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
xxx
7. Back to Hogwarts
Cho Chang and her father sat in the back of a Muggle cab headed for King's Cross Station. Cho was quiet and sullen, her arms folded over her chest. Her father looked through the window at the buildings he had passed a dozen times. He had never felt so distant from his daughter.
After the argument over her haircut, Lotus simply refused to say a word to her daughter. This suited Cho just fine. But her father wanted to say something, especially since it would be months before he saw her again.
That morning, at breakfast, he had simply said, "I'm going with you onto the platform this time. I'm going to see you on the train."
Cho, who had other plans, plans she'd kept hidden from her parents, was outraged. "I'm not a child! I can do this all myself!"
"I know that, but things have changed."
It would make no sense denying the truth to her father: that she still had nightmares about the death of Cedric Diggory. "But with you on the platform, it'd be as if you were pointing the finger at me, for all the world to stare at! Please let me just get on the train."
"I'm worried about you, and you make me out to be some sort of criminal."
"I'm not making anything. Why can't you just leave me alone?"
"Because I know it'll be difficult for you. You might want a little help."
"I'll have friends on the train, if I need help."
Lotus glared at her daughter, still not speaking but aching to say something to Cho. And Cho knew exactly what her mother wanted to say: that her "friends" hadn't bothered to send a single owl in the two months of the break, that they wouldn't know how to react to Cho at Hogwarts, that those gwailo witches couldn't be counted on for anything...
Cho gritted her teeth and jumped out of the cab as soon as it stopped at the station. She loaded up the cart with her luggage and quick-walked into the station as if her father wasn't even there.
After he settled the cab fare, he caught up with her halfway to the platform. "You didn't think you could get rid of me, did you? I'm a lot like you; we do whatever we have to do."
The barrier wasn't crowded; they were early. They passed through to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, where a few students, some of them with parents, were milling about.
Cho wanted to grab her trunk and put it on the train herself, but her father was just a step quicker, and carried it on himself. She had no choice now but to take Quan Yin and follow him.
He found an empty compartment toward the rear of the train and placed Cho's trunk there. Cho came in, turned her back to her father and placed Quan Yin's cage on the overhead rack. As soon as she did so, her father put his hands gently on her shoulders. He tried to be gentle, but she still cringed at his touch.
"You're not in a contest this year, you know," he said softly. "Don't try to be courageous if you don't need to be. Just take care of yourself. We both worry about you, believe it or not."
"I ... I know," she said, barely above a whisper, still with her back to him.
Chang Xiemin let go of his daughter's shoulders; they stood still for a minute. "Well, which is it," he asked; "are you too old now to kiss me goodbye, or am I too evil to get a kiss?"
Cho suddenly turned and threw her arms around her father. "I'm sorry, daddy," Cho said, again barely above a whisper. "I know I've been awful to you."
"I understand. Just do your best. And write to us; tell us how you are. And tell your Head of House if you really start having problems. You know what I mean."
Cho gave her father a quick peck on the cheek. "I know. Goodbye, daddy."
Seeing that he was being dismissed, he gave Cho a wry smile and left the carriage.
Cho actually watched him walk up the platform and through the barrier before she closed the door, then turned and started rummaging through her trunk.
xxx
Before the train started, two of the others from Cho's dormitory found her compartment and settled into it; the Prefect, Marietta Edgecombe, would of course ride with the other Prefects, and Jan Nugginbridge wouldn't board the train until later that day, when the Hogwarts Express stopped at Snitter's Run, near the border, to pick up students who lived in the North. But Diana Fairweather and Raina al-Qaba lived in London, like Cho, and they looked in the compartment and found a smiling Cho Chang, happy to see them, looking forward to the new school year, and eager to share what they had done over the summer.
They hardly noticed as the train pulled out of the station; they were still too busy chatting away about topics from Cho's haircut and her trip to the Continent ("Copenhagen and Amsterdam--both lovely little cities, but I really wasn't at my best and didn't get much out of them, I'm afraid") to the reunion of Raina and her cousin, who she hadn't seen in four years.
