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
27. If Misery Loves Company
The Easter break was basically quiet for Cho, as breaks are supposed to be. Between time spent in the library on her own studies, helping Marietta with her work, and paying cheer-up visits to the hospital wing, she wasn't in Ravenclaw House except to sleep most days, and was hardly in the rest of Hogwarts at all. This allowed her to focus on all of the really important things that had gone begging recently: Quidditch practice for the Cup match, her studies for next year's N.E.W.T.s, and the so-far fruitless search for some way to remove Marietta's jinx.
Cho grew more and more worried about Marietta as more and more remedies failed to remove the violent acne from her face. One night she almost produced her Swan Patronus to try to cheer Marietta up, but she hesitated. She couldn't very well admit to Marietta where she'd learned to do that; besides, Cho grumbled to herself, maybe Granger's put a hex on that as well--try to do any DA magic now and I'd break out in the word "show-off." It would be just like her, too...
She Transfigured a pillow into a puppy-dog instead, until Madam Pomfrey put a stop to that. "I don't much fancy any animal running about my ward," she sniffed. "It would upset Filch and it's hard on the other patients."
At the moment the "other patients" consisted of Ashpeth Montagu, the Slytherin Chaser. He was still confined to bed at the other end of the wing. By now the entire school had heard that the Weasley twins had been challenged by Montagu, a member of Madam Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. They had showed their respect by shoving him into a Vanishing Closet on the fourth floor. When he reappeared four days later, just a few doors down in the boys' lavatory, his nerves seemed shattered and he couldn't give an accounting of where he had vanished to nor what had happened to him. He still couldn't.
It was Sunday night, the third of May; classes would resume the next day. Cho had brought her dinner to the hospital wing to eat with Marietta, who ate hardly a bite and kept glancing sadly at the beekeeper's hat she would wear to classes the next day. The heavy netting would block the view of her face, but not hide it altogether.
"Am I going to have to go through my whole life like this?" she said suddenly, throwing her fork angrily down on the bed.
"We can't give up," Cho said, trying to sound as soothing as she could. "Madam Pomfrey says that even the failed attempts teach them something."
"It teaches me that this is all a waste of time," Marietta grumbled. "I only just got my teeth back to normal." A previous attempt by Professor Flitwick to lift the hex had left Marietta for a full week with every other tooth tinted green. "It's been almost a month!"
"I can't believe it'll go on much longer," Cho smiled; "just wait."
"Easier said than done," Marietta said through a mouthful of curried mutton. She had stopped asking Cho how the jinx had happened. On the one hand, Cho was glad that the pressure of revealing the secret of Dumbledore's Army was off; on the other hand, it looked as if Marietta was losing hope altogether.
"Things have to start changing soon," Cho said, although she wasn't sure she believed it anymore herself.
xxx
One collossal change happened Monday afternoon at five o'clock.
Chio was on her way back to Ravenclaw to drop off her books when she heard steps racing along the corridors. They seemed to be coming from all directions, and growing louder, but so far she hadn't seen anything. One student would run past her, then would run back, followed by three or four more. This happened several times until she stopped one of the students she recognized: a Ravenclaw Seeker named Torrance Chambers.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"The twins," Chambers said after catching his breath. "Not sure what they did, but they done something big. Their fat's in the fire for sure now."
"What do you mean? Where are they?"
"Umbitch and her pet snakes have been chasing them all around the castle. Last I saw, they were headed toward the Great Hall. Come on!"
Chambers took off in a mad rush, with Cho right behind him. But he didn't know why she was so interested.
Cho couldn't tell Chambers why she was interested. They were in the Army too. Did Umbridge suspect that? Would she try to make them talk about it?
Word of the twins leading the Inquisitorial Squad a merry chase had spread rapidly, and Cho and Chambers found that the only way they could get close to the Great Hall and the entrance to the castle was by doubling back to the second floor and trying for the stairs. Even then, students were crowded into every available space, and even the castle ghosts floated above the entrance hall, looking down on Umbridge and Fred and George Weasley. The two seemed remarkably composed; if they knew Umbridge had gotten the upper hand, they gave no sign.
