Chapter 2
…and again.
It was more than she could bear. Life seemed to insist upon being cruel to her, on dangling her emotions from a string that seemed fragile enough to snap at any moment, particularly the most inopportune ones. Grief had been the simplest and most potent feeling she had been capable of for the longest time, and it had slowly become her comforter, her anchor; it kept the walls from closing in on her and her lifelines severed when she felt the most lost at sea. She hadn’t been prepared to fall for someone ever again.
Harry. Such a simple name, and a fairly common one at that, but it would never again be just another form of recognition to her, a bland and informal title. It almost became her obsession. At times she wished that she could just blend into the stone walls of the school or become invisible, just so that she could watch him without any sort of intervention or fear of being discovered and embarrassed. Once she’d observed him as he’d quickly done his homework at breakfast, managing to joke around with his friends at different intervals, and to take a bite or sip.
His slender, agile hand darted quickly across the paper, leaving behind masses and masses of words that she hadn’t the ability to decipher, given her distance from him. He worked earnestly, although certainly hurriedly, and there was something about his figure as he bent over his work that immediately struck her as attractive. While physical features most definitely made the first most notable impression on her, studious qualities only seemed to enhance them further in a more positive light, an unusual whim of hers that she supposed had something to do with her affiliation to the house of Ravenclaw. Cedric had been a hard worker as well.
She felt like a traitor. There was no other word for the self-loathing she viewed herself with. Cedric would have died a thousand times over again for her, had he lived, and she found herself already moving on to Harry, who could just barely look her in the eye, as though he felt that he couldn’t imagine himself worthy of her gaze. Memories of Cedric became clouded over with visions of Harry Potter, stammering a nervous hello, watching her wistfully with his full emerald eyes. Guilt turned her stomach over again at the reminder of why she’d become interested in Harry in the first place.
Her need for the details of Cedric’s last living moments had driven her to the conclusion that Harry, being the only one who really truly knew anything about what had happened on the night of the third task, would logically be the only one who’d be of any assistance. A burning curiosity for the knowledge was soon replaced with interest.
He fancied her. It was evident from the moment that she’d set foot in his train compartment on the way back to Hogwarts for her sixth year that he had some clumsily hidden feelings for her. Shock was the initial emotion that swept over her, but once it had retreated to make way for other thoughts, she felt slightly intrigued and proud. Of course, she’d had her thoughts and speculations on exactly why he’d asked her specifically, out of all the possible candidates at Hogwarts, to be his date for the Yule Ball. A polite apology had sufficed at the moment, and yet… she found herself wondering over why she’d been his choice. She knew very well now, and was startled to find that she was beginning to return the feelings.
It had to be her damned curiosity that would get in the way of her almost inevitable happiness, that gnawing need to know about the death that neither she nor Harry seemed quite ready to discuss openly. When the time came that she’d worked up enough courage to ask, it had been the wrong moment, the wrong place, yet again, and Harry had closed up to her, when she needed the knowledge the most, to be at peace with herself and her battling emotions.
She knew already that she would never be able to breathe easily again until she had known more about Cedric’s death. Did he die defying the Dark Lord and bravely holding his head up high while the deadliest of the Unforgivable curses was being performed on him, or did he cower behind something before running in a fruitless attempt to escape and being shot down, so to speak, in the process? Was it quick, or was he tortured first? Was an Unforgivable curse even used? Did he mention her at all before he died? Did he have time to? All of these questions swam in her head, clouding her other thoughts and refusing to be cleared until they were answered.
The hatred she felt for herself always seemed to find new reasons to plague her. Her sudden lack of intelligent thought and speech whenever Harry was within fifty feet of her, for instance, had been the cause for more than just embarrassment in front of her classmates, as well as Harry. It had been the cause of the many nights she’d spent in her bed, wide awake with the troubling thoughts of how much idiocy she’d subjected herself to that day in an attempt to give him a reason to glance her way. If she said things that she regretted later, she assured herself that Harry was there to stay and that he thought the world of her, but the idea of it seemed overly confident and gloating.
Every time he spoke to her, an entire acrobatic circus rampaged through her insides, twisting and writhing them in ways she never imagined possible, while her heart seemed ready to tear its way right out of her body with its furious thumping. She desperately needed to divulge to someone all the contradictory feelings that were giving her no peace during the night and endless frustration during the day. But to whom could she confide about this? Surely not any of her so-called friends; they would spread whatever she said far and wide in the form of gossip, trying to make their shallow lives have a little bit more worth. They could be nice, each in their own little way, but when it came to being true friends, she doubted the words co-existed in their vocabularies.
