Convinced

xii.

When she looks back later, all she can remember about the day she met Dudley is that it was the first Friday in July.

The rest of that summer is broken up into distinct memories connected by blurry hazes of tears and breakdowns and emptiness and denial that Cedric is really gone; it's an aching head and throbbing eyes as she tells her parents she doesn't want to go back to Hogwarts, and it's numbness and dizziness and stars that smudge into sunrises; but the first Friday in July stands out, and so does Dudley's voice later on when he tells her this is the best summer of his life.

She'd laughed hollowly at those words and told him it was her worst summer.

She can't remember if he'd looked hurt when she'd said it.

1.

When she gets back to Hogwarts, people walk on fucking eggshells.

She knows they want to ask, knows they're dying to ask, and she's dying to talk about it, but nobody knows how to bring it up, so they all pretend everything is fine and she quietly falls apart on the inside.

"How was your summer, Cho?" someone asks, and she wants to launch into a speech about the agony of missing Cedric, but when she opens her mouth she realizes that she's exhausted, and it all dies on her lips.

"Good," she says. "How was yours?"

For some reason, her mind flashes to the way Dudley nodded fiercely when she asked are we still going to be friends after summer ends?

She hasn't heard from him since August.

vii.

"I really like Marietta," Dudley says when Cho shows up at the Muggle restaurant he's chosen. "Think you can get me her number?"

"Number?" Cho repeats.

"Phone number," Dudley clarifies, and Cho nearly smacks herself in the face.

"Marietta doesn't have a phone."

"Oh." Dudley wrinkles his brow. "What is it with your friends and not having phones?"

Cho tries not to smirk. "We just prefer to write letters, I s'pose."

"Weird." Dudley shakes his head.

"We can't all be as normal as the Dursleys," Cho says, picking up her menu. "I'll find out if Marietta is interested."

"Thanks."

2.

She regrets kissing Harry the moment it happens.

Because she's still used to Cedric, to the softness of his mouth and the angles of his jaw and the way he used to cup her cheek in his hand, and it isn't until Harry's lips touch hers that she realizes she will never be kissed like that again.

(She doesn't know how Dudley kisses. She's never really thought about it.)

iv.

"Cho," her mother says. "Do you mean it, about not going back to Hogwarts?"

Cho is sitting on the window seat with her knees drawn up to her chest and her forehead leaned against the pane, and she's looking at the stars but she's not seeing anything at all. She doesn't answer.

Her mother is quiet for a moment. "Here," she says, dropping a pamphlet on Cho's bed. "It's for a Muggle school nearby."

Cho looks up sharply. "What?"

"It's called Smeltings Academy. They're having a summer session in a few weeks. Maybe you'd like to try it out, if you really don't want to go back to Hogwarts."

Cho swallows hard. "I need some time away from magic," she says, and it sounds robotic even to her own ears.

"I know, sweetheart. No one blames you." Her mother comes around the bed to plant a kiss on Cho's forehead. "Session starts the first week of July. Read up on it a bit. Decide what you want to do."

Cho looks at the cover of the pamphlet for a very long time.

3.

"D'you ever hear from Dudley?" Marietta asks at breakfast one morning in December.

Cho shakes her head. "He's not a letter writer."

Marietta smirks. "Muggles."

"Yeah."

"D'you think you'll see him when you go home for Christmas?"

Cho shrugs. "I hope so."

"He lives near you, doesn't he?"

"He lives near Smeltings, I think."

"Smeltings." Marietta rolls her eyes and reaches for a piece of toast. "I can't believe you subjected yourself to two months at that place."

Cho shrugs. "It wasn't so bad. It was a good distraction, if nothing else."

Marietta slices through the butter. "Clearly you didn't like it enough to stay."

"No." Cho begins to tug at the end of her sleeve. There's a loose thread there, and the more she pulls the more it unravels, but she can't seem to make herself stop.

"Lucky you met Dudley." Marietta crunches down on her toast, spilling crumbs down her front. "At least that's one good thing you took away from summer, right? An actual Muggle friend?"

Cho nods.

She's not really listening.

v.

"Only child," says Dudley as he sips his coffee. They're sitting on a park bench after class; their first Muggle English lesson has just let out, and when a schedule comparison revealed they've both got Ecology in an hour, he's offered to stick with her for a while. "I've got a cousin around my age, but he's barmy. We don't really talk about him."

Cho smirks into her tea—he'd made fun of her for ordering tea and she'd made fun of him for getting coffee, and nothing about it had reminded her of Cedric. "Only child, as well," she says.

"So what's making you consider Smeltings?" he asks.