The new Headmistress and the twins were saying something to each other, which Cho couldn't make out from the second floor. Argus Filch had come to stand beside Umbridge, chattering happily away about something. She still didn't forgive the caretaker for bursting into the Owlery, destroying the moment between her and Harry... Was Harry here? She couldn't tell; the press of students was too thick.
Suddenly the twins raised their wands and, as one, shouted "Accio Brooms!"
Why were they pointing their wands into the castle, Cho wondered. Wouldn't their brooms be out with the other Quidditch... Quidditch! That's right; they'd been banned from the game along with Harry! So the brooms were--
Cho pressed herself against the wall as the sound of rattling chains came nearer. The two brooms sailed to their owners, one of them still dragging chains; apparently Umbridge had the brooms secured to the wall. The twins jumped on their brooms, exchanged a few more words with a purple-faced Umbridge; then, one proclaimed to the crowd, "If anyone fancies buying a Portable Swamp, as demonstrated upstairs, come to number ninety-three Diagon Alley: Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes! Our new premises!"
The other finished the sentence: "Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they're going to use our products to get rid of this old bat."
Even as Umbridge yelled for someone to stop them, the Weasley twins shot up level with the second-floor landing. Cho realized that she was looking at them, through Peeves the poltergeist.
"Give her hell from us, Peeves!" one of them said. And Peeves actually tipped his hat to them and saluted as the twins flew back down and out the front doors.
"A swamp upstairs?" Chambers was saying. "That's worth missing a meal. Let's go check it out, eh?"
Cho nodded, only half-hearing what Chambers was saying to her, and following behind him automatically. Her mind was filled with one thought:
So that's what it means to be a Gryffindor.
xxx
The twins had told Peeves to give Umbridge hell; for the next week, Hogwarts smelled like Hell--smelled like sulphur and brimstone and dungbombs and swamp gas, at any rate. Students took to casting Bubble-Head Charms on themselves to try to keep out the odours. Some of the witches, less afraid of the stench in the halls than of having their looks distorted by glass bowls, Transfigured their textbooks or quills or anything handy into bunches of flowers. They would hold the sweet-smelling flowers up to their noses, walking quickly through the corridors and trying to pretend that their eyes weren't watering in spite of all.
True to their word, the Weasley twins had enchanted part of the fifth floor of the east wing of the castle into a swamp. It looked dubious and smelled even worse. It was a Gryffindor, a Third Year named Dennis Creavey (who Cho recognized from the Army) who first volunteered to try to wade across it. The swamp seemed no more than a wet spot some fifteen feet in length, but Creevey got hardly one-third of the way across when he sank like a stone. Other students, gathered to look at the oddity, glanced at each other nervously, not sure what to do next. When Creevey broke the surface, flailing about and apparently unable to swim, a Seventh Year Hufflepuff, Bristella Bernini, used a Locomotor spell to lift him out of the swamp and back to solid ground.
Creevey's only reaction was a wide grin, "That was so cool!"
Headmistress Umbridge told the faculty to get rid of the swamp. Flitwick declared that he couldn't remove it, although he never really tried--just sort of "admired the craftsmanship" of it, as Roger Davies told Cho after that weekend's Quidditch practice. McGonagall, as Assistant Headmistress, also proclaimed herself unable to remove it, although Cho suspected that she didn't try very hard either. Umbridge angrily tried to remove the swamp herself, but none of her spells moved it in the least, and Filch couldn't do a thing about it, being a Squib, except drag a punt up from the lake to the fifth floor and ferry students from one shore to the other.
This had the effect of keeping Filch stuck on the fifth floor during the day, unable to patrol the castle, and as a result the chaos increased. The Stinkpellets were blooming indoors as the flowers were blooming outdoors in the sunny month of May, and there was nobody to stop it. A kind of mania took hold of most of the younger students, touched off by the Weasley twins. The new sport (which the older students, looking at the impending arrival of the O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, didn't share) seemed to be, how much can you get away with. And for a period of about two weeks, a lot of the students tried to get away with just about anything.