"She's actually engaged!" Raina gushed, "and she's no older than me. And no, it's not what you think. She doesn't have anything in the cauldron, although I'm sure she will soon enough. We're fond of large families."
Diana clucked her tongue. "No offense, but I can't imagine living like that. Just staying at home all day with the little pups? I need to be out doing something." She then looked at Cho, as if asking her to agree.
"I--I'm not really sure now," Cho said, her voice a bit hesitant in spite of the smile on her face. "I mean, my parents still expect me to get into the family business, and sometimes I think I'd like the quiet. Things can change so quickly, after all. I'll probably just make up my mind when the time comes."
The others thought she was talking about Cedric, but that wasn't the case. She couldn't yet talk about why she had gone to those two European cities, both of which were major pockets of resistance during the war against Grindelwald.
Daddy tried to explain it to us, Cho thought as she half-listened to Diana talk about how she and her Muggle mother took part in an amateur theatre company. We went there because he believed me: Voldemort is alive again, and, sooner or later, there will be another war.
xxx
After a couple of hours, she felt that enough time had passed. Cho excused herself and started walking the corridors of the Express. She was out of practice as a Seeker, but she kept her gaze straight ahead while checking out the compartments from the corner of her eye. She saw the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, sitting still and very quiet. She knew exactly why, but kept a grip on her emotions. Not here, she scolded herself; not now! She saw compartment after compartment full of strangers, of children far younger than she. For a second, she felt that maybe she'd gotten on the wrong train.
Then, she saw him.
She walked past the compartment for a few steps, gathered herself, put on her sunniest smile, turned back and opened the compartment door.
"Oh...hello, Harry."
And was hit at once with the odour of Stinksap.
It was all she could do to keep the smile pasted on her face. One glance around the compartment told her the story: Neville Longbottom (Padma Patil had told the Ravenclaws all about how he had left a list of the Griffindor passwords lying about during the Sirius Black scare) had brought that plant, a Mimbulus mimbletonia, onto the train, and it had just sprayed the compartment and everyone in it. Cho also noted that one of those in the compartment was a Ravenclaw--Luna Lovegood. True to her House, Luna had had the presence of mind to hide behind a newspaper and avoid the worst of the plant. But not the others: Harry (who for some reason was holding a toad), Neville and Ginny Weasley (Cho remembered the business about the Chamber of Secrets).
With that smell in the air, the closest Cho could come to any kind of witty response was, "Um...bad time?"
Only then did she realize: Harry had taken the sap in the face. It covered his glasses. He didn't even know who she was yet! She could have retreated, but she stayed frozen in the door as Harry held the toad in one hand and wiped his glasses on his robes with the other.
"Oh...hi," he said, a blank look on his face. He's probably refusing to believe this is really happening, Cho thought; I know I am!
"Um..." Cho's mind, which had planned for, hoped for, this meeting, went blank. She could feel her face going red. "Well..." she tried again, "just thought I'd say hello...'bye then." She closed the door and, realizing she'd been holding her breath, let it all out in a rush.
Neville and his damned plant. She'd learned to avoid it years ago, when her parents introduced her to it under its more accurate Chinese name: a name which meant "Night Soil Defense".
xxx
Nobody at the Ravenclaw table thought there was anything odd about Cho until after the Sorting and after the feast, when the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher got up to speak, which was itself a novelty. The teacher herself, Madam Dolores Umbridge, was a short, squat little witch with bulging eyes that had a disconcerting way of seeming to look several directions at once.
Cho listened to a minute of her talk--some babble about tradition being as important as the new--then she turned to Marietta Edgecome and started chatting happily away, as if a professor wasn't addressing the Great Hall.
"I saw your mother over the summer--did she tell you? I really must thank her again. She was such a help in locating Penelope Clearwater--you remember her, of course..."
Others around her exchanged glances. Here she was nattering on about the summer while a professor was making a speech. Of course, it didn't take them long to realize that Umbridge wasn't saying much of anything anyway, and that others around the hall were, like Cho, ignoring the professor. It all may as well have been a class with Professor Binns.
Finally, Umbridge sat down and Headmaster Dumbledore dismissed everyone. Cho was feeling a bit unsteady, and was looking forward to a good night's sleep.
