Forever Yours, Forever Mine
Chapter Three: On The Hogwarts Express

A/N: Yay, thanks so much to all my lovely reviewers, and readers, and also to all the people who have added me onto Favorites and Alerts, I love you guys to death. :) More Cedric/Cho interaction in this chapter.

Disclaimer: I continue to own nothing except Paige, and Dom, who is Cedric's friend.

Pushing a cart full of her trunks through the brick wall, Cho grinned. The best part about summer was this: going the Hogwarts Express, to go back to the castle that she truly called home. After dropping off her luggage, she looked around, an inexplainable joy filling up in her at the sight of so many familiar faces mulling through, chatter rising up audibly in the smoke.

"Mare!" Cho squealed in delight, launching herself on a curly-haired brunette. The girl grinned and returned the greeting, the two friends latched onto each other for quite a long time before Cho pulled away.

"Cho! Marietta!" another voice called. Racing toward them was a blue-eyed, blonde-haired beauty—Lisa Turpin, the last girl in their dynamic group. She flung herself on both of the girls, crushing them in hugs, all of them grinning madly at the sight of their friends. It wasn't long before Mandy and Paige found them too, and they all set off into the train, picked an empty compartment, and began to chat ferociously.

When the conversation drifted into that of the Quidditch World Cup, Marietta and Lisa scoffed and began their own conversation together, as Cho, Mandy and Paige started to replay the whole match, their excited tones washing out any other noise inside the compartment.

When Cho had recapped her awe over Viktor Krum's amazing Wronski Feint for the tenth time, she remembered there were two other people in the compartment with her. To her shock, Marietta and Lisa each had a good pile of food in their laps, the sweets and candies usually supplied by the trolley witch. The three of them gaped in surprise.

"Where did you get those?" Mandy asked, the first to snap out of her stupor.

"Trolley witch just passed by," Marietta told them offhandedly, opening a package of Chocolate Frogs. "Tried to get your attention, but didn't hear either of us, so we just got our own stuff."

"But when?" Mandy persisted.

"Just a couple minutes ago."

The three friends looked at each other, and scrambled for the compartment door. Cho made it out first, looking for the witch. Seeing her at the end of the hall, she started off a light jog, looking back at her friends with a grin.

"I see her, she's—" Before Cho could finish, she ran into someone just coming out of a compartment.

A voice grunted, startled.

"I'm sorry," Cho said, bowing her head slightly. She peered through her bangs to see who it was. The girl was tall, and seemed unhappy that Cho had ran into her, her arms crossed in an aggressive stance.

"Er… Really, I didn't mean it," Cho stammered.

"Watch where you're going, then," she hissed. Cho shuddered; it felt as if the girl's dark eyes were boring holes into her. She wasn't in the mood to getting into a fight, though it seemed clear the older girl wanted one.

"Listen, I'm really sorry, I was just trying to get to the—"

"Liselle," a voice rumbled behind Cho. The girl, or Liselle, looked surprised and her aggressive demeanor dropped immediately.

"Cedric," she said breathily, a tone the exact opposite from the harsh and crude one she had been using earlier. In fact, now that she was smiling, she was actually quite pretty, her long, dark hair dramatizing her face, and her dark eyes glittering rather than glaring.

"Anything wrong?"

"Oh no," Liselle smiled. "Just bumped into this little girl. Telling her to watch out in the halls. Don't want anyone getting hurt, now do we?" Cho felt her anger bubble. The girl had been rude, and unexplainably angry at her for a reason that didn't even seem liable for that kind of hostility, and now, she was all disarming smiles. Though Cho wanted nothing better than to punch her, she held it in, merely tightening her hand in a fist. She tried her best to keep a straight face, her mother's words drifting in and out of her ears.

"Keeping a smile in the face of adversity is the best weapon, haven't I told you that? I never want you to lose your temper with me or with anyone else again, do you understand me, Cho Chang? I swear, I don't know where I went wrong with you."

