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
37. Real and Imagined
"Miss Chang. Just a word, if you don't mind."
The one thought running through her head was: "Why me? Why is Professor Lupin singling me out?"
The Ravenclaw Fourth Years had just finished their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class under Remus Lupin, and they'd all counted it a rousing success. It started out as a scary prospect-practical lessons in the Dark Arts risked being very dangerous. Yet the assignment was not only easy (confronting a relatively harmless Boggart) but was made funny as well: Professor Remus Lupin taught them the Riddikulus spell. It took the Boggart, which changed itself into what people fear the most, and broke up the fear by making it look foolish.
It was certainly the most varied group of students Lupin had met yet at Hogwarts, and their visions were equally varied. Raina al-Qaba imagined the Boggart turning into a giant horned ogre, its head brushing the ceiling- one of the more frightening monsters out of the Arabian Nights. Her Riddikulus turned it into a stork, hopping about the room on one leg.
Grimaldi, on the other hand, tried to scam Lupin, but the professor locked the wardrobe before the Boggart, who now let out a high feminine giggle, would emerge.
"Honestly, Professor," Grimaldi begged, "I'm terrified of beautiful naked women!"
Lupin waited until he was satisfied that the Boggart wasn't being fooled by Grimaldi's prank; when it finally came after Grimaldi, it was as a giant octopus.
Cho's Boggart, however, caused Lupin to keep her after class. There was no hurry-the class was on its way to lunch anyway-but she didn't want to be singled out, especially not because of this.
"Miss Chang, would you mind telling me what the Boggart was supposed to be?"
"I'd rather not, Professor."
"But why not? It appeared to be a disheveled young man; looks like he might have been someone I once knew."
Cho stayed silent.
"You weren't thinking of Sirius Black, were you?"
"No, sir," she answered honestly. "This was a real Muggle I once, er, met." She didn't say any more.
After a minute, Lupin walked to the wardrobe. "If I let it out again, will it be the same?" Cho nodded. "Then the Riddikulus wasn't enough. Tell me, why did your Riddikulus spell make the Boggart stop, with his trousers down around his ankles?"
Cho's cheeks coloured. "I, I didn't plan it that way; not at first."
Cho was still standing by the first row of benches. Lupin sat on top of his desk. "I have to make sure that we don't have a problem here. Getting along in this world is hard enough when people don't say all that they need to say. In the Dark Arts, though, it's extremely dangerous. It's one thing when you can manipulate Charms and Potions; but imagine what could happen if they started to manipulate you. I can see that you're uncomfortable about this, but I have to know: who is the Muggle?"
"He's just-some man I saw in a library once."
"Just a derelict, nothing more?"
"No." Cho was surprised to find herself shaking. "I was in a library at closing time. He was there, and he-he came after me."
"And you ran?"
"He blocked the way."
"But you escaped him?"
"I used a Petrificus. I knew nobody would believe his story."
"Sounds as if you managed the thing very well. So what frightens you?"
"When it happened, I was twelve, and I guess I just thought he was going to . . . I didn't really know what he was going to do to me. Now I'm older, and I can imagine it. That's what scares me now; thinking about what might have happened."
Cho was still shuddering; Lupin put his hands on her shoulders, and looked deeply into her eyes with his.
"All of your classmates fancied the Boggart into monsters from the magical world: giants, harpies, ogres. You're the only one who faced down a real monster. I'd say that's worth an extra five points."
Cho blinked. "That's it? There's no problem?"
"Of course not," Remus laughed. "You've shown more sense than just about anyone else in this school. You and Harry Potter."
Harry?!? "Can you tell me-what was his Boggart?"
Lupin sighed. "His Boggart-IF I had let it out of the cupboard, which I wasn't about to-would have been a Dementor. As if you couldn't see one by looking out a window. Very bad idea." Lupin was standing at the staff room's one window, looking out on the lawn. Cho couldn't tell if he could see a Dementor.
After a bit, Lupin seemed to remember that Cho was still in the room. "Well," he said brightly, "let's see what's for lunch."
"If you don't mind, I'd like to drop these off," Cho quickly said. "Thanks for the lesson!" And she was off, running toward Ravenclaw.
