Field Notes, Entry No. 127 — On the Curious (and Uncommonly Tender) Habits of Human Companionship, Observed Firsthand in the Cot Beneath the Bowtruckle Tree

— by Newton Artemis Fido Scamander

Last night, or more accurately, some thick pocket of early morning half-lit hours — that liminal time where dreams rot and reality hasn’t had the decency to arrive yet — something rather unexpected happened. (Not that the unexpected is terribly unusual in his line of work, but this… this wasn’t Nundu-in-the-tent unexpected. This was gentler. Stranger. Quieter.)

He’d just bedded down in the cot he keep wedged beside the steaming moss bed for the Myan feather-wings (bloody show-offs, but warm neighbours), and the suitcase was at its nighttime hum — all the creatures snoring, crooning, purring in their own eccentric harmonies — when he felt a shift. Not the kind caused by an errant Fwooper or Pickett throwing a tantrum (again). No. This was soft. Human.

You.

You came crawling into the cot like some trembling moonlit spectre, the kind children insist hide in their wardrobes but never quite make it out of fiction. Your limbs were uncoordinated, sleep-heavy, your breath sharp and panicked like you’d outrun a Lethifold in your dreams. You didn’t say anything. (Which he was grateful for, as verbal processing isn’t exactly a strength of his at half-past-no-one-should-be-awake.) You just… curled in. Clung on. Burrowed.

It would’ve been easier, perhaps, to shift aside. Make space, murmur that curious breed of British pleasantries about how everything would feel much better in the morning. But there was something in your grip — the way your hands gripped his jumper like it was the only dry thing left in a storm — that rooted him.

So he stayed still.

Half-asleep, he suppose he must’ve mumbled something. Nothing profound. Likely nonsense. Possibly something about Puffskeins and how they also shake in their sleep when frightened. (They do. Particularly the juveniles.) He remembers stroking your back once or twice — awkward, probably — more instinct than anything else. Your spine was stiff. The kind of tension that doesn’t release unless someone else carries it for a while. So he tried.

And then, rather impossibly, you relaxed. Just melted against him, like wax against a wick, all pliant limbs and sleep-weighted breath. Your nose pressed somewhere between his collarbone and throat, and your fingers threaded into the hem of his jumper like ivy curling into brick.

He lays there, not quite awake, not quite asleep, just feeling the minute shifts of your breathing. The odd hiccuping exhale. The sound of your heart settling its tempo to his. (It’s strange, isn’t it? How easily two heartbeats can sync up when the bodies housing them are desperate not to be alone.)

When he woke, it was to the sight of you still there. Still pressed close, face tucked under his chin, and the world had shifted just enough that he didn’t feel like an oddity anymore. You weren’t frightened now. Your face had gone soft. Serene. One hand was still curled against his chest like you were afraid he’d vanish if you let go.

And Merlin, he thought — he felt — like something had split open in him. Not in the frightening way. In the finally way. There you were. Still. Safe. Warm. Unmoving except for the flutter of your lashes and the gentle rise-fall of your breathing.

And he just… watched. Not in a creepy way (He do have some social instincts, however buried). Just… in awe. As one might regard a sleeping Thunderbird — beautiful, dangerous in the right light, and wholly untouchable in waking hours.