Over Breakfast

OVER BREAKFAST: sequel to A DAMN FOOL QUIDDITCH MATCH

Harry slowly turned his head from side to side. He wasn't so groggy that he didn't realize what that meant: sometime during the night Madam Pomfrey had lifted the Stasis Charm. He could move; he was healed; he could go back to Gryffindor.

The sun wasn't up yet, but he could tell it was morning. A Sunday morning in November. Everyone in the castle would be sleeping in.

He looked over at the next bed. Cho's bed had been moved back; the screen had been put up. Without even thinking about what he might see, he pulled the screen aside to reveal--an empty bed.

"Ah; good to see you up, Harry." Madam Pomfrey had just come back into the ward.

"Do you know where Cho is? Miss Chang, I mean?"

"In the girls' lav, which is what I suggest for you. Have a wash-up and change into fresh clothes before you leave."

Harry rushed down to the boys' lavatory, at the other end of the ward. He was hoping that Madam Pomfrey didn't notice, and wouldn't comment on, a certain problem he'd recently developed most mornings. Well, he and half the other boys in his dorm and older.

As he washed up, he noticed that his Quidditch robes and the clothes he wore under them were gone, and a fresh change of clothes and set of robes was waiting for him. Would Ron have thought to do that? Not likely; Ron would have expected Harry to show up in muddy robes, wearing them proudly like campaign ribbons. It was probably house-elves.

He hurriedly pulled on his clothes and robes, opened the door ... and there she was. Standing by the bed where she had spent the night beside Harry. She held her glowing wand aloft, as if she were looking for something, and the way the light flickered on her face made Harry's heart glow in his chest like a fire coming back to life. He thought she had never looked more beautiful.

"Hello," he said, a bit nervous but trying to hide it.

"Hello," she smiled back, walking toward Harry. "I didn't have a chance to thank you. Madam Pomfrey told me that you broke my fall and maybe saved my life."

"Well, ..." Whatever Harry was going to say was lost as Cho gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"I'd better get back to my House now. Thanks again." She turned to go.

"Wait!"

Cho stopped, still with her back to Harry. "I wanted to, erm, that is, do you have to go just now? I mean, I heard what your classmate said about Ravenclaw having a party and all. I thought ... maybe you'd like ... a quiet bit of breakfast first."

Harry had barely finished the sentence when Cho turned back to face him, smiling. "That sounds wonderful."

xxx

They were greeted in the Great Hall by an unusual sight: nobody. They were alone. None of the tables had food on them.

Harry automatically sat at the Gryffindor table. Cho started toward Ravenclaw, but changed her mind and sat across from Harry.

"Seems silly to sit apart like that. Besides, there's something I want to say."

Having said that, food started appearing in front of them, and only in front of them. Toast and marmalade, porridge, bangers and eggs, pitchers of juice and milk. Cho may have wanted to say something, but she helped herself to food first, so Harry did too.

They had been eating silently for five minutes before Cho spoke up again.

"I had a dream last night, Harry. A dream about Cedric." That name hit Harry's stomach like a leaden fist, but Cho went on. "It was a bit of a change. I mean, all summer I had nightmares about you and Cedric's body ... but this time it wasn't like that. It was a memory of the good times we'd had together, and then ... then he faded away, like fog."

Harry had stopped eating to listen to Cho, unsure where she was going with all this.

"Harry, it was the first time I was able to let him go. I don't know why. Maybe it was something to do with what we said yesterday. If so, then that's one more reason to thank you."

"Cho, why did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"You asked Madam Pomfrey ..." Harry could feel his cheeks burning. "She gave me your hand."

Cho blushed as well, although Harry was sure that it made him look stupid even as it made Cho look even prettier. "The two of us, there alone. I'm sure there were things we still wanted to say, but we weren't able to say them. And I ... I had to try to tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"Well, I'm like everyone else here. We knew about you before you ever got here. And, I'm sorry, Harry," she smiled, "but you didn't look a thing like your reputation. You were just a First-Year along with the others. And your first Quidditch match ... we'd all been expecting so much, because you'd been let on the team. When you lost control of your broom, it made you look terrible."

Harry was about to explain that Professor Quirrell had tried to crash Harry's broom, but Cho went on.

"But the second match! Harry, I've wanted to be a Seeker for years. I've studied it as best I could, but I never saw flying like that before. Three minutes to find and grab the Snitch! And the way you got it; like a falcon going after its prey. It was the best flying I'd ever seen at Hogwarts."

Cho took a sip of juice, then started spreading marmalade on toast. She was very intent about it, keeping her eyes on the toast while she said, "I think that's when I knew I liked you."

Harry almost dropped his forkful of eggs. "Like?" he said in a weak strained voice.

Cho nodded, her eyes still on her toast. "After that, I was happy enough just passing you in the halls, seeing you at meals here, playing against you Seeker to Seeker. I just told myself that we weren't going anywhere, that we had years to get to know each other. But then Cedric asked me to the Yule Ball, and I'd been waiting for you to ask ..."

"Cho! Wait!" He felt that she was telling him too much too fast. It was like travelling by Floo. "Did you love Cedric?"

