OR DIE TRYING: CHO CHANG'S SIXTH YEAR
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
A/N: You'll note that I had Roger Davies as two years ahead of Cho in "Or Die Trying"; "Order of the Phoenix" showed that he was only one year ahead. So call it a Flint. Likewise, when I arbitrarily decided that Cho was a supporter of Puddlemere United; it wasn't until "Phoenix" that JKR confirmed she was really a supporter of Tutshill. I intend to go back and change the early Flints accordingly, someday.
xxx
6. Shopping For Something New
Cho awoke on 30 August to find a strange owl on her windowsill. At last, the school owl with her book list had arrived.
They're cutting it close, she said to herself as she untied the letter. She quickly read through the letter signed by Assistant Headmistress McGonagall and went straight to the booklist. Everything looked pretty much as expected. "The Guide to Advanced Transfiguration", "Moste Potente Potions", "Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes" for Flitwick, "Ancient Runes Made Easy," ... Ah; this is a mistake. I told Flitwick I wouldn't take Divination this year, but "The Eye and the I Ching" is still on the list. I'll talk to him about it when I get there. Miranda Goshawk's "Standard Book of Spells", Volume 6. And--that's strange. The Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook for Sixth-Years ought to be Eggdonny's "Light Shall Be Your Shield," and instead they've got this "Defensive Magical Theory" by Wilbert Slinkhard. Cedric told me about his classes and he never...
Cho had to stop and sit on her bed. The memories flooded into her again: the long hours in their secret garden behind the greenhouses, where they'd spent the spring of the year planting flowers and talking and holding each other and tasting the kisses from each other's lips... It was all she could do not to cry out, but, after a few very long minutes, she was able to compose herself again, and slow her breathing, which she found had become short and shallow.
She thought again, as she had several times that month, about doing something rash. She knew what she had to do, and she knew her mother would hate her for it.
She went down to breakfast in her school robes. "The school letter came this morning," she announced to her parents. "If you don't need me in the shoppe this afternoon, I'll get my books."
"The owls are rather late getting out this year, aren't they?" asked her father from behind a copy of the Daily Prophet. "I expect Flourish and Blotts'll be a madhouse. Are they open tomorrow? You could go then."
"But tomorrow's the last day, so it'll be even worse, what with witches having to get here from out of town and everything."
"Hasn't it occurred to you that our shoppe will be a madhouse as well?" Lotus asked crossly.
This time, Cho decided not to rise to her mother's bait. "If I get my books today and pack half my things tonight and the rest on the morning of the first, then I can help in the shoppe all day tomorrow."
"Sounds like a good time management plan to me," Chang Xiemin said as he folded the newspaper to an inner page, took his wand from his belt and drew a circle around an article about an increased budget allocation for the Pest Advisory Board at the Ministry. A glowing copy of the article appeared, floating six inches above the table. He plucked it out of the air, folded it and put it in the pocket of his robes. "I've got a meeting with them next week; you remember," he told his wife. Lotus simply nodded. "There's some good money to be made if I get in with the right wizards."
Cho was out of her seat before her father had finished speaking. "I'll open up." She went downstairs, trying very hard not to let the rage she felt show on her face. Rage; that was the only word for it. She despised Amos Diggory, who worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Amos had forbidden his son Cedric to see Cho, and since then Cho had blamed him for his son's death--in part, at least.
At the foot of the stairs, Cho stopped, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then went through the curtain to open the Chang family herb shoppe for the day.
xxx
They weren't as busy as the bookstore, but the business was constant. Some of the older students came in looking for ingredients that Professor Severus Snape would require for Advanced Potions. Among these students was Roger Davies, captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team and now in his Seventh Year. He had started out trying to keep Cho off of the team, but now they were close friends. In fact, they both knew that Roger wanted to be closer than a friend to Cho, but she simply didn't feel that way about him.
"A pound of shredded dittany and two pounds of knotgrass," he told Cho; she offered him a small, weak smile and went off to fill his order. When she came back with two pouches of herbs, Roger put his hand on hers; Cho quickly jerked it away. "Listen," he whispered, "are you, erm, how are you?"
"I'll be all right," Cho sighed, not looking up into his eyes. Roger gave her two Galleons; she gave him change as if he were just another customer.
"Well. See you on the train, then."
Cho just gave a small nod of her head and went to help another customer.
