OR DIE TRYING: THE STORY OF CHO CHANG
By monkeymouse
NB: JKRowling built the Potterverse; I'm just redecorating one of the rooms.
Rated: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
10. Happy New Year
When Cho opened the curtains to her bed on the morning of December 29, sun was pouring in through the window. The world outside was white with snow and cold as ice, but none of that could get into the dormitory room at Hogwarts. The room was properly heated by the stove, and a fine breakfast waited in the Great Hall, as usual.
She felt happy, yet a bit-unsettled. Something was tugging at her mind for attention, but she couldn't begin to figure out what it might be. She glanced over at Raisa's bed; the curtains were still drawn.
I could go down to breakfast with my robes on over my nightdress, she thought. It's the holidays; who would ever know. And at that moment, a strange idea pounced into Cho's head and wouldn't leave. The more she tried to analyze it away, the stronger it stuck. She tried to reject it without reason, yet still it refused to budge. Finally Cho, covering her mouth to stifle her giggling, decided to give in to the idea.
She jumped back into bed and pulled the curtains to, just in case Raisa awoke. The whole point, smirked the idea in her head, is that you'll be the only one to know. So Cho pulled her nightgown over her head, pulled off her underpants and put on her robes. She then opened the curtains again, and stepped onto the floor. She put on her slippers, since the stone floors of Hogwarts would hardly be as warm as the dormitory, and went downstairs.
She didn't meet anyone on her way down to the Common Room, although there were a few other girls staying in Ravenclaw for the holidays. The Common Room itself was also empty, except for "Jinx" Jenkins, one of the Ravenclaw Beaters. He had apparently been reading up on Divination; a book on the old Roman practice of reading bird entrails, titled "Guts Are Your Friends", was tented over his snoring face. He was flat on his back on the daybed, with his robes open revealing a bulge in his trousers that could have been one thing only. Cho looked at that bulge for the better part of a minute, not thinking anything in particular-her mind, in fact, had almost gone blank. Finally, she turned and dashed through the bookcase, up the steps and out into the corridor.
Once there, she literally started dancing her way through the castle to the Great Hall. She leapt and spun and paced her way, flourishing the hems of her robe up as high as her knees-and sometimes higher. There was nobody to see anything in any case, but as she danced she could feel nothing but a strange indefinable excitement. She knew that, somehow, she was walking along the border of a part of the grown-up world where she was not yet allowed. On the other side of the border were glances that took the place of words, secret meetings, words that seemed to have two meanings, touches that nobody else was allowed to know, muffled cries and laughs and sobs mixed together in a stew of emotions. And naked bodies; whatever happened on the other side of the border (and until now Cho had never really been interested in exactly what happened there) involved naked bodies.
Yet here she was, naked under her robes, as if she were trying to sneak over the border to find out exactly what was going on in that other country.
Between the Library and the Great Hall, Cho saw the Fat Friar float through the wall and into the corridor. She paused for just an instant. Could a ghost see through her robes? She doubted it, and waved.
The Fat Friar waved back. "Good morning, my dear," he called to her, "and isn't it a lovely." His words were cut off as if by scissors, as he stopped and stared at Cho, his face filled with horror and disgust. It took him a few seconds to find his voice: "Oh, that's terrible! I'm going to report you; just see if I don't!" The ghost turned and ran through the wall the way he had come.
Maybe ghosts CAN see through clothes, she thought, as she looked down at her robes. And there, sticking through her robes at about stomach-level, was Peeves the Poltergeist, looking up into Cho's face, his tongue lolling obscenely out of his open mouth.
"GET OUT OF IT! SHOO! YOU FILTHY THING!" Cho swatted at Peeves, which did no good, but he passed through her body, giggling like a maniac as he passed through the high ceiling of the hallway.
All of Cho's daring and curiosity and giddiness evaporated after that encounter with Peeves. She ran back to Ravenclaw, jumped back into bed and drew the curtain, not physically tired but trembling from nervousness. After a few minutes, she pulled herself together, got dressed properly and went down to breakfast.
