办不到

A Harry Potter fan fiction story by Gfyuwatr7

Authors Note: Huge thanks to all the people who've read, reviewed, and faved this story. Wasn't really sure what kind of reaction it might receive. You're all keeping me motivated. Rest assured, I plan on seeing this story to the end. Again, any constructive criticism is welcomed.

Disclaimer: I don't Harry Potter or any its characters or ideas, the novels or the films. All of it belongs to J.K. Rowling. If I did own any of it, I wouldn't need to write this story.

Chapter 2

"I can't believe it!" a Ravenclaw fifth-year squealed as she, Cho Chang, and the other Ravenclaw students in their year filed out of Professor Flitwick's classroom. "The Yule Ball! I've never even heard of it, but it sounds amazing! I can't wait to go!" She and her friends moved on, giggling and whispering to one another as they turned a corner in the corridor and disappeared.

"They're very excited, aren't they?" Cho remarked, an amused smile on her lips. She watched as another group of students, this one comprised of boys, passed her and her friend, Marietta, by. They seemed to be much more subdued, all of them muttering nervously under their breaths about this sudden and unwelcome announcement.

"Why wouldn't they be?" Marietta asked incredulously. "This is the one of the most - no, scratch that, this is the most exciting thing to happen to us this year!" She calmed down, looking slightly distracted and worried. "I wonder if anyone will ask me to…" she mumbled, trailing off as she contemplated her possible future.

"Of course someone will!" Cho told her, trying to bring her friend's spirits up. She knew how emotional Marietta could become under stressful circumstances. "And even if no one does ask you, what of it? They'll be the ones missing out, not you."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right." Marietta grumbled. She cheered up very suddenly, however, when she asked, "What about you, Cho? Who do you think will ask you out?"

"Well…" Cho replied guiltily. She was stalling, and she knew it. If Marietta wanted to know something, and especially if that something was some sort of scandalous secret, she would weasel out an answer eventually.

"Come on! You can tell me!" Marietta said, turning around in front of Cho and beginning to walk in reverse as they headed for the Great Hall. "Who do you want to go with?"

"Actually, I wasn't really…planning on…going." Cho mumbled sheepishly, trying to comb her hair over face to cover her small blush. In all honesty, she hadn't been terribly interested in going to the Yule Ball with anyone. Her family had always insisted that her studies were more important than her social life. She had to admit that she had gotten used to it.

"What!?" Marietta exclaimed. She looked scandalized. "The only good thing to come out of this tournament, and you don't even care?" She paused, remembering something, "The only good thing, except maybe that Bulgarian bon-bon, Viktor Krum…mmm…" Marietta mused, lost in her thoughts, a slow smile spreading across her face.

"Stop that!" Cho laughed, mockingly shoving Marietta along the hallway. "I'm serious, I really don't think I'll be going. I have to study for my O.W.L.'s. And so do you!" She reminded her, pointing an accusing finger at her. "You can't just leave your studies aside to worry about some silly dance."

"Alright, yes, I know that, mum." Marietta grumbled again.

At that moment, a group of Hufflepuff boys, including Cedric Diggory, walked past them. As Cedric passed Cho by, he sent a curt nod of acknowledgement in her direction and kept walking.

"Ooh, do you think Cedric will ask you out?" Marietta whispered excitedly. She craned her neck to look over her shoulder at Cedric, who had just walked off in another direction, away from his friends.

"I don't think so." Cho mumbled softly. She had known Cedric for a few years. They had met during her first match as Seeker of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team against Hufflepuff. It had been a close game, but in spite of that, Cedric had introduced himself afterwards and had complimented her flying skills. If Cho was honest, she admitted to herself that she'd once had a small crush on him, and had hoped that one day he would ask her out on a date.

But something happened to him last year, something that changed him. He became melancholic, almost completely anti-social over the course of a single day. He stopped spending time with many of his friends, including Cho herself, and whenever she tried to contact him over the summer, he wouldn't return any of her letters. Even at the Quidditch World Cup, when Cho had run into him, he'd seemed distant. Cho didn't know what bothered her more; the fact that he didn't talk to her anymore, or that she didn't know what had happened to make him like this.

