Petunia and the Little Monster

August 1973

Their kiss changed things while they bizarrely also stayed the same. It was confusing for Petunia while simultaneously being the most wonderful time she could recall.

She would visit Ivy (Eugene) often, whenever she could get away from her parent's questioning gazes and Lily's loud presence in their shared room. When she went to bed at night her mind would be alight with images of magical sunshine, soft curls, wide grins, lush fields and careful touches that sent goosebumps across her skin and prickling bubbles into her bloodstream.

Most of their time was spent in the Occamy enclosure, either playing with Ivy and her siblings or simply taking walks through the forest surrounding their nest, Eugene pointing out small creatures hiding in burrows or flying above their heads. Newt Scamander's menagerie was vast and every creature seemed more magical and fantastical then the last. They would talk, about their families, about magic, about beasts but somehow they never discussed what they now meant to each other. Eugene would simply take her hand, brush a finger across her cheek or kiss her and Petunia revelled in his touch and attention like she had been starved for years. They didn't need any words.

The enclosure they spent almost as much time in was the one containing Eugene's Hippogriffs. He told Petunia that his grandmother had been breeding them all her life but his father refused to take up her mantle, letting the remnants and offspring of that original herd live out their days in his home instead.

Of course Eugene had a favourite and in the way he treated him, Petunia could see a reflection of her and Aspen. But instead of tightly-stretched skin, Hippogriffs were covered in a mixture of gleaming fur and downy feathers, their avian eyes bright and sharp, not milky-grey like Aspen's.

Eugene's favourite was named Icarus ("Way too pompous for my taste, but my uncle picked the name and I was too young to protest, not having mastered speech yet") and had russet-coloured fur and feathers, gleaming like the setting sun whenever he rustled them in a prideful display. After bowing to him and approaching him carefully, Icarus let Petunia pet his sharp beak and muscular neck, tolerating her attention while Eugene kept watch.

"He looks dangerous."

Eugene shook his head in mocking disagreement. "No, no, he looks comfortable, Petals. Look at that broad and soft back - no poking bones, no cold, slippery skin -"

Petunia interrupted him with a glare. "Aspen is not uncomfortable!"

At least not when she padded his back with enough blankets.

Eugene chuckled at the expression on her face, maybe able to guess the words she left unspoken, but before Petunia could protest further he had silenced her with a soft kiss that left her head empty.

She never tried to mount and fly his Hippogriffs and Eugene didn't urge her to try, sitting down in the shade and watching them swoop through the air with her instead.

They looked at other creatures. One time Eugene took her to feed the mooncalves, strange four-legged beasts with cup-sized, round eyes and a tiny mouth they used to pluck floating pellets out of the air. Another time he showed her the Nifflers with a warning to take tight hold of her braid ("If they try to steal your hair for nesting I'll do my best to save at least a few strands.") and it soon became obvious that this caution stemmed from personal experience. The mole-like creatures were swift and quite enamoured with Eugene's golden curls and the small buttons at Petunia's sleeves, trying to rip both off in increasingly sneaky attempts. Neither of them were able to completely stop them, Eugene's scalp and Petunia's wardrobe suffering for it. She wasn't sure which hurt worse.