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
23. The Army and the Team
Thursday evening answered Marietta's question: what would happen at the next meeting of Dumbledore's Army, after Harry and Cho's disastrous date at Madam Puddifott's? At that evening's meeting, Harry was congratulated by almost all the members of the DA, who kept pressing him with questions based on the interview. It kept him from starting the lessons on time. But so did the absence of Cho and Marietta.
Marietta had seemed to Cho to be stalling, finding one reason or another not to go to the meeting just yet, until Cho finally put her foot down.
"If you'd rather not go at all tonight, just say so!"
"I would have thought YOU'D rather not go tonight, after that Hogsmeade business."
"That's all over and done."
"Are you certain?"
Cho, who really wasn't certain, bit her lip, then smiled. "Only one way to find out."
Once they were in the corridors, Cho grabbed Marietta's sleeve and practically ran up to the seventh floor, to the enchanted classroom. Both were out of breath as they burst in, five minutes late.
"Sorry, Harry," Cho panted, her face flushed but smiling.
Harry smiled just as broadly as he looked at her. "It's all right."
They seemed to have forgotten about the others, standing there, smiling at each other--until Hermione Granger cleared her throat rather loudly.
"Now that we're ALL here--"
Harry seemed to snap out of his trance. "Right. Deflection spells. Erm, this is a Fifth Year level defensive spell--or it would be, if we had a proper teacher."
We do now, Cho thought.
xxx
At the beginning of the week, Roger Davies had posted a notice in the Common Room that the Quidditch team--Regulars and Reserves--would meet for Saturday morning's practice in Flitwick's Charms classroom after breakfast. This was a bit odd, but Cho trusted Roger after all these years.
When she and the others showed up at the classroom, Roger was waiting. He had put some numbers up on the board:
Gryffindor 390 / Hufflepuff 340 / Ravenclaw 250 / Slytherin 40
They all understood; this was the number of points each House had scored so far. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had played two matches so far, so they had the higher scores.
"Right," Roger said when the team had taken seats near the board. "This is where we are. We're really in a great position. If we win against Slytherin, we'll be the only undefeated team at Hogwarts; that makes it certain we'll be in the Cup finals. Even if we lose--"
"Which we won't," Chambers interrupted.
"As I was saying, one hundred fifty points puts us ahead of Gryffindor. That's a Snitch. So we're probably going to the finals, and we'll probably be up against Gryffindor. But first," he pointed at the board, "we've got to get past Slytherin."
"Shouldn't be too hard," Becksnee said. "That's a pitifully low score."
"Yes," Roger nodded, "but we've seen this before. What does their forty points tell us?"
Cho spoke up almost without thinking: "They'll be desperate. They'd have to run up 300 points to make it to the finals, win or lose. So they're going to play dirty."
"Dirtier than usual?" Molina chuckled.
"No doubt," Roger nodded. "So we have to practice some specialty plays and develop some special strategies. I want to win this, and I want to win the Cup, but I want to do it fairly. We can't let the Slytherin bag of tricks provoke us into copying them. So, we'll meet again at noon on the pitch, and I'll try to schedule us for two practices a week. That's all. Cho."
"Yes, Rog?"
"Stay back a minute."
The others filed out of the classroom, talking amongst themselves about their previous experience playing against the Slytherins. After a minute, Cho and Roger were the only ones in the classroom.
"Cho."
"Yes?" She was hoping this would be about Quidditch and not about Madam Puddifoot's.
"You think Malfoy will try the Wronski Feint?"
"I think he'll try it if he thinks it can work."
"You said the other day you were thinking of a way to counter it."
"Well, that's easy, actually. I just won't rise to the bait."
"But that's what makes the Wronski so effective. You can't be sure he hasn't seen the Snitch, can you?"
"But that's where Seekers like Lynch make their mistake. They stop looking for the Snitch and focus on the opposing Seeker. I know better than to trust Malfoy on anything."
"He's got a Nimbus Oh One."