"Why not? Didn't you two have a thing for each other?" Marietta asked skeptically.

"One: that thing you're talking about? That's just your imagination acting up again. Two: I'm not even sure I'm his friend anymore." Cho ended on that dour note as she hurried toward a group of her friends lounging outside in the courtyard. Dinner was about to start, and students from all three schools were waiting outside for the doors of the Great Hall to open.

"And besides, didn't I say I wasn't planning on going to the ball?" Cho whispered to Marietta, hoping that they were still out of earshot of her friends. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

"Wait, WHAT!?" Stephanie Edgley, a Ravenclaw in her fourth year, exclaimed indignantly. Immediately, all of her friends circled menacingly around her, trying to keep her from scrambling away and avoiding their questions.

"What do you mean, 'I wasn't planning on going to the ball'?" another friend asked.

Cho thought to herself, 'Here we go', as she sighed in exasperation, resigning herself to her fate. "I meant exactly that." she told them, a defiant look in her eyes. "I think it's all very silly, and I really don't care for it."

"Even if you think it's silly, I'm sure others don't feel that way." Marietta said, a smug grin on her face. "I bet there are loads of guys here just waiting for the right moment to ask you out." They all nodded in agreement, wondering why on Earth anyone wouldn't want to go to the Yule Ball.

"Look, I have my own reasons, alright?" Cho said defensively. "I don't need to explain them to you."

"Cho, you know us better than that," Stephanie said, a mischievous gleam in her eye as she said it. "We'll find out about these so-called 'reasons' one way or another." They all began to close in on her, arms raised and hands and fingers extended as if about to…

"No!" Cho whimpered, realizing what they were trying to do in front of all the other students. "No, you can't tickle me! Not here!" She began looking around in a panic, trying to find some way out of her predicament. And she saw the perfect distraction in the form of Harry Potter and his friend walking toward them.

"Why do they always have to travel in packs?" Harry asked Ron as they walked out into the snow-covered courtyard. They noticed many of the girls outside were giggling and looking in their direction. "And how do you get one on their own to even ask them?"

"Lasso one?" Ron suggested. "Got any idea who you're going to try?"

Harry had a very clear idea of who he wanted to try, as Ron put it. The only problem, as he'd said aloud, was getting her on her own to even talk to her. Her name was Cho Chang.

Harry had first met Cho in his third year, in his first match against the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Circumstances had prevented Harry from facing them in his first and second years at Hogwarts. All she had done was smile at him, and suddenly an odd feeling had passed through him. Not unpleasant, but unexpected and new. He had never felt this way about anyone. And she was a very good Seeker as well. She managed outmaneuver him quite a few times, enough to prompt Oliver Wood, his Quidditch captain at the time, to order him to 'stop being a gentleman' and knock her off her broom if he had to.

Over the course of that year, whenever they saw each other, she would smile and wave, and he would usually drop whatever was in his hands at the moment to wave back. Not very dignified, to say the least. He then saw her at the Quidditch World Cup, but he was too nervous to approach her then, either. Then finally, he met her on the train to Hogwarts, where he again made a fool of himself and simply gawked at her. He also recalled forgetting to buy some sweets for Ron and himself at that point, due to his sudden lack of hunger.

You could say he knew who to ask, but actually doing it was another matter entirely.

Before he could even begin to answer Ron, however, he heard a familiar Scottish-accented voice calling out his name.

"Harry!"

Turning to his right, he saw his person of interest walking towards him, a relieved smile on her face. Immediately, he felt the familiar sensation of butterflies in his stomach, and a small blush began to form on face as he answered the Chinese girl's greeting.

"Cho! Hi, it's, uh, good to see you!" Harry stuttered, turning to face her. He looked a bit nervous, she noted. He seemed to be shifting, or bouncing, on the balls of his feet.

'It's probably all that bad press he's been getting,' Cho thought sympathetically. 'He must always be on the lookout, trying to make sure no one gets any more information on him.'

