A/N: All right then… I have no takers for reviewing the last chapter… yet. Anyway, plodding on forward with the story! And hopefully, some kind soul will console me with a review for this chapter (*sniff*). Okay, well, here goes!
Disclaimer: not mine, blah, blah, blah, so on and so forth
Chapter 2"Are you sure you're all right dear?" asked Mrs. Chang, a concerned expression on her face.
"Yes Mum, I'm fine," said Cho, lying for what felt like the millionth time that day, or that summer, for that matter.
"You look a bit pale; are you absolutely certain you can go to the train station by yourself?"
"Yes, I told you, I'm fine," Cho persisted.
Mrs. Chang narrowed her eyes slightly in suspicion, but questioned her daughter no further.
"All right, fine, go on, don't forget to write," she said after a heavy sigh, taking Cho in her arms for one last warm embrace.
"I won't," Cho promised, sealing her oath with the second genuine smile she had given since her encounter with Ron. Her mother, seeing the authenticity of Cho's grin for the first time in months took it as a sign that she really was going to be all right and, in knowing this, visibly relaxed.
With slightly watery eyes, she watched as Cho gathered her things together and, with one final wave, Disapparate to her last year at Hogwarts.
"You can't always be this protective of her, you know," said her husband, coming to stand beside her as she stared out the window at absolutely nothing.
"I know, it's just that… she's been so… distant ever since Cedric died and she just seems to drift farther and farther away until I feel like she's completely out of my reach," she replied, the tears she had struggled to contain, flowing freely down her cheeks.
"Shh," comforted Mr. Chang, wrapping his arms around his wife protectively, "It'll be all right, you'll see. It'll be all right."
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With a loud CRACK Cho found herself standing right on the other side of the barrier that served as the entranceway to Platform 9 and ¾. With difficulty, she managed to find an abandoned trolley and wheel it towards the familiar scarlet train, weaving through the crowd carefully and trying not to trod on anyone's feet. When she was right in the middle of the dense mass composed of parents and students, she spotted a familiar head of strawberry-blonde hair and debated with herself as to whether or not she should call out towards her friend. She chose the latter and continued to make her way to the train. When she had reached an entrance, a new problem arose; how on earth was she going to get her heavy trunk onto the train all by herself? All of the previous years, she had had at least one fellow male classmate take pity on her and help her, but none of them seemed to be anywhere in sight. So she just stood there, basically muttering to herself, causing several parents to hurry their children's footsteps.
"…or maybe I could… no, that wouldn't work… I could also… no, magic isn't allowed outside of Hogwarts unless it's for an emergency and I really don't think this is one… oh, what am I going to do?" she finally cried out in despair, although it was barely audible due to all of the conversations going on around her at the same time.
"Cho!" called a voice. She turned around and came face-to-face with Michael.
"Oh, hey Michael," she replied casually, acting as if she wasn't in the middle of a dilemma.
"Need help with your trunk?"
"Yeah, thanks, that would be really helpful," she said gratefully, flashing him a grin albeit another fake one.
Michael simply glowed with pride at her grateful expression, proving that love really is blind and hoisted her trunk onto the steps. Once it was safely on the train, he insisted on carrying it for her to the compartment of her choice and helping her put it away in the luggage compartment. Cho thanked him with a kiss on the cheek, her facial expression softened to a real, although small, smile. After he had gone off to get his own trunk, her eyes started to fill with tears of remorse at how she had been treating him. Michael was such a sweetheart, helping her and always trying to make her happy.
She sighed and brushed her tears away. It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair to him and it wasn't fair to her. She wasn't being true to how she was really feeling and Michael deserved someone better than she was. She should let him go… but the problem was, she was afraid to. She was afraid of losing somebody who cared about her that much;
she was afraid of being alone. Yes, she should, but she was too afraid to.
"Cho? You all right?"
Cho looked up to see that Michael had returned and put away his trunk and was now staring at her pink nose and slightly red eyes. She sniffed and nodded vigorously before putting on a falsely cheery voice and starting up a would-be normal conversation.
"So, did it work out between Jake and that Hufflepuff you were talking about?" she started, snuggling into the warmth of his arms and resting her head on his shoulder, trying to compensate for her slightly cold behavior at Diagon Alley, although she knew very well that he hadn't noticed it; she was doing this to assuage the pangs of guilt she was still feeling.
Struggling to ignore the rush of excitement that coursed through him when she put herself in this affectionate position he replied shakily, "Oh fine, fine. In fact, I think I saw them snogging two compartments down from this one,"
Cho laughed and said, "Well, mission accomplished,"
"Yeah," replied Michael distantly, laying his head on top of hers.
