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-13
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
46. Spring Has Come
It was as if that one game had released Cho from some sort of magic spell. Other witches, who she had never met before, started coming up to her in the corridors between classes, or in the Common Room, or in the Great Hall during meals. They asked questions about schoolwork, or about Quidditch, or about Chinese magic.
At first Cho suspected that this interest in her was largely because Madam Trelawny had started teaching the I Ching in her Sixth-Year Divination classes. At least, she tried to teach it. Cho found herself answering some questions over and over again, showing Madam Trelawny's weak grasp of such matters as moving trigrams. Once Cho had copied out several sets of notes, there were fewer of these sorts of inquiries.
But it wasn't all about homework. Harry Potter wasn't the only one to notice it: she was growing up. She was becoming a beautiful young witch.
Cho herself would have been the last person to recognize herself as beautiful. She seldom spent time in front of a mirror. She brushed her hair mechanically, without inspecting it, usually before a window overlooking the grounds of Hogwarts Academy. Her clothes and robes fit her perfectly, and she left it at that, not caring what kind of figure she cut in them.
But hers would have been an exotic beauty anywhere, but was doubly so here in the Scottish borderlands: her almond-shaped, almond-tinted eyes and her slightly darkened skin and her glossy black hair shouted out her membership in a civilization that had nothing to do with Angles and Saxons and Normans and Celts. There were some (mostly Slytherin) who felt that Cho's looks meant only that she was Not a Member of the Club, but many others acted as if she had personally brought the warm spring weather back to Hogwarts.
Cho enjoyed the milder weather along with the rest of the school, and was not alone in doing so. Friends from Ravenclaw, and gradually from other Houses, took delight in her features, as attractive as a new spring day, and a personality as welcoming as May. Of course, Cho was brought up to be polite, but this sudden rush of popularity was surprising to her, and even a bit heady. Some days she half-expected everyone to go back to their old ways and leave her circle of friends much smaller, but it wasn't happening this spring.
xxx
It grew harder and harder to keep her mind on her studies, as she too got caught up in the Quidditch Cup final match. Students were taking sides, and even though many of them sided with Gryffindor, that didn't mean that Slytherin's partisans weren't loud, persistent, and occasionally devious. There was no overt sabotage or assault on either team, but everyone seemed to feel it would come to that if the game didn't hurry up and get played.
And, on 16 April, 1994, it was played.
Cho had been studying Harry Potter before the February Gryffindor/Ravenclaw match; if anyone asked her why, she'd say that she was "sizing up the opposition". Now the season was over for Ravenclaw, but she kept studying him just the same.
It didn't happen often; mostly at meals, and involved Cho staring at the back of Harry's head, but she didn't seem likely to stop doing it anytime soon. If you asked her why, she'd evade giving an answer.
Perhaps because she didn't have an answer to give.
But her denials of interest in Harry vanished the morning of the big game, when the Gryffindor team came to breakfast and were roundly applauded by almost everyone in the Great Hall. They sat and ate breakfast under the hopeful eyes of almost everyone there (Slytherin excepted, of course), waiting their turn to look at the field, go into the changing rooms and prepare for the match. As they finished breakfast and made to leave, the students cheered again.
And Cho Chang shouted out, "Good luck, Harry!"
And Harry heard her! She knew he heard her because he started blushing. And so did she.
She held her tongue during one of the hardest-fought matches she had ever seen. Slytherin was clearly out to win at all costs. They broke rules-and tried to break bones-in what turned out to be a futile attempt to stop Gryffindor. Cho, meanwhile, cheered each Gryffindor goal and booed each Slytherin foul. She was up on her feet for each shot, and down on the bench for the penalties, and up again as the Seekers chased the Snitch and she could always tell when Harry saw the Snitch, even when he wasn't letting on he saw it, which only made Malfoy look dumber than usual to her, and she spent the last three minutes of the match up and bouncing on the balls of her feet unable to sit still as Harry flew interference for Angelina Johnson, enabling her to score the Quaffle while at the same time giving Harry a chance to scout for the Snitch and when he did see it Cho groaned because Malfoy had already seen in but Harry put on his own burst of unbelievable speed as they grabbed at the Snitch like two kittens playing with a ball, except that kittens and ball were moving at breakneck speed and could kill themselves or each other unless one of them one of them-
YES! HARRY! Harry Potter got the Snitch! Gryffindor won the Cup!
