OR DIE TRYING: THE STORY OF CHO CHANG

By monkeymouse

NB: JKRowling built the Potterverse; I'm just redecorating one of the rooms. And one of the great things about JKR telling the story from Harry's point of view is that stuff could be happening all over Hogwarts that Harry isn't aware of.

Rated: PG

Spoilers: Everything

xxx

24. So Rudely Interrupted

It was as if that talk with Penelope Clearwater lifted some kind of spell. Before, Cho didn't seem to be able to catch sight of Penelope; now, she couldn't help but notice her luxuriant head of long curly hair, either further down the Ravenclaw table, moving in and out of library stacks, staring at book titles on the shelves in the Common Room, dashing through the halls of Hogwarts. Always, however, there seemed to be a sweet sunniness radiating from her, helping to illuminate the old castle.

That's a bit much, Cho thought. Maybe she doesn't exactly give off light, but that's what she seems like.

And the light seemed to be strongest when she was seen sneaking out of some empty room or other. If Cho caught her at this, she usually loitered about for a minute. Sure enough, before the minute was up, Percy Weasley would sneak out of the same room. Although, to tell the truth, he never looked sunny or gave off a supernatural glow. But he did smile a great deal more than usual-at least, when he thought nobody was looking. And he tried to keep his usual serious, fretful scowl on his face, and, to his credit, he succeeded-most of the time.

But Cho didn't really have time to sort out the mysteries of young love yet. She had already marked the upcoming week in the calendar as the most important of the term. Saturday, October 31, would be her first Hogsmeade trip, followed later by the Halloween feast. And the following Saturday would see the start of the Quidditch season, with Gryffindor playing against Slytherin.

xxx

"Bloody unfair, if you ask me," Pablo Molina muttered as the Ravenclaw team practiced early on the morning of the 25th. The weather was awful-a hard, cold rain had pounded the school for days, and looked to be settling in to pound it some more. Still, Roger Davies took them through basic drills twice.

Cho had pulled her broom alongside his, escaping the rain for a few seconds in Pablo's leeward side while she scouted for the Snitch. "I know what you mean," she muttered, stopping to brush back some stray hairs. "But it doesn't come down to the Quidditch Cup; just the House Cup. And Gryffindor beat Slytherin for it. I wish we were playing first game of the season, too. Unless the weather's going to be like this, of course."

"I still say you should have got points just for getting Roger to let you on."

Cho suddenly spotted the Seeker and zoomed away from Pablo. At least, that's how she wanted it to appear. The fact is that, although she took a great deal of pride in her appearance and her accomplishments, Cho could also be shy and reticent. This was a part of her that was always there, but was asserting itself more and more-even in spite of herself. She couldn't quite understand where the mood was coming from.

After ninety minutes, Roger took pity on the team and called time. They landed on the field and rushed into the changing room, where all of them, soaked to the skin, started peeling off their sodden robes, and even the shirts beneath.

Until Cho cleared her throat a little too loudly.

"I hope you don't expect me to tear my clothes off," she smiled sweetly.

A few of the Ravenclaw players blushed profoundly. Roger stepped forward: "You have any better ideas, then?"

Cho swept her wand in front of herself. "Saharid!" As she spoke the Charm, everything on her-clothes, hair, skin-were not only dry but warm as toast.

"Don't recall Flitwick teaching us that one," Erasmus Skiddle said.

"He hasn't. Found it in "Really Useful Charms" by Parsemonious Dingbat. It's in the Common Room." With that, she left the rest of the team cold, wet and half-dressed, and ran toward Ravenclaw. To hell with what some Prefect might say about running in the halls. It was a good day, it'd been a good year so far, and the best week of all was about to happen!

xxx

Halloween dawned with a chill in the air and a sky full of pewter clouds, but at least the rain had stopped. Cho and her dorm mates all came down as one, eating a rather light breakfast in anticipation of sampling whatever Hogsmeade had to offer. Then they wandered the halls of the castle almost aimlessly, waiting only for the time to leave. And when the hour arrived, they were off like a shot down the muddy road to the station. This time, however, they would cross the tracks and enter the village of Hogsmeade.

It was a small Scottish village in some respects. But, because it was entirely made up of wizards and witches, they felt under no pressure to disguise themselves in case of Muggles. The town, in its own way, resembled Diagon Alley more than any other village; it even had, just next to the Post Office, its own Flourish & Blotts bookstore, which was where most of the Ravenclaws gravitated first.

