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
29. Strange Yet Familiar
(talks with Hooch after the match; argues with Roger about whether he ever cared for her; approached by Corner; they talk about brooms, but he seems concerned about her, and his self-assurance makes him seem mature despite his age, and she finds herself wondering about Michael)
Cho didn't even go to the changing room; she ran back to the castle, desperate to get there before anyone could call her name, or try to talk to her. She didn't want to talk to anyone, didn't want to hear what anyone had to say.
Nobody but herself, and now her own mind was screaming at her.
Stupid! Stupid, stupid cow! You knew better than that before you even got your Hogwarts letter! You dropped your concentration, you dropped your guard, and you dropped the Cup!
Even as she ran and berated herself, she tried to think of a place where she could just hide until this awful day was oversomewhere she wouldn't have to answer questions, wouldn't have to apologise to the rest of Ravenclaw. Yet she realized that she couldn't hide in the library; with exams starting on Monday, the library would be full of students all weekend. And by now Umbridge has probably put some sort of lock on the Room of Requirement...
NO! Not there!
She knew, even if she couldn't say it yet, that she also wanted to avoid anyplace where she might see Harry Potterwith or without Hermione Granger. She no longer knew what to think about those two, except that, whatever happened between her and Harry or even if nothing happened between her and Harry, Cho would not forgive Hermione until Hermione forgave Marietta.
There was nothing for it. Cho would go to her dormitory, crawl under the covers, draw the bed curtains, and hide there. She'd probably go down to the hospital wing in the afternoon...
By the time she reached the tapestry, she was almost too winded to give the password ("ichneumon"). She staggered more than walked toward the bookcase, touched her copy of Confucius, and entered the Common Room...
...where Madam Hooch was waiting for her.
Cho froze on the spot, and could barely get out the words, "How ... did you..."
"Get in? Being on faculty does have its privileges."
Cho shook her head. "How did you know to find me here?"
"Frankly, it was a guess. I was prepared to wait here all afternoon, though, if I had to."
For the first time in her life, Cho understood what it meant to feel deflated; she truly felt as if whatever had been holding her up had all leaked out. She crumpled into the nearest seat. "Just get it over with, then."
"Not here and now. Follow me, please, Miss Chang." Hooch led Cho out of Ravenclaw, then up the stairs to the fourth floor. She stopped at the first door on the right, which Cho recognised as an Ancient Runes classroom. Hooch waited by the open door until Cho walked numbly inside, then closed the door behind them.
"You can go ahead, Madam Hooch."
"And do what yell at you? Call you all sorts of names for a badly-played match? You don't need two people doing that."
"Two people?"
"I expect you haven't stopped yelling at yourself since Weasley got the Snitch, so why should I bother?"
Cho's legs finally gave out under her and she slipped onto a bench, but it was out of surprise more than dread.
Madam Hooch answered her unspoken question: "You think you're the first Seeker in a thousand years of Quidditch to lose a game like that? I've been here for a few years, you know, and I've seen the best and the worst and just about everything in between." She smiled as she sat opposite Cho. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Even as she recalled her trip to Cambridge, where the grief counsellor encouraged her to talk, she also remembered Madam Puddifoot's, and the disaster of trying to talk with Harry Potter. "I'm not sure it'll help..."
"Is it what I expect it is, or is something else going on?" Hooch pressed.
"It's..." She tried but stopped, then tried again. "I..." Cho knew that she'd have to get the words out, if only to repay Madam Hooch for standing by her all these years. "Something got between me and the match. I couldn't focus. The one match where I really needed to focus, and I couldn't."
"Just a little thing called pressure. We grownups feel it a hundred times a day, more or less. Takes a lot of the fun out of life, I can tell you."
"But I let you down, and the House, and the team." Cho paused. "And myself. I thought I was a better Seeker than that."
"On a good day, you certainly are, and I've seen you on enough good days to know that. You're the best Seeker at Hogwarts right now. Summerby would need to work more years than he has left at Hogwarts to come up to your level, and Malfoy is dangerously close to doing himself in with his dirty tricks."
"And..." She couldn't even say his name.
"Gryffindor? Well, Angelina Johnson tells me that Ginny Weasley would rather be a Chaser next year anyway, and there's simply nobody else while Potter's on the bench. And I'm sure Umbridge will keep him there as long as she's around."
"Pardon me for saying this, but..." Cho's voice dropped to a whisper. "I wish something would happen to her."
"You're not alone in that wish." Madam Hooch stood up. "Well, I'm sure we just broke an Edict or two, so maybe we'd better move along."
Cho actually smiled as she stood up, for the first time since the match. It seemed her world wasn't going to explode after all.