"Miss Chang."
Cho was surprised to see her Head of House, Professor Flitwick, standing next to her. She hadn't even seen him leave the Head Table.
"Good evening, Professor Flitwick. Did you have a nice summer? You know, there was an error in the book list--"
"Stop it, Miss Chang." The little wizard had a strange look on his face; Cho couldn't be sure if he was angry or sad. "I know, you see. I know exactly what you've done."
Cho had been afraid that he might notice, but decided to brazen it out. "I don't think I've done anything, Professor."
"How many times today, Miss Chang? Two; perhaps three? You are doing yourself more harm than you know. The after-effects--"
Cho cut him off in mid-sentence. "There's really no need for you to be worried, Professor. I'm feeling quite fine now, and I'm sure I'll get through the year in good form."
Professor Flitwick started to say something, then changed his mind. "I tried to warn you," he said sadly, shaking his head. He then walked back to the Head Table and started to talk to Madam Pomfrey. Cho was sure they were talking about her.
Nonsense, she decided. Let them think what they like. It's nothing urgent, and by morning everything will be normal again.
And it might have been, except for talk of the absent Libby Foggly and the Great Poster Row.
By the time she walked into the dormitory room at the top of the girls' staircase, the other four were already there, still talking about summer, as they unpacked.
"Marietta," Diana Fairweather asked, "have you heard anything at all?"
"Not a thing," the Prefect shook her head, "and you'd think they'd tell me. I don't think anyone knows what's become of Libby."
"I know," Cho said.
The room went immediately quiet. "Out wi' it then," Jan urged.
"The last night, during the Leaving Feast, I--I didn't eat anything. I just couldn't. I came back up here, and Libby was throwing everything in a trunk. She said she was leaving Hogwarts because ... because she was a Death Eater."
Cho was met by a stunned surprise from the other girls. "I didn't believe it myself," Cho went on, "until she showed me the Dark Mark, branded into her arm. She said her parents were Death Eaters, too, and wanted her to join them, now that Voldemort was alive again."
Only Jan and Raina flinched at the name; the others stared at Cho in silence. Then, after almost a minute passed, they turned back to their unpacking, as if Cho wasn't even there.
Now Cho was the silent, stunned one. "Don't you believe me?"
"Would you believe it?" Diana asked. "I mean, we've lived with Libby for five years, and this is the first we've heard about Death Eaters or any of it."
"On the other hand," Raina added, "she was always interested in the Dark Arts. Maybe a bit too interested."
"So are a lot of us here," Diana replied, "but that doesn't mean they'll turn bad. All of Slytherin would have left over the summer if that were true."
"An I think I would've seen summat wrong wi' 'er."
"She wasn't like that! She just kept everything a secret. Why won't you believe me?"
Diana sat on her bed. "Cho, you have to admit you're sounding a lot like Loony Lovegood."
By now, Cho was sitting on her bed as well, and starting to shudder. She knew why, even if the others didn't. Professor Flitwick had been right; she had dosed herself three times that day with Cheering Charms. Now they were all wearing off at once, and Cho was starting to feel the effects.
"Look what me mum gave me," Jan announced to the room; "kind of a back to school present." She had just attached to the wall over her bed a poster of the Weird Sisters. Apparently they were in concert when the picture was taken. Their lead singer, Kirley McCormack, smiled out of the picture, guitar in hand, while the others seemed to be waiting for him to say or do something.
"An' here's the best part." Jan touched a corner of the poster, and immediately McCormack strummed his guitar and started singing:
"It was a pumpkin sunset..."
That did it. Cho hadn't heard the song since the Yule Ball, since the night she learned to dance in the tender arms of Cedric Diggory. Her lip trembled as she tried to hold the feelings in, but it was no use. She threw herself onto her own bed, sobbing loudly into her pillow. The song played on from the poster, but Cho only half-heard it, overcome by her memories of Cedric and the knowledge that she would never see or touch him again. But as the song ended, she heard bits of muttered conversation from the other girls:
"Not givin' up me poster!"
"Didn't you stop and think?!"
"But why should we turn all our lives around just because she's lost it?"
