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

62. The Day of the Third Task

Cho Chang awoke on Thursday, 24 June, 1995, with butterflies in her stomach, as if she were going to face the Third Task and not the Champions.  After tonight, she thought, I'll settle down.  The Ministry people will go home, and the Prophet reporter will go home, and maybe Cedric will be Champion, or maybe Harry will, but tonight it will all be over.

"'Ere, Cho," Jan interrupted her thoughts, "yeh haven't any plans for tonight?  Fer after, I mean?"

"No, we'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"Don' count on bein' alone wi' Cedric.  Win er lose, I'm sure there'll be some big Tournament do at the end.  And yeh know, his parents'll be here."

Cho knew; she knew very well, and the mention of them woke the butterflies back up.  She had seen Amos Diggory only once—at the World Quidditch Cup almost a year ago—but had heard about him from Cedric on an almost daily basis since the Second Task, almost four months ago.

Has it really been so long since he first kissed me? Cho wondered.  It feels as if we've loved each other all our lives, and I just never knew it.  Why can't his father see him for what he is, the way I can?

But, as Cedric had told her in their secret garden, Amos Diggory had problems that he couldn't solve, except through his son.

One Saturday afternoon just before the O.W.L.s, they were working the garden, stopping to rest and sip cold pumpkin juice and just be near each other.  "When Fudge was first up for the top spot," Cedric told her, "there were so many deals being made.  He wasn't the only candidate; lots of wizards were up for it.  But Fudge was the better dealmaker.  He promised Dad a spot in Magical Creatures, with the understanding that he'd head the Division when it came open.  Well, when it did, Fudge went back on his word and passed over my dad.  There's been bad blood between them since, and he's stuck where he is.  That's why he puts everything on me, you see.  He wants me to be the successful wizard he'll never be."

"I just wish he could be nicer about it, though.  His letters sound as if he's never satisfied."

"It's just his way," Cedric shrugged.  "I'm used to it by now, or maybe just resigned to it.  Even though I don't have to take any NEWTs, he started owling me right after my name was drawn.  'I don't want to hear about you skiving off of one minute of class work!  You're not going to disgrace the family name by coming out of Hogwarts with good looks and an empty head.'"

"How did you ever manage?  Before Hogwarts and the garden, I mean."

"My mum; I could usually use her to find a way around my dad.  She can tell him off if she has to.  And if she couldn't find a way around him, there was no way to be found."

Cho remembered all this now, as she went down to breakfast.  I have to owl him every day this summer, she thought.  He'll be stuck with them, and he'll need owls to lift his spirits.  But then so would a visit . . .

She sat at the Ravenclaw table next to Sally Fawcett.  Before she touched a bite of food, she asked, "You live near the Diggorys, right?"

Fawcett nodded.  "There are only a few of us near Ottery St. Catchpole, but the Weasleys live a few miles away."

"I, well, I want to visit Cedric during the summer, and it would be a problem if his parents said no.  So, can I Floo over to your house and walk to the Diggorys from there some time?"

"Of course!" Sally beamed.  "Any time, day or night.  Of course, the night time visits are much more romantic."  Sally dropped her voice to a whisper.  "Be honest, Cho; is he also a Champion in bed?"

Cho looked down at her plate, her cheeks burning.  "Even if I could answer that, I wouldn't."

"Have you seen this?!"  Diana Fairweather stepped up to the table and threw a copy of the Daily Prophet down and sat next to Cho.  The lead article was once again about Harry Potter.  "Now they're saying that Dumbledore hushed it up when Harry spoke Parseltongue two years ago.  Hushed up, indeed!  Flitwick talked about it and all."

"The Prophet seems to be going against Potter; can't imagine why," Fawcett said.

"Well, I can imagine it," Vincent Krixlow spoke up.  "The Prophet publishes under Ministry control.  Only one of the Champions has Ministry connections.  Q.E.D.  This is all Diggory's doing."

Fleur Delacour, who was accepted at the Ravenclaw table more openly after the Second Task, which seemed to teach her some much-needed humility, listened closely to Vincent.  "You mean pere or fils?"

"They're all one.  How can one act without the other?"