"Although I will say this," Madam Hooch said as she walked with Cho into the corridor. "Next year will be your last chance, probably your only chance, to go head-to-head with Potter again. I'd like to see that."
"I ... I've never really had the chance," Cho said, no longer sure how she felt about that prospect.
By Wednesday evening Cho wasn't even thinking of Quidditch at all, much less facing Harry Seeker to Seeker. The exams were on, and for Sixth Years they seemed to be N.E.W.T.-level already. Cho and Marietta spent almost every spare moment in the hospital wing studying. Some subjects, like Binns' History of Magic, were simple: read the book and repeat what it says. Ancient Runes and Arithmancy involved quite a lot of practice, just to make sure everything was done in order.
Cho had just finished the Wednesday afternoon exam in Potions, which was devilishly tricky. But then, the Ravenclaws expected no less from Snape, so they prepared by seeking out the oldest, most obscure potion formulas they could find, on the off-chance that Snape would assign them. And, sure enough, he did: they were told to mix up a batch of Linguafranca, which would temporarily give animals the power of speech, and test it on a cage full of owls Snape had brought down from the Owlery for the purpose. Cho's year succeeded, but the owls said such insulting things about Hogwarts in general, and Argus Filch in particular, that Cho wondered whether the owls might not be slaughtered after the exam, just in case.
She especially worried when one old horned owl started to complain: "And I resents havin' to be diverted just so that Umbridge woman can read..."
"Hush up!" a screech owl cut him off. "You don't want it to get back to her, now do yeh?"
Of course, by then, it was an open secret that Umbridge and the Inquisitorial Squad had been reading the student correspondence entering and leaving Hogwarts. After the business with Harry's interview in the Quibbler, Cho had continued writing to her family in Mandarin, just as Raina wrote home in Farsi, in hopes that Umbridge would consider the letters not worth the bother of translation.
Cho went from Snape's classroom to Ravenclaw, dashed off a quick scroll to her mother about the exam, then remembered that she had sent Quan Yin home the night before. Rather than wait, she went to the Owlery and attached the message to a school owl.
As she watched it fly toward the south, she heard the door open and close behind her. She turned, half dreading and half hoping to see Harry Potter
it was Roger Davies.
Cho had avoided him since they lost the Cup; now that she was cornered, she tried to act as if it had never happened. "How are the N.E.W.T.s treating you?" she smiled.
"That's why I'm here; just sending home the daily progress report." He selected a medium-sized horned owl and tied a short scroll to its leg. "It could be worse, I suppose," he said, looking at the owl's leg and not at Cho. "I'm just looking to scrape by, after all. It's not as if the N.E.W.T.s are going to determine my future."
"Well, that's usually the way it works for the rest of us."
"Not for me." He walked the owl to the window, watched him fly away, then turned toward Cho, smiling. "I've got a tryout."
"Really! Roger, that's wonderful! I'm so happy for you. Which team?"
He made a sour face. "Ballycastle. Honestly, why couldn't it have been a Welsh team? Now I have to go up to Northern Ireland!"
"But you wouldn't say no if they offered, would you?"
"Everybody's got to start somewhere. Anyway, after a few years, I might get traded. Things always work out for the best."
"Do you really believe that, Rog?"
"Yeh; I do now, anyway." The look on his face had turned serious. Not stern or angry, but more earnest and grave than Cho had ever seen him.
He stood, looking seriously at Cho, waiting, as if she was supposed to ask him something.
"Roger, listen," Cho started nervously, not at all sure where the conversation would take her, "I heard that you had words with some students who were making fun of me, after that awful business in Hogsmeade. I want to thank you for that..."
"Don't." The way he snapped that answer out at Cho, and the serious look still on his face, made Cho think he was mad at her. "Just standing up for a friend. You'd know about that."
"You mean Marietta? Yes, she's a friend, and also a Prefect."
"What's wrong with her face, then?"
"II don't know."
"Somehow, I think you really do know."
"Look, it's just a stupid fight, a girl thing between two Houses that should have been long over. Can't we just drop it?"
"That's funny coming from you."
"And what's THAT supposed to mean?"
"You never drop nothin'! Cedric's been dead a year and you haven't dropped him. You had that big row with Potter, and you still haven't dropped him, either!"
"What could that possibly matter to you! To you and Annabella Smoot! That was quite a show you two put on. Are you taking her with you to Ballycastle?"
"Damn it all, Cho, II sent it."
"Sent what?"
"Three years ago. You got a Valentine."
"What?"
"A poem."
Cho's brain felt as if it were freezing solid, refusing to cooperate. "Lockhart was... those ugly little dwarves..."
