Where My Thought's Escaping

Acknowledgements: Originally written for springtime_gen on Livejournal. Thanks to kennahijja for regular betaing, plus shiiki and dolorous_ett for invaluable Sinopicking assistance. But anything problematic is my responsibility, not theirs. One line is taken directly from DH, others refer to it from Cho's POV. The title is borrowed from Simon & Garfunkel's Homeward Bound.

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到 -- arrival

Cho inevitably needed a few minutes to recover from travel by Portkey, especially ones that crossed continents, and so as soon as they touched ground this time she reeled away to find the nearest solid wall to lean against. When her head finally stopped spinning she was able to take in her surroundings. She'd travelled to Guangzhou twice before, for visits to parental aunts and uncles, and the arrival station was every bit as cramped as she remembered it. It was harder for wizards to hide in such a crowded city, and a larger station would have run more risk of awkward questions from anyone who noticed that it shouldn't be there at all.

It was an interesting place, a thriving Muggle city with an equally thriving wizarding community scattered within it. Cho had enjoyed her visits. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to live there.

Her parents chuckled as they helped her sister and brother back onto their feet. They were saying it was 'full circle', or at least, Cho was fairly sure they were - they had, almost unconsciously it seemed, dropped back into the Cantonese that most of the other conversations in the room were held in. Her mother blushed, and switched to English. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, mum." She dusted herself down. "Full circle?"

Her father beamed. "Good to see you understood, kitten," he said, and Cho winced at the old childish nickname. Her younger siblings looked on curiously; they'd understood the words, but clearly had no more idea than Cho did what their parents were referring to. "I don't think we ever told you, but we met for the very first time in this place. We were no older than Chun then, of course, we had no idea what it would lead to." He smiled at them. "Your grandparents took us away in 1967, for much the same reasons."

"Why, Daddy?" That was Chun - eleven soon, always curious, but she wasn't going to be a Ravenclaw like her elder sister. She wasn't even going to go to Hogwarts.

He lost the smile. "A war was starting here, so they took us away. A group of our people formed an organisation to -" he was choosing his words carefully "- to strike back at the Muggles, as they put it. The Ministry fought them. You'll learn about it in time. We hoped never to have to do the same thing, but - full circle, as I said."

"They ran away?" That was Ming, who sounded disappointed, almost disbelieving. To an eight-year-old boy it probably seemed that way.

"Just like we're doing," muttered Cho, trying not to sulk. It wasn't dignified to sulk when you were eighteen. She refused to cry. She'd done far too much of that in her time already.

搬 -- moving

There had been a huge argument when her parents told her.

"You want to what?"

"We're moving back to China," her father said, more abrupt than usual. "I'm sorry, Cho, but it's becoming too dangerous here."

"Why now? Nothing's changed!"

"We've been thinking about this for a while, darling," said her mother. "And things have changed."

"Dumbledore," added her father heavily. Cho stared in disbelief. "After all, he beat You-Know-Who himself in that affair your boyfriend was involved with." His tone indicated some disapproval of Harry Potter and his behaviour, whether in general or towards his daughter in particular, Cho couldn't tell. "We were worried when they started killing Muggles, naturally, it was like seeing the Defenders back again, but so long as Dumbledore was fighting - we were prepared to stay."

"You didn't even believe him when he said You-Know-Who was back! You told me to support the Ministry!" cried Cho. That still rankled, even two years later.

"The Ministry were wrong," replied her father in annoyance (and with perhaps a touch of defensiveness). "And you didn't pay any attention to what we told you, did you? Fudge let everyone down badly, yes, but that doesn't matter now. The situation is different. Now, things will go downhill very quickly, I fear. It's best that we leave as soon as possible."

"But ..."

He held up a hand, looking weary. "No buts, Cho, please. We've thought about this. It's a good time to go."

"But this is our home!"

"And it's been our home for the last thirty years," her mother put in, sounding sad. "But Edinburgh isn't ... home home to us, Cho. It's just where we happened to end up. You have to remember that."

"What about Chun and Ming? You can't take them away now!"

Her father shook his head. "They haven't started school yet. You've completed your education ... As I said, it's a good time for us to go."

Cho listened to this in dawning horror. "You want me to come too?"

"Of course. We're a family."

"But ..."

"You can hardly not come, Cho," said her mother gently. "You must see that it wouldn't be right. We should keep all the family together."

Cho felt like screaming, but she didn't. Instead she went to her room, threw herself on the bed, and punched the pillow. She couldn't think of any good way to argue. It was going to be miserable beyond belief if she couldn't talk them out of it - and she rarely had been able to talk her parents out of anything once their minds were made up - but still, she couldn't bear the idea of breaking their hearts by refusing to go. Whatever her duties here, whatever her plans had been - well, she'd just have to scrap them now. She had a duty to her family first of all.

She stared at the opposite wall, feeling numb. A few of the players in the Tutshill Tornados squad poster that covered it grinned and winked at her, but it didn't really register. China. A new country, a new life. Just like that, out of the blue.

Great.

分手 -- separation

Breaking up with Michael, just as they were beginning to get close to each other, had been painful.

"You're going where?"

"Guangzhou," she said miserably. "Mum and Dad grew up there. They don't think it's safe here any more."

"Well, not that safe, no, but ... why do you have to go too?"

"Because I can't let them down!" she replied with a flare of anger. "I'm the eldest child, they rely on me to set an example for Chun and Ming!"

"And us?" He looked mulish for a moment or two, almost sulky, then caught himself and his attitude turned pleading. "I thought ... it was really starting to work out, wasn't it? I knew it was going to be tricky for us now school's over for you, but I didn't think ..."

"I don't want to, you know," she said, feeling awful. "But ... don't you think it's best to make a clean break now before it gets any harder, yeah?"

"I suppose so," he said with difficulty. He looked stunned, almost lost. After a moment, he said "Will you write?"

"Yeah, of course I will. Will you?"

"You bet."

And that, after a lingering goodbye kiss, had been that. Under the circumstances there really wasn't a lot more they could say, even though they wanted to. And at least it was a clean break, not the protracted mess it had been with Harry ...

That consideration didn't actually seem to make it feel any better.

学 -- learning

After the strangeness of moving into a new house (or rather an old house, the one her mother had grown up in, and which her second maternal aunt had been kind enough to make available), and the frenetic rush of the first week that left little time for thought, Cho was the only member of the family who found herself completely lost. Her father had arranged a job for himself via friends. Her mother was evidently thrilled to be back in her old home, and was forever making nostalgic remarks about things that had happened long before Cho was born. Her kid sister had been enrolled in a nearby school for the coming term, and was soon brushing up on her characters and looking forward to the prospect of learning magic with nervous excitement. Her little brother could make a nuisance of himself anywhere and had adapted quickly. Cho just felt out of place.

Feeling that she should probably know how she came to end up here, she tried to find out what had happened in the 1960s that was so bad. Unfortunately, her parents weren't much help; not only had they left when they were Chun's age, they were ill-at-ease with the subject and offered no more than a few awkward generalities about the 'Defenders of the Wand', who sounded horribly like the Death Eaters.

So Cho did the only thing a former Ravenclaw could reasonably do - she decided to research it herself. A few tentative enquiries revealed that by common consent, Zheng Zhuang's Comprehensive Emporium of the Written Word was the finest bookshop in China. It was also about a thousand miles away in Jinan. Fortunately - if that was the right word - it turned out that the Beijing Ministry had put a lot of effort into arranging regular Portkeys to, from, and within China (much more effective than the patchy Floo network, perhaps because of the great size of the country). The journey was as disorienting as ever and she vowed to Apparate in future if she possibly could, but once she managed to locate the Emporium, it quickly proved its worth. It was every bit as comprehensive as its reputation suggested, and carried a considerable stock of books written in foreign languages too - a huge advantage for Cho. Her command of written Chinese was even rustier than her speaking ability.

