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
Spoilers: Everything
xxx
10. Signs of Spring
Cho's birthday came around, as usual, in the dead of winter. Again the Changs had guests over for dinner, but Cho didn't find out until the moment they arrived; she wasn't supposed to find out.
The sun was already set when the guests knocked on the door. Cho had already gotten presents—books, of course—from her parents that morning, but they had all been so busy in the shoppe that she hadn't had even five minutes to look through some of the books. She had just taken a minute to page through "Queens of the Quaffle," profiles of outstanding witches in Quidditch, when she heard the knock.
"Cho, get that, would you please?" Lotus called from upstairs. "I'm not quite dressed yet."
Cho, feeling frustrated, closed the book but kept her fingers where she'd opened it. Maybe I can get five minutes in before dinner, she thought as she opened the door. A second later, her parents heard a scream, and the thud of the book falling to the floor.
As they came downstairs, they saw Cho, hands over her mouth in surprise, and, waiting on the front step, bundled up to the eyeballs from the cold, were Madam Hooch, Hogwarts flying instructor, and Gwenog Jones of the Holyhead Harpies!
"You DO plan to invite us in," Hooch said, as archly as she could muster, but even Cho could tell that she was smiling.
xxx
For the rest of the evening, food kept coming from the kitchen nonstop as Cho fired question after question at Gwenog Jones. The first question out of her mouth, though, was to Madam Hooch: "What's it like these days at Hogwarts?"
"Whatever Quidditch they still have is pretty much just for show," Hooch said as she sipped at some Chinese plum wine. "Snape and the Carrows live in absolute dread of the students rising up against them, so they never give them a chance to assemble en masse. Meals are taken in shifts according to your House; if you're late or early you're supposed to get nothing, but you can imagine the flaw in that plan."
Cho and Gwenog said, in unison, "the house elves!"
Hooch nodded. "I swear, I never met a house elf who wouldn't tackle a dragon just to give a human a midnight snack. Snape should know better by now, but the Carrows must have spent all their time around the Minister, or the Minister's Minister." That was Hooch's way of saying that Thicknesse answered to Lord Voldemort. "They think elves are beneath their notice, so they have no idea what's going on."
"But what's the Quidditch like?"
"It's nothing for the students, especially since you can only go to a match if your House is playing."
"That's terrible!" Cho burst out.
"The students tried to get around it at the first game, but just before play started the announcer says that there will be a special 'placement examination' for Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, to commence in five minutes. No latecomers will be admitted, and automatic failure if you're not there."
"It sounds awful!"
Jones interrupted: "Afterwards, Horace Slughorn sent an owl about it, including the announcer. Merlin help me for saying it, but I do wish that, one night, all the kittens would leap off her plates and claw her to death."
Kittens? Plates? "You mean…"
"Yes; Umbridge is back at Hogwarts. Not as Headmistress, of course, but as ruthless a disciplinarian as ever."
"Now then," Lotus Chang said as she swept in from the kitchen, "you two didn't come all this way to tell Cho that she's well out of Hogwarts."
"Even though she is," Hooch added. Jones just nodded and cracked her knuckles. Cho's father shivered; he could never get used to that sound. "Things have been more than a little confuzzled, and not just at Hogwarts. As you can imagine, the Minister's Minister has a close eye on some departments, so he's had to let slide the others. Among the latter portfolios has been Magical Games and Sports; he'd hardly care about that even if something weren't weighing on his mind. As it is, there's a bit of a shake-up at the Ministry."
"Well, they haven't said anything about it in the Prophet," Cho said.
"About what?" Lotus asked.
"I think Madam Hooch is hinting around the fact that there hasn't been a head of Magical Games and Sports since the Triwizard."
Hooch smiled, looked at Cho's parents as they said, in unison, "Ravenclaw."
"You know the way it's been done," Jones said; "some veteran player who's gone a bit long in the tooth retires to the Ministry, runs Quidditch, and puts everything else on the staff. It's been three interim directors in three years, but they're about to name a permanent replacement. The Prophet doesn't even know yet; it won't be known for another week."
Hooch looked at Cho. "Very well, Miss Ravenclaw," she smiled, "you should be able to figure the name with all the clues you've been given."
Was this puzzle one of her birthday gifts? Was it just by chance that Madam Hooch stopped by to celebrate her nineteenth birthday? And what would the Department of Magical Games and…
The answer hit in a blaze of inspiration; not just the answer, but everything that it implied. She looked to Madam Hooch, but found her mouth was almost too dry to speak: "Prosper Drury?"