She was struggling with these inner demons yet again one lonely Saturday as she was lying down on her bed in the 6th year girls’ dormitory and not a single soul was in sight, all of them being readily occupied with the task of relaxing in Hogsmeade on their day off. Swearing out loud, she had to fight an almost irresistible urge to turn her trunk over on the floor upside-down and angrily pitched the nearest thing she could get her hands on across the room. The book sailed through the air and disrupted the organized state of her desk, for which she reluctantly stood and went to attend to.
An unbidden tear fell from her eyes that she quickly wiped away before she stooped down to pick up her things off of the floor. Scooping her papers and other trifles into her arms and dumping them on the table, she fell back into the wooden chair that accompanied the desk and sighed heavily. Quickly scanning the floor for any signs of something she’d overlooked in her hasty tidy-up, the largest object that caught her eye was the blue and silver notebook.
She picked it up and did exactly as she had done when she’d first unwrapped it, turning it over in her hands and flipping through the pages absently. She’d almost inevitably forgotten about the notebook, and wondered why she hadn’t noticed it sooner, since she could have been putting it to use in one of her classes. There had always been a suspicious thought lurking in the depths of her mind, she finally allowed herself to admit, which had immediately emerged when she’d first held it. Her parents were always the most sensible and rational people she’d ever known, and they had always had some reason for every single thing they did and said, although their logic was certainly not as consistently explained to her. As with everything, there had to be a catch, a little hint as to why she’d gotten such an ordinary gift among all her other treasures. It must have been meant for something special.
Perhaps her parents had meant for her to write letters to them in it while she was at school.
She snorted at the thought.
Not only did they write her epic novels, but they also sent her enough parchment enclosed in their own letters to ensure that she did the same.
Letters…
Of course. The only person she could feel better from telling her feelings would be Harry.
She rashly shoved the items that littered her desk aside, knocking most of the ones she’d just gathered together back on the floor again. Setting down the notebook in the cleared space, she hunted through her belongings for a pot of ink and quill. Finally despairing of finding the expensive quill she’d been searching for, she settled for the next best pen and opened the front cover of the notebook, dipping the tip of her quill in the well of blue ink she’d dug up from the pile. Pausing with her pen poised in a hovering position above the clean, smooth paper, she wondered how to begin. Feelings flooded her senses and triggered some mechanism in her mind and hand, and she soon found, much to her surprise, that the words came out as easily as if she’d been planning them out her entire life.
Maybe she had.
When she’d finished her first letter, an hour and a half later, she held the notebook back to examine her writing. Everything she’d written was the truth, the honest truth, and nothing but the truth, and could potentially be too truthful. Truthfully. A fragment of her emotions and thoughts could be glimpsed by skimming through the neatly formed sentences, and perhaps more could be deciphered from the words on the paper.
At any rate, she knew that she would rather die than let Harry actually read any of the letters she’d write…
Dear Harry,
Even now, just writing your name down on paper makes me feel dizzy. I’ve decided that since I can never tell you in person how I feel, I’m going to write to you, safe in the knowledge that your eyes will never see anything written on these pages. To start off, I have one particular comment that I need to tell you: you drive me out of my wits. One day you’d be talking to me as though I was one of the most important people in your life, the next, you barely seem to see me when I walk by you in the hallway, although my attempts to get your attention are rather feeble…
There are so many things that I want to tell you, but can’t. I wish I could tell you that you aren’t crazy, that I honestly believe that you and Professor Dumbledore are telling the truth about You-know-who. That first night at school after the feast was over, I saw you approach the first years. I’m sorry about that Harry, I really am. I know I shouldn’t be the one apologizing, but I am. When you’re that age, what’s printed in black ink in the newspapers is true because you simply don’t suspect that the editors would allow lying. At least, that’s how I was. You might have been a little bit more cautious of your surroundings, and you had a right to be, even if you don’t remember your parents and the night you lost them. I’ve heard about how those muggles you live with treat you and it appalls me. I don’t know how they could hate their own flesh and blood so much. Still, it’s just something I’ve heard, it’s not like I really know anything about it…
My mother always says that when I’m nervous I ramble on and on. I guess I’m doing that now. I just feel like a load has been taken off my mind as each word is penned, but right now my mind doesn’t seem to be working properly; I’m just as nervous as if you were looking over my shoulder right at this moment, reading everything I’m writing down. I’ll try again when my thoughts are more organized.