Cho was tempted to jump in and describe exactly what the difference was, but held her tongue.  Besides, at that moment, Harry Potter himself arrived for breakfast, and the level of noise at the Griffindor table grew.  As her classes were over after the O.W.L.s, Cho decided to take a book outside to read.  Cedric would no doubt be busy with Tournament matters.  She had just left the Great Hall.

"Cho Li!"

Cedric was halfway up the stone steps, dashing up from the lawn.  Cho met him at the top of the steps.  "Ni ha!"

Cho pursed her lips to keep from laughing.

"Still no good, eh?  Well, time enough to get it right.  I need to borrow you for a minute."

"For what?"

"They're here, and I want you to meet them."

Cho knew exactly who they were.  "You could have warned me!"

"I wasn't warned myself.  Not five minutes after they arrive, they say they want to meet you."

"Really?  I mean, is this a good sign?"

"Won't know until it's over.  So, ready for your Task?"

"We might as well go; I'm already nervous."

"Don't be, love," Cedric gave her a quick kiss.  "We can make this work."

So, hand in hand they went down the steps to the two adults standing on the lawn.

Cho remembered seeing Cedric's parents at the World Cup, but they hadn't been introduced; her father had simply dragged his family along while he talked business, and Cho was simply expected to keep quiet.  Now that there was a possibility that she could marry into this family, Cho studied them more carefully as she approached them.

"Well," Cedric said happily as they stopped in front of his parents, "here she is.  Cho, I'd like you to meet Amos and Celia Diggory."

Amos looked exactly as he had the previous summer: a slightly stocky wizard with rosy cheeks that made him look as if he'd just been exerting himself, framed by a brown beard that seemed in need of a trim.  Celia was thin without appearing gaunt, and even though her eyes looked to Amos as if to say that she would follow his lead, there was also a set to her jaw that told Cho that she'd been in more than a few battles with her husband.  Perhaps even that very day.

Cho's hand twitched, ready to shake their hands, but none was offered.  She quickly bowed instead.  "I'm very pleased to meet you."

Amos spoke up before she'd finished speaking.  "Your people keep a shop in Diagon Alley, don't they?"

Cho didn't like either the tone of his voice or the implications of the question, but she checked herself and answered, as politely as she could: "They're Herbologists there, yes."

Celia touched her husband's arm: "You already knew that, dear; you've done business with them."

Amos shrugged off his wife's hand as if she were a bothersome fly.  "Just making sure they're not claiming to be different from what they are."

Was he trying to provoke her?  Keeping an even tighter rein on her tongue, Cho said, "My family's been Herbologists for many generations in China.  My parents just happen to be the first to come to England."

Cedric rushed in: "She's a brilliant student, dad; I've told you she's a Ravenclaw, haven't I?  She's also their Seeker."

Amos cut his son off.  "Bet you never beat Harry Potter, though.  Cedric did!"

Cho could see Cedric's jaw tighten out of the corner of her eye.  "Yes, sir, I know; I saw that match."

Cedric interrupted again.  "She came within a hair of beating Potter herself last year, though.  It was really quite a match."

No one spoke.  Amos Diggory was still eyeing Cho as if she had just walked out of Knockturn Alley, and his wife and son were nervously waiting for him to say something.  But Cho decided that this couldn't go on any longer.  "It's been a pleasure to meet you, Mister Diggory, Missus Diggory, but I have a House meeting to attend.  If you'll pardon me."  She turned to go, walked up two of the stone steps, then turned back to the Diggory family: "Your son deserves the prize and I hope he gets it."  She spun around and almost ran up the steps to the castle.  Once inside, she broke into a run, not stopping until she got to the tapestry.

"Houyhnhnm."

The tapestry opened.  She dashed inside, through the bookcase and into the Common Room.  Once there, she screamed.

Raina was just coming down the steps from the dormitory.  "What's wrong?"

"Cedric's father!  Two minutes with the man and I couldn't bear another second of him!  Why does he have to be like that?!"

"Are you sure it wasn't my father?  He can be that way sometimes."

"I don't want to think they're all that way sometimes.  Is Letitia around?  Does she have any more Contentment Draught?"

"Snape made her destroy all the extra potion once the O.W.L.s were over.  Surely there's something you can read to calm you down?"

