Chapter two: Cho
"With Cho Chang," Destiny admitted.
"With Cho?" Harry asked confused, "I haven't even seen Cho for years ever since she graduated. I barely even know her."
"You do now, but it didn't have to be that way," Destiny reminded him, "in 5th year you could have easily ended up in a more serious relationship with her had you treated her differently. In this future, you end up handling things with her better and she doesn't get as emotional over Cedric.
She then gets over him and instead falls in love with you and ends up becoming your best friend and lover.
After 6th year she goes and fights Voldemort with you, and after the war you get married.
He did not really want to be married to Cho, he felt that that ship had sailed. While he had had a crush on her back when he was at Hogwarts, he hadn't even really thought of her in forever.
Yet Destiny apparently had other plans.
He blinked as there was another flash of light and he awoke, this time not in a bed, but lying on the grass.
"Good job Harry, you caught the snitch!" a woman's voice said.
As he turned to look over at them, he saw that it was Cho, albeit an older Cho than he had last seen and wearing a quidditch uniform in the colors of the British National Team.
As he looked over at his right hand, he noticed that he did indeed have a snitch currently clasped inside it.
"That's my husband," she announced loudly and as he looked around, he noticed that there was several other players with the same uniforms also going over to congratulate him.
He then noticed as he stood up that there was an entire quidditch pitch full of cheering fans.
Cho gave him a kiss on the lips and raised up his hand in triumph, causing the crowd to grow even louder.
"That's it folks, England wins 300 to 60," the announcer roared.
Harry smiled and waved. He at least knew how to handle himself after winning a quidditch game.
Evidently in this future both he and Cho were on the British National Team and they had just won a game.
When the team finally began to leave, he headed off to with the other male members on the team to the locker rooms, but Cho grabbed him.
"Just where do you think you're going, Harry? I highly doubt that you want to be naked with them instead of me," she said.
She guided him instead into another room and as he looked at the door it had both their names on it:
Harry and Cho Potter.
When they got inside she said, "wow that was some game huh Harry? We're in the semi-finals again."
"Sweet," he said.
"You don't seem all that excited," she observed.
Searching through his knowledge he found that apparently he and Cho were part of the winningest Quidditch National Team Britain had ever had, with him as seeker and her as a Chaser. They had apparently won the last 7 years in a row with them on the team.
"It's just another win, I suppose it's just gotten not as exciting when you win all the time," he claimed.
She nodded, seeming to accept that as an answer.
"I suppose I can believe that, we do win an awful lot," she admitted, grinning.
Cho began removing her clothes until she was totally naked.
As he looked over her body, she had a very athletic, very toned body with a very firm butt and compact breasts that were still a C cup.
At one point this would have fulfilled many different fantasies that he had had about her when he was a young hormonal teenager, but now it was different.
She still had an incredible body, and time spent with Ginny would have convinced him even more that that body type was what he liked most.
Ginny had much the same toned athletic frame but being with Hermione had changed that thinking somewhat.
Still he couldn't deny that Cho was a very attractive woman, yet he didn't love her, he didn't really even know her.
However she seemed to be waiting for him.
"Hurry up Harry and get out of those clothes, so we can get to our post game celebration," she insisted, grinning.
He hesitantly began removing his clothes.
Once he got out of them, Cho went over and kissed him and began grinding up against him.
"What are you doing?" He asked.
"We're having our post game celebration silly, did that bludger you got hit in the head by earlier mess you up that bad?" She asked.
He wasn't sure just what to do as the celebration evidently meant sex, and he wasn't entirely sure if that was such a good idea, especially if he wanted to tell her the truth about him later, which he wasn't sure now would be the best time to tell about either.
Instead he used the excuse she had suggested.
"Sorry I'm still hurting from that injury, and I'm just a little bit dizzy," he answered.
She winced and said, "Ooh, its okay Harry, I suppose we can celebrate later if you're still hurting, do you need to go lie down?"
"I think I should be all right once I give it some time," he claimed.
They both got dressed and went out.
