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

50. Someone Else

Most of the Ravenclaws were chattering excitedly as they made their way to their House. Not only had the new school year begun, it included a dramatic surprise: the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Known only by reputation to most of the students, it was a legendary test of bravery and skill. It wasn't unusual in the old days for no trophy to be awarded at all, since none of the contestants had survived. It was a decisive, if extreme, test of magic between the three major European schools of wizardry.

"Of course, that's old colonial-era thinking," Pablo Molina said as he came into the Common Room. "Look at all the academies that have sprung up all over the world since then. Academies in Asia and Africa and South America. You wouldn't think of having a tournament like that these days and not inviting them. But the Ministry likes to think it still runs the whole wizarding world-a very British, very white world."

"Give it a rest," Vincent Krixlow answered back. "It's an old tradition. You start messing about with it, and it won't be an old tradition any more."

"Besides, yeh won't have teh worry about it unless you're a Seventh Year." Jan Nugginbridge yawned. "Think I et too much tonight. Aren't yeh comin' up, Cho?"

Cho had curled up in the day bed with Kenilworthy Whisp's biography of "Dangerous" Dai Llewellyn. "Not just yet."

Cho sat there as most of the Ravenclaws went upstairs to the dormitories. She stayed in the day bed even when Letitia Groondy, who had been chosen Prefect, brought the First Years through, telling them a bit about the House and pointing out Cho as "the Ravenclaw Seeker."

"Not this year, I'm afraid," Cho smiled from behind her book. Letitia noticed it was a sad smile.

Cho watched as Letitia led the six new Ravenclaw witches up to their dormitory, and thought, To think I used to be that young; seems ages ago. She stayed curled up with the book for another hour. She held it, but hardly looked at it. She was waiting for what she hoped would be the worst moment of the year; better to get it over with.

"Hullo, Cho."

"Hi, Roger." She motioned for him to sit in a comfy chair across from the day bed.

"What are you doing up?"

"Waiting for you. I had a feeling you'd come looking for me. We missed each other at the World Cup."

"Yeah. Well." Roger seemed more nervous than Cho could ever remember.

"Roger, do they absolutely have to cancel Quidditch for the Tri-Wizard Tournament?"

"Afraid so. I tracked down Madam Hooch after dinner and asked her. Apparently they're using the pitch for something, and it just won't be fit for matches this year."

"Can't they rig up something? This year would be your last chance."

"I know," Roger sighed. "It would have been nice to go out with a championship season. But I'm already on the Cup. And they're letting Seventh-Years try out for the Tournament. You think I have a chance?"

"I'm sure you do," Cho smiled.

"That means a lot, to hear that from you. I put a lot of store in your opinion, you know."

Cho kept her smile but was shaking inside.

"It's funny to think of it now, how much I wanted to keep you off the team when you first came here. If I had more sense, or maybe Madam Hooch had pushed a little harder, you could have done a Potter and gotten on the team in your First Year. But, anyway, you're here now."

Cho nodded, waiting.

"Well," Roger cleared his throat and started rubbing his hands together nervously, "anyway, there's no more Quidditch for me at Hogwarts. Seems so strange to be saying that. Just my N.E.W.T.s and maybe this Tri-Wizard thingy. But that's good. Gives me a chance to tell you something; something I've wanted to say for a while now, and I couldn't say it while I was your Captain."

Here it comes.

"So. Erm, Cho, we've been on the House team for a few years, and I watched you start out, and you were really just a kid then. But you played like it was the only thing you could do. Like there was nothing in the world but Quidditch. You don't see that too often. And, well, anyway, I've watch you grow as a player, but also as a girl. And I never thought I'd say this to anyone; believe me, it's caught me off-guard as well. But, well, the truth is, I think you're really beautiful, and-and I think I love you."

There it was. Mackie had hinted at it a week earlier when he'd seen Cho at the World Cup. She'd been trying to figure out what to say since then, knowing that this moment was coming. Being a Ravenclaw, she'd come up with a dozen elaborate, sensible speeches, all aimed at letting Roger down easy, as they say. But now, everything she'd planned to say vanished, and all that came out was, "Roger, I'm so sorry."

Roger just sat looking at Cho, looking as if someone had punched him in the stomach. "Is it-is it someone else?"

"No! Roger, no!" Without thinking about it, she leaned forward, taking both his hands in both of hers. "I don't-there's nobody else, Roger. It's not that. It's just that, I don't feel that way about you. You're my captain, and a Housemate, and a very dear friend. I just can't feel anything past that."

"Ah." Roger was quiet for a full minute. "Do you-do you think there's a chance?"

Cho couldn't even speak; the words caught in her throat. She just shook her head, no.

As she watched Roger's face, she could see the tears forming. This was exactly what I didn't want, she thought, please don't start, but now Roger was crying and Cho realized that she was crying and they fell into each other's arms, his head on Cho's shoulder and her head on Roger's shoulder, and they clung to each other for a few minutes.

Finally, Roger pulled away from Cho and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his robes.

"Roger. I really don't want to lose you as a friend. Please don't think ill of me for this."

"That-well, that won't be easy. I'll think about it."

"Roger, I-I just don't know what else to tell you."

"Yeh," he said as he stood up, "this is going to be some year. See you around." He turned and went up to the boys' dormitories.

xxx

Cho sat for another half-hour before she pulled herself together and went up to her dorm. By now she was used to finding her way through the room in the dark. Just as she reached her bed, she heard Jan whisper, "Is something wrong, Cho?"

Cho started to answer that things were fine, but she couldn't. "Everything's wrong," she sniffled.

"Get over here, then."

She sat on the foot of Jan's bed.

