Fantastic Feats and Who May Hide Them - Fantastic Beasts fanfiction

Suitcases Reunited

"I can't believe you didn't Obliviate that woman," Tina groaned as they walked down yet another avenue, in search of the address stamped on the suitcase's lid. "If there's an inquiry I'm finished."

"I'm sorry but why should you be finished?" Newt wanted to know, taking the case back from her, not liking the way it bounced at her side when she forgot what was inside it. "It's my mistake."

"I'm not supposed to go near the Second Salemers."

"But if you're not on the-" He stopped as Tina abruptly halted, eyes fixated on a bright cobalt insect as it hovered and buzzed above them, then flitted up and away.

Tina rolled a leery gaze around to him. "What was that?"

"Ah, moth I think. Big moth." He ducked as they came around the corner to the sound of screams.

"Oh no," Tina moaned, and they broke into a run to join the crowd gathering in a huddle outside the brick building that matched the address on the lid of the case. Said building had a gap the size of a car punched out of a second-floor wall.

"Now everybody just quiet down!" an officer was shouting. "I'm trying to get a statement."

"I'm telling you it's a gas explosion again!" one woman insisted. "I ain't taking the kids back up there until it's safe."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, there ain't no smell of gas," said the officer.

"I hear you, officer, it was no gas leak," said a heftier man as Newt and Tina pushed behind him. "I seen it, it was a gigantic, huge, hippopoto-gas," he amended as Newt's spell seeped in. "Gas!"

Tina stood below the wreckage, mouth agape.

Newt, not one to waste time, wove between those still streaming down the steps out of the building, and took the stairs three at a time up to an open door with too much light streaming through. He had to weave through toppled terra cotta pots and their green foliage to get to the room with the shattered wall.

Spotting the teal of the No-Maj's skirt first, he crouched at her side and tugged down her blood-smeared collar. He grimaced at the Murtlap bite as she swatted at his hand, apparently not entirely unconscious, which was always a good sign.

Newt stood. He didn't have to consider the spell to put the building to rights, and assumed Tina would Obliviate the crowd below as iron staircases righted and affixed themselves to reassembling brick walls. As the wall closed back together, bricks chinking and grating against one another, the light flicked on at Celia's ivy-draped dresser, he heard Tina calling out to him from the stairway. He retreated to the bed and swung his case onto his lap. Both latches were open and the lid was ajar.

"Mr. Scamander!" Tina bounded up the steps and hurried into Celia's room, not having to dodge the plants that had all been righted with his spell, their dirt and foliage back where they belonged. Her eyes widened as he snapped the latches down. "It was open?"

He looked up at her. "Just a smidge."

"That crazy Niffler thing is on the loose again?"

"Ah, might be."

"Well then look for it! Look!" She'd spotted Celia, and stepped over her legs to crouch at her side. "Her neck's bleeding," Tina announced. "She's hurt." She patted Celia's cheeks.

A pale, tendril-covered creature the size of a housecat threw itself out of the gap beneath Celia's dresser, launching itself at Tina. Tina cried out and threw up her arm, and it used her arm as a springboard to make for the open door.

Newt lurched forward and caught it by the tail, and hastily folded it into his suitcase.

"Mercy Lewis, what is that?" Tina demanded.