In the English-language section there was a detailed History of the Defenders War that made it clear why her parents might consider they had come full circle. The origins she found confusing - something about a revolution in culture in the Muggle world that had started within sight of the Emporium (even if the Emporium itself was not similarly visible to Muggles), after which their government suddenly refused to acknowledge the presence of wizards in their midst, despite urgent entreaties from the Chinese Ministry. The results were depressingly familiar, however. The group calling themselves 'Defenders of the Wand' had published manifestos vowing to fight back against 'Muggle oppression', but most of their actual fighting effort had been directed at the 'counsellors of treason' in the wizarding government. It had taken ten years of bitter struggle to suppress them. The author mentioned - in a tone that seemed rather sniffy - that many people had left China as a result of the war. He seemed to consider this a failure of good taste, which might explain why her parents were so sensitive on the subject.

The Emporium also had an extensive periodicals section, although Cho didn't pay it much attention at first - copies of the Daily Prophet could be obtained in Guangzhou's wizarding quarter, if you thought it worth the inflated price asked for foreign publications. Cho rarely bothered during the first few weeks she was there. Any spectacular actions by You-Know-Who would probably get a mention in the overseas news section of the Guangzhou Messenger anyway, and reading about Ministry activities and Tutshill Tornados victories only made her feel horribly homesick.

But from time to time she made an exception. One day while browsing in the Emporium, the English headline 'New Minister Takes Charge' caught her eye, and she quickly opened her purse. The front-page article left her with a sick feeling. She knew little of Rufus Scrimgeour, and even less about Pius Thicknesse, but the skills she'd learnt during her sixth year for translating Prophet reports into the probable underlying facts came in handy. The abrupt departure of the former Minister, and the harsh measures immediately taken by his replacement, positively screamed of a takeover by the Death Eaters.

Her parents exchanged dark glances when they saw the paper she'd brought home with her, and it was clear they shared her suspicions. They didn't discuss them with her, but then they never did; perhaps they considered the matter too dangerous for discussion, or simply closed. Cho herself wasn't sure what to feel about things. It was getting harder to maintain her resentment; she was growing used to her new situation, and things were clearly no picnic back home. Perhaps her parents had a point, which was an uncomfortable thought.

会 -- meeting

As a legal adult, Cho received an invitation to her own introductory meeting with the Chinese Ministry, quite separate from the one for her parents. She hesitated for a day or so before accepting, but then decided that there was really no reason not to go. She had no wish to be seen as impolite.

The entrance to the central Ministry buildings was hidden in what appeared to be an overfilled warehouse in Beijing. When Cho spoke the pass phrase and stepped through the curtain on which the characters for 'Enter Within' were embroidered, she found herself in a pleasant open courtyard surrounded by pagodas that might almost have been there since the fifteenth century - indeed, Cho reminded herself, it was entirely possible that they had. It was a remarkable contrast to the office blocks on the other side. Unlike the London Ministry, this one was at ground level; the skyscrapers of Muggle Beijing towered over it, and yet somehow did not dominate the view, merely forming a ghostly backdrop through the haze of the atmosphere and the distorting effect of the concealment charms. You could imagine they were merely a trick of the light unless you screwed up your eyes and stared.

The offices themselves, inside a building towards the rear of the courtyard, were much more prosaic - a familiar affair of cluttered desks and improvised bamboo partitions. The official who greeted her was a kindly old gentleman who spoke good if not perfect English, for which Cho was grateful. Even after weeks of effort on her part, it was still more practised than her Cantonese, and she'd have been completely lost if he'd spoken Mandarin.

"Welcome, welcome," he said. He blinked slightly when she told him her name, then gave an airy wave of his wand. "Please, let me offer refreshment." Tea began to manufacture itself while he spoke of China and its requirements, most particularly as they related to relations with the Muggles. The gist seemed to be that while laxity was sometimes forgivable in traditional rural areas - where news of odd happenings seldom spread beyond the locality, and would probably be dismissed as nonsense if it did - extreme caution was to be exercised in the cities. "You must try to be like them. Dress as they do." He shook his head sadly at the formal robes her parents had insisted she wear for such an important meeting. "These are not seen so much now. It is sad, but I set an example, you see?"

Cho bit her lip; she reckoned she had a rather better idea of Muggle fashion than anyone of his generation. He had dressed in what she thought was called a boiler suit - in bright scarlet with gold collar and cuffs, which would probably stand out anywhere - and although he had a baseball cap on his head, it was worn neither forward nor reversed but with the peak over his left ear. "I'll remember that in future, sir," she said. "Thank you."

He beamed at her. "It is the advice of the Council of Harmony. They speak to the leaders of the Máguā, who still do not trust us."

Cho sat forward. She'd picked up that word quickly; it sounded much the same anywhere in China. "Where I come from, they have no reason to."

"Ah yes. The Shí-sǐ-tú." Cho wasn't quite sure what that one meant until he added, "We learn they have taken the government. A distant threat, yes, but we watch with concern. We saw troubles start in Europe before, seventy years ago; it seemed small at first, then it became big. You should know I myself am old enough to remember those times." Cho wondered if she was meant to demur, but he continued, "Already there are people who hear the news and say they are right. We do not like this."

Cho didn't like it either. "And are there people who say they're wrong, sir?"

"Many more. Relations are always difficult, but this is not the answer. This we discovered thirty years ago."

"Will ... will your Ministry do anything to help stop them?" It was a sudden wild hope, which was quickly dashed.

"No, no. Europe is able to solve its own problems. As we solved ours, after your grandparents left."

"The Defenders weren't as dangerous as You-Kn ... as V-Voldemort!" she cried, forgetting herself for a moment. "They were just thugs! Can't people see that he has to be stopped early! Now he's in power in Britain, what's to stop him sweeping across Europe as soon as he consolidates!" She became suddenly, horribly aware of how rude a guest she was being. "I ... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"This is correct. It is not your concern." He seemed thoroughly shocked by her outburst, and Cho wondered if she'd just managed to place herself in the 'troublemaker' category. Not a great start.

"Please, forgive me." It wasn't hard to be contrite under the circumstances. "I spoke without thinking. It, er, it means a lot to me."

"This I see." The tone was still frosty, but he accepted the apology. "Well, well. I hear that one young man stands in his way before he can ... consolidate? If he is defeated, then we look again at what we should do."

Harry. The thought hit Cho like a blow to the gut. She had spent so much time last year avoiding him and anything to do with him, that the sudden casual reminder of his horrible situation from such an unexpected source blindsided her. "Yes," she heard herself saying. "Yes, of course."

In an odd way, that thought was comforting. Harry was not the kind of hero she had once convinced herself he was - in truth, she had been expecting him to be Cedric all over again - but whatever their disagreements, he was still a hero. And as a further shock she realised: if he's really standing in Voldemort's way, I'd still be willing to stand with him.

争论 -- argument

"Dad, Mum - I just wondered - well, have you thought much about what's going on back home?"

Both parents gave her sharp looks, and Cho cursed inwardly. She'd wanted to talk to them about this for weeks, and now she'd finally plucked up the courage, starting the conversation by referring to Scotland as home was a bad mistake. Sure enough, her father frowned and said, "This is home, kitten."

Cho took a deep breath. "Our old home," she said in a conciliatory manner, trying to recover from her slip. "You must have heard what's happening there."

"Of course." He exchanged looks with her mother. "Why do you ask?"

"Don't - don't you want to go back ever?"

Her mother gave a slightly wistful smile. "Sometimes. We enjoyed living there. But this was always home, darling."

"I didn't grow up here, mum," she replied, as gently as she could. "Chun and Ming, they've never even been here before. It's not so easy for us, you know - look at Chun's school marks, she's still struggling with the language, let alone the magic!"

Her father sighed. He gave the impression of having expected this conversation for some time. "I know it's not easy, kitten, but she'll soon pick it up. We had to pick up English at Hogwarts when your grandparents moved, and I know my children are cleverer than we poor old folk are."

