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 (The contents of this chapter may be considered unsuitable by some persons)
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
17. Home for the Holidays (1)
The weather was unseasonably warm on the 14th of December. For the first time at Hogwarts, Cho was not watching a Quidditch match by sitting in the galleries with the other students; she was on a bench on the field with the rest of the reserves, clutching her Comet Two Sixty. In the (very unlikely) event that something happened to Mackie Culligan and he couldn't continue as the Ravenclaw Seeker, she had to be ready to fly in and take over.
Cho prepared for the game that morning with a step-by-step process that became something of a ritual with her: a list of things she did before any Quidditch match, whether she was on the field or on the bench. She had kept her fingernails short since she was a child; on game mornings, she buffed and filed and brushed them down almost to the quick. During one of her practice sessions at Puddlemere the previous summer, she had caught the Snitch, only for it to catch a wing on a corner of her nail; using that as leverage, it jerked itself out of Cho's hand. She wasn't about to let that happen again.
After that, she would brush out her hair (which, having never been cut, now reached well down her back). She would then braid it, coil the braid onto the back of her head and spell it into place. Sometimes, having the wind whip one's hair into one's face was fun and oddly exciting, but Cho realized a match wasn't one of those times.
While she went through all of these preparations at her bedside table, Cho's dorm mates would look on in silence. Something told them that they could not-or should not-disturb Cho. Her moves were careful and deliberate; almost a religious rite of some kind.
She went to breakfast on December 14, but realized that she had no appetite at all. She had a spoonful of eggs and one sausage-which she ate very daintily, with a knife and fork. Any other day she'd think nothing of picking up a banger and popping it in her mouth; but on Quidditch day, she made sure nothing got on her fingers.
Finally, she and the rest of the team went to the stadium to put on their robes. Ravenclaw's colors-blue and bronze-seemed a bit somber compared to the robes of the other Houses, but Cho thought them perfect. The size was another matter; even the smallest Ravenclaw Quidditch robes were a size too big for Cho. It was too late to do anything about it now, so Cho would have to wear the large robes, on one of the warmest December days in memory, and have them taken in later.
The match itself was no surprise: Ravenclaw easily beat Hufflepuff. That afternoon, as snow began falling-snow that would be several feet high by daybreak-the Ravenclaw team sat around the Common Room discussing their first match of the year.
Roger Davies turned suddenly to face Cho, who had been noticeably silent. "Well, Miss Kenilworthy Chang, any thoughts?"
Cho had let her hair down again. She was now snuggled into a corner of a divan, holding a bottle of butterbeer, and she looked at Roger almost as if he was a plant in the greenhouse and she was trying to determine what kind. "Do you want me to be honest?"
Roger shrugged. "Try it and see what happens."
Cho looked around, and didn't see their Seeker. "Well, just looking at the Seekers, I guess both teams did the best they could with the talent they had."
"Which was ."
"Too nervous on their side, and too cautious on ours."
"You just wish it were you instead of Culligan."
"I don't know what happened to him today, but he simply wasn't himself as a Seeker. He couldn't seem to concentrate on the game. Slytherins scare him off, but I don't know what his excuse was against Hufflepuff; they're hardly an aggressive team. And I don't know why Hufflepuff is playing a Fourth-Year Seeker like Diggory. He may have the build, but he didn't have anything like the speed. The fact that we beat Hufflepuff owes less to our Seeker than to Diggory's failings."
"Ah. Fancy Diggory, do you?"
"I do NOT! Honestly, why do you think this is about anything but Quidditch."
"May I speak in my own defense?" Mackie Culligan was on the steps leading to the boys' dormitories. "To tell you all the truth, Chang is right; I didn't have my mind on the game today. I couldn't stop myself thinking that this is my last year. I've got NEWTs to prepare for."
"That won't be too hard, Mackie," Roger smiled. "Got a first-class brain. You're a Ravenclaw, when all's said and done."
Mackie sighed. "You'll understand in your seventh year, boyo."
"Well, I don't understand why you're taking on so." Cho was on her feet now. "We're only assured of playing two games, and the third and final one if we get that far. We had a good win today, that's all that matters; and we're going to have a winning season this year. It'll be our graduation gift to Captain Culligan."
The sound of clinking butterbeer bottles and shouts of "Hear hear!" echoed in the Ravenclaw Common Room.
xxx
Going to the station on the 23rd was a bit like going to the castle from the train in September. Only, this time, the students piled into small sledges, which only held four or five people, and they slid briskly under their own magical power over the deep snow around the castle. Something about snow makes people giddy, even childlike; Cho was riding with Krixlow and Grimaldi, and had to dodge the handsful of snow they scooped up as they sped along and threw at each other, laughing all the while. By the time they got to the station at Hogsmeade, even Cho was laughing.