At noon, Lotus went up to the apartment and came back down with a cold lunch for the two of them: marinated tofu and mushrooms, pickled cucumbers and a mixture of rice and barley. There was also a pot of tea. They ate in silence, and Cho emptied her teacup in one gulp. "I'll be back as soon as I can," she said to her mother as she was on her way out the door.
The worst of the summer heat was over but the day was still warm and sunny. As expected, Diagon Alley was full of shoppers, especially Hogwarts students on frantic last-minute shopping trips. Flourish and Blotts, the wizarding bookstore, was so crowded that Cho could barely move. She looked around at the students and, in many cases, their parents, and realized with a start that she hardly knew any of them, and that they were all younger than she. Look at them: so young, she thought. It hardly seems possible that I was that young once.
She gathered up her textbooks and found that she could afford Eggdonny's Dark Arts text as well as Slinkhart's and still have some Galleons to spare. She got into the queue to pay for her books, but the line was a slow one. By the time she left Flourish and Blotts, she realized that she had been in there for over an hour.
She looked up and down the crowded cobblestone lane, with Gringotts Bank glowing white and powerful at one end and her family's herb shoppe at the other. The idea she'd had for much of that month was still with her, and she knew that, if she didn't act on it now, she wouldn't have the courage to act on it again.
She looked at the shop she wanted to enter, but there was a crowd there, too. She would have to wait. She decided to pass the time in Quality Quidditch Supplies, and hoped the crowd would thin out in a little while.
The last time she was there was a year ago, just before the World Quidditch Cup, and most of the souvenirs of that momentous event were now gone. There were just a few pennants left, prices drastically slashed, in a barrel by the door, and they didn't even bother to flutter or cheer as Cho came in.
"Hey, that's you, isn't it? The Seeker." One of the owners of the store, a withered old wizard named Gridpipe, was behind the counter. Cho had impressed him the year before with her knowledge of the great Seeker Eunice Murray. Gridpipe had played for the Wimbourne Wasps in his youth, and had seen Murray in the twilight of her brilliant career.
Cho hadn't really planned to buy anything, but saw a display of badges for the Tutshill Tornados: two dark blue Ts on a pale blue ground. She'd supported Tutshill since she discovered Quidditch as a child, and the summer after her first year at Hogwarts, her father had actually given her a Portkey that sent her to the Tutshill stadium where she could practice while she was away from school.
"A Tutshill badge, please," she said, smiling as best she could.
"Been sellin' a lot o' those," Gridpipe smiled. "O' course, they're havin' their best season in years. Could go all the way."
"I hope so," she nodded, realizing with a start that she had no idea what Tutshill had been doing for the past two months. The end of the Tournament had driven Tutshill, and so many other things, out of her mind...
"Here, you were supposed to tell me when you were playin' last year, and I heard nary a word."
Cho kept her eyes on the two Sickles she handed Gridpipe. "That was because we didn't play last year. They canceled Quidditch for the..." Her voice caught. "For the Tri-Wizard Tournament."
Gridpipe's hand paused for a moment as he handed her the badge. "Ah. Bad business, that. Did yeh know him, then; the one what was killed?"
It was all Cho could do to nod her head and say, just above a whisper, "He was a Seeker, too."
Gridpipe nodded his head as if he understood. "I'll look for yeh this year, then."
"Thank you," Cho muttered, without even being sure if she was thanking him for the badge or for the compliment of making the journey to Hogwarts to see her play. "Sorry, but I have to..." Cho left the sentence unfinished as she turned and almost ran out of the shop.
She found that her heart was racing again; she waited until it and her breathing slowed. She looked across the lane; the shop she wanted was empty now. She checked her money pouch; she still had enough. Her throat went suddenly dry as she crossed the lane and entered Madam Tituba's Treasure Tresses.
Madam Tituba was a large, round-bodied and round-faced witch in vibrant red and orange robes, with a smile as wide as her face and skin as black as the ropes of hair that hung down from under her hat. "Welcaam teh mi paahlah," she said in a thick Jamaican accent as she beamed at Cho. "I know I nevah see yah heah befoah. Siddown, den." Cho steeled herself and sat in the beautician witch's chair.
Madam Tituba drew Cho's hair out behind her, letting it slip through her fingers. "Ah, dis a fine beautiful head o' hair. Yah tek good care, I kin tell. So what would yah want from me now?"
Cho took a deep breath, closed her eyes and said, "I want it cut off. All of it."