Umbridge sent out her Inquisitorial Squad to keep whatever peace they could (and by whatever means they chose), but the students were no longer afraid of them and fought back. So it was that, on the Thursday after the Weasleys' departure, Cyril Warrington--a Chaser for Slytherin as well as a member of the Inquisitorial Squad--was checked into the hospital wing. He had tried to break up a foodfight in the Great Hall, and was repaid with a Scabrous Jinx. All the skin on his face was dark and stiff, cracked and peeling and looked likely to fall away at any second; Madam Pomfrey put the screens up around his bed before Marietta and Cho (who was spending more time in the hospital wing just to dodge the madness in the corridors) could see if the jinx continued down the rest of his body.
The next morning, Pansy Parkinson had started to tell off students outside the Great Hall not to "repeat that foul bit of business yesterday evening--" That was as far as she got before another student hexed her, too. She ran crying to the hospital wing and burst in, with a fresh pair of antlers growing from her head.
Marietta and Cho glanced up at what they were now calling "the Slytherin ward", then turned back to their breakfast.
"Animorph Jinx," Marietta muttered, spreading marmalade on her toast. "Suits her."
"I always thought she looked more like a dog than a deer," Cho replied as she finished her oatmeal.
"Well, they know how to help her, at least," Marietta said, throwing down her knife. "I've been here a month! You said..."
"I said I'd try. I can't get through to them!"
"Through to WHO??"
"Erm, Granger and her friends. Maybe I'm wrong, and they had nothing to do with this."
But Cho knew she wasn't wrong, and every day of watching Marietta suffer just made her madder and madder at Hermione Granger.
The next day was a Saturday, and there were only three more Saturdays before the House Quidditch Cup match. Ravenclaw was supposed to practice that morning, but, as Cho crossed the Common Room, she saw a notice on the board: QUIDDITCH PRACTICE MOVED TO SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
She recognized the note as Roger's writing, realized that he must have just put it up, and went to the Great Hall to see if he was there. He was just about to tuck into some sausages.
"Roger, why'd they rearrange us?"
He glanced at the Head Table, then lowered his voice. "Umbitch. Her bright idea to put in another match next week: Slytherin and Hufflepuff."
"They're surely not competing for the Cup!"
"Of course not; she's just trying to get this lot to calm down. Or at least buy herself a couple of hours peace."
"Next Saturday, you say? Should be interesting. Warrington's face hasn't cleared up yet, and Montagu's still all befuddled, so Slytherin's without its two top Chasers."
"I don't think she counted on that," Roger grinned. "I think Snape actually tried to talk her out of it; this has been their worst year."
"And our best," Cho smiled.
"You feel good about the match, then?"
"Why shouldn't I? The Gryffindor Seeker doesn't know the game, their Keeper is hopeless, and one of their new Beaters nearly concussed himself with his own bat! I was at the hospital wing when they brought him in!"
"Never underestimate the opponent, Cho."
"You worry about your N.E.W.T.s, Rog; we're definitely getting back the Cup."
Roger stood up. "See you at tomorrow's practice, then." As he walked away, Cho realized that she was hungrier than usual, without even the pressure of a practice to dull her appetite. She dashed to the hospital wing to have breakfast with Marietta.
xxx
Marietta was right about one thing: most of the Slytherin didn't spend long in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey sorted Pansy Parkinson out the first thing Monday morning--"Just to get her whining gob out of here," Marietta said under her breath, and she was partly right. Parkinson kept up a non-stop high-pitched keen of despair all the time she was in the wing, until Flitwick was called in to apply the counter-jinx (under Severus Snape's watchful eye) and remove the antlers, which had grown to an impressive twelve points.
