First Sight

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" -Christopher Marlowe

**

She was looking for her favorite quill, which she was sure she'd dropped down this corridor, when she saw Ginny Weasley. For the first time, that is. Ginny was facing the wall, giving Cho a side view of her. She wore an expression reminiscent of someone trying to complete a very difficult task- utter focus was written on her face. On one slender finger, almost too small for Cho to see from her vantage point, was an eyelash.

"Make a wish," Cho said on impulse. Ginny's look of extreme concentration broke, and she looked up at Cho, surprised.

"What?" she asked, staring at the dark-haired Ravenclaw.

Cho pointed to the eyelash, still balanced on Ginny's finger.

"I read this book," she said, "and there was this girl and in the book, when one of her eyelashes fell out- or, you know, when she found it on her cheek, she took it on her finger and-" She was suddenly acutely aware that she was rambling, and that Ginny Weasley was staring at her as if she'd escaped from St. Mungo's.

"And she made a wish, and- and blew it off," finished Cho lamely, wishing Ginny would stop staring at her with her huge, soulful eyes. They made Cho have the strangest urge to start talking again.

Ginny didn't stop, but she did bring her finger up to her mouth and blow the eyelash gently off, never taking her eyes off Cho. Cho lowered her eyes to Ginny's finger, not wanting to look her in the face, not knowing why it was so imperative she didn't.

"Like that?" asked Ginny quietly.

Cho, flustered and having confused herself quite greatly, was suddenly angry with Ginny for making her, Cho Chang, incoherent and unpoised. Eloquence was the one thing she knew, really knew, and this little redheaded fifth year had reduced her to a babbling little girl.

"You know what?" she began, but, finding she had nothing to say, simply stormed down the corridor, back the way she'd come.

**

Two days later, her quill was owled to her by way of an erratic little ball of feathers, with an unsigned note that said, simply, 'You were looking for this.' A statement, not a question.

Cho thought of Ginny's unusually bright eyes and freckled face and the tone of her voice while speaking those last two words- 'Like that?'- and didn't sleep as much as she'd have liked.

**

The next time Cho saw her, Ginny was sitting by the edge of the lake, staring out at the water. Somehow, Cho found herself sitting next to Ginny, never looking into her eyes, until Ginny looked at Cho and began, "Why-"

"I wanted to thank you," said Cho abruptly. "For my quill. It was specially made, and it was my favorite, you know- well, obviously, you wouldn't know, would you, but all the same, it-" She stopped and felt her face heat up. She was rambling again.

She sighed and stood up, not noticing Ginny's small smile as she walked away.

**

"Hi Ginny," muttered Cho to herself on her way to Charms. "Just two words, that's it, simple..."

She knew, as soon as she saw the sparkling brown eyes at the other end of the crowded corridor, that she'd never be able to do it, so she walked past Ginny, careful not to look into her face.

**

There was just so much to say to her, mused Cho, and tapped her favorite quill on the edge of her desk.

"Cho," said Morgan Pratt from beside Cho's four-poster bed, "why is there a note under your pillow?"

**

It was 9:30 before she found her way to the Gryffindor common room entrance, and Cho hoped the younger girl wouldn't be in her bedroom.

She knocked, and Hermione Granger opened the portrait hole.

"I- Ginny," said Cho, which summed it up perfectly for her, but apparently didn't help Hermione much. Cho pushed past her impatiently and spotted Ginny immediately. She took long strides up to the other side of the table at which she was sitting and sat down in the chair there.

How do you get me to do this? she wanted to say.

Why do you make me feel like I'm six years old? she wanted to ask.

She wanted to tell her about her eyes, and how she thought there could be times when she'd never come out of them, and she wanted to tell Ginny about how beautiful her voice had sounded when she'd first seen her, and how pink her lips were, and how she had freckles even on her fingers, and how she noticed.

She noticed.

"You need to learn how not to talk so much," said Ginny comfortably, and kissed her on the mouth.

Cho thought it was what she'd meant from the beginning, anyway.

**

Later, when Cho was back in her own bed, lying in the darkness but not sleeping, she thought contentedly that this felt very much like it should be happening. She assumed that was because she was sort of really in love.

And to think she'd sworn never to believe in love at first sight.

**