written for: the houses competition

house: slytherin

category: short

prompts: Cho Chang [Character]

word count: 2561

warnings: death mention (canonical)

notes: canon-compliant (and the ending is actually canonical; not the specific details, but the general situation)

disclaimer: disclaimed.

i.

Cho Chang is fifteen years old when she first speaks to Cedric Diggory.

It's Fourth Year, and she's only just turned fifteen, and she feels absolutely giddy with triumph and excitement because they won—they absolutely smashed Hufflepuff in their first match of the season. She doesn't think anything can top this moment right now; at least, not until Hufflepuff's Seeker flies down to land beside her.

"Cho, right?" he asks, smiling easily, even though his team just lost their first game of the year. She can hear her captain, Roger, somewhere in the background, hollering for her to come join the team, but she stays where she is. Her first absurd thought is about how nice Cedric Diggory's teeth are—it's not a new observation, not at all, not when Cedric Diggory is possibly the most popular boy in school, but it's one thing to be aware of something abstractly, and quite another to have irrefutable evidence right in front of you.

She nods, cheeks flushed from adrenaline.

His smile widens. "That was some flying," he says. "Congratulations on the win," he says sincerely, and holds his hand out to shake hers. Her breath hitches, and she just stares for a moment, before smiling shyly in return and taking his hand. He's Hufflepuff's Captain, Seeker, and the school's resident golden boy—and here he is, shaking her hand. She had been wrong before, when she'd thought the feeling of winning couldn't be topped—somehow, this made it even better.

"I'll see you around," he says, taking his leave with a relaxed two-fingered salute and turning to his team.

She nods, something fragile and warm unfurling in her chest. It feels a little like potential.

ii.

Cho Chang is sixteen years old when she last speaks to Cedric Diggory.

(Well, sort of—she is sixteen years old the last time they have a conversation. Over the following years, she speaks to him many more times, and tries not to let her heart concave whenever she thinks about how he's not there to hear it.)

"I'll see you after," she whispers to him, in the space between their lips that exists only between kisses, before pressing her lips to his once more. It's almost like a farewell, but more of a see you later. It's meant to tide her over for a few hours as she waits for him to emerge victorious from the maze, heart bursting with pride throughout. Sure, she's a little nervous for him—it's the Triwizard Tournament, after all—but this is Cedric Diggory. He's Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, an absolute shoo-in for Head Boy, and beloved to Hogwarts. More than that, he's good, and kind, and brave, and Cho loves him with her entire heart. She believes in him with all she has, and she knows he's going to win.

"I'll be looking out for you," he promises, and he's sporting that little half-grin that she loves so much, and she just can't help herself from pressing another kiss to his lips. He accepts it with a laugh, twirling her out of his arms after she breaks it, and farewells her with a two-fingered salute, just like he had that very first time. She watches until he disappears around the corner with Professor Sprout, then rushes up to the stands to wait with Marietta as the Tournament takes place.

When Harry and Cedric return, she's one of the first down there beside them, sprinting faster than she'd have thought possible. Her legs are faster than her mind, though, and it registers too late that Cedric isn't moving—that Cedric is still, his eyes glassy and unseeing instead of searching for her amongst the crowd like he'd promised.

She falls to her knees, uncomprehending. She doesn't even feel the ground-shock rocket through her, nor does she hear her friends frantically calling her name. Even the gasps and screams ripping themselves from the crowd and the mournful wails of his name don't sink in. All she can hear is a roaring in her ears and all she can taste is grief in her throat, a sob that she's choking on, a scream that she can't get out.

There is something raw and jagged searing through her chest, ricocheting around her ribs like a bullet unable to escape. It feels like a broken promise. It feels like a broken heart.

iii.

Cho's not in love with Harry Potter, not by a longshot, but she likes him—she truly does.

She knows Marietta thinks it's the similarities with Cedric that pull her in, and, well, she's not wrong. They're both brave, and good, and kind, and Harry was with him when he died. Even on a surface level, they're both Seekers, and she's heard the rumours—she knows the student body thinks she has a type. And she can't pretend that the fact that Harry was there doesn't play into it a bit, that it isn't part of the connection she feels with him, because it is. But that's not all it is.