"Right in one," Gwenog smiled. "I figured she would."
"Mister and Missus Chang," Madam Hooch addressed Cho's parents, "I know that you've had reservations about Quidditch and your daughter. From her first year at Hogwarts I realized that she had the makings of a great Seeker. I also realized that she had enough respect for you not to leap at it on her own. Well, here I must ask you all to consider: Prosper Drury, Seeker for the Tutshill Tornadoes, is leaving the stadium and taking up the Quidditch portfolio at the Ministry. That means that their reserve Seeker moves up, which creates an opening. I know that it isn't up to me, but I can't think of a better fit than Cho."
The room fell silent. The Changs looked at each other, and were about to speak…
"WAIT!"
Cho was standing between her parents and her guests; she seemed surprised to find herself there.
"Madam Hooch, Miss Jones, first of all I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I may never get an honour like this again. But, as you know, our world is all topsy-turvy at the moment, thanks to Minister Thicknesse and the rest. Because of that, my parents have put me on a special course of study. When I complete those studies, then I can think about Tutshill."
The words hung in the air for a moment. Then Hooch spoke: "It's late, and we have our answer. Perhaps this is the moment for a parting glass." A tray appeared with five small goblets of plum wine. When they had all taken a goblet, Madam Hooch raised hers.
"First of all, I don't think I've been let down this nicely since I tried to recruit my fourth husband. I knew that Cho had a Seeker's talent, but also a solid set of principles to live her life by, and I was bound to respect them. May we all live to see better days, and soon; may we live to see this girl someday grace the skies over Tutshill; and, Cho, may you always have the happiest of birthdays."
"Hear hear," Gwenog said before emptying her wine glass in one gulp.
Cho didn't say anything. She just turned and leaned against her mother, letting the tears soak into her robes.
xxx
Before a week had gone by, Ministry wizards were back at the Chang herb shoppe. They were two burly, middle-aged wizards, and, when Cho saw them come in, the first thought that crossed her mind was that they had once been Beaters on some Quidditch team or other. They had the air of undisciplined Beaters who would swing at anything or anyone.
"Can I help you?" she said with a slight bow and an immobile face. Smiling at the Ministry was not something she felt like doing.
"Who's in charge here?" The wizard who spoke had a gravelly voice and an ill-kept red beard.
"My father. He's working on the books just now."
"Tell him we're here, and have him bring the books and your import licenses."
Cho went upstairs to the parlour where her father had set up ledger books and an abacus which clicked away on its own, adding and subtracting last year's figures. "Father, some Ministry wizards want to see your books and import licenses."
"Did they say anything else," he asked.
"No."
"I've been expecting this for some months," he said, standing up and closing the books. "There are some new and very potent boomslang skins coming onto the market; use them in Polyjuice and it lasts longer and is harder to detect. The Ministry hates the idea that it's lagging behind in anything."
"Should I ask?"
"No, this time you should not. Send your mum to the shop; she's in the cellar. I expect we won't do any business until that lot has gone."
Cho went back down to tell her mother. She found Lotus in the storeroom, and this time she was walking on tea cups. Cho couldn't help but watch her mother's graceful, fluid motions as she walked on eggshell-thin porcelain without breaking or even moving anything. She told her mother about the Ministry wizards and what her father had thought of their visit. When her mother had gone up Cho took advantage of the cups to spend an hour walking on them, then moving to the walls and the ceiling. She hadn't missed a step.
xxx
"Can I ask about the skins now?"
Lotus had just cleared away the dinner dishes, and Chairman Miao had jumped onto Cho's lap for a little attention. She scratched behind the cat's ears.
"What do you need to know?" There was something in Lotus's voice that caught Cho's attention; this question was deeper than it looked, like a deceptively deep spot in a river.
"It's just that we've been brewing up Polyjuice for centuries. What makes this batch of skins so different?"
Lotus looked at her husband, who answered the question. "Nobody knows when or how it happened, but boomslangs seem to have evolved within the last few decades. As near as the naturalist wizards have figured out, boomslangs share territory with numerous other breeds of snake, including the Black Mamba. Apparently, the two breeds have, erm, shared more than territory."
"Daddy, I understand about chimeras. I just never thought there'd ever be any new ones."