"Harry's got a Firebolt, and I was able to cope with that. When the time comes," Cho smiled, "leave Mayfoy to me."
xxx
So a month passed, the gloom of late winter becoming first the rains, then glowing warmth of early spring. Students all over Hogwarts, sensing that the end of the year was almost in sight, buckled down harder on their studies. Cho buckled down harder, because, in addition to her studies, she had Quidditch practice twice a week and Dumbledore's Army once a week. But, unlike her studies, those were a joy. She was born to fly, and practiced with the team in all weathers, and even stayed after an extra hour whenever she could. Pablo Molina had been forbidden to play that year by his parents because of bad grades, but he was still a Reserve, and he would pretend to be Malfoy as she worked and reworked and perfected her strategy to counter Malfoy if he should use the Wronski Feint.
Cho worked just as hard, and found just as much joy, in her secret Defense Against the Dark Arts group, and Harry was a large part of it. They hardly exchanged words before or after the meetings, which suited Cho just fine. I think we'd both rather forget Madam Puddifoot's, she told herself; at least now we have a chance to start over again. No demands, no arguments; just get to know each other a bit better, and at the end of the year, maybe on the train...
One bit of drama broke up the weeks before the Ravenclaw match with Slytherin. On a Monday evening two weeks before the match, Cho was browsing the shelves of thre Ravenclaw Common Room. She'd finished the next day's assignments for Arithmancy and Advanced Muggle Studies. The latter assignment (three scrolls on "Why is there baseball?") put her in a sporting frame of mind, and she was looking for "Quidditch Through the Ages," to see what Kennilworthy Whisp had to say about Josef Wronski...
"Hey, everyone! Come quick!"
Michael Corner had just burst through the bookcase, nearly breathless from running.
"Trelawney's been sacked! She's pitching a troll-fit in the entrance hall!"
Almost the entire Common Room cleared out to go and watch. Cho hesitated a minute. She never forgave Trelawney--never forgave the art of Divination--for failing to foresee Cedric's death in the Third Task. She tried to not even think of Trelawney, and thought ill of her when she did. But this was more than just a bit of gossip. Umbridge was extending her power, throwing out faculty she didn't like for whatever reason. The next step would be to bring in someone new, someone who would probably follow--like Umbridge--the Ministry line that Voldemort had not returned. She decided to go see what was happening.
But, by the time she got to the hospital wing and was headed toward the entrance hall, she saw a group of Ravenclaws coming back.
Beater "Jinx" Jenkins was in the group. "It's over; you missed the drama."
"What happened?"
"Trelawney was in the hall, bottle of wine in one hand, going completely to pieces. Umbitch was there, totally enjoying her moment of triumph, but that's when Dumbledore came back and spoiled it."
"Did he put Trelawney back on the faculty?"
"He couldn't, according to Umbitch and Edict Number Whatever. But Dumbledore says that Trelawney can still live at Hogwarts, even if she's not a teacher; that she hadn't taken that power from the Headmaster yet; nor his ability to name Trelawney's successor. And you'll never guess who's our Divinations prof now!"
They broke off the conversation long enough to give the password ("epithelial"), pass under the tapestry and through the bookcase into the Common Room.
"You're saying it isn't Grubbly-Plank? She's pretty much substituted for everyone at one time or another."
"Nope. Dumbledore brought in a centaur!"
Cho knew about centaurs, of course, but only as much as she'd learned in Magical Creatures, and that was little enough. They were a standoffish race, devoted more to astrology than anything else, and were classified by the Ministry as magical beasts in spite of their human aspect. Perhaps that was why they avoided the company of humans. Some centaurs were known to live in the forbidden forest, although few of the students had ever seen one; for Dumbledore not only to find one, but induce him to join the faculty, was a rarity indeed.
Still, Cho shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me." And she went back to looking for "Quidditch Through the Ages."
xxx
"Right-o, Hogwarts, and welcome!"
