~*Everything You Want*~
Chapter Eight: I Quit
Dove: We're ba-ack! Now that the story has hit its halfway point, expect more angst in bucketloads and complications in the form of Fleur, Harry, and all sorts of fun little first years… as always, enjoy, review, and be happy-this chapter was way too long so we cut it in half… you'll probably have another in a few hours!
Thalia: I SAW Roger and Cho in real life!! And they're engaged!! And I've been mid-term-ing right and left and front and back.... it's a chaotic existence.... but here's the next chapter of fic for you to enjoy and review!! Roger and Cho... ah well.... we're sadists....
Disclaimer: If you think that we should own them, that's GREAT!! However, you're not JKR....
"I got my hands dirty, while you rolled cigarettes,
With one eye on the time
I tried my hardest, I've been conscientious,
But I'm taking back that heart of mine
You can't roll me round your tongue no more, baby
It's time to clear up your emotional debris
And if I'm falling overboard, please don't save me...
'Cause I'm telling you now...
I quit! I quit! 'Cause loving you's a job I don't need
Ain't gonna go to work no more…
I quit! I quit! Your situation's vacant for me
Ain't gonna go to work no more, ain't gonna go to work no more,
Ain't gonna go to work..."
-Hepburn, "I Quit"
For the first time since she started Hogwarts, Cho found herself standing alone on Platform Nine-and-three quarters. Roger, stony-faced, stood about thirty feet away and he had pointedly turned his back towards her, talking with sixth year Ravenclaw Zachary Turpin, one of the chasers on their Quidditch team. Now and then, Zach would glance over Roger's shoulder, giving Cho surprised and commiserating glances. Try though she might, Cho couldn't help but look towards Roger's oblivious back every now and then. Annoyed with herself for such a lack of self-control, she started scanning the platform for something to distract herself with.
"Cho?!" A shrill voice reached her ears. Cho winced. This was not quite the distraction she had been looking for.
"Hello, Cassandra, Melissa." Cho sighed. Let the interrogation begin...
"You cut your hair!" Melissa squealed. Cho rolled her eyes.
"Very astute observation."
"It looks so much better this way." Cassandra said, in a mincing, "I'm-one-of-the-most-fashionable-girls-in-school" voice, "So much more sophisticated, less childish. You look marvelous, darling..."
Cho's poker face was firmly in place, and she remained stonily silent. At that moment, the train arrived, and she immediately picked up her trunk and walked briskly into a compartment. Unfortunately, Cassandra and Melissa followed right at her heels, and were both sitting in the compartment before she could slam the door in their impertinent faces.
"You should have cut your hair ages ago, it was way too long." Cassandra continued, twirling one of her own curled blonde locks with one manicured finger, "I mean, with hair that long, there's absolutely nothing you can do to style it that won't make it look utterly medieval. That braid you used to wear it in, that might have looked okay on a child, but on a young lady, it looked positively juvenile..." So Cassandra did have a vocabulary after all. It was a pity that she only used it when talking about hair. "However, now, you can do so much more with it... if you'd like, I'll curl it for you tonight, you'll look gorgeous."
"No thank you," Cho managed to speak out between clenched teeth. "And I do not look marvelous."
"Oh, but you do." Melissa grinned, "So, what made you decide to cut it at long last?"
Cho smiled icily. "If I told you," she replied calmly, "I'd have to kill you."
There was a tangible silence. Cassandra's jaw dropped at the audacity, and Melissa blinked and said, "Oh."
Before Cho could be treated to a slew of uncomfortable questions, Penelope stuck her head into the compartment, Head Girl badge gleaming. She quickly took survey of the situation and decided Cho needed rescuing. "Cho!" she exclaimed. "I need to talk to you about... that... cat!"
Cho looked baffled for only a second before jumping up. "The cat! How could I forget! I'm coming!" Then she sped out of the compartment and shut the door behind her. "Thanks. I was in dire straits."
