Cho, Cho/Cedric, a bit of Cho/Harry.
Set during the events of OotP.
Gen, Angst.

I'm a sucker for tragedy.



The pitch is empty, save for drifting snowflakes and the fading sun. Cho stands at the edge of the field, trying to visualize green grass, blue skies, and a warm June wind, instead of the bitter February cold that makes her eyes water. It has been snowing all week, blizzards relentlessly pouring over the school, erasing lines and adding new ones, alternately changing the landscape with gently curving hills and sharp icy angles.

After practice her teammates hurry to change, to get out of the freezing whiteness of the pitch, but Cho lingers, stunned Snitch in hand. Roger Davies watches her from the goal posts, but she ignores him until he gives up and leaves.

She flies higher and higher, until she can see the whole of the pitch in one glance. She centers herself, sweeps her gaze from one end of the pitch to the other. Exact, precise.

She lets go of the Snitch; it drops and disappears into the foot of snow, an invisible marker.

Cho stands at the edge of the pitch, visualizing green grass, blues skies, a warm June wind. She takes one step at a time, counting.

One hundred and fifty seven steps, and for a stride longer than hers, less, to reach a cup hidden in the center of a maze. Inexact, imprecise. It’s the best she can hope for. Her cold fingers dig into the snow and close around the snitch as the stunning charm expires. Metallic wings unfurl, hindered, in her palm.

She can do the rest of the math later.

*

Marietta sits on the edge of Cho’s bed, listening to her cry. She is unusually quiet throughout the story. Her frown deepens by the end of it, the distaste of darling Hermione Granger’s name, of Harry’s refusal to talk clearly etched on her face.

He’s not a very nice boy, is he?

I thought he would understand. She despairs, a little. I didn’t think Cedric would just be another dead name to him.

He’s Harry Potter, says Marietta sarcastically. Everyone is just another dead name to him.

I don’t think that’s true, says Cho, and she wipes her eyes on her sleeves. I don’t think that’s true, at all.

You’re hopeless, says Marietta, going away. Just forget about it. Go to sleep.

Afterwards, falling asleep, she realizes that Harry is right, of course.

He’s dead, and when he died he did not mention her, did not think of her. He’s dead and here she is, crying over coffee and confetti and garish red cupid hearts that he hadn’t even liked, anyway.

I can only handle that place, you know, if you’re with me and I can look at you instead of at the walls.

You said it was cute!

I was talking about you.

*

The Hufflepuffs are unusually subdued in April, but not many people notice. Everyone is too busy being outraged at Umbridge, or whispering about Harry, to pay attention to anything else.

We’d like to invite you to our Common Room tonight, says Ernie Macmillian somberly at breakfast one morning. Just you, Cho.

It’s Cedric’s birthday, Hannah Abbott explains, as if Cho doesn’t know the days of the calendar. I mean - it would have been. We’re – we’re having a small memorial service in his honour.

We thought you’d want to come, says Ernie, considerately.

How stupid, Cho thinks, her insides lurching, and she is overcome by the desire to throw up. He’s dead, she thinks, how stupid to celebrate someone’s birthday when they’re dead. If Cedric were here he’d probably be offended. They are rubbing it in. The memory of having once been born, alive.

We want to make sure everyone remembers Cedric, Hannah intones gently, earnestly. We want to make sure no one forgets what happened to him.

Cho smiles generously, politely at her (she knows this is what Cedric would have done), and nods, tearfully agrees to come. There is a method to this kind of remembering, she understands, it is the kind of remembering that you do in order to forget.

At the memorial they light candles and talk about him in hushed tones as though anything louder than a whisper would hurt him, somehow, possibly offend his nonexistent person. They recall his best Quidditch moves. There are a couple of funny stories, and a few about how kind and noble he was. Was.

As though he would not be kind or noble beyond death, as though the loss of life somehow meant the loss of everything attributed to that life.

The dapple of candlelight reminds Cho of the presence of ghosts. She knows when the candles go out, Cedric will be gone, too, from the Hufflepuff Common Room. They have remembered him, gathered here together, to bring each piece of him that they carry, these individual recollections and memories, putting together a meshed echo of the whole that once existed. Now they can forget him, having paid their due. Now he will be less than a ghost.

She asks the Hufflepuff ghosts if it is difficult to become one.

No, they reply, swirling around her irritably. The task is not difficult.

Then why doesn’t everyone become a ghost, and stay on this earth? Why do some disappear?

None of them answer her.

Marietta asks, Why would you want to live with ghosts?

The question is kind of silly. They already do.

*

Her second break up is unofficial, unannounced, just like her first. The only difference is, she could have seen this one coming, but she chose not to. Marietta’s scars still have not healed. A cruel trick, Cho thinks, standing on the edge of the empty Quidditch pitch. Ratting out your friends is low, but she does not see how a planned act of vengeance, that serves no purpose except that of petty vindication, is any better. It is too vain for her tastes. Sneaking around is still sneaking around, and Cho is tired of it.

One, two, three, four… she imagines maze walls around her, tall, thorny, dark.

Twelve, fourteen, sixteen… he would have been cautious, careful, but determined to get ahead.

You’ll do well, I know it.

That’s not the question. You’re still not answering it.

I don’t want to jinx it.

You’re my lucky charm. You won’t jinx it.

Cedric, I don’t –

You don’t think I –

You’ll win, Cedric. I think you’ll win. There, I’ve said it.

Thanks. All I needed to hear.

Fifty, sixty, seventy. There would have been Krum here. She knows the story. Harry told his parents, and they told her, because they saw their grief in her, and pitied her. A lot of pain, and shock.

One hundred, one hundred and ten. Harry. One hundred and twenty. A giant spider. One hundred and thirty. Deliberation. He turned down glory here, she thinks, fiercely proud. She bends to touch the grass in this spot, and doesn’t know if she could have done the same. She wishes he had seen it through.

One hundred and fifty. Still inexact, imprecise. She takes seven more steps, but her timing is off now, months later. Maybe she miscounted. The stunned Snitch unfurls its wings and shoots upwards, whizzing before her eyes.

Cho swipes with a hand, and catches nothing but warm June air.

~fin


Rejected title, courtesy of balcarin, who demanded credit: "157 Steps To A Broken Heart".