"There have been many reports over the years of the two breeds attempting to mate with each other, but after years of trying there have never been reports of this resulting in either eggs or live offspring. Until about thirty years ago."
Cho glanced at her mother, then back at her father. "A few living crosses were found in the wild and taken back to the Ministry by someone in Magical Creatures named Graciela Pyrox. It might interest you to learn that her maiden name was Graciela Avery, a very old, very Pureblood, and very Slytherin family. A dab hand at Potions, too, by all accounts. It took her years to figure out how to make Polyjuice using the new skins, to find out how long it would last and make sure it wouldn't kill you in the process."
Lotus interrupted Cho's train of thought: "So, what do you think the Ministry's next move was?"
"It sounds as if they were determined to keep this Polyjuice to themselves. It would give them a leg up in working undercover. But I'm thinking that someone else figured how to use the new skins. It would take much too long to discover the same thing independently, so someone in the Ministry slipped out the skins, the formula, everything. A major security breach."
Chang Xiemin beamed. "Carefully reasoned, and perfectly correct. If only someone other than Thicknesse was Minister; you'd probably be offered a nice berth in the Department of Mysteries, or the Aurors Office."
He took hold of Cho's shoulder; she reached up and squeezed his hand. "Thanks, daddy," she said softly. After a minute she spoke again; "I assume your source wasn't the Diggorys."
"Let's just say friends of friends," Lotus said. "You understand that we can't compromise them."
xxx
The same conversation continued over the next couple of weeks, and moved from Polyjuice to Minister Thicknesse.
"Not too many people know where he came from," Cho's father was saying one Sunday afternoon, as they took advantage of a break in the weather and were readying the garden for spring. "Funny thing is, he wasn't a Slytherin. Didn't even go to Hogwarts."
"Where's he from, then?"
"According to the rumours, he was recruited into Magical Law Enforcement from the Continent; grew up with Igor Karkaroff."
"Was he Durmstrang, then?"
Cho's father looked over his shoulder before answering in a lowered voice. "I think he likes giving that impression, but no. He was ambitious enough to realize that Slytherin and Durmstrang weren't names that would get him too far in the Ministry, but that's what he wanted: a position of power in the Ministry. He cultivated rumours of the Dark Arts that could never be verified, but he went through the Voyevode Magical Military Academy on the Polish border. Once he was in Magical Law Enforcement, he did the work he was assigned and kept his ears open."
"Didn't he work under Fudge?"
"Fudge, Scrimgeour; made no difference. His only allegiance is to Pius Thicknesse."
"Yet he works for You Know Who."
"It's who he is," Lotus interrupted, also in a whisper. "He'll work for anyone. I don't usually follow gossip, but I heard from an apprentice to Madam Malkin that Minister Thicknesse had come in for a fitting before Christmas, and they did a spell-check to see if he was under any kind of enchantment, since it alters the hang of the robes. He said he wasn't under any influence, and he wasn't."
"So all his pronouncements about Muggle-borns…"
"That's Minister Thicknesse speaking from his heart, such as it is. Over the years he's learned just what to say about Muggle-borns and, as long as You Know Who trusts him, he stays on top, with no interference."
"If I were You Know Who, I don't think I would trust anyone."
"Apparently, there's another project that has him preoccupied. He can't be bothered with the day-to-day of the wizarding world."
Before Cho could ask anything else, clouds started gathering overhead. That ended the gardening.
xxx
Spring came to Diagon Alley in its own time; something else the Ministry couldn't control. The Hogwarts Express was expected to bring students home for break; in the week before that happened, business at the shoppe almost doubled as parents prepared special meals for their children, which required special ingredients.
The longer the days grew, and the closer the weeks came toward end of term at Hogwarts, and especially the longer the news in the Prophet went on recording Ministry policy without mentioning anything at all about Harry Potter, the more anxious Cho grew about his safety. Wherever Harry was, however he managed to evade capture, his luck can't hold out for much longer. She thought the paper was essentially worthless—worse than that bizarre Quibbler—but she pored through it the second it hit the doorstep every morning. Finding nothing day after day brought a few minutes of relief, followed by hours of anxiety, which she kept inside as best she could until the next day's paper was delivered.
Until May Day, which Cho would forever call the Day of the Dragon
xxx
To be continued in part 10, wherein, after an unlikely event in Diagon Alley, Cho returns to Hogwarts at the summons of the Galleon, and isn't concerned about Dumbledore's Army…