"How can you SAY that about the poor thing?"
"Wha' poor thing? First that load o' toss about Libby an' now this?! Gonna be a bitch of a year, innit."
Cho stopped listening, pushed herself up off her bed with as much dignity as she could muster, and grabbed her pillow and blanket. "You needn't worry yourselves," she said to the room in general; "I'll sleep in the Common Room tonight, and make other arrangements in the morning." She ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her before the others could say a word.
The Common Room was deserted when she got there. Deserted, and somehow colder than she'd ever remembered it being. She dropped her pillow onto the daybed, wrapped the blanket around herself and sat down. What she was feeling was partly grief over Cedric, and partly a reaction to the Cheering Charms wearing off at once: a feeling of isolation, of being alone in a cold and uncaring world.
Now I've done it, she thought; I've ruined the day for all of them. Why did I come back? She threw herself back onto her pillow, sobbing in despair.
Nothing registered with her for several minutes, until she heard the voice:
"Come back upstairs, Cho."
It was Marianna Edgecombe, standing at the foot of the stairs to the girls' dorms. She was in a bathrobe and slippers.
"Why?" Cho sniffled. "So they can call me 'Loony' again?"
"Nobody's calling anyone anything," Marietta said as she sat on the end of the daybed. "I just reminded them of one simple thing: you've been a great friend to all of us through the years. We talked it out and took a vote, and you should come back upstairs."
"A vote?"
"It wasn't unanimous, I'm afraid, but we decided that, well, this is new to all of us, and you're really not to blame for going through a rough time. But we'll have to work on it together. Besides, how would it look for me if the Prefect can't patch up a simple little argument?"
For the first time that day, Cho Chang smiled. It wasn't the mindless grin brought on by Cheering Charms; it was a bit weak and apologetic and tearful, but it was Cho, smiling from her heart. She gathered up her pillow and blanket and walked up the stairs with Marietta.
xxx
to be continued in part 8, wherein Ron finds out about Cho's favorite team, the school finds out about Harry Potter's defiance, and Cho finds out about the Iron Quill.
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
7. Back to Hogwarts
Cho Chang and her father sat in the back of a Muggle cab headed for King's Cross Station. Cho was quiet and sullen, her arms folded over her chest. Her father looked through the window at the buildings he had passed a dozen times. He had never felt so distant from his daughter.
After the argument over her haircut, Lotus simply refused to say a word to her daughter. This suited Cho just fine. But her father wanted to say something, especially since it would be months before he saw her again.
That morning, at breakfast, he had simply said, "I'm going with you onto the platform this time. I'm going to see you on the train."
Cho, who had other plans, plans she'd kept hidden from her parents, was outraged. "I'm not a child! I can do this all myself!"
"I know that, but things have changed."
It would make no sense denying the truth to her father: that she still had nightmares about the death of Cedric Diggory. "But with you on the platform, it'd be as if you were pointing the finger at me, for all the world to stare at! Please let me just get on the train."
"I'm worried about you, and you make me out to be some sort of criminal."
"I'm not making anything. Why can't you just leave me alone?"
"Because I know it'll be difficult for you. You might want a little help."
"I'll have friends on the train, if I need help."
Lotus glared at her daughter, still not speaking but aching to say something to Cho. And Cho knew exactly what her mother wanted to say: that her "friends" hadn't bothered to send a single owl in the two months of the break, that they wouldn't know how to react to Cho at Hogwarts, that those gwailo witches couldn't be counted on for anything...
Cho gritted her teeth and jumped out of the cab as soon as it stopped at the station. She loaded up the cart with her luggage and quick-walked into the station as if her father wasn't even there.
After he settled the cab fare, he caught up with her halfway to the platform. "You didn't think you could get rid of me, did you? I'm a lot like you; we do whatever we have to do."
The barrier wasn't crowded; they were early. They passed through to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, where a few students, some of them with parents, were milling about.
Cho wanted to grab her trunk and put it on the train herself, but her father was just a step quicker, and carried it on himself. She had no choice now but to take Quan Yin and follow him.
