Disclaimer: I do not own "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" in any way, shape, or form! I only own my OC, "Sophie Millicent Kingston" and the plot of this story!

Author's Note: Hi! Here's the next chapter!

Enjoy!

Around eight, Sophie packed her desk up and left her office. She slipped her ring back on, because John would've surely asked where it had gone.

She sighed as walked out onto the streets and hailed a taxi. It didn't take long to get to the restaurant that he had told her to meet him, and before she knew it, she was walking through the doors and scanning the crowds, looking for her fiance.

Once she found him, she drew a breath and walked over to him. John Williams was an Englishman, born and raised in England. In fact, the only reason that he had come to Romania was because Sophie was returning to Romania after the death of her father and he wanted to be with her. He had dark hair with dark brown eyes, and sometimes Sophie actually managed to find them attractive.

"There you are, sweetheart!" John said loudly, and Sophie flushed at the looks that she got from the other patrons as she arrived at the table. John stood up to give her a hug and a kiss, but she quickly slid into her chair across from him. He awkwardly sat back down as Sophie picked up her menu so that she wouldn't have to answer any questions from him.

"You're late," he told her as he settled in his seat.

Sophie frowned and check her wristwatch. "It's only 8:15."

"But we had agreed on 8," John insisted. "You must've gotten lost in your work. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: you spend way too much time at that sanctuary."

Sophie clutched her menu tighter and tried not to rip it into two. Ever since she and John had met, he had never approved of her work as a dragonologist. He deemed it "too dangerous for a woman" and that Sophie should be focusing instead on domestic work, such as staying home and learning to take care of the house. John himself was an Auror, though Sophie never complained about it. In fact, she was rather happy that he worked as an Auror, because it meant that his hours were often irregular, so she had an excuse not to see him.

"Well, it is my job," she said as neutrally as possible. "And I wouldn't trade it for the world."

"You'll have to cut back on your hours once we're married," he thought as he stroked his face, scratching at the hint of a beard that was starting to form. "I'll cut back as well. I feel if we don't spend much time together when we're engaged, what will it be like when we're married?"

Better, Sophie thought to herself as the waiter arrived. They placed their orders, and the waiter took their menus. "How was work today?" he asked her, the first question of the night that made John seem interested in her.

"It was good," she nodded. "This man named Newt Scamander stopped by today. He's writing a book on magical creatures and wants information from the sanctuary."

"A book on magical creatures?" he repeated. "Like an extermination field guide?"

Sophie immediately shook her head. "No, that's not what it seems like at all. When he talks about magical creatures, he talks about them with such love. I think it's more of a book of information on these creatures, information that will help people not be afraid of them."

John nodded thoughtfully. "Were you two alone in your office?"

Sophie sat straighter. "Yes. Is that a problem?" she asked, her voice heavily laced with deadly accusation.

John quickly shook his head. "N-no, of course not!" he stated, though Sophie could tell that he had a problem with it. "I was just wondering if he's working with anybody else at the sanctuary, is all."

She let it go. This was no place to start an argument with John. "I think he's going to be working with Alexandra as well, though I'm not sure."

"That's nice," he nodded, and an awkward silence started creeping its way into their conversation.

"How was your day?" Sophie quickly asked in order to spare them of the silence.

John seemed grateful for the question and began his story, complete with an hour by hour description.

As John spoke, Sophie had to admit to herself that John wasn't a bad guy. In fact, he was a really good one, and Sophie should be glad that she was marrying such a good guy when she could be marrying someone terrible.

But as hard as Sophie tried, she couldn't love him.

She wasn't sure what it was. Maybe it was his disapproval of her job. Maybe it was the way he thought that she shouldn't be working at all, instead staying home and spending all day cooking meals and looking after children. Maybe it was the way he interrupted her when she spoke, or the way he just didn't seem that interested in whatever Sophie wanted to talk about. She just didn't love the man.

Then why was she marrying him, one might ask?

Back when Sophie and John had met, Sophie's father had just passed away. John was the son of Thea's good friend's Joyce, and the two spent some time together as Sophie stayed in London in order to help take care of her family. He always showed up to her door, wondering if she needed anything. He walked her anywhere she went, even when she begged him not to. He bought her little things, even when he didn't have the budget to do so. But what Sophie didn't know was that John Williams was actually rich. Very, very rich.

Thea knew this, obviously, and when she noticed that John and Sophie were spending some time together, she advised Sophie to start seriously seeing John. When Sophie protested, Thea reminded her that they didn't have as much money as they had before, because Matthew had brought in most of the money through his self made business. After he passed away, the business ended.

With that in mind, Sophie felt guilty, and then started spending more time with John. As a result, John started spending on her family, and Sophie always felt her heart warm when she saw how happy Astra or Penelope were with the little trinkets that John had gotten for them. The two girls had stopped smiling after the death of their father, and Sophie was happy to see them happy.

