(Apologies ahead of time for any minor discrepancy in dialogue with the published screenplay ... I have not gotten my copy in the mail yet at the time of this writing ... although I have made sure of the spelling of Queenie's name at least in the IMDB cast list, which I assume comes from official sources like the cast list in the film credits).
What I said in that post is that, in addition to the "skeleton" and "muscle" layers that I find in two chiastic substructures of the seven-book Potter series (the former in a 3-4-5 chiasm of the seven-year curriculum of Hogwarts and the latter in a 2-4-6 chiasm of themes in the "bottle fame, brew glory, put a stopper in death" borrowed from the first ever potions lesson in book 1), there is a "skin" level in the 1-4-7 structure, and I emphasized that this should not be cheapened or viewed as of lesser stature because it is equally as important as the bones and muscle because, in the matter of what we mean to each other as persons, the "skin/face" level is what we actually encounter; it is that by which our personal relations primarily happen ... in smiles, for example, and JKR regularly speaks in HP of smiles that do or do not extend to the eyes, and I think those descriptions and others like them are what initially hook us in the writing.
(Side Note: I use "face" because, in a doctoral course on contemporary philosophy in relation to theology, we read a certain phenomenological philosopher who dwelt on the face as that by which we humans identify each other as human. I can't remember the philosopher's name without digging out the notes for that class from the buried bins of old grad school materials, which make Newt's suitcase look like a well organized house, but I do remember that one of the Jesuit scholastic students in the class actually did a paper on it and got it published, so it's a philosopher and theme that is considered relevant enough in contemporary discussion for publication in a live peer-reviewed academic journal).
In Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them, I want to talk about the cocoa, meaning the scene in which Queenie and Tina give Newt and Jacob cocoa before bed, as this "face" relational aspect, and I want to claim that this type of thing is what grabs us and pulls us in first to the story (after which the bones of the narrative, the chiastic structure, and the muscles, the themes, hook into our bones and muscles and we are just that ... hooked).
A Foil: Innocence versus Coroman Strike
I'll note one other thing before going further, and that is the aspect of "endearingness": Jacob Kowalski is an amazingly endearing person (and I love the solid character development of Newt as a self-aware but at peace person using Jacob as a foil, when they walk down the night street and Newt notes that people like Jacob, and Jacob tries to be generous and kind by saying that people like Newt to, and Newt, totally at peace with it, states that "no, I actually annoy people"). And Queenie's attachment too Jacob is equally gripping and endearing.
What rises to my mind here is a conversation recently with a friend's wife who was saying that she thinks Pixar studios is owed a huge vote of thanks for restoring a sense of innocence. Jacob Kowalski is that sense of innocence in Fantastic Beasts, and I think it grips the viewer very much, endears us to his simple joy of wonder in discovering the magical world. As a foil (but meaning the utmost respect for the scholar and the work) John Granger (www. howartsprofessor.com) has done a lot of work recently on ring composition (the full-work-scope aspect of chiastic structure) in Rowling's Coroman Strike novels (there is, according to John, a set plan for exactly seven novels), which she writes under the pen-name Robert Galbraith. Before I knew John was working on them, I read the first of them, The Cuckoo's Calling, just out of interest, because it had been made public knowledge that she was Galbraith. Quite simply put, it left me with absolutely no incentive to read the following novels (some of it has to do with gritty content and language and things that, to me, draw the material closer to that other common meaning of "adult literature" ... and I didn't even bother reading The Casual Vacancy on the ground of what I had heard in that respect about that book). Cuckoo's Calling just left me totally flat; I found no endearingness in the characters (maybe a little bit of pathos, but they are not necessarily the same thing). In short, my personal theory is that a preoccupation with proving she can write adult content after many "elites" saying HP was "pretty good ... for kids lit" made for a poor story. The structure may be there (as per John's work on ring composition), but it reads to me like a bit of a Gollum: anemic muscles and saggy skin hanging off those bones (strong in some ways, Like Gollum, but not to good effect).
The thing to me that makes the difference with Fantastic Beasts is the endearingness of the characters, which I think is greatly wrapped up in that "innocence" that makes the wonder possible (the opposite is jadedness, and all it makes possible is suspicion and tension ... these can have a place in a tightly demarcated way that makes them fall under the larger wonder, and it can be a very strong artistic development, like Snape, but if it is the overarching element, I think we soon whither in the reading).
