Is Newt Scamander a Dumbledore?

Last night I was re-reading a post that a reader had told me in the comment boxes had two undecipherable sentences. I found a link in that Fantastic Beasts 1 deleted scenes discussion to Rowling’s having said in an interview that the Demiguise was her favorite fantastic beast: “They have the ability to become invisible at will, which is a power that has always appealed to me, so I love the Demiguise.”

I wondered, “Could the Demiguise be Newt’s Patronus?” That would be a nice surprise and appropriate somehow, given Newt’s private nature and that he baby-sits all his magical creatures the way Dougall does the baby Occamy in the first Beasts film. I googled “Newt Scamander patronus” to see if anyone else had thought of this before I shared it here.

No, no one had written it up online at least. But I learned through that search that Rowling had been asked the question on her Twitter feed and she had responded that telling us Newt’s Patronus would be a “Big Spoiler.” I sent this information to my private cadre of Potter Pundits along with my Top Ten list of probable Patroni (Patronuses?) for Newt and the request that they share any beasts I left out that would be “Big Spoilers.”

Beatrice Groves, author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, immediately responded with, “I feel like a phoenix would make the biggest spoiler…!” When pressed for her reasoning, i.e., was she suggesting that Newt was a Dumbledore,  she shared,

I wasn’t meaning anything too wild – just that Newt was also a Dumbledore! (given that Dumbledore’s patronus is a Phoenix – so in this case it can be about who you are, not just who you are in love with). Given the phoenix imagery in Crimes of Grindelwald – and the idea that this bird proves you are a Dumbledore, I’d have thought it was one of the beasts with the most symbolic potential in the series hence the one with biggest spoiler potential *and* we don’t know anything about Newt’s parentage?

I wasn’t working from the ‘who might Newt be?’ end of things, just from the ‘what animal might be the biggest spoiler?’ end of things!

Huh. Newt Scamander a Dumbledore? … That would be a big reveal if Rowling’s telling us Newt’s Patronus suggested that. Join me after the jump for discussion of this “Big Spoiler” theory, ‘Newt Scamander-Dumbledore.’

We were told in the very first edition of Fantastic Beasts, the red slim paperback ComicRelief edition with Harry and Ron’s annotations, that his mother was a hippogriff breeder (FYI, that ‘About the Author’ page has not appeared in any subsequent versions of Newt’s book). We weren’t told anything about his father. The only other thing we know about Newt’s mother comes from Inside the Magic: The Making of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in which it is said she was “not impressed” with her younger son’s career in Magizoology.

The ‘About the Author’ page also tells us Newt was born in 1897, which means Kendra Dumbledore was still alive (d. 1899) but that her husband Percival was either in Azkaban (imprisoned c. 1890) or dead. Albus would have been 16 in 1897 and Aberforth 13 or 14. It is ‘conceivable,’ then, but unlikely that either brother could have fathered a child at that age. Kendra, however, if she birthed Albus at age 25, would have been 41 and pre-menopause.

I’m going to assume consequently that, if Newt is a Dumbledore, he is the son of Kendra Dumbledore, a child born out of wedlock. If she is the default candidate to have been Newt’s biological mother, what do we know about Kendra that suggests this possibility is more or less probable?

We know that Kendra was intensely private, that she moved her family to Godric’s Hollow after Percival’s incarceration, and, we are told in Deathly Hallows, that she lived apart from her neighbors to protect Ariana’s condition from becoming public knowledge (and the girl being institutionalized at St Mungo’s). Remember Aberforth: “I knew my brother, Potter. He learned secrecy at our mother’s knee. Secrets and lies, that’s how we grew up…” It’s plausible, therefore, that if she did become pregnant, Kendra could have and would have kept the affair a secret, delivered the baby, and sent it abroad to conceal its origin and protect her children from further stigmatization.

Harry Potter thinks, after seeing a photograph of her in Deathly Hallows, that Kendra looked Native American. Elphias Doge tells Harry that she was Muggle-born. Let’s assume that these two points are correct and that Kendra was not only a Muggle-born First Nations witch, but also that she was from North America, was educated at Ilvermorny, and that she came to the attention of Percival Dumbledore because she was, a la Hermione, a Muggle-born witch we know, the smartest witch of her generation. That’s a real reach, I know, but not quite baseless speculation.

