Title: I am Fine

Round : 2

School : Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry

Year : 6

Theme : Secrets

Main Prompt :[Genre] Hurt/comfort

Additional Prompts :[Emotion] Rage

Word Count : 1937

1

After the war, three things happened to Cho Chang.

Firstly, she acquired a low paying job at the Ministry after having moved back to England from China, where she'd spent two years after the war, hoping to distance herself from the stress and the drama that she had faced back in England, but despite her expectations, all she acquired was even more stress, which came along with moving with her grandparents, who simply did not understand why Cho refused to marry that good boy that they knew, even though he so well-bred and good-mannered, which was in their opinion, everything a husband was supposed to be.

"Do you expect to be alone forever, Cho?" Her grandmother would scold her every time she would go to visit them. "Or god forbid, marry one of those English men?" And then her grandmother would sigh very dramatically, shaking her head. "It's your mother's fault, you know. We should have never allowed Yinfei to convince Luo Chang to move to England. You should have been raised like a proper Chinese woman. If you had, you would have at the very least, known how to properly eat with a chopstick. What would your grandfather say?"

Apparently, not knowing how to hold the bloody thing properly was a greater offense than anything else in the eyes of her aging grandmother.

Suffice to say, it had not taken Cho long to decide that enough was enough and move back to England.

The second thing that happened was the loss of her friendship with Marietta (whom her grandmother disapproved of entirely, for her general Englishness), which was bound to happen either way after how much Marietta started to blame her for everything that happened to her life after what happened in their sixth year.

Although the witch never explicitly said so, Cho always had a feeling that Marietta blamed her for what had happened, that if Cho hadn't convinced her to join them, she wouldn't have had a scar that would last for the rest of her life even though it was Hermione Granger who had done that to her, dooming her unappealing to the most wizards and it wasn't even like she could cover it with a charm, since it was created in a way that made that practically impossible.

But whatever, if Marietta didn't want to be friends with her anymore, that was her loss, even if it did hurt at times whenever she caught a glimpse of her walking across the street in London or heard a rumor about her from somebody — the latest piece of a rumor was that Marietta was working in Brazil now, which explained why they haven't crossed paths lately.

Lastly, she had gained a new friend in Marcus Flint, although maybe calling him a friend wasn't quite right. After all, the only time they ever saw each other was during Fridays after work when they would both drive themselves to a state of drunkenness.

It was something of a secret, actually, since they often met up at muggle bars or her house, which apparently was an invitation for the rest of the Slytherin gang to come along.

Cho did not mind.

It was the only time she did not feel lonely or empty, or any of those things that she tried to convince herself that she did not feel those past few years, anyway.

So, as the saying went, the more the merrier.

2

"You know what, it's really unfair," Cho complained one night, drowning another glass of a firewhiskey, "I defended my friend, and in turn, I was vilified. Never mind that she turned out to be a bitch that I really shouldn't have stuck out for, but that doesn't matter does it? When you defend a friend, you do not think about how a boy you may just love may decide that you are mean and ridiculous. You think about how you do not want to lose them just because of a silly boy. Now, when I go out in the streets, they say, she lost her mind after she lost her boyfriend, that poor Cho. It doesn't matter that I fought in the war in the end. I am still that weak, fragile thing that couldn't handle it in the end. The one with all those changing emotions that couldn't be trusted with. I absolutely hate it."

Draco snorted. "What else did you expect of those Gryffin folk?" He asked. "Everything's so fucking black and white with them. You defended somebody they deemed to be traitorous and wicked, which of course means, that you are too. Just look at how they treated Pansy after she did one mistake when she was a scared little teenager in a war she didn't know how to fight. You know how being a Slytherin means that you cannot even enter some establishments nowadays?"

If Pansy heard him calling her that, she may have hexed him to the next week. It was a good thing that she wasn't in the vicinity tonight.

"You know what I think?" It was Marcus who spoke, raising his glass. "Fuck them. We do neither need nor want their judgments."

"I'll drink to that."

And they did.

3

The morning after, Cho woke up with a headache and an emptiness in her chest that she didn't know how to fill.

She looked at the mirror, at the pale face that stared back at her across the mirror, and got a sudden urge to lay down on the bathroom floor and cry, except she thought that she should be better than this, better than to fall into a state of a depression every five weeks. Shouldn't she know how to control her own state of a mind, but Cho did not, and all she could do was to curl down and cry.

