Over Thinking
Disclaimer: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them does not belong to me.
She is the worst sort of ninny there is because she knows better. This, she tells herself, is what happens when you let yourself get all caught up instead of keeping your feet firmly grounded in reality. She does not tell herself this to make herself feel better (it actually makes her feel worse) but because trying to twist oneself into unnatural contortions to pretend that the facts are not the facts is not going to do her any good. She needs a hefty dose of reality and a good, swift kick - not whatever it was she had been doing that had let her get all starry eyed and lacking in clear headed thinking back when she was getting those letters on the regular. She has never really gotten people they way that her sister has so she was probably taking things all wrong. It is not as though she had not known.
[more]
She has always known that fellas just did not look at her the same way that they looked at Queenie. Queenie is the fancy dishes everyone wants for the display rack on the sidebar in the kitchen and Tina is the everyday sort of bowl that people settle for when they have to because the other kind is too much trouble to get or too dear to keep out for every day use. It is a poor comparison but conveys what Tina has thought about her prospects from the time she understood what prospects were - she falls into the she’ll do category. She always knew she would be settled for rather than sought. This is a part of why she worked so hard to pursue a career path that could render it a moot point (not the largest part but she cannot deny that it was a consideration). The fact that she is naturally inclined to be a worker bee that keeps at something until she excels at it in the realm of both the practical and the academic did nothing to make the many skills that needed mastering in order to pass auror training seem less appealing.
They are not so far away from the turn of the century for it to have been uncommon for people to whisper behind her back (and not always behind her back and not always a whisper either) during the days when she was struggling to make it through auror training while working to keep their heads above water about how much easier it would have been if she could have married security for herself and her sister. There were also plenty of whispers that told her that the people doing the whispering did not believe that event to be particularly likely to occur.
She knew how unlikely it was that she would ever be the subject of a romantic adventure. She just feels foolish. She is supposed to be a mature, responsible career woman - not one of those insipid ninnies that grace the pages of the kind of books that Queenie keeps hidden under her pillow so she can sneak a few pages each night before she goes to sleep.
Newt Scamander can good and well marry anyone he pleases. In fact, she hopes him happy in his choice. He certainly did not owe that American woman he had met once and made a foolish commitment to deliver a book to any explanations. No one owed her anything at all least of all the man with the traveling menagerie she will likely never see again.
The hurt she set herself up for by allowing herself to get carried away will fade with time. Someday, she will be able to turn the whole incident into a story that she can tell to Queenie’s grandchildren (she will not give herself leave to ponder why the thought of ever being in a position to have grandchildren of her own feels more distant and less likely than ever) about the time that Auntie Tina helped the famous author Newt Scamander trap an escaped creature in a teapot. (There is no doubt in her mind that Newt . . . Mr. Scamander will be famous enough for Queenie’s grandchildren to recognize the name.) She bought her own copy of the book. She let curiosity get the best of her and came home from the bookshop with the little volume tucked away (as if anything she brings into the apartment ever stays secret for long). It is a wonderful book -even if the title gives one more reason for her heart to hurt. She sincerely doubts that even Queenie’s someday grandchildren will ever believe that the name came from her. She will just keep that particular tidbit to herself. It is not as if it matters. The book is published, popular, and making people think. Tina just happened to have had a chance encounter with someone famous before they were famous once. That will be the end of the story.
She does not let herself think about how the future Mrs. Scamander looks the type to be able to make her way through the social obligations the magazines Queenie collects like a magpie tell her Newt . . . Mr. Scamander is perpetually found at these days with ease. She hopes the other woman is smoothing the way for him; she knows from her own short acquaintance how trying Newt . . . Mr. Scamander must find the social events crowded with people playing one-upmanship and coattail riding games.
It will be good for him to have someone on his side that can manage and shepherd him through (not someone who would sink into the woodwork and hinder him further) - not that she is thinking about that.
