morningless replied to your post
“I just realised that Newt and Percival both have mother of pearl as...”
well thought out, but wasn't Newt's expulsion not enforced?
I’ve definitely heard that theory, and I believe one of the main points of evidence is that the original Fantastic Beasts book (ie, the copy of the text book) notes that Newt graduated from Hogwarts. On the other hand, JK said in a tweet that “Dumbledore was a young teacher at the time Newt was expelled. He wasn't able to revoke expulsions.” Although this could imply that someone else revoked the expulsion, it does seem to confirm that Newt was, in fact, expelled.
The wiki sums it up by saying:
He attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he was Sorted into Hufflepuff House, and was later expelled (although it is known that Newt did graduate in some way).
Some theories (and I have no idea how accurate these are or are not, I’m just pulling things out of thin air here):
Newt was expelled after graduating somehow; perhaps completing his OWLs were enough to qualify as ‘graduate’, but he didn’t complete his NEWTs, same as you can leave school after GCSEs.
Newt was expelled but went back to complete his education at a later date (though I confess, this seems unlikely to me given how young Newt was when he went to war. Maybe he was required to have graduated Hogwarts before signing up, and was let back in on that basis?)
“Graduating Hogwarts” simply means “studied there for a time” - there doesn’t seem to be a minimum standard for passing classes (look at Crabbe and Goyle, for example, who can’t exactly have got stellar OWLs but were still there for their NEWTs) so there might not be any graduating criteria and the line on the Fantastic Beasts textbook could be a red herring
Newt was given an honorary title of graduate because Hogwarts wanted the prestige of being associated with him when his book was being published
In my writing, I tend to ignore the whole thing and go for him being expelled and leaving Hogwarts completely behind, but I admit that’s a bit of artistic creativity. If number one was the case he may have been allowed to keep his wand, or it may be that the wand-snapping rule wasn’t in place at that point (or even that the Scamander family name carries weight and the rules were bent, who knows?) - but as I say, I personally don’t see the wand as an Ollivander wand and I think it makes sense that it’s a somewhat alternative replacement he got because he wasn’t technically supposed to have one. He’s certainly shown enough disregard for the law for that to work, but perhaps also he followed the law and remained wandless until he turned up at war, at which point his CO called him an idiot and made him get a wand from a local wandmaker in whichever town near the Eastern Front they happened to be in. That could explain the presence of lime wood, which is important to Slavic mythology but ignored by Ollivander.
