowd.—But, the touch, small and brushing though it was, was familiar and soothing (the quiz they'd taken hadn't been wrong about physical touch and Newt, it seemed), and he offered his ear in an anticipatory tip of his head. He smiled, his gaze dropping like a pair of lost coins to pavement, and his shoulders were rounded protectively by his ears.
Newt did his best to clear his throat. "I'll be back, ah, in a week or so, if you'd like to talk then?" He smiled without making eye contact, and he nodded at the others pooling around, most of them curious onlookers, rather than anyone who'd a burning need to talk to him. Or so a cursory glance told him. "I'll see you all then." It was Newt's last vestige of politeness. He pushed against Patrick then, wanting to wrap an arm through Patrick's and lean on him, but he didn't. "Come." He kept his head down and made for the little tree Patrick'd left behind.—Rather than make the short walk over to it, however, on pavement, Newt Accio'd the tree, stuck is hand in Patrick's quickly, and Disapparated them.
The blackness came in in a crush, then let off like a respiring lung, and, suddenly, they were much further down the street, nearer where the Hall Way's little backalleys spilled off like spider legs in every direction, where men and women skulked in too-big cloaks and made promises of illegal substances, prohibited goods, and so on. Newt released Patrick, of course, as quickly as he'd taken his hand, and he took a step back to pass off the tree as if it were a child between them. "Merlin." He pushed nettle-scented hand through his missing fringe.