"But they didn't move you back when the first war started in Britain," argued Cho. It seemed a good argument to her, but one her father had obviously anticipated.

"Perhaps they should have done. But it seemed a very small war, to start. For a long time, the authorities seemed to be holding their own. And perhaps -" he seemed oddly ill-at-ease "- the arguments that were used about Muggle threats sounded more plausible after what had happened here."

"The Defenders were still very active at home," added her mother. "One war or another, why move again? And they didn't want to spoil our education. It meant a lot to them. There is much prestige attached to Hogwarts - I think you'll find that when you go looking for a job." Cho's jaw dropped; she hadn't expected that. "But for us, now, it's the ideal time, darling, with no such worries. And then ... well, as we told you, there was Albus Dumbledore. Even towards the end, it was hard to believe that a war could actually be lost when the man who defeated Grindelwald was still fighting it. Those events were famous even here."

"He's not fighting it any longer," said her father heavily. "Kitten, we talked our parents round, and we were lucky. You were just a baby when the wat ended. It could have been the wrong decision to stay. This time, I think we made the right decision to leave."

"You made the decision." Again, the words were out of her mouth before she'd properly thought about them, and this time, she let it go.

"Yes, I did. And your mother agreed." Before Cho could say anything, he added, "We do not want our children growing up in a war zone."

"I'm not a child any more!"

"Then stop acting like one! While you live in this house, whatever you think about the decision, I expect you to respect it! I expect you to care more about your family." His voice was raw. "What do you want, Cho, to get yourself killed in some useless fight? I thought you were supposed to be the intelligent one? I thought you had more sense than that!"

"It's not useless! Somebody's got to do it!" She knew this sounded like bravado, even to her own ears.

"Like Harry Potter? Like Cedric Diggory?"

Cho was so shocked that her father had thrown Cedric's death at her, it felt like a physical slap. She stared at him for a moment in speechless fury then stormed out, ignoring her father's irate calls and her mother's shocked pleas for her to return.

逃 -- flight

Long before, Cho had found that the best method of working off her frustrations was to climb on her trusty Comet Two Sixty and just fly. Brooms were considered rather crude by the local wizards and witches, who preferred to travel in a more sedate and comfortable manner on a variety of flying rugs, but she didn't care. She wanted the speed, the sensation of the wind in her face, the literally soaring feeling that took her to a place of her own, high above the world and her woes. She really missed playing Quidditch, no matter how many disappointments it had brought her.

In the aftermath of this latest argument she sped off, pushing the Comet to its limit as she hurtled across country. She didn't really care where she went, so found herself more or less following the course of the Pearl River inland, alone in the skies except for a few birds. Eventually she began to relax again, and when she checked her watch she couldn't believe it; she'd been flying for nearly three hours. Cho braked to a halt a few hundred feet above the river, and then it hit her that she had absolutely no idea where she was. In Britain she would probably long ago have reached the coast and known that she needed to turn back, but here the river simply continued to follow the path it had formed through the country below her, extending far into the distance to meet the horizon.

There was a city not so far away along the river, and a quarter of an hour later she was landing there under the protection of a Disillusionment Charm, trying not to bump into anyone - the Ministry in Beijing were unlikely to consider that the discovery of an invisible foreigner showed the exercise of 'extreme caution'. The city was large, much larger than Edinburgh, and when she examined her surroundings she realised to her embarrassment that she didn't have a clue what it was called. The scale of things here was suddenly overwhelming; this was a country in which there could be cities of millions that were nothing out of the ordinary and hardly worthy of special mention.

Cho returned home by Apparition, a stage at a time, not daring to risk the long journey of maybe hundreds of miles in one go. She didn't speak to her parents on her return, and although they were clearly relieved that she was back, they seemed to have decided that the best policy was to leave her alone and act as if nothing had ever happened.

She was very quiet for the rest of the day.

忠告 -- advice

Cho was pleasantly surprised to find that she'd picked up more Cantonese from her parents than she'd realised. Admittedly her vocabulary was limited at first and her accent hard for many people to understand, but she very quickly progressed to finding her way around Guangzhou without trouble. What to do there was another matter entirely. She'd only ever thought about career plans in terms of Britain, with occasional idle thoughts of a year abroad in France when talking to the Beauxbatons students at the house table during the Triwizard Tournament.

Beijing had its own problems - she was completely lost as far as communication was concerned, unless she could locate someone who spoke either Cantonese or English instead of Mandarin. The locals there tended to do a double-take at her name and sometimes concealed a smirk, and Cho blushed furiously when she realised that it sounded rather unseemly in Mandarin. When she travelled there (it did after all have some of the finest magical stores in the world, let alone China) she began giving her name as 'Zhang Qiu' in her best shot at a Beijing accent.

In some ways it was harder to fit into the wizarding areas, thriving as they were, than to slip anonymously into the huge cosmopolitan Muggle cities surrounding them. Her accent immediately made her stand out, as did her spellwork - everyone else used incantations in Chinese forms rather than Latin ones. A scholarly gentleman in the Comprehensive Emporium heard her using Accio to retrieve a book from a high shelf - annoyingly, it took a couple of tries to make it work - and smiled at her. "You are English, then?"

"Scottish," she said automatically. "But my parents are from Guangzhou. We just moved there."

"I see." He nodded vigorously. "May I be so bold as to offer you a small but helpful suggestion?"

Cho blinked. "Er - yes, of course, please do."

"A thousand thanks. Well then, allow me to say it will be worth your time and trouble to learn the Chinese forms. A spell and its incantation become as two parts of one whole, tied together and gaining in power by use; where everyone says the same words, the repetition smoothes and strengthens the flow of magic. It is like a river cutting its course through the earth, at once carving out and being guided by the path it has formed. This is a deep law of magic. You will find that the incantations everyone uses in Europe will be less effective here, so far from home, where spells have channelled their power in other forms, and a newcomer must create its own path. And of course this applies in reverse." There was a twinkle in his eye that reminded her of Professor Dumbledore; a sharp pang. "I myself always forget this when I travel to Europe for a conference, so the difficulty is not yours alone."

"Thank you, sir." Cho looked at him curiously; she could vaguely remember Professor Flitwick discussing the subject in the middle of her first N.E.W.T. year, but she'd been far too distracted by ... other things at the time to do herself justice. "Can I ask - are you a teacher?"

"Ah, do I lecture without thinking?" He chuckled. "Please pardon me. Yes, I teach Charmcraft at the Imperial Academy to the north of Beijing - not of course that the Imperial title is more than courtesy these days, but we wizards do not like to change our traditions. Are you perhaps due to attend? I am told that a former Hogwarts pupil will join us shortly."

Cho's eyebrows rose. "It's not me, sir. I finished school last year - I turn nineteen in another month. And my sister's at, erm -" she had to think for a minute to remember the name "- Xinbian Academy. It's nearer to home."

"Yes, yes, that is a fine school. Not as fine as the Imperial Academy, naturally, nor as fine as Hogwarts, I am sure. I met your headmaster several times - a very wise and entertaining wizard. A tragic loss for us all."

"It certainly was," said Cho glumly.

求职 -- employment

To Cho's surprise, the people she became most friendly with were their Muggle neighbours - Máguā, as the wizards said, not so different from Britain. A few boys were showing definite interest and she flirted a little with one of the cuter ones, which only made it obvious that she didn't even feel up to thinking about another relationship just yet, so soon after breaking up the last one - let alone a relationship that would require so much concealment and evasion about what she was. Not that any of her relationships had ended well yet - a thought she didn't want to dwell on - but with Michael it felt as if she'd been reading a story that stopped abruptly just as things were coming together nicely, and would now never be completed.