After ten seconds of silence, Cho opened her eyes again. Madam Tituba was standing behind Cho with a somber, almost sad look on her face. "Chile, I doan' usually say no to de customah, but it would be a crime..."
"But I ... you don't understand," Cho said, trying to hold onto her emotions but letting a single tear escape down her cheek. "Something ... happened. I need to change myself. Please do this for me."
"Yah woan' find what yeh're lookin' for dat way."
"But I have to do something! It..." Cho almost lost control again; she had to stop and compose herself. "It hurts too much to remember."
They kept it up for several more minutes, with Madam Tituba declining and Cho insisting. Finally, realizing that Cho was not going to leave without a change, the black witch waved her wand. Cho's hair immediately was shortened, ending just below her shoulders instead of at the small of her back.
"Yah unnerstan' dis is an example," Madam Tituba said. "I've not cut nuttin' off yet. Dis is jest an illusion, teh see if yah like it like dis."
Cho reached behind her head, pulling her hair up until it seemed to make a respectable ponytail, while with her hair down it appeared from the front as if nothing had been cut off. The weight of her hair was still in her hands, even if she couldn't see it. She let go and closed her eyes. "This will be fine."
A single pass of Madam Tituba's wand, and it was done. More than half of Cho Chang's hair, fully a yard long, lay on the floor of the shop. Madam Tituba picked it up carefully, as if it were a favourite pet that had died. "Yah know I can re-attach dis tomorrah or de next day..."
"I won't want that," Cho said, as she took five Galleons and gave them to Madam Tituba. "I won't change my mind. Burn it or bury it or do what you wish. Thank you."
Cho quickly left the shop. She had hoped that the change would make her feel better, or at least different. It didn't. But she wasn't going to have it undone.
As Cho knew she would, her mother took one look at her and screamed. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT? THAT WAS YOUR TREASURE!"
"I--I can't explain it. I had to make a change."
"So why didn't you just cut it all off! Become a nun! That's a change, too!!" Before Cho could say another word, Lotus threw up her hands in disgust and stormed up the steps to their apartment. For the next two days, she didn't say a single word to Cho.
xxx
to be continued in part 7, wherein Cho meets friends on the Hogwarts Express and sets off the Great Poster Argument
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
A/N: You'll note that I had Roger Davies as two years ahead of Cho in "Or Die Trying"; "Order of the Phoenix" showed that he was only one year ahead. So call it a Flint. Likewise, when I arbitrarily decided that Cho was a supporter of Puddlemere United; it wasn't until "Phoenix" that JKR confirmed she was really a supporter of Tutshill. I intend to go back and change the early Flints accordingly, someday.
xxx
6. Shopping For Something New
Cho awoke on 30 August to find a strange owl on her windowsill. At last, the school owl with her book list had arrived.
They're cutting it close, she said to herself as she untied the letter. She quickly read through the letter signed by Assistant Headmistress McGonagall and went straight to the booklist. Everything looked pretty much as expected. "The Guide to Advanced Transfiguration", "Moste Potente Potions", "Olde and Forgotten Bewitchments and Charmes" for Flitwick, "Ancient Runes Made Easy," ... Ah; this is a mistake. I told Flitwick I wouldn't take Divination this year, but "The Eye and the I Ching" is still on the list. I'll talk to him about it when I get there. Miranda Goshawk's "Standard Book of Spells", Volume 6. And--that's strange. The Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook for Sixth-Years ought to be Eggdonny's "Light Shall Be Your Shield," and instead they've got this "Defensive Magical Theory" by Wilbert Slinkhard. Cedric told me about his classes and he never...
Cho had to stop and sit on her bed. The memories flooded into her again: the long hours in their secret garden behind the greenhouses, where they'd spent the spring of the year planting flowers and talking and holding each other and tasting the kisses from each other's lips... It was all she could do not to cry out, but, after a few very long minutes, she was able to compose herself again, and slow her breathing, which she found had become short and shallow.
She thought again, as she had several times that month, about doing something rash. She knew what she had to do, and she knew her mother would hate her for it.
She went down to breakfast in her school robes. "The school letter came this morning," she announced to her parents. "If you don't need me in the shoppe this afternoon, I'll get my books."
"The owls are rather late getting out this year, aren't they?" asked her father from behind a copy of the Daily Prophet. "I expect Flourish and Blotts'll be a madhouse. Are they open tomorrow? You could go then."