Sincerely,
Cho
Dear Harry,
I saw you in the hallway today, looking angry again. I sometimes wonder why you look so glum. Of course, what with seeing Cedric die in front of you and watching He-who-must-not-be-named come back must have had some sort of impact on you. Your whole life changes when you realize that someone close to you is gone. To tell you the truth, before Cedric was killed, I had never really had someone that dear to me die. I can just barely remember a few times when You-know-who had been so powerful, when I was too young to grasp the concepts of death. He killed my relatives one by one, and my parents’ friends as well. I can just remember faintly, if I really try hard, going to funerals held in secret, the only remains able to be found from the shambles of completely annihilated homes and if not that, some personal items that were able to be salvaged were put in a simple and single coffin for all to see. They never opened any of the coffins while the children (including me) were present. I can imagine the shocked look on your face now.
“How can she not have felt that much pain and loss until now?” your expression tells me without a single word uttered from your lips. Either that or you would think me simple or silly, like a little girl trapped in a sixteen-year-old body. It’s true, I’m trapped, but with all that I have experienced in the past year or so, I would be fortunate indeed to feel the same innocent obliviousness to the harsh reality of life. However, I shouldn’t write as though I’ve the burden of the world upon me with all the hardships in life; you learned far too early that life is not fair and this world is not always merciful, not always bending to your every whim and fulfilling your every need. I can sympathize with you and try to comfort you, but I cannot honestly say that I have experienced true hardships and trials as you have. Still, my heart seems to feel otherwise, regardless of what my mind thinks. As I’ve said countless times before, you torture me. You really do. I lie awake in bed at night wondering if I should have said something differently or if I could have done something other than what I had actually done, my cheeks burning as though someone had ignited something underneath my skin and I was slowly smoldering into nothing when I remembered my embarrassment. Ah! If only I could do just that…then I would no longer be left alone with nothing but my bewildering thoughts, feeling myself slowly fall into lunacy. There are times now when I question my sanity, wondering whether I’m simply being blinded by never-to-be fantasies to think clearly. This is where I truly am thankful that I have this notebook to write in; I can organize myself in thought while simply relieving myself of the words that I dare not speak aloud, but prefer to pen instead. The other girls sleep like the dead, unconscious of how I’m suffering. Well, until the next time I can write; my hand begs me to let it rest.
Sincerely,
Cho
Dear Harry,
I wonder where I stand right now. Do I love you? Although I’m sixteen, I highly doubt that I have any idea what love is, which is why I’ve signed all my letters thus far with “Sincerely” instead of “Love;” because I don’t know if it would be proper if I did use that word. I suppose I’m confessing another fault (or is it a virtue…?): paying attention to the small details even when it doesn’t quite seem to matter. I also wonder about how you feel. I’m sure I ruined everything between the two of us when I ran out of that café in Hogsmeade, but I couldn’t help it. Everything that I had been feeling, that I had been trying to keep contained, just broke the dam and spilled out.
I’m sorry for that, and for obviously confusing you by doing things that I thought would impress or intrigue you, but only pushed you farther away from me. I’M SORRY. I would write it over a billion times, if I could only know if you would feel better as a result. I know that there’s nothing going on between you and Hermione; she seems to be falling as hard for Ron as I am for you and Ron clearly feels the same way. I doubt you’d noticed…
I can now no longer stand romance novels. If they end well with happy endings for everyone, I’m torn between happiness and envy: happiness because they’re happy and they have what they want and envy because I’m not happy and I don’t have what I want. Sometimes I feel like no one really likes me for who I am, like just because I’m pretty to look at, my personality matters less. It’s almost like getting a beautifully wrapped package with elaborate, expensive wrapping paper and then caring more for admiring the gift without ever opening it to find out what’s inside. I’m sure you would think that, if I were that package and you were the recipient of me, you would think that the box was empty. I hope you don’t really feel that way, because I would just feel like I could die right on the spot if you did. You seem so distant around me, like you had purposely built a wall to keep me out. Then again, you always seem so distant around everyone, including your closest friends. Did you know that I saw Hermione crying in the girls’ bathroom the other day? Someone told me that you had yelled at her again. You probably don’t even know about how upset she gets whenever you raise your voice. I see her, trying to be strong, dealing with Ron refusing to reveal any of his feelings about her and you being constantly angry… it almost reminds me of myself… tonight my quill weighs heavily in my hand and the fact that I can’t write steadily is another distraction. I keep thinking about the Quidditch game tomorrow, Ravenclaw vs. Gryffindor. I know you’ll be in the crowd, watching instead of playing because of that Umbridge woman. I want to write more, but I need my rest and Marietta is starting to become a light sleeper, waking at the smallest sound.
Sincerely,
Cho
A/N: So, what do you think? Thanks to everyone who reviewed, you really made my day! Also, please note that the letters above are random snatches of what Cho wrote in the notebook, hence the time jumps from her first letter to the one referring to Umbridge.
-Unicorn13