The rest of the team grinned and one of the players shouted, "What no post game celebration Harry? If I were you I would have done Cho like mad. You've earned it."
Cho shouted back, "too bad you aren't Harry huh Thomas?"
"Don't worry some of us are going over to the club and see if we can get some action of our own, you want to join?" He invited.
"No, I've got to get Harry home, evidently he got hit a bit too hard," she said.
As they walked off he noticed who appeared to be the team coach currently chatting with the media.
"Do you think that they will finally clinch a record breaking 8 straight world cup wins," one of the members of the media asked.
"Absolutely," the coach agreed, "we've got the best team and best of all most of them are still young. We'll likely see many more victories to come."
Both he and Cho passsed them but unfortunately they were swarmed by a bunch of fans.
"Oh Merlin can we have your autograph?" A teenage girl asked excitedly.
Cho obligingly signed a piece of paper for the girl and Harry, realizing he was trapped, signed autographs for all the fans as well.
"Well we've got to go," Cho said, after each of the fans had gotten an autograph.
After dropping off their dirty clothes inside what appeared to be the laundry room, they apparated out, as thankfully he knew where home was.
When he came in just outside his house he found that they apparently lived in a huge mansion. Evidently a world famous quidditch career paid pretty well.
Entering the house, they were accosted by several house elves.
To his delight, Dobby, Winky, and Kreacher were there. In this future Dobby wasn't dead. For some reason or another, Dobby now belonged to him.
"Can Dobby get master and mistress anything?" Dobby asked.
"I'd like a nice hot bath drawn up if you could please," Cho commanded.
Dobby instantly went to go do it.
"You want to take a bath with me and work out the stiff muscles? It might help you feel better," she recommended.
"No, I think I'll just get some sleep," he said as he looked around.
Stupidly he asked, now used to seeing his and Hermione's kids when he got home asked, "so where are the kids?"
She dropped the glass of wine that Winky had just handed her causing it to break.
Winky immediately cleaned up the pieces however and went to get her a fresh glass.
Looking over at him, she said hastily, "Harry we've already discussed this many times. It just isn't a good time in our careers to have children. Besides who knows what havoc that could cause on my body? I likely wouldn't be able to play quidditch professionally after that."
"Sorry," he said ashamed, "I didn't mean to upset you."
She took the fresh glass from Winky and drank it down as he went to go to bed.
When he got to the bed however, Dobby was there waiting for him.
"Can Dobby do anything for master Harry before he sleeps?" He asked dutifully.
He realized that Dobby could actually be a wealth of information without him having to tell Cho anything about where he was from.
"I was wondering if you could tell me just what day it was, and just why I apparently own you," He asked.
If Dobby was surprised by such questions he hid it rather well and said, "It is June 6 and Dobby is owned by Master Harry because Mistress Cho realized how loyal Dobby was to Master Harry and how much Winky wanted a new master, so she invited us to be yours and hers and we accepted. Now Dobby and Winky is happy to be Master Harry's."
He nodded, digesting this information and then asked, "I was wondering if you could tell me a few things, even though they may seem a little odd. I was wondering if you knew anything about Ron Weasley and who he is married to, and who Ginny Weasley is married to."
"Man Weezey is Master Harry's best friend and is married to his Grangy, while Female Weezy is married to Longybottom and lives in Germany," Dobby admitted.
So it appeared that without him around to get in the way of the two of them, Hermione ended up marrying Ron and Ginny had still married Neville and moved out of the country.
"Thanks Dobby," Harry answered gratefully.
He got into his bed and fell asleep.
When he woke up however, he was awakened to the sound of Cho shaking him awake.
"Come on Harry, no sleeping in, we've got practice," she said.
He groggily got up and checked the time.
It was 5:30, still way too early for him.
"Lamont is going to kill you if you're late again," Cho pointed out.
He guessed that Lamont was the team coach.
Hurriedly dressing, he got up and went with Cho.
When they got to quidditch pitch, most of the team was already there, standing out in the still somewhat dark quidditch pitch.