It would be about a year before Cho would again have reason to be curious about what lay across that border.
xxx
Hogwarts didn't recognize New Year's Eve as a holiday, but Ravenclaw certainly did. On that last day of 1990, the Quidditch team members broke open their hidden supply of butterbeer, brought back from Hogsmeade trips especially for this night. Even Cho and Raisa were made to feel welcome and (once they were sure nothing in butterbeer conflicted with Raisa's religion) the two First-Year girls drank as freely as the older boys.
Most of the talk was about Quidditch. Cho kept silent as the team debated the merits of one model broom over another. They kept arguing over the loss to Slytherin, with nobody objecting as Cho pointed out precisely when Culligan missed easy chances at the Snitch. They all took it in turns making fun of Seagoon's way of announcing a match, and were glad that, being a Seventh-Year, he was almost out of Hogwarts.
"What's he going to do after, has anybody heard?" Culligan asked. Raisa started giggling again; as the evening wore on, she found herself giggling every time Culligan spoke. She'd never heard anything like his Welsh accent, and wasn't prepared for the way it made her feel.
"I know his father works for the World Wizarding Network," Erasmus Skiddle said. "You think he'd line something up for his son?"
"Yeah," Roger put in, "tea-boy." They all laughed, except Cho. She never found humour in making fun of someone else. And it may have been her imagination, but when she caught Roger Davies' eye, he stopped laughing too.
As it drew closer to midnight, Raisa had to excuse herself from the party; she could barely stay awake long enough to make her apologies. Cho, however, was as wide-awake as the others. She felt that she had to be; that this was part of the testing she would have to undergo to be found worthy of being on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.
So it was that, when talk came to what people hoped for in the next year, all Cho said was, "Everyone here knows what I want." This actually seemed to carry more weight than if she had argued with the team about keeping girls off. They didn't say anything in response.
The conversation went on until a minute before midnight, when Roger Davies glanced at his watch. "Mackie, it's time Mister Burns put in an appearance."
The Chang family had never celebrated any but the Chinese New Year. Although they sometimes went out to parties on 31 December, Cho had stayed at home and her parents returned before midnight. So what happened next took Cho completely by surprise: Everyone rose, as if on cue, and formed a circle. Cho rushed to be part of the circle, then found that she had to cross her arms over her chest, holding the hands of the people next to her. She found herself between Roger Davies and "Jinx" Jenkins.
Confusion must have been obvious on her face. Roger looked at her-the first time she could remember him doing so without suspicion or condescension. "It's an old way of seeing the old year out. Wizards and Muggles both do it." He stopped when Culligan started to sing, in a clear, pure baritone voice:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!"
The other voices seemed to explode into the room at the chorus:
"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Culligan took up the next verse, with Davies doubling an octave higher. Cho listened breathlessly; the sound was nothing less than magical:
"And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o'kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Cho was so caught up in their voices that she wasn't ready for everyone to come back in with the chorus; but, since she still didn't know it, she listened, and kept listening as the Quidditch Co-Captains sang the third verse:
"We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
Sin' auld lang syne."
She joined in the third chorus, a little shaky, a little off-key but glad to be a part of Ravenclaw, of Hogwarts, of the whole wizarding world-
"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Her mind started asking questions during the singing of the fourth verse:
"We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne."
Why are we singing about old times? What old times could we have had? The oldest here isn't more than sixteen. So what were the old times?
The answer hit her like a thunderbolt: these are the old times-or they will be. Someday, when our youth is gone, when children have grown and loved ones are dead and dear old friends have vanished, never to be seen again, will we forget them all? Or will we remember each other as we are now-young and strong and carefree?
By now everyone had started in on the final verse:
"And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne."
She followed as best she could and joined in strongly on the chorus, even though tears of joy were rolling unstoppably down her cheeks. She'd never felt such a bond before-to everyone in that room at that moment, no matter what would happen to them in the future:
"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Cho couldn't help it; as soon as the grips around the circle started to loosen, she threw her arms around Roger Davies to her left and gave him a fierce hug. Her tear-streaked face shone up toward him for a second, before she broke the hug and ran up to her dorm.
She didn't stay to hear the rest of the Quidditch team laughing at Roger, as he blushed seven different shades of pink.
xxx
All too soon, the magic of the holidays gave way to the cycle of lessons and (in Cho's case) lessons from Madam Hooch, broken only by a few highlights.