"But tomorrow's the last day, so it'll be even worse, what with witches having to get here from out of town and everything."
"Hasn't it occurred to you that our shoppe will be a madhouse as well?" Lotus asked crossly.
This time, Cho decided not to rise to her mother's bait. "If I get my books today and pack half my things tonight and the rest on the morning of the first, then I can help in the shoppe all day tomorrow."
"Sounds like a good time management plan to me," Chang Xiemin said as he folded the newspaper to an inner page, took his wand from his belt and drew a circle around an article about an increased budget allocation for the Pest Advisory Board at the Ministry. A glowing copy of the article appeared, floating six inches above the table. He plucked it out of the air, folded it and put it in the pocket of his robes. "I've got a meeting with them next week; you remember," he told his wife. Lotus simply nodded. "There's some good money to be made if I get in with the right wizards."
Cho was out of her seat before her father had finished speaking. "I'll open up." She went downstairs, trying very hard not to let the rage she felt show on her face. Rage; that was the only word for it. She despised Amos Diggory, who worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Amos had forbidden his son Cedric to see Cho, and since then Cho had blamed him for his son's death--in part, at least.
At the foot of the stairs, Cho stopped, closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then went through the curtain to open the Chang family herb shoppe for the day.
xxx
They weren't as busy as the bookstore, but the business was constant. Some of the older students came in looking for ingredients that Professor Severus Snape would require for Advanced Potions. Among these students was Roger Davies, captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team and now in his Seventh Year. He had started out trying to keep Cho off of the team, but now they were close friends. In fact, they both knew that Roger wanted to be closer than a friend to Cho, but she simply didn't feel that way about him.
"A pound of shredded dittany and two pounds of knotgrass," he told Cho; she offered him a small, weak smile and went off to fill his order. When she came back with two pouches of herbs, Roger put his hand on hers; Cho quickly jerked it away. "Listen," he whispered, "are you, erm, how are you?"
"I'll be all right," Cho sighed, not looking up into his eyes. Roger gave her two Galleons; she gave him change as if he were just another customer.
"Well. See you on the train, then."
Cho just gave a small nod of her head and went to help another customer.
At noon, Lotus went up to the apartment and came back down with a cold lunch for the two of them: marinated tofu and mushrooms, pickled cucumbers and a mixture of rice and barley. There was also a pot of tea. They ate in silence, and Cho emptied her teacup in one gulp. "I'll be back as soon as I can," she said to her mother as she was on her way out the door.
The worst of the summer heat was over but the day was still warm and sunny. As expected, Diagon Alley was full of shoppers, especially Hogwarts students on frantic last-minute shopping trips. Flourish and Blotts, the wizarding bookstore, was so crowded that Cho could barely move. She looked around at the students and, in many cases, their parents, and realized with a start that she hardly knew any of them, and that they were all younger than she. Look at them: so young, she thought. It hardly seems possible that I was that young once.
She gathered up her textbooks and found that she could afford Eggdonny's Dark Arts text as well as Slinkhart's and still have some Galleons to spare. She got into the queue to pay for her books, but the line was a slow one. By the time she left Flourish and Blotts, she realized that she had been in there for over an hour.
She looked up and down the crowded cobblestone lane, with Gringotts Bank glowing white and powerful at one end and her family's herb shoppe at the other. The idea she'd had for much of that month was still with her, and she knew that, if she didn't act on it now, she wouldn't have the courage to act on it again.
She looked at the shop she wanted to enter, but there was a crowd there, too. She would have to wait. She decided to pass the time in Quality Quidditch Supplies, and hoped the crowd would thin out in a little while.
The last time she was there was a year ago, just before the World Quidditch Cup, and most of the souvenirs of that momentous event were now gone. There were just a few pennants left, prices drastically slashed, in a barrel by the door, and they didn't even bother to flutter or cheer as Cho came in.
"Hey, that's you, isn't it? The Seeker." One of the owners of the store, a withered old wizard named Gridpipe, was behind the counter. Cho had impressed him the year before with her knowledge of the great Seeker Eunice Murray. Gridpipe had played for the Wimbourne Wasps in his youth, and had seen Murray in the twilight of her brilliant career.
Cho hadn't really planned to buy anything, but saw a display of badges for the Tutshill Tornados: two dark blue Ts on a pale blue ground. She'd supported Tutshill since she discovered Quidditch as a child, and the summer after her first year at Hogwarts, her father had actually given her a Portkey that sent her to the Tutshill stadium where she could practice while she was away from school.
