The Nightmare Child

Chapter 4

(Also, I found out that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them took place in 1926 only 54 years before Harry Potter was born. Not 100. Warner Bros. why you lie to us like this?...)

"Ow!" Phoenix yelped as she stumbled down the steps upon entering Newt's case. She stumbled on the last step and fell to the ground. She groaned and stood, brushing herself up. She appeared to be in a rough-looking shack with cluttered messes everywhere. She frowned. Newt said that there were creatures here. How?

She stepped over broken pots and at first she hated the mess. After a while it became clear that this was the way that Newt organized everything. She picked up a battered book and read it.

"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," She read from the book. She opened it up. "First Manuscript. Huh, neat," she set the book down and walked over to the door and opened it.

Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened in shock.

Ahead of her, the case seemingly expanded wider and wider. Things were ordered with exhibits, ranging from sandy desserts to bubbles drifting around the place. Creatures big and small roamed the area starting with a small billywig to a large nundu. Phoenix could feel herself grinning.

"Alright," she muttered, making her way through the exhibits, dodging angry looks from the creatures. It almost seemed like they were saying, What have you done to Newt? She did her best to ignore them.

Loui, unfortunately, did not.

"Rawk!" Phoenix looked down to see Dodo, a Diricrawl cawing up at her. It hooted and teleported to what looked like a small forest. She followed Dodo, wondering what was happened. She followed him to this nest-like thing and it was only then when she came up to speed with what had happened. Dodo had escaped from her bag. Others probably escaped form her bag, realizing that they were somewhere new. And when coming upon what she realized was a Niffler nest, she only needed to pair two and two and...

"Loui!" Phoenix roared and charged forward, past Dodo. Dodo squawked and disappeared. Phoenix of course, didn't care. Dodo never caused any harm.

When Phoenix reached the nest, she could already hear the squabbling of Loui and Newt's Niffler. Phoenix looked into the hole just in time to see Loui fall out the side and then scramble back onto it. Loui turned to Newt's Niffler, but Phoenix tapped her foot. Loui froze and slowly turned to her. Loui squeaked and Phoenix snatched the Niffler. She stuffed him in her bag and apologized to Newt's Niffler.

Feeling slightly overwhelmed, Phoenix made her way back to the stack. She cast a small listing spell on her bag and found that only her Niffler, two Mooncalves, her Shortle, (Turtle) and her Bireline, Bri. She sighed, sad and a little angry that most of the creatures had escaped into the case. Then she realized it really didn't matter. Smiling, she opened her bag and let everyone out.

"Now be nice to Newt's Niffler," she told Loui and he nodded, dashing away. She watched the two mooncalves squeal and make their way to this moonlit place on the other side. She suspected that other mooncalves were there. Turtle moaned clearly wanting water. Phoenix sighed.

"Over there, you big bum," she said, pointing to the water area. Turtle cried out happily and waddled over there. Phoenix giggled. Bri merely sniffed and morphed to the size of a regular house cat, her wings shrinking with her. She mewled and slided up to Phoenix, rubbing her head against Phoenix's leg. Phoenix scratched her ears, looking up at the sky. She smiled. She could live here. She wouldn't even mind it.

"Getting comfortable?" Phoenix jumped. She turned around to see Newt. He had taken off his blue jacket, so now he was just in his vest and white shirt along with his pants. He had taken a bucket of meat with him and was walking around the Arizona-like exhibit.

"Need to take that down," he muttered to himself, nodding it.

"Yes, I am getting comfortable," Phoenix said, speaking up. Newt looked over at her and smiled.

"That's good," he told her. Beat

"Where are your friends?" She asked.

"Oh, they're upstairs," Newt said, plopping the bucket down. She skipped over to him. "I wanted you to get used to this place before you saw them,"

"Yeah...," she crouched down and picked up a slab of meat. "What sort of animal-" she was cut off by Newt letting out this deep roar-like sound. She jumped back, surprised. Newt looked down and her and smiled, roared again, before helping her up.

"What was that-?" She froze. Ahead of her, a stampede of something was running at them, full speed.

"Give them a second," Newt said. Bri had walked over and meowed. She licked her front paw and Newt raised his eyebrows at Phoenix.

"You have a Bireline?" He said. She nodded.

"Pretty much everything you have and then Turtle my Shortle and of course, Bri my Bireline," Phoenix said, smiling. Newt chuckled a bit.

"You named your Shortle, Turtle?" He said. She gave him a lopsided grin and nodded. She turned her head and nodded to the playful Shortle who was just over near the rest of the water creatures. Newt nodded, smiling.

"All of my creatures escaped by the way," she added, peering into the gloom. "Sorry if you didn't want them too. I have a hard time controlling some of them,"

"Nah, that's okay," Newt also peering into the gloom. "Here they come," he stooped down to grab a piece of meat. She looked down at him.

"Here what-?" She paused as she had looked back to see a Graphorn near her. Her eyes widened. "You-You have a-a," she choked, unable to get the words out. Newt grinned.

"These are special Graphorns," he told her. "They're the last breeding pair in existence,"

"Yea-yeah," Phoenix stuttered, but her surprised look turned to a look of awe. "I never really saw any of these creatures," she rambled. "Never had one either, but that would make sense...and I did meet one once, but he was quite small and dying," she paused. "A lot of the first animals I found were like that....I used to work at the Central Park zoo too," she added, grinning. Then she paused. "I don't know why I'm telling you all of this," Newt had stopped throwing meat and he looked over at her.

"Maybe because you trust me," he said. She looked at him and smiled.

"Yeah," she said. "Maybe..."

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