Through the tapestry ("prehensile"), through the bookcase, through the Common Room and up to her dormitory, Cho ran as fast as she could. She almost collided with Raina, who was just on her way down to lunch. Cho threw her bookbag under her desk, sat heavily on her bed, buried her face in her pillow and forced her breathing to slow down, waiting for her heartbeat to become regular.
She hadn't realized what seeing the vagrant-the Muggle who she now realized surely would have tried to rape her if he'd had the chance-would do to her emotions.
She didn't come down to lunch at all that day.
xxx
The following Saturday was Quidditch practice for the Ravenclaw team. All of the players were back this year, and all of them were eager to try out new plays, new equipment and ideas.
Roger Davies was still the Captain, and he didn't use most of the suggestions from the players, even after listening to them.
"But ROG!" "Jinx" Jenkins, a Beater, was especially upset. "You saw how well the 'back-up' worked!" In an improvised game with Slytherin just before summer holidays, they used a play that Jinx had developed. While Cho was chasing the Snitch, and Draco Malfoy was chasing Cho, the Ravenclaw Beaters hit Malfoy with Bludgers in both shoulders, causing him to lose control.
"So did Slytherin," Roger said. "They'll be ready for it next time, and a secret weapon's no good if it isn't a secret. We can still use it; just not in our first game."
"Then we'd better come up with a few more tricks like that one. I think this year's going to be rough. For once, we have to worry about all the others, even Hufflepuff."
"You're joking," Chaser Erasmus Skiddle said. "They have a new Captain, then?"
"Diggory the Seeker." Skiddle snorted with laughter. "Don't be so quick to judge. He's been working on the game this summer, too. I was over near his town for a bit this summer, Ottery St. Catchpole. He's really throwing himself into the game."
"That's Hufflepuff, though, isn't it?" Chaser Pablo Molina asked. "Fly hard when you can't fly smart."
"Just keep your broom on its toes, as it were; that's all I'm saying."
Roger turned to Cho, seeming to ask a question without speaking. Cho simply nodded and smiled.
xxx
The talk at dinner that night was less sportsmanlike.
"You're going to be our secret weapon this year, right?" Vincent Krixlow said to Cho.
Cho eyed him warily, saying nothing. She knew how his mind worked.
Krixlow turned to others at the table. "All she has to do is arrange a date with the other Seeker the night before the game, get them up to the Astronomy Tower, get them good and worn out . . ."
He didn't get any farther than that; Cho bounced an apple off of his forehead with a Levitation Charm, nearly knocking him out. She smiled sweetly at Vincent: "Next time, it'll be the water pitcher."
xxx
The weeks sailed by in a routine of classes, meals, study and Quidditch practice. Before Cho even realized it herself, the first Hogsmeade trip of the year was at hand; and so was the Halloween feast. And in one week, the first Quidditch match of the year.
Maybe it was the presence of the dementors around Hogwarts, but Cho and the girls from her dorm clustered together as they left the grounds, and stayed clustered together as they wandered Hogwarts. They browsed through books at Flourish & Blotts; they looked at astrolabes and philters at Dervish & Bangs; some of them insisted on looking in the window at Glad Rags at the latest in formal robes; and they stocked up on sweets from Honeyduke's and butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks. As good as the food at Hogwarts was, there were some things that the school just didn't serve.
The feast was a wonder. The mood was fun and just spooky enough; the food was rich and plentiful as always; and the Gryffindor ghost, Nearly Headless Nick, seemed fully recovered from his encounter with the basilisk and gave a lively retelling of the day he was almost beheaded. Cho and her dorm mates were all tired, full and happy as they walked through the halls of Hogwarts, talking excitedly about the day's events. Cho felt that she'd probably sleep until noon.
Until she saw a knot of students in front of the tapestry. Some Sixth- Years were shouting out every password they'd used this year-and Grimaldi shouted out a few words that had never been used as passwords in Hogwarts. The tapestry stayed shut.
"Let me through please!" The voice of Professor Flitwick carried to the students, even if he was too short to be seen. He finally made his way to the stairs just past the tapestry. "For the time being," he announced, "Ravenclaw House is closed up. Go back to the Great Hall at once. You will be informed of the reason when you get there."
