“Mommy, read me that one again! Please?” The child’s high-pitched whine and large, imploring eyes tug at the heartstrings of the woman sitting at her desk.
“But honey, Mommy has to work. I’ve already read it to you too many times,” she tries to resist.
“Oh, please, Mommy, please. Just one story. Then I’ll go to sleep, I promise! Really, please, just one, just this one!”
“All right, baby. But you have to go to sleep after, okay?” The mother relents, picking up the worn and well-loved book.
“Yes, Mommy, I will, I promise!” the girl squeals, her pigtails shaking up and down as she nods enthusiastically.
“Here goes then. In a snug retreat sat a duck on her nest, watching for her young brood to hatch. At last the eggs broke to reveal several small, graceful ducklings. Then, out of the largest egg, a young one crept forth crying, ‘Peep, peep.’ It was very large and ugly..." the woman begins, her voice even and pleasing.
By the time the young oriental woman lays the fairy tale book away, the little girl is fast asleep, and she recites the last line from memory.
“Then the swan rustled his feathers, curved his slender neck, and cried joyfully, from the depths of his heart, “I never dreamed of such happiness as this, while I was an ugly duckling.”
“Sleep tight, my little swan,” she whispers, standing up to return to her desk.
“Run faster, faster!” the dark-haired child laughs.
The older boy grasps his little sister’s hand as they run along the shore of the lake.
Today, for this Christmas, the fifth year doesn’t mind being seen running free, playing a silly game with his eleven year old sister.
“You’re going to be a Qudditch player, little one, with endurance like that,” he gasps when they finally stop to rest.
“I know I will! I know it, I know it! I love to fly! I love to fly, free like…”
He smiles a broad smile at his sister, interrupting her excitement. “Like a bird, right? It’s what you’re made for. You were born to fly, free and content, like a swan.”
“That was so sad!” chokes the twelve-year-old girl, wiping her eyes.
“But it was beautiful!” her best friend adds, before blowing her nose.
“It was so romantic, when they both jumped into the lake, when they couldn’t break the spell…”
“At least they were together in the end!”
The two girls sit, crying into each other’s arms, right there in the opera house. And neither is ashamed to be crying for a lovely swan princess and her lover, both doomed to die.
“One day,” her best friend reminds her, “one day we’ll be beautiful too, like a swan princess.”
“You look lovely. Really lovely…”
The young girl of fifteen is entranced by his nervous blush. She smiles shyly, unsure of what to say.
“You look smashing, too,” she finally replies, hoping that this simple truth is the right response.
“You know, just a few months ago, a film came out, an American one, The Swan Princess. I dunno why I thought of it…I guess you just reminded me…I mean, it’s a kid film, but, you know, my cousins watched it and…And the prince makes a mistake when he tells the princess, the swan, that he loves her because she’s beautiful…”
She smiles at him, not quite understanding the film he’s speaking of, but comprehending his meaning nonetheless. She grins, more naturally this time, and so does he.
“I just meant to say, please, don’t take it as an insult if I say that you look as beautiful and as graceful as a swan, poised to take flight,” he concludes, taking her arm to lead her in the first dance of the Yule Ball.
She sits alone on her bed, dreamily sketching what is on her mind. She thinks of him often, and mostly she cries because he is dead and she doesn’t know what to do, and she wants to fly, but she knows that Quidditch may soon be part of the past, too.
It’s then that she draws, sketching him, his face on paper destined to be tear-stained and smudged in the end. But today she isn’t crying and today she isn’t drawing him. She knows that her mother’s new boyfriend doesn’t like it when she draws; he says it’s not proper for a young witch, but she does it anyway.
And today, she lets her sadness wash out of her pencil, not into a tragic, handsome face, but into something graceful, something lovely. And she would say this is her best drawing yet, because it reveals her need for freedom and grace.
She smiles, something she does very seldom these days, as she looks down at the sketch of a swan taking wing, and flying off into the sky.
“You’re doing really well. A corporeal patronus! Of course, it’s harder when there’s a Dementor, but this is a really good start!” he compliments, and she feels herself blush.
She knows she shouldn’t be blushing “ no, she should be sad and determined, not excited. But she’s all of the things at once, and maybe, just maybe she can let herself be.
“What were you thinking of?” the raven-haired boy asks her curiously.
She smiles at him, not sure if he’ll understand that it isn’t just one memory, that it’s a lifetime of memories, a lifetime of happiness. But a lifetime of sadness too, of mothers with jobs that overwhelm them and boyfriends who hurt them, of brothers who abandon families to follow dreams of fame and fortune, of friends who refuse to do what’s right, of heroes who die, innocent and too young, of dreams that are stomped out by poverty and step-fathers.
She guesses he sees the pain behind her eyes, because he changes his question without receiving an answer for the first one.
“Any idea why it’s a swan? Mine…stands for my father.”
“Oh… I…” she stutters; again he has asked a question that is impossible to answer, because when did her life become inexplicably intertwined with a graceful white bird, when did she decide that a swan was just meant to be part of her? She just doesn’t know. She doesn’t know the answer to that question, but she knows, deep inside, that the swan is a symbol for her happiness, for her memories of life and of love.
“I guess it’s just part of me,” she admits, and he seems satisfied.
And she’s content just to watch him hurry about the room, helping others, and she wonders if maybe today she’ll get up the nerve and talk to him, kiss him, and if it’s okay to do it even though her first love is dead now.
But she knows that her life is destined to be filled with pleasure and with sorrow, and she knows that she has too take this chance to regain some happiness, to fill the gap inside of her before it’s too late.
Cho Chang knows that she has to be brave, she has to embrace life and freedom and happiness if one day, she wishes to spread her wings, so that she can finally fly, graceful and happy, a lovely swan.