He found an empty compartment toward the rear of the train and placed Cho's trunk there. Cho came in, turned her back to her father and placed Quan Yin's cage on the overhead rack. As soon as she did so, her father put his hands gently on her shoulders. He tried to be gentle, but she still cringed at his touch.
"You're not in a contest this year, you know," he said softly. "Don't try to be courageous if you don't need to be. Just take care of yourself. We both worry about you, believe it or not."
"I ... I know," she said, barely above a whisper, still with her back to him.
Chang Xiemin let go of his daughter's shoulders; they stood still for a minute. "Well, which is it," he asked; "are you too old now to kiss me goodbye, or am I too evil to get a kiss?"
Cho suddenly turned and threw her arms around her father. "I'm sorry, daddy," Cho said, again barely above a whisper. "I know I've been awful to you."
"I understand. Just do your best. And write to us; tell us how you are. And tell your Head of House if you really start having problems. You know what I mean."
Cho gave her father a quick peck on the cheek. "I know. Goodbye, daddy."
Seeing that he was being dismissed, he gave Cho a wry smile and left the carriage.
Cho actually watched him walk up the platform and through the barrier before she closed the door, then turned and started rummaging through her trunk.
xxx
Before the train started, two of the others from Cho's dormitory found her compartment and settled into it; the Prefect, Marietta Edgecombe, would of course ride with the other Prefects, and Jan Nugginbridge wouldn't board the train until later that day, when the Hogwarts Express stopped at Snitter's Run, near the border, to pick up students who lived in the North. But Diana Fairweather and Raina al-Qaba lived in London, like Cho, and they looked in the compartment and found a smiling Cho Chang, happy to see them, looking forward to the new school year, and eager to share what they had done over the summer.
They hardly noticed as the train pulled out of the station; they were still too busy chatting away about topics from Cho's haircut and her trip to the Continent ("Copenhagen and Amsterdam--both lovely little cities, but I really wasn't at my best and didn't get much out of them, I'm afraid") to the reunion of Raina and her cousin, who she hadn't seen in four years.
"She's actually engaged!" Raina gushed, "and she's no older than me. And no, it's not what you think. She doesn't have anything in the cauldron, although I'm sure she will soon enough. We're fond of large families."
Diana clucked her tongue. "No offense, but I can't imagine living like that. Just staying at home all day with the little pups? I need to be out doing something." She then looked at Cho, as if asking her to agree.
"I--I'm not really sure now," Cho said, her voice a bit hesitant in spite of the smile on her face. "I mean, my parents still expect me to get into the family business, and sometimes I think I'd like the quiet. Things can change so quickly, after all. I'll probably just make up my mind when the time comes."
The others thought she was talking about Cedric, but that wasn't the case. She couldn't yet talk about why she had gone to those two European cities, both of which were major pockets of resistance during the war against Grindelwald.
Daddy tried to explain it to us, Cho thought as she half-listened to Diana talk about how she and her Muggle mother took part in an amateur theatre company. We went there because he believed me: Voldemort is alive again, and, sooner or later, there will be another war.
xxx
After a couple of hours, she felt that enough time had passed. Cho excused herself and started walking the corridors of the Express. She was out of practice as a Seeker, but she kept her gaze straight ahead while checking out the compartments from the corner of her eye. She saw the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, sitting still and very quiet. She knew exactly why, but kept a grip on her emotions. Not here, she scolded herself; not now! She saw compartment after compartment full of strangers, of children far younger than she. For a second, she felt that maybe she'd gotten on the wrong train.
Then, she saw him.
She walked past the compartment for a few steps, gathered herself, put on her sunniest smile, turned back and opened the compartment door.
"Oh...hello, Harry."
And was hit at once with the odour of Stinksap.
It was all she could do to keep the smile pasted on her face. One glance around the compartment told her the story: Neville Longbottom (Padma Patil had told the Ravenclaws all about how he had left a list of the Griffindor passwords lying about during the Sirius Black scare) had brought that plant, a Mimbulus mimbletonia, onto the train, and it had just sprayed the compartment and everyone in it. Cho also noted that one of those in the compartment was a Ravenclaw--Luna Lovegood. True to her House, Luna had had the presence of mind to hide behind a newspaper and avoid the worst of the plant. But not the others: Harry (who for some reason was holding a toad), Neville and Ginny Weasley (Cho remembered the business about the Chamber of Secrets).