"Yeah, I am fine," She would later call Padma to explain why she'd missed their weekend shopping, "I think I just caught a cold," She would fake a cough around this time, the lie falling naturally around her tongue, "Of course I didn't forget to drink the potion, Padma. And yeah, I will see you at the office on Monday?"

And then she would fall down against the wall, and stare at the wall for what felt like five minutes, but what was actually five hours.

4

It all began after Cedric died — at the very least, Cho thought so, it was quite hard to tell between grief and depression at times — the months following his death ended in Cho locking herself in her room and refusing to either sleep or eat. During those times, she would cry endlessly, cry until her eyes turned red and she could no longer shed any tears any longer.

And when Harry came along, the boy that was the last person to see Cedric alive, and Cho thought she saw salvation.

She thought if she had Harry, she would have a piece of Cedric that she had lost, but all it ended up doing was making her feel even more depressed and miserable and left her with a grudge that she had never thought she would ever be capable of.

She threw herself at Michael Corner and Roger Davies with a hope that they would be able to fix her, to make herself turn back to the normal, but by the end of her school graduation, Cho learned that no stupid boy could ever fix the hole that Cedric had left behind.

5

Cho had asked Marcus to go with her to the charity ball held with the intention of protecting and supporting the war orphans every two years or so, mostly because he was so tall and scary looking that hopefully, nobody would actually try to approach her with the hopes of getting her into talking with them.

In shorter words, she was using him as a shield of sorts, which he apparently found way funnier than Cho thought that he should.

But of course, such a thing would not matter to Harry Potter, who'd faced you-know-who and won at the age of seventeen.

"Cho, I wanted to talk to you," He said, eying Marcus suspiciously, "Can we talk alone?"

Cho crossed her arms together, hoping to look intimidating, but with her baby face, she probably looked like a bunny trying to look like a lion much to her frustration. "Anything you want to say, you can say in front of Marcus."

He sighed, "Look, I know we probably ended things badly —,"

"That would be an understatement —," She quipped.

"But Hermione was hoping I could get you to agree to —," But he stopped upon seeing the look on her face, now looking quite ashamed.

"Whatever Granger wants you to do," Cho glared at him in a rage, tightening her hold on Marcus' arm, "You can tell her to forget it. I have no plans on doing anything for you people."

"I thought we were on good terms," Harry said, looking genuinely startled. "It's just during the war, you seemed to —,"

"Just because I was not willing to get in an argument with you, does not mean I forgave you what you and your friends did to me and Marietta." She informed him, "It was meaninglessly cruel and heartless."

He sighed. "For what it's worth, I am sorry."

Cho did not dignify him with a reply.

She merely took off and left, not even waiting for Marcus to follow her.

6

The morning after, Marcus appeared on her doorstep.

"This is the third time you did this," was what he said upon entering her house, "You've got to stop abandoning me as soon as things get — Merlin, what happened to your face?"

Cho shrugged. "I had a rough night." Well, the truth was that her anger had turned into bitterness, which ended in her emotions spiraling until she ended up crying in the hallway of her own house until who even knew when, but what she did know was that it was long enough for her eyes to redden and puff from crying.

"Were you crying?" Marcus asked a little worryingly, glancing over her place, "Cho, are you really alright?"

"I am fine." Cho gave him the excuse she gave him and others thousands of times before, that she was perfectly fine and there was nothing to worry about. "I just had a bad day, that's all."

"Cho, when people have bad days, they don't end up looking like they are dead, and even if they do, they better the next day. Are you really sure you are alright?"

Cho's shoulders shook roughly, and despite herself, she gave a little whimper when she lifted her head to look at him, and when Cho opened her mouth to speak, to say what, she did not know, she found that she could not.

Instead, she cried and when he awkwardly placed his arms around her, she did not protest.

7

After that day, Marcus convinced her to get professional help.

He'd told her how they helped to manage his anger and rage when his sister convinced him to go to them after the war.

So, he thought, they would be able to help with her own situation, and it did, way more than Cho had ever thought it would even when she'd gone to that first session with Marcus loyally accompanying her, waiting around in the lobby until she was finished.

For what felt like the first time in a very long time, Cho was content and happy.