A SUMMER PLACE
by monkeymouse
a/k/a Patrick Drazen
2.5: One Owl Too Many
[If you found your way this far, you don't need me to tell you that JK Rowling created the Potterverse, and is still creating it…]
The month of July wore on, warmer than usual and slower than Harry had thought it would. Time, to tell the truth, was hanging heavy on his hands.
In mid-month he received his Hogwarts letter for sixth year, listing all the courses he would take and the supplies he would need. Yet it was still a few days too early to go shopping for any of the supplies; Harry knew that because he'd tried. The proper books weren't in yet at Flourish & Blotts. He found that, even though he'd only gotten a few inches taller since the past year, his old school robes could no longer be let out enough to make up for it. He'd have to buy new robes, but they weren't in stock yet either.
Still, Harry had a few things to look forward to. He knew his sixteenth birthday was coming up at the end of the month, and he knew he could count on a letter every day or two from Cho.
And the letters always made him feel better—until the last week of July.
It started out as a perfectly innocent question. Harry simply asked in one letter, because of what he had heard Granny Li say about Cedric Diggory (though without mentioning her): "How did you feel about Cedric, really? I mean, getting asked to the Ball was one thing, but after that…"
"Dearest Harry,
It's not quite true to say that, while I was dancing with him, I was thinking of you. I wish I could say it now, but… Put yourself in my place, Harry: he was tall, good-looking (almost all the girls thought so, anyway), an excellent Quidditch player (even if it was for a House that hardly ever won anything, it didn't get him down). I hadn't wanted him to ask me, but I felt honoured when he did. I felt the same way when he said he'd like to see more of me after the Ball.
And then there came the Second Task. It was a shock to wake up and find I might have come close to drowning, but it was an even greater shock when I realized that, of all the people Cedric could have rescued—and, believe me, I knew a dozen girls who would have thrown themselves into the lake for the chance—he chose me. Some part of him said that I was the one he would surely miss, as the poem in the egg put it. When he told me that after the Task, as I sat wet and shivering and wrapped in a blanket, I—who had never had a boyfriend (Andrew definitely didn't count) before he came along—I must have fallen in love with him. I thought so at the time, anyway. Believe me, Harry, I know better now. Besides, the way the Task turned out, I supposed that you didn't exactly think of me that way."
Cho may have been joking when she wrote that last line. Still, when Harry read it, he dropped her letter as if it were a tarantula.
He rushed to the desk to send his reply:
"YOU THOUGHT I WAS A POUFFE?! You honestly thought that I felt "that way" about Ron?! That's no truer then than it is now! Besides…"
Harry had to stop his reply for a minute. He thought back to the Second Task. Maybe Cedric took it for granted that the Task was about something romantic. Viktor Krum had chosen to rescue Hermione, after all, and he seemed to be interested in her that way… No, that can't be right, he thought angrily, because in that case what she said about me and Ron would be true and it just isn't! There was only one other "couple" to compare to, and it was a bit of a stretch, but Harry saw it as his last chance to win the argument. "Besides, what does that make Fleur and Gabrielle, then? It can't ALL have been based on romance."
There. Cho would have to concede the point now. He tied the note to Hedwig's leg and watched her fly away.
Hedwig returned the next day with a short reply that didn't make Harry feel better at all:
"Fleur and Gabrielle? Yes, they're sisters, but they're also French; they're also veela; they're also Beauxbatons; who knows what they get into."
This was crazy. She seemed to cling to the Second-Task-as-Romance theory stronger than ever, if she could suggest THAT about the Delacour sisters. Harry hadn't wanted to do this, but she was leaving him no choice. He'd have to attack Cedric head-on; her memory of him, anyway.
"I still can't believe you think about the Second Task that way. It certainly didn't work out that way for anyone, did it? Hermione hasn't shown much interest in Viktor that I've seen, and according to your granny Cedric wasn't even interested in you that way. He didn't think you stood any chance of a future together."
While Harry was attaching the note to Hedwig, he felt a nagging suspicion that he'd written something that would come back to haunt him, but at the moment he couldn't think what it was. Nor could he think of it as he watched the owl fly yet again toward Japan, nor could he think of it the rest of that day.
The next day, July 29, two letters arrived from Cho. The first was delivered by nightingale, one small piece of parchment with two words: "MY GRANNY?!"
Harry felt a large collection of rocks gathering in the pit of his stomach. He suddenly remembered why that last letter of his probably wasn't such a good idea, and he knew exactly what Cho meant; she didn't need to go into any further detail. But she did. Thirty minutes later, while he was still pondering what to say in reply, Hedwig showed up with a slightly longer letter:
"If I recall correctly, I asked you not to speak to Andrew about me during the social, and you spoke to him anyway. I have asked you—repeatedly—not to go trying to find my family in Diagon Alley, and you seem to have gone trying to find them anyway. I have just one question, Mister Harry Potter; do you intend to treat my words as if they meant NOTHING for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, or is this just a fifth-year thing?"
