CHO CHANG'S EIGHTH 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 the wizarding world that Harry isn't aware of.

Rated: PG-13

Spoilers: Everything

xxx

3. Changes

xxx

Lotus called at once for her husband. She practically screamed; she sometimes screamed during arguments with Cho, but this was different. Cho had never heard that tone in her mother's voice before. She began to realize that there was so much she didn't know about Lotus Chang.

The family spent a few minutes discussing whether to close the shop for the day out of respect. However, the Prophet didn't give any indication whether the new Minister would have wanted that, and the Changs knew, whether or not they came out and said it, that anyone standing against the new masters of the Ministry would be suspected of a host of disloyalties.

Sure enough, when they opened the shop for the day, two suspicious looking wizards were among the customers. They never placed an order; they simply walked around the floor, making a big show of taking notes. What any of it might have meant, they never said. Even when Lotus asked them point-blank what they were looking for, they didn't answer her. When they did speak, it was rudely to customers they seemed to consider undesirable.

By the Sunday after the takeover, things had begun to sort themselves out. The two suspicious wizards vacated the shop, but stood in Diagon Alley, watching everyone coming in or going out. Occasionally they would harass certain customers (who tended to be older, slower, and more vulnerable), and once or twice per day made a point of arresting someone, sending them to the Ministry.

xxx

"I must be thick," Cho said that Sunday evening at dinner, "because I'm missing something. Are those two trying to get to us through our customers?"

"I think they have several customers in mind, even if we can't see them. Think about it: the Ministry has been taken over by the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. That's plain. But his priorities haven't changed, have they? The posters are still all over the Alley."

The "posters" were blow-ups of the face of Harry Potter, under the slogan "Undesirable Number One." This amused Cho to no end; not only did she still desire Harry very much, but she doubted that he had ever had a picture taken that made him look suspicious, menacing, or at all sinister. The posters simply made him look as if he was back at the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade, organizing Dumbledore's Army and a bit bemused to be doing so.

"Harry's supposed to be coming here?"

"Among other places in the Alley. Because they think he really wants something here."

Cho looked down at her plate, fighting off a blush and trying not to grin from ear to ear.

"I meant Polyjuice ingredients!" Lotus spelled the dirty dishes into the kitchen sink. "He's going to need a barrel of the potion now, isn't he?"

"Well, he's used it in the past," Cho began.

"But did he ever change himself into an octogenarian?" Cho's father interrupted. "That seems to be the only kind of customer they've targeted."

"That only makes sense," Lotus sniffed. "If you're going to disguise yourself, you'd want a type least like your own."

"But not too far off, especially for something this serious," Cho added. "If you had a couple of elderly witches acting like students, that would be a giveaway."

"Perhaps. But this latest batch of Death Eaters doesn't seem as sharp as the ones before you were born."

"All they're looking for now is brute force and unswerving loyalty," Cho's father added. "Frankly, the ones I've seen are vicious enough, but they barely have the brains to go into a store and buy a Chocolate Frog."

Cho couldn't help but glance at the fireplace, in case somebody was listening in through the Floo Network. But nobody said anything.

xxx

The next day, during a rare lull in business, Cho asked: "Did you have to go through all this when you first got to London?"

"No," Lotus said, with the hint of a smile. "And we weren't completely sure what to tell them. I'm sure you realize already that Chinese magic does things a bit differently, and some of these English are very hard to read. You can never be sure who would resent what we can do, or who would be open to accept it."

"I'm more than a little ashamed of it now," Cho's father added, "but we sometimes used their own stereotypes against them. You talkie funny, they think you not so smart, they leave you alone." James had lapsed into a bad comic Chinese dialect, like from an old Muggle movie; then he lapsed back into his normal speech. "Of course, that made it easy for us to keep an eye and an ear on them. They figured we were harmless."

"Well, you were harmless; I mean, weren't you?"

"I think the Dark Lord wouldn't have known what to make of your father and me," Lotus smiled. "He had his own ideas of how a Pureblood should sound and act, even then. As long as he thought we didn't offer a threat to his rule, and as long as he hasn't a clue about Chinese magic, he won't much care about us or the shop."

"And now that I'm here too?"

"Now they know about your time in the so-called Dumbledore's Army, and being Harry Potter's, erm, friend."

"Will they hold that against me? Worse, against you?"

"Who knows what they'll do with that bit of information? I expect they would use it if they could."

xxx

The Changs were kept under Ministry observation, and a few times that fall Cho's parents were actually summoned to the Ministry on very flimsy pretexts, but basically they were left alone.

"That was a day wasted," Cho's father complained one evening in October. Dinner had been held up and the shop had been short-handed while he was at the Ministry all day. "They wanted to examine our license to import boomslang skins; not that there's anything to examine. I think they just wanted to look like they were doing something."

"Who are they trying to impress, then? Apart from the Dark Lord, I mean."

"Each other. They have to look as if they're doing something. Of course, the ones who really are doing the Ministry's dirty work are so busy that they don't have to put up a front."