Cho had tried--and failed--to forget the last time she had had anything to do with Pansy Parkinson: on a gloomy street in Hogsmeade, on Valentine's Day, with Pansy teasing Cho and saying that Harry wasn't as good-looking as Cedric had been...
No! Cho scolded herself; don't drag all that up now! Instead, it's best wishes to whoever hexed Pansy, after what she'd said about Harry-- That's as far as she got before the butterflies started.
Snape also loitered about the wing, casting baleful glances at the Ravenclaw girls. "What's he doing here still?" Marietta whispered.
"Those other two are Chasers," Cho whispered back. "He needs to play them this Saturday."
"Good luck," Marietta replied.
Warrington's Scabrous Jinx was also lifted that day, although Snape kept interrupting Flitwick by questioning Warrington, demanding to know who had Jinxed him and what they were doing wrong when he caught them.
"Severus, please!" the little Charms professor turned to Snape. "Can't you question the lad later? This isn't helping my concentration. We wouldn't want the damage to be permanent, would we?"
Snape snorted, but continued to loom over Warrington's bed until he was cured and sent away.
Montagu's case of mental disorder, however, wasn't cured so easily. The next day, Montagu's parents actually arrived at the castle. Pomfrey had put the screens up so Marietta and Cho couldn't see what was happening, but the Montagus confronted Pomfrey during morning classes, and gave Marietta plenty to hear.
"You should have heard it," Marietta smiled, as Cho joined her over the lunch hour. "First they tear into Pomfrey like a couple of starved hippogriffs, only she's not having any of that, and tells them off. 'First of all,' she says, 'I'm not about to guess at how to bring your son around. If you want me to throw spells at him willy-nilly and hope he comes back to himself, then fine: put that on a scroll and I'll sign it. But I don't want to risk his mental condition any more than it's been risked already. Now, your boy's got himself in rather a vicious circle; I can sort out his trouble, but not until he gives me a clue as to what the problem is, and the problem won't let him tell me.'
"'Well, couldn't a Legilimens get through to him?' demands Mister Montagu, and Pomfrey replies, 'The only one on staff here I'd trust to get the information without damage to himself or your son is Albus Dumbledore. It's a pity he's no longer Headmaster here, but you can take that up with the Ministry.'
"So Montagu's folks must be breathing fire at this point, because they storm out of the wing, and I guess they had some young Slytherin escorting them around, because then you hear Mister Montagu yelling, 'Don't just stand there, boy; take me to that damned Umbridge!' I imagine she got more than an earful."
"Serves her right," Cho muttered, deliberately adding up a long column of numbers and not looking at Marietta. Arithmancy was right after lunch, and they had to finish up a couple of very tricky logarithms.
After a minute, Marietta looked up at Cho, her voice dropped so that Cho, ten inches away, could hardly hear it. "All this--my face--has something to do with Dumbledore leaving, doesn't it?"
After six weeks, Cho was running out of ways to avoid answering the question. "Marietta, what would you do if the Ministry turned out to be wrong about something--something very important?"
"But how could the Ministry ever be wrong about anything?" Marietta asked. "I mean, they're the best and the brightest wizards and witches we have, and surely they know lots of stuff that the rest of us don't."
Cho smiled a bit weakly. "Then this can't be about Dumbledore against the Ministry, can it?"
The two went back to working out their Arithmancy.
They finished just in time for Cho to deliver both her work and Marietta's to Professor Vector. After class, Cho crossed the courtyard, caught sight of Harry, Ron Weasley and Granger, and very deliberately looked away.
This has gone on too long, Cho told herself, but I'll not go begging to Granger. If she hasn't heart enough to feel a little pity and change Marietta back, and if Harry hasn't brains enough to see what a cold vindictive witch he has for a friend, then they deserve each other. I'll not seek him out. I'll take the only revenge he seems to understand: Quidditch. I'll get the Snitch, and the Cup, and Gryffindor will know what it's like to go without the Cup, and then HE will come looking for ME...
xxx
to be continued in part 28, wherein Cho plays in the Quidditch Cup match ...
