A Boy, a Girl, and a Ravenclaw

A Boy, a Girl, and a Ravenclaw

Susan Bones

October 2002

I thought it would be me Harry came to when Ron died. But no. He went to her. To that other.

True, she is his best friend and I understand that completely ... yet sometimes I wonder. I wonder if there is more to their relationship than Harry tells me.

They have been best friends since the tender, magical age of eleven. Ten years have passed, the War is over, and the Order has been disbanded until another Dark Lord comes around.

But Harry has not come for me. I wait ... and wait ... and wait. He visits me often, we go out, and he says he loves me but I do not think that is so. He is often distant and I know that he is thinking of her when he looks off into space. I hate it, but I do not do anything about it. Because it gives me a fierce triumph to know that yes, he might love her, but right now it is I he comes home to. I've won this battle, but who'll eventually win the war is not to my knowledge.

He has not come for me in the way I want him to. He has not come to propose, or to accept the fact that she has left London. He is still here, in a way, and yet he is not. I sometimes think that he left when she did.

So I wait for him to return. To return to that boy he once was back in our fourth year and he asked me to the Yule Ball.

I miss those days. I long to roam the halls of Hogwarts once more with all my friends, to be playing Quidditch for the Ravenclaw house, to parade the halls hand in hand with Cedric Diggory. I miss the days when the future was unclear, when the shadow of evil always hung in the air, but, as children, we were sure everything would come out all right. We were positive our parents would stop these horrible happenings.

Of course we were.

We never dreamed that to stop it, our parents would have to sacrifice themselves.

I thought I would be the one to comfort Harry when Ron was killed. I thought I would be the one to whisper soothing words to him, to hold him while he cried and listened when he told me stories about Ron.

But I was only an onlooker.

I only watched as she came to our flat, day after day, and sat with him. She would put on tea and he would watch her with a small, lopsided grin. In a few moments she would have him laughing in a way I could never quite manage to get him to do. Then night would fall and she would leave. Harry would come to bed, but he never said much.

Then a new day would come and with it: Hermione.

I hate her.

She has Harry's love, something I myself have tried to get at and failed.

I remember watching the three of them in the Great Hall. Ron would be watching Hermione, Hermione would be watching Harry, and Harry would seem to be avoiding both of them. I suppose he knew of Hermione's feeling, or he thought they were for Ron especially. In any case, I thought it was puppy love at the time. He would get over it. After all, here I was, beautiful, popular Cho Chang, Seeker for the Ravenclaw House team. My boyfriend had recently been murdered and I needed all the comfort I could get and wanted. And I wanted it from Harry Potter.

And then Hermione told Ron that she did not love him, he was upset for a few weeks and then he appeared to get over it and married some Hufflepuff after he graduated.

Now he's dead.

I wonder if Hermione blames herself. She was the one who sent him away, after all. She told him she loved someone else (though who it was she would not say) and a few years later he killed0 himself.

Does it have something to do with Miss Hermione Granger? The jealousy of one tortured young soul leading to his eventual suicide?

Will that happen to me?

Will I gradually grow so upset by Harry's lack of feeling for me and kill myself, just like the late Ron Weasley?

I hope not.

But ...

No!

I must think of a distraction, something to keep my mind off of this dark subject. Let me see ... the first time I played Quidditch against Harry, the Yule Ball with Cedric, the day I got my Hogwarts letter ...

The look on Harry's face when Hermione told him Ron was dead.

All right, Cho, that's enough. Really now, you're getting carried away.

But I can't help thinking about it! I guess there is nothing to do but let it runs its course.

The only thing I can do to protect myself is to let Harry go. A hard thing, I know, but it must be done. I mean Ron could not let Hermione go and look where he ended up. In a bathtub, the water tinged pink-ish, his eyes glazed and open.

And that is not going to happen to me.

I guess she wins the war after all. She gets her man. That's how the story goes, isn't it? The hero ends up with the girl he loves.

It's the same in every story.

And it'll be the same in this one too.