On 27 January, Cho turned twelve years old, and the girls in her year surprised her by giving her a knit scarf with moving designs of galloping horses on it. They had learned that Cho was born in a Year of the Horse, and it was coming around again. For Cho, this meant a year of good fortune and monumental change-and she would be right in ways she could not yet guess.
Also in January came an odd lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Quirrell seemed both more distracted than usual and more exhausted, as if he was fighting a losing battle. At one point, he posed a question to Cho:
[A/N: the reader must forgive me if I leave Quirrell's stammer to the imagination, rather than inflict it again on the eye.]
"Miss Chang, what are the three temptations most often offered to Muggles by practitioners of the Dark Arts?"
"They are temptations of money, of love, and of the return of the dead."
"Correct."
"But sir," Cho interrupted, "what is it about bringing back the dead that attracts Muggles?"
"I should have thought it was obvious, Miss Chang."
"Sorry, sir, but it isn't obvious to me. I was brought up to believe in reincarnation, so that the dead are always coming back, in a manner of speaking."
Quirrell smiled. "Touche, Miss Chang. Mister Grimaldi, explain why return from the dead should be a temptation."
"Because it's just impossible, isn't it? Once you're dead, you're dead."
"But dark wizards have brought the dead back to life on occasion," Libby Foggly pointed out.
"You're both right, as it happens. Death is final, yet dark wizards have revitalized the dead. Can you explain the paradox, Miss Foggly?"
"Either it was a hoax, or there was still some spark of life in the corpse."
"Excellent answer. There is still a spark. That spark will have to be enough, impossible as it may seem." The class looked at each other in curiosity; Quirrell seemed to have forgotten about them. "I know there's little enough time, but we have to wait. There is still enough time." As suddenly as he entered his trance, Quirrell awoke from it, and apparently didn't realize what had happened. "Miss Nugginbridge, how do the temptations offered to a wizard differ from those offered to a Muggle?"
Nobody in the class knew what to make of Quirrell after that.
xxx
continued in part 11, wherein Cho comes home for the summer to a marvelous surprise
By monkeymouse
NB: JKRowling built the Potterverse; I'm just redecorating one of the rooms.
Rated: PG-13
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
10. Happy New Year
When Cho opened the curtains to her bed on the morning of December 29, sun was pouring in through the window. The world outside was white with snow and cold as ice, but none of that could get into the dormitory room at Hogwarts. The room was properly heated by the stove, and a fine breakfast waited in the Great Hall, as usual.
She felt happy, yet a bit-unsettled. Something was tugging at her mind for attention, but she couldn't begin to figure out what it might be. She glanced over at Raisa's bed; the curtains were still drawn.
I could go down to breakfast with my robes on over my nightdress, she thought. It's the holidays; who would ever know. And at that moment, a strange idea pounced into Cho's head and wouldn't leave. The more she tried to analyze it away, the stronger it stuck. She tried to reject it without reason, yet still it refused to budge. Finally Cho, covering her mouth to stifle her giggling, decided to give in to the idea.
She jumped back into bed and pulled the curtains to, just in case Raisa awoke. The whole point, smirked the idea in her head, is that you'll be the only one to know. So Cho pulled her nightgown over her head, pulled off her underpants and put on her robes. She then opened the curtains again, and stepped onto the floor. She put on her slippers, since the stone floors of Hogwarts would hardly be as warm as the dormitory, and went downstairs.
She didn't meet anyone on her way down to the Common Room, although there were a few other girls staying in Ravenclaw for the holidays. The Common Room itself was also empty, except for "Jinx" Jenkins, one of the Ravenclaw Beaters. He had apparently been reading up on Divination; a book on the old Roman practice of reading bird entrails, titled "Guts Are Your Friends", was tented over his snoring face. He was flat on his back on the daybed, with his robes open revealing a bulge in his trousers that could have been one thing only. Cho looked at that bulge for the better part of a minute, not thinking anything in particular-her mind, in fact, had almost gone blank. Finally, she turned and dashed through the bookcase, up the steps and out into the corridor.