"And one of those ugly little dwarves had a poem I wrote. Well, I cribbed some of it from a Muggle. It was a poem about China and I thought..."
"I never heard it."
"Never?"
Cho shook her head. "Pince Transfigured it before I could hear it."
"So youyou never knew?"
Cho sat heavily onto the Owlery floor, not noticing the rodent bones and owl droppings. Her entire Hogwarts history was re-arranging itself. "Roger, oh, Roger, oh no..."
"Cho, I, I didn't mean to blurt it out like that"
"HowHow am I supposed to believe you! When I tried to join the team you actually warned me off! You said Quidditch and romance don't mix. And now you say you were interested in me, even while you were with the Veela, I suppose"
"A Veela's a Veela. I couldn't help that!"
"Annabella Smoot is no Veela!"
"Look, if you're going to be jealous of anyone, go back to the Veela!"
"But you just said!"
"Listen to me!" Roger crouched down next to where Cho was still sitting on the floor. "All right, she played with me during the Tournament, and I liked it. I mean, I thought about all the other wizards she could have had. Yeh, I acted the fool, but it was only me, nobody else, and I still feel proud that she picked me. So I've written her all this year. She's answered a few times, although she's been working at Gringotts in London with one of the older Weasleys." He looked at a tiny mouse pelvic bone on the floor and flicked it away. "They do more than work together, from what I hear.
"But I wrote to her after you said you were waiting for Potter to ask you to Hogsmeade. I still remember her reply. She wrote back, 'Love is a little more complicated than you English make it, but also it is more simple. It makes no sense to hope when you will get nothing for it. You must walk away.'"
Tears began to roll down Cho's face. She tried to think of Roger as a friend all of these years; she either didn't know, or didn't want to know, if she caused him any pain.
"So I took Annabella to Puddifoot's to see if she was right, and she was. We saw each other for a month, had a few good snogs in the meantime, then she lost interest. And when it was over, it didn't hurt; not much, anyway."
Roger stood back up; Cho stayed on the Owlery floor, crying. Roger stood up, bent over, with one finger under her chin raised Cho's head up to face him, and lightly kissed her forehead.
"I'll still think of you as a friend," he said softly, "as well as the best damned Seeker I know. As for the rest, well, the Muggles have a saying: You can't miss what you never had." With that he turned and walked out of the Owlery. As Roger walked down the stairs to the castle, he thought, And I'll bet it's crap when the Muggles say it, too.
Cho was too exhausted to move. She stayed on the Owlery floor for twenty minutes. Then she got up, carelessly brushed off her robes, and slowly went down to the hospital wing. She knew that she'd hate repeating all this to Marietta, but what else was there to do?
xxx
The next Saturday, exactly one week since the loss to Gryffindor, Cho woke up to a day in which, for the first time in ages, there was absolutely nothing to do. No exams to prepare for, no matches to practice for. She could do anything.
And the prospect was upsetting. You don't want to hear that you can do whatever you desire, when the things you truly desire are impossible.
She wanted Marietta's face fixed once and for all, so that she could come out of the hospital wing and enjoy the weather and not have to go about the castle with veils and masks and makeup, none of which disguised the vile word SNEAK. But that wouldn't happen until Hermione Granger felt some remorse. I daresay she's proud of having pulled off such a spell, Cho thought, at least to hear Harry tell it...
Harry.
She wanted Harry. She wanted to be able to talk to him again, to have him talk to her again, without Granger's hex and Marietta's face getting in between them. But, no; Marietta DID try to tell Umbridge about the DA, and he seemed unlikely to forgive that.
She wanted Cedric back from the dead, which seemed somehow only slightly less impossible than a contrite Granger or a forgiving Potter.
She wanted this awful, awful year to be over. She wanted it to be 1 July and all of them on the train to London now, instead of almost a month from now.
She went down to the hospital wing, found that Marietta was still asleep, and curled up in the neighbouring bed. She wanted to wait a few minutes, but instead dozed off and slept for two hours. When she awoke, Marietta was already up.
"Good thing," the Prefect smiled; "we almost missed breakfast altogether."
By the time they got to the Great Hall, it was almost empty, with one or two students lingering at each House table. Most of the students were out enjoying the good weatherexcept for the Fifth Years, whose O.W.L.s were only half over.
Cho looked at the far end of the table, where she saw Michael Corner dividing his attention between a bowl of porridge and a copy of the "Most Potente Potions."
"That's funny," Cho said; "somehow I thought he was Fourth Year."
"I can understand why," Marietta replied between bites of sausage. "Ginny Weasley's Fourth Year, and they've been an item for months."
Ginny Weasley was still a very sore spot for Cho. "And he's a Ravenclaw? Surely he can do better."