Also to her surprise, a job eventually found her, when her father introduced an acquaintance who had known him as a child. In the thirty intervening years Yang Honghua had built up a thriving export business, and declared that he had urgent need of a junior administrative liaison who spoke fluent English, in order to deal with his many American clients. When he installed her in a small office with a girl called Hu Jiao - about the same age and with duties consisting mostly of answering letters - Cho suspected that the offer had been solely a favour to a childhood friend, not based on any qualities she might have. That proved to be too cynical, however. She was soon busy guiding a steady stream of buyers around the warehouse, while desperately trying to remember where everything was stored. Her mother turned out to have been right; both co-workers and customers generally seemed rather impressed when they heard she'd been to Hogwarts. The school was evidently far more famous than any of its pupils had realised!

Or maybe that was simply because of its headmaster, whose exploits against Grindelwald seemed world-famous, who had been personally known to scholars in Beijing, and who had after all been the ceremonial head of the International Confederation of Wizards. Former head. Cho shuddered; her parents had been right about that one too. With Dumbledore in place, somehow everything had seemed under control, but not any more. The scant information she had from Britain suggested that Harry (wherever he was) had replaced him as the population's Last Best Hope, despite the Ministry's latest campaign to discredit him. No doubt people had learnt their lesson after the previous attempts by Fudge and Umbridge; the thought of the woman still made Cho want to spit.

Ah yes, Harry.

For better or worse, the singular story of the Boy Who Lived - and the boy who might or might not be the Chosen One mentioned in a prophecy - seemed to have caught the imagination of the wizarding public worldwide, and Cho learned to her embarrassment that it was unwise to mention that she'd recently left school in Britain. Usually, one of the first reactions would be the excited question "Do you know Harry Potter?". Hu Jiao in particular was a big fan, and had an annoying tendency to tell customers (American, Chinese, or otherwise) that Cho had actually spoken to him. She managed to fend off the inevitable questions - feeling a great reluctance to reveal that she'd done rather more than speak to him - but it was seriously annoying. She needed concealment and evasion here too, another reason she often felt more at home among the Muggles.

Yang Honghua's customers were often fascinated also by her insufficiently concealed Scottish accent, and Cho quickly learned to wear a polite fixed smile every time someone mentioned it. The well-meaning sympathy rapidly became irksome. Everyone seemed to nod wisely and say that they quite understood why her family had left, they'd heard the news from Britain too (or England, as the American clients insisted on saying) and wasn't it terrible? It was equally irritating when they seemed to assume that it would be easy for her to fit in here just because of her Chinese background. She still stumbled over one word in ten when trying to speak the language, and fell back into using the incantations she'd been taught unless she consciously thought about it.

信 -- letters

Michael's occasional letters were unsettling, indeed frustrating. Most were guarded to the point of blandness, as if he expected the staff to search every owl as a matter of course before it was allowed to leave the castle grounds. Only visits to the post office on Hogsmeade weekends gave him the opportunity to be more candid, and even then, much of what he dared to say was indirect. It seemed that there was a new and unpleasant regime at Hogwarts ('Do you remember the school year we got together? It was much better than this one!'), that the DA had reformed in some fashion ('A lot of the old crowd have gone now, of course, and some of the others didn't come back this year, but those of us that are left are still trying to keep up the traditions!'), and that he at least was missing her ('I really, really miss you, you know'). Well all right, that at least was direct.

Marietta - lovely, sweet Marietta, who had been a foul-weather friend to her - wrote weekly, and was able to be more explicit. Her mother had secured a junior position for her in the Muggle Relations section of the Ministry of Magic, and it soon became clear that policy there had moved a long way from anything that might be approved of by the Council of Harmony. Her first letters were gossipy, still almost schoolgirlish, as she talked about her new job and the robes she'd bought from Madam Malkin's with her first week's pay and the cute wizard in the next office who she hoped to get to know better. As the weeks went by and the new regime began to make changes, details of her work became noticeable by their absence. Cho didn't ask; Marietta had always been a little ... fragile, and it wasn't her place to harass her friend for details.

But then, finally, came a long, rambling letter that told how she was beginning to hate her job and the Ministry in general, and talked about some of the things that worried her - a new statue, creepy in some way she didn't manage to express clearly; chilling official indifference to reports of quite brutal Muggle-killings; and some commission that Dolores Umbridge was running, one that seemed to have left Marietta even more disillusioned with the old hag than she'd been when Umbridge failed to protect her after the debacle of two years before. Reading between the lines, her friend was clearly scared out of her wits, and Cho longed to be able to comfort her, in the way she'd once been comforted by her.

In the way she would have been able to if, of course, she hadn't been several thousand miles away in a completely new life.

信息 -- news

There had been one curious hint in Michael's letters - 'everybody here reads the Quibbler, it's so much more interesting than the Prophet!'. Unfortunately, the multiple Apparitions necessary to get across country to Jinan were fruitless, as in this case Zheng's Emporium proved insufficiently comprehensive to supply the current version. The only one they had was a faded copy of the edition that had carried Harry's interview; the assistant explained that it had been asked for often enough at the time to be stocked. After a year and a half on the shelves unpurchased it was priced to sell, and Cho bought it, for no real reason except old times' sake.

After some hard thought about where to try next, she located a source much closer to home. Hong Kong had never been politically detached from wizarding China in the way it had in the Muggle world, and so celebrations of its recent return had been muted - but neither had it been a place of particular importance before the British came, and their influence was strong even in the magical areas. Cho poked around and found a small store that specialised in esoteric imports of all kinds; the merry little witch who ran it had contacts in Diagon Alley, and was only too happy to provide an up-to-date copy of The Quibbler.

"How soon could you get it?" asked Cho. She'd no idea how long such things took.

"I can sell one to you now." She laughed at Cho's expression. "No, no, I am not a Seer. You aren't the first person to ask."

"I'm not?"

"Not at all. I think there have been - let me see, four others before you. They told me it's an open secret that it has the real news. Well then, I said, this is something I need to keep in stock!"

"Oh ... that's good then." Cho dug out some gold and placed a standing order.

When she got the magazine home and curled up on her bed to read it, she could understand why people had that opinion. Much of the content was still the sort of thing you would expect from something published by Loony Lovegood's father - yet more claims that the Tornados' recent success was due to something other than their superior skill and tactics (this time, it was the ghost of Roderick Plumpton spying on the opposition's training sessions for his old team), and a 'Snorkack Watch' column with the latest sightings from obscure parts of Scandinavia (where the locals probably had little to do in the winter but knock back aquavit). But the political stories now had a new plausibility. When Lovegood had claimed that Cornelius Fudge was plotting to crush goblin opposition and seize Gringotts for the sake of its gold, it had sounded ridiculous. When he claimed that new minister Pius Thicknesse aimed to eliminate goblin control of the bank at the behest of You-Know-Who, it sounded like reporting.

She found it frustrating.

硬币 -- coin

Cho kept her DA coin with her at all times. To begin with, it had been a small gesture of rebellion against her parents, but as the weeks passed it gradually became a mere habit. Most of the time she forgot it was there, but whenever she left it behind by mistake she would feel a sense of slight unease. It was like a talisman of sorts.

Every now and then, she would take it out of her pocket almost absently to look at it - always with a slight tingle of anticipation, almost hope, a feeling that it might have changed while she wasn't paying attention. And every now and then she would feel it heat up (Granger's Protean Charm working perfectly even across continents, big surprise there), and there would be a message for her to read. Usually the messages were cryptic - no doubt they were of vital significance for those involved, but they might have meant anything to someone not in the know. Presumably that included the staff of the school as well as Cho. and was therefore the point of the exercise, but this too was frustrating.

The coin was a source of considerable amusement to local witches and wizards who saw her looking at it, although the disapproval of her parents was palpable on the one occasion a message came through while they were in the middle of a meal. Cho excused herself and went up to her room as soon as she realised; she didn't exactly like arguing with them, and she definitely didn't want them asking why she was still carrying such a thing.