She is not thinking about the subject at all - not a bit. She is just plain Tina Goldstein - trying to do her level best to ensure that none of her superiors at MACUSA have any cause to regret her reinstatement as an auror while keeping her sister out of trouble. She is very busy. She does not have time to keep up with an in depth personal correspondence anyway. Besides, her mother may have been gone for a long time but she does not need her standing here with her to tell her how not proper it would be to carry on writing letters to another woman’s fiance.
Things are at sixes and sevens all over with the debacle of the escape in any case and there are enough petty little reports that no one else wants to take the time to bother over to keep her working over hours from now until Queenie’s someday grandchildren have had time to become a reality (which sounds like an exaggeration but the paperwork really does seem to be never ending). She likes being busy (she just happens to be particularly fond of having the excuse of being busy at her disposal at this point in time). She has always liked being busy -waiting and sitting by have never been her style (and she does not need anyone else to remind her of the times that tendency has gotten her into trouble either). Busy means she has less time for thinking about things.
The British, she reminds herself for what feels like the one hundredth time when a bout of thinking creeps up on her again, are dreadfully formal about things. Asking about things like sending a gift (like a hostess present) is probably one of those things that one says because of the expectation that something along those lines needs to be said. And the first letter, well, she probably took that all out of proportion. It was likely intended to be a mere matter of sending a thank you note. Then, she had gone and answered it and now poor Newt . . . Mr. Scamander was stuck sending her replies because he was too polite to not answer (although not polite enough to keep his thoughts on her profession to himself).
She had been deluding herself the whole time and had not even realized it. This was why she was better off leaving the making nice with people to her sister. She just was not any good at it. When was she finally going to get that through her thick skull? Poor, pathetic Tina - she could not even tell the difference between a man being interested and a man displaying basic manners. Well, it was not going to continue. She would end this cycle here and now. She would leave the latest letter unanswered. Newt . . . Mr. Scamander would be off the hook and she would get her head on straight. It would all be for the best. It would. She was already feeling better about everything. Really.
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She is the worst sort of ninny there is because she knows better. This, she tells herself, is what happens when you let yourself get all caught up instead of keeping your feet firmly grounded in reality. She does not tell herself this to make herself feel better (it actually makes her feel worse) but because trying to twist oneself into unnatural contortions to pretend that the facts are not the facts is not going to do her any good. She needs a hefty dose of reality and a good, swift kick - not whatever it was she had been doing that had let her get all starry eyed and lacking in clear headed thinking back when she was getting those letters on the regular. She has never really gotten people they way that her sister has so she was probably taking things all wrong. It is not as though she had not known.
[more]
She has always known that fellas just did not look at her the same way that they looked at Queenie. Queenie is the fancy dishes everyone wants for the display rack on the sidebar in the kitchen and Tina is the everyday sort of bowl that people settle for when they have to because the other kind is too much trouble to get or too dear to keep out for every day use. It is a poor comparison but conveys what Tina has thought about her prospects from the time she understood what prospects were - she falls into the she’ll do category. She always knew she would be settled for rather than sought. This is a part of why she worked so hard to pursue a career path that could render it a moot point (not the largest part but she cannot deny that it was a consideration). The fact that she is naturally inclined to be a worker bee that keeps at something until she excels at it in the realm of both the practical and the academic did nothing to make the many skills that needed mastering in order to pass auror training seem less appealing.
They are not so far away from the turn of the century for it to have been uncommon for people to whisper behind her back (and not always behind her back and not always a whisper either) during the days when she was struggling to make it through auror training while working to keep their heads above water about how much easier it would have been if she could have married security for herself and her sister. There were also plenty of whispers that told her that the people doing the whispering did not believe that event to be particularly likely to occur.
She knew how unlikely it was that she would ever be the subject of a romantic adventure. She just feels foolish. She is supposed to be a mature, responsible career woman - not one of those insipid ninnies that grace the pages of the kind of books that Queenie keeps hidden under her pillow so she can sneak a few pages each night before she goes to sleep.