Maybe Cho had hoped to find something rare and unusual even for Hogwarts- some dusty old tome on Druidic practices, perhaps. Instead, to her disappointment, she found mostly the standard Hogwarts texts, plus the usual wizarding newspapers and magazines. There were romance novels by Adelaide Sump McTwiddy which held no interest at all for Cho (she had completely forgotten about trying to read one at age eight). There were, on prominent display, the collected works of Gilderoy Lockhart; but then, they would have been there even if they hadn't been required this year.

But there was also a section on Scottish history, both Muggle and wizarding. There was a book titled "Twenty Things To Do With a Haggis, Apart From Cooking and Eating It." There were accounts of Robert the Bruce and other warriors, biographies of King James and Queen Mary, as well as histories of the Inquisitions against wizarding folk in the Fifteenth Century.

One such incident, Cho had read in "Hogwarts, a History", was about the trial and execution of a monk named Brother Timothy who, although he had attended Hogwarts as a youthful wizard, renounced magic when he took holy orders. His devotion to the church meant nothing when he was convicted and executed for his past history of witchcraft. At the last possible second, though, wizards from Hogwarts, who had gotten word of the Inquisition, spirited away Brother Timothy, now more dead than alive. The Potions master, Nicholas Flamel, wasn't able to save Timothy's life, but the monk's spirit, in gratitude to the old school that hadn't turned its back on him as he had on Hogwarts, was allowed to become a ghost, now known only as the Fat Friar.

"'Ere, come on, Cho!"

Jan was calling her from the door. With a start she realized that she had spent a full hour in Flourish & Blotts; there wouldn't be any time to explore the rest of Hogsmeade! She quickly looked around-and there it was: a slim, black-bound collection of the verses of Robert Burns. She bought it, without knowing exactly why.

From there they were off down High Street. Students were packed five deep into Honeyduke's Sweetshop, yet they waited on line to buy some of its legendary chocolate. They passed by Zonko's Joke Shop just as Fred and George Weasley ducked inside. Cho followed them in, but stayed close by the door, trying to be inconspicuous in the crowded store.

"Don' yeh want yer look 'round?" Jan asked in a whisper. She could tell Cho was on some sort of secretive mission.

Cho shook her head as she watched the Weasley twins sample one trick candy, device and explosive after another. Finally, they made their purchase, and- satisfied that there was nothing that Gryffindor could use against them in a Quidditch match-she ducked out as she had come in.

Many of the students had hit the Three Broomsticks first thing, partly because it was closest to the station, but also because the food and drinks were rumoured to be among the finest kind. In any case, by the time Cho got there, the public room had largely emptied out except for some Ravenclaws (who knew enough to wait until things quieted down) and some Slytherin (who didn't like having to rub shoulders with riffraff). So it was that Cho found herself seated next to Marcus Flint, Captain of Slytherin's Quidditch team.

"I'm going to enjoy playing against you this year," he said menacingly, glowering at her over his butterbeer.

Cho smiled back. "I always suspected you were a masochist, Flint."

It took a few seconds for that one to sink in; when it did, Flint angrily slammed his drink down onto the table. "You don't know what you're in for! We've all got new brooms; Nimbus 2001!"

"For all I care, all the Slytherins could have sprouted batwings over the summer. We'll still outfly you and outscore you when the time comes."

"Games aren't won by talk, Chang."

"You'd know, of course, since you won your last game-what is it, two years ago now?"

Flint was on his feet and looked as if he wanted to punch Cho out, girl or not. But then he realized that most of the eyes in the place were on him, including Madam Rosmerta's. Swearing under his breath, he stormed out of the Three Broomsticks. Cho and Jan were at least polite enough to wait until Flint slammed the door before they burst out laughing.

"Do yeh believe the nerve o' that great oaf?" Jan said, pulling on her butterbeer. "Cripes, that's good!"

"He must never have heard the old saying," Cho smiled. "Don't get into a battle of wits with a Ravenclaw . . ."

They finished in unison: "if you've got no ammunition!" They started laughing again.

xxx

Most of the Hogwarts students stayed in town until the last possible minute- Hogsmeade trips were few and far-between, and sometimes winter trips were cancelled if the weather was too rough. But they knew they had to hurry back to the castle to change robes in time for the Halloween feast.