"Who would that be?"

"The Registry lot. They had to drop their plan to list half-and-halfs as well as Muggle-borns; it would have involved too much work and implicated too many wizarding families."

"Sounds like Amateur Night over there," Lotus sniffed. "How's the Ministry getting anything done?"

"Same as during the last war: Imperius those you can and Cruciatus for the rest. Lots of threats, but this is one of those times where their propaganda works against them. They can threaten most families with all sorts of punishment, including Azkaban, but they're bound to favour the old Pureblood families. Many of the threats never amount to anything."

"Seems funny and sad at the same time," Cho sighed.

"So did the last war," sighed her mother.

xxx

By mid-October Cho had made an accidental discovery that even her mother hadn't warned her about. The room full of teacups was heavy with humidity from the thunderstorm rattling Diagon Alley that day. It may have been part of an attack of some kind—since Scrimgeour had been assassinated, order and civility were on the decline in the wizarding world—but Cho was glad to be at home, away from the Alley and out of the weather.

She had just moved quickly from one corner of the room to another, deftly walking on the teacups without breaking them at all. She had stopped to watch Chairman Miao apparently trying to imitate her. He walked onto one of the teacups, then shook his paw as if he'd gotten it wet. Cho found the cat's movements hilarious, but she tried very hard not to laugh, lest she break her concentration.

The thunderclap was a loud one; Cho momentarily thought that the house had been hit. She couldn't tell what the cat was thinking, but it tensed every muscle and then leapt across the room toward Cho. Cho jumped backward, her back hitting the middle of the wall.

And she stayed there.

Her mother may have taught her about lightening the body, about meditation, and about all of the rest, but she hadn't mentioned this. Cho was clinging to the wall like an insect, without feeling at all that she was likely to fall back to the floor. Again, she simply stayed where she was to see if her mother would come looking for her. Sure enough, a few minutes later, Lotus called down from the shop: "We need some help here!"

"I think I do too, mummy. Can you come down for a moment?"

Cho watched the doorway until her mother appeared. When she took in the scene, Lotus's eyebrows went up in surprise. Cho, not knowing what to say or do, edged up the wall until she reached the ceiling, then kept going, crossing the ceiling on her back.

Lotus watched Cho; all she said was, "Don't show off, dear; come up and help us."

But there was no mistaking Lotus's proud smile for her daughter.

xxx

"Have I ever met Minister Thicknesse? I don't remember."

The Changs were having dinner about a month later. It was November, and the weather was already miserable.

Cho's father shook his head with a rather sad smile. "Believe me, if you'd ever met him, you still wouldn't remember. He was something of a nonentity even when he headed Magical Law Enforcement."

"I suppose that would be an advantage. Keep a low profile and people don't know you're coming."

"On the other hand, who was that Auror you were telling us about at Hogwarts; Moody?"

"Mad-Eye Moody."

"Yes. He was just the opposite of Thicknesse. You always knew if he was within a mile of you. He was never one for being undercover, and he got results."

"But remember," Lotus interrupted, "Moody never wanted to be Minister of Magic. Being just an Auror wasn't a problem for him, and Scrimgeour was one of several recent Enforcement heads who were killed."

"Does any of this explain Thicknesse, then?"

Cho's father shook his head. "On the one hand, this is a state of emergency, and it makes sense to promote the Enforcement head to be Minister of Magic. But Thicknesse isn't exactly a wartime Minister, is he? He just acts as if the worst of everything is over now, and tries to maintain that all is well."

"Then why do the Ministry workers act so foolishly? If all is well, they haven't heard about it."

"Well spotted," said Lotus. "You're the Ravenclaw; what does all this tell you?"

"That Thicknesse really isn't in charge," Cho said without a moment's hesitation. "He puts himself out there as Minister, but it's an act. Or someone's using Imperius on him. Or someone's assumed his identity using Polyjuice. After all, you said a little while ago that the Ministry was trying to find out who was buying Polyjuice ingredients. If I depended on it that much, I'd be worried."

"Well reasoned," Cho's father smiled.

"Perhaps, but it doesn't really help us, does it? Short of all-out war, there's no way we'll get the Ministry back to independence, is there?"

"Not at the moment, anyway. We need to keep our eyes open, and find our allies when and where we can. Meanwhile, we keep to the shop and keep a low profile."

Cho nodded, but doubted whether the day would ever come that there would be enough allies to change things.

xxx

To be continued in part 4, wherein Cho and her parents receive too many visitors for the holidays…

A/N: I'm of the opinion that "Pius Thicknesse," JKR's puppet Minister, is an implied critique of Pope Pius XII, who led the Catholic Church during World War 2 and did (according to many observers) little or nothing to try to save Europe's Jews from Hitler's "Final Solution." One such view of Pius was in the play "The Deputy" by Rolf Hochhuth, which was eventually filmed by the brilliant and political director Costa-Gavras ("Missing," "Z") and called, simply, "Amen."