When she looks at Harry, it's always coloured by the grief and tragedy of Cedric's death, but there's something more there. She can see Harry, and he takes her breath away sometimes. Not in the same way Cedric did, where her heart thudded to the staccato of his fingers lightly drumming against her skin, and where laughter tasted like he did: honey and cinnamon and butterbeer, warming her up from her head to her toes. Harry doesn't warm her up like Cedric does, but she sees him bearing the weight of the world and a dead boy on his shoulders as he walks through the corridors, and something twinges through her heart. He's quiet and angry and frustrated, hot-tempered and glaring at most people who aren't Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger, but she gets that. He's just sick of not being believed. Cho believes him. More importantly, Cho sees him, and she knows that he's not just this frustrated construction the Ministry and the Prophet are trying to convince their world that he is—she knows that he's brave and loyal and fierce, that he cares so much that his heart bleeds from it, and that he watched Cedric die and was strong enough to bring him back to the Diggorys. Strong enough to bring him back to her.

So, yeah, it's maybe too simplistic for Marietta to believe it's solely his similarities with Cedric that captivate her, because she sees someone beyond that shared grief, but she doesn't complain. The thing is, Marietta's there. Cho's always had a lot of friends, but in this year of grief and trying to live with tragedy, she's discovered that maybe they're not all the type of friend who will hold you when you cry and choose you, even when you're sad and quiet and don't remember how to be yourself. She can't even count how many people shoot her sympathetic looks without ever staying beside her when she needs them, nor how many of her supposed friends skirt her gaze every day.

Marietta Edgecombe, though, stays. She even joins the DA with Cho so that Cho doesn't have to do it alone, even though Marietta really doesn't want to. Marietta stands by her and walks her through every day; she helps her survive. It's Marietta who looks at Cho searchingly when she notices the furtive glances that Cho sends Harry sometimes, but it's also Marietta who researches advanced cleaning spells in the library when she finds some spelled graffiti about Cho's 'type' in the Fifth Floor Girls' Bathrooms.

Cho thinks that maybe Harry is the only person who can possibly understand what she's going through, and she feels unspeakably guilty about it. How counterintuitive, she thinks to herself, is it that Cedric is both the thing that pulls her towards Harry and the primary reason she thinks she should stay away? Harry Potter is many wonderful things, and she hopes they can guide each other through this unnavigable tragedy, but Marietta Edgecombe is the person who walks alongside her every day, even when she disagrees with Cho, and never flinches.

iv.

It's almost incomprehensible to Cho, how everyone could turn on Marietta so fast. How Harry could think what Hermione Granger did was okay.

Harry Potter hasn't changed, she's pretty sure, but she doesn't think she has, either. She's not sure how to marry that knowledge with the fact that he's almost unrecognisable to her right now.

On one level, it makes utter sense. Part of what she likes about Harry is his loyalty—it's not so surprising to see him direct it so demonstratively towards Hermione, no more than it should be for him that she still defends Marietta with all she has. And yet, as they look at each other, it's inescapable that they are so utterly divided on this, and that neither had expected the other's steely determination not to bend. Perhaps they hadn't seen each other, but Cho doesn't really think that's true, at least not entirely. She knows the Harry Potter she saw was real, and that he exists within the bounds of the coolly furious boy in front of her, but maybe that's not all he is.

Cho isn't sure that Harry ever saw her, not really, and she thinks that maybe she only saw all the parts of him that she wanted to see. Can you ever know someone fully? She thinks of Cedric, and blinks back tears. She thinks of Marietta, and her heart hardens with resolve.

Cho knows she didn't do everything right with Harry, not by a long shot. Taking him to the place she'd been to with Cedric—mentioning Roger—reacting how she had to the mention of Hermione on their date—she knows that none of it is what a teenage boy expects from a first romance, and she takes some responsibility for that. She can't help it, though—her mind and heart are such a mess of confused emotion and tragic memory, and it tears her apart inside. Part of her thinks, somewhat resentfully, that Harry could have been a little more understanding—that maybe he could have tried to see her as something more than a pretty girl who believed in him—but she's tired, and chasing that thought down the rabbit hole seems to her like a way to lose herself.

