Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
The Height of Shallow
By: ChoCedric
He sees them walking along the corridors, disappearing into broom closets to snog. He feels anger well up in his chest at the sight of them. He dated her for a year and a half, and got his heart broken from it. He was so dumb to think that she actually liked him for him, rather than as someone who would help her on her way to achieving Harry Potter.
At the end of June last year, she broke up with him for an extremely shallow reason. Just because he wouldn't cheer Gryffindor when his own team lost! Aren't people in a relationship allowed to support different teams? he wonders idly as he walks the corridors with Cho Chang. They aren't dating, that was just a rumor, a rumor that Little Miss Weasley liked to spread around. But it isn't true. Michael actually comforts Cho about Cedric when the famous Prat-Who-Lived can't be bothered to.
As he goes through those last few weeks of that school year, which is his last year at Hogwarts, he sees Ginny and Harry make those trips to broom cupboards quite often. That's all well and good, but where's the talking? he thinks. Isn't an intimate relationship supposed to be about talking? But all Harry seems to care about is her kisses and dancing red hair, he doesn't seem to give a damn about her personality.
And oh, yes, he heard about the big kiss in the common room, so disgusting and putrid. He did it in front of her ex, and that's so low-class. Not to mention that Dean is a perfectly nice lad, and the rumor is that Ginny broke up with him because he was helping her through the portrait hole to the Gryffindor common room! How shallow is that? He thinks, in retrospect, that the two gits deserve each other. Apparently Michael was just a tool, and so was Dean. They were tools to make Harry lust for her, lust for the perfect goddess Ginny Weasley with all her sickly glory. One of those popular snobbish girls you read about in Muggle novels. Long-term romances can't be based on just looks alone, and Harry's damned Boy-Who-Lived status is the only thing Ginny seems to care about.
The following year, Michael comes back to Hogwarts to fight the final battle against Voldemort. Many of his comrades die that night, including some of his best friends. It is horrible for him to watch them fall, to watch them die, their lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling just like Cedric's had when Harry emerged from the maze. He knows that for Cho, it is like losing him all over again when she looks into their expressionless faces. He fights by her side, and Cho is hungry for revenge, taking down as many Death Eaters as possible.
But it is at the very end of the battle that Michael is flabbergasted beyond belief, and can't believe that Harry Potter could stoop so low. He has defeated Voldemort, yes, which is a wonderful thing. But once it is all over, Ginny is sitting by her family, crying over a lost brother, Fred Weasley. Michael liked him very much; he cheered almost everyone's spirits along with his twin brother, George, during Umbridge's reign. She is sobbing on her mother's shoulder, her hair being stroked lovingly.
But what does the bloody Savior of the World do? Michael thinks angrily. He walks right past her, probably looking for Ron and Hermione! It is just like the Cho scenario all over again; he doesn't even bother to comfort the supposed love of his life when her brother just died! What a pigheaded idiot! Throughout the last three years Harry Potter has turned into a royal prat, so different from the Harry he heard about before. Oh, so Ginny's not in a condition to snog because she's crying. So what? Grow the hell up, Potter! Michael snarls in his head. Well, if Potter can't do it, I have the decency to, he thinks as he goes over to his crying ex-girlfriend. She may have broken up with him for a stupid reason, and he may have just been a tool to her so that she could bag her superstar, but at least he's nice enough to give comfort when it's needed. "Ginny?" he says softly, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm really sorry about Fred. If there's anything I can do to help, I will."
Ginny looks up at him, her gaze blank. "Thanks," she whispers, "but there's nothing." Then she turns away from him. Michael feels that is the least he can do. Even though she denied his help, he was still offering support, and that's what any good samaritan would do. He is disgusted with Harry Potter now, even if he did defeat Voldemort.
Michael goes on with his life, remaining best friends with Cho. Cho did marry a muggle, but that resulted from a one-night stand she had right after the final battle. She got pregnant, and her parents believed very strictly that if pregnancy occurs, you must marry the man who got you that way. But that ended in a divorce because Cho confessed she never really loved him. She'd never been able to get over Cedric, and Michael will never forget the night her heart just gave out. Healers at St. Mungo's said she had a heart attack and even magic couldn't cure her. All he could do was hold her hand and watch as she whispered Cedric's name over and over again, and then she slipped away forever. Even though he grieves for his best friend, he knows she is finally at peace again, with her Cedric.
It is years after the final battle that Michael spots Harry Potter again. Michael himself married Eloise Midgen, because he was able to look past her appearance. Yes, the acne faded in time, but he is a firm believer that he would have fallen in love with her even if it never had. She is a beautiful person, and he loves her with all his heart. They have a son named Jacob, and he just turned eleven this year. They are dropping him off at King's Cross station so he can catch the train to Hogwarts for the first time, and low and behold, he sees Harry and Ginny dropping their own son off. He can see that they barely talk to each other, that they don't even look at each other. Ever since he heard the news of their marriage years ago, he still cannot comprehend it. How could such a shallow relationship culminate in a marriage? he thinks. But as he said before, the two prats deserve each other. Ginny is just in it for the money, and Harry is in it for the firewhisky snogs and dancing, flaming red hair. He wishes Cho were here right now, so they could have a good old gripe about the Boy Wonder and his Cinderella. Because Harry Potter never gave a damn about the real Ginny Weasley, and Ginny is so wrapped up in him that she doesn't even know it. As he and Eloise kiss Jacob goodbye and watch the train speed off into the distance, he thanks Merlin that he is Michael Corner. How sad it would be to be Harry Potter! How very sad indeed.