She shrugs. "I need a change of pace." She expects him to pry, but he just nods as if he understands. "And you?"

"I already attend, actually," he says. "But my grades have slipped, so I'm making up a few classes over the summer. I go home in the evenings—barmy cousin's there, I can't leave my mum and dad alone with him." He shudders and takes another sip.

Cho laughs at the mental image of two grown adults being visibly afraid of an odd little teenager.

"D'you think you'll stay on?" Dudley asks.

She lifts one shoulder and then lets it fall. "I could be convinced, I think."

Dudley nods as if he knows what she's talking about. "Do you. . . ." He licks his lips. "D'you like pizza?"

4.

"Muggle Studies." Marietta shakes her head. "I still can't believe you're taking Muggle Studies."

Cho barely glances up from her assigned reading about light bulbs. "It's interesting."

"It's an escape." Gently, Marietta takes the book from Cho's hands and sets it down on the table next to her armchair. "Cho. Look at me. I don't think you're grieving properly."

Cho raises her eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"This new fascination with Muggle stuff—it can't be healthy."

"Why not?"

"It's just . . . it's helping you ignore the real problem."

The word Cedric pulses in her head, throbbing, straining against her bones and her muscles and her memories, and she is not big enough to contain it, she is not powerful to hold it back, not when people keep peeling her scabs and picking at her scars, not when they all keep making her think like this, and she wants to run back to Smeltings and Muggles and a school full of people who will let her heal.

(Except none of that is true, is it, because people haven't pried, and the only one tearing her apart is herself.)

"I'm dealing with the real problem," Cho says.

"I don't think you are."

"Believe me." Cho is on her feet. "I know Cedric is gone, Marietta. I am not in denial. And keeping busy doesn't mean I'm trying to bring him back."

"That's not what I'm saying." Marietta is on the verge of tears. "Just talk to me, Cho. We haven't talked about it."

"I don't want to talk about it with you."

"You can't keep it all bottled up inside."

Cho is on her way out of the Common Room. "I'm not."

ix.

"So?" Dudley asks during their second month at Smeltings. "Are you going to tell me about him?"

Cho nearly chokes on her coffee. "About who?"

"The guy." Dudley leans back in the booth they're sharing. "Did he dump you? Cheat on you?"

"There's no guy."

"Well, obviously."

Cho stares at the table for a moment. "What makes you think I had someone?"

"You said it's the worst summer of your life, for one. And you get this look on your face sometimes, like you aren't here. Like you're thinking of somewhere else. Remembering. And I know you came here for a change of scenery, which sounds an awful lot like you're looking for some new beginnings, so I just assumed you're fresh from an ending."

Cho blinks hard. "You're much more perceptive than you look."

Dudley rolls his eyes. "I get that a lot. So? Why'd he run? He's an idiot for leaving you."

"That's not quite what happened."

Dudley lets out a low whistle. "So you left him. What'd he do, pop the question too soon? Knock you up?"

Cho finds it in her to laugh. "He passed away, actually."

"Oh." Dudley puts his hands on the table. His cuticles are bitten ragged. "I'm sorry. Did you love him?"

Cho nods.

She's crying.

Dudley doesn't seem to mind.

5.

Roger Davies takes her out for Valentine's Day.

She feels nothing.

vi.

Marietta comes to visit after the first month.

"No wand," Cho says as they walk down the street to meet Dudley for pizza. "No mention of magic, no mention of Hogwarts, if he asks about school tell him—"

"—I go to boarding school in Scotland." Marietta smirks and plucks at her belt. "I can pose as a Muggle, Cho."

"Good." Cho pulls open the door to the pizzeria and lets Marietta go inside ahead of her. "Because Dudley is my best friend here, and I don't want him to think anything's up."

"Relax." Marietta looks up at the menu board mounted on the wall. "Cho," she whispers, "how do they make it?"

"Make what, the pizza?"

"Yes."

"In an oven."

"How do they keep from burning themselves?"

Cho cracks a smile. "I dunno. I guess they're careful."

"Oh." Marietta looks like she wants to ask more, but then Cho catches sight of Dudley in the corner booth, and the introductions begin.

6.

Madam Pomfrey tells her it's just a stress headache.

"These things happen," she says as she hands Cho a cool compress to put over her eyes. "I'll whip up a Pepper-Up Potion right away."

Cho drinks the whole thing.

Her head throbs to a rhythm that sounds like Cedric and hurts like hell, and she spends two nights in the Hospital Wing with tears streaming down her face and her nails digging half-moon scars into her palms.

