The two of them are snugly resting against one another, Charlie lightly dozing as Thandi reads. It’s amazing how someone so frightened of the world in general can sleep so deeply, but those close to the pair know that most of his sleep is done only with Thandi around. She’s nestled between his thighs, tapping her lip as she concentrates.
The quill dashes off a few more lines of notes as she takes a breath. Charlie’s head rests on her shoulder, his arms around her, and every once in a while, Thandi will reach up to stroke his hair.
Part of the reason for his attachment is his need for comfort to sleep. The Slytherin dorms are the opposite of what he would consider comfortable: cold, crushed under layers of water, great aquatic beasts peering into the windows, and not a peek of sunshine nor a breath of fresh air to interrupt the dankness of the Slytherin dungeon.
Thandi knows this well. Any night he spends alone is a night spent studying or reading, if only to keep up with the bare minimum of classes.
Sleep didn’t always come to Charlie easily. Thandi leans back into him as she rests her eyes for a moment, reflecting on her boy’s odd first year.
For one, by the end of it, he refused his own schedule to follow hers.
For two, he was glued to her as if she was the first and only person in the world he knew.
For three, he didn’t sleep terribly well for the first three months, and after winter vacation, he barely slept at all. Whatever happened while he was alone in the dungeon scared him so badly that when she returned, he promptly curled up next to her and passed out.
She had never seen such a haunted expression since then, but his exhaustion clung to him like cobwebs. He was sleeping in snatches of ten, fifteen minutes at a time, clinging to her each time. The professors gave up and wrote it off as him being an unmotivated student. He’s a Slytherin boy, he’ll get by, they said.
But he didn’t. He got worse. Shadows spooked him, and when the telltale red of a Howler dropped into his lap, he would walk away with it and disappear for the rest of the day. He only seemed to trust Thandi to keep him safe while he managed a few precious minutes with his eyes closed.
For an eleven year old boy, it had to be torture to go so long without sleep. It was slowing Thandi down as well until she put her foot down one morning and declared he wasn’t allowed to hug her until he went to sleep.
This ended up with him crying loudly in front of the Ravenclaw common room, hyperventilating and crouching in front of her and begging her forgiveness. Thandi’s heart softened and she brought him to the infirmary so that the nurse could give him a sleeping draught.
Charlie slept for two days. Their friends came together to brainstorm what to do to get him together again and decided, in the end, to poke around the Slytherin dorms. There wasn’t much amiss until they got Tirel, one of his roommates, to speak up about the boy’s dorm. Apparently, it was cursed in the non-traditional, wizarding sense. Every night, one of the boys would be accosted by an image of terrible fright, so wretched that they would often be heard screaming through the long halls.
It took several professors and an exterminator to investigate, finding that a boggart of all things was hiding away in the dorms. And Charlie had been alone with it for a week. Not only that, but under his bed there was discovered a metal box brimming with ashes, charred significantly.
Eventually, he told everyone precisely what had happened: a box had come for him over Christmas, labelled as being from his mother. The boy was overjoyed and unwrapped it, opening the box only to find his father climbing out of it and seven distinct Howlers all screaming at him in unison. He was alone with it for the entire vacation period.
The boggart hassled him endlessly, and the fear of sleeping in the dorm never left. He ended up getting permission from the Headmaster herself to sleep in the Ravenclaw common room “as long as he assisted her protégé”.
Thus, Thandi became his pillow for the next few years. It wasn’t the worst; he was able to better sleep on his own now, and even occasionally dared to return to his own bed on occasion. As for her, Charlie got rest and his eagerness to help her (despite his claims) certainly eased the load of her classes.
Thandi sighs. The downside to having him be so cuddly, though, was that it made her so terribly comfortable that she would be tempted into a nap with him. Even now, fifth year, inseparable to a fault, her eyes start to flutter shut as she leans into her boy’s chest.
He squeezes slightly with a deep sigh and she drifts off.