Disclaimer: Characters are not mine. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: Ok, i know this probably is one of the most unpopular pairings, but what the heck. READ/Review, if you please.
September
She made one final adjustment to the shiny Head Girl badge pinned on her navy blue school robes, fastened and re-fastened the clasp just to make sure it was in place, straightened her collar, flipped her hair back, breathed deeply, and pushed the heavy oak doors forward.
As she entered the Great Hall, a gush of cool, autumn wind met her face, sweeping her long, black hair flowing smoothly behind her as she advanced, the heels of her new black suedes making low clicking noises against the marble floors. Heads turned as she strode towards the Ravenclaw table at the far right of the room. Naturally, she beamed at the random faces that greeted her. A Gryffindor first year, who has been openly smitten with her, even offered her a seat. But smiling politely, as a politician might have done, she waved an airy hand towards the boy—a motion that said, "thanks but no thanks"—before she carried on. Her raven mane was now slighlty tousled, but she expertly ran a few fingers and it was straightened, almost untouched, once again.
It wasn't the first day of classes in her final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry but as always, Cho Chang wanted to make the perfect entrance. And so she did.
"G'morning," she greeted her girl friends Padma Patil and Marietta Edgecombe as she sat on the empty spot reserved for her. "Slept well, I hope."
"Bloody," Padma massaged her right temple with two of her fingers, eyes closed. "I cannot believe I let you talk me into getting pissed last night."
Mariettas's long blonde curls covered much of her face as she forked bits of bacon from her plate, but the mischievous grin playing on her lips was obvious. "But it was fun, right?"
Padma opened one eye and smiled sleepily, "Damn straight. Most fun I had this year."
Cho shook her head at the two, dismayed and jealous at the same time.
A group of Slytherin seniors organized a little get-together in a private area in the sixth floor last night. Invited were a select group of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor girls, including Lavender Brown, Padma's sister Parvati, and a lone Hufflepuff Giullia Juppé, who Cho heavily suspected was invited only because she was a Beauxbatons Academy exchange student. And you know what boys think about foreign exchange.
Anyway, she really wanted to come, even just to make a short appearance, but principle weighed more than her popularity status. She was Head Girl after all, although she wasn't as strict as, say, Percival Weasley.
"So, what went on?" Cho asked casually, not wanting to sound too left out.
"Terry Boot and Hannah Abbott were basically giving each other root canals," Marietta rolled her eyes and bit off her toast, before continuing with a mouthful of bread. "I got really drunk, but the last of my vivid recollections were Malfoy's fine, fine, Merlin-sent abs."
"Hallelujah!" Padma piped in dreamily.
Cho almost choked on her juice. "Why-was-nudity-involved?" She asked in one breath, wiping the side of her mouth with the table napkin.
"Some decided to play a modified spin the bottle game. No truth or consequence bull, you just need to strip one item of clothing everytime the bottle lands on you," Marietta explained, shooting a dirty glare at Guillia, who was chatting animatedly with a Hufflepuff senior. "Needless to say, the boys charmed the bottle so the Beauxbatons bimbo always had a go."
"Down to her scary red knickers, she was. A vile sight, if you ask me," Padma said, before taking a quick swig of a pepperup potion that Cho knew was from Marietta, who always had a ready stash. "Anyway, you should come next time, Cho. You're missing quite a lot."
Cho simply smiled. Something was on her mind. She knew it was Slytherin's party and he couldn't possibly be there. But before she could stop herself, the question escaped her mouth. "Was Harry there?"
"Harry sodding Potter was not there, Cho. If he was, he's probably tied up in a pole, being torutred with feathers, leather chains, whips…" Marietta's exasperated voice trailed off as she saw a familiar character approach their table.
"Are you sure that's torture, Edgecombe? I happen to think that's rather kinky," said a smirking Draco Malfoy, who only caught the last bit of Marietta's sentence. Beside him was Terrence Higgs, the Head Boy from the Slytherin House, who was holding a bottle of Pepper-up as well.
Padma erupted in a fit of giggles, while Marietta raised a curious eyebrow up at the blonde-haired Slytherin. Cho quickly interrupted knowing fully how Marietta would possibly respond to Malfoy's remark (i.e. 'Care to try it out, then?' Or 'And you know a lot of kinkier things than that, I'm sure.')
"Higgs," she said, looking at him over her shoulder. "What brings you here?"
"We'll be in the dormitory," Padma jerked her thumb towards the exit, clutching the potion on one hand and Marietta's wrist on the other. Marietta simply had to be dragged out of Draco Malfoy's five-meter radius. Cho nodded half-heartedly as they bade goodbye.
"Listen," Terrence began, looking down at her. "McGonagall wants a report on how the Halloween Ball committee is doing. I don't know why the bloody hag wants to dip her quill in our ink but I say let's just make that our first agenda later. And, uh, I reckon we should cut the meeting short, am still quite hung over (he motioned to the Pepperup on his hand) and want to get some sleep before we dismangle Gryffindor tomorrow," he shot a contemptuous look over at the Gryffindor table.
"Damn right," Draco elbowed Terrence and the two laughed evilly.
Cho followed his gaze and felt a weird lurch in her stomach as she saw Harry, a feeling that seems to happen quite often these days, but knew better than to allow her eyes to linger …on his messy hair, the mysterious scar she could make out faintly from a distance, his bright green eyes that always seem to light up even more when he saw her , but that was then…
Too late. Draco saw her staring before she could shake herself out of the trance. He smirked knowingly at her.
"Get over that wanker, Chang." He said with an odd tone of pity and frustration in his voice, shaking his head at her before retreating to his table.
Cho was rendered speechless. It almost sounded like an instruction, she thought. She set her eyes down on her lap grudgingly. Get over him, he says. What did Malfoy know anyway? And it wasn't like she was going to start listening to the git. They weren't even friends.
She lazily picked up her fork and tossed the eggs and bacon around her plate, before finally deciding to return to her dorm to clear her head.
Cho almost tripped on a trick step on the way to the fifth floor up the changing staircases. She walked past the statue of Boris the Bewildered, made a right on the first corner and reached the suit of armor. She hoisted its left arm up and pushed the Hogwarts crest on the center of its chest armor and stepped back as the statue moved forward, allowing entrance to the Head Boy and Head Girl's chamber.
A sanctuary, this was. From the dimly lit torches to the musky scent that always prevailed (Terrence's perfume, she guessed ), the dormitory was almost a piece of heaven for Cho. The reception was quite spacious, it's size much like the house common rooms. Three sets of red upholstered sofas were situated by the white stone fireplace. A black Asian-inspired coffee table, underneath it a complimentary Oriental rug with dragon silhouettes, placed in the center of the fixtures, completed the living areas' old-world-slash-modern feel. The Ravenclaw and the Slytherin seals, glistening from the light from the several torches around the room, were hung facing each other on opposite walls above two doors that led to the bedrooms.
Cho went inside her room, the one on the right, collapsing on her unmade bed with her shoes on.
Her thoughts went back to Harry sodding Potter. Clutching her sheets tightly, she finally mustered the strength to admit to hereself that she is jealous. For months, her feelings for him were gone, or at least hidden somewhere in her conscious. After all, she wasn't allowed to reveal those inner struggles because she broke up with him last year. And had good reason to, she believes.
When she and Harry parted ways last year, they started going out again for a couple of months after Cho broke up with Michael Corner, whom she found out was seeing a fifth year Gryffindor on the side. Harry took her back, even though he knew she was only on the rebound. She wanted their relationship to click, she so wanted it to. And it seemed almost right when their relationship progressed in levels of intimacy during those months.
But there was one thing that became apparent for Cho despite all that: She just doesn't like him enough… Enough to make sacrifices.
The Chosen One or the boy-who-lived, he was called. The mysterious scar that carved him a niche in magical history was the one thing that scared her the most.
The constant attention became too overhwleming for Cho. (And this is Cho we're talking about, a lady who loves being in the limelight.) A day would not pass that an oblivious stranger, star struck and awed by the lone reminder of how he unknowingly defeated he-who-must-not-be-named, would not ogle at him.
And then there were his sudden scar attacks. As much as she would like to care for him during his times of growing need, the scar attacks enveloped him with an air of mystery that drove her away from him. Knowing that he could be attacked by the Dark Lord any second instilled a growing paranoia in her that she too was in danger. More importantly, she already lost Cedric to the Dark Lord and she didn't want it to happen again.
So it had to be done. When she finally confessed to Harry Potter how she felt, he fled without a word. Marietta, who never really liked him, thought it was unmanly of him to go without defending himself, but it was better that way for Cho.
Since then, they had not spoken a word to each other. That had been fine for Cho, up until last week, during breakfast, when she found out something that bothered her.
"I know something you both don't," Padma teased, waving her fork in the air like a wand.
Cho and Marietta exchanged glances.
"Fancy telling us now that we're SO dying of anticipation," Marietta replied sarcastically. Cho couldn't help but snicker.
But Padma wasn't to be discouraged. "Guess who Harry Potter's new snog is…"
At this, Cho stopped dead from forking an unruly bacon and lifted her gaze to meet with her friend, who looked rather pleased with herself for acquiring the information. Cho suddenly felt likeshe was about to go sick. The mere mention of his name sent memories and old emotions flooding back to her, and before she could stop herself, she asked, a little too eagerly, "Who?"
"If I didn't hear you right, you sounded like a jealous ex," Marietta sniggered and shot Padma a knowing look. Cho felt herself flush.This was no laughing matter.
Just when Padma was about to reveal the information, the Headmaster, whose voice was magically modulated to echo in the entire castle, announced, "All prefects proceed to the entrance hall."
Padma slid out of her seat, an apologetic, but slightly teasing look in her eyes. "Be back in a second."
But Cho didn't have to wait for Padma's answer. Her eyes immediately spotted the messy-haired Gryffindor, who was beside a redhead—not the lanky boy he always sat with but her sister—Ginny Weasley. They were feeding off each others' plates, giggling and giving googly eyes to each other, looking extremely in-love.
"Jealous?" Marietta nudged Cho's elbow as she too eyed the new couple. Cho hated how Marietta always pointed out the obvious.
"Are you kidding me," Cho failed at an attempt to sound cheerful and not look crestfallen. "'Fcourse not." The way her voice cracked and the tiny tear that fell from her eyes gave her away. With that she emptied her juice in a swift motion and much like Harry when she broke up with him, she fled without a word.
She stared at the ceiling, fighting back the tears that were waiting to escape her cat-like eyes. The freckly red-head isn't that pretty anyway, Cho thought. So she's in the Gryffindor team. And by the stories she heard, she's quite popular in her year.
"Oh sod it," she told herself after minutes of contemplating the finer points of Ginny Weasley's personality and comparing it to hers. She shot up in bullet-speed, went to her bathroom, gripped the faucet taps open, and doused her face with cold water.
"Enough," she told herself.
"Enough of what?" The mirror spoke.
"Oh shut up," Cho responded grudgingly.
She grabbed a fresh towel hanging on the rack to dry her face. She went out the bath to check the time. The alarm clock on her nightstand read: 15 minutes to NEWT-Potions. She picked up her white leather back pack, stuffed a couple of parchments from under her bed and hurried outside her room.
"Hey you don't mind if I bring a couple of my mates over tonight?"
She groaned inwardly, but merely shrugged at him. It wasn't like he'd let her stop him anyway.
His friends from the Slytherin Team spent so much time in their dormitory that they've become almost like a fixture.
Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, two of the bulkiest boys in school, were always guffawing by the study desk. (Not doing any studying, of course) They were mostly eating sweets or playing Exploding snaps.
Draco Malfoy would be on the red leather chair, feet up on the table, reading a book. He could also sometimes be seen on the leather sofas, snogging his girlfriend, Pansy Parkinson, or talking Quidditch strategies with Terrence. Cho had a strong feeling that Malfoy was just sucking up to Higgs, him being Head boy and all.
And then there's Harold Flint, brother of former Quidditch captain Marcus. He'd be walking all over the room like he owned the place. He's obnoxious, nosy, and to put it simply, a huge asshole.
"See you later," she finally exited the room with Terrence calling out, "Thanks Cho," behind her as the suit armor once more sped backward and guarded the entrance.