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
27. If Misery Loves Company
The Easter break was basically quiet for Cho, as breaks are supposed to be. Between time spent in the library on her own studies, helping Marietta with her work, and paying cheer-up visits to the hospital wing, she wasn't in Ravenclaw House except to sleep most days, and was hardly in the rest of Hogwarts at all. This allowed her to focus on all of the really important things that had gone begging recently: Quidditch practice for the Cup match, her studies for next year's N.E.W.T.s, and the so-far fruitless search for some way to remove Marietta's jinx.
Cho grew more and more worried about Marietta as more and more remedies failed to remove the violent acne from her face. One night she almost produced her Swan Patronus to try to cheer Marietta up, but she hesitated. She couldn't very well admit to Marietta where she'd learned to do that; besides, Cho grumbled to herself, maybe Granger's put a hex on that as well--try to do any DA magic now and I'd break out in the word "show-off." It would be just like her, too...
She Transfigured a pillow into a puppy-dog instead, until Madam Pomfrey put a stop to that. "I don't much fancy any animal running about my ward," she sniffed. "It would upset Filch and it's hard on the other patients."
At the moment the "other patients" consisted of Ashpeth Montagu, the Slytherin Chaser. He was still confined to bed at the other end of the wing. By now the entire school had heard that the Weasley twins had been challenged by Montagu, a member of Madam Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad. They had showed their respect by shoving him into a Vanishing Closet on the fourth floor. When he reappeared four days later, just a few doors down in the boys' lavatory, his nerves seemed shattered and he couldn't give an accounting of where he had vanished to nor what had happened to him. He still couldn't.
It was Sunday night, the third of May; classes would resume the next day. Cho had brought her dinner to the hospital wing to eat with Marietta, who ate hardly a bite and kept glancing sadly at the beekeeper's hat she would wear to classes the next day. The heavy netting would block the view of her face, but not hide it altogether.
"Am I going to have to go through my whole life like this?" she said suddenly, throwing her fork angrily down on the bed.
"We can't give up," Cho said, trying to sound as soothing as she could. "Madam Pomfrey says that even the failed attempts teach them something."
"It teaches me that this is all a waste of time," Marietta grumbled. "I only just got my teeth back to normal." A previous attempt by Professor Flitwick to lift the hex had left Marietta for a full week with every other tooth tinted green. "It's been almost a month!"
"I can't believe it'll go on much longer," Cho smiled; "just wait."
"Easier said than done," Marietta said through a mouthful of curried mutton. She had stopped asking Cho how the jinx had happened. On the one hand, Cho was glad that the pressure of revealing the secret of Dumbledore's Army was off; on the other hand, it looked as if Marietta was losing hope altogether.
"Things have to start changing soon," Cho said, although she wasn't sure she believed it anymore herself.
xxx
One collossal change happened Monday afternoon at five o'clock.
Chio was on her way back to Ravenclaw to drop off her books when she heard steps racing along the corridors. They seemed to be coming from all directions, and growing louder, but so far she hadn't seen anything. One student would run past her, then would run back, followed by three or four more. This happened several times until she stopped one of the students she recognized: a Ravenclaw Seeker named Torrance Chambers.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"The twins," Chambers said after catching his breath. "Not sure what they did, but they done something big. Their fat's in the fire for sure now."
"What do you mean? Where are they?"
"Umbitch and her pet snakes have been chasing them all around the castle. Last I saw, they were headed toward the Great Hall. Come on!"
Chambers took off in a mad rush, with Cho right behind him. But he didn't know why she was so interested.
Cho couldn't tell Chambers why she was interested. They were in the Army too. Did Umbridge suspect that? Would she try to make them talk about it?
Word of the twins leading the Inquisitorial Squad a merry chase had spread rapidly, and Cho and Chambers found that the only way they could get close to the Great Hall and the entrance to the castle was by doubling back to the second floor and trying for the stairs. Even then, students were crowded into every available space, and even the castle ghosts floated above the entrance hall, looking down on Umbridge and Fred and George Weasley. The two seemed remarkably composed; if they knew Umbridge had gotten the upper hand, they gave no sign.