Especially as she didn't quite know why herself ...

协定 -- agreement

Ever since their big argument, her parents had carefully avoided the subject of the war back in Britain - and indeed most other subjects to do with life there, from her exam results to the latest Quidditch scores. On the whole, Cho went along with it, other than the occasional small dig almost immediately regretted as childish. They weren't going to change their minds and she wasn't going to leave them behind, so she decided (gritting her teeth) that she'd just have to make the best of it.

As the weeks passed she worked hard on improving her Cantonese and getting used to her job, spent a lot of time catching up on her reading, and tried to practise the common Chinese spell forms (which were mostly Mandarin sounds, just to make things more difficult - the result of some long-ago edict to spell developers by the Ministry in Beijing). She made a few half-hearted attempts at putting together a social life, allowing Hu Jiao to drag her to poetry readings and other events she had little interest in, quickly changing the subject whenever the topic of conversation seemed likely to turn to Harry Potter. With the vague idea of keeping her hand in at duelling, she even attended a few open nights at the Guangzhou Martial Society, but that proved embarrassing. She was seriously out of practice, and instinctively used the Latin incantations she'd always used - they did seem less powerful than she would have expected from past experience.

But when both Michael and Marietta wrote and hinted strongly that they would really like to see her over the holidays, she couldn't take it any more.

"You want to what?"

Cho stood her ground. "I want to spend a few days visiting Michael and Marietta over their Christmas holidays. I'm not running away, if that's what you think, but I ... I need to do this."

"What about your job?" asked her father, his mouth set in a thin line of disapproval (although she thought there was a touch of apprehension too when she said running away).

"I can ask for a few days off. I'm dealing with American customers most of the time, they'll be having a break then as well."

He seemed mollified by that, albeit only slightly. "But what about the danger?" That was presumably the real sticking point.

"I'm sure I can go in and out without any trouble. I'll even use Muggle transport to get there if you insist. I don't suppose anyone will even notice I'm there."

"And then what?"

"And then I come back and ... do whatever I do here." Her life at the moment felt like one of those potions that refused to turn into something definite however hard you stirred them up.

Her mother spoke for the first time. "Be honest, Cho. Do you want to go back?"

"I don't know!" That was the most honest answer she could give.

"We do miss it too, you know," said her father kindly. "We know it's hard, it was for us too. But this is the better way. It's home."

'Home' again. "It doesn't really feel like it to me, Dad. Can't you see that?" She sighed. "It might some day, but right now I .. I just feel like I'm drifting. I want to see my friends again."

"You want to see your boyfriend again?"

There was a knowing glint in her mother's eye as she asked the question, and Cho flushed. The subject of Michael was another one she avoided discussing with her parents in case they asked questions she wasn't sure how to answer. "Yes, I'd like to see Michael, as it happens. You know, we'd only been going out for a year, it's not like we were close or anything!"

"You never talked about him much. Not like ... your other boyfriends." At least this time her father looked awkward; he'd finally remembered that both Cedric and Harry were touchy subjects for her. "He didn't visit you over summer holidays last year."

"Yes, well ..." Cho scowled. It had in fact taken some months before her emotional bruises had healed, and until then she'd just regarded Michael as someone fun to spend time with - and occasionally snog - when they weren't studying for N.E.W.T.s. She'd always suspected he felt more strongly about her, but that was his problem. "We'd only just started going out then. He couldn't come this summer, could he, we weren't there!"

Her mother laid a hand on her husband's arm before he could say anything. "I think we can understand young love, can't we?" Her eyes twinkled at the sight of her daughter cringing at the phrase. "I don't suppose a few days back in Britain will be too much of a risk. And she is of age." She turned to Cho and suddenly became much more serious. "Will you promise to be careful and come straight back, kitten?"

"Yes. All right." Cho would have promised almost anything to get them to agree. Yes, she was of age, but the thought of burning bridges by taking off by herself without their approval still felt worse than not going at all.

访友 -- visiting

Cho booked a room at the Leaky Cauldron and assumed that Michael would be staying there too, but to her surprise his letter directed her to a Muggle hotel in Bloomsbury. When she arrived there she understood why - it was comfortable, but also large enough to be reasonably anonymous. The necessity for this precaution was disquieting. She was even more surprised - but delighted - when she arrived in his room to find Marietta already waiting with him. The two of them evidently still had a certain coolness towards each other, but once they began to discuss matters with Cho in earnest, they soon warmed up to the serious business of cursing the new regimes at Hogwarts and the Ministry.

"... Snape's headmaster? Really? I thought I must have misunderstood when you wrote that! But ... he k-killed Dumbledore. How did they explain it away?"

"They're trying to pin it on Harry." Michael was slightly ill-at-ease talking to Cho about him, which was rather endearing. "Nobody believes them except for a few idiots who can't see the obvious, of course, not even Parkinson and her crowd. Well, she probably knows her precious Malfoy was involved, doesn't she?"

"He's back too?" Cho was outraged.

"Yeah. Keeping his head down, though ..."

"... It's not much fun at the Ministry. People seem to be staying away if they can." Marietta looked miserable.

"Why?"

"It all feels a bit ... creepy. I don't think it's just me, Cho!"

"Who said it was?" asked Michael, who sounded as if he could easily believe 'creepy'.

"Well, a lot of people are carrying on like they haven't noticed any difference. Maybe they don't care. But Mum's seen it too - she says she's getting some very funny requests to track Floos now, very dodgy people asking, not like Umbridge. Though her Commission's pretty iffy as well."

"What is that about? She's giving Muggle-borns a hard time again?"

"She's giving everyone a hard time. No-one likes being hassled over their Blood Status."

"Tell me about it," said Michael with a snort. "And they're not just giving Muggle-borns a hard time, they're taking their wands away. Some bollocks about them not really being wizards at all."

"What?"

"My granddad's a Muggle. Dad had to go in front of their Commission and prove my gran was a witch to get given 'Blood Status' ..."

"... People are fighting back at Hogwarts though, right?" Cho was fighting a sense of panic at the thought they might not be. Perhaps that had sounded like a rebuke, because Michael flinched.

"We're all doing what we can. Ginny and Luna and Neville Longbottom started up the DA again, but it's not been easy, not with the Carrows throwing Crucios about the way the other professors give out lines."

Cho gulped. "You ... you're not serious? They're not really using the Cruciatus on people - on students?"

"Yeah they are. I suppose they're trying not to leave physical evidence." Michael shrugged, and Cho and Marietta shared horrified glances at his air of resignation.

The news confirmed everything Cho had suspected and feared. The coup had been quick and complete, and just enough plausible propaganda had been released to suggest that it hadn't really been a coup after all - merely a change of Minister, bringing new policies in his wake. Resistance seemed to be patchy.

"Maybe my parents were right!" she exclaimed at one point, as Marietta and Michael were discussing the failings of the Daily Prophet, as compared to The Quibbler or some clandestine wireless programme called Potterwatch (of all things). They'd confirmed her earlier impression of the Prophet; unless all you wanted was the recipe for Invigoration Infusion in the household tips column, it was impossible to glean anything useful without the kind of close reading-between-the-lines analysis normally reserved for Ancient Runes translations, or the plot developments of the latest epic in Winifred Wellbeloved's adventure series.

Michael and Marietta shared an uncertain look. "In what way?" he asked.

"Moving. Going to China." Cho wished she hadn't said that; she wasn't sure she quite believed it, but then again, she wasn't sure she entirely disbelieved it now.

"Yes, what's it like there?" Marietta seemed keen to change the subject away from doom and gloom, and after a moment Michael chimed in too. "It must be so cool, living in a different country! Is it really exotic?"

Cho laughed. "Exotic? Not really ... well, a bit, I suppose. Not as much to me as it would be to you."

"Do you like it there?" Michael was watching her closely, and she bristled.

"Yes!"