She settled in for the long trip back to London by doing some reading; rather, re-reading. She had brought the special scrolls Madam Pomfrey had told her about. Even though she had almost committed them to memory, she wanted to be sure that she hadn't missed anything. She had also copied out some of the Hygiene Charms from the book Letitia Groondy had found for her, and intended to ask her mother about them. This, after all, was the reason she was spending the holidays at home.
She thought about how she'd miss Christmas dinner in the Great Hall, New Year's Eve with Mackie and Roger and the rest of the team in the Common Room. She sighed as she reached into her trunk and pulled out a scroll at random. It was the same scroll Letitia had mentioned: "How Wonderful You're a Witch." She looked through it, and realized that Letitia was right; it was of no use at all. So why did anyone keep the thing around? Why didn't Madam Pomfrey get fresher, more up-to-date scrolls?
Cho was fighting sleep when she saw that one passage in the scroll had been circled by a previous reader, who had also written in the margin, almost too faintly to see, "Great Merlin, how true!" The passage:
"Quite apart from the changes your body is going through, your emotions are in for an even more rocky ride. These are years when feelings intensify even as your body develops. Your happiness will be much more intense than ever before, and so will your sorrows; there will be days when you'll feel that you'd rather die than go on living. There will be days when you'll curse your best friends, and when wizards who you barely know will fill your every thought.
"Be careful, Young Witch. Many of these thoughts and hopes and fears are simply illusions, caused by your body changing to take on its adult role. They won't always tell you the truth, and you'll have to sort everything out not just once, but several times. Keep close to your friends, Young Witch, because that first taste of True Love may not be true after all; nor the second nor even the third. You'll thank yourself later if you wait until that One Special Wizard truly comes along."
It was poetic, maybe, but Letitia was right; how practical was that advice here and now? Cho didn't feel True Love for anyone. She didn't even have a short list of potential boyfriends. Although such a list might include Roger, maybe even Harry Potter.
WHAT? Where did THAT come from? From reading the scroll, no doubt. I have NEVER looked at . not like THAT! Come off it, Cho.
She settled herself into the seat, watching the snowscape through the frosted windows.
xxx
Lotus Chang didn't waste any time, and started scolding her daughter while they were still on the platform. "You said you had to come home, and I hope you appreciate what this means to your father and me. We had to change a lot of plans."
Cho decided she shouldn't waste time either. "I'm sorry, mummy, but so did I. It seems I have to go shopping now, and I need your help."
"Shopping? You came back home to go shopping? For what?"
"Well, for starters, a brassiere."
Lotus stopped walking, and stared at Cho. "You mean . you started-didn't you?"
"Yes, mummy, and I wish you'd warned me; scared myself half to death, didn't know what was happening, and made an utter fool of myself."
"We don't talk about these matters unless we have to; and apparently we have to." She continued walking briskly toward the exit.
"Mummy."
"Not another word about it until we're home!"
Cho suddenly remembered why she didn't come home for the holidays last year.
xxx
They didn't speak again until they were in the study, on the middle floor of their building at the far end of Diagon Alley. "Very well," Lotus sighed, sounding as if her daughter was being a nuisance, "what do you still need to know? I suppose by now you understand the basics."
Cho did what she always did when her mother got like this: she answered back in kind, determined to give as good as she got, even from her mother. "No thanks to you. I mean, in this whole library, isn't there one book that I could have read before going up in September? Something that could have told me what to expect? Or were you hoping I'd embarrass myself in front of the whole school?"
"Are you saying you did?"
"As it turned out, no; only in front of the nurse in the hospital wing."
"Then I don't see why you're so upset."
"I'm upset now because you still haven't answered me! Do we have anything?"
Cho's mother picked up her wand from the glass side-table, pointed it at the bookcase on the far wall and muttered an incantation in Mandarin. At once, an entirely new shelf of books and scrolls appeared. "It was your father's idea to hide those until you were old enough. I happened to agree."
"Didn't it occur to either of you ."
"I don't have time for this," Lotus interrupted. "I have to get back to the shoppe. Read anything you wish. We'll go to Madam Malkin's on Thursday." With that she swept out of the room.
Cho was stunned. All those books were there all the time?! She had no idea, but her parents did . She came very close to throwing something at the shelf, or at the door through which her mother had just exited, but instead started reading the spines of the hidden books. Some of them appeared to be written in English, and some in Chinese. Some were factual books on medicine and health; others were racy-looking novels. But she noticed a blank space at the end of the shelf, which could have held another book or two.
She tried to slide other books into the empty space, but the books wouldn't budge. So there's something they're still keeping hidden, she thought. Cho decided to explore that mystery another day.
xxx
to be continued in part 18, wherein Cho hunts for information and frilly underwear, and finds more than a little of both .
By monkeymouse
NB: JKRowling built the Potterverse; I'm just redecorating one of the rooms.