April 3 dawned clear and mild, with a light breeze; the kind of day that would bring on spring fever in almost anyone. But the Quidditch stadium was almost filled with milling students, cheering and shouting even before the players came onto the field.
The Slytherin team knew that it had to beat Ravenclaw, by the widest possible margin, just to get to the Finals. And the Ravenclaws knew that they knew it ...
"Everyone, keep on your toes!" Roger was telling the team for the fifth time that week. "Help out the Beater if it looks like they're going to try to force the Quaffle. And make sure they don't harm the Seeker!"
"We know all this, Rog," Becksnee interrupted. "Watch Millbanks, watch Chang, and don't trust a Slytherin as far as you can throw a hippogriff."
"Right. Erm ... right." Roger still seemed nervous to Cho, but there wasn't time for talk; the signal had been given; they lined up and walked onto the pitch, brooms in hand.
"Here's the team from Ravenclaw!" Lee Jordan shouted excitedly. "Davies! Bradley! Chambers! Jenkins! Becksnee! Millbanks! And Chang!"
Most of the crowd in the stadium cheered--all but the Slytherin supporters, of course. Cho knew that it wasn't necessarily that they loved Ravenclaw, but that they hated Slytherin. Well, she thought, tightening her grip on her Two Sixty, today you'll get a reason to love Ravenclaw.
Just then, Jordan was announcing the Slytherin line-up. When he announced the names of Crabbe, Goyle, and Malfoy, Cho heard the cheers from the Slytherins but felt the cold silence of the rest of the students. She looked straight at the three, and especially at Malfoy.
You. Your fathers are Death Eaters. They were there when Voldemort came back. They were there when Cedric was murdered. I'm playing this match for Ravenclaw, and for Dumbledore's Army.
Whether or not Malfoy knew what Cho was thinking, he stared back at her, with just as cold and mean a gaze as he ever gave her. As they mounted their brooms, Draco looked straight at Cho and quickly drew his finger across his throat.
Cho smiled at him. A threat, Mister Malfoy? she thought. We'll see who survives the match.
Hooch blew the whistle. Fourteen brooms kicked off into the sky.
"And the match is under way!" Jordan announced. "Ravenclaw takes first possession of the Quaffle, and--oh, I say!"
The match hadn't been on for ten seconds, when Crabbe and Goyle had launched their Bludgers at Millbanks. He'd dodged one, but the other caught his right shoulder.
Roger called for a time out as he went to check on Millbanks. "Don't worry, Rog," Millbanks smiled; "I can Keep this lot off one-handed."
Hooch blew her whistle and play resumed.
"Davies still has the Quaffle, and he's off to the Slytherin goals and--I DON'T BELIEVE IT!"
Once again the Slytherin Beaters had ganged up on the Ravenclaw Keeper. This time, the Bludgers had hit Millbanks on the right elbow and on the forehead. He could barely stay on the broom, much less stay in as Keeper.
"Damn them," Roger muttered. He pointed to the Reserve bench.
"Looks like Davies is calling up the Reserve Keeper, Wilmer Bloodwort. He's only a Third Year, and we haven't seen him in action yet. Well, I expect he's going to get a workout today, as ... WHAT THE--"
McGonagall scolded Jordan for his next few words, but he certainly had reason to curse: Crabbe and Goyle were after Bloodwort now. One Bludger caught him in the back of the head, the other hit his ribcage.
Madam Hooch called a halt to the play. "Ten points to Ravenclaw, possession of the Quaffle, and if you attack a Keeper again when the Quaffle is nowhere near him, you two are on the bench!"
Crabbe and Goyle nodded, but their mouths were curled up into sneers. They didn't seem to care what might happen to them.
In fact, they'd accomplished what they'd set out to do. Bloodwort also had to take the bench after less than a minute of play. With his Reserve Keeper out as well, Roger started to look desperate.
"I've got it," Molina said, standing up from the Reserve bench.
"You've never played Keeper before!"
"No, but I've played Slytherin before. I can deal with that lot."