Cho let out the breath she had been holding for the past thirty seconds, sitting exhausted back down on the bench-and at first she was puzzled, because it was the wrong time of the month to be feeling what she thought she was feeling, and then she realized that she was feeling something completely different, and when she realized what it was she had to cover her mouth with both hands to keep from laughing out loud.
xxx
Everything calmed down as the spring deepened, summer approached, and so did the exams. Cho knew that they couldn't hope for history to repeat itself-the successful rescue of a student from the Chamber of Secrets led to the cancellation of exams the year before. So Ravenclaw studied, perhaps a bit more than usual.
But not all the talk was about classes.
On the second Sunday before exams, Cho and some of her mates had taken their books out onto the stone steps that led up to Hogwarts' main doors. The subject was supposed to be Dark Arts.
"Jan?" Cho asked.
"Yeh, what?"
"I wanted to ask about, you know, the Glow."
Since Jan had first mentioned it to Cho six months earlier, others had found out about Jan's ability to see the aura of someone in love. Others had asked for advice or confirmation; Cho had not, until now.
"What I want to know is this. Can you see someone who thinks they're in love with someone else, even if that someone else isn't really in love with the first person, or maybe one of the people isn't really sure if what they feel about the other person is really-real." Cho's voice trailed off as Jan tried not to laugh at her friend.
"I think I follow all that, an' the answer is, no. Yeh can't see it if it's all on one side. If yeh could, ye'd just end up seein' ever'body. 'Cause we all wants ter be loved, don' we, when it's all said an' done. It's like me mam says: if we saw the glow of those who wanted to be loved, the world would be so bright none of us could get any sleep."
"So you think we all come up wanting love?" asked Libby Foggly. "Does that include the Dark Lord?"
The others looked at Libby in shock. "That was in really poor taste," scolded Letitia Groondy.
"No; just think about it. Most wizards-or Muggles-aren't born great; they have to become over time whatever they're going to be. So, was there a point somewhere when the Dark Lord was just a kid like us? Did he want the kinds of things we want? And if one little thing had gone different for him, would he even have gone on to become the Dark Lord?"
The Ravenclaws did think about it. Cho tried to remember the earliest bits from a biography of Grindelwald, the Teutonic sorcerer who caused so much destruction during the Muggles' Second World War. Before she could pick anything specific, though, Jan spoke up.
"I jus' finished a paper on Alberich for Binns. He's this ugly ol' dwarf who tried to flirt with these water sprites who live in the River Rhine. Well, they weren't havin' none o' him. So he says as how he's through wi' love forever. Now, sayin' this made it possible for him to take enchanted gold from the Rhine an' make it into a Ring of power. An' by the time his story is over, he's destroyed Heaven an' the Muggles an' the wizards an' all."
"All over some water sprites?" Letitia asked weakly.
"Coulda been about anythin'! But not havin' love made him mean enough to destroy the world; or so the story goes."
"I can think of some Slytherin that love could never help," Cho said in a whisper, looking around just in case. "That Quidditch team is . . ."
"Belt up!" Jan whispered. She'd caught sight of Draco Malfoy walking by the lake, hand in hand with another Slytherin from his year, Pansy Parkinson.
Eyebrows went up all around the group. "Maybe pigs CAN fly," Letitia snickered.
"But he's still a rotten Seeker. You all saw what he tried to do to Harry during the Cup match; and that dementor trick before that!"
"Matters a lot to yeh, Cho?"
"No! Well, not really. I mean, I have to know who I'm up against, don't I?"
"But what's really important is where you're up against him," Libby grinned.
"You're AWFUL!" Cho laughed as she and Libby threw scrolls at each other for a minute. Then they settled down again and returned to studying.
xxx
The year ended with the usual round of exams, and with Cho getting good marks in almost all courses. She was graded down on Potions, but then, so was every student who wasn't a Slytherin. Snape had spent the year nursing some sort of old grudge, which had made him more impatient and critical than usual. The day after exams were over, Hogwarts found out why: Snape revealed that Professor Lupin was a werewolf. Lupin had to resign at once.
"Now that's a shame," said Libby Foggly, who specialized in Defense Against the Dark Arts. "After that old fraud Lockhart, Lupin really knew what he was doing. I was looking forward to next year with him."
She was talking to Cho and Jan at the Three Broomsticks over iced glasses of butterbeer. The day after exams was a Hogsmeade visiting day, and almost the entire school took advantage of it. The students, however, weren't the only extra color in the town that day. Witches and wizards were starting to arrive in the British Isles in anticipation of the finals of the World Quidditch Cup in August. Quite a few wizards in town that day had crossed over to Hogsmeade from France, where the French National team would take on the Italians in a few days.
"Room for one more, ladies?" Roger Davies had walked up to the table.