Rated: PG-13 (The contents of this chapter may be considered unsuitable by some persons)
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
17. Home for the Holidays (1)
The weather was unseasonably warm on the 14th of December. For the first time at Hogwarts, Cho was not watching a Quidditch match by sitting in the galleries with the other students; she was on a bench on the field with the rest of the reserves, clutching her Comet Two Sixty. In the (very unlikely) event that something happened to Mackie Culligan and he couldn't continue as the Ravenclaw Seeker, she had to be ready to fly in and take over.
Cho prepared for the game that morning with a step-by-step process that became something of a ritual with her: a list of things she did before any Quidditch match, whether she was on the field or on the bench. She had kept her fingernails short since she was a child; on game mornings, she buffed and filed and brushed them down almost to the quick. During one of her practice sessions at Puddlemere the previous summer, she had caught the Snitch, only for it to catch a wing on a corner of her nail; using that as leverage, it jerked itself out of Cho's hand. She wasn't about to let that happen again.
After that, she would brush out her hair (which, having never been cut, now reached well down her back). She would then braid it, coil the braid onto the back of her head and spell it into place. Sometimes, having the wind whip one's hair into one's face was fun and oddly exciting, but Cho realized a match wasn't one of those times.
While she went through all of these preparations at her bedside table, Cho's dorm mates would look on in silence. Something told them that they could not-or should not-disturb Cho. Her moves were careful and deliberate; almost a religious rite of some kind.
She went to breakfast on December 14, but realized that she had no appetite at all. She had a spoonful of eggs and one sausage-which she ate very daintily, with a knife and fork. Any other day she'd think nothing of picking up a banger and popping it in her mouth; but on Quidditch day, she made sure nothing got on her fingers.
Finally, she and the rest of the team went to the stadium to put on their robes. Ravenclaw's colors-blue and bronze-seemed a bit somber compared to the robes of the other Houses, but Cho thought them perfect. The size was another matter; even the smallest Ravenclaw Quidditch robes were a size too big for Cho. It was too late to do anything about it now, so Cho would have to wear the large robes, on one of the warmest December days in memory, and have them taken in later.
The match itself was no surprise: Ravenclaw easily beat Hufflepuff. That afternoon, as snow began falling-snow that would be several feet high by daybreak-the Ravenclaw team sat around the Common Room discussing their first match of the year.
Roger Davies turned suddenly to face Cho, who had been noticeably silent. "Well, Miss Kenilworthy Chang, any thoughts?"
Cho had let her hair down again. She was now snuggled into a corner of a divan, holding a bottle of butterbeer, and she looked at Roger almost as if he was a plant in the greenhouse and she was trying to determine what kind. "Do you want me to be honest?"
Roger shrugged. "Try it and see what happens."
Cho looked around, and didn't see their Seeker. "Well, just looking at the Seekers, I guess both teams did the best they could with the talent they had."
"Which was ."
"Too nervous on their side, and too cautious on ours."
"You just wish it were you instead of Culligan."
"I don't know what happened to him today, but he simply wasn't himself as a Seeker. He couldn't seem to concentrate on the game. Slytherins scare him off, but I don't know what his excuse was against Hufflepuff; they're hardly an aggressive team. And I don't know why Hufflepuff is playing a Fourth-Year Seeker like Diggory. He may have the build, but he didn't have anything like the speed. The fact that we beat Hufflepuff owes less to our Seeker than to Diggory's failings."
"Ah. Fancy Diggory, do you?"
"I do NOT! Honestly, why do you think this is about anything but Quidditch."
"May I speak in my own defense?" Mackie Culligan was on the steps leading to the boys' dormitories. "To tell you all the truth, Chang is right; I didn't have my mind on the game today. I couldn't stop myself thinking that this is my last year. I've got NEWTs to prepare for."
"That won't be too hard, Mackie," Roger smiled. "Got a first-class brain. You're a Ravenclaw, when all's said and done."
Mackie sighed. "You'll understand in your seventh year, boyo."
"Well, I don't understand why you're taking on so." Cho was on her feet now. "We're only assured of playing two games, and the third and final one if we get that far. We had a good win today, that's all that matters; and we're going to have a winning season this year. It'll be our graduation gift to Captain Culligan."
The sound of clinking butterbeer bottles and shouts of "Hear hear!" echoed in the Ravenclaw Common Room.
xxx
Going to the station on the 23rd was a bit like going to the castle from the train in September. Only, this time, the students piled into small sledges, which only held four or five people, and they slid briskly under their own magical power over the deep snow around the castle. Something about snow makes people giddy, even childlike; Cho was riding with Krixlow and Grimaldi, and had to dodge the handsful of snow they scooped up as they sped along and threw at each other, laughing all the while. By the time they got to the station at Hogsmeade, even Cho was laughing.