Soothed by the gentle sway of the train and overcome with fatigue due to the fact that she hadn't slept a wink the night before, Cho soon fell asleep and remained so for the majority of the trip. Twenty minutes before the train was to come to a stop, Michael gently shook her awake.
"Cho… wake up. You might want to get changed into your school robes,"
"Hmm?"
"I said, you might want to get changed now."
Cho opened an eye and looked up at Michael, who had untangled himself from her a few minutes earlier to change and was now standing over her with a look of utmost satisfaction, as if just being able to gaze upon her was one of the greatest gifts he could ever hope to receive. As she saw this, the feeling of guilt crept back into her stomach, causing it to clench up slightly and make her feel a bit nauseous.
She yawned, and reluctantly opened her other eye before getting up to rummage in her trunk to find her uniform and robes.
"I'm going to go and see if Jake needs any help with anything, all right?" said Michael, sliding open the compartment door and preparing to step out to give Cho some privacy.
"What would he need help with?" Cho said, raising an eyebrow.
"Unhinging his lips from his girlfriend's, most likely," Michael replied, smirking.
Cho rolled her eyes and gave a gesture with her hand, telling him to go ahead. Once she had gotten changed, she fixed her hair and went out into the train corridor to find Michael. However, no sooner than she had walked three feet, the train gave a jolt as it came to a screeching halt at the station. She would have fallen if the compartment door on her left hadn't opened at the exact same moment as the train had thrown her forwards and someone caught her.
Cho held on to the person's strong arms and tried to recover from dizzying experience. Indeed, her head was spinning painfully as the blood at her temples throbbed and made her head feel like it was a bomb waiting to explode.
"Thanks," she managed to get out after a few seconds. "I owe you one,"
"No problem," said the boy who was holding her.
That voice…
Cho looked up, and felt a jolt of horror go down her spine; it was the one and only Ron Weasley who had his arms around her. She suddenly flushed and Ron, seeming to realize how awkward this position was, let go of her. Soon, she was aware of many pairs of eyes behind her, staring inquisitively at her and Ron.
"Shit," was the first thing that came to her mind. On top of it all, Harry, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville's eyes now added to the number, theirs from inside the compartment. Before she could say another word, Michael had found her and dragged her away.
"C'mon Cho," he said, "we need to go find a carriage soon so that we won't have to sit with someone we don't want to sit with." And with that, he shot Ron a dirty look and bustled his girlfriend off of the train, following the crowd of students swarming towards the carriages (or, in the first years' cases, towards Hagrid).
Once they had found a carriage, Michael practically slammed the door before anyone else could get in and then turned on Cho with a deathly glare.
"What the hell were you doing with him?" he snarled, suspicion and anger etched clearly on his face.
"I tripped when the train stopped and he just happened to catch me," she replied coolly, giving him a cold and defiant look.
"Oh really? Why was he holding you like that for so long then?" he said, his eyes returning the challenge that her face was sending him.
"Michael, grow up! It was only for a few seconds and my head hurt, so I had to hold onto something! Is that a crime? Besides, it's not like you own me or anything! Yes, you are my boyfriend and yes, you do have a right to be slightly protective of me, but that doesn't mean you can blow something like this so out of proportion!" She was now yelling as well, her face turning slightly red again.
Michael sighed and rubbed his temples. "Look, I'm sorry, ok? It's just that… seeing you with any other guy just makes me lose my head,"
"Yeah, I guess," said Cho, starting to feel slightly sorry about yelling at him.
"I'm sorry,"
"Me too,"
Michael gave her a small smile before pulling her into a hug. As he held her in this position, she suddenly realized that the jolt she had felt earlier while Ron was holding her in a similar way wasn't of horror. In fact, it was the exact opposite.
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"Do we have everything?" asked Mrs. Weasley, looking around anxiously.
"Yes," replied everyone in monotone.
"Everyone?"
"Yes,"
"All right then, I guess we're all set to go!" said Mrs. Weasley, breathing an audible sigh of relief.
The Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione were all clustered together on the sidewalk, preparing themselves for the new school year, students and parents alike.
Mr. Weasley, with a signal from Mrs. Weasley telling him that they were all ready, held out his right arm and with a loud BANG the infamous Knight Bus appeared, the same as always, triple-decked and all.
One by one they filed onto the bus and then proceeded to search for a seat. Luckily, there were two groups of armchairs that were empty and they gladly occupied them. The trip to the station was normal, from the haphazard driving of the bus driver to the constant complaints about having to pick themselves up off of the floor at each stop.
"When I said that I never wanted to get on the Knight Bus again, I meant it," groaned Ron, picking himself up from the floor once again.
"Oh, stop your griping Ron, it isn't that bad," said Hermione, who had managed to stay in her seat somehow for the entire ride.