The memory of her mother's words went too far. Her anger increased, and whatever the two were saying to each other was lost to her ears. The girl, Liselle, was smiling again and talking to Cedric in a flirty voice. Cho's fist twitched. Bringing her leg around, she stomped it as hard as she could on the other girl's toes. The girl yelped in surprise, her face first in shock, then in anger. She whipped out her wand.

"Densaugeo!"

With a muffled shriek, Cho covered her mouth. Paige and Mandy ran forward, their faces livid with anger. They both pointed their wands at the girl, but Cedric interfered, holding their wrists, and pulling them into a compartment. The talk inside the room stopped when the three people came inside.

"Cedric, who are all these people?" A boy smiled, standing up. Cho made noises of discomfort, using both hands to try and cover her teeth, which had grown so long that she could no longer hide them. She tried to shy away from the boys who were all looking interestedly at the three girls that had crowded into their compartment.

"Not now, Dom," Cedric told the boy standing up, who immediately understood the message and sat back down, tangling up the rest of the boys into conversation.

"Are you okay?" Cedric asked. Cho didn't respond, her face red and squeaks of dismay emitting from her throat. "Here, just let me have a look at those." But Cho turned around, so her back was facing him, tears of embarrassment watering her eyes.

"Cho, I need to look at them," he told her patiently, trying to turn her around. Cho stayed rooted to the spot. He gave an exasperated intake of breath. He stopped trying to move her and before she knew it, Paige's face was in front of hers.

"Cho! You have to… Oh my God… Here, no wait, here. Finite Incantantum! There, look, they've stopped growing. I don't know how to shrink them yet. But Cedric does, just turn around, please, Cho, they're going to be stuck like that until we get to the castle if you don't. For goodness sake, please, just face him!" Paige's hands grabbed her shoulders and forced her around, so she was facing the Hufflepuff boy, his wand at the ready.

Cho whimpered, trying her best to cover her impossibly long teeth. This proved to be a fruitless task as her teeth had grown down to her stomach. Mandy grabbed her hands and pulled them down, exposing the teeth she had tried so hard to hide. Cho looked as if she was going to cry, her face a beet red and trying desperately to break her friend's grip.

His face did not betray disgust or pity, it only looked concerned as he rolled up his sleeves, mumbled something under his breath, and caused her teeth to slowly shrink. They shrank past her chest, past her shoulders, past her lower lips, and then shrank into place. She ran her tongue under her teeth, relieved to find them at their former glory. Before she knew what she was doing, she flung her arms around the boy, hugging him fiercely before realization hit her.

Cedric looked stunned, and Cho felt incredibly abashed, bringing her arms back down to her sides. "I'm sorry," she apologized. "I… er… Thanks, so much. I don't think I can thank you enough. Thank you, again. Er… bye."

She ducked out of the compartment, Paige and Mandy on her heels. They had the same smirks plastered on their faces from the night of the Quidditch World Cup.

"What did I tell you?" Paige grinned.

"Nothing," Cho retorted.

"Come on, Cho. The way he saved you? The face he gave when you hugged him? And did you see that girl's face when he took you away?" Mandy asked, grinning.

"It was nice of him," Cho told them conclusively, fighting away the pleased sensation she was receiving from her friend's claims. She stayed expressionless, trying her best to look disinterested, making her way over to the trolley witch, who was, thankfully enough, still visiting the last of the train compartments.

Her friends seemed to have given up, but Cho missed the secret glances they exchanged after she made it clear she didn't want to hear anymore.

"I'd like a Pumpkin Pasty, please," Cho told the witch, holding out a couple Knuts and dropping them in the trolley witch's hands. Cho looked up as the old woman shuffled through her cart, and right in front of her, on the other side of the trolley, was none other than Harry Potter. Her heart jumped in surprise. Collecting herself, she smiled, and he gave her a hesitant smile back. Feeling exceptionally better, she accepted her Pumpkin Pasty and made off, Mandy and Paige following her.

In the previous excitement, the two had forgotten to buy their sweets, so they doubled back, though the door to Harry's compartment was now closed. Cho's fingers itched to open it and start a conversation with Harry, but doing so might be unnatural, and her friends definitely wouldn't get off her back if she did.