Cho stayed in the hospital wing with Marietta until lunch, when Madams Pomfrey and Sprout showed up with another experimental potion to try on Marietta's face. Cho knew she had to leave, but promised to return in a couple of hours.
Once in the corridor, though, she had no idea where to go.
A shout came through an open window. She looked out on the courtyard, and saw a couple of Gryffindor boysone black, one whitere-enacting the dramatic departure of the Weasley twins. Even though they risked being given detention (or worse) by Umbridge, they seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
That's what I want to do, Cho suddenly realized: fly. Not for a match, not for practice. Just flying for its own sake. Just feeling the sun and wind...
Then she remembered. Last week, the last she'd seen of her Comet Two Sixty was when she angrily threw it to the ground after the match. What happened then? Did Hooch pick it up and put it in the shed?
Remembering that gesture made her feel every bit as rotten as she did whenever she thought about Puddifoot's. She walked briskly back to Ravenclaw, resisting the urge to break into a run, as if she could escape her embarrassment that way. But by the time she reached the tapestry, she was remembering Roger Davies, and what the Veela had told him: sometimes you must walk away.
Perhaps a new broom...
She looked around the Common Room and found what she was hoping to find: the most recent edition of "Which Broomstick." Some of the pages had been folded down, and there was scribbling in some of the margins. Next to a picture of the 1996 model Twigger, someone had written "Call it Snigger; it's a joke!" Other comments were considerably ruder.
Still, she realized that she wasn't really aware of the state of the broommaker's art, so she settled into the daybed and began leafing through the pages.
An hour later, she was still casually leafing through the book.
"Hello, Cho."
Michael Corner.
Cho fought a quick internal battle. Would she despise him because of Ginny Weasley? Or would she be friendly to a fellow Ravenclaw and a member of the DA? Cho's personality, all other things being equal, tended toward friendly.
"Taking a break from studying?"
He nodded. "The worst of it is over, at least. I mean, we only have four days next week. Potions on Monday, but after that it's a doddle." He pointed at her book. "It's high time you got something better than the Comet."
Cho's eyes narrowed as she looked at him. "Strange thing to say, coming from the boyfriend of the winning Seeker."
Michael rolled his eyes. "Don't remind me; that's over."
Cho was surprised to realise how interested she was to hear that. "Since when?"
"Since lunch, actually. You can't imagine what Ginny's been like this past week. She's been nothing but 'I won the Cup' and 'I beat the Ravenclaw Seeker.' So I tell her that I'm still Ravenclaw and she says, 'Too bad you weren't smart enough to get into Gryffindor,' and that's when we went at it. We exchanged a few ill-chosen words, and she gave me my walking papers."
"Oh." Cho didn't really know what to say. "You don't look too broken-up about it."
"We'd been seeing too much of each other, I think. Sometimes you just have to move on."
Cho looked down at the catalogue, afraid that her eyes would betray her thoughts if she looked at Michael's face. Why did he use those words?
"Enough of that. Have you decided on anything?"
"What? Oh, no; not really." Michael seemed poised to go, either up to his dorm or out of the Common Room and into the castle. Cho hardly realised that she was speaking: "Do you have any thoughts?"
Michael pulled a chair up next to the day bed and sat down with a smile. "Thought you'd never ask. What are you looking at?"
"What? Oh, well, I'm going through the import models just now. Do you know anything about this American import, the Soft-tail Deluxe?"
"I know it's not the broom for you. All the American models have too much power, and none of the control spells are sensitive enough."
"Don't you think I can handle it?"
"Only if you had about a year to get used to it. At high speed in the middle of a match, you'd build up too much momentum and end up in the stands."
"What do you recommend, then?"
Michael looked Cho up and down, in a way that left her feeling not unpleasant. "In your case, I'd look at some of the Japanese brooms."
"This isn't a racial thing, is it?"
"Never! Just that the Jap brooms are built for someone like you; they're smaller, far more flexible, built for maximum speed with perfect control. Most British wizards think they'd fall apart in a high breeze, but there's a lot of strength there most wizards don't see at first glance."
Something about Michael's conversation, his smile, his way of looking at Cho, felt strange yet familiar at the same time. She tried to push it back in her mind; the subject at hand now was brooms. Later, in the hospital wing, she'd discuss him with Marietta.
"Any thoughts, Mister Corner?"
"Well, ever since they brought it out I've been partial to the Interceptor..."
Cho and Michael talked about brooms for the next two hours. By the time he left to resume studying for Potions, Cho had forgotten about her promise to return to the hospital wing.
xxx
to be continued in part 30, wherein Cho finds out one thing too many about Michael Corner ...