A/N: What would've happened if Cho's new future isn't a very bright one?
Disclaimer: I still don't own the world of Harry Potter :(
I looked after them as they returned towards the maze. I pointed my wand at myself once more and started muttering spells, deteriorations of the spell I had intended to use earlier. I couldn't wait to see what had become the outcome of what I had told Cedric and Dumbledore tonight.
Somehow, I managed to return home after only a few tries. Only, I seemed to have splinched myself. Wonderful. Hogwarts students would probably be wondering why there was half an eyebrow hovering around the grounds for ages, but I couldn't be concerned about that. Only then I became very conscious of my surroundings. I had expected that I would be in the post office again, but wherever I had arrived now, couldn't really be classified as that. It looked like an old factory and I was, fortunately, only on the grounds. Hurrying over to a small window, I gasped at what I saw. People, wearing nothing but an old piece of cloth (reminding me strongly of House Elves), seemed to be working under very difficult circumstances.
"Are you looking for something, Miss?" a cold voice spoke from behind me. Turning around slowly, I came face to face with none other than Draco Malfoy, sounding even more arrogant than he had in school and looking the piece too.
"No, I'm lost… I'll just go." With that, I ran out of there, fortunately without being chased by Malfoy or whomever he would want to send after me. After running a few blocks, I was suddenly grabbed by an arm and pulled in a narrow alley.
"Cho, what are you doing?" Well, that answers one of my questions. Cedric was alive now, but he didn't seem to be very happy with me. "You can't just go running around during daytime, what if someone sees you? Catches you?"
"Cedric – what are you talking about?" I wasn't feeling very well. This future wasn't the one I had thought, expected, hoped it to be. So far, at least. I had a feeling that it wasn't very safe to even be outside.
His grip on my arm tightened. "Let's not talk about that here." He looked around carefully and then he disapparated, taking me along. The place where we arrived looked deserted, haunted almost. I shivered. "Now what were you doing there, Cho? You know that it's far too dangerous for us to just go for a walk whenever we please!"
"I'm sorry!" I exclaimed. "But I'm just very confused now, Cedric. I have no idea what you're talking about!" He looked at me with an unreadable expression. He took something from his pocket, a vial of some sort, and forced some of its contents into my mouth. This only became stranger and stranger.
"Who are you?" he asked with a dangerous tone in his voice. "What are you doing here? What do you want?"
I was ready to protest (honestly, 'who are you'? I would have expected him to remember that…), but somehow, my tongue forced me to just answer his questions. So that was what he gave me, truth serum. Wonderful. "I am Cho Chang, I just came back from the past, and I would really like some answers about what's going on here."
His eyebrows shot up. "The past, you say?"
"Yes, the past. I went back a few years due to some odd spell and there I saved you and then I came back and the world was like this."
"Oh, right," was all he said.
"Yeah."
"Alright, I'll tell you what's going on here, then, I guess," he finally said, sighing. "The Ministry didn't want to back out of the last task in the Tournament, so they gave us the choice if we would enter that maze or not…"
"And?" I pressed. "What did everyone do?"
"They all went in," he said softly. "I didn't, though. I guess everything happened they way it was supposed to go. Harry was transported to the graveyard, I reckon, but no one has seen him since that day. You-Know-Who's terror reign started about a year later, after he had silently taken over the Ministry of Magic somehow. We have no idea what happened to Harry, but it can't possibly be good."
"And he's the only one who can beat You-Know-Who," I breathed. "O Merlin, what have I done?"
"It's not your fault," Cedric said, trying to soothe me. "Chances are Harry is still alive. At least, that's what Dumbledore always tells us. We're fighting him," he added as I sent him a questioning look, "well, we're resisting his terror reign. We can't always fight. Hogwarts isn't safe anymore either, it's all been taken over."
"That's terrible," I whispered. "But before you found me, I saw some sort of factory. What's that?"
"That's what You-Know-Who is making the Muggles do," he answered. "He must have thought that they could be useful after all, so he didn't kill them all. Mind you, if he thinks they're not productive enough, he lets his Death Eaters finish them off. Or worse, he lets one of his magical prisoners do it, or some evil creature. He doesn't kill everybody, he usually captures them and lets his followers do whatever they want with them."
"Does that happen to many people?" I asked hoarsely. I didn't know if I wanted to know the answer to that.
"It happens to a lot of people, we have lost too many fighters already," he replied bitterly. "Now let's go, we have a meeting to attend."
I was thoroughly shocked when we returned from the meeting. So many people were dead or missing, I still couldn't completely wrap my mind around it. I knew that most people, presumably, didn't know that the world could have looked very different if it hadn't been for me, but I still felt bad.
There was only one thing I could do: go back in time again and fix this. Easier said than done, of course, and I wasn't sure if I could let Cedric die. I was sitting outside the house we had been in earlier, to think it over, and suddenly, everything went black.
I awoke much later, only to feel that chains were attached to my whole body. I was lying on some sort of torture table and Cedric, I noticed, was right next to me. A man (could you call him that? He didn't exactly seem human to me anymore) I had only seen in my worst nightmares and, alright, once in real life, but only from far, stared down at us with a wicked grin on his face, and I noticed that Malfoy was standing behind him, smirking.
"Well, Miss Chang, I must say, I am very grateful that you were so generous to lead us not just to your own hiding place, but even to your gathering… I promise you, my followers will take good care for your… friends. As for you and Mr Diggory, I will leave you to Mr Malfoy here. I assure you, he's very experienced with cases like yours." After that, he let out a high, cackling laugh that sent shivers over my entire body, and he left.
Before Malfoy could strike us with whatever curse he was planning on using, I looked to my left, to Cedric, with pleading eyes. I hoped that he would know that I was really sorry about all this. Before Malfoy's curse hit us, he briefly looked at me with a look in which I could read disappointment, some anger, and… could it be? Probably not, because the last thing I knew, was him mouthing to me, "Thanks a lot, Cho!"
A/N: How about this for an end? I know that this was pretty extreme too, so I hope you still liked it… Let me know, please review!