"Last night was a good game, but we still could have lost had Potter not gotten the snitch," Lamont informed them, "I want to see some drills all of you."
The whole team groaned.
"Let's double the amount of drills then if you're still a bunch of babies," he yelled.
This guy seemed to be far worse than Oliver Wood had ever been.
They lined up and began drills, as they performed basic flying skills over and over again.
While not as tough as many muggle sports in the training they did, they could still be tiring on a body, especially after you did them for a long time.
By the time he and the rest of the team were done, they were panting on the ground.
"Okay, now let's get to actual practice," Lamont grinned.
Needless to say, the team was thoroughly exhausted by the time practice ended, and the last few hours had been the worst, having had to endure the heat of the day.
Guzzling down various hydrating potions, he and Cho went into their locker room.
"How come you didn't do the Bernouilli's defense properly? You must have done that maneuver a thousand times," Cho commented.
He shook his head tiredly. He hadn't done it right because he had never heard of it, and while he had somehow known how to do it, he hadn't quite known automatically how to actually execute it.
"Well we've got that charity police ball tonight," she informed him excitedly as she got dressed,"can we go pick out a dress?"
He nodded.
"So is it for just the aurors or everyone else?" He asked.
She gave him a strange look, "what do you mean by aurors Harry? Aurors don't exist anymore, they haven't for the last 15 years. I was talking about the D.A. Of course.
The D.A? He wondered, Dumbledore's Army? They had ended up disbanding that. Well evidently it hadn't died in this future and had now replaced the aurors.
"Sorry don't know what I was thinking," he claimed lamely.
He couldn't exactly use a bludger as an excuse again so he had to endure her odd look.
When they got inside Diagon Alley, he watched as Cho picked out a very expensive black dress.
While it was expensive, he had to admit it looked really good on her.
After wards, he pointed at the ice cream parlor.
"Come on, let's go get some ice cream," he suggested.
"Do you know how much exercising I would have to do to work that off?" Cho asked as if his suggestion was crazy.
He rolled his eyes, apparently Cho was an even bigger health nut than Hermione.
Passing up his desire to have some ice cream, he continued to shop with her until he was even more exhausted from just shopping than he had simply from quidditch practice.
At the charity ball, Cho looked absolutely radiant in her new dress, and Harry surreptitiously used the opportunity to learn about what was up with the D.A.
From what he gleaned from various pamphlets lying out on the various booths and tables, Cho's friend Marrietta had never betrayed the D.A so they were never caught by Umbridge. Instead it had only gotten more powerful and eventually Dumbledore had expanded upon it to the wizarding world at large as a means to protect them as well.
When the ministry collapsed, and the auror force mostly wiped out, it had been the D.A that had stepped up and fulfilled the role in magical law enforcement.
Since Harry had had a hand in creating the original Dumbledore's army, he had also had a lot of say in the rules. It now basically mirrored what he had always wanted and dreamed of for the auror force.
As he learned more, he also found that because of the strength of Dumbledore's Army, the Battle of Hogwarts never took place and instead they ended up taking back the government from Voldemort and killing or capturing all of his followers.
As he stood reading one of the pamphlets, someone bumped into him and said:
"Hey Harry," said a familiar voice.
As he looked up, he found that it was Ron, his best friend.
"Hey Ron," Harry said happily.
"Hello Harry," Hermione said from behind him.
His heart leaped as he turned around to look at her.
Hermione looked beautiful, wearing a gorgeous blue dress. He had to literally force himself to look away.
While he had spent the last two months with Hermione and fallen in love with her, she was now married to Ron and he to Cho, and things were very different now.
"Hello Hermione," he managed to say.
"What do you say we ditch this stuffy party and go have some real fun?" Ron suggested to him.
Harry grinned, it was nice to have his best friend back.
"We just got here though Ron," Hermione reminded him.
"Yeah, well you can stay longer if you'd like while me and Harry enjoy ourselves," Ron insisted.
"Aren't you going to at least dance with me?" Hermione asked.
