So, while attempting to fall asleep two nights back, while my mind was in full writing mode, I came up with this. This is a little girl growing up listening to her Muggleborn mother's fairytales, who decides that falling in love and being a princess coincide, and want to be a princess. I'm sure most of the girls out there have wanted to be a princess, and have dressed up in pretty little gowns, and danced around the house. This is Cho, wanting to be a princess, from age three, to thirty-four.
This is going to be ten chapters long, and I'm going to post one chapter every Saturday. Except… I'm going away for two weeks this Saturday, so I'm posting one chapter today, and another tomorrow.
Just a little heads up, I am not J.K.Rowling, and I don't own Cho, but I own her parents and this story.
Wishful Princess
(the twelve dancing princesses)
When Cho Chang is three, she wants to be one of the princesses in the story 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses'.
She wants to put on a pretty dress every night, and tug on a pair of matching slippers, and glide down the stairs behind the hidden door to the lake. A gondolier would take her across the lake to a bejeweled palace, where she would dance the night away with the evil sons of an eviler witch.
Then, after years of dancing in the night, wearing away her slippers, her father would send a man to investigate. The oldest sister would trick him, and give him drugged wine. This would happen to the second man as well, until the wily guardsman would come. He would not be fooled by the wine, and would hide under his invisibility cloak, and bring back three things from the castle under theirs. And then she would live happily ever after.
Cho tells her Mummy and Daddy what she wants to be, her big brown eyes solemn as she answers their questions.
"Which princess would you want to be?" asks Daddy, after laughing at Mummy about her Muggle fairytales.
"The seventh one," Cho replies, swinging her legs over the edge of the dock into the cool lake.
With a little smile, Mummy ruffles her hair, "And why the seventh one?"
"Because seven is a big girl number," Cho informs her mother, sagely tossing a rock into the water.
Mummy and Daddy smile, and lean back to watch Cho dance on the dock, pretending to be the seventh princess, dancing with her evil prince until someone comes to save her.
The next day, Daddy comes home from work with a pretty pink hat-box, which he promptly hands to Cho. Cho's little hands feel the box, taking in the baby pink and white striped box, and the polka-dot lid. She strokes the dark pink velvet ribbon, and carefully unties it, listening to the whispers of the fabric as it slides down into a little heap. She lifts off the lid, and lets it fall with a clatter as her eyes take in what lies in the box.
A pair of pink ballet shoes were waiting for her in there, lying on a black long-sleeved leotard. A pair of white stockings, still in their plastic wrappings, rest off to the side, and with shaking fingers she caresses everything. Her eyes fall on the pink skirt, edges just peeking out under the leotard, the slippers and the stockings, and with a shout, she pulls out her ballerina skirt.
"Now," Daddy says, with a big smile, "you can dance just like the princess."
And Cho takes ballet lessons, learning to pirouette, and pliée. She practices her pliées in the living room, reminding herself "No hippo-butts!"
At her recital, Mummy and Daddy cry to see their little girl dancing for everyone, twirling in her short ballgown that Mummy sewed with a little help from her wand. Her dance is to the Hungarian Rhapsody, and is based on 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses'. Cho does sautées with her partner, and she laughs happily, because she's the seventh princess.