Roger only had a second to make up his mind. "No; if this is going to be their approach, you should stay ready in case we need a Chaser." He looked at who was still available, and called to a Fourth-Year Chaser. "Lloyd-Lewis! Take the rings. Jenkins; Becksnee; why in bloody hell weren't you watching the Keeper?"
"Same reason you weren't, Rog," Jenkins said; "we didn't expect this one." In truth, they'd expected Slytherin to play dirty, and practiced accordingly, but they hadn't expected the team to stoop so low.
"Change in strategy, then: safeguard the Keeper, and let the Chasers look after themselves. We don't know how much they're willing to try to get away with."
Cho was watching all of this from the corner of one eye; even when time was called, she hadn't stopped circling the stadium, looking for the Golden Snitch. As much as she wanted to leave it off and pay the Slytherins back in their own coin, she knew that she couldn't; that they'd expect her to do exactly that, leaving Malfoy a free hand to Seek the Snitch himself. Not today, Malfoy, not today...
"Davies has the Quaffle, passes it to-- No, Slytherin intercepts it, they're charging the rings, Warrington, to Montague, to Pucey, Pucey fakes a shot right at Lloyd-Lewis, and--chases the Keeper off, damn it all--"
"JORDAN!"
"Sorry--and Slytherin's on the board at ten-all."
From that moment on, Ravenclaw was in desperate trouble. Crabbe and Goyle targeted the Ravenclaw Chasers and Beaters no less viciously than they had the first two Keepers. Ravenclaw simply couldn't keep the Quaffle long enough to make another goal; they kept losing possession to Slytherin, and the three Chasers would charge the rings, intimidate the novice Keeper and score handily. In a matter of minutes, the score was 100-10.
Cho, away from the action, began to get more and more nervous. They were ignoring her! Had they all guessed wrong about Slytherin's strategy?
Then she saw Malfoy start to climb. She took a good look, not at him, but at the sky above him. There was no Snitch there.
This is it, she smiled to herself; he's trying to set me up. Well, Mister Malfoy, don't mind if I do...
"Malfoy seems to see something up there, and Chang's following after," Jordan told the crowd. "This horribly one-sided duel could be over soon, one way or another."
Malfoy levelled off and began drifting almost lazily from one side of the stadium to the other. Cho stayed behind him, but made sure that he knew she was there.
"And Chang is still there, not taking the kind of aggressive play we've come to expect... Wait a minute! Malfoy sees something, he's diving down, Chang's in hot pursuit!"
Fifty yards up, Cho calculated...
"And Warrington scores again! Slytherin up now with one hundred ten!"
Thirty yards...
"Malfoy still diving, Chang right behind him, practically in free fall..."
Twenty yards ... fifteen yards ... twelve yards--NOW!
Cho bore down with a powerful Sprint, and--
"I don't believe it! Chang's in front of Malfoy!"
When she was less than a yard from the pitch, she suddenly turned hard left, skimming across the grass. Malfoy involuntarily turned his head to watch.
He did not, however, turn his broom.
"Ouch," Lee Jordan muttered as Malfoy hit the pitch, "he's going to miss a few classes after that."
Cho couldn't help smiling; her strategy had worked, and there was even scattered applause when Malfoy fell into his own trap and crashed. But, more importantly-- she saw the Snitch!
She put on as much speed as she could, chasing it up, down, over to the left and back again...
"Another Slytherin Goal! That's one-twenty!"
No! Can't let them win it on goals! Cho reached out, missed it, reached again--
"And that's the match!" Lee shouted. "After some really filthy Slytherin--"
"Jordan!"
"That is, some high questionable plays by Slytherin, Ravenclaw takes the Snitch and wins the match, one-sixty to one-twenty, all thanks to the truly stellar flying of Seeker Cho Chang! They couldn't have pulled this one out without her!"
Cho could barely hear Jordan over the roar of the crowd in the stands, or over the beating of her heart.
xxx
to be continued in part 24, wherein, in one night, Cho finds the greatest magical triumph of her life and narrowly avoids capture for it...