"Five Sickles says they won't tell us the truth," muttered one Second-Year to another.
xxx
That Ravenclaw won his bet; Dumbledore told them only that the castle needed to be searched, and that they would be spending the night in the Great Hall floor on sleeping bags. Only after he left, with the students mingling themselves from House to House, did the story come out: about the painting over Gryffindor's entrance being savagely mutilated-apparently by Sirius Black.
"Load of rubbish, if you ask me," Letitia Groondy sniffed when Padma Patil told her what her sister Parvati had said. "Can you really trust anything Peeves has to say?"
"He was a witness!" Padma insisted.
"The only witness, which means he can say whatever he likes! He probably thinks it's a lark to tell us it was Sirius."
"It's not just Peeves," Roger Davies interrupted. "I was just listening to Oliver Wood going on about it. Filch found the lady in the painting; she's a bit cut up, but she'll live, as it were. Anyway, she says it was Sirius Black too."
Just then, Head Boy Percy Weasley called lights out.
In spite of that, whispered conversations among the students went on for a long time after the Great Hall went dark. Prefects moved among the students to keep things in order, and most of the students behaved themselves; although at one point, some two hours after the lights went out, those who were still awake heard a harsh girl's whisper: "So help me, Krixlow, if you touch me with that thing, I'll Hex it right off of you!" There was some snickering before things quieted down again.
The Hall wasn't dark; some light was cast by the ghosts who passed in and out of the Hall through the walls. They reported to Dumbledore, then sailed back out to inspect some other part of the castle.
Cho awoke once in the middle of the night with a dry throat; no sooner was she awake than a flagon of cold water materialized in front of her. She swiftly drained it all, then lay back down. As she did, the thought crossed her mind:
This is the second time. Ha Li Po Te is sleeping there somewhere, and I'm here with him. Of course, so is everybody else . . .
xxx
to be continued in part 38, where the first Quidditch match of the season is marred by bad weather and unwelcome visitors.
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
37. Real and Imagined
"Miss Chang. Just a word, if you don't mind."
The one thought running through her head was: "Why me? Why is Professor Lupin singling me out?"
The Ravenclaw Fourth Years had just finished their first Defense Against the Dark Arts class under Remus Lupin, and they'd all counted it a rousing success. It started out as a scary prospect-practical lessons in the Dark Arts risked being very dangerous. Yet the assignment was not only easy (confronting a relatively harmless Boggart) but was made funny as well: Professor Remus Lupin taught them the Riddikulus spell. It took the Boggart, which changed itself into what people fear the most, and broke up the fear by making it look foolish.
It was certainly the most varied group of students Lupin had met yet at Hogwarts, and their visions were equally varied. Raina al-Qaba imagined the Boggart turning into a giant horned ogre, its head brushing the ceiling- one of the more frightening monsters out of the Arabian Nights. Her Riddikulus turned it into a stork, hopping about the room on one leg.
Grimaldi, on the other hand, tried to scam Lupin, but the professor locked the wardrobe before the Boggart, who now let out a high feminine giggle, would emerge.
"Honestly, Professor," Grimaldi begged, "I'm terrified of beautiful naked women!"
Lupin waited until he was satisfied that the Boggart wasn't being fooled by Grimaldi's prank; when it finally came after Grimaldi, it was as a giant octopus.
Cho's Boggart, however, caused Lupin to keep her after class. There was no hurry-the class was on its way to lunch anyway-but she didn't want to be singled out, especially not because of this.
"Miss Chang, would you mind telling me what the Boggart was supposed to be?"
"I'd rather not, Professor."
"But why not? It appeared to be a disheveled young man; looks like he might have been someone I once knew."
Cho stayed silent.
"You weren't thinking of Sirius Black, were you?"
"No, sir," she answered honestly. "This was a real Muggle I once, er, met." She didn't say any more.
After a minute, Lupin walked to the wardrobe. "If I let it out again, will it be the same?" Cho nodded. "Then the Riddikulus wasn't enough. Tell me, why did your Riddikulus spell make the Boggart stop, with his trousers down around his ankles?"