"Always, Roger," Cho smiled, gesturing toward the lone empty chair.
"Ah, well, we'd better be off," Jan said, hastily standing up.
Libby joined her. "Yes, you two probably have lots of things to discuss. And some might even have to do with Quidditch." She was laughing as she blended into the crowd.
Cho was on her feet, calling to the two girls "Wait a minute!", when she realized that Roger had done and said exactly the same thing. They looked at each other, both chuckled a bit embarrassedly, and sat back down.
There was a slight awkward pause until Cho said, "So, what are your plans for the summer? The World Cup, of course?"
"Of course; couldn't miss it, and it's right on my doorstep, so to speak. I'm going to have to work for a few weeks, but I'll get the time off."
"Same with me," Cho nodded. "My family is taking me, but I think they feel I have to earn it."
"As far as I'm concerned, you have."
"Be sure to tell them, then," Cho laughed. "But, honestly, I don't mind. How do you think your O.W.L.s went?"
"Best I could do, but I feel I did all right. Seventh Year's got me worried, though."
"I'm sure you'll be fine."
They were distracted by shouting at the bar. A witch and a wizard were screaming at each other in French, loudly enough for passers-by in the street to look through the window. They were in their twenties; she was strikingly beautiful with long brown hair that hung over one side of her face, while he was strikingly handsome with a pencil-thin moustache and short, slicked-back hair.
Everyone in the inn watched for another minute, as the French couple didn't seem to care who saw or heard them. At one point, though, they suddenly went for their wands, but no sooner had they drawn them then the wands rose up to the ceiling-Charmed there by Madam Rosmerta.
"There'll be none of that in my place!": she scolded the pair. "Allez! Allez!" She practically shoved them out into the street, only bringing down their wands when they were on the threshold.
Cho hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until she let it all out at once.
"Well, that was a change," Jan said; she and Libby had back away from the couple when they drew their wands. "They do say that yeh see more o' these goings-on at the Hog's Head."
"I suppose you didn't have to worry about seeing a Glow on them," Cho whispered to Jan.
"Are ye daft? They had the brightest Glow in the place!"
Cho was so busy trying to puzzle that one out that she didn't even notice Roger excuse himself and leave.
xxx
to be continued in part 47, where Cho discusses Quidditch with some children and a former Wasp
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-13
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
46. Spring Has Come
It was as if that one game had released Cho from some sort of magic spell. Other witches, who she had never met before, started coming up to her in the corridors between classes, or in the Common Room, or in the Great Hall during meals. They asked questions about schoolwork, or about Quidditch, or about Chinese magic.
At first Cho suspected that this interest in her was largely because Madam Trelawny had started teaching the I Ching in her Sixth-Year Divination classes. At least, she tried to teach it. Cho found herself answering some questions over and over again, showing Madam Trelawny's weak grasp of such matters as moving trigrams. Once Cho had copied out several sets of notes, there were fewer of these sorts of inquiries.
But it wasn't all about homework. Harry Potter wasn't the only one to notice it: she was growing up. She was becoming a beautiful young witch.
Cho herself would have been the last person to recognize herself as beautiful. She seldom spent time in front of a mirror. She brushed her hair mechanically, without inspecting it, usually before a window overlooking the grounds of Hogwarts Academy. Her clothes and robes fit her perfectly, and she left it at that, not caring what kind of figure she cut in them.
But hers would have been an exotic beauty anywhere, but was doubly so here in the Scottish borderlands: her almond-shaped, almond-tinted eyes and her slightly darkened skin and her glossy black hair shouted out her membership in a civilization that had nothing to do with Angles and Saxons and Normans and Celts. There were some (mostly Slytherin) who felt that Cho's looks meant only that she was Not a Member of the Club, but many others acted as if she had personally brought the warm spring weather back to Hogwarts.
Cho enjoyed the milder weather along with the rest of the school, and was not alone in doing so. Friends from Ravenclaw, and gradually from other Houses, took delight in her features, as attractive as a new spring day, and a personality as welcoming as May. Of course, Cho was brought up to be polite, but this sudden rush of popularity was surprising to her, and even a bit heady. Some days she half-expected everyone to go back to their old ways and leave her circle of friends much smaller, but it wasn't happening this spring.
xxx
It grew harder and harder to keep her mind on her studies, as she too got caught up in the Quidditch Cup final match. Students were taking sides, and even though many of them sided with Gryffindor, that didn't mean that Slytherin's partisans weren't loud, persistent, and occasionally devious. There was no overt sabotage or assault on either team, but everyone seemed to feel it would come to that if the game didn't hurry up and get played.