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
23. The Army and the Team
Thursday evening answered Marietta's question: what would happen at the next meeting of Dumbledore's Army, after Harry and Cho's disastrous date at Madam Puddifott's? At that evening's meeting, Harry was congratulated by almost all the members of the DA, who kept pressing him with questions based on the interview. It kept him from starting the lessons on time. But so did the absence of Cho and Marietta.
Marietta had seemed to Cho to be stalling, finding one reason or another not to go to the meeting just yet, until Cho finally put her foot down.
"If you'd rather not go at all tonight, just say so!"
"I would have thought YOU'D rather not go tonight, after that Hogsmeade business."
"That's all over and done."
"Are you certain?"
Cho, who really wasn't certain, bit her lip, then smiled. "Only one way to find out."
Once they were in the corridors, Cho grabbed Marietta's sleeve and practically ran up to the seventh floor, to the enchanted classroom. Both were out of breath as they burst in, five minutes late.
"Sorry, Harry," Cho panted, her face flushed but smiling.
Harry smiled just as broadly as he looked at her. "It's all right."
They seemed to have forgotten about the others, standing there, smiling at each other--until Hermione Granger cleared her throat rather loudly.
"Now that we're ALL here--"
Harry seemed to snap out of his trance. "Right. Deflection spells. Erm, this is a Fifth Year level defensive spell--or it would be, if we had a proper teacher."
We do now, Cho thought.
xxx
At the beginning of the week, Roger Davies had posted a notice in the Common Room that the Quidditch team--Regulars and Reserves--would meet for Saturday morning's practice in Flitwick's Charms classroom after breakfast. This was a bit odd, but Cho trusted Roger after all these years.
When she and the others showed up at the classroom, Roger was waiting. He had put some numbers up on the board:
Gryffindor 390 / Hufflepuff 340 / Ravenclaw 250 / Slytherin 40
They all understood; this was the number of points each House had scored so far. Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had played two matches so far, so they had the higher scores.
"Right," Roger said when the team had taken seats near the board. "This is where we are. We're really in a great position. If we win against Slytherin, we'll be the only undefeated team at Hogwarts; that makes it certain we'll be in the Cup finals. Even if we lose--"
"Which we won't," Chambers interrupted.
"As I was saying, one hundred fifty points puts us ahead of Gryffindor. That's a Snitch. So we're probably going to the finals, and we'll probably be up against Gryffindor. But first," he pointed at the board, "we've got to get past Slytherin."
"Shouldn't be too hard," Becksnee said. "That's a pitifully low score."
"Yes," Roger nodded, "but we've seen this before. What does their forty points tell us?"
Cho spoke up almost without thinking: "They'll be desperate. They'd have to run up 300 points to make it to the finals, win or lose. So they're going to play dirty."
"Dirtier than usual?" Molina chuckled.
"No doubt," Roger nodded. "So we have to practice some specialty plays and develop some special strategies. I want to win this, and I want to win the Cup, but I want to do it fairly. We can't let the Slytherin bag of tricks provoke us into copying them. So, we'll meet again at noon on the pitch, and I'll try to schedule us for two practices a week. That's all. Cho."
"Yes, Rog?"
"Stay back a minute."
The others filed out of the classroom, talking amongst themselves about their previous experience playing against the Slytherins. After a minute, Cho and Roger were the only ones in the classroom.
"Cho."
"Yes?" She was hoping this would be about Quidditch and not about Madam Puddifoot's.
"You think Malfoy will try the Wronski Feint?"
"I think he'll try it if he thinks it can work."
"You said the other day you were thinking of a way to counter it."
"Well, that's easy, actually. I just won't rise to the bait."
"But that's what makes the Wronski so effective. You can't be sure he hasn't seen the Snitch, can you?"
"But that's where Seekers like Lynch make their mistake. They stop looking for the Snitch and focus on the opposing Seeker. I know better than to trust Malfoy on anything."
"He's got a Nimbus Oh One."