Penelope nodded. "I thought so." She looked at Cho then, really looked, and her eyes widened. "Your hair!"
Cho sighed. "Yes. My hair. Is gone. Can we stop talking about this?"
Penelope recognized a touchy subject. "Of course. It looks nice. By the way, have you figured out why those dolts are in Ravenclaw yet?"
Cho, distracted, grinned. "Nope. Airheads."
"Well, what do you say we go and get another compartment, where the people inside are a bit less stupid?" Penny said casually. Cho nodded.
The two girls walked together and slid the door of the next compartment open. Cho peered inside, and saw Arnold Derrick, the Slytherin Beater, leering back at her. She quickly slid the door shut, ignoring the hoots and catcalls coming from Derrick and his cronies, and strode into the next one, Penny right behind her.
"Roger!" Penny greeted the occupant of that compartment. Cho grimaced. So much for a compartment with someone less stupid, her luck was just horrible today. She resolutely stared at her shoes, refusing to look at him, quite uncomfortably aware of his eyes fixed on her shorn head. Probably disgusted. she thought, then wondered why she cared.
"Penny." Roger greeted the Head Girl coolly. "What is she doing here?"
Before Cho could snap out in indignation for his rudeness, Penny cleared her throat and looked pointedly at Roger, "She's with me. Are you going to kick us out?"
Roger thinned his lips. He wanted nothing more than to do just that, to take Cho, and her lopped off hair, and the reminder of her broken promises and her affair with Diggory and everything else that had made the past several months hell for him... away. But he couldn't bring himself to throw her out, and moreover, he really couldn't make Penny leave without any good reason. "Stay if you like, just leave me alone."
"It's not like we want to talk to you anyway." Cho muttered, narrowing her eyes wrathfully.
"Of course not, you would do anything to be with Diggory right now, wouldn't you?" Roger sneered at the younger girl. "Can't wait 'til he whisks you off to the Astronomy Tower tonight, eh?"
"Quiet! Both of you!!!" Penny stood up between the other two, and glared at both of them, "For Merlin's sake, GROW UP!! Stop this infantile bickering this instant, or I'll give both of you detentions!!"
Cho rolled her eyes slightly, "I think Percy's a bad influence on you, Penny."
Roger laughed before he could help himself, then tried unsuccessfully to hide it with a cough. Scowling at the two girls and angry with himself for letting his control slip again, he retreated into icy silence for the remainder of the trip.
Cho would indeed have rather been anywhere else, preferably with a good friend like Ced. She knew, however, from his latest owl that he would be coming late this year due to some family function, using the floo to come into Hogsmeade in the evening. Hadn't she warned her mother to let him through their house so he wouldn't have to pay the public floo station? Therefore, her only real friend on the train was Penelope, and since Penelope was in this compartment... well, silence from Roger was better than questions from her roommates, anyway. And that was that.
She pulled a small book from her cloak pocket and muttered over it with her wand until it returned to its normal gargantuan proportions. She had taken to shrinking her O.W.L. preparation book so that she could take it anywhere over the summer. In her home, magic was allowed as long as one of her parents was in the room, strictly for scholastic purposes. Therefore, Cho was already halfway through the book. She had promised herself to read through it at least five times this year, until she knew the contents backwards and forwards.
Roger had gotten nearly perfect O.W.L.s two years ago, and that just meant she'd need a perfect score.
She opened to the Charms section and began to relocate things in the room, change their color and size, and generally make a wonderfully magical mess. The entire time, her spells were whispered so softly that the silence of the compartment was barely stirred, and in her concentration, she was unaware of Roger watching her with grudging admiration on his face.
Once she was tired, she switched to studying Potions ingredients. About then the witch with the snack trolley came by. Cho was concentrating too hard to pay much mind to her, but Penny shoved some food into her lap shortly thereafter, and Cho ate mechanically, mentally repeating the magical properties of rosemary.