With that smell in the air, the closest Cho could come to any kind of witty response was, "Um...bad time?"
Only then did she realize: Harry had taken the sap in the face. It covered his glasses. He didn't even know who she was yet! She could have retreated, but she stayed frozen in the door as Harry held the toad in one hand and wiped his glasses on his robes with the other.
"Oh...hi," he said, a blank look on his face. He's probably refusing to believe this is really happening, Cho thought; I know I am!
"Um..." Cho's mind, which had planned for, hoped for, this meeting, went blank. She could feel her face going red. "Well..." she tried again, "just thought I'd say hello...'bye then." She closed the door and, realizing she'd been holding her breath, let it all out in a rush.
Neville and his damned plant. She'd learned to avoid it years ago, when her parents introduced her to it under its more accurate Chinese name: a name which meant "Night Soil Defense".
xxx
Nobody at the Ravenclaw table thought there was anything odd about Cho until after the Sorting and after the feast, when the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher got up to speak, which was itself a novelty. The teacher herself, Madam Dolores Umbridge, was a short, squat little witch with bulging eyes that had a disconcerting way of seeming to look several directions at once.
Cho listened to a minute of her talk--some babble about tradition being as important as the new--then she turned to Marietta Edgecome and started chatting happily away, as if a professor wasn't addressing the Great Hall.
"I saw your mother over the summer--did she tell you? I really must thank her again. She was such a help in locating Penelope Clearwater--you remember her, of course..."
Others around her exchanged glances. Here she was nattering on about the summer while a professor was making a speech. Of course, it didn't take them long to realize that Umbridge wasn't saying much of anything anyway, and that others around the hall were, like Cho, ignoring the professor. It all may as well have been a class with Professor Binns.
Finally, Umbridge sat down and Headmaster Dumbledore dismissed everyone. Cho was feeling a bit unsteady, and was looking forward to a good night's sleep.
"Miss Chang."
Cho was surprised to see her Head of House, Professor Flitwick, standing next to her. She hadn't even seen him leave the Head Table.
"Good evening, Professor Flitwick. Did you have a nice summer? You know, there was an error in the book list--"
"Stop it, Miss Chang." The little wizard had a strange look on his face; Cho couldn't be sure if he was angry or sad. "I know, you see. I know exactly what you've done."
Cho had been afraid that he might notice, but decided to brazen it out. "I don't think I've done anything, Professor."
"How many times today, Miss Chang? Two; perhaps three? You are doing yourself more harm than you know. The after-effects--"
Cho cut him off in mid-sentence. "There's really no need for you to be worried, Professor. I'm feeling quite fine now, and I'm sure I'll get through the year in good form."
Professor Flitwick started to say something, then changed his mind. "I tried to warn you," he said sadly, shaking his head. He then walked back to the Head Table and started to talk to Madam Pomfrey. Cho was sure they were talking about her.
Nonsense, she decided. Let them think what they like. It's nothing urgent, and by morning everything will be normal again.
And it might have been, except for talk of the absent Libby Foggly and the Great Poster Row.
By the time she walked into the dormitory room at the top of the girls' staircase, the other four were already there, still talking about summer, as they unpacked.
"Marietta," Diana Fairweather asked, "have you heard anything at all?"
"Not a thing," the Prefect shook her head, "and you'd think they'd tell me. I don't think anyone knows what's become of Libby."
"I know," Cho said.
The room went immediately quiet. "Out wi' it then," Jan urged.
"The last night, during the Leaving Feast, I--I didn't eat anything. I just couldn't. I came back up here, and Libby was throwing everything in a trunk. She said she was leaving Hogwarts because ... because she was a Death Eater."
Cho was met by a stunned surprise from the other girls. "I didn't believe it myself," Cho went on, "until she showed me the Dark Mark, branded into her arm. She said her parents were Death Eaters, too, and wanted her to join them, now that Voldemort was alive again."