Time for Cocoa
So, the only thing really left to do is to recount the cocoa scene itself in Fantastic Beasts for the demonstration of the effect, meaning that argument and exposition of concepts and terms in a post like this can get one only so far ... the thing that will really convince the reader is to recall the "tactile" ("skin"-level) real details that (I hope) hooked them in watching the movie.
As you will recall, Jacob was bitten by Newt's myrtlap and is having an adverse reaction, sweating and the like. Tina is in hot water with M-CUSA and it's going to be bad for her if she doesn't sort this out on her own, so she brings the two men to the apartment she shares with her sister Queenie. When the boys are tucked in (Newt only pretending), Tina brings them in a tray, saying "I thought you might like a hot drink." Jacob is all smiles (but still a bit of sweat from the bite too, of course), and so likable when he turns to Newt and says "Hey, Mr Scamander, it's cocoa" and smiles and whistle's in simple boyish natural innocent interest when he raises his cup to Queenie, who is smiling at him from the background through the open door. When the door closes, Newt takes him down into the suitcase world and gives him the stuff that will fix the reaction to the myrtlap bite,which works instantaneously. When Newt discovers that the female erumpant got out, he finds out from Jacob that central park is the most likely place and asks him to show him where it is ... and Jacob replies "well, I could take you there, but wouldn't it be kind of a double-cross, after the girls gave us cocoa and everything?" Newt, of course, convinces him to lead by surmising that the girls will obliviate him as soon as they see he is no longer sweating. And when the girls find that they have indeed gone, Queenie is crestfallen and says, "but we made them cocoa."
That line is the reason that I will be really ticked off if Jacob and Queenie are not married by the end of the five-movie series (I would love to see Newt and Tina married too, but as I said in my other post, I could see character trajectories in which they remain single and at a distance but still very fond of memories of each other ... but Jacob and Queenie are made to be married to each other) . And I love the way, when Queenie steals Jacob away from the guy taking him to obliviate him and Jacob says "but aren't you going to obliviate me," she smiles at him and says "of course not, you're one of us now." That "us" is definitely not just the wizarding world when she gives him the same smile in his bakery at the end; that is the "us" of "I would really like the two of us to be an 'us.'" And all of the "taking care of him" details and the "him being totally fascinated by her" details of the dinner in the apartment scene are too obvious to need to be given here (she's a great character in general too: the "hogwash" line and the "ladies things" line and the little cough and the "let me obliviate this guy and she'll never hear it from me" ... she's a very well drawn and endearing character).
My argument for this post is relatively simple: Such endearing character interactions, which begin with having endearing characters in the first place, are absolutely essential ... that is the "importance of cocoa." As I said, I buy that JKR is doing chiastic structure in the Coroman Strike series, which, according to John Granger, is slated to be a set seven-book series. But without this level of the skin, the face, the endearing characters and character interaction, which for me there was none of in Cuckoo's Calling, it left me with no incentive to go further.
Conclusion
On a final note, this is analogous a bit with the point of my post on the movie Whiplash and biblical studies. There I said that techne (technical prowess) and scientia (prowess with working elements such as plot pacing or psychological realism in characters etc) not enough ... you have to have sapientia/sophia, a theme (a "wisdom") that comes from beyond the merely human and connects with those (and, as I said there, you will have one, the question is whether or not you provide it consciously yourself or let others use your art to insert their own while you're inordinately preoccupied with techne and scientia). Here, the analogy is that, at least for the difference between Fantastic Beasts and the Strike series in my own interaction with them, you have to have not primarily the psychological realism bur rather the endearingess and grippingness of characters before things like the chaistic structuring or even "serious themes" have something to work with. I have actually even said in my initial jot-down numbered list of ideas from three times watching Fantastic Beasts that I think obliviation as an erasing of the source of the wonder from the no-mage memory may be the "no-mage interaction" version of the willingness to kill in the pursuit of right that is possibly the films heavy theme, which would make this whole thing of Kowalski's wonder and endearing character hook directly into the heavy thematic literary content. That is the importance of cocoa.
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