Newt Scamander can good and well marry anyone he pleases. In fact, she hopes him happy in his choice. He certainly did not owe that American woman he had met once and made a foolish commitment to deliver a book to any explanations. No one owed her anything at all least of all the man with the traveling menagerie she will likely never see again.
The hurt she set herself up for by allowing herself to get carried away will fade with time. Someday, she will be able to turn the whole incident into a story that she can tell to Queenie’s grandchildren (she will not give herself leave to ponder why the thought of ever being in a position to have grandchildren of her own feels more distant and less likely than ever) about the time that Auntie Tina helped the famous author Newt Scamander trap an escaped creature in a teapot. (There is no doubt in her mind that Newt . . . Mr. Scamander will be famous enough for Queenie’s grandchildren to recognize the name.) She bought her own copy of the book. She let curiosity get the best of her and came home from the bookshop with the little volume tucked away (as if anything she brings into the apartment ever stays secret for long). It is a wonderful book -even if the title gives one more reason for her heart to hurt. She sincerely doubts that even Queenie’s someday grandchildren will ever believe that the name came from her. She will just keep that particular tidbit to herself. It is not as if it matters. The book is published, popular, and making people think. Tina just happened to have had a chance encounter with someone famous before they were famous once. That will be the end of the story.
She does not let herself think about how the future Mrs. Scamander looks the type to be able to make her way through the social obligations the magazines Queenie collects like a magpie tell her Newt . . . Mr. Scamander is perpetually found at these days with ease. She hopes the other woman is smoothing the way for him; she knows from her own short acquaintance how trying Newt . . . Mr. Scamander must find the social events crowded with people playing one-upmanship and coattail riding games.
It will be good for him to have someone on his side that can manage and shepherd him through (not someone who would sink into the woodwork and hinder him further) - not that she is thinking about that.
She is not thinking about the subject at all - not a bit. She is just plain Tina Goldstein - trying to do her level best to ensure that none of her superiors at MACUSA have any cause to regret her reinstatement as an auror while keeping her sister out of trouble. She is very busy. She does not have time to keep up with an in depth personal correspondence anyway. Besides, her mother may have been gone for a long time but she does not need her standing here with her to tell her how not proper it would be to carry on writing letters to another woman’s fiance.
Things are at sixes and sevens all over with the debacle of the escape in any case and there are enough petty little reports that no one else wants to take the time to bother over to keep her working over hours from now until Queenie’s someday grandchildren have had time to become a reality (which sounds like an exaggeration but the paperwork really does seem to be never ending). She likes being busy (she just happens to be particularly fond of having the excuse of being busy at her disposal at this point in time). She has always liked being busy -waiting and sitting by have never been her style (and she does not need anyone else to remind her of the times that tendency has gotten her into trouble either). Busy means she has less time for thinking about things.
The British, she reminds herself for what feels like the one hundredth time when a bout of thinking creeps up on her again, are dreadfully formal about things. Asking about things like sending a gift (like a hostess present) is probably one of those things that one says because of the expectation that something along those lines needs to be said. And the first letter, well, she probably took that all out of proportion. It was likely intended to be a mere matter of sending a thank you note. Then, she had gone and answered it and now poor Newt . . . Mr. Scamander was stuck sending her replies because he was too polite to not answer (although not polite enough to keep his thoughts on her profession to himself).
She had been deluding herself the whole time and had not even realized it. This was why she was better off leaving the making nice with people to her sister. She just was not any good at it. When was she finally going to get that through her thick skull? Poor, pathetic Tina - she could not even tell the difference between a man being interested and a man displaying basic manners. Well, it was not going to continue. She would end this cycle here and now. She would leave the latest letter unanswered. Newt . . . Mr. Scamander would be off the hook and she would get her head on straight. It would all be for the best. It would. She was already feeling better about everything. Really.
Back to FBaWtFT