I suppose if you’d told me two years ago that I’d be walking hand-in-hand with someone through the halls of Hogwarts—not because I tripped over a Pygmy Puff on the loose or because I’m being chased by a fuming professor—I’d have stared blankly and said something about mooncalves instead.

But here I am. Year Seven. My last at Hogwarts.

And you’re here too.

You’re quiet like me. Awkward with people, but with creatures? Merlin, you shine. The first time I saw you, you were crouched in the muddy edge of the Forbidden Forest cradling an injured Jobberknoll like it was made of glass. I remember standing there stupidly for far too long before blurting out, “They don’t usually let anyone touch them, you know.”

You jumped. “I—I wasn’t trying to—it was bleeding,” you’d stammered, holding the little blue creature close to your jumper, eyes wide like I’d caught you nicking potions ingredients.

“I didn’t mean—sorry. You did it right,” I mumbled. “Just surprised it let you.”

We both stood there for a moment, staring at the bird. Then at each other. Then back at the bird. Brilliant start, really.

Somehow, that moment stuck. One awkward conversation became two. Then three. Then mornings meeting at the edge of the forest before classes with our arms full of feed and our pockets full of plasters. Somehow you got me talking—not the rehearsed facts I spill when professors ask—but talking, properly. About my creatures. About what they meant.

“You know,” you told me one night, curled up beside me near the Hufflepuff common room fire, “you talk to your bowtruckle more than you do to anyone else.”

“Well… Pickett doesn’t interrupt,” I said. “And he actually listens.”

You snorted. “So do I.”

You were right.

It wasn’t all sunshine and gillywater, of course. I still get stared at. Still get called “Scamander the Strange” by some of the Slytherins, especially when my robes come back smelling of hippogriff dung. But you’d squeeze my hand under the table in Herbology, or slip me notes with doodles of grinning nifflers during Transfiguration, and suddenly I didn’t care what they said.

One day I found you in the stables crying quietly beside a thestral. I’d never seen you like that.

“He was trying to fly,” you whispered, gesturing to a fledgling. “He fell wrong. I—he didn’t make it.”

I crouched beside you, not saying anything. I knew words wouldn’t help. Instead, I sat with you in silence, our knees brushing, until you leaned against me and said, “You’re good at this.”

“At what?”

“Being here. When it matters.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded and gave you a tiny smile.

Now, in our last year, we’re preparing for what comes next—though I’d rather spend the rest of my life in the forest with a sack of flobberworms and you beside me. Sometimes, in the evenings, we sneak out with my invisibility charm and walk beneath the stars, whispering dreams and plans and fears into the dark.

“I think I want to travel,” you said once. “To see how magical creatures live in other countries.”

My heart jumped. “I—I do too. I’ve always wanted to write a guidebook. For people who… don’t understand them.”

You grinned. “Then we could go together. Write and study and… maybe open a sanctuary one day.”

I couldn’t speak for a full minute. My ears went pink, which they tend to do when I feel too much.

“Is that a yes?” you teased.

“It’s a forever,” I said softly.

You looked down, cheeks flushed, and mumbled, “Good. I think you’re the only person I could ever do this life with.”

And that’s just it, isn’t it? In a world of shifting staircases and roaring spells and beasts that don’t belong in cages, I found someone who sees me. Who loves the quiet in me and the chaos too.

I still don’t fit in. But now I don’t mind. Because you don’t either.

And together? We fit.