About an hour before they would reach the station, Cho put away her book, and began to hack away at her personal project-the Patronus Charm. After seeing Roger do it, and then Harry Potter, despite the latter being younger than her, she had resolved to learn it. What she hadn't expected was the blistering headache she got from trying without any precedent, or the fact that even her new Advanced Charms book was rather vague on how, exactly, it was made to work. She feared, deep down, that there were simply no memories happy enough for her to achieve it, especially now. Nothing but a faint silver cloud came from her wand, and that had taken nearly a month to create over the summer. She kept trying, but nothing came of it.
When the train slowed, Cho shrunk her book, put it away, and stood. "Come on, Penny," she said, smiling at the other girl and ignoring the other inhabitant of the room completely. "Help me slip by those silly girls again, will you?" Then, she flounced out, or tried to, on shaky legs. Penelope sighed and followed.
Roger watched quietly as she walked out, leaning slightly on Penelope. Cho was slightly pale, the Patronus Charm that she had been trying to master took a lot out of one, after all. It was ironic that she was trying to cast it now. Last year at this time, they were still friends. Sharing a compartment. Facing the Dementors together. Him watching her sleep, her long braid shimmering in the sunlight. Was it just a year ago? Time seemed to drag on these days. Oh well, school would start. He would be busy with Prefect duties and Quidditch and N.E.W.T.s to study for. Maybe... just maybe, he wouldn't have time to think about Cho.
With such thoughts in mind, he entered the Great Hall, forcing himself not to look at Cho as she sat down with Penny at the other end of the Ravenclaw table. Several other people had remarked on her shortened hair, asking her where it went. She simply pressed her lips together and did not answer. Roger wondered if anyone knew that it was sitting in a drawer in his desk, side by side with the Christmas gift that he had never given her, still in its box. He had not even realized that he had taken those shorn locks inside until he had reached his room, and looked down to see them clutched in his fist. Jet-black, damp silky strands. Lifeless. Severed as cruelly as their friendship had been. Perhaps another, more practical man, in his shoes might have been angry and set her hair on fire, burnt it to ashes so that it would disappear and there would not remain any painful reminders. But for some reason, he had not the heart to do something that felt so sacrilegious.
As usual, Dumbledore started to make announcements after the sorting and before the feast. Roger half-heartedly listened as he forbade students from wandering into the Forbidden Forest, etc. And then, the Headmaster made an announcement that caused him to sit bolt upright. No Quidditch?!
Just as Roger was about to jump up and demand why, when Dumbledore answered his question. "This is due to an event that will be starting in October and continuing throughout the school year, taking up much of the teachers' time and energy-but I am sure you will all enjoy it immensely. I have great pleasure in announcing that this year at Hogwarts-"
Just then, there was a crash of lightning, the doors flew open, and a frightening figure entered, walking in silently except the clunk that echoed at every other step as he limped across the Great Hall towards the professors' table and Albus Dumbledore.
Roger was familiar with the man. He had met him years ago, when his father had taken him to a day of work in the Ministry one summer, a crash course in reality, he called it. Alastor Moody had come into the office for only about ten minutes, but a face like that was difficult to forget. Roger remembered, and even so, he winced a bit when the light hit his face and illuminated the disfigured, scarred surface. He heard (and pretended not to notice) Cho take in a shaky breath.
The former Auror said something to Dumbledore, sat down, and speared a sausage with his pocket knife. A shudder went through the room as one of his eyes moved around the room, Never still, while the other stayed focused on the food. The silence was deafening.
Dumbledore appeared not to notice the general consensus of disgust. He smiled brightly. "May I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" Silence. "Professor Moody."
Silence greeted the declaration. Dumbledore cleared his throat and spoke again. "As I was saying, we are to have the honor of hosting a very exciting event over the coming months, an event that has not been held for over a century. It is my great pleasure to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year."
"You're JOKING!" shouted a boy at the Gryffindor table. One of the Weasley twins, though Roger had no clue which one.