Cho shrugged and walked over to one of the bookcases.  She thought she was familiar with most of the books in the Common Room by now, but one thin black spine caught her eye.  It looked too new to have been there long.

It was a book of Robert Burns' poetry; the same book that Penny Clearwater had received as a Christmas present.  She looked inside for an inscription and found:

"For the Common Room of Ravenclaw, the best library in the best House in the best school I will ever know.  And thanks to CC for listening, for talking, for being a friend."

Why hadn't she told Cho?  Why hadn't SOMEONE told her about this book?  She took it outside to the stone steps, as she'd originally planned, and started reading.  Burns' Scots dialect was like trying to read runes—a class she detested, but it was still interesting.

She was still reading it just before noon when Gabrielle Delacour, Fleur's little sister, ran up the steps toward Cho.

"'Allo!  I'm looking for you!"

"Yes?"

"Monsieur Cedric, he wants you to meet with him."

"What, now?"

Gabrielle nodded.  "'E looked very sad."

Cho got up, put the book in a pocket of her robes, and started down the steps.

"Wait!  He did not say where!"

"I know where.  Thanks, Gabrielle."

She went straight to the garden.  The door was open and she saw Cedric pacing frantically back and forth.

"What's wrong?  Where are your parents?"

"Having lunch with Dumbledore and the Ministry blokes, I think.  Oh, dad's in rare form today.  As soon as you left, Potter shows up, and he starts goading him about last year's match.  My mum had to bark at him to stop it."

"But that isn't what you wanted to tell me, is it?"

Cedric looked at her, sat heavily on the stone bench and shook his head.  "We have a problem."

"Meaning that your father doesn't like me?"

"It, it goes deeper than that."

"How bad can it be?"  He tried to speak, but couldn't.  "Cedric, I have to know.  What did he say exactly?"

Cedric looked up into her eyes, and she could see that he could start crying in a moment.  "Cho, whatever I say, please remember they're his words . . ."

"Tell me!"

Cedric sighed as if his he was giving up his spirit.  "He said, 'Well, sunny Jim, looks like nobody's ever told you about the birds and the bees.  Well, these are the facts of life: you are my only son and heir.  Your mother and I aren't about to go and get another one.  You are the one who will carry on the Diggory name.  And I'll be damned if that name is going to some squinty-eyed little alien.'"

Cho found her mouth was hanging open.  She was prepared for rough language, but she wasn't prepared for the effect the words had on her.  Coldly and levelly, she asked, "And your mother?"

Cedric swallowed.  "No help there, I'm afraid.  Oh, she didn't agree with him, exactly.  She just said, 'You two are really too young to know about such things.'"

There was an awkward moment of silence.  Cho finally asked, "So?"

Cedric simply shook his head.  "I don't know what to do."

Those words made Cho angrier than she could remember being.  "How could you not know?!  Don't tell me you think they might be right!"

"They're not; of course they're not.  But . . ."

"But what?"

"He's my father!  I can't just tell him to disown me."

"Why not?!  That's what I've done!  I've had to defy my family for your sake, and that means a lot more to me; you don't have hundreds of generations of ancestors to contend with.  Stand up to them!"

Cedric opened and closed his mouth, but no sounds came out.

"Never mind," Cho snapped impatiently.  "You obviously have too many things on your mind.  I'll meet you after the Tournament, and maybe, if you've learned how to face down whatever monsters they have, you'll have figured out how to love me.  Good luck."  She ran out of the garden, determined not to start crying until she was safely in her room.

xxx

She couldn't stay in her room for long; the other girls were constantly in and out, dropping things off or picking things up or preparing for the festivities of the Third Task—festivities that Cho wanted no part of.  She ended up going to the library and hiding among the rear stacks.

Part of her hated herself, told her to find Cedric, apologize, get on her knees and bang her forehead on the ground in the old Chinese kowtow, just to let him know that she still loved him, that she would always love him, that they would someday be together forever until death do us part.  But then the other side would answer back: can you really hope for that?  With Cedric not having spine enough to defend you to his parents?  How could he insult you like that, abandoning you without a fight?