"Your letters sounded as if you weren't sure," said Marietta softly. Her friend knew her far too well. Damn. "Honest now, Cho."

"Well ... it's taken a lot of getting used to, yes." Cho picked her words with care; she owed them both as frank an answer as she could give. "Yes, I do miss Britain, and I miss all my friends. Then again, you two are the only ones who stuck with me all the way anyway," she added with a touch of bitterness.

"Of course we did," said Marietta. "You stuck with me, didn't you? Even when ... you know." She gave a small shudder, and Cho noticed that she still wore her makeup caked on, even though the spots had finally faded away a year ago.

"Yeah. You're all right, though?" This time Michael seemed to be the one keen to change the subject.

"I'm getting the hang of it - my Cantonese is pretty fluent now I'm using it all the time, I'm remembering stuff I didn't know I knew. I've got a job, like I said in my letters - nothing high-flying, but it's a nice place to work. I sort of ... do and don't fit in." A few people had called her Jook-sing, but mostly the tone had been teasing rather than insulting. "I'm the exotic girl there to the boy next door, aren't I?" Michael's smile became rather fixed, and she added, "And no, no-one special, Mike, don't get sulky. I didn't forget you that quickly. I haven't felt up to it, anyway."

"Right." There was a rather awkward pause. "Go on then ... tell us all about it!"

"Oh - all right, erm ..." She started to talk about their new home, and her job, and what her parents were doing, and moved on to the Chinese wizarding and Muggle cultures in general. Marietta and Michael were clearly fascinated, and Cho found herself quite enjoying telling the tales of her Chinese life. It was amazing how much better it sounded, how much more of an adventure, when she was thousands of miles away. It passed the evening very pleasantly.

Eventually Marietta made her excuses and went home, leaving Cho and Michael to look at each other awkwardly as soon as they were alone. She didn't really want to go just yet. Michael was the one who broke the silence, asking with a wry smile, "Was I really being sulky?"

Cho giggled. "A bit. You do do that, you know. I didn't mind, it's quite ... sweet. Sometimes. When you don't do it too much."

"Right." He went slightly pink. "You, er ... you said you didn't feel up to seeing anyone. Did you miss me, then?"

"Well - yes." She could feel herself blushing too. "We went out for a year, Mike, I can't just let that go. You missed me then, too?"

"Yeah. Yeah." He paused. "A lot, actually." He turned away from her; he was having some difficulty talking. "We were really getting on well, weren't we? I wish you hadn't had to go."

"So do I." She put her arms around him, and for a few minutes they just stood there, hugging. Michael seemed to need it, and for that matter, so did she. Finishing with Michael at that point had been like putting down a book just as it was getting to the ... um, the last chapter. Yes. That. "I should leave, I suppose," she said after a while.

"Right." He let her go, kissed her once on the cheek, and then, as she reached the door, he said "Cho?" It sounded forced from him.

She turned, already halfway into the corridor. "Yes?"

He waited a moment, then suddenly asked, "Will you stay? Please?" There was more than one kind of need in his voice; he sounded both under strain and desperately weary. It startled her.

"I ... I ... I don't know." She winced; that wasn't exactly a categorical 'no'. "It wouldn't be a good idea, would it?"

"No. Yes. Oh, I don't know either." He ran his fingers through his long hair; she'd never seen him quite so obviously hurting. "For what it's worth, your letters and the DA were the only things keeping me sane this term. I ... I hated leaving it where it was - oh sod it. Sorry." His shoulders slumped. "Sorry, Cho. That wasn't fair. Forget it, sorry. Just ... you will keep writing to me, yeah?"

"Yeah, of course," she said, for the sake of something to say. Then after a few seconds of difficult hesitation, she made a decision.

Cho stepped back into the room and gently closed the door behind her, smiling slightly at the mixture of expressions that were chasing each other across Michael's face: disbelief, happiness, gratitude, a flash of raw, unconcealable desire, and finally a sort of hopeful nervousness. She wasn't at all convinced she knew what she was doing - it wasn't quite what she'd envisaged - but, well ... even if she was about to finish a story without being sure she wanted to continue with the sequel, at this moment, she didn't think she could bear never to find out what would happen.

适应 -- acclimatisation

The series of Portkeys on the return journey were as disorientating as ever, but this time Cho felt a lot happier to arrive in China. She wasn't convinced that she had in fact actually resolved anything, but it felt as if she had, and that was a lot more than she'd dared hope for. It seemed to show; her mother looked pleased when she met her at the arrival station.

"Hi, Mum!"

"Welcome back, darling. Did it help?"

"Yes. Yes, I think it did."

"Good." Much to Cho's surprise, she left it at that, for which Cho was glad. She didn't really think it would be helpful to go into details.

Her father had finally bought a flying carpet in her absence, so the journey home was sedate but comfortable, and Cho stayed quiet on the way. Maybe she'd just needed to visit Britain - and Michael - again to get things out of her system? It had been at once familiar and unfamiliar, a rather jarring dual sensation of feeling simultaneously at home yet somehow like a tourist. While she was there she'd put it down to the changes wrought by the new Ministry, which seemed to have induced a general wariness that hung in the atmosphere like the smog over Beijing. It wasn't until she arrived back in Guangzhou that she realised that there was more to it than that. Actually, she'd simply grown acclimatised to being surrounded by people who looked like her.

"Are you all right, darling?"

"What? Oh, yes - yes, Mum, I'm fine."

Cho didn't say anything to her parents, but it was yet another unsettling revelation. Other than her family, and a few friends of her parents, she'd met very few wizards or witches of Chinese extraction before moving here. She'd always looked Chinese, but felt Scottish. Muggles occasionally stared at her oddly, but magical people never really seemed to care what other people looked like - just so long as they too were magical. Although now she thought about it, other Ravenclaws had always seemed to assume she'd be friends with Su Li - annoyingly so, since Su was a year younger than Cho, and frankly had been the kind of cliché bookworm that gave her house a reputation for dullness. Granger had been bad enough, but whatever her faults she at least had a bit of spark ...

"I'll take my stuff back up to my room and unpack."

"All right, kitten. Don't take all day, we'd like to see you at dinner."

Cho gritted her teeth at the kitten and waved her wand at the trunk, muttering "Yí xíng huàn yǐng!" under her breath in an aggrieved tone of voice. She paused for a fraction of a second halfway up the stairs when it dawned on her that she'd finally used a Chinese incantation for the movement spell without thinking. Out of pure curiosity she set it down and tried "Locomotor trunk!" instead to make a direct comparison. The spell with Latin incantation was noticeably more sluggish; the trunk didn't move immediately, and it was harder to control.

Over the course of the day Cho found herself wondering if Su Li's family had done the same as hers. She wasn't sure how to find out, though; as far as she could remember, they were third-generation and had originally come from a completely different part of China, and if they'd left Britain would presumably have gone to relatives there. She regretted not having paid more attention to her now; maybe she could even have brought her into the DA. After all, she'd been in the same year as Michael - and Harry - so she must have known some of the members.

By the time she'd slipped back into her job routine she realised that Guangzhou was actually beginning to feel like home. Growing familiarity with the spell forms everyone else used even improved her Martial Society performance considerably, to the point where one of the best duellists in the club declared her a worthy opponent. Maybe the week she'd spent back in Britain had helped her find ... closure, the annoying term half her so-called friends had tried to drum into her when she was mourning Cedric. It was a process she knew rather more about than they did, and also much more than she wanted to.

相遇 -- encounter

Cho had grown used to the irregular but reasonably frequent arrival of a rather tired owl pigeon from the witch in Hong Kong, bringing with it the latest copy of The Quibbler. She'd hoped to pick up the latest edition early while in London, but hadn't been able to find one. That was disappointing, but presumably even Lovegood would want to take a break over Christmas and the New Year while his daughter was at home. There was no copy waiting for her when she got back, either; Ming vigorously denied nicking it, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he would have grabbed it if he could. Oh well, let him - if he wanted to know what was going on, it couldn't hurt.

She was distracted for a while by Chun's return from the Xinbian Academy for the holidays, telling excited tales of what it was like to learn magic, to anyone who would sit and listen to her gush about her school (which she naturally regarded as far superior to Hogwarts, the Imperial Academy, or indeed any of the other thirty or so schools of magic in China). Cho didn't mind. She was happy to spend a lot of time with her sister, and the differences from the way she'd been taught were fascinating.

Transfiguration was regarded as an advanced study, best left until the students had mastered basic Charms work, but it was traditional to begin Divination early - although with emphasis on written forms that sounded much more like Arithmancy. There was of course no subject of Ancient Runes, but there was instruction in the art of magical calligraphy for the enchanted parchments often used in Chinese magic, and there were no separate Defence classes. Her parents nodded when they heard; this was apparently a topic of optional (although encouraged) special study when the student was older and more experienced. They seemed to approve of this arrangement, as if early study and involvement with the DA had left their elder daughter with an over-optimistic view of the dangers of duelling. And Chun's Potions teacher was something of a tyrant, hated and feared by most of the students. So some things stayed the same.

However, when her sister was preparing to return to school after seeing in the Year of the Tiger, and Cho had time to think about other things, she began to get concerned that no new copies of The Quibbler had arrived. Was something wrong? Had her payment run out, or had the woman in the shop just run out of stock?

So on her next day off Cho Apparated to Hong Kong again to investigate. As she entered the shop she was surprised to hear the name Quibbler mentioned in a young woman's voice. This customer spoke in careful Mandarin, but the owner replied cheerfully in English, "Oh yes, you are Li Su? I'm sorry, child, but there are none this month. None last month, either. My supplier thinks there is a problem." She caught sight of Cho. "Have you come to ask about your English magazine too?"

Cho nodded. "A problem?" She glanced at the other customer and did an astonished double-take as the face and name registered.

"It says dangerous things, I hear." The shopkeeper's face grew sadder. "Brave, brave, but ... this is not the first time such a thing happens."

"No. Thank you." Cho turned away, bitterly disappointed, and as they stepped outside into the morning daylight, she saw that she'd been right. "Li Su - er, Su Li?"

The other girl looked equally astonished, gawping at her. She was dressed in what looked like school robes, very similar to those her sister wore, although bearing a crest with the characters for Imperial Academy. "Cho Chang ...?" She said something in Mandarin that Cho thought meant "what are you doing here?".

Without thinking, Cho replied, not in English, but in Cantonese. "I live here now." They talked over each other in mutual confusion for a moment or two, and then caught themselves as they realised what they were doing. The younger girl gave a rueful, albeit nervous, grin, and Cho couldn't help but laugh. "Sorry! Habit, I suppose."

Su Li smiled tentatively. "I remember you from Hogwarts!"

"Your family moved too, then?"

"Yes."

Su looked as if she didn't quite know what to say, and acting on pure whim Cho asked her to come for lunch, insisting when she demurred. Over pork and noodles Cho began to draw her out - it was hard work, but she finally got her talking. Apparently their parents knew each other slightly and had discussed what they might do in the event of the war taking a turn for the worse, which was news to Cho.

"So really it's our fault that you got dragged all the way out here for your last year?"

"I didn't mind," said Su, blushing slightly. "I'm not like you, Cho. I wouldn't know how to fight like you did."

"I didn't actually fight," said Cho, feeling rather guilty. "My friends did."

"But you joined that Dumbledore's Army thing, didn't you? It was very brave of you."

"Oh. Thank you." Now Cho didn't quite know what to say; she hadn't felt that flattered for quite a while.

Su seemed to brace herself. "Did you want to stay then?" she asked tentatively.

"I suppose I ... I don't know, really." Cho shrugged. It still wasn't a question she felt comfortable answering. "I'd probably have stayed, yes. But I couldn't when my parents wanted to come here. It wouldn't have been right."

"Oh I know. A lot of people who had the chance to go did. Mum's best friend, she's married to a Canadian, they left when Rufus Scrimgeour was replaced. Obviously he'd never have resigned voluntarily, he wasn't the type, so anyone could see something bad had happened." Su evidently followed politics much more closely than Cho had. "That boy in the year below me with the French name, I heard his parents left Britain too?" Cho nodded in confirmation; Marietta had mentioned that in passing. "And there were the people with Muggle parents, of course. Justin Finch-Fletchley wrote to me from Malta, he said his father has a business there so he insisted his family get out. I used to like him, he was nice."

Cho gaped as Su blushed again, this time furiously; it had taken a long time to get her to lighten up, but now she had she was coming out with all sorts of things Cho had no idea about. She hadn't realised Su even knew Justin, let alone had what seemed to be quite a crush on him. It seemed only fair to add a little news of her own. "Terry Boot stayed, though. His grandmother's Dutch, he told me once. They used to spend holidays in Amsterdam."

"He was in that thing with you too, wasn't he?" At Cho's nod, she added, "He must have had better luck than you did."

That depended on what was lucky, really. "Padma's still there, too. And her sister. Michael - er, Corner, that is - told me."

Su's eyes widened. "Didn't their parents take them away as soon as they heard of ... you know, the murder?"

"Yeah. Changed their minds and decided to stick it out, obviously ..." Cho broke off when she realised that what she was saying was another uncomfortable topic. Of course, unlike her own parents, the Patils' mum and dad had been born in Britain. Then again, so had Su's. "It's been really nice seeing you here, Su," she said on impulse.

Su looked quite pleased by the compliment. "You too. It's good to see someone from home."

"Yeah ..."

"I ... I'd like to go back some day, if it settles down. I mean, this is quite fun, but Britain is home, isn't it?"

Cho's chest tightened and she cursed under her breath; she'd thought she was getting out of the habit of thinking of Britain as home, but all it took was one chance meeting and she was away again ... "I suppose so," she said, in as level a voice as she could manage.

"Do ... do you think Harry Potter will win?" Su seemed afraid to ask. "You knew him better than ... I mean ... you know ..." She broke up, looking embarrassed.

"Because I was his girlfriend - well, sort of?" Cho gave her a wry look. "I don't think I ever really knew him that well. But - I think Harry can do it if anyone can. Don't give up hope just yet, Su."

制度 -- system

Hope appeared to be a precious commodity in magical Britain, one in steadily dwindling supply, and however much Cho would have liked to help it was not something Yang Honghua's business had available for export. Michael's letters from Hogwarts were even more ambiguous, though also much more personal; Cho tried to give him some hope and comfort in the letters she wrote back, but it was difficult to know what to say. Offering comfort didn't seem to be her strong point - she hadn't been able to help Harry either, no more than he'd been able to comfort her.

But when Marietta's next letter arrived, there was yet another unexpected development. It seemed that she and Michael had worked out some kind of system between them. Snape had not yet banned Hogsmeade visits (perhaps the greasy creep also felt like having a day off from seeing people who loathed him, not that it wasn't entirely deserved), and so Marietta had met Michael in the village, received the latest news from the school unfiltered, and passed it on to Cho in her letter. From this she learnt the explanation for the missing Quibbler; Loon ... Luna Lovegood had not come back after the holidays, and her father had been sent to Azkaban. Cho felt sick when she thought of the implications.

The next letter from Marietta brought news that Potterwatch had stepped into the breach as a source of hope, keeping people up to date with news from the resistance. It was pretty much an open secret among the older students that Lee Jordan was behind it. Michael thought he'd recognised Professor Lupin's voice too, and their aliases seemed to support the conclusion. But the main news from the programme actually seemed rather disquieting; Harry had disappeared from sight as completely as if he had performed a Vanishing Spell on himself. Everyone hoped he was doing something important, but since no-one had a clue where he was it was hard to tell.