"Harry's got a Firebolt, and I was able to cope with that. When the time comes," Cho smiled, "leave Mayfoy to me."
xxx
So a month passed, the gloom of late winter becoming first the rains, then glowing warmth of early spring. Students all over Hogwarts, sensing that the end of the year was almost in sight, buckled down harder on their studies. Cho buckled down harder, because, in addition to her studies, she had Quidditch practice twice a week and Dumbledore's Army once a week. But, unlike her studies, those were a joy. She was born to fly, and practiced with the team in all weathers, and even stayed after an extra hour whenever she could. Pablo Molina had been forbidden to play that year by his parents because of bad grades, but he was still a Reserve, and he would pretend to be Malfoy as she worked and reworked and perfected her strategy to counter Malfoy if he should use the Wronski Feint.
Cho worked just as hard, and found just as much joy, in her secret Defense Against the Dark Arts group, and Harry was a large part of it. They hardly exchanged words before or after the meetings, which suited Cho just fine. I think we'd both rather forget Madam Puddifoot's, she told herself; at least now we have a chance to start over again. No demands, no arguments; just get to know each other a bit better, and at the end of the year, maybe on the train...
One bit of drama broke up the weeks before the Ravenclaw match with Slytherin. On a Monday evening two weeks before the match, Cho was browsing the shelves of thre Ravenclaw Common Room. She'd finished the next day's assignments for Arithmancy and Advanced Muggle Studies. The latter assignment (three scrolls on "Why is there baseball?") put her in a sporting frame of mind, and she was looking for "Quidditch Through the Ages," to see what Kennilworthy Whisp had to say about Josef Wronski...
"Hey, everyone! Come quick!"
Michael Corner had just burst through the bookcase, nearly breathless from running.
"Trelawney's been sacked! She's pitching a troll-fit in the entrance hall!"
Almost the entire Common Room cleared out to go and watch. Cho hesitated a minute. She never forgave Trelawney--never forgave the art of Divination--for failing to foresee Cedric's death in the Third Task. She tried to not even think of Trelawney, and thought ill of her when she did. But this was more than just a bit of gossip. Umbridge was extending her power, throwing out faculty she didn't like for whatever reason. The next step would be to bring in someone new, someone who would probably follow--like Umbridge--the Ministry line that Voldemort had not returned. She decided to go see what was happening.
But, by the time she got to the hospital wing and was headed toward the entrance hall, she saw a group of Ravenclaws coming back.
Beater "Jinx" Jenkins was in the group. "It's over; you missed the drama."
"What happened?"
"Trelawney was in the hall, bottle of wine in one hand, going completely to pieces. Umbitch was there, totally enjoying her moment of triumph, but that's when Dumbledore came back and spoiled it."
"Did he put Trelawney back on the faculty?"
"He couldn't, according to Umbitch and Edict Number Whatever. But Dumbledore says that Trelawney can still live at Hogwarts, even if she's not a teacher; that she hadn't taken that power from the Headmaster yet; nor his ability to name Trelawney's successor. And you'll never guess who's our Divinations prof now!"
They broke off the conversation long enough to give the password ("epithelial"), pass under the tapestry and through the bookcase into the Common Room.
"You're saying it isn't Grubbly-Plank? She's pretty much substituted for everyone at one time or another."
"Nope. Dumbledore brought in a centaur!"
Cho knew about centaurs, of course, but only as much as she'd learned in Magical Creatures, and that was little enough. They were a standoffish race, devoted more to astrology than anything else, and were classified by the Ministry as magical beasts in spite of their human aspect. Perhaps that was why they avoided the company of humans. Some centaurs were known to live in the forbidden forest, although few of the students had ever seen one; for Dumbledore not only to find one, but induce him to join the faculty, was a rarity indeed.
Still, Cho shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me." And she went back to looking for "Quidditch Through the Ages."
xxx
"Right-o, Hogwarts, and welcome!"
