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

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31. The Adventures of Gilderoy Lockhart

From that moment on, Cho was on a mission. She attended to her duties: classes, homework, Quidditch practice (which Roger Davies called weekly regardless of the compromise because "you never know"). Every moment beyond that, however, she spent poring over the collected works of Gilderoy Lockhart. She didn't really believe her rash statement that Lockhart might be connected to the Chamber of Secrets, since both appeared at Hogwarts the same year. Besides, she doubted that Lockhart could summon up any kind of monster; during the year he had moved in her view from "harmlessly amusing" to "profoundly incompetent".

She woke early and started reading, often going right through breakfast without noticing or eating. This was why she missed Lockhart's announcement in the Great Hall about the Valentine's Day festivities. So it was that, on the afternoon of 14 February, Cho Chang, who had turned fourteen less than a month before, was reading in the library and taking lengthy notes when she sensed someone standing beside her. She looked over; then looked down. There she saw something that was supposed to be a cupid. However, this dwarf-short, pink, holding a bow and arrow, and naked (except for a strategically placed quiver)-looked both rumpled and impatient.

"'Ere, you're Cho Chang, ain't yeh?"

Cho looked down at him, trying to keep a straight face. "And you're a garden-gnome, ain't yeh?"

"Suit yerself," the cupid shrugged. "I got yer Valentine anyway." The cupid pulled a scroll out of its quiver, opened it, and began singing in a voice that sounded like a screech-owl gargling:

"Ship me somewhere East of Suez Where there is no . . ."

The cupid got no further; he vanished in a puff of smoke. The smoke cleared to reveal a potted plant.

Madam Pince, the librarian, walked over with severe steps and a disgusted look on her face. "That's enough of THAT!" she declared, picking up the plant. "Don't know what that man was thinking." She kept muttering to herself as she walked away.

Cho, however, didn't notice. She had been stopped in her search by one thought:

"A Valentine. Somebody sent me my first Valentine-and it's been turned into a plant!"

xxx

At first, she wasn't sure how to take it; the thing had looked and sounded so awful. But that evening, in the dormitory, she'd heard about others who had received the same mixed blessing.

"Harry Potter's was the absolute worst," Letitia Groondy chuckled. "He actually ran from it, and the bally little thing had to tackle him in the middle of the corridor!"

"Who would send somethin' like that?" Jan asked.

"Mercifully anonymous. I'd want to hunt down whoever sent something like that to me. I have a few select Hexes I'd want to try."

"No name on yours, I suppose," Diana Fairweather asked Cho.

"I'm not sure," Cho said; "Madam Pince Transfigured it just as it was getting started."

"Maybe you'll do better next year; if they have this next year." Diana shook her head. "Pince isn't the only one who thought it was a bad idea."

Cho tried to focus on Lockhart again, but couldn't. She couldn't stop thinking of the ugly cupid with the ugly song. And that night, for the first time in months, she recalled in her dreams the erotic Chinese pictures from her parents' hidden library, and especially the pose known as "Queen Bee Making Honey".

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Like an athlete who, confident and sure of stride, makes one misstep that throws everything else off, Cho faltered after Valentine's Day. She still devoted her spare time to reading Lockhart, but it was if she no longer knew what she was reading. She would spend an hour poring over "Year with the Yeti", only to realize that she couldn't remember anything that she'd read. Her courses were also suffering, and the last straw came when Professor Snape singled her out in Potions one day in early March: "Miss Chang seems to be losing her touch. She should take care, lest the monster in the Chamber mistake her for a Muggle-born."

It was all Cho could do not to lash out at Snape in class. Both her parents were magical; only one grandparent was a Muggle. But Snape was right; everything she touched seemed to be falling apart, and Cho had no idea what to do about it. As soon as Potions was over, she gathered her things, ran back to her dormitory, threw her cauldron into a corner and fell onto her bed, crying like a lost soul.

Raina came into the dorm a few minutes later, saw Cho, and immediately sat next to her on the bed. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened. Don't worry about me," Cho sniffled. "I'll get through this."

"Through what? You're working yourself to death!"

Cho explained her notion that discovering the identity of the monster would return Quidditch to Hogwarts, and that Lockhart's memoirs might have a clue.

Raina didn't even need a second to think about it. "Cho, you've always treated me well. You're probably the best friend I have here. So let me say this as a friend: stop what you're doing. For a few days at least, rest your body and relax your mind."

"I've got to defeat the monster!"

"But the monster is defeating you; he's just doing it slowly. Please, rest for a few days. If you want to go back to the search, I'll help you."

"But, you don't have to . . ."

"Yes, I do," Raina replied earnestly. "I'm worried about you."

