Books

    Cho Chang pulled down a hefty volume and retreated to a corner to explore it. It wasn't homework, wasn't really practical reading in any way. It was something about 'lesser-known magical herbs and their uses'. She'd only chosen it because it looked long and complex, something she could fall into completely, forgetting the world as she tried to assimilate it. It was real, solid knowledge, a thing she could embrace fully without the caution and reservation required in human interaction. She opened it to somewhere in the middle, losing herself first in the supreme aroma of dusty paper and then in the words, the facts, the infinite details of a world carefully documented and bound with glue and leather. The book opened itself to her, revealing all its esoteric secrets. This was her foundation, the center of a true Ravenclaw's soal. It was the very ground she stood on. Luckily for her, books, unlike people, could be depended upon always to be there no matter what.

    Cho had spent a lot of time ghosting around the library this year. She didn't come here because she didn't have friends. She had plenty of friends; she was even rather popular, and she didn't come here to read or study; there were plenty of books in the Ravenclaw commons. She came here to get away. Away from her friends, mostly, because somehow she felt more alone around them than she did when she really was alone. It hadn't been that way before. She'd felt a bit awkward around them at times, set apart, but never like this. She'd never really minded being 'in the closet' particularly, generally seeking the company of coed groups, who avoided 'uncomfortable' issues. Of course she'd been alone sometimes, like when the girls in her dormitory would start giggling about boys, a social expectation having a 'boyfriend' had blissfully exempted her from last year. Although she actually sort of wished they hadn't put on that farce, letting everyone think they were dating. Now no one knew the truth and for some reason she hadn't bothered to enlighten them. These days they tried never to discuss boys in front of her at all and the silence that ensued was more awkward than anything they could have said. The occasional awkwardness hadn't really been a problem, at least not for the last couple of years, because she'd had someone to confess her secrets to, to tell all the things which she couldn't make her other friends understand. Not that she ever really tried. She liked her other friends, her housemates, and now she missed enjoying her time with them almost as much as she missed him. Almost.

    The comforting effects of the open book in her lap still lingered, though her mind had wandered away from it. She knew she could escape back into it's pages if she wanted to. Escape... She thought about flying. It was the physical embodiment of freedom. There was nothing else like it in the world. When she thought of it now, though, she wasn't thinking of Quidditch, of catching some elusive Snitch. She closed her eyes, leaned back into the wall, and thought of flying away, away from her friends, away from the prison that Hogwarts, that her whole life, had become. She was flying higher, farther than she ever had in reality; she was alone with the clouds, with the sky, with the wind whipping wildly through her hair; she dreamt of that glorious solitude where no one, nothing could touch her. She was utterly alone there. Alone. Then she was falling, crashing back to the earth, the library, the book in her lap. But she was no longer falling into the book, but rather into the glum reality about her. As exciting as the knowledge archived here was, she was painfully aware that it wasn't all she wanted. She wanted not to be alone.     

    She felt like she was thirteen again, drowning in an illicit desire for human contact, feeling herself so fundamentally different, so separate from all of her peers that the gap between them could never be closed. That was back before she'd found Cedric, before she'd really found herself, before she'd been on her house team, taken her OWLs or become the more mature person she now was. She'd been so alone then, trying to wrap her mind around what her body was telling her. She kept it all to herself, all in her head, where it would fester into an unbearable need, an aching of the flesh and spirit that was gruesome and wonderful all at once. It was amazing how much difference there was between sharing her secrets with just one other person and carrying them alone. She had come full circle, but now it was worse, far worse. Hogwarts had become a place of harsh realities and unshared secrets that threatened to eat her alive.

     She'd grieved; of course she'd grieved. But it was different during the summer, at home a hundred miles from anyone. There had been a void even there of course, no owls, no social visits, no one-on-one Quidditch, and always the inescapable fact, the images inscribed permanently on her consciousness; but the world had just sort of stopped for a while. Now she was back at school, with her peers 24x7, mundane every-day life grinding along as it had always done, accepting it's loss and moving along just like normal. It was better in some ways and a hundred times worse in others. As the school year progressed, as she went to class and lived her life in the same halls where she had once seen her best friend every day, the finality of it had hit her on a new level. She would never see him again. Never. And all this time she had thought she already knew that. Perhaps she really did know it, because she was thinking about it now without crying.

    She saw movement along one of the racks of books and looked up. This was the other reason she'd been coming here lately. The girl was a fifth year (Cho wasn't sure if she was fifteen or sixteen), average height, with beautifully wild frizzy brown hair. Cho was fairly certain she was straight (she'd really seemed to like Krum last year, though he was way to old for her), but her smile was so... so unbelievable. The situation was slightly ironic, as Cho knew one of Hermione's best friends had a crush on her. She and Hermione were only very slightly acquainted, though of course they already knew of each other. Neither of them was exactly low-profile at this point. They had gotten used to seeing each other in the library this year, occasionally exchanging smiles or greetings, but no more. It was the sort of initial recognition that often becomes more though. Hermione always seemed to be studying hard when she was in here, always with that extremely attractive fervor. Cho, more often doing exactly what she was doing now, often wondered what the other girl was researching, probably something to do with saving the world. Either that or homework. By all accounts, Hermione was quite fond of both.

    At the moment the other girl was scanning the titles on the shelf in front of her with a look of intense concentration on her face, a large stack of books already in her arms. She hadn't seen Cho yet, sitting by the wall watching her. She pulled out a book, balancing the others carefully as she flipped through the pages. After a moment she apparently decided it wasn't what she was looking for and slid it back into place.

    Cho carefully shut her book on obscure plant life and got to her feet. As she replaced it on the shelf, Hermione caught sight of her and smiled. God, she's beautiful! Cho hesitated for a moment and then stepped towards her and spoke.

    "Looking for something?"