She locked her fingers behind her back until Mandy and Paige were done and then made her way back to her own compartment, moving quickly by the compartment that Liselle occupied. The three friends opened the door and sat back down, Marietta and Lisa looking bemusedly at them.

"What took so long?" Marietta asked incredulously, giving them all her infamous 'what's-going-on' look.

"Cho's got a lover!" Mandy laughed.

"Ooh!" Lisa gasped, her blue-gray eyes sparking with interest. Lisa always perked up when it came to boys. "Who?"

Paige stayed silent, clearing her throat and promptly opening a book. Cho smiled gratefully. Though Paige badgered her in private, she never did it in public, especially when she knew that her friend would not appreciate it. Mandy however, impulsive as she was, often did things without thinking, especially when she was excited. She also tended to block out anything else but herself and the people she was talking to, hence, she didn't hear Paige's obvious discomfort at raising the subject.

"Cedric," she grinned.

"Cedric Diggory?" Marietta repeated, looking over at Cho in disbelief. However, she had chosen this moment to look out the window as if the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful, though it was nothing more than clumps of dead shrubs under a darkening sky. Silence settled in the room for a long moment. Paige chose this moment to turn a page in her book with much more noise than was necessary, and Cho's cheeks took on a pinkish hue.

"Who?" Lisa's voice seemed to echo strangely in the dead silent compartment.

"Cedric! Cedric Diggory?"

"Yes, Marietta, Cedric Diggory," Mandy sounded incredibly amused.

"When, just now?" Marietta sounded confounded, and Cho couldn't blame her. She knew exactly what her friend thought of the boy, how handsome he had grown in the past few years, and how lucky Cho was to be able to play against him in Quidditch.

"No, not just now." Mandy sounded as if she would burst if she kept the information in longer. "The Quidditch World Cup!"

"What about it?"

"Well, Cho got separated from us, and we were so scared that she might have died, or something, you know, with the Death Eaters and all, but then we see her walk right over to us, with Cedric right next to her! She had his cloak on and everything. And you know what was draped around his shoulders? Cho's blanket! And then when we left to go get the stuff from the trolley witch-"

Cho cleared her throat loudly, cutting Mandy off short. "It was nothing," she remarked coldly. Marietta and Lisa, who had been listening intently Mandy, looked over at Cho, surprised.

"But Cho," Lisa protested. "We have to know! I mean, this is huge news!"

"Neither of them fancy me."

"Well, either way, as your best friend, I think I ought to know at the very least," Marietta said stuffily, obviously unhappy that she was the last to know all the news.

"It's about me. Don't I get a say in what's said about me or not?"

"Well, Cho, be fair, I mean, what happened in the hall was big. Shouldn't they at least know that?" Mandy asked. Usually so cheery, Mandy now looked a little uncomfortable. Cho knew she was regretting what she had blurted out so openly. Despite Mandy's grievances, Cho still felt anger curdle in her stomach. She forced it down.

"Oh alright," she sighed, Lisa and Marietta craning in again, interested. "I got in a fight with a girl in the hall, it wasn't such a big deal. My teeth started growing, and Cedric fixed them for me. That's all."

"But that can't be all," Lisa said knowingly, looking expectantly at Cho.

"But it is."

"But Cho…" Mandy started.

"That was it. That was all there was to it." Cho didn't understand the snappy tone in her voice, neither did her friends, who immediately dropped trying to talk to her, and tried to weasel it out of Mandy, who was giving Cho apprehensive looks and refused to say another word about what happened. Both girls seemed unhappy that neither of them knew what had happened in the corridor, while a room full of their friends did. Cho didn't even see why they had to make such a big deal out of it. It's not like every encounter with a boy is a huge thing, she told herself, trying to get rid of the slight pang of guilt at her friends' disappointed faces.

Glaring moodily out the window, Cho stuffed a Pumpkin Pasty in her mouth. But even those didn't have the same taste they usually did. Shoving them away from her, Cho looked back out the window, bemused. Why lose her temper over something so small and menial? Why was she so hesitant to have Marietta and Lisa know anyways? It was their right to know as her friends. She tried to tell herself it was nothing, convince herself like she had her friends.

Some things were just easier said than done.