April 3 dawned clear and mild, with a light breeze; the kind of day that would bring on spring fever in almost anyone. But the Quidditch stadium was almost filled with milling students, cheering and shouting even before the players came onto the field.
The Slytherin team knew that it had to beat Ravenclaw, by the widest possible margin, just to get to the Finals. And the Ravenclaws knew that they knew it ...
"Everyone, keep on your toes!" Roger was telling the team for the fifth time that week. "Help out the Beater if it looks like they're going to try to force the Quaffle. And make sure they don't harm the Seeker!"
"We know all this, Rog," Becksnee interrupted. "Watch Millbanks, watch Chang, and don't trust a Slytherin as far as you can throw a hippogriff."
"Right. Erm ... right." Roger still seemed nervous to Cho, but there wasn't time for talk; the signal had been given; they lined up and walked onto the pitch, brooms in hand.
"Here's the team from Ravenclaw!" Lee Jordan shouted excitedly. "Davies! Bradley! Chambers! Jenkins! Becksnee! Millbanks! And Chang!"
Most of the crowd in the stadium cheered--all but the Slytherin supporters, of course. Cho knew that it wasn't necessarily that they loved Ravenclaw, but that they hated Slytherin. Well, she thought, tightening her grip on her Two Sixty, today you'll get a reason to love Ravenclaw.
Just then, Jordan was announcing the Slytherin line-up. When he announced the names of Crabbe, Goyle, and Malfoy, Cho heard the cheers from the Slytherins but felt the cold silence of the rest of the students. She looked straight at the three, and especially at Malfoy.
You. Your fathers are Death Eaters. They were there when Voldemort came back. They were there when Cedric was murdered. I'm playing this match for Ravenclaw, and for Dumbledore's Army.
Whether or not Malfoy knew what Cho was thinking, he stared back at her, with just as cold and mean a gaze as he ever gave her. As they mounted their brooms, Draco looked straight at Cho and quickly drew his finger across his throat.
Cho smiled at him. A threat, Mister Malfoy? she thought. We'll see who survives the match.
Hooch blew the whistle. Fourteen brooms kicked off into the sky.
"And the match is under way!" Jordan announced. "Ravenclaw takes first possession of the Quaffle, and--oh, I say!"
The match hadn't been on for ten seconds, when Crabbe and Goyle had launched their Bludgers at Millbanks. He'd dodged one, but the other caught his right shoulder.
Roger called for a time out as he went to check on Millbanks. "Don't worry, Rog," Millbanks smiled; "I can Keep this lot off one-handed."
Hooch blew her whistle and play resumed.
"Davies still has the Quaffle, and he's off to the Slytherin goals and--I DON'T BELIEVE IT!"
Once again the Slytherin Beaters had ganged up on the Ravenclaw Keeper. This time, the Bludgers had hit Millbanks on the right elbow and on the forehead. He could barely stay on the broom, much less stay in as Keeper.
"Damn them," Roger muttered. He pointed to the Reserve bench.
"Looks like Davies is calling up the Reserve Keeper, Wilmer Bloodwort. He's only a Third Year, and we haven't seen him in action yet. Well, I expect he's going to get a workout today, as ... WHAT THE--"
McGonagall scolded Jordan for his next few words, but he certainly had reason to curse: Crabbe and Goyle were after Bloodwort now. One Bludger caught him in the back of the head, the other hit his ribcage.
Madam Hooch called a halt to the play. "Ten points to Ravenclaw, possession of the Quaffle, and if you attack a Keeper again when the Quaffle is nowhere near him, you two are on the bench!"
Crabbe and Goyle nodded, but their mouths were curled up into sneers. They didn't seem to care what might happen to them.
In fact, they'd accomplished what they'd set out to do. Bloodwort also had to take the bench after less than a minute of play. With his Reserve Keeper out as well, Roger started to look desperate.
"I've got it," Molina said, standing up from the Reserve bench.
"You've never played Keeper before!"
"No, but I've played Slytherin before. I can deal with that lot."