The new Headmistress and the twins were saying something to each other, which Cho couldn't make out from the second floor. Argus Filch had come to stand beside Umbridge, chattering happily away about something. She still didn't forgive the caretaker for bursting into the Owlery, destroying the moment between her and Harry... Was Harry here? She couldn't tell; the press of students was too thick.
Suddenly the twins raised their wands and, as one, shouted "Accio Brooms!"
Why were they pointing their wands into the castle, Cho wondered. Wouldn't their brooms be out with the other Quidditch... Quidditch! That's right; they'd been banned from the game along with Harry! So the brooms were--
Cho pressed herself against the wall as the sound of rattling chains came nearer. The two brooms sailed to their owners, one of them still dragging chains; apparently Umbridge had the brooms secured to the wall. The twins jumped on their brooms, exchanged a few more words with a purple-faced Umbridge; then, one proclaimed to the crowd, "If anyone fancies buying a Portable Swamp, as demonstrated upstairs, come to number ninety-three Diagon Alley: Weasleys' Wizarding Wheezes! Our new premises!"
The other finished the sentence: "Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they're going to use our products to get rid of this old bat."
Even as Umbridge yelled for someone to stop them, the Weasley twins shot up level with the second-floor landing. Cho realized that she was looking at them, through Peeves the poltergeist.
"Give her hell from us, Peeves!" one of them said. And Peeves actually tipped his hat to them and saluted as the twins flew back down and out the front doors.
"A swamp upstairs?" Chambers was saying. "That's worth missing a meal. Let's go check it out, eh?"
Cho nodded, only half-hearing what Chambers was saying to her, and following behind him automatically. Her mind was filled with one thought:
So that's what it means to be a Gryffindor.
xxx
The twins had told Peeves to give Umbridge hell; for the next week, Hogwarts smelled like Hell--smelled like sulphur and brimstone and dungbombs and swamp gas, at any rate. Students took to casting Bubble-Head Charms on themselves to try to keep out the odours. Some of the witches, less afraid of the stench in the halls than of having their looks distorted by glass bowls, Transfigured their textbooks or quills or anything handy into bunches of flowers. They would hold the sweet-smelling flowers up to their noses, walking quickly through the corridors and trying to pretend that their eyes weren't watering in spite of all.
True to their word, the Weasley twins had enchanted part of the fifth floor of the east wing of the castle into a swamp. It looked dubious and smelled even worse. It was a Gryffindor, a Third Year named Dennis Creavey (who Cho recognized from the Army) who first volunteered to try to wade across it. The swamp seemed no more than a wet spot some fifteen feet in length, but Creevey got hardly one-third of the way across when he sank like a stone. Other students, gathered to look at the oddity, glanced at each other nervously, not sure what to do next. When Creevey broke the surface, flailing about and apparently unable to swim, a Seventh Year Hufflepuff, Bristella Bernini, used a Locomotor spell to lift him out of the swamp and back to solid ground.
Creevey's only reaction was a wide grin, "That was so cool!"
Headmistress Umbridge told the faculty to get rid of the swamp. Flitwick declared that he couldn't remove it, although he never really tried--just sort of "admired the craftsmanship" of it, as Roger Davies told Cho after that weekend's Quidditch practice. McGonagall, as Assistant Headmistress, also proclaimed herself unable to remove it, although Cho suspected that she didn't try very hard either. Umbridge angrily tried to remove the swamp herself, but none of her spells moved it in the least, and Filch couldn't do a thing about it, being a Squib, except drag a punt up from the lake to the fifth floor and ferry students from one shore to the other.
This had the effect of keeping Filch stuck on the fifth floor during the day, unable to patrol the castle, and as a result the chaos increased. The Stinkpellets were blooming indoors as the flowers were blooming outdoors in the sunny month of May, and there was nobody to stop it. A kind of mania took hold of most of the younger students, touched off by the Weasley twins. The new sport (which the older students, looking at the impending arrival of the O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, didn't share) seemed to be, how much can you get away with. And for a period of about two weeks, a lot of the students tried to get away with just about anything.