Everyone began to laugh, and Roger let himself drift away and daydream. The Triwizard tournament... he had read about it in History of Magic, of course, and been fascinated. He could be Hogwarts champion... he could be a hero! Famous, admired by all... Cho's admiration would have to come back to him. Not that he cared for her at all, of course, but it would be satisfying.
Dumbledore went on to explain the rules. The cutoff age was no problem. Roger was sure he could do it now. The prize money would be the icing on the cake. Oh, he could be everything, he could have everything... and maybe the gaping hole inside his heart would heal. Or at least, maybe he would be too busy to notice it.
Or so he hoped.
Cho saw Roger's eyes light up at the mention of the Triwizard Tournament. Not that she was watching him, of course! But a frown came, unbidden, to settle upon her forehead. Did the daft git actually want to try out for that tournament? What for?! Glory? Money? Were those really so important? More important than, say, staying alive? Why was he even considering this? And for that matter, why did she care? No, she didn't! Really! He could try out for the bloody tournament and have girls hanging all over him like a lionized hero and... and... she didn't care a whit! Hmph!
However, it was a very pensive Cho that walked back to Ravenclaw Tower that evening. Filled with a worry and a vague sense of pain that she did not understand, she sat at her favorite window seat, gazing out towards the sky with a faraway expression on her face. At that moment, the portrait hole opened once more, and she looked up to see Calista, Glenda, Una, Alice and Helen, now-second-year Ravenclaw girls, smiling at her, each of them carrying a pie in her hands.
Normally, something of this nature would have made Cho ecstatic, but right now, though happy and touched, she felt an odd sort of... wrongness... about the whole picture. Nevertheless, she smiled at the girls, and took to slicing the pies. Absorbed in making identical slices for everyone, she didn't notice Roger watching her, a wistful look on his face.
Roger watched as she smiled and cut pie for those younger girls. He couldn't really help himself. The Charms text in his lap seemed to fade into nothingness as he took in the scene by the window. Cho bending over the second-years with a smile, her face half-hidden by the shorter hair. He had an urge to go over and brush the hair behind her ears. He watched as she beckoned for Orla Quirke, Stewart Ackerley, and the other new first years to join them. She was so good with those children. Easygoing, yet setting a good example. She would make a great mother someday. Wait, what was he thinking?! He shook his head to clear the horrifying image of Cho, Cedric and little Diggory tots that had sprang unbidden into his head. At that moment, he felt a light tap on his shoulder.
Looking up, he saw that girl, Glenda, holding out a plate with a steaming slice of strawberry pie in her small hands, looking at him with a slightly bashful expression. "Here, Mr. Davies... sir... have some... pie."
Had he not feared that he would scare the girl and all the other occupants of the common room into thinking that he had finally lost his mind, Roger would have laughed, long and bitter, and the irony of the situation. He heard a loud clink, and jerked his head in the direction of the sudden sound.
Cho's fork had fallen onto her plate from her nerveless fingers. She had sprung up and away from her own pie, as if the pastry had burnt her. Her eyes met his for one anguished moment, and they seemed to fill with tears. Then, she looked away, face white, and perfunctorily opened her Transfiguration book, backing away from her seat and the confused first and second years with her head bowed. Moving to a far corner of the room, she sat down shakily and bowed her head over the book. She stayed there, frozen, for a long time.
Orla Quirke, confused, turned toward Calista and asked in a whisper, "What's the matter with her?"
"See that boy that Glenda just gave the pie to? That's Roger Davies; he's a Prefect and Quidditch captain. Cho's our Seeker. She and Roger were friends until they fell in love with each other, now they're not speaking to each other any more."
"I thought that people in love were supposed to be happy!" Orla mumbled. Calista shrugged.
"Not around here they're not. Don't worry, you'll get used to it, and they'll come to their senses someday." Calista smiled reassuringly at the first-year, "We are Ravenclaws, after all."