Fantastic Feats and Who May Hide Them - Fantastic Beasts fanfiction

Babysitter

"How do you people do this all the time?" she wanted to know, momentarily leaning on Queenie when they reappeared in a damp alley somewhere.

"You get used to it," Tina assured her. "This way." She led them down into a tucked-away stair, as though descending into a root cellar. A full-sized poster of a woman looking into a mirror blinked at them out of her reflection. Tina and Queenie went to stand before the poster first, faced each other, then drew their wands down before them. As though turning tiny tiles, their everyday clothes flickered into sparkling dresses more appropriate to an evening at a dancing bar. Celia noticed Newt retying his blue bowtie.

Queenie looked up at Celia. "Mind if I change your clothes, honey? It won't last."

Celia glanced down at her business clothes and shrugged. "Something modest," she requested.

"Something green," Queenie decided, and gave Celia a wave of her wand, and Celia's clothes flickered into a pale green dress similar to their own, but with a higher neckline. Celia nodded her approval, and Queenie grinned.

Tina raised a hand to knock deliberately on the blinking poster, and the eyes ripped back to reveal a rectangular peephole.

Queenie was frowning at Celia's arm, having spotted the long, rough scar running from her elbow to her wrist.

Flushing, Celia drew her arms about her, rubbing them against the chill, remembering only at the last moment that her thoughts weren't always her own around Queenie, and deliberately thought of something else.

With a sympathetic smile, Queenie patted Celia's arm, and nudged her to walk before her as they followed Tina into the bar.

"You come with me," Tina said to Newt, cupping a hand under his elbow.

"I'll be right back," Queenie whispered to Celia, indicating her toward the bar, and Celia took a seat.

Celia had never gone to bars in New York before, not being comfortable around so many people, even if they were bars mostly populated by non-white folks like her. Too many bodies rubbing too closely and calamitously together made her bones ache like their bones were sandpaper, and just their proximity was enough to cause an abrasion. But this one was only pleasantly filled, it being early in the night yet, and it wasn't entirely filled with humans.

The woman singing was the first to catch her attention—she was small, and narrow-boned, her fingers like threads. Celia wasn't sure how the silver snake wrapping around her skull stayed fixed, but was entranced by the entirely off-kilter beauty of it. And there were humans chatting with people who weren't wrong, necessarily, but their heads sat too large on their shoulders, and their fingers were knobbed as though they had acorns for knuckles. Then a man so tall he had to hunch even while sitting was leaned against a nearby wall playing cards.

"You want a drink or you just sittin'?" a rasping voice asked, and Celia jumped. There was no one behind the bar. But then she looked lower, and spotted a short, long-eared fellow scowling up at her. "What?" he asked. "You never seen a house-elf before?"

Celia shook her head. "Not a one."

"Then where you been livin'? Under a box?"

"I'm starting to think so," she harrumphed. "How's your evening going?"

"Dry," he retorted. "What about that drink?"

"Would it be rude to ask for a water?"

"Ruder still if I didn't give it to ya," he grumbled, and with a snap of his fingers a glass whizzed from underneath the bar, and water flowed in a stream from some other source.