The Dumbledores marry, settle in Mould-on-the-Wold, and have three children. Ariana is attacked by three Muggles when she was six years old; the language Rowling uses to describe the attack and the violence of Percival’s response has caused Patrick McCauley to theorize in Into the Pensieve that she was raped. After Percival is imprisoned (c. 1890), Kendra and her children move to Godric’s Hollow where they live in near isolation except for the boys’ education at Hogwarts until Kendra’s death in 1899. As the Harry Potter Lexicon puts it, “Kendra was accidentally killed by Ariana’s out-of-control magic.”

What if she had a fourth child in 1897, though, the boy who would become known as Newt Scamander? How does that bizarre possibility fit into the story we learn in Crimes of Grindelwald and the first Fantastic Beasts film?

First, we have to figure out how Newt, son of Kendra Dumbledore, became a Scamander. The obvious course is that his biological father was Theseus’ father. Newt’s integration into the Scamander family couldn’t have been easy because Theseus is eight years older than Newt; the older brother had to have known, even if his brother didn’t, that this was not the son of his mother the hippogriff trainer. Newt and Theseus, from this view, are only half-brothers — and Newt’s mother doesn’t really care for him, given her husband’s infidelity. Hence the “not impressed” line. Theseus is protective of his half-brother but they’re not especially close despite his efforts. Both mother and brother keep Newt’s illegitimacy out of the public domain, perhaps even outside his knowing.

Newt according to this line doesn’t go home for vacations at Hogwarts not because of wounded birds needing his care but because there isn’t much of a home there for him at the Scamanders. Mom and dad may have divorced, in fact, when she learned of Newt’s existence but she takes the boy in, Petunia-style. Theseus, for obvious reasons, older and legitimate, is the maternal favorite.

Albus Dumbledore, despite Kendra’s attempts to conceal the facts, is aware of his mother’s love child, the second great family secret, and tells Gellert about his younger half-brother Newt during their no-secrets, closer-than-brothers summer together. Hence Grindelwald’s cryptic comments to Newt as GrindelGraves about Dumbeldore in the MACUSA interrogation room, and as he is led off to prison after Newt subdues him, and in the Lestrange Crypt Auditorium at the end of Crimes. 

Another obstacle is, if Dumbledore knows all this, why doesn’t he just tell Newt after his graduation from Hogwarts (assuming that happened) that they, too, are half-brothers? It seems borderline sadistic to hold on that secret just to protect the Dumbledore family honor. Newt, like Credence, must want to know who his real mother is if his brother or mother ever revealed the truth of why Daddy Scamander left home.

Well… Newt tells us in the latest edition of Fantastic Beasts that “Albus Dumbledore was something more than a teacher to me” and that he cannot say more lest he break both the Official Magical Secrets Act and Dumbledore’s “confidences” (p xvi). Perhaps that means that Newt will be told sometime in the coming adventures.

As it is, Albus thinks the world of Newt Scamander, which high estimation would be a mystery explained if the older man knew they were related. He shares with the young Magizooligist the family legend of a phoenix coming to help a Dumbledore in need. We see a phoenix at the end of Crimes of Grindelwald at Nurmengard, a chick that appeared to Credence in Paris, but did it come as fulfillment of prophecy on its own or by Grindelwald’s machinations to foster Credence’s belief that he is the lost Dumbledore brother, ‘Aurelius’?

We are told in the Lestrange family drama a Gothic story of illegitimate children, confused identities, and lives of remorse, regret, and revenge on the part of separated half-siblings. Beyond the puzzle and confusion of Leta’s recall of her Titanic-esque adventure (one that we will have to learn more about to decipher), could this aptly named ‘le strange’ tale be also a suggestive parallel and foreshadowing of another family’s half-sibling and their reconciliation with him in time?

Credence is striving to find his family roots and discover who he is; perhaps the great turn-around ending will involve his discovering his identity at the same time Newt learns his. I’d guess that will be when Fawkes rescues the Magizooligist and Credence but because Newt is the Dumbledore, not ‘Aurelius.’

Ask yourself this: “Rowling has told us the revelation of Newt’s Patronus would be a ‘Big Spoiler.’ If Newt Scamander’s Patronus is a phoenix, can you think of a bigger story twist consequent to this reveal than it serving as a pointer to Newt’s being a Dumbledore?” I can’t.

Fan fiction or a reasonable theory? Let me know what you think in the comment boxes below! Hat-tip to Beatrice Groves for the suggestion that Newt could be a Dumbledore and his Patronus a Phoenix. [Yes, I know that Aberforth’s Patronus is a goat!]