Umbridge sent out her Inquisitorial Squad to keep whatever peace they could (and by whatever means they chose), but the students were no longer afraid of them and fought back. So it was that, on the Thursday after the Weasleys' departure, Cyril Warrington--a Chaser for Slytherin as well as a member of the Inquisitorial Squad--was checked into the hospital wing. He had tried to break up a foodfight in the Great Hall, and was repaid with a Scabrous Jinx. All the skin on his face was dark and stiff, cracked and peeling and looked likely to fall away at any second; Madam Pomfrey put the screens up around his bed before Marietta and Cho (who was spending more time in the hospital wing just to dodge the madness in the corridors) could see if the jinx continued down the rest of his body.
The next morning, Pansy Parkinson had started to tell off students outside the Great Hall not to "repeat that foul bit of business yesterday evening--" That was as far as she got before another student hexed her, too. She ran crying to the hospital wing and burst in, with a fresh pair of antlers growing from her head.
Marietta and Cho glanced up at what they were now calling "the Slytherin ward", then turned back to their breakfast.
"Animorph Jinx," Marietta muttered, spreading marmalade on her toast. "Suits her."
"I always thought she looked more like a dog than a deer," Cho replied as she finished her oatmeal.
"Well, they know how to help her, at least," Marietta said, throwing down her knife. "I've been here a month! You said..."
"I said I'd try. I can't get through to them!"
"Through to WHO??"
"Erm, Granger and her friends. Maybe I'm wrong, and they had nothing to do with this."
But Cho knew she wasn't wrong, and every day of watching Marietta suffer just made her madder and madder at Hermione Granger.
The next day was a Saturday, and there were only three more Saturdays before the House Quidditch Cup match. Ravenclaw was supposed to practice that morning, but, as Cho crossed the Common Room, she saw a notice on the board: QUIDDITCH PRACTICE MOVED TO SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
She recognized the note as Roger's writing, realized that he must have just put it up, and went to the Great Hall to see if he was there. He was just about to tuck into some sausages.
"Roger, why'd they rearrange us?"
He glanced at the Head Table, then lowered his voice. "Umbitch. Her bright idea to put in another match next week: Slytherin and Hufflepuff."
"They're surely not competing for the Cup!"
"Of course not; she's just trying to get this lot to calm down. Or at least buy herself a couple of hours peace."
"Next Saturday, you say? Should be interesting. Warrington's face hasn't cleared up yet, and Montagu's still all befuddled, so Slytherin's without its two top Chasers."
"I don't think she counted on that," Roger grinned. "I think Snape actually tried to talk her out of it; this has been their worst year."
"And our best," Cho smiled.
"You feel good about the match, then?"
"Why shouldn't I? The Gryffindor Seeker doesn't know the game, their Keeper is hopeless, and one of their new Beaters nearly concussed himself with his own bat! I was at the hospital wing when they brought him in!"
"Never underestimate the opponent, Cho."
"You worry about your N.E.W.T.s, Rog; we're definitely getting back the Cup."
Roger stood up. "See you at tomorrow's practice, then." As he walked away, Cho realized that she was hungrier than usual, without even the pressure of a practice to dull her appetite. She dashed to the hospital wing to have breakfast with Marietta.
xxx
Marietta was right about one thing: most of the Slytherin didn't spend long in the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey sorted Pansy Parkinson out the first thing Monday morning--"Just to get her whining gob out of here," Marietta said under her breath, and she was partly right. Parkinson kept up a non-stop high-pitched keen of despair all the time she was in the wing, until Flitwick was called in to apply the counter-jinx (under Severus Snape's watchful eye) and remove the antlers, which had grown to an impressive twelve points.