She couldn't see a clear way around the dilemma, and hoped that Cedric would sort it out tomorrow or the next day.  Or, better, tonight.  If Harry Potter won the Third Task—which could happen, since he should have won the first and almost won the second—then everyone would go back to fussing over him and nobody would bother Cedric, and she could even see him again tonight, when they could sit down and have a good long talk about everything that they still needed to say.

She hadn't eaten much at breakfast, and had missed lunch altogether, so that, by the time dinner was ready to start, she was very hungry.  However, just as she was leaving the library, Madam Pince called her name.

"Miss Chang!  Here's someone who's been looking for you."

At first she hoped it might be Cedric, apologizing for what happened, ready to defend her with all his strength—but she saw the librarian had been speaking with Madam Phyllida Sprout.

"Come with me, Miss Chang," the Herbology professor said, and marched out of the library without a glance back.

Cho practically had to run to keep up.  Madam Sprout seemed unconcerned with whether Cho was behind her or not.  She led Cho to the greenhouses, then to the wall.  The door was open.

"Miss Chang, can you explain this?"

Cho looked in to the garden, and was struck with a terrible chill.  It had been destroyed.  Every plant that the two of them had planted had been uprooted.  No, that was putting it too mildly; the fierceness with which the plants had been torn from the ground, and the viciousness with which they had been tossed aside, made the garden seem as if a werewolf had attacked it.

Cho's legs could barely carry her to the stone bench, where she fell rather than sat down.

"Miss Chang?"

Not daring to believe it, or not wanting to, Cho simply said, "We quarreled."

Madam Sprout looked around at the damage done.  "Cedric has always needed an outlet of some kind when the pressure becomes too great.  I think you pushed him past his limit."

"Is he all right?  Where is he?!"

"Relax, Miss Chang.  He's with the other Champions; I saw him an hour ago preparing for the Third Task.  He was acting a bit unusual; very decisive, as if he'd sorted out everything in his life.  I had to come back up here to lock up, noticed the door was open, and you know the rest."

Cho couldn't take this all in.  "Decisive?  What does that mean?"

"I can't be sure.  Cedric has always been eager to please, from the day he came here and I had him in Hufflepuff.  But he seems to have made some sort of choice."

"Them or me?" Cho said under her breath.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing."

"We'll have to get along now; things are about to start.  I'll walk you to the stadium."

"No!  That is, I forgot something in my room."  Without another word, Cho dashed back to Ravenclaw, went up to her dormitory, which was now empty except for Jan's cat Coriander, threw herself on her bed and sobbed.

"Forgive me, Cedric," she moaned into the pillow.  "I'll make it up to you, I swear.  Just get through the Tournament so I can see you again."

xxx

Jan Nugginbridge couldn't find a seat, so she hit on another solution.  She was on her broom, watching from behind the last row of seats in what had been the Quidditch stadium.  From her high vantage point she could see almost everything: she saw Krum attacking Diggory (and what looked like Moody making Krum attack–but that wasn't possible); at least, she sort-of saw it.  She was almost blinded by Cedric's Glow, which was more intense than any she had ever seen.  She saw the giant spider attack, she saw Cedric and Harry talking, going toward the Cup, touching it together…and vanishing.

Then she realized something else; she didn't see Cho.  She wasn't sitting anywhere near the Diggory family, or near any of the Ravenclaws.  She should have been able to see the Glow at least.  On a hunch, she wheeled her broom around, headed straight for their dormitory tower.  As she drew near, she could see the Glow from their dormitory window.

Through the window, she saw Cho sitting on the edge of her bed, holding Coriander to her as if it were a stuffed animal.  She seemed to have been crying.  Jan pounded on the window.  The cat jumped out of Cho's grasp.  Cho, red-eyed and bewildered, ran to open the window.

"Wot th' hell are yeh doin' here?" were the first words out of Jan's mouth.

Cho tried to pull herself together.  "Is the Tournament over, then?"

Then Cho recognized the look of worry and fear on Jan's face.  "Cho … summat's gone horrible wrong."

xxx

to be continued in part 63, wherein Cho learns something about Eunice Murray that she never knew

A/N: The almost unpronounceable password is the name of the race of intelligent horses in Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels".