For sweeternity's Irrational Fear Challenge!
Toxiphobia: the abnormal fear of poisons or of being poisoned.
AN: This follows the idea from the movie in which Cho was the one that ratted out Dumbledore's Army and not her friend.
Wednesdays were the worst. Cho was hardly able to drag herself out of bed on Wednesdays. She would lie in the Ravenclaw dorm room while her friends laughed carelessly around her, as they got ready for the day. They would tease her about her laziness and she let them believe that it was the reason she wouldn't rise. It wasn't.
Wednesdays were absolutely horrible because Cho had double potions. And Potions was her worst subject. Not because she was exactly bad at potions, it's just that she wasn't exactly able to concentrate on what she was doing.
People chalked this up to the fact that Wednesday's double potions was shared with the Hufflepuffs and it was common knowledge that Cho Chang was involved with Cedric Diggory. Cho let them believe this, because if anything was more severe then her reason for lack of concentration it was her denial of that reason.
Cho was absolutely and irrevocably terrified of being poisoned.
She had been this way ever since her older sister had tricked her into drinking Firewhiskey as a child and she was sure it was burning her throat with real fire. Her mother had almost brought her to St. Mungos out of fear for her youngest daughters hysterics.
And ever since that frightful day Cho had been weary of everyone, she was sure that one day someone would really poison her and that she wouldn't survive it.
But it was becoming increasingly worse, heightened and horrific at times. She would be in the middle of breakfast, for instance, and someone would hand her a drink. Her body would freeze up and she would have to physically fight the urge to throw the drink down and question the contents of the cup.
Poison… Poison… Poison
It would run through her mind whenever she became suspicious of anything and would bring her into a panic.
The paranoia was the worst in potions, where she was surrounded with people making things that could go horribly wrong, or right (with the intention of poisoning her). She spend most of the class time checking around her and monitoring what people were putting where, her own potion left unchecked; she would often get horrible grades.
Her fear had reached its max, she thought about being poisoned constantly, she was sure that everyone was out to get her and she was on the edge of panic at all times. She kept herself on guard when anyone presented anything to her, drink, food or inanimate object. She narrowed her eyes and discarded it as quickly as possible without drawing suspicion.
Ironically, it wasn't until she really was poisoned that she realized how irrational her fear of being poisoned was.
She had joined Dumbledore's army with two goals in mind, her first was to get closer to Harry, which only paled in comparison for her yearning to better guard herself from the horrors of evil poisoners to come.
What she had not foreseen was the extent a teacher would go to in order to catch Harry and all of Dumbledore's Army.
It happened, ironically enough, on a Wednesday. Cho was sitting with her best friend Marietta in Transfiguration when a younger student interrupted the class to tell Professor McGonagall that Cho was needed in the High Inquisitor's office immediately.
Cho hurried up there, worrying about her impending double Potions lesson instead of being on guard for poison in Umbridge's office, an anomaly in her life.
"Miss, Chang. Have a seat" She said, an artificial smile plastered across her face as she took a sip of her tea, "Tea?" she offered sweetly.
Cho shook her head but Umbridge just tutted, "No dear, you look parched, would you like anything else then?"
"Just water please" Cho responded quietly.
Had she been paying attention to Umbridge and thinking of possible ways to be poisoned, like usual, Cho would have been the last person that Umbridge would have been able to pull that over on. But alas, she hadn't been paying attention; instead her eyes took in the pink room around her, with little interest.
Umbridge thrusted the water into her hands and hurried her to take a drink, which she did. Then she set the water down and Umbridge's face turned into a smirk as she leaned forward and fired questions at her.
Her mouth spoke as she told her everything that she wanted to know, somewhere inside of her she was frantic, she knew that it must have been Veritaserum that she had been slipped and she was angry with herself for being so careless.
Somewhere amidst the panic and crippling fear that she felt while under the influence of the poison her emotions began to shift. Moving away from the fear and panic into a calm, proud state.
It was calming to know that she had been poisoned. It made her feel invincible. So even when she saw the look of loathing on Harry and every other member of Dumbledore's Army, she felt triumphant in her heart. She was invincible.
Until she was accidentally poisoned 6 years later and consequently died because she refused to go to St. Mungos.
I had so much fun writing this, its my first published challenge. I'm somewhat addicted now!