"I'm sure you'll find some old toothless man to dance with you," Ron answered, "ask Dumbledore to dance with you."
"He's like 170," Hermione reminded him.
Apparently in this future Dumbledore was still alive.
"I'll dance with you Hermione," Harry offered.
He took her hand and led her out onto the dance floor to Ron's surprise.
"I would have never guessed that you would ask me to dance," Hermione said as they started.
"Why not? If Ron wasn't going to do it, I figured I should," He told her.
"You're just always with Cho and winning quidditch championships," Hermione answered.
"It doesn't mean I don't have time for you, you're my friend too," he said.
From her nervousness, he realized that Hermione and him were not as close, and he somehow knew why. Apparently as one of the conditions in order to be with Cho, he had had to draw away from Hermione a bit so that Cho wouldn't get jealous. They were still friends, but not nearly as strong of friends as they used to be.
As he glanced down at her shoulder, he noticed that Hermione had a bruise on her shoulder.
"Hermione, where did you get this?" He asked.
She shifted her dress strap to cover it up again.
"It's nothing Harry, I just fell that's all," she claimed.
"Did Ron do this to you?" He asked angrily.
"I already told you it's nothing," she said.
"If Ron is hurting, you know you can always come talk to me," he told her.
"I don't want you to worry about it Harry," Hermione said as she pulled away from him.
He watched as she left the dance floor.
Immediately after however, Cho came up to him and grabbed his arm.
"I guess she didn't want to really dance with you," Cho claimed.
He began dancing with Cho, and the rest of the night was still fantastic, but he was still worried about Hermione.
They got home late, and Harry managed to give Cho a decent good night kiss before they went to bed.
However he found that he couldn't really sleep as he dwelled on what he had learned about this time period. This future might seem pretty good at least outwardly. He was one of the most famous quidditch players ever, he was rich, and Ron was still his best friend. The magical law enforcement was exceptionally good, and Dumbledore was even still alive.
Cho really was great, but he just wasn't used to the lifestyle he had with her.
Then there was Hermione. If his suspicions were correct, Hermione was being abused. No matter if Ron was his best friend he simply would not tolerate it.
From what he had managed to gather, because he had married Cho and thus pulled away from Hermione, they weren't good enough friends for him to have noticed what was going on with her.
Back during his own time, Ron and Hermione had been having problems, but Hermione and he had been close enough back then for her to tell him and for him to then go to Ron and work things out.
Apparently without him doing that, such problems had escalated into abuse.
The next day, he and Cho had quidditch practice, and then spent the night out on the town afterwards, hitting up muggle clubs.
Cho was a girl who liked to party and have fun.
When they got home, he had to carry her because she was already a bit tipsy.
She tried to have sex with him, but he insisted that she was too intoxicated for that.
After putting her to bed, he was about to see if he could maybe find out some more information about this future when there was a knock at the door.
Opening it, he found that it was Hermione.
She looked desperate as she said, "Harry I know that you might be the last person who would be willing to help me, but I don't know who else to go to."
She seemed to have been crying heavily from what he could tell.
"Please come in," he invited.
She came in, and he led her into the living room as she sat down next to him on the couch.
"I know that you and Ron are close..." She began.
"If this is about Ron abusing you, then if he's abusing you than he's no friend of mine," Harry announced.
She put a small grin on her face and then said, "It's not just that. The abuse I thought I could handle, so I kept it to myself. It was just an occasional hit every now and again, yet lately it's been getting worse. He's started not letting me leave the house except to go to work and gets angry and jealous whenever I'm around any other men besides him. This afternoon however, I came home from work early to find Ron in our bed with another woman."
She started crying again and he hugged her tightly.
"We'll work things out, I promise, I'm not going to let Ron do anything else to you," he said, "you can stay here until then."
"What about Cho?" Hermione asked.
"Cho will just have to deal with it," Harry told her, "I'm more concerned for your safety."