Cho had tried--and failed--to forget the last time she had had anything to do with Pansy Parkinson: on a gloomy street in Hogsmeade, on Valentine's Day, with Pansy teasing Cho and saying that Harry wasn't as good-looking as Cedric had been...
No! Cho scolded herself; don't drag all that up now! Instead, it's best wishes to whoever hexed Pansy, after what she'd said about Harry-- That's as far as she got before the butterflies started.
Snape also loitered about the wing, casting baleful glances at the Ravenclaw girls. "What's he doing here still?" Marietta whispered.
"Those other two are Chasers," Cho whispered back. "He needs to play them this Saturday."
"Good luck," Marietta replied.
Warrington's Scabrous Jinx was also lifted that day, although Snape kept interrupting Flitwick by questioning Warrington, demanding to know who had Jinxed him and what they were doing wrong when he caught them.
"Severus, please!" the little Charms professor turned to Snape. "Can't you question the lad later? This isn't helping my concentration. We wouldn't want the damage to be permanent, would we?"
Snape snorted, but continued to loom over Warrington's bed until he was cured and sent away.
Montagu's case of mental disorder, however, wasn't cured so easily. The next day, Montagu's parents actually arrived at the castle. Pomfrey had put the screens up so Marietta and Cho couldn't see what was happening, but the Montagus confronted Pomfrey during morning classes, and gave Marietta plenty to hear.
"You should have heard it," Marietta smiled, as Cho joined her over the lunch hour. "First they tear into Pomfrey like a couple of starved hippogriffs, only she's not having any of that, and tells them off. 'First of all,' she says, 'I'm not about to guess at how to bring your son around. If you want me to throw spells at him willy-nilly and hope he comes back to himself, then fine: put that on a scroll and I'll sign it. But I don't want to risk his mental condition any more than it's been risked already. Now, your boy's got himself in rather a vicious circle; I can sort out his trouble, but not until he gives me a clue as to what the problem is, and the problem won't let him tell me.'
"'Well, couldn't a Legilimens get through to him?' demands Mister Montagu, and Pomfrey replies, 'The only one on staff here I'd trust to get the information without damage to himself or your son is Albus Dumbledore. It's a pity he's no longer Headmaster here, but you can take that up with the Ministry.'
"So Montagu's folks must be breathing fire at this point, because they storm out of the wing, and I guess they had some young Slytherin escorting them around, because then you hear Mister Montagu yelling, 'Don't just stand there, boy; take me to that damned Umbridge!' I imagine she got more than an earful."
"Serves her right," Cho muttered, deliberately adding up a long column of numbers and not looking at Marietta. Arithmancy was right after lunch, and they had to finish up a couple of very tricky logarithms.
After a minute, Marietta looked up at Cho, her voice dropped so that Cho, ten inches away, could hardly hear it. "All this--my face--has something to do with Dumbledore leaving, doesn't it?"
After six weeks, Cho was running out of ways to avoid answering the question. "Marietta, what would you do if the Ministry turned out to be wrong about something--something very important?"
"But how could the Ministry ever be wrong about anything?" Marietta asked. "I mean, they're the best and the brightest wizards and witches we have, and surely they know lots of stuff that the rest of us don't."
Cho smiled a bit weakly. "Then this can't be about Dumbledore against the Ministry, can it?"
The two went back to working out their Arithmancy.
They finished just in time for Cho to deliver both her work and Marietta's to Professor Vector. After class, Cho crossed the courtyard, caught sight of Harry, Ron Weasley and Granger, and very deliberately looked away.
This has gone on too long, Cho told herself, but I'll not go begging to Granger. If she hasn't heart enough to feel a little pity and change Marietta back, and if Harry hasn't brains enough to see what a cold vindictive witch he has for a friend, then they deserve each other. I'll not seek him out. I'll take the only revenge he seems to understand: Quidditch. I'll get the Snitch, and the Cup, and Gryffindor will know what it's like to go without the Cup, and then HE will come looking for ME...
xxx
to be continued in part 28, wherein Cho plays in the Quidditch Cup match ...