Cho herself had never liked reading gossip magazines like Witch Weekly, and she would avoid even the Daily Prophet like the plague if she saw that Rita Skeeter's story had made the front page. Unfortunately, someone had decided that Rita Skeeter covering the first stages of the Triwizard Tournament was a good idea. All she seemed to write about was some nonsense about Harry's life, articles that were clearly utter rubbish. What Cho didn't understand, however, was how Skeeter was obtaining her information if she wasn't even allowed on school grounds anymore.

'Can't think about that now, though' Cho thought. She refocused her attention on Harry, who seemed to be worried that she hadn't answered his greeting.

"How are you, Harry?" she asked, getting the conversation moving. "How's your arm?" She gestured at his left arm, which she recalled, had been injured in the First Task.

"Oh, it's much better now, thanks." Harry replied, looking relieved that she seemed to be directing the conversation and not him. "I don't need the cast anymore."

"That's good." Cho said, still smiling. She actually felt a little nervous around Harry, and she wasn't sure why. There was a small pause, as they both waited for the other to say something. His friend ('probably Ron Weasley,'she thought) was looking on with amused interest, but also, it seemed, with a hint of pride. Eventually, Harry broke the silence.

"Um, Cho, I was wondering…" he began. "If you wou - that is, I mean…"

'Oh no, he's not… is he?' Cho thought to herself, panicking slightly. 'How am I going to say no?'

"Oh. My. God." Stephanie whispered loudly. "Is he going to …?"

"This is really happening! Say yes, say it!" Marietta practically yelled.

"What?" Cho, who had still been pondering Harry's halting sentence, was drawn out of her reverie when she heard what her friends were saying.

"S-sorry?" Harry stammered, surprised.

"No, sorry, Harry, I was just…distracted by something. Or, more correctly, someone…" she grumbled, glaring over her shoulder briefly at her friends, before turning back to Harry with an apologetic look. "What were you saying?"

"Um, never mind. You must be busy, I didn't mean to…" Harry paused, looking for some excuse to let her off the hook, but not finding any. "Um…maybe we should…talk later?" He stood there for another moment, looking for something else to say, but finally saying simply, "I should go." He turned and began walking away, looking slightly disappointed.

"What? Wait, Harry, I wasn't…" Cho began, but he was already gone. She covered her face with her hands in frustration and exclaimed, "咳，我真该死! （Oh, I'm such a fool!）"

"What happened, Cho?" Marietta asked sarcastically, while she and their friends surrounded Cho once more. "Felt a little love-struck by the Boy Who Lived?"

"No, that's not it, and you know it!" Cho exclaimed, turning to face her friends impatiently. "If you lot hadn't been distracting me…" As Cho started to rant, she realized that she wasn't sure what she would've said to Harry if he'd asked her to go with him to the ball. For she was certain that that was what he had been working up to. 'What would I have said?' she mused to herself.

"Um, Cho? You alright? You were just about to tell us off…?" Marietta was looking quite concerned. Cho usually had some very interesting things to say about people who got under her skin. It seemed like this was the perfect opportunity to do so, but it looked to them that Cho was lost in her in own thoughts.

"What? Oh, never mind." Cho groaned, walking dejectedly toward the Great Hall, which had just opened its doors. "Let's just go to dinner."

2nd AN: Thanks again to all those who've read, reviewed, and faved this story. I really do plan on finishing it. I know all too well the feeling of finding a decent story on this site, only to realize the author hasn't updated it in a year.

To orangenie: Thanks for being the first to favorite and review my story, I'm glad you liked the first chapter. I don't really plan on writing anything too crazy in regards to Harry and Cho's relationship, I was hoping to keep it as a straightforward romance. That being said, I do have some tricks up my sleeve, so stay tuned for any future updates and stories.

What's up with Cedric? We'll see…

Lastly, I've hidden some small Easter eggs throughout this chapter, six in total, referencing the original novels or films and other works as well. Let the egg hunt begin…