She'd caught him out. Harry knew that she had a reason to be angry. Still, he thought, there was no harm done. And Granny Li was the one who came to the Leaky Cauldron to speak to him.
As he sat down to reply, though, he reread her letter. He heard the tone of anger behind it. He bristled at the unfairness of it all. Yes, he may have found the shop, but that's all he was looking for; it isn't as if he went inside or anything. And besides, Granny hit him with a broom. There was no reason to get all hot and huffy about it; no reason at all…
Rather than admit he was wrong and move on from there, his temper got the better of him. He became defensive; then he became angry in turn; then, when he wrote his reply to Cho, he became rash
"How well did you do for yourself in your fifth year, then? You go and get starry-eyed over some thick-as-a-brick pretty-boy who would've made your life so routine and so ordinary that you would have been miserable. If he would've had you in the first place! Maybe Voldemort actually did you a favour, and kept you from getting your heart broken by your 'hero.'"
It was a mark of Harry's anger that he reread this letter several times before deciding it was all right to send back with Hedwig. It was a bit blunt, perhaps, but on the whole he didn't see anything wrong with it.
The next day, July 30, Hedwig returned just before midnight with a scroll. Harry thought that she had an embarrassed look about her, as if she knew he wouldn't like the contents. He quickly unrolled it. The scroll was filled with Chinese characters, written very large, in very red ink, with very violent brush-strokes. Harry thought he could figure out the general meaning of the message, but Cho had provided a rough translation. At the bottom of the scroll, written in equally large red letters:
"HARRY POTTER I HATE YOU!"
At the moment he read those words, a clock tower somewhere near Diagon Alley chimed midnight. He had just turned sixteen, and the first thing he saw was Cho's letter in his hands.
"So you hate Harry Potter?" Harry muttered to himself as he looked up into the mirror. He saw a skinny teenager with wild hair and fat-rimmed glasses, alone in a public-house room. No family, no friends, no girl; nobody in the world. "So do I."
He fell back on the bed, burying his face in the pillow, ashamed to let even the mirror see him crying.
"For what it's worth, laddie," the mirror said softly, "happy birthday".
…to be continued…
by monkeymouse
a/k/a Patrick Drazen
2.5: One Owl Too Many
[If you found your way this far, you don't need me to tell you that JK Rowling created the Potterverse, and is still creating it…]
The month of July wore on, warmer than usual and slower than Harry had thought it would. Time, to tell the truth, was hanging heavy on his hands.
In mid-month he received his Hogwarts letter for sixth year, listing all the courses he would take and the supplies he would need. Yet it was still a few days too early to go shopping for any of the supplies; Harry knew that because he'd tried. The proper books weren't in yet at Flourish & Blotts. He found that, even though he'd only gotten a few inches taller since the past year, his old school robes could no longer be let out enough to make up for it. He'd have to buy new robes, but they weren't in stock yet either.
Still, Harry had a few things to look forward to. He knew his sixteenth birthday was coming up at the end of the month, and he knew he could count on a letter every day or two from Cho.
And the letters always made him feel better—until the last week of July.
It started out as a perfectly innocent question. Harry simply asked in one letter, because of what he had heard Granny Li say about Cedric Diggory (though without mentioning her): "How did you feel about Cedric, really? I mean, getting asked to the Ball was one thing, but after that…"
"Dearest Harry,
It's not quite true to say that, while I was dancing with him, I was thinking of you. I wish I could say it now, but… Put yourself in my place, Harry: he was tall, good-looking (almost all the girls thought so, anyway), an excellent Quidditch player (even if it was for a House that hardly ever won anything, it didn't get him down). I hadn't wanted him to ask me, but I felt honoured when he did. I felt the same way when he said he'd like to see more of me after the Ball.
And then there came the Second Task. It was a shock to wake up and find I might have come close to drowning, but it was an even greater shock when I realized that, of all the people Cedric could have rescued—and, believe me, I knew a dozen girls who would have thrown themselves into the lake for the chance—he chose me. Some part of him said that I was the one he would surely miss, as the poem in the egg put it. When he told me that after the Task, as I sat wet and shivering and wrapped in a blanket, I—who had never had a boyfriend (Andrew definitely didn't count) before he came along—I must have fallen in love with him. I thought so at the time, anyway. Believe me, Harry, I know better now. Besides, the way the Task turned out, I supposed that you didn't exactly think of me that way."
Cho may have been joking when she wrote that last line. Still, when Harry read it, he dropped her letter as if it were a tarantula.
