Cho is definitely, totally using Michael Corner to get back at Harry Potter. Which might be fair, since she's sure he's using her the exact same way. At least they're on the same page.
She knows how she must look. Barely a year since Cedric had died and now she's gotten through two other boys, but she's clinging to her mental health by her fingertips as it is and she can't afford to think about it. The school must consider her a whore but so long as she ignores it, it's not happening.
When she asks Marietta if she came off as shallow, or promiscuous, or anything like that, Marietta shrugs and pats her shoulder. "You're alright," she says. Her mouth twists sourly down. "You could come off worse, anyway. You could come off as a sneak."
Cho wouldn't ever admit it to anybody but she's furious that Marietta's humiliation has coincided with her breakup. (Has caused her breakup, really.) It means that they both have to lean on each other, and that they're both already worn thin, emotionally speaking.
After Harry Potter it's difficult to express herself to anybody. It'd been difficult before Harry Potter, too, but she'd been so confident that he'd understand. Surely- surely Harry Potter, who was an orphan, who'd watched Cedric die, would understand her loss.
Therein lies the problem, though. Harry might have been shaped by loss but she's got no reason to believe it'd been in the same way. Harry'd grown up with it; she'd had it foisted on her a year ago, when she was sixteen and stupid, when she hadn't realised that anything could become a tragedy if you just waited a little longer.
And Cedric Diggory- that boy was a tragedy if you ever saw one, wasn't he? He'd been noble and strong and stalwart and kind and he'd radiated goodness from every pore and, in the end, it hadn't meant shit.
See, that's a proper tragedy.
Cho and her friends meet up over the summer like they always have, but it feels weird somehow. Because Cho isn't over Harry Potter, maybe, or because Cho isn't over Cedric, or because Marietta has sneak printed over her face. They are a tragedy themselves, just a smaller one, and it shows. Corinne and Emma and Jenny and Shefali and Ruby all act weird lately. Their smiles seem faker, their laughs forced. Cho is unsurprised when their summer meetings drop off.
She tells herself she doesn't care. Or maybe she tells herself that it doesn't matter, that she shouldn't care.
It'd be so easy to blame this on Hermione Granger, that absolute bitch, with her righteous attitude, and her stubborn Gryffindor moral code, and whatever on earth had possessed her to protect a school club with such an underhanded, nasty curse. Cho knows that Marietta blames this on Hermione- sneak, and the breakup, and everything surrounding it.
It could very well be a Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw thing but she doesn't get it. Morality is subjective and philosophy has tried for decades to reason it out. And here comes Hermione Granger with a pimple spell thinking she knows best. It's so smug, so arrogant. It makes Cho want to scream.
What rankles is that Harry had defended it. Harry, who'd been routinely despised by most of the school all of last year, and most of her third and fifth years too.
Cho doesn't like to make judgements quickly, unlike some people, but she'd really thought better of Harry Potter.
But apparently he's a Gryffindor too, down to his bones, with all the Gryffindor self-righteousness, so she's rather glad she's dating a Ravenclaw now.
Even if it's only as revenge.