As he looked into Hermione's eyes, he was reminded of the relationship that they had just had only a few days ago. He had been truly in love with this woman, and perhaps it was that that caused him to do what he did next.
He leaned in and kissed her.
Hermione seemed shocked, but whatever her reaction might have been, it could not have been worse than the reaction he saw next.
"Harry," Cho asked desperately.
He turned around to find Cho, only partially dressed standing there.
"You're cheating on me with Hermione?" She asked sounding upset.
"No, Cho, it's not what it looks like," he insisted.
He felt extremely guilty. Here he was, trying to console Hermione over the fact that her husband was cheating on her, and now it looked like he was doing the exact same thing to his wife.
"It looks like you had Hermione come over when you thought I was asleep so you could make out with her," Cho answered.
"Harry was just helping me with a problem, and we accidentally kissed, we didn't actually do anything," Hermione claimed.
"I don't need to hear it from you, I need to hear it from him. I want you Harry to swear a wizard's oath that you haven't been in a relationship with this woman or had sex with her," Cho asked.
He wanted to deny it, and would have had it not been for her asking him to give a wizard's oath. Yet he knew that he could not give it, he had been in a relationship with Hermione, even if it wasn't in this future.
"I can't," he finally admitted.
With anger in her voice, she shouted at Hermione, "I want you out of my house!"
Hermione hastily got up and left, leaving the two of them alone.
"Let me at least explain," he said as he watched Cho begin sobbing.
"I don't want to hear your explanation, how could you do this to me Harry?" She asked bitterly, "I thought you loved me and I've certainly always loved you."
She ran to her room, and he realized that he wasn't about to get any closer with her until she had calmed down a bit.
He eventually just lay down on the couch, feeling like a total jerk.
From what he had already learned, Cho really did seem to love him and it was important to him that he was able to patch things up between them and see if he really did love her.
The next morning, Cho refused to leave her bed to go to quidditch practice.
"Just go without me," she told him.
"I"m afraid I can't do that, not until you let me explain," he insisted.
"What is there really to explain? You've been having an affair with Hermione," she pointed out.
"You just don't understand all the details," he answered.
Finally she sighed and said, "all right, if you really must, give me your explanation."
"The truth is Cho, I'm not really your husband, or at least I wasn't several days ago," he began.
"What are you talking about? You saying you polyjuiced the real Harry?" She asked.
"No I'm still the real Harry, but the truth is I'm not totally your Harry, I'm a time traveler and come from a parallel universe where me and you break up in 5th year."
"You don't have to make up some crazy story Harry," Cho claimed.
It was obvious Cho did not believe him and he was trying desperately to think of a way to prove it to her.
At that moment, there was a flash of light and both he and Cho found themselves with Destiny.
"Where are we?" Cho asked fearfully.
"Don't be alarmed, it's just me Destiny," Destiny admitted, :I figured that Harry could use some help convincing you. You see Harry really is from a parallel universe and a time traveler just as he said, and me appearing is my way of proving that to you."
Cho didn't seem to immediately believe but when she found that she really was somewhere else, she said, "Why is he here? Where's my real husband?"
"Harry is your real husband, although lacking a bit of background. I promise that if you give him a chance that he will learn to love you very much just as you love him," Destiny admitted.
"What about Hermione? Were they somehow together in the parallel universe he was from?" She asked.
"Not exactly," Harry admitted, answering the question himself, "I actually just came from a world where we were together but I'm not from there."
"Just how many worlds have you visited?" Cho asked incredulously.
"Just that one and this one," he admitted, "in my own, it was 15 years in the past and I was engaged to Ginny."
"Ginny, but she's Ron's little sister, nothing ever happened between you," Cho pointed out.
"Well in the original time line we got together a year after you and I broke up," he said.
"How did we break up?" Cho asked.
"You were too distraught over Cedric and I was unable to comfort you properly so we broke up. I pretty much considered it a disaster," he said.
"You consider our relationship to be a disaster?" She asked, looking like she was about to cry again.