Once there, she literally started dancing her way through the castle to the Great Hall. She leapt and spun and paced her way, flourishing the hems of her robe up as high as her knees-and sometimes higher. There was nobody to see anything in any case, but as she danced she could feel nothing but a strange indefinable excitement. She knew that, somehow, she was walking along the border of a part of the grown-up world where she was not yet allowed. On the other side of the border were glances that took the place of words, secret meetings, words that seemed to have two meanings, touches that nobody else was allowed to know, muffled cries and laughs and sobs mixed together in a stew of emotions. And naked bodies; whatever happened on the other side of the border (and until now Cho had never really been interested in exactly what happened there) involved naked bodies.
Yet here she was, naked under her robes, as if she were trying to sneak over the border to find out exactly what was going on in that other country.
Between the Library and the Great Hall, Cho saw the Fat Friar float through the wall and into the corridor. She paused for just an instant. Could a ghost see through her robes? She doubted it, and waved.
The Fat Friar waved back. "Good morning, my dear," he called to her, "and isn't it a lovely." His words were cut off as if by scissors, as he stopped and stared at Cho, his face filled with horror and disgust. It took him a few seconds to find his voice: "Oh, that's terrible! I'm going to report you; just see if I don't!" The ghost turned and ran through the wall the way he had come.
Maybe ghosts CAN see through clothes, she thought, as she looked down at her robes. And there, sticking through her robes at about stomach-level, was Peeves the Poltergeist, looking up into Cho's face, his tongue lolling obscenely out of his open mouth.
"GET OUT OF IT! SHOO! YOU FILTHY THING!" Cho swatted at Peeves, which did no good, but he passed through her body, giggling like a maniac as he passed through the high ceiling of the hallway.
All of Cho's daring and curiosity and giddiness evaporated after that encounter with Peeves. She ran back to Ravenclaw, jumped back into bed and drew the curtain, not physically tired but trembling from nervousness. After a few minutes, she pulled herself together, got dressed properly and went down to breakfast.
It would be about a year before Cho would again have reason to be curious about what lay across that border.
xxx
Hogwarts didn't recognize New Year's Eve as a holiday, but Ravenclaw certainly did. On that last day of 1990, the Quidditch team members broke open their hidden supply of butterbeer, brought back from Hogsmeade trips especially for this night. Even Cho and Raisa were made to feel welcome and (once they were sure nothing in butterbeer conflicted with Raisa's religion) the two First-Year girls drank as freely as the older boys.
Most of the talk was about Quidditch. Cho kept silent as the team debated the merits of one model broom over another. They kept arguing over the loss to Slytherin, with nobody objecting as Cho pointed out precisely when Culligan missed easy chances at the Snitch. They all took it in turns making fun of Seagoon's way of announcing a match, and were glad that, being a Seventh-Year, he was almost out of Hogwarts.
"What's he going to do after, has anybody heard?" Culligan asked. Raisa started giggling again; as the evening wore on, she found herself giggling every time Culligan spoke. She'd never heard anything like his Welsh accent, and wasn't prepared for the way it made her feel.
"I know his father works for the World Wizarding Network," Erasmus Skiddle said. "You think he'd line something up for his son?"
"Yeah," Roger put in, "tea-boy." They all laughed, except Cho. She never found humour in making fun of someone else. And it may have been her imagination, but when she caught Roger Davies' eye, he stopped laughing too.
As it drew closer to midnight, Raisa had to excuse herself from the party; she could barely stay awake long enough to make her apologies. Cho, however, was as wide-awake as the others. She felt that she had to be; that this was part of the testing she would have to undergo to be found worthy of being on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.
So it was that, when talk came to what people hoped for in the next year, all Cho said was, "Everyone here knows what I want." This actually seemed to carry more weight than if she had argued with the team about keeping girls off. They didn't say anything in response.
The conversation went on until a minute before midnight, when Roger Davies glanced at his watch. "Mackie, it's time Mister Burns put in an appearance."
The Chang family had never celebrated any but the Chinese New Year. Although they sometimes went out to parties on 31 December, Cho had stayed at home and her parents returned before midnight. So what happened next took Cho completely by surprise: Everyone rose, as if on cue, and formed a circle. Cho rushed to be part of the circle, then found that she had to cross her arms over her chest, holding the hands of the people next to her. She found herself between Roger Davies and "Jinx" Jenkins.
