Bursting Into Life

Chapter 1

It's an ordinary evening. Nothing irregular about it. Tina gets home at six, just like she always does, and Queenie, who gets off far sooner, has dinner ready on the table. A completely ordinary evening.

Over dinner they talk, just as they always do. Queenie talks about the latest gossip, all the interesting things she heard that day because who pays her any mind, really? Not many people. Tina tells her about the latest in the magical criminal force - the day was slow, not much going on, and the only thing she did that involved leaving the building was to deliver the paperwork she'd spent the day catching up on. If there was one thing she hadn't missed about being an Auror, it was the obscene amount of paperwork that came with every little happening!

And then Queenie sits bolt upright, her eyes wide.

"Get the door!" she shouts, and Tina stares at her, confused. "Now, Tina! The door!" She's making her way through the apartment as quickly as she can, but she had been behind the table in the kitchen and Tina is sitting on the couch in the living room and she's so much closer. And she finally does it. She dashes over to the door and yanks it open, her sense of urgency drawn from her sister's, and she sees -

Newt Scamander is standing there in the doorway, his face pale and swaying where he stands. A bright sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead, and he speaks. "...Tina... didn't know where else to go... my case..." And his eyes roll back into his head, his knees buckle as he pitches forward, suitcase dropping to the ground with a thud. Tina only just manages to catch him, and she struggles with the weight for a moment - he's inches taller and pounds heavier than she is, and frankly it's a miracle that she manages to catch him at all, but she can't hold him much longer - and then Queenie is there, helping her hold Newt up. Between the two of them they manage to bring him over to the couch, where they take off his coat - he's obviously got a fever - and lay him down.

The case rattles suddenly, and Tina is reminded of what had happened the last time things got out of that bag. "Incarcerous," she mutters, flicking her wand at the case. Magically reinforced ropes appear from thin air and wrap themselves tightly around the case.

Queenie drops into the armchair, turning to look at Tina.

"What do we do now?" she asks. Tina is silent for a minute.

"I guess... we wait for him to wake back up," she says.

They check Newt over, looking to see if he's okay, and he isn't. Running down his left leg is a huge gash. The veins around it are swollen and dark, and whatever gave him that cut must have been venomous, or else followed it up with a curse. Tina isn't quite sure whether this is a spell - inflicted wound or an animal-inflicted one, and she doesn't want to spend too much time looking at it. There's a reason she didn't become a mediwizard. She treats it as best she can, cleaning it out and rubbing various magical herbs into it, finally finishing it off with essence of dittany. It's expensive, she knows, but this is a nasty wound.

The case rattles again, and her eyes flick to it. It still appears well contained, though, so she goes back to what she's doing, wrapping the gash up with proper bandages.

Newt still isn't awake when they go to bed, which is a worrying sign, but not altogether unexpected. He'll need time and heat to break that fever, and if he isn't awake in the morning, then he'll need medical care that she can't provide and they'll have to take him to the hospital. Tina grimaces at the thought - a hospital demands gold, and gold is not something that they have on hand abundantly.

Worrying about something, though, just means you suffer twice instead of once, so she puts it out of her mind and turns out the light.