He rushed to the desk to send his reply:
"YOU THOUGHT I WAS A POUFFE?! You honestly thought that I felt "that way" about Ron?! That's no truer then than it is now! Besides…"
Harry had to stop his reply for a minute. He thought back to the Second Task. Maybe Cedric took it for granted that the Task was about something romantic. Viktor Krum had chosen to rescue Hermione, after all, and he seemed to be interested in her that way… No, that can't be right, he thought angrily, because in that case what she said about me and Ron would be true and it just isn't! There was only one other "couple" to compare to, and it was a bit of a stretch, but Harry saw it as his last chance to win the argument. "Besides, what does that make Fleur and Gabrielle, then? It can't ALL have been based on romance."
There. Cho would have to concede the point now. He tied the note to Hedwig's leg and watched her fly away.
Hedwig returned the next day with a short reply that didn't make Harry feel better at all:
"Fleur and Gabrielle? Yes, they're sisters, but they're also French; they're also veela; they're also Beauxbatons; who knows what they get into."
This was crazy. She seemed to cling to the Second-Task-as-Romance theory stronger than ever, if she could suggest THAT about the Delacour sisters. Harry hadn't wanted to do this, but she was leaving him no choice. He'd have to attack Cedric head-on; her memory of him, anyway.
"I still can't believe you think about the Second Task that way. It certainly didn't work out that way for anyone, did it? Hermione hasn't shown much interest in Viktor that I've seen, and according to your granny Cedric wasn't even interested in you that way. He didn't think you stood any chance of a future together."
While Harry was attaching the note to Hedwig, he felt a nagging suspicion that he'd written something that would come back to haunt him, but at the moment he couldn't think what it was. Nor could he think of it as he watched the owl fly yet again toward Japan, nor could he think of it the rest of that day.
The next day, July 29, two letters arrived from Cho. The first was delivered by nightingale, one small piece of parchment with two words: "MY GRANNY?!"
Harry felt a large collection of rocks gathering in the pit of his stomach. He suddenly remembered why that last letter of his probably wasn't such a good idea, and he knew exactly what Cho meant; she didn't need to go into any further detail. But she did. Thirty minutes later, while he was still pondering what to say in reply, Hedwig showed up with a slightly longer letter:
"If I recall correctly, I asked you not to speak to Andrew about me during the social, and you spoke to him anyway. I have asked you—repeatedly—not to go trying to find my family in Diagon Alley, and you seem to have gone trying to find them anyway. I have just one question, Mister Harry Potter; do you intend to treat my words as if they meant NOTHING for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, or is this just a fifth-year thing?"
She'd caught him out. Harry knew that she had a reason to be angry. Still, he thought, there was no harm done. And Granny Li was the one who came to the Leaky Cauldron to speak to him.
As he sat down to reply, though, he reread her letter. He heard the tone of anger behind it. He bristled at the unfairness of it all. Yes, he may have found the shop, but that's all he was looking for; it isn't as if he went inside or anything. And besides, Granny hit him with a broom. There was no reason to get all hot and huffy about it; no reason at all…
Rather than admit he was wrong and move on from there, his temper got the better of him. He became defensive; then he became angry in turn; then, when he wrote his reply to Cho, he became rash
"How well did you do for yourself in your fifth year, then? You go and get starry-eyed over some thick-as-a-brick pretty-boy who would've made your life so routine and so ordinary that you would have been miserable. If he would've had you in the first place! Maybe Voldemort actually did you a favour, and kept you from getting your heart broken by your 'hero.'"
It was a mark of Harry's anger that he reread this letter several times before deciding it was all right to send back with Hedwig. It was a bit blunt, perhaps, but on the whole he didn't see anything wrong with it.
The next day, July 30, Hedwig returned just before midnight with a scroll. Harry thought that she had an embarrassed look about her, as if she knew he wouldn't like the contents. He quickly unrolled it. The scroll was filled with Chinese characters, written very large, in very red ink, with very violent brush-strokes. Harry thought he could figure out the general meaning of the message, but Cho had provided a rough translation. At the bottom of the scroll, written in equally large red letters:
"HARRY POTTER I HATE YOU!"
At the moment he read those words, a clock tower somewhere near Diagon Alley chimed midnight. He had just turned sixteen, and the first thing he saw was Cho's letter in his hands.
"So you hate Harry Potter?" Harry muttered to himself as he looked up into the mirror. He saw a skinny teenager with wild hair and fat-rimmed glasses, alone in a public-house room. No family, no friends, no girl; nobody in the world. "So do I."
He fell back on the bed, burying his face in the pillow, ashamed to let even the mirror see him crying.
"For what it's worth, laddie," the mirror said softly, "happy birthday".
…to be continued…