Confusion must have been obvious on her face. Roger looked at her-the first time she could remember him doing so without suspicion or condescension. "It's an old way of seeing the old year out. Wizards and Muggles both do it." He stopped when Culligan started to sing, in a clear, pure baritone voice:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!"
The other voices seemed to explode into the room at the chorus:
"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Culligan took up the next verse, with Davies doubling an octave higher. Cho listened breathlessly; the sound was nothing less than magical:
"And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak a cup o'kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Cho was so caught up in their voices that she wasn't ready for everyone to come back in with the chorus; but, since she still didn't know it, she listened, and kept listening as the Quidditch Co-Captains sang the third verse:
"We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
Sin' auld lang syne."
She joined in the third chorus, a little shaky, a little off-key but glad to be a part of Ravenclaw, of Hogwarts, of the whole wizarding world-
"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Her mind started asking questions during the singing of the fourth verse:
"We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin' auld lang syne."
Why are we singing about old times? What old times could we have had? The oldest here isn't more than sixteen. So what were the old times?
The answer hit her like a thunderbolt: these are the old times-or they will be. Someday, when our youth is gone, when children have grown and loved ones are dead and dear old friends have vanished, never to be seen again, will we forget them all? Or will we remember each other as we are now-young and strong and carefree?
By now everyone had started in on the final verse:
"And there's a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne."
She followed as best she could and joined in strongly on the chorus, even though tears of joy were rolling unstoppably down her cheeks. She'd never felt such a bond before-to everyone in that room at that moment, no matter what would happen to them in the future:
"For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne."
Cho couldn't help it; as soon as the grips around the circle started to loosen, she threw her arms around Roger Davies to her left and gave him a fierce hug. Her tear-streaked face shone up toward him for a second, before she broke the hug and ran up to her dorm.
She didn't stay to hear the rest of the Quidditch team laughing at Roger, as he blushed seven different shades of pink.
xxx
All too soon, the magic of the holidays gave way to the cycle of lessons and (in Cho's case) lessons from Madam Hooch, broken only by a few highlights.
On 27 January, Cho turned twelve years old, and the girls in her year surprised her by giving her a knit scarf with moving designs of galloping horses on it. They had learned that Cho was born in a Year of the Horse, and it was coming around again. For Cho, this meant a year of good fortune and monumental change-and she would be right in ways she could not yet guess.
Also in January came an odd lesson in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Professor Quirrell seemed both more distracted than usual and more exhausted, as if he was fighting a losing battle. At one point, he posed a question to Cho:
[A/N: the reader must forgive me if I leave Quirrell's stammer to the imagination, rather than inflict it again on the eye.]
"Miss Chang, what are the three temptations most often offered to Muggles by practitioners of the Dark Arts?"
"They are temptations of money, of love, and of the return of the dead."
"Correct."
"But sir," Cho interrupted, "what is it about bringing back the dead that attracts Muggles?"
"I should have thought it was obvious, Miss Chang."
"Sorry, sir, but it isn't obvious to me. I was brought up to believe in reincarnation, so that the dead are always coming back, in a manner of speaking."
Quirrell smiled. "Touche, Miss Chang. Mister Grimaldi, explain why return from the dead should be a temptation."
"Because it's just impossible, isn't it? Once you're dead, you're dead."
"But dark wizards have brought the dead back to life on occasion," Libby Foggly pointed out.
"You're both right, as it happens. Death is final, yet dark wizards have revitalized the dead. Can you explain the paradox, Miss Foggly?"
"Either it was a hoax, or there was still some spark of life in the corpse."
"Excellent answer. There is still a spark. That spark will have to be enough, impossible as it may seem." The class looked at each other in curiosity; Quirrell seemed to have forgotten about them. "I know there's little enough time, but we have to wait. There is still enough time." As suddenly as he entered his trance, Quirrell awoke from it, and apparently didn't realize what had happened. "Miss Nugginbridge, how do the temptations offered to a wizard differ from those offered to a Muggle?"
Nobody in the class knew what to make of Quirrell after that.
xxx
continued in part 11, wherein Cho comes home for the summer to a marvelous surprise