As soon as Cho walked into the Great Hall, she knew this one would be the best yet. Hagrid had grown gigantic pumpkins for the occasion-some of them as big as carriages. Bats were flying across the starry ceiling. There wasn't any food on the tables yet, but the smells drifting up from the kitchen were wonderful.

It took Albus Dumbledore a minute to subdue the chattering students.

"As you all know, this is a day prized above all in the wizarding calendar, both for its traditional meanings and its more modern, er, associations." Dumbledore glanced at the Gryffindor table; his countenance fell, almost imperceptively. "It is a day when Muggles disguise themselves, perhaps to ward off the Fates. Be that as it may, you also will be playing two roles tonight: diners at our feast, but, first, spectators at a performance by the finest troupe of skeletal performers on the Continent: Cirque d'Os!"

There's been rumours that a skeletal trio would perform, and, no sooner did Dumbledore sit down than three skeletons danced in front of the Head Table. They started with some precision tap-dancing (of course, being skeletons on a stone floor, tapping came naturally to them). They swapped arms and other body parts in mid-dance, and played a brief game of keep-away with one of their skulls. But, just when it looked as if the act was over, the three dancing skeletons rattled their fingers, and another two dozen skeletons (unnoticed until now) leapt from the walls of the Great Hall.

What happened next could only be called a spectacle, as skeletons performed all over the Great Hall-on the tables, in the windows, at the doors. One group got up a game of rounders between the tables; others juggled bits of themselves. A half-dozen skeletons formed a bridge over the tables while two others staged a sword-fight (although they used thigh-bones for swords and hip-bones for shields). At last, after dancing a spectacular jig during which they traded body parts at a dizzying pace, they all jumped over the tables and back to the walls, to thunderous applause.

For the rest of the feast, the performance was all that the students could talk about. The trip to Hogsmeade seemed forgotten.

Except by Cho Chang.

Following Dumbledore's introductory speech, she had thrilled to the dancing skeletons, but now, as everyone ate pumpkin pudding and trifle, the Headmaster's words came back to her. To Muggles, Halloween was a day associated with magic and evil; in the wizarding world, it was the anniversary of Voldemort's defeat at the infantile hands of Harry Potter.

But Cho had noticed Dumbledore's hesitation, looked at the Gryffindor table, and realized what he had realized: Harry Potter wasn't there.

To say that Harry must have had mixed feelings about Halloween seemed an understatement. It was also, after all, the day he lost his parents. Cho wondered if that was why Harry wasn't there; perhaps Halloween would be, to him, the saddest day on the calendar. As she ate and thought about it, she realized that she still had with her the copy of Burns' poems she had bought in Hogsmeade. She resolved within herself to try to find Harry-that night, no matter where he had gone-and give him the book as a cheering-up present-one Seeker to another, of course. Nothing beyond that.

But even as she was swept up in the crush of students going back to the dormitories after the feast, thinking about what to say to Harry, wondering about the look on his face . . . she didn't realize at first that traffic seemed to be jammed up somewhere on the second floor.

Cho, being shorter than most of the students her age, couldn't tell what was happening. "Can you see the hold-up?" she asked Vincent Krixlow.

"It's Harry Potter. Seems he's killed Filch's cat."

"Alright, then; don't tell me."

Krixlow was about to respond, but instead he shrugged. "I'm easy."

Jan, meanwhile, was on tiptoe trying to see over the crowd, when Cho heard her gasp and saw her eyes go wide.

"Cho," she said, barely above a whisper, "I reckon it's true!"

Cho pushed her way past a dozen students to see the scene: Mrs. Norris's tail was tied to a torch set into the wall. She looked stiff as a board. On the wall, painted in large red letters, were the words:

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED

ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE

Dumbledore sent the students on to their Houses, detaining Harry and a couple of his friends. Hardly any of the others said a word. The first to speak among the Third-Year Ravenclaws, though, was Jan Nugginbridge. As she was getting ready for bed, her cat Coriander came into the dorm from the hallway. Jan picked her cat up and rubbed its nose with her own.

"Good job about Filch's cat, though, innit?" she said to Coriander.

xxx

to be continued in part 25, wherein the first Quidditch match and the second attack prompt an exchange of owls.