"A Tutshill badge, please," she said, smiling as best she could.
"Been sellin' a lot o' those," Gridpipe smiled. "O' course, they're havin' their best season in years. Could go all the way."
"I hope so," she nodded, realizing with a start that she had no idea what Tutshill had been doing for the past two months. The end of the Tournament had driven Tutshill, and so many other things, out of her mind...
"Here, you were supposed to tell me when you were playin' last year, and I heard nary a word."
Cho kept her eyes on the two Sickles she handed Gridpipe. "That was because we didn't play last year. They canceled Quidditch for the..." Her voice caught. "For the Tri-Wizard Tournament."
Gridpipe's hand paused for a moment as he handed her the badge. "Ah. Bad business, that. Did yeh know him, then; the one what was killed?"
It was all Cho could do to nod her head and say, just above a whisper, "He was a Seeker, too."
Gridpipe nodded his head as if he understood. "I'll look for yeh this year, then."
"Thank you," Cho muttered, without even being sure if she was thanking him for the badge or for the compliment of making the journey to Hogwarts to see her play. "Sorry, but I have to..." Cho left the sentence unfinished as she turned and almost ran out of the shop.
She found that her heart was racing again; she waited until it and her breathing slowed. She looked across the lane; the shop she wanted was empty now. She checked her money pouch; she still had enough. Her throat went suddenly dry as she crossed the lane and entered Madam Tituba's Treasure Tresses.
Madam Tituba was a large, round-bodied and round-faced witch in vibrant red and orange robes, with a smile as wide as her face and skin as black as the ropes of hair that hung down from under her hat. "Welcaam teh mi paahlah," she said in a thick Jamaican accent as she beamed at Cho. "I know I nevah see yah heah befoah. Siddown, den." Cho steeled herself and sat in the beautician witch's chair.
Madam Tituba drew Cho's hair out behind her, letting it slip through her fingers. "Ah, dis a fine beautiful head o' hair. Yah tek good care, I kin tell. So what would yah want from me now?"
Cho took a deep breath, closed her eyes and said, "I want it cut off. All of it."
After ten seconds of silence, Cho opened her eyes again. Madam Tituba was standing behind Cho with a somber, almost sad look on her face. "Chile, I doan' usually say no to de customah, but it would be a crime..."
"But I ... you don't understand," Cho said, trying to hold onto her emotions but letting a single tear escape down her cheek. "Something ... happened. I need to change myself. Please do this for me."
"Yah woan' find what yeh're lookin' for dat way."
"But I have to do something! It..." Cho almost lost control again; she had to stop and compose herself. "It hurts too much to remember."
They kept it up for several more minutes, with Madam Tituba declining and Cho insisting. Finally, realizing that Cho was not going to leave without a change, the black witch waved her wand. Cho's hair immediately was shortened, ending just below her shoulders instead of at the small of her back.
"Yah unnerstan' dis is an example," Madam Tituba said. "I've not cut nuttin' off yet. Dis is jest an illusion, teh see if yah like it like dis."
Cho reached behind her head, pulling her hair up until it seemed to make a respectable ponytail, while with her hair down it appeared from the front as if nothing had been cut off. The weight of her hair was still in her hands, even if she couldn't see it. She let go and closed her eyes. "This will be fine."
A single pass of Madam Tituba's wand, and it was done. More than half of Cho Chang's hair, fully a yard long, lay on the floor of the shop. Madam Tituba picked it up carefully, as if it were a favourite pet that had died. "Yah know I can re-attach dis tomorrah or de next day..."
"I won't want that," Cho said, as she took five Galleons and gave them to Madam Tituba. "I won't change my mind. Burn it or bury it or do what you wish. Thank you."
Cho quickly left the shop. She had hoped that the change would make her feel better, or at least different. It didn't. But she wasn't going to have it undone.
As Cho knew she would, her mother took one look at her and screamed. "WHY DID YOU DO THAT? THAT WAS YOUR TREASURE!"
"I--I can't explain it. I had to make a change."
"So why didn't you just cut it all off! Become a nun! That's a change, too!!" Before Cho could say another word, Lotus threw up her hands in disgust and stormed up the steps to their apartment. For the next two days, she didn't say a single word to Cho.
xxx
to be continued in part 7, wherein Cho meets friends on the Hogwarts Express and sets off the Great Poster Argument