So instead, she simply walks away.

v.

Michael Corner is the first of her 'comforters'.

He and Ginny Weasley are over, and maybe it's not honourable, or distinguished, or whatever, but she's seventeen and only has one summer until her final year begins, and she's tired. All she really wants is a distraction, a reprieve from the constant barrage of feelings, and he gives her that, if only for a moment.

Roger Davies is next, during Easter break in Seventh Year—it's nothing special or pre-meditated, just returning to a safe option from her past, but it's enough for the moment.

Then the war breaks out in undisguised earnest during her first year out of Hogwarts, and she returns to the castle for the final battle. It's a mess of war and pain and curses and corpses and it's absolutely nothing she was ever prepared for, but she fights anyway. Cedric died in this war. Harry sacrificed so much. She fights for them, and for every other student she sees in Hogwarts that night: grimy, scared but still fighting like hell.

Most of all, she fights for herself. She fights to be doing something.

The battle ends, and with it, the war. There are trials and chases and other loose ends to wrap up, of course, but the vast majority of the tragedy which has shaped Cho's life since she was sixteen is over. She's nineteen now, and all she's left with is herself.

It takes her a while, but she eventually decides to discover who that is.

She travels a lot. She sees Harry and Fleur at the battle, so she visits Bulgaria to find Viktor Krum. It's not closure, exactly, so much as it is keeping an eye on the lives of the champions who walked into the Triwizard Tournament alongside Cedric. She learns some of the language, and meets Viktor's Quidditch team. It's a little overwhelming, but it's also incredible. She thinks back to the summer after Cedric died, and marvels a little—the Cho of that summer would never have imagined she could end up here.

She visits Italy, and stays with Marietta's maternal cousins. One of them is a Seer, and Cho thinks for a moment of Professor Trelawney—theatrical, odd, with large owl-eyed glasses and frizzy hair, but absolutely devoted to her school and fierce enough to lob a crystal ball at Fenrir Greyback for daring to touch one of her students—but Livia is nothing like her. She takes one look at Cho and her eyes fill with tears, but she's beaming, so Cho thinks it might be a good thing. "You're going to be okay," she whispers comfortingly to Cho, then hugs her tightly, and Cho carries those words around in her heart until the day she dies.

She travels to Shanghai, and Tibet, and Laos. She even ends up in the Pacific, starting in Australia and exploring the Melanesian Islands, before spending some time in Polynesia and Micronesia before finally ending up in New Zealand to see an Antipodean Opaleye.

She paints during her travels, and photographs. She remembers Colin Creevey on the bier at the end of the Battle of Hogwarts and winces, but it's a little easier every day. You create space around tragedy, until one day it's no longer your entire world.

Sometimes, she writes. Often poems, but sometimes letters. They're to her parents, and Marietta, and Cedric's parents, on the rare occasions she can bring herself to do so. Occasionally, they're even to Cedric himself, though those are the letters she keeps in her rucksack.

Cho Chang does a lot of things over the years, but the most important thing she does is learn who she is outside of the parameters of her love and her loss. They are intrinsic to her, and she will always carry those truths and tragedies within her, but they are not all she is. She is still a fast flier, and brave, and loyal. She rediscovers herself, and remembers parts that she'd forgotten. She learns that she isn't scared of getting lost anymore, and that her favourite colour in the world is the skin of an Antipodean Opaleye when it has a New Zealand sunset dancing on its skin. She learns that loss never goes away, not truly, but neither does the love behind it.

Most of all, she learns about herself, and that Cho Chang is someone worth discovering.

vi.

(When a Muggle man named Nick sits beside her in a diner in Lyttleton, she doesn't register it. It doesn't feel especially auspicious, nor important. She sips on her coffee and glances at the newspaper, oblivious to his gaze falling on her crossword, his mouth opening to suggest an answer.

She doesn't go looking for a beginning, but one finds her anyway. Life happens all the time, even when it doesn't feel like it.

This is what it means to become.)

a/n. please leave a review if you've read this far—i appreciate it a lot!