After some time had passed, Sophie decided that it was time for her to go back to work, which still paid very good money, money that they could use. Thea saw no sense in staying in London when her eldest daughter lived in Romania, so the family of four decided to move together.

When John found this out, he proposed to Sophie immediately, saying that he didn't want to be without her. She asked for some time to think it over, and her mother told her that she wasn't going to find an offer like this again, especially the older that Sophie was getting.

Sophie, seeing that John wasn't a bad man and would be a good fit for her family, accepted. She assumed that at this point in her life, she wasn't going to fall in love with anybody, and a young, rich, handsome man was asking for her hand in marriage. She would've been promised with a stable life, and that was what was appealing to Sophie.

Some days she regretted it, some days she didn't. But Sophie found herself noticing that she was having more days where she was regretting accepting the offer of marriage, and she wasn't sure how to stop having these days. Most of the time she was able to get over it, but there was a nagging feeling in her stomach that wouldn't go away that was telling her how wrong it was that she was marrying a man that she didn't love.

Sophie ignored these thoughts and instead dug into her food when it arrived, deciding to deal with these feelings on other day.

The next day, Sophie had gone into work expecting to see Newt Scamander. She even went in an hour early, hoping that he had been there waiting like he had the day before. To her surprise, she was disappointed when he wasn't there.

Sophie took off her ring as usual and discarded it into the drawer. She hated the way that she felt whenever she saw the ring and whenever she took it off, but she had become accustomed to not wearing it at work. In fact, she had stopped wearing it at work for so long that some people asked if her engagement was off, or men who didn't know that she was engaged would ask her out for dinner.

A little bit before lunch, Sophie made her way to Alexandra's office in the next wing. She and Alexandra never knocked for each other, so she simply swung the door open as she said, "I forgot to grab lunch this morning. Want to get something to eat?"

But Sophie was met with silence, and she furrowed her eyebrows when she noticed that the office was empty. And it wasn't just empty as if Alexandra had just stepped out for a moment, but it was empty. The light was off, none of Alexandra's things covered the desk, and her jacket was noticeably absent from the coat rack that she had in the corner of the room.

"She's not in today," Sophie heard, and she turned around to see Luca Barbu, who worked as a researcher in the Swedish Short Snout department.

"Why not?" she asked as she turned around to face him completely, shutting the door behind her.

He shrugged. "She sent an owl this morning saying that she was sick and that she wasn't going to be coming in. She didn't provide much detail."

Sophie nodded thoughtfully and thanked Luca for telling her. She then made her way back to her office and grabbed her coat from her chair. She slipped it on and then left a sign on the door saying that she had stepped out for her lunch break and then walked out of the sanctuary.

It was strange for Alexandra to stay home from work. Even if she was sick, she still came because she hated the idea of lost money. And it was even stranger for her not to tell Sophie that she wasn't coming in. Sophie saw her just yesterday. She couldn't be so sick as to choose to stay home, could she?

The cold summer air greeted her as she stepped outside. Summer was slowly starting to draw to a close, which meant that sooner rather than later, Sophie would have to switch out her skirts and thin coat for trousers and thicker coats. It was also almost time for Penelope to return to school. Even though Hogwarts only accepted students from Great Britain, because Penelope had been a student at Hogwarts before she had moved to Romania to live with Sophie and the rest of their family, the Headmaster Armando Dippet had kindly extended the boundaries for Penelope and allowed her to continue studying there (and by kindly, Sophie meant that she had gone and threatened him with John investigating his role as Headmaster if he hadn't allowed Penelope to continue to attend Hogwarts).

Penelope was sixteen, meaning that she was going into her last year of Hogwarts, and then she could find a job in her desired field-namely, Transfiguration. Penelope had become inspired to be a Transfiguration professor by her favourite professor, Albus Dumbledore, who happened to be the head of the department. He told her that there would be a position waiting for her should she choose to apply, and Sophie could swear she saw her eyes sparkle with the light of her dreams when she told her.

Alexandra lived by the sanctuary, so Sophie chose to walk over to the small apartment building where Alexandra lived. Before she went, she stopped by a restaurant and got some soup for the both of them, thinking that if Alexandra was sick then she would need some hot food.

After being granted access to the building, Sophie took the stairs to the third floor where Alexandra's room was. She let herself in with the key that Alexandra had given her and walked inside. "Alex?" she called out, locking the door behind her. She set the container of soup down on the counter in the kitchen and shrugged off her coat. "Alex?" she tried again, tossing her coat onto the couch in the joined living room.

She went over to Alexandra's bedroom and knocked. "Alex?" she said gently, and when she heard a soft moan, she took that as an okay to enter and opened the door.

Alex's bedroom was small, only really big enough for the bed and one regular sized dresser. The bed was in the middle of the room, and Alexandra had barely managed enough strength to turn in bed when Sophie had opened the door.

"Alex," Sophie breathed when she saw the condition that her friend was in. She was very pale, with sweat beading all along her forehead. Her eyes were red and sunken in, with deep purple bags under her eyes. There were some veins around her eyes that were a mix of a sickly green and a worrying grey, and the area around her lips were a faint orange colour. There was a bucket next to the bed, and judging from the smell that was coming from it, Alexandra had been sick several times into it. "What happened?" she asked as she came over to her.

Alexandra coughed and shook her head. "I don't know," she barely managed, and Sophie fought the urge to lean in to hear her better in case she caught whatever it was that Alexandra had. It must've been bad, because Alexandra was speaking Romanian instead of English like she normally did with Sophie. "I came home last night absolutely fine, and then I woke up this morning and couldn't get out of bed."

"Well, I brought you some soup," she offered, patting the blanket where Alexandra's legs were. "I'll bring it in here."

Alexandra nodded her thanks as Sophie turned and walked out of the room. She poured some soup into a bowl, grabbed a spoon, a glass of water, and some unsalted crackers and put them on a tray. She carried the tray into Alexandra's bedroom, and when Sophie saw her friend struggling to sit up so that she could place the tray onto her lap, she said, "Just lie down. I'll feed you."

So Alexandra let Sophie spoon feed her some soup, though she stopped before she could finish half of the bowl. "I'm not very hungry," she told Sophie as she laid back down.

"Can I do anything else for you?" Sophie asked, setting the bowl aside onto the side table. She covered it with another plate, hoping that Alexandra would just use a spell to heat it up and eat it later.

Alexandra shook her head. "Thank you for bringing me food," she smiled.

"Can't I bring you some medicine or something?" she tried. "I'm sure Astra has some natural remedies or something..."

"I already took some," Alexandra said. "I'm sure this will go away after a couple of days if I keep taking the medicine. Honestly, Soph, I'll probably be back to work next week." She leaned over to look at the clock that was on her wall, and then she looked back to Sophie. "You should get back to work. It looks like your lunch break is almost over."

"Well, if you're sure," Sophie said uneasily as she stood up. "I'll come check up on you again after work tonight, and I'll keep coming to check on you."

"Thank you," Alexandra said, and she turned over so she could settle in for another nap. "Goodbye, Sophie."

"Goodbye, Alex," she responded as she made her way to the door. Sophie stood in the doorway for a second, looking at Alexandra as she slipped into sleep, and then quietly shut the door.

She had never seen an illness quite like this. Of course, it could just be the common flu, but Sophie had never seen a face with that kind of colour before. People's faces just didn't turn orange or gray mixed with green, right?

There was something that wasn't quite right with what was wrong with Alexandra, and Sophie could feel her stomach tying into knots as she worried.

When she returned to work, she found herself so lost in her worry that she almost missed Newt Scamander calling out her name. "Miss Kingston! Miss Kingston!" he called out, and Sophie stopped walking as she turned around to see him catching up to her.

"Oh, Mr Scamander," she acknowledged distractedly as she went back to walking in a dreamlike state. What illness could cause your face to turn green and grey? "I didn't see you there. I apologize."

"That's quite all right," Newt assured her. "You looked like you were thinking deeply about something. I often get like that as well when I'm thinking very hard about something. Once, I was thinking about something so hard that I walked right into a tree and into a pile of mud."

Sophie was in a worried state, but she couldn't help the giggle that rose out of her chest at Newt's story. "Was the tree okay, at least?" she asked, with an air of jest in her question.

Newt smiled tentatively, which made Sophie's smile bigger. "The tree was absolutely fine," he informed her. "I, on the other hand, was washing mud off of myself for a week."

She laughed again, and Newt smiled once more. His smile relaxed a little as he asked, "Are you all right, Miss Kingston? Is there something wrong?"

Sophie shook her head. She barely knew Newt Scamander; she didn't want to burden him with her troubles. "Nothing that you have to concern yourself with." She came to a stop in front of her office. "Your concern is the Chinese Fireballs," she said as she opened the door and stepped inside. "When you weren't here this morning, I didn't think you were coming today."

"Oh, I had some things to do in town this morning," he informed her. "My apologies, I should have clarified yesterday when I would be coming."

"It's not a problem," she assured him. She went over to her desk as Newt waited awkwardly in the doorway. She finally managed a good look at Newt as she opened her desk, and she noticed that she had his suitcase with him once again. "Are you a drifter, Mr Scamander?"

He gave her a confused look, and she looked down pointedly at his suitcase. "Oh," he said as he held it out a bit from him to take a look at it. "No. I just carry it around it."

"Everywhere?" she went on as she opened her drawers and pulled out a set of keys.

"Yes," he answered, though he offered no reason why.

Sophie decided not to push it as she made her way back over to where Newt was standing. "Are you ready, Newt?" she asked, a grin on her face.

"For what?" he asked, a hesitant look on his face at the excitement on Sophie's.

She held up the keys. "We're going to go meet some Chinese Fireballs."

TBC...

So in this chapter we find out how Sophie ended up engaged to her fiance if she didn't care for him that much. I hope the explanation makes sense!

Till next chapter!

Please review if you can, they give me motivation!

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