Fantastic Feats and Who May Hide Them - Fantastic Beasts fanfiction

Capture of an Entirely Different Sort

"Two down, one to go," he said as the case clicked shut behind them.

Celia took a seat and unclipped his helmet, handing it back to him. He tucked it into his coat, where it shrank into a pocket somewhere. She was able to reach around to the buckles in the back of the vest too, and drew it over her head, handing it to him.

He accepted it back and went to tuck it away too when he caught sight of the spattering stain in the side of her shirt, and looked worriedly back at the vest for a puncture mark. "What happened?" he asked at last, baffled.

Celia laid a wary hand over the stain, hiding it. "It's nothing." She drew her loose coat more tightly around her.

"How long has that injury been there?" he wanted to know. "What caused it? What is it, exactly?"

"It's nothing."

"Celia, the vest would have held your shirt tightly against you, which means I know that you bled on it from a wide area, meaning you have rather a large injury in that part of your skin." He fiddled with the vest still in his hands, then wiggled his wand over it, removing her blood from the inside, she supposed. "Celia, what's wrong? I'd like to help you. I won't tell anyone, I promise. I'll even help you hide it, if you'd like."

Celia had been hiding it herself for weeks. She'd been hiding a lot of things. Like how much water she had to drink to compensate for how much she cried, coming home every night to an empty house, her food going rotten because she hadn't cooked for just one person in six years, and how much it hurt her when people asked how she was, because Momma had taught her to be honest, and she'd never once answered that question dishonestly.

At last she stiffly straightened from where she sat, easing the hem of her shirt out from underneath her skirt, and rolled it up so he could see.

Newt watched her gravely, and his expression fell into one of alarm when he saw what she'd been concealing, though the alarm quickly dispersed into sad sympathy. He knelt next to her so he could better see it, beckoning, and a candle stub floated over to him, hovering off his right shoulder. "It's a parasite," he said at last. "Or several, really. For you, probably several hundred, perhaps a few thousand. They target people who are unhappy."

He stood, putting his back to her, head hanging as he found a pale cloth and dampened it with something. He returned and tried to stoop to press it against the gaping patch of eaten skin, and she pushed his hand away.

"I'm fine."

"Celia, you decidedly are not fine—"

She snatched the cloth from his hand and pushed him away again. "I'm. Fine. Mr. Scamander."

For a moment he looked hurt, but then he turned away again, picking things up and putting them down, apparently at a loss for what to do with his hands. "That won't treat it," he said at last. "It'll just disinfect where the wound is torn."

Gingerly, she laid it against the split skin, her breath hitching.

"For all our advances," he murmured, "neither Muggles nor Wizards have come up with a disinfectant that doesn't burn. I could do it with magic, but...."

"Please don't."

He nodded, turning a different rag over and over in his hands. One of his Deskmate's twirling stems brushed against it, then wound around a corner, tugging. Newt's hands stilled and he let the plant draw the cloth inexorably out from between his fingers.

"Unhappy people are less likely to mention it," he quietly said, watching the Deskmate wrap its tendrils through and around the cloth. "They're already in pain, they hardly notice. Others fight back when their happiness is threatened. Sad people don't; they haven't got any to begin with."