Cho dropped the toast onto her plate, and started rubbing her forehead as if it would help her think. All the while, she looked down at the table, never up at Harry. After a minute, she sighed and looked up. "Harry, I ... I thought I loved him. That was all the reality I knew. I still don't know about such things; not really. And Ravenclaws are supposed to be able to figure everything out," she smiled sadly.

Harry didn't know what to say to all of this, but he felt he had to say something. "There's a mirror here, somewhere in Hogwarts. I haven't seen it since my first year. But it's magic, of course, and it shows you what you desire most of all. Back when I saw it first, it showed me my parents. Because, well, before then, I'd never seen even a picture of them, and I wanted to know ..."

Cho nodded. "I can imagine."

"But then, two years later I met you for the first time. I think if I found that mirror again today, it would show something different."

Cho bit her lip abd started talking quickly, as if to change the subject. "It would change for everyone every few years, I suspect. We all change, we grow ..."

"But I won't outgrow you!" Now or never, Harry, he told himself, and the words he'd held in started coming out in a rush. "Maybe the word doesn't make any difference, maybe it does. But whether I like you or I love you, it's all the same. I want to spend time with you, get to know you better. I was just afraid to say that, especially after Cedric. People would think I did him in to get to you."

"It's too late to try to convince me that you held your tongue because of Cedric. We both know better, Harry. You felt like this before Cedric came along. Besides, nobody would have believed you'd kill to keep me for yourself."

"Hogwarts was ready to believe I was Heir of Slytherin."

"I wasn't."

"Cho, I, I meant to thank you for not wearing one of those 'Potter Stinks' badges last year."

"I don't understand how anyone could have worn those. How can some people be so thoughtless?"

Harry shrugged. "If you'd ever met my cousin the Muggle, you'd see how. He always used to push me around, order me about-and his parents were even worse."

"That's terrible."

"I shouldn't even talk about it, though. That's my old life. Everything changed when I found out I was a wizard. I left that family behind me."

"I don't have that luxury. My mother never let me forget I was a witch second but a Chang first. 'Whatever you do at school will reflect on your parents, and their parents, and generations of ancestors. You must always be worthy of their having given you life.'"

"Sounds like a lot of pressure."

"It is, but you get used to it."

At that moment, the sun rose above the horizon. Light came through a window, bathing the two of them in gold. Harry wanted to tell Cho what he was thinking-that she had never looked more beautiful-but he realized, somehow he knew, that she was thinking the same of him.

And-because he now knew how Cho felt-he started to chuckle.

Cho looked at him, asking why.

"Maybe the collision was a good thing."

Now Cho was chuckling too. "In the end, maybe, but let's try to avoid breaking bones in the future."

They heard footsteps headed for the Great Hall.

"We'd better get back now," Cho said as they both stood up. As they rose, the dishes vanished. "I'll see you later, I'm sure."

She gave Harry a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned to go-but couldn't. Harry Potter was hanging onto her hand. Without exchanging a word, they understood. They hugged each other tightly, fiercely, as if drawing strength from each other's touch. Again, a quick kiss on the cheek; this time, though, it was mutual. Cho broke it off and walked toward the door, but kept looking back at Harry, not wanting to take her eyes off of him, and smiling all the while. Finally, she turned and left.

Harry sat back down at the table. He lost track of the time-he might have been there five minutes or fifty-before the voices of Ron and Hermione brought him awake.

"Thank goodness you're all right!" Hermione gushed. "That was the worst collision I've ever seen! Are you sure you're all right now?"

"Yeah, Madam Pomfrey fixed everything up."

"Shoulda left you with a broken nose," joked Ron.

"Why on earth would he want that?"

"Give you a resemblance to Vicky. And you know how much Mione fancied him..."

"Are you suggesting that the only thing that attracted me to Viktor Krum was a broken nose?!"

"There's the Man of the Hour!" The Weasley twins were at the door, striding rapidly to the Gryffindor table. "Well done, Harry!"

The other twin spoke up without missing a beat. "Yeah, we cleaned up on the betting yesterday."

"Doesn't it matter to you that he could have been killed?" Hermione demanded angrily.

"Wasn't going to happen," one of the twins-George, perhaps-dismissed Hermione. "Besides, Harry's the one who really got lucky, if you know what I mean."

"Nudge nudge wink wink," chipped in the other twin.

"What do you mean?" Harry asked.

"Isn't it obvious? You, Cho, all alone all night in that hospital ward..."

"With half a dozen broken bones. Sorry to spoil your fun," Harry smiled, "but nothing happened."

"Come on, surely love will find a way around a few broken limbs..."

"Look, Fred, George, whoever, we were both in Stasis Charms. We could hardly talk! Nothing happened."

At that moment, Cho Chang walked in, fielding questions from four or five other Ravenclaw girls. They seemed to be taking the same approach as Fred and George, pumping Cho for information about her and the night and Harry Potter.

Cho looked over at Harry. Their eyes met. They smiled.

And everyone present knew that, even though nothing had happened, something had happened.