"Yeah? Well, I'm not the one who stayed in my chair the entire time. Merlin's beard! How the heck do you manage it?" he shot back, falling out of his seat once more as they stopped somewhere in Surrey to drop off a large group of giggling witches.
Soon, the scenery outside of the bus had changed to show the busy streets of London, muggles (and magic folk in disguise) rushing around, trying to get places.
"Well everyone, here we are!" said Mr. Weasley brightly, as everyone, except for Hermione, picked themselves off of the floor for the last time and willingly headed for the exit.
Once they had all gotten trolleys and walked through the barrier, Mr. Weasley with a bit of difficulty ("Oh, Molly, please can't I just stay out here for a moment and look at that new escapator they added?"), Ginny walked off to meet up with Dean and left Ron, Hermione, and Harry to go find a compartment themselves.
"Here we are, this looks like a good one," said Hermione when they were halfway down the train.
"How can you say that? They all look the same to me," said Ron, still disgruntled at the fact that Hermione had managed to keep her seat from tipping over on the bus.
Her only reply was to roll her eyes at him and drag her trunk into the compartment she had chosen. Ron and Harry followed suit, Ron still muttering darkly to himself, the only really intelligible words being "women" and "gone absolutely daft." Harry sat down by the window and stared outside, silently watching parents saying their last good-byes to their children.
"Sirius came to the station to say good-bye to me last year," he thought. "And it's because of me that he's not going to be able to do that anymore,"
"Harry?" asked Hermione tentatively. "Are you all right?"
Harry looked away from the window briefly to glance at her and say, "Yes," before turning back to it to continue his observations and berating himself mentally.
Hermione threw a worried look to Ron, who in turn shrugged as if to say, "I don't know what else we can do for him that we haven't already done,"
As the day went on, Harry kept up his silent reverie and replied to everyone in mostly monosyllabic answers. Even as Ginny and Neville joined them, he made no move to greet them in the friendly way that he had always done before. He just cast himself off from the rest of the group and caused the atmosphere around him to feel tense and uneasy, not to mention worried at his sudden mood change.
"Harry, do you want something off of the food trolley?" inquired Ginny gently when the cart came around at its usual hour.
"No," was the brusque reply.
"Are you absolutely sure?"
"Yes,"
Ginny sighed and shook her head to tell the woman that none of them wanted anything from the trolley. The woman smiled sympathetically, sensing their discomfort, and moved on.
"Hey Harry, did you see Marietta? You know, Cho's friend?" said Neville, trying to stir up a conversation.
"No," said Harry, keeping his gaze to the countryside passing by them outside the window.
"She apparently didn't completely follow Madam Pomfrey's directions on how to treat and get rid of her boils and, well, she has a lot of little scars where they used to be. So when you look at her, it's like she's been labeled or something. Now everyone's going to know her as 'the sneak.' Isn't that funny?" Neville said, trying to be pleasant and casual.
"Mm," was all Harry said, never averting his gaze.
When the train had come to a halt, everyone headed for the door a lot more eagerly than usual, Harry lagging behind. Ron, leading the group, looked back at Harry, who was still in his own little world before opening the door and stepping out… just in time to catch somebody.
Too shocked to say or do anything, he only had enough mental clarity to respond to the firm grip the girl had on his arms, signaling that she needed support. Dumbly, he held onto her until she had gathered her wits enough to say unsteadily, "Thanks, I owe you one,"
"No problem," his voice automatically said.
At the sound of his voice, the girl's head jerked upward and looked him in the eye.
It was certainly… unexpected. Running into Cho twice was a bit uncanny, but what did that imply?
Again, she colored and Ron, seeing how suspicious their current position looked, let go of her and before he could say anything else, her boyfriend Michael came and whisked her away. By now half of the student population was staring at him, and some whispering in the back had started to circulate throughout the entire group.
"Great," Ron thought. "By tomorrow the entire school is going to be talking about the 'latest couple,' "
When they had stepped off of the train, Hermione headed towards one carriage that was closest to the train. However, before she or anybody else could get inside it, the door had slammed and it had started to head towards the castle.
"Humph!" said Hermione huffily. "That was rude!"
It was only a few minutes later when they heard someone yelling from inside of it, and they all exchanged glances before looking at Harry. He said nothing still, but now he looked more alert and confusion was one of the feelings that mingled together to form the strange expression on his face. Suddenly, a look of understanding dawned on him and, for the first time in a while, he smiled and chatted happily with the rest of them.
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A/N: Okay, well, I'll try to make the next chapter longer, just to satisfy myself, I guess and hopefully somebody will be nice enough to review. Please? (flashes puppy eyes expression)