"Not here, I don't, I can see that you love me, and I must have fallen in love with you too. For whatever reason, I have to find out if I really do love you most of all. If I choose you, then this future can become a reality."
"What if you don't?" She asked.
He was quite hesitant to answer this question, but Destiny answered for him, "This future will cease to exist and instead it will become whatever Harry chooses it to be."
"What happens to me?" She wondered.
"I cannot say, just that it won't be with Harry," Destiny told her.
"I don't want any other future than to be with Harry though," Cho exclaimed, "could you at least tell me if it would be better?"
"It will not," Destiny admitted.
"I don't want Cho to be unhappy," Harry said.
"Then you will have to decide if she really is the one you love most," Destiny said.
At that, they disappeared and then reappeared back in their bedroom.
"I can't believe this is happening," Cho said.
"Hey it will be alright," he declared, "we can take things slow or I could even leave for awhile if you want me to."
She looked at him for a moment and then said, "No, I'd really like things to work between us. You may not know me very well, but I still know you, and I still love you. If I have to convince you of that again, then I'm up for the challenge."
She gave him a kiss on the lips, which he returned.
It was going to be difficult at first, but he was willing to see if there really was something to him and Cho.
As the days and weeks went by, they got closer together as he enjoyed his new life with Cho. He wouldn't have thought that the socialite, famous scene was his deal, but Cho introduced it to him and he found that he liked it.
He had wild parties, and he got to make serious dough doing his favorite pastime: playing quidditch.
The only downside was that Cho was now a lot more leery of Hermione as she knew that they had a history together and that he still loved her.
They had compromised by him making sure that Hermione got help and got away from Ron, just as long as it didn't involve him.
Ron of course was quite upset that he had taken his wife away, but Harry wouldn't budge in his support of Hermione and so they had stopped being friends.
Instead he put everything into his relationship with Cho, wanting to see where it would lead, and it turned out to be pretty good.
When they won the quidditch world cup again for the 8th time in a row, Cho insisted on celebrating by their first time together, at least as far as he could remember.
The sex was wild and crazy, much like Cho was, and left him totally exhausted after.
With it now being the off season for quidditch, they spent several days with nothing else to do either than passionate days and nights.
As he was about to do so again one night however, and cast the contraception spell, Cho finally said, "Harry I think I'm ready to have children now."
"Are you sure?" He asked.
"I've already had a successful career playing quidditch and I don't need to play anymore, I'm satisfied with that. I know however that you want children and admittedly so do I. I want there to be a reason that you stay and choose this future with me."
Amazed, he agreed and got to work on starting a family.
About 3 weeks later, Cho complained of feeling ill and so they went to the doctor to have her looked at.
"You are indeed pregnant," the doctor confirmed, "with twins it looks like."
"Twins! Harry thought excitedly. His beautiful, now pregnant wife was pregnant with twins, his twins that he had helped create.
It was a beautiful time for them, which they were more than happy to celebrate.
He helped her with all the pregnancy problems such as morning sickness and all that, but it only caused him to care about and love her more.
While he wasn't sure just how long he might be staying, he hoped that it would at least be long enough to see the twins born.
He got his wish.
Around 10 months after coming to this future, Cho gave birth to a beautiful twin girl and an equally beautiful twin boy.
As he stared down at his new little infants, he realized that he simply couldn't be happier, this was the future for him he decided.
Yet when he least wanted it, he found himself once again blinded in a flash of light and now face to face with Destiny.
"I choose this future," he said, "I have a family now with Cho, and I can't just leave my children or Cho, who I now truly love."
"You still don't know if you would really be happier in another future," Destiny reminded him, "this future may have seemed to be pretty good, but there was still plenty of bad in it. Hermione never told you because you weren't really there for her and stood by Cho instead, but Ron abused her to the point that she could no longer have children. She was also so distraught that she never really succeeded in her research to cure cancer. Millions of lives will be lost every year because of that. Do you really want that on your conscious?"
"Well no, but what else can I do?" He asked.
"How about you find out if things are any better with someone else," Destiny suggested.
"With who?" Harry asked.