She settled in for the long trip back to London by doing some reading; rather, re-reading. She had brought the special scrolls Madam Pomfrey had told her about. Even though she had almost committed them to memory, she wanted to be sure that she hadn't missed anything. She had also copied out some of the Hygiene Charms from the book Letitia Groondy had found for her, and intended to ask her mother about them. This, after all, was the reason she was spending the holidays at home.
She thought about how she'd miss Christmas dinner in the Great Hall, New Year's Eve with Mackie and Roger and the rest of the team in the Common Room. She sighed as she reached into her trunk and pulled out a scroll at random. It was the same scroll Letitia had mentioned: "How Wonderful You're a Witch." She looked through it, and realized that Letitia was right; it was of no use at all. So why did anyone keep the thing around? Why didn't Madam Pomfrey get fresher, more up-to-date scrolls?
Cho was fighting sleep when she saw that one passage in the scroll had been circled by a previous reader, who had also written in the margin, almost too faintly to see, "Great Merlin, how true!" The passage:
"Quite apart from the changes your body is going through, your emotions are in for an even more rocky ride. These are years when feelings intensify even as your body develops. Your happiness will be much more intense than ever before, and so will your sorrows; there will be days when you'll feel that you'd rather die than go on living. There will be days when you'll curse your best friends, and when wizards who you barely know will fill your every thought.
"Be careful, Young Witch. Many of these thoughts and hopes and fears are simply illusions, caused by your body changing to take on its adult role. They won't always tell you the truth, and you'll have to sort everything out not just once, but several times. Keep close to your friends, Young Witch, because that first taste of True Love may not be true after all; nor the second nor even the third. You'll thank yourself later if you wait until that One Special Wizard truly comes along."
It was poetic, maybe, but Letitia was right; how practical was that advice here and now? Cho didn't feel True Love for anyone. She didn't even have a short list of potential boyfriends. Although such a list might include Roger, maybe even Harry Potter.
WHAT? Where did THAT come from? From reading the scroll, no doubt. I have NEVER looked at . not like THAT! Come off it, Cho.
She settled herself into the seat, watching the snowscape through the frosted windows.
xxx
Lotus Chang didn't waste any time, and started scolding her daughter while they were still on the platform. "You said you had to come home, and I hope you appreciate what this means to your father and me. We had to change a lot of plans."
Cho decided she shouldn't waste time either. "I'm sorry, mummy, but so did I. It seems I have to go shopping now, and I need your help."
"Shopping? You came back home to go shopping? For what?"
"Well, for starters, a brassiere."
Lotus stopped walking, and stared at Cho. "You mean . you started-didn't you?"
"Yes, mummy, and I wish you'd warned me; scared myself half to death, didn't know what was happening, and made an utter fool of myself."
"We don't talk about these matters unless we have to; and apparently we have to." She continued walking briskly toward the exit.
"Mummy."
"Not another word about it until we're home!"
Cho suddenly remembered why she didn't come home for the holidays last year.
xxx
They didn't speak again until they were in the study, on the middle floor of their building at the far end of Diagon Alley. "Very well," Lotus sighed, sounding as if her daughter was being a nuisance, "what do you still need to know? I suppose by now you understand the basics."
Cho did what she always did when her mother got like this: she answered back in kind, determined to give as good as she got, even from her mother. "No thanks to you. I mean, in this whole library, isn't there one book that I could have read before going up in September? Something that could have told me what to expect? Or were you hoping I'd embarrass myself in front of the whole school?"
"Are you saying you did?"
"As it turned out, no; only in front of the nurse in the hospital wing."
"Then I don't see why you're so upset."
"I'm upset now because you still haven't answered me! Do we have anything?"
Cho's mother picked up her wand from the glass side-table, pointed it at the bookcase on the far wall and muttered an incantation in Mandarin. At once, an entirely new shelf of books and scrolls appeared. "It was your father's idea to hide those until you were old enough. I happened to agree."
"Didn't it occur to either of you ."
"I don't have time for this," Lotus interrupted. "I have to get back to the shoppe. Read anything you wish. We'll go to Madam Malkin's on Thursday." With that she swept out of the room.
Cho was stunned. All those books were there all the time?! She had no idea, but her parents did . She came very close to throwing something at the shelf, or at the door through which her mother had just exited, but instead started reading the spines of the hidden books. Some of them appeared to be written in English, and some in Chinese. Some were factual books on medicine and health; others were racy-looking novels. But she noticed a blank space at the end of the shelf, which could have held another book or two.
She tried to slide other books into the empty space, but the books wouldn't budge. So there's something they're still keeping hidden, she thought. Cho decided to explore that mystery another day.
xxx
to be continued in part 18, wherein Cho hunts for information and frilly underwear, and finds more than a little of both .