Cho's cheeks coloured. "I, I didn't plan it that way; not at first."
Cho was still standing by the first row of benches. Lupin sat on top of his desk. "I have to make sure that we don't have a problem here. Getting along in this world is hard enough when people don't say all that they need to say. In the Dark Arts, though, it's extremely dangerous. It's one thing when you can manipulate Charms and Potions; but imagine what could happen if they started to manipulate you. I can see that you're uncomfortable about this, but I have to know: who is the Muggle?"
"He's just-some man I saw in a library once."
"Just a derelict, nothing more?"
"No." Cho was surprised to find herself shaking. "I was in a library at closing time. He was there, and he-he came after me."
"And you ran?"
"He blocked the way."
"But you escaped him?"
"I used a Petrificus. I knew nobody would believe his story."
"Sounds as if you managed the thing very well. So what frightens you?"
"When it happened, I was twelve, and I guess I just thought he was going to . . . I didn't really know what he was going to do to me. Now I'm older, and I can imagine it. That's what scares me now; thinking about what might have happened."
Cho was still shuddering; Lupin put his hands on her shoulders, and looked deeply into her eyes with his.
"All of your classmates fancied the Boggart into monsters from the magical world: giants, harpies, ogres. You're the only one who faced down a real monster. I'd say that's worth an extra five points."
Cho blinked. "That's it? There's no problem?"
"Of course not," Remus laughed. "You've shown more sense than just about anyone else in this school. You and Harry Potter."
Harry?!? "Can you tell me-what was his Boggart?"
Lupin sighed. "His Boggart-IF I had let it out of the cupboard, which I wasn't about to-would have been a Dementor. As if you couldn't see one by looking out a window. Very bad idea." Lupin was standing at the staff room's one window, looking out on the lawn. Cho couldn't tell if he could see a Dementor.
After a bit, Lupin seemed to remember that Cho was still in the room. "Well," he said brightly, "let's see what's for lunch."
"If you don't mind, I'd like to drop these off," Cho quickly said. "Thanks for the lesson!" And she was off, running toward Ravenclaw.
Through the tapestry ("prehensile"), through the bookcase, through the Common Room and up to her dormitory, Cho ran as fast as she could. She almost collided with Raina, who was just on her way down to lunch. Cho threw her bookbag under her desk, sat heavily on her bed, buried her face in her pillow and forced her breathing to slow down, waiting for her heartbeat to become regular.
She hadn't realized what seeing the vagrant-the Muggle who she now realized surely would have tried to rape her if he'd had the chance-would do to her emotions.
She didn't come down to lunch at all that day.
xxx
The following Saturday was Quidditch practice for the Ravenclaw team. All of the players were back this year, and all of them were eager to try out new plays, new equipment and ideas.
Roger Davies was still the Captain, and he didn't use most of the suggestions from the players, even after listening to them.
"But ROG!" "Jinx" Jenkins, a Beater, was especially upset. "You saw how well the 'back-up' worked!" In an improvised game with Slytherin just before summer holidays, they used a play that Jinx had developed. While Cho was chasing the Snitch, and Draco Malfoy was chasing Cho, the Ravenclaw Beaters hit Malfoy with Bludgers in both shoulders, causing him to lose control.
"So did Slytherin," Roger said. "They'll be ready for it next time, and a secret weapon's no good if it isn't a secret. We can still use it; just not in our first game."
"Then we'd better come up with a few more tricks like that one. I think this year's going to be rough. For once, we have to worry about all the others, even Hufflepuff."
"You're joking," Chaser Erasmus Skiddle said. "They have a new Captain, then?"
"Diggory the Seeker." Skiddle snorted with laughter. "Don't be so quick to judge. He's been working on the game this summer, too. I was over near his town for a bit this summer, Ottery St. Catchpole. He's really throwing himself into the game."
"That's Hufflepuff, though, isn't it?" Chaser Pablo Molina asked. "Fly hard when you can't fly smart."
"Just keep your broom on its toes, as it were; that's all I'm saying."
Roger turned to Cho, seeming to ask a question without speaking. Cho simply nodded and smiled.
xxx
The talk at dinner that night was less sportsmanlike.