"Nah, come inside."

Cho drew her legs onto the bed as Jan closed the curtains. "Lumos." Jan's wand, which had been under the pillow, glowed softly. "Out with it, now."

"Jan, I feel just awful. There's a boy here, and he just told me . . ." Cho's tears started again. "The first time a boy ever said he loved me, and I had to say I didn't love him, and now we're both miserable."

"Poor thing," Jan clucked. "Still, it has teh happen teh everyone."

"But why? Why does it have to happen? None of us deserves to be miserable about it."

Jan thought for a minute. "My oldest sister got married straight out of school, to a boy she was seein' for years before that. He got a good job in a Nimbus factory. They had a couple o' kids in short order, an' ever'thing was always fine with 'em. Then, when their youngest is five, she gets the flu real bad. Almos' died, she did. They took care o' her day an' night. Well, no sooner does she get better from that than my sister asks for a divorce. You want teh know what brought it on? She said it was 'cause one night he wanted teh sleep five more minutes before givin' a potion to the kid."

"Was that really the reason?"

"Nah, but it opened the door, you might say. After that, all sorts of other things come spillin' out; things they didn't never talk about." Jan reached out and took Cho's hand in her own. "We all make mistakes, even where love is involved, an' those mistakes jus' seem to hurt more'n the others. Maybe because yeh can't get it fixed in the hospital wing. But, the way I see it, you suffer early on so yeh can tell the big hurts from the small ones. That way, yeh don't end up doin' somethin' foolish like leavin' the one yeh love because o' five minutes sleep."

Cho looked down at her hands, folded in her lap, for a minute. When she looked up at Jan, she was smiling. "You're very good at this sort of thing. Thank you, Jan."

"Any time. Well, maybe not this late."

Cho gave Jan's hand a quick squeeze, then slipped out of Jan's bed and got into her own.

xxx

Cho still couldn't get right to sleep. She hadn't wanted to lie to Roger; but then, she didn't really know if it was a lie. There couldn't really be a "someone else" if Cho hadn't yet said five words to him, could there?

Cho spent the next hour going over all of the facts, in a thorough, Ravenclaw manner. She knew that, like every witch her age, there simply wasn't a time that she hadn't heard the name of Harry Potter. He was a legend by the time she could walk and talk. Because of what he had done, Halloween was now the celebration of the day he had vanquished the Dark Lord. You simply didn't live in the wizarding world and not have an opinion about Harry Potter.

For Cho's part, her opinion was rather vague at first. Ha Li Po Te (as he was known around her household) had gotten himself muddled up with other historical wizards, whose faces were a blur and whose deeds were part legend and part guesswork. Harry Potter lurked in the same shadows of history as Merwyn the Malicious and Inglut the Inconvenient. He might as well have lived centuries ago, he was so unreal to her.

That all changed in her second year at Hogwarts, for that was when Harry started attending. He showed up short and nervous, brilliant green eyes behind big glasses, and in a matter of days became a Seeker on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Broom-riding in general, and the fine points of Quidditch in particular, came to him as naturally as breathing. Cho, who wanted such mastery and worked for years to achieve it, saw that Harry was a "natural", but could not envy him. Instead she thrilled-along with the rest of Hogwarts-to his string of victories on the Quidditch pitch.

If he could have stayed on the pitch, they might have been competitors and nothing more. But, on the eve of the finals for the House Cup, Harry had been struck down and laid for days unconscious in the hospital wing-struck down by Lord Voldemort, weakened but not gone, who failed a second time in his life to kill Harry Potter even as he killed Professor Quirrell.

Cho had snuck into the wing to be sure that Harry would be unfit to play against Ravenclaw for the Cup-and, while she was there, she did a small and simple thing: she brushed a stray lock of hair off of his forehead. Small and simple, but a gesture which haunted her for months. It proved to her that Harry Potter was not merely a legend. He was real; he was vulnerable.

That vulnerability hit home to Cho in her Fourth Year, when Harry was again hospitalized after his encounter with dementors during a match. She had come to the hospital wing to watch as he slept, except that his sleep was fitful, disturbed by memories of the death of his parents. This was too much vulnerability for Cho; it was too true. She felt she had seen a part of his soul that he wanted to keep hidden from the world. It made her feel even closer to him, but ironically made her wary of proceeding too far or too fast.

But then, later that year, they faced off against each other, Seeker to Seeker, for the first time, and Cho tried to keep up with Harry. In the process, she started to become lost, to play a very different game: one in which she was the Seeker, but Harry Potter was the Snitch.

It was a game she found she could play off the field as well as on it, and one into which she joyfully threw herself. The rules were simple: just bring Harry Potter, one way or another, into whatever was possible. As she watched the World Cup, she wondered what Harry would make of the Wronski Feint, and whether he would try to use it against her, and how she might counter it if he did. As she saw the downpour on her way to King's Cross, she wondered if Harry had an umbrella. As she passed by the Firebolt on display in Quality Quidditch Supplies, she remembered that she knew someone who owned this top-of-the-line broom.

Knew? Perhaps not exactly. They had never spoken to each other, not even during their Quidditch match. But Cho was absolutely convinced that there was a bond between them. Quidditch was a bond, as was being a Seeker. All they had to do for now was smile and wave at each other, as they did at the World Cup-surely all of the other things would come in time.

Other things? At this point, Cho was very glad that the other girls in her dorm could not see what she could see. But, whether she had managed to talk herself into it or not, whether she meant it to happen or not, Cho Chang started her Fifth Year at Hogwarts with a large unspoken crush on Harry Potter.

xxx

to be continued in part 51, wherein Cho and her classmates experience Professor Moody