School and Year: Mahoutokoro, Year 6
Theme: Wartime struggles
Main prompt: [Word] Hopeless
Additional Prompt: [Dialogue] "I cannot begin to express the extent of my disapproval."
Word Count: 2090
Strong trigger warning: distant mother, fairly extreme descriptions of self-harm and depression
Cho knew how it must look. Blood on the towel. Blood on her fingers. The white washcloth pressed against her skin, now tainted pink. Her weak attempt at applying mascara earlier that morning was now ruined by tears and stained her cheeks grey.
She opened her mouth, an attempt at an explanation quick to formulate in her mind, but before she could say a word, her mother's eyes said enough. Cho's weak explanation, a lie on the tip of her tongue about having broken a mirror, drifted from her mind faster than it had arrived.
Juliette Chang was an intelligent woman. Analytical, discerning, quick to adjust to what the situation required. She scanned Cho up and down, her eyes flicking to the towel, how it was pressed tightly against her daughter's forearm, how the grey tracks on her daughter's face were fresher than her morning coffee.
Cho swallowed, her mother's gaze stifling any attempt to speak. Juliette's eyes, always a crashing ocean of stormy blue, momentarily receded to a rippling lake. Softer, a look Cho hadn't seen on her mother's face in years, not since Cho's Auntie Mill had passed away. But then it was gone. And her cool voice was stinging the air of the bathroom.
"I cannot begin to express the extent of my disapproval."
Cho didn't make eye contact with her mother, still unable to speak past the lump in her throat. As Juliette withdrew her wand and knelt down, Cho stiffened even more on the edge of the bathtub. Her mother either didn't notice or pretended not to notice as she, rather ungently, pulled the towel away from Cho's arm and pointed the tip of her wand to the raw, bleeding cuts.
Cho winced as the rough bit of wood touched the skin, but then she exhaled slowly as the cuts were healed. Her mother, still not saying a word, took the washcloth back and cleaned away the remaining blood. Cho hissed in pain. Her mother did not have a soft touch.
She could've healed the cuts herself, she knew. She'd been healing them herself for weeks now, but those were the ones on her shoulders and hips. The ones she could hide under her clothes. She'd needed a new place though, a blank canvas if you will, to mar. She figured she could wear long sleeves for a few days until the scars faded, pretend she was feeling a bit chilled. Honest to God, she knew what she was doing was wrong, stupid. And yet, she knew only that it made her feel. She was so cold and empty all the time, except when she did this.
For once in her life, she was grateful that she lived in a house with her mother. What with Juliette being a Ministry worker, her use of underage magic was overlooked.
"What did you use?" Her mother asked quietly, dragging Cho away from her tremulous thoughts.
Cho didn't want to answer, but she knew better than to avoid straightforward questions from her mother.
She wordlessly reached into her sweater pocket and pulled out the small razor blade she'd taken from her father's toolbox. Her father may have been a wizard, but he had a love of fixing things with his hands and seeing them come together. Juliette looked at the blade laying in her daughter's palm and, for a second, Cho glimpsed that same flicker of a calm lake on her mother's face before it was gone yet again.
Her mother quickly took the blade and cleaned it with the washcloth before standing. She pocketed it, then gestured for Cho to stand up. They left the bathroom and went into Cho's room. Decorated with blues and greys, reminiscent of Cho's loft in Ravenclaw Tower, it was the place Cho felt safest. It had been painful to step back into it when the holidays began. The pictures of Cedric had blinked and waved at her from her bulletin board; the Snitch Cedric had caught just before asking her out on their first date had fluttered gently on her desk, and the letters she'd received from him over the years laid loosely across her desk and blankets.
She'd sobbed herself to sleep the night she returned home, but only after an angry fit of stuffing everything that reminded her of Cedric into a shoebox. The snitch made rustling noises every now and then, reminding Cho of their existence, but otherwise she tried to forget they existed so that she wouldn't be tempted to look at them.
Cho moved to sit on her bed and was quiet as her mother stared around her room. "Give me everything sharp in here," she said calmly after a moment.
"Mother, I won't do it any—"
"Not good enough," Juliette cut her off. "I can't watch you every minute of every day and if you do intend to stop, then it shouldn't be a problem in me taking these things away, should it?"
Cho lowered her gaze, unable to come up with an argument against that. As she listed the few sharp things in her room, her mother gathered them up in her hands: her Muggle craft scissors, the Victorian-era letter opener Cedric had given her as a Christmas present, and the few other things her mother thought she might use.
When she was finished she stood in front of Cho.
"What?" Cho muttered, looking at her mother's feet.
"Your wand."
"What?" Cho nearly cracked her neck with how fast she looked up.
"You're a smart girl, Cho, don't expect me to assume that you don't know spells of that sort."
Cho's jaw tightened. Yes, she did know some of those spells. It's what she had used at first, until she discovered that a blade had a stronger, realer, effect. Cho wanted to tell her mother that she wouldn't use her wand, but she knew that she couldn't do that honestly. With no other option, she would fall back to her wand eventually.