Now it was all Cho could do to keep from crying for sheer relief and joy.

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The next week was like Easter vacation for Cho; she found that, after doing homework, she had more than enough time on her hands. Raina made sure that Cho ate three meals a day and got enough sleep. And she wouldn't let Cho touch a book by Lockhart.

By the end of the week, Cho could feel the difference. Her mental focus had returned, her mind seemed sharper, and she wasn't totally run-down at the end of the day. She knew that she would have to find a special gift to thank Raina.

At the end of the week, rested and ready, Cho returned to her monster hunt, assisted this time by Raina and by Diana Fairweather. Diana had also noticed Cho's slow deterioration, but didn't know how to approach her about it or what to say. But she took Raina's lead and by week's end had added her own special gift: Penelope Clearwater had told Diana about the Prefects' Bath. The three snuck in one Saturday midnight, and had a delightful time swimming, splashing, giving each other shampoos and playing catch with soap bubbles as big and thick as a beach ball. Cho went to bed feeling better than she had in months.

The three girls had divided up Lockhart's works between them. They followed Cho's example of taking notes about everything Lockhart wrote, and making logical deductions based on those writings. At first they simply focused on the nature of the monsters and generally ignored whatever else Lockhart wrote. But one day in early May, with time running out on the school year and no attacks since before Christmas, they made an important discovery.

It didn't seem important at the time. They were at a table in the library. Diana Fairweather had impatiently thrown down "Voyages with Vampires". "This is no good!" she declared. "There's something wrong with these books!"

"How do you mean?" Raina asked.

"I think I know what she means," Cho answered. "There are some things about them that make no sense at all. The ways in which he discovers these monsters; sometimes he gets mail, sometimes he reads it in the papers, and sometimes he just doesn't say."

"Now that you mention it, I've noticed it too," Raina sighed. She thumbed through her copy of "Voyages with Vampires". "Here's this chapter about the Creepy Countess of Curtici, Rumania. All he says is that 'the appearance of three bloodless corpses sent me to Rumania in September of 1985.'"

Cho's head quickly went up. "Say that again." Raina repeated the passage. Cho immediately started looking through "Holidays with Hags". She stopped at one passage, and read it several times. "Funny I never noticed this before," she told the others, "but Lockhart says he was in Italy in September 1985, chasing down the Monstrous Minotaur of Milan."

"Not according to this," Diana said, indicating "Year with the Yeti". "It says here, 'I spent two weeks in Japan in mid-September of 1985 before tackling the Terrible Tengu that Terrorized Tokyo. I absorbed the atmosphere of that wonderful Asian world . . .' Well, never mind the rest; it's just a travelogue. But could he really do it? Could he be in three countries in the same month?"

"It's possible, I suppose," Raina said. "Apparation, broom, Portkey, Floo Powder; there are lots of ways to travel."

"But he says here that he didn't travel!" Diana insisted. "He doesn't say a thing about a side-trip to deal with a vampire or a minoraur or any of it."

"Here, too," Cho said. "Lockhart writes, 'From the thirteenth to the eighteenth of September, I combed the streets of Milan, stopping only for food or rest, caught in a labyrinth as daunting as the original on the Isle of Crete.' He didn't leave Milan."

"He didn't leave Tokyo, either," Diana said. "So what kind of wizard can be in three places at once?"

They considered the answer in silence, not wanting to speak what they were all speaking. Finally, Cho spoke. "Either Gilderoy Lockhart is the greatest wizard on earth . . ."

"Not bloody likely," muttered Diana.

"Or else he's the wizarding world's greatest fraud."

They continued to sit in silence, realizing what this could mean.

"The faculty won't be pleased to hear this," Diana ventured.

"What faculty?" Cho demanded. "Most of the teachers, and the students, think Lockhart's a joke anyway. Look at that so-called Dueling Club."

"I heard he couldn't even control a cageful of pixies," Raina added.

"And the business with the bones in Harry Potter's arm," Diana added.

"Harry? QUIDDITCH!" Cho jumped up with a start. "Tomorrow's that game, isn't it? What time is it?"

"Time to close up," came the voice of Madam Pince from behind them. "Get on back to your House, then."

The three girls gathered up their notes quickly and were shooed out into the corridor.

"Well, what now?" Diana asked. "Do we try to see McGonagall or Dumbledore?"

Cho thought a second. "It's too late now. After breakfast and before the match. I'll draw up a time-line tonight to prove what we've found. This is a serious charge, and it needs convincing evidence."

The three walked briskly back to Ravenclaw. Unmasking the great Gilderoy Lockhart as a fake! This seemed almost as good as finding the monster!

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to be continued in part 32, when the monster attacks again, and two opponents find something else that they have in common . . .