Meeting of the Newts
The small male paced down the street lost in thought. He might have been said to be unaware of his surroundings, but every few steps he paused to glance around him, gazing almost dazedly at the buildings that surrounded him. It was quite easy to get lost in one’s mind when there were seemingly a million things to think about at any given moment… but it didn’t do to get completely lost there either. Sometimes you missed something very interesting in your surroundings.. And sometimes you missed the very obvious fact that you were on a collision course with another individual. A few steps later and he did exactly that, crashing into another dog that was roughly around the same size as he was.
“Terribly sorry,” he murmured the words out, already casting his hazel eyes away from the other dog that he had collided with. That should have been the end of it, of course. Except, at almost the same time, he heard the other dog muttering the same thing to him - which wasn’t that strange, except that the voice sounded so very familiar with just a slight bit of dissonance to it that only came when you heard yourself in some kind of recorded message and you realized that you didn’t sound the same as you thought you did.
The dark brown mutt turned his gaze back to the other mutt that he had collided with and he froze momentarily. He wouldn’t say the other dog was identical to him because that simply wasn’t true in the least. But the same hazel eyes were peering out at him from behind a mop of hair that was enormously similar to his own. They were not identical, that was for certain; his own color was a darker brown interspersed with lighter tans, freckles and white. He was a bit lankier as well. The other male was varying shades of brown, ranging from one almost as dark as Newt’s one to a cream almost as light as the white spots on Newt himself. Even more curiouser, was the fact that he wore a bow tie almost identical to Newt’s own… and it didn’t take long for his eyes to take in the pale grey and yellow scarf around the neck, and was that…? “Excuse me is that, I mean, that wouldn’t happen to be a bowtruckle, would it?” That was surprising, because he didn’t know of many individuals who would have one that they carted around with them except for, well, himself.
The other dog’s eyes narrowed a tiny bit, suspicion in them - and probably for the same reasons that Newt’s own eyes had done the same. Surely he heard the strangely familiar and yet strangely unfamiliar voice, surely he saw the similarities. The other male looked as if he were considering answered the question and then a thought seemed to come to him, judging by the sudden brightness in his eyes. ”Polyjuice potion? No. Transfiguration?” The other Newt - Newt 2? - mumbled the words out.
“I should think not,” Newt stated, although the thoughts had passed through his mind as well. They would be the most likely, right? And yet they didn’t look the same - similar, but not the same. Transfiguration would be the most likely but then that was also quite an awful lot of it and… was there a purpose to it? You did that sort of a thing when you were trying to pretend to be someone else, not when you were running directly into them. It was all strange, very strange. “You didn’t answer my question, though, you know.” Because that was more interesting to him than anything - he had always been a bit hyper focused when it came to magical creatures, after all.
“And, um, who are you?” The other male asked. The words were somewhat hesitant but also still full of a surety that said he was going to protect what he needed to protect, too. It was a familiar tone, but almost surreal coming from someone else.
“Newt,” he responded. “And you?”
Though he was expecting it, he still felt a tingle of surprise when the other dog answered simply with, “Newt.” He seemed similarly both surprised and not surprised at what had just occurred between the two of them. “How very odd.”
“Yes, um, but my question?”
There was a moment’s hesitation before Newt - Newt 2, as it were - seemed torn between answering or even perhaps doing something. It was wrong to say that he felt as if he could read the other canine’s mind - he couldn’t in the least - but it was strange to somewhat see similar emotions being mirrored in the other dog’s face. “Yes,” the other dog finally said, turning his head a little to indicate the small, green creature that was mostly hidden behind his ear. “This is Pickett.”
“Oh, but, mine is called Pickett too!” Newt put in excitedly. The momentary strangeness was forgotten simply on the grounds of excitement of knowing that there was another creature right there within touching distance. Only the fact that it would be extremely awkward - and perhaps even considered threatening - stopped him from surging forward to get an even closer look. “And you were a Hufflepuff?”
“As I assume you were, too?” Newt the second questioned. At the nod, a wondering look came over the lighter brown dog’s face. “But how-”
“No idea. Very strange, don’t you think?” Newt commented. Very strange indeed.
“Very.”
“I don’t suppose-” Newt began, hesitating only a moment. As he stood and watched, the lighter colored dog seemed to perk up.
“That you want to go and have a chat about all of this and figure out what’s what?” The other Newt questioned, tail waving back and forth once or twice in a tentative wag. He hadn’t quite fully finished the sentence with what Newt had been intending to say, but it was very close; close enough that it was quite clear that they were of the same mind. And he thought it was a good idea, for now anyways, because they needed to talk and try and learn just what was going on. It wasn’t quite as if they were friends, or even fully trusting one another at the moment, but they were both curious and interested in figuring out just what was going on… and who could blame them at this point in time? After all, it wasn’t often that you met your doppelganger in the middle of a busy street.