And, on 16 April, 1994, it was played.
Cho had been studying Harry Potter before the February Gryffindor/Ravenclaw match; if anyone asked her why, she'd say that she was "sizing up the opposition". Now the season was over for Ravenclaw, but she kept studying him just the same.
It didn't happen often; mostly at meals, and involved Cho staring at the back of Harry's head, but she didn't seem likely to stop doing it anytime soon. If you asked her why, she'd evade giving an answer.
Perhaps because she didn't have an answer to give.
But her denials of interest in Harry vanished the morning of the big game, when the Gryffindor team came to breakfast and were roundly applauded by almost everyone in the Great Hall. They sat and ate breakfast under the hopeful eyes of almost everyone there (Slytherin excepted, of course), waiting their turn to look at the field, go into the changing rooms and prepare for the match. As they finished breakfast and made to leave, the students cheered again.
And Cho Chang shouted out, "Good luck, Harry!"
And Harry heard her! She knew he heard her because he started blushing. And so did she.
She held her tongue during one of the hardest-fought matches she had ever seen. Slytherin was clearly out to win at all costs. They broke rules-and tried to break bones-in what turned out to be a futile attempt to stop Gryffindor. Cho, meanwhile, cheered each Gryffindor goal and booed each Slytherin foul. She was up on her feet for each shot, and down on the bench for the penalties, and up again as the Seekers chased the Snitch and she could always tell when Harry saw the Snitch, even when he wasn't letting on he saw it, which only made Malfoy look dumber than usual to her, and she spent the last three minutes of the match up and bouncing on the balls of her feet unable to sit still as Harry flew interference for Angelina Johnson, enabling her to score the Quaffle while at the same time giving Harry a chance to scout for the Snitch and when he did see it Cho groaned because Malfoy had already seen in but Harry put on his own burst of unbelievable speed as they grabbed at the Snitch like two kittens playing with a ball, except that kittens and ball were moving at breakneck speed and could kill themselves or each other unless one of them one of them-
YES! HARRY! Harry Potter got the Snitch! Gryffindor won the Cup!
Cho let out the breath she had been holding for the past thirty seconds, sitting exhausted back down on the bench-and at first she was puzzled, because it was the wrong time of the month to be feeling what she thought she was feeling, and then she realized that she was feeling something completely different, and when she realized what it was she had to cover her mouth with both hands to keep from laughing out loud.
xxx
Everything calmed down as the spring deepened, summer approached, and so did the exams. Cho knew that they couldn't hope for history to repeat itself-the successful rescue of a student from the Chamber of Secrets led to the cancellation of exams the year before. So Ravenclaw studied, perhaps a bit more than usual.
But not all the talk was about classes.
On the second Sunday before exams, Cho and some of her mates had taken their books out onto the stone steps that led up to Hogwarts' main doors. The subject was supposed to be Dark Arts.
"Jan?" Cho asked.
"Yeh, what?"
"I wanted to ask about, you know, the Glow."
Since Jan had first mentioned it to Cho six months earlier, others had found out about Jan's ability to see the aura of someone in love. Others had asked for advice or confirmation; Cho had not, until now.
"What I want to know is this. Can you see someone who thinks they're in love with someone else, even if that someone else isn't really in love with the first person, or maybe one of the people isn't really sure if what they feel about the other person is really-real." Cho's voice trailed off as Jan tried not to laugh at her friend.
"I think I follow all that, an' the answer is, no. Yeh can't see it if it's all on one side. If yeh could, ye'd just end up seein' ever'body. 'Cause we all wants ter be loved, don' we, when it's all said an' done. It's like me mam says: if we saw the glow of those who wanted to be loved, the world would be so bright none of us could get any sleep."
"So you think we all come up wanting love?" asked Libby Foggly. "Does that include the Dark Lord?"
The others looked at Libby in shock. "That was in really poor taste," scolded Letitia Groondy.
"No; just think about it. Most wizards-or Muggles-aren't born great; they have to become over time whatever they're going to be. So, was there a point somewhere when the Dark Lord was just a kid like us? Did he want the kinds of things we want? And if one little thing had gone different for him, would he even have gone on to become the Dark Lord?"
The Ravenclaws did think about it. Cho tried to remember the earliest bits from a biography of Grindelwald, the Teutonic sorcerer who caused so much destruction during the Muggles' Second World War. Before she could pick anything specific, though, Jan spoke up.