Roger only had a second to make up his mind. "No; if this is going to be their approach, you should stay ready in case we need a Chaser." He looked at who was still available, and called to a Fourth-Year Chaser. "Lloyd-Lewis! Take the rings. Jenkins; Becksnee; why in bloody hell weren't you watching the Keeper?"
"Same reason you weren't, Rog," Jenkins said; "we didn't expect this one." In truth, they'd expected Slytherin to play dirty, and practiced accordingly, but they hadn't expected the team to stoop so low.
"Change in strategy, then: safeguard the Keeper, and let the Chasers look after themselves. We don't know how much they're willing to try to get away with."
Cho was watching all of this from the corner of one eye; even when time was called, she hadn't stopped circling the stadium, looking for the Golden Snitch. As much as she wanted to leave it off and pay the Slytherins back in their own coin, she knew that she couldn't; that they'd expect her to do exactly that, leaving Malfoy a free hand to Seek the Snitch himself. Not today, Malfoy, not today...
"Davies has the Quaffle, passes it to-- No, Slytherin intercepts it, they're charging the rings, Warrington, to Montague, to Pucey, Pucey fakes a shot right at Lloyd-Lewis, and--chases the Keeper off, damn it all--"
"JORDAN!"
"Sorry--and Slytherin's on the board at ten-all."
From that moment on, Ravenclaw was in desperate trouble. Crabbe and Goyle targeted the Ravenclaw Chasers and Beaters no less viciously than they had the first two Keepers. Ravenclaw simply couldn't keep the Quaffle long enough to make another goal; they kept losing possession to Slytherin, and the three Chasers would charge the rings, intimidate the novice Keeper and score handily. In a matter of minutes, the score was 100-10.
Cho, away from the action, began to get more and more nervous. They were ignoring her! Had they all guessed wrong about Slytherin's strategy?
Then she saw Malfoy start to climb. She took a good look, not at him, but at the sky above him. There was no Snitch there.
This is it, she smiled to herself; he's trying to set me up. Well, Mister Malfoy, don't mind if I do...
"Malfoy seems to see something up there, and Chang's following after," Jordan told the crowd. "This horribly one-sided duel could be over soon, one way or another."
Malfoy levelled off and began drifting almost lazily from one side of the stadium to the other. Cho stayed behind him, but made sure that he knew she was there.
"And Chang is still there, not taking the kind of aggressive play we've come to expect... Wait a minute! Malfoy sees something, he's diving down, Chang's in hot pursuit!"
Fifty yards up, Cho calculated...
"And Warrington scores again! Slytherin up now with one hundred ten!"
Thirty yards...
"Malfoy still diving, Chang right behind him, practically in free fall..."
Twenty yards ... fifteen yards ... twelve yards--NOW!
Cho bore down with a powerful Sprint, and--
"I don't believe it! Chang's in front of Malfoy!"
When she was less than a yard from the pitch, she suddenly turned hard left, skimming across the grass. Malfoy involuntarily turned his head to watch.
He did not, however, turn his broom.
"Ouch," Lee Jordan muttered as Malfoy hit the pitch, "he's going to miss a few classes after that."
Cho couldn't help smiling; her strategy had worked, and there was even scattered applause when Malfoy fell into his own trap and crashed. But, more importantly-- she saw the Snitch!
She put on as much speed as she could, chasing it up, down, over to the left and back again...
"Another Slytherin Goal! That's one-twenty!"
No! Can't let them win it on goals! Cho reached out, missed it, reached again--
"And that's the match!" Lee shouted. "After some really filthy Slytherin--"
"Jordan!"
"That is, some high questionable plays by Slytherin, Ravenclaw takes the Snitch and wins the match, one-sixty to one-twenty, all thanks to the truly stellar flying of Seeker Cho Chang! They couldn't have pulled this one out without her!"
Cho could barely hear Jordan over the roar of the crowd in the stands, or over the beating of her heart.
xxx
to be continued in part 24, wherein, in one night, Cho finds the greatest magical triumph of her life and narrowly avoids capture for it...