"Maybe this is for the best," a sensible part of her brain muttered. But the other part of her, the one that was in constant pain, constant grieving, silently pleaded with her mother not to insist. But Juliette's eyes were unwavering.
Cho looked down and handed her mother her wand without looking at her. She felt it leave her fingers and then watched as her mother's feet left the basement bedroom without another word.
Cho fell asleep some time later, still fully-clothed, fresh tears traveling down her cheeks.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cho read Marietta's letter with a damp glimmer in her eyes. Marietta was on vacation with her parents in Paris. Cho had been invited, and despite her lack of energy, she'd desperately wanted to go. Marietta's parents were amazing. They doted on their daughter, and doted on Cho too whenever she visited. Cho felt loved at the Edgecombe house, more than she ever really did at her own home. Her father was busy so often that Cho seemed to hardly ever see him, leaving her with her mother most of the time.
But of course, her mother seemed to think that Cho would do better with her own family and so had refused to let her go on the trip. Cho wrote back to Marietta, careful to let no teardrops appear on the parchment. She hesitated, the go-to "I'm doing okay" reply on the tip of her quill, but then Marietta's insistence on honesty floated through her mind and she knew that her friend would be able to see right through the lies she wrote, even if they were just on parchment.
So, she was honest. She told Marietta about how her mother had taken away all her means of self-harm. She wrote how she knew that deep down it was good, but how she was suffering from withdrawal at the same time. She had no outlet for her pain it seemed, except for tears, and she was starting to wonder if she'd run out of those soon.
After finishing the letter, and sending it off with her owl, Mercury, she tentatively went upstairs into the kitchen. She could hear her mother's heels clicking across the floor in her study on the second floor, so the first floor was seemingly empty. That is, she thought it was empty until she caught sight of her father.
Sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of deep brown coffee in his hand, he looked down at the copy of the Daily Prophet in front of him and sighed while turning a page idly.
Diego Chang was a very kind man. Sometimes, it seemed to Cho, he was the polar opposite of her mother. He would've gladly let Cho go on vacation with Marietta; it was her mother who put her foot down. Diego was also very loyal to and trusted Dumbledore. He believed what Cho said, what Dumbledore had said, and what Harry had said about You-Know-Who having returned and it being he who had murdered Cedric. Her mother, however, was a blind follower of the Ministry's perspective.
Cho felt like she hadn't seen her father in an age, despite it having only been since last night at dinnertime. He looked older. Tired. A decade older than Cho knew him to be.
He looked up when he heard her soft footsteps. "Hey, joya," he said kindly, using the nickname she'd far outgrown, but still loved. It meant "jewel" because that's what he'd called her ever since she was born.
Cho couldn't bear the kindness in his voice. It was so different from her mother's constant icy chill.
"What is it?" he asked softly. The tears she'd swiped away just a few minutes ago returned.
Cho lowered her gaze to the floor, but then, when she heard her father lay down the paper and set his coffee down, she forced herself to look up at him.
"I — it's just that…" she swallowed. "Mother… she — she doesn't…" Her voice was quavering more than ever as she took a few teetering steps towards the table. "Fath– Daddy." Her voice broke and she nearly stumbled forward into the chair next to his. "I don't know w-what to d-do anym-more." She was hiccuping violently.
"Mi joya," her father said gently. He scooted his chair forward and put his arms around her, pulling her into his chest. Cho buried her face into his soft flannel and cried, soaking up every bit of physical affection she could. Her mother never offered any.
"We'll figure it out," he said gently. "I promise you, mi joya. We'll figure it out. It may not be very soon, but one day, we will be alright again."
"I — I don't," Cho hiccuped. "I don't want to live like th-this."
"Shh, shh." Her father's arms tightened around her.
"I miss him s-so much," Cho whispered. Tears forced her eyes to remain open, but she could barely see anything but the blurred wooden tabletop through the mist.
"I know, sweetheart, I know. I'm so sorry." Her father's hands carded through her messy, unwashed hair.
Cho couldn't remember how long she'd been there, soaking up her father's love and affirmations. He didn't say much, but she didn't need him to. This was enough.
"I miss Mom," Cho whispered a while later. Her sobs had finally stopped but she didn't dare move from her father's arms unless prompted. "Before we lost Auntie Mill."
"Me too, mi hija. Me too."
Cho could remember flashes of her mother's bright smile, happy gaze. The way her arms would scoop up Cho and swing her around the living room before baking biscuits for Cho's imaginary tea parties.
Then Auntie Mill had passed away. And everything had changed. Her mother became withdrawn and cold, as if afraid to continue loving anything or anyone, even her husband and daughter.
Diego and Cho had done what they could, but their mother's personality seemed to have been changed forever. Cho desperately hoped she wouldn't become like her mother was now. Untouchable, encased in a shimmery coating of ice that never thawed.
"I love you, Daddy," Cho whispered again, holding on to her father ever tighter.
"I love you too, mi joya."
Cho held onto her father. And she held onto Cedric in her mind. She tried to let go of the urge to mar her skin, while clinging tighter to the memories of Cedric's smile and his laughter.
"I love you, Cedric, mi amor."