"You're going to be our secret weapon this year, right?" Vincent Krixlow said to Cho.
Cho eyed him warily, saying nothing. She knew how his mind worked.
Krixlow turned to others at the table. "All she has to do is arrange a date with the other Seeker the night before the game, get them up to the Astronomy Tower, get them good and worn out . . ."
He didn't get any farther than that; Cho bounced an apple off of his forehead with a Levitation Charm, nearly knocking him out. She smiled sweetly at Vincent: "Next time, it'll be the water pitcher."
xxx
The weeks sailed by in a routine of classes, meals, study and Quidditch practice. Before Cho even realized it herself, the first Hogsmeade trip of the year was at hand; and so was the Halloween feast. And in one week, the first Quidditch match of the year.
Maybe it was the presence of the dementors around Hogwarts, but Cho and the girls from her dorm clustered together as they left the grounds, and stayed clustered together as they wandered Hogwarts. They browsed through books at Flourish & Blotts; they looked at astrolabes and philters at Dervish & Bangs; some of them insisted on looking in the window at Glad Rags at the latest in formal robes; and they stocked up on sweets from Honeyduke's and butterbeer at The Three Broomsticks. As good as the food at Hogwarts was, there were some things that the school just didn't serve.
The feast was a wonder. The mood was fun and just spooky enough; the food was rich and plentiful as always; and the Gryffindor ghost, Nearly Headless Nick, seemed fully recovered from his encounter with the basilisk and gave a lively retelling of the day he was almost beheaded. Cho and her dorm mates were all tired, full and happy as they walked through the halls of Hogwarts, talking excitedly about the day's events. Cho felt that she'd probably sleep until noon.
Until she saw a knot of students in front of the tapestry. Some Sixth- Years were shouting out every password they'd used this year-and Grimaldi shouted out a few words that had never been used as passwords in Hogwarts. The tapestry stayed shut.
"Let me through please!" The voice of Professor Flitwick carried to the students, even if he was too short to be seen. He finally made his way to the stairs just past the tapestry. "For the time being," he announced, "Ravenclaw House is closed up. Go back to the Great Hall at once. You will be informed of the reason when you get there."
"Five Sickles says they won't tell us the truth," muttered one Second-Year to another.
xxx
That Ravenclaw won his bet; Dumbledore told them only that the castle needed to be searched, and that they would be spending the night in the Great Hall floor on sleeping bags. Only after he left, with the students mingling themselves from House to House, did the story come out: about the painting over Gryffindor's entrance being savagely mutilated-apparently by Sirius Black.
"Load of rubbish, if you ask me," Letitia Groondy sniffed when Padma Patil told her what her sister Parvati had said. "Can you really trust anything Peeves has to say?"
"He was a witness!" Padma insisted.
"The only witness, which means he can say whatever he likes! He probably thinks it's a lark to tell us it was Sirius."
"It's not just Peeves," Roger Davies interrupted. "I was just listening to Oliver Wood going on about it. Filch found the lady in the painting; she's a bit cut up, but she'll live, as it were. Anyway, she says it was Sirius Black too."
Just then, Head Boy Percy Weasley called lights out.
In spite of that, whispered conversations among the students went on for a long time after the Great Hall went dark. Prefects moved among the students to keep things in order, and most of the students behaved themselves; although at one point, some two hours after the lights went out, those who were still awake heard a harsh girl's whisper: "So help me, Krixlow, if you touch me with that thing, I'll Hex it right off of you!" There was some snickering before things quieted down again.
The Hall wasn't dark; some light was cast by the ghosts who passed in and out of the Hall through the walls. They reported to Dumbledore, then sailed back out to inspect some other part of the castle.
Cho awoke once in the middle of the night with a dry throat; no sooner was she awake than a flagon of cold water materialized in front of her. She swiftly drained it all, then lay back down. As she did, the thought crossed her mind:
This is the second time. Ha Li Po Te is sleeping there somewhere, and I'm here with him. Of course, so is everybody else . . .
xxx
to be continued in part 38, where the first Quidditch match of the season is marred by bad weather and unwelcome visitors.