When she's feeling better she pens two letters and sends them both out with her owl, even though she knows she won't get a response from either of the boys she's writing to.

viii.

"So Marietta isn't interested?" Dudley asks as they sit beside each other on a park bench and watch the sun go down.

Cho shakes her head. "Sorry. She's got her eye on someone at our boarding school, I think."

"Oh." Dudley sighs. "Even with that, it's still been the best summer of my life."

Cho finds it in her to smile as she leans into his chest. "Has it?"

"Yeah." He slings an arm across her shoulder. "It has."

"Dudley?" Cho is picking at a thread on her jacket. "Will we still be friends when this is all over?"

She feels him nod. "Of course we will."

"Good." Pause. "It's been one of the worst summers of my life."

He tightens his arm around her.

7.

She goes home for Easter and makes the trek to Smeltings. It's mostly deserted, although the pizzeria is open. She stops in and buys a slice with the Muggle money she has left over from the summer.

She wonders whether Dudley received her letter, and whether he was angry when he read that she wouldn't be going back to Smeltings next summer.

Half of her hopes he'll walk in right now and see her.

The other half of her just aches.

x.

"Will I see you next summer?" he asks.

She shrugs. "I could be convinced, I think."

8.

If time passes, she barely notices.

Everything is Cedric, Cedric, Cedric, hammering away into her skull until she hates the name and the past and the person.

She spends the summer in China with her grandparents and learns how to make tea and finds she strongly prefers coffee.

In September she drops Muggle Studies and takes up Astronomy, and when she passes her NEWTS with flying colors she hands the envelope to her mother and lets her parents hug her while she looks out the window and tries to decide how to tell them she doesn't want to be a Healer.

She joins the Order in October, and she thinks the reason she makes such a good soldier is the fact that she doesn't care whether she lives or dies.

xi.

"Will you write me?" she asks.

He snorts. "Or you could call."

"No phone."

Smirk. "You lot are so odd."

"Not as odd as you and your tea aversion."

"Don't knock coffee until you try it."

An eye roll. A tight hug.

"See you soon, kiddo."

"I hope so."

9.

It's the first Friday in July when she runs into him again.

"Cho? Cho Chang?"

She looks up from the copy of Witch Weekly she's been reading. "Dudley?"

He's gotten taller, and while he is by no means a small man, he's thinned out enough that he can no longer be called plump. "Where the hell've you been?" he asks, pulling her into a hug. "It's been, what, three years?"

"Nearly, yeah." (Exactly.)

"I got your letter," he says. "Wanted to write back, but I didn't have the address."

She shrugs. "That's all right."

"I've graduated from Smeltings," he says. "And I s'pose you've graduated from your boarding school?"

She nods. She is acutely aware of the wand in her pocket. "I've joined the—erm, the police force."

Dudley bobs his head as if he finds it interesting. "I'm at my father's company," he says. "Grunnings. Makes drills. Not terribly interesting, but it pays."

It's Cho's turn to nod.

"I'm actually running a bit late," he says. "But it was good to see you. I hope we run into each other again."

She lets him walk four paces before she opens her mouth. "Coffee?" she asks. "Tomorrow?"

He turns back. "Yeah, okay." And then: "Since when do you drink coffee?"

She catches herself smiling.

i.

She hugs Cedric tightly. "I love you."

He presses a kiss to the top of her head. "Not as much as I love you."

(She can't figure out which of them is lying.

Maybe it's both.)

10.

"So," says Dudley as they sit in the café. "How's your friend Marietta?"

Cho smirks. "Still hung up on Marietta three years later?"

He lifts one shoulder, and then lets it fall. "Haven't thought of her much, actually."

"She's fine."

"And how are you?"

"I'm fine."

"Found a new boyfriend?"

Cho thinks of Harry, of Roger, of the clumsy kiss she shared with Lee Jordan last winter on New Year's. "No boyfriend."

"Interesting." Dudley twirls a stirring straw in his coffee. "Are you looking?"

She looks up at him. "Why?"

"Because I'm looking."

ii.

"I just want you to be happy," Cedric says, and she replies that she's happy with him, and he whispers that maybe it's time for her to be happy with someone else.

The next day, he's dead.

11.

"Dudley Dursley," she says, "are you asking me out?"

He winks. "We're already having coffee, aren't we? Halfway there, I'd say. What do you think?"

iii.

She wonders sometimes whether he knew what was coming, or whether he would have broken up with her either way.

12.

"I think. . . ."

Under the table, Cho reaches into her pocket for her wand.

With a deep breath, she snaps it in half.

"I think I could be convinced."