"I jus' finished a paper on Alberich for Binns. He's this ugly ol' dwarf who tried to flirt with these water sprites who live in the River Rhine. Well, they weren't havin' none o' him. So he says as how he's through wi' love forever. Now, sayin' this made it possible for him to take enchanted gold from the Rhine an' make it into a Ring of power. An' by the time his story is over, he's destroyed Heaven an' the Muggles an' the wizards an' all."
"All over some water sprites?" Letitia asked weakly.
"Coulda been about anythin'! But not havin' love made him mean enough to destroy the world; or so the story goes."
"I can think of some Slytherin that love could never help," Cho said in a whisper, looking around just in case. "That Quidditch team is . . ."
"Belt up!" Jan whispered. She'd caught sight of Draco Malfoy walking by the lake, hand in hand with another Slytherin from his year, Pansy Parkinson.
Eyebrows went up all around the group. "Maybe pigs CAN fly," Letitia snickered.
"But he's still a rotten Seeker. You all saw what he tried to do to Harry during the Cup match; and that dementor trick before that!"
"Matters a lot to yeh, Cho?"
"No! Well, not really. I mean, I have to know who I'm up against, don't I?"
"But what's really important is where you're up against him," Libby grinned.
"You're AWFUL!" Cho laughed as she and Libby threw scrolls at each other for a minute. Then they settled down again and returned to studying.
xxx
The year ended with the usual round of exams, and with Cho getting good marks in almost all courses. She was graded down on Potions, but then, so was every student who wasn't a Slytherin. Snape had spent the year nursing some sort of old grudge, which had made him more impatient and critical than usual. The day after exams were over, Hogwarts found out why: Snape revealed that Professor Lupin was a werewolf. Lupin had to resign at once.
"Now that's a shame," said Libby Foggly, who specialized in Defense Against the Dark Arts. "After that old fraud Lockhart, Lupin really knew what he was doing. I was looking forward to next year with him."
She was talking to Cho and Jan at the Three Broomsticks over iced glasses of butterbeer. The day after exams was a Hogsmeade visiting day, and almost the entire school took advantage of it. The students, however, weren't the only extra color in the town that day. Witches and wizards were starting to arrive in the British Isles in anticipation of the finals of the World Quidditch Cup in August. Quite a few wizards in town that day had crossed over to Hogsmeade from France, where the French National team would take on the Italians in a few days.
"Room for one more, ladies?" Roger Davies had walked up to the table.
"Always, Roger," Cho smiled, gesturing toward the lone empty chair.
"Ah, well, we'd better be off," Jan said, hastily standing up.
Libby joined her. "Yes, you two probably have lots of things to discuss. And some might even have to do with Quidditch." She was laughing as she blended into the crowd.
Cho was on her feet, calling to the two girls "Wait a minute!", when she realized that Roger had done and said exactly the same thing. They looked at each other, both chuckled a bit embarrassedly, and sat back down.
There was a slight awkward pause until Cho said, "So, what are your plans for the summer? The World Cup, of course?"
"Of course; couldn't miss it, and it's right on my doorstep, so to speak. I'm going to have to work for a few weeks, but I'll get the time off."
"Same with me," Cho nodded. "My family is taking me, but I think they feel I have to earn it."
"As far as I'm concerned, you have."
"Be sure to tell them, then," Cho laughed. "But, honestly, I don't mind. How do you think your O.W.L.s went?"
"Best I could do, but I feel I did all right. Seventh Year's got me worried, though."
"I'm sure you'll be fine."
They were distracted by shouting at the bar. A witch and a wizard were screaming at each other in French, loudly enough for passers-by in the street to look through the window. They were in their twenties; she was strikingly beautiful with long brown hair that hung over one side of her face, while he was strikingly handsome with a pencil-thin moustache and short, slicked-back hair.
Everyone in the inn watched for another minute, as the French couple didn't seem to care who saw or heard them. At one point, though, they suddenly went for their wands, but no sooner had they drawn them then the wands rose up to the ceiling-Charmed there by Madam Rosmerta.
"There'll be none of that in my place!": she scolded the pair. "Allez! Allez!" She practically shoved them out into the street, only bringing down their wands when they were on the threshold.
Cho hadn't realized she'd been holding her breath until she let it all out at once.
"Well, that was a change," Jan said; she and Libby had back away from the couple when they drew their wands. "They do say that yeh see more o' these goings-on at the Hog's Head."
"I suppose you didn't have to worry about seeing a Glow on them," Cho whispered to Jan.
"Are ye daft? They had the brightest Glow in the place!"
Cho was so busy trying to puzzle that one out that she didn't even notice Roger excuse himself and leave.
xxx
to be continued in part 47, where Cho discusses Quidditch with some children and a former Wasp