Only Jan and Raina flinched at the name; the others stared at Cho in silence. Then, after almost a minute passed, they turned back to their unpacking, as if Cho wasn't even there.
Now Cho was the silent, stunned one. "Don't you believe me?"
"Would you believe it?" Diana asked. "I mean, we've lived with Libby for five years, and this is the first we've heard about Death Eaters or any of it."
"On the other hand," Raina added, "she was always interested in the Dark Arts. Maybe a bit too interested."
"So are a lot of us here," Diana replied, "but that doesn't mean they'll turn bad. All of Slytherin would have left over the summer if that were true."
"An I think I would've seen summat wrong wi' 'er."
"She wasn't like that! She just kept everything a secret. Why won't you believe me?"
Diana sat on her bed. "Cho, you have to admit you're sounding a lot like Loony Lovegood."
By now, Cho was sitting on her bed as well, and starting to shudder. She knew why, even if the others didn't. Professor Flitwick had been right; she had dosed herself three times that day with Cheering Charms. Now they were all wearing off at once, and Cho was starting to feel the effects.
"Look what me mum gave me," Jan announced to the room; "kind of a back to school present." She had just attached to the wall over her bed a poster of the Weird Sisters. Apparently they were in concert when the picture was taken. Their lead singer, Kirley McCormack, smiled out of the picture, guitar in hand, while the others seemed to be waiting for him to say or do something.
"An' here's the best part." Jan touched a corner of the poster, and immediately McCormack strummed his guitar and started singing:
"It was a pumpkin sunset..."
That did it. Cho hadn't heard the song since the Yule Ball, since the night she learned to dance in the tender arms of Cedric Diggory. Her lip trembled as she tried to hold the feelings in, but it was no use. She threw herself onto her own bed, sobbing loudly into her pillow. The song played on from the poster, but Cho only half-heard it, overcome by her memories of Cedric and the knowledge that she would never see or touch him again. But as the song ended, she heard bits of muttered conversation from the other girls:
"Not givin' up me poster!"
"Didn't you stop and think?!"
"But why should we turn all our lives around just because she's lost it?"
"How can you SAY that about the poor thing?"
"Wha' poor thing? First that load o' toss about Libby an' now this?! Gonna be a bitch of a year, innit."
Cho stopped listening, pushed herself up off her bed with as much dignity as she could muster, and grabbed her pillow and blanket. "You needn't worry yourselves," she said to the room in general; "I'll sleep in the Common Room tonight, and make other arrangements in the morning." She ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her before the others could say a word.
The Common Room was deserted when she got there. Deserted, and somehow colder than she'd ever remembered it being. She dropped her pillow onto the daybed, wrapped the blanket around herself and sat down. What she was feeling was partly grief over Cedric, and partly a reaction to the Cheering Charms wearing off at once: a feeling of isolation, of being alone in a cold and uncaring world.
Now I've done it, she thought; I've ruined the day for all of them. Why did I come back? She threw herself back onto her pillow, sobbing in despair.
Nothing registered with her for several minutes, until she heard the voice:
"Come back upstairs, Cho."
It was Marianna Edgecombe, standing at the foot of the stairs to the girls' dorms. She was in a bathrobe and slippers.
"Why?" Cho sniffled. "So they can call me 'Loony' again?"
"Nobody's calling anyone anything," Marietta said as she sat on the end of the daybed. "I just reminded them of one simple thing: you've been a great friend to all of us through the years. We talked it out and took a vote, and you should come back upstairs."
"A vote?"
"It wasn't unanimous, I'm afraid, but we decided that, well, this is new to all of us, and you're really not to blame for going through a rough time. But we'll have to work on it together. Besides, how would it look for me if the Prefect can't patch up a simple little argument?"
For the first time that day, Cho Chang smiled. It wasn't the mindless grin brought on by Cheering Charms; it was a bit weak and apologetic and tearful, but it was Cho, smiling from her heart. She gathered up her pillow and blanket and walked up the stairs with Marietta.
xxx
to be continued in part 8, wherein Ron finds out about Cho's favorite team, the school finds out about Harry Potter's defiance, and Cho finds out about the Iron Quill.