In the privacy of her own room Cho made a few attempts to tune in, before realising that the attempt was futile and giving up. Not only did she have no idea when the programme was on or how to access it, she doubted that even the most powerful magical broadcasting charms would reach Guangzhou from Britain.

Cho tried to put it aside and concentrate on her job, but often caught herself thinking about when the next letter would arrive, and especially about what it might say. She tried to console herself with the thought that things couldn't get much worse, but it didn't help much - it was obvious that they could. It wasn't at all easy to see how to stop the rot. One passage in particular from History of the Defenders War sprung to mind, though; the Defenders of the Wand had made an early surprise attack on the Ministry in Beijing - and easily beaten the small force of Lawwizards left to defend the Ministry while their colleagues were hunting the Defenders. As the author recounted in some wonder, a takeover had been prevented by a spontaneous last-ditch stand by 'ordinary wizards and witches who had happened to be there at the time on business'. It had turned out in retrospect to have been one of the key actions of the war.

Perhaps You-Know-Who and his gang would overreach too soon and come a cropper, then? It was the best hope she had.

闲谈 -- gossip

Cho seldom looked at her DA coin any more, although she never quite got out of the habit of carrying it around. On a dull day at work in mid-March, she was idly playing with it at her desk when it suddenly burned. Hu Jiao chuckled as Cho gave a yelp and dropped it.

Blushing, she picked it up from the floor, read the message, did a double-take, and then let out a whoop of joy. The marks translated to the simple note: "I'm safe, Luna." No details of course - there wasn't enough room - but wherever she'd been, she seemed to be out of harm's way for the moment. Perhaps with her father in jail and unable to publish they'd let her go?

"What is that thing, Chang Cho?" She jumped at the question; her co-worker was trying to look as if she was merely casually interested in the answer rather than consumed with curiosity, but she was doing a very poor job of it.

"It's a -" Explaining the coin was more difficult than she'd anticipated, especially as she'd never tried before. "It, um, sends messages. I used to be in a - a sort of secret club at school. We all had a coin, and the leader changed the marks round the edge to tell us when the meetings were."

"I see." She didn't sound sure of that. "How did that work?"

"Well, it's got a -" Cho flailed for a moment as she realised she didn't know what the equivalent of 'Protean Charm' was "- a spell on it that makes changes to one coin show on all the others, so when Harry changed his coin -"

"Harry?" squeaked Hu Jiao, and Cho bit her lip. "Harry Potter?" Cho nodded and cursed silently. "You mean you were in a secret club with the most famous British wizard there is and you never told me?"

"Well, it was ... secret," said Cho, knowing it sounded lame. Was there anywhere Harry wasn't some sort of rock star? Jiao hadn't sounded this excited since the announcement that China's foremost wizarding poet was booked to do a reading at the Guangzhou Meeting Hall.

"Did he just send you a message?"

"No, he doesn't do it any more. It's Lu - er, some other people who were in it started it again because of the - the situation."

"The situation?"

"You know. There's a war going on there?"

Jiao's mouth was an O. "Did your - club win a battle or something? Is that why you yelled?"

"No ..." Cho hesitated for a moment, and then suddenly, all the things she'd seen and heard, all the things she'd never talked about at home, began to spill out of her - the Death Eater takeover, the DA, news about Luna and her father, Michael and Marietta, the steady drip, drip, drip of bad news from the country of her birth, to which the message from Luna was a welcome contrast. The only thing she kept back was the information that she'd once gone out with Harry Potter. She didn't feel she could cope with Hu Jiao asking her what it was like.

Her colleague was very quiet for a minute or two after Cho finally ran down. "I didn't realise it was that bad," she said eventually.

"Neither did I," admitted Cho. Well, she'd known it was bad, but until she put it all together like that it hadn't sunk in quite how bad it was, nor how rapidly things had gone downhill.

"It's eating you up, isn't it?"

"What?"

"Not being able to do anything about it."

"No!"

"No?"

"Oh, all right, then, yes! Yes, I suppose it is."

There was no opportunity to discuss the matter further, as Yang Honghua chose that moment to walk in with a new customer for Cho to discuss orders with; she did however notice that this time, Hu Jiao refrained from pointing out to them that Cho had actually spoken to Harry Potter.

祸 -- disaster

After the rare piece of good news from Britain that made Cho's heart leap, what followed made it sink again. The first intimation of trouble was a fearful letter from Marietta, telling her that the entire Weasley family (except the pompous one who'd been Head Boy in their fourth year) had suddenly disappeared overnight. It was a massive subject for gossip in the Ministry, although no-one seemed to know where they actually were. Michael confirmed this by writing to say that Ginny Weasley had not returned to school - that at least he could frame as romantic gossip ("Ginny's not bothered to come back - nothing to do with me! I know you didn't like her much, but I'm over her now, honest").

The really shattering news came in Marietta's next letter, a semi-hysterical message sent a few days after one of the school Hogsmeade weekends. It was hard to be sure exactly what had happened from her panic-stricken scrawl, but what she could read and understand made Cho's blood run cold. Michael had not turned up, but Padma and her sister had sought Marietta out and told her baldly that he'd been severely tortured for trying to help a younger kid. He couldn't have left his bed even if he'd been allowed to come. They avoided going into specifics, which only made things worse, as it set Cho's imagination working in gruesome detail. Presumably Crucio had been used on him, but the Patils had hinted that this time physical cruelty had been involved as well.

At Hogwarts.

At a school.

"What are they doing?"

"Huh?" Her little brother looked up from ... oh, whatever annoying game he was playing.

"None of your business, Ming," she said, scowling at him. She hadn't realised she'd cried it aloud, and was profoundly glad that her parents weren't there.

"You've got another of those letters, haven't you?"

"What letters?" she replied with unease. He couldn't read her letters, of course - they were all enchanted to be readable only by her - but he wasn't even supposed to have noticed them. She quickly snatched the latest one from the table, together with the Communications from Foreign Parts section of the Guangzhou Messenger, which had some kind of report from Europe that she wanted to read but didn't want Ming asking questions about.

"The ones your friends send. The ones where they tell you war stuff. Kitty." He grinned at Cho's discomfiture. "I know about the war, right? Dad and Mum talk about it sometimes when you're not there and they think I can't hear. Are your friends winning then?" He sounded genuinely curious.

"What? No." There didn't seem much point in pretending she didn't know what he meant.

"Oh." His face fell. "That's rubbish."

Cho stood up; she suddenly felt so angry she didn't trust herself to continue the conversation. "Yes, it is, you horrible little creature!" she spat at him as she dashed upstairs to her room and slammed the door.

Oh Michael.

Tortured.

Put under Cruciatus, burned, beaten to a bloody pulp ... she didn't even know what they'd done to him.

He was only a half-blood. His Blood Status (how she loathed that term!) wouldn't protect him from the worst of it.

When they'd met in Bloomsbury, he'd said they tried not to leave marks. If they'd stopped caring whether they did or not, that was ominous. The Death Eaters must think they had things well under control and could do what they liked now - create an atmosphere of terror, suppress opposition before it started, impress upon people from the start that there was a new order in wizarding Britain, and it was prepared to be brutal if it didn't get what it wanted. She recognised the approach all too well from her History of Magic lessons (at least, those she'd managed to stay awake for). And for that matter, she'd seen it in History of the Defenders War - when groups of Defenders had seized control of provincial wizarding areas, they had often behaved the same way. It seemed to be a standard tactic.

She realised she was lying on something, pulled it out to see what it was, and found the copy of the Messenger she'd brought upstairs and temporarily forgotten about. One of their foreign correspondents had written a long, pessimistic report on the situation in Europe. Cho skimmed through it and found it contained many details that Michael and Marietta hadn't known. Other Continental countries had at first been accepting of those who fled from Britain, but were now becoming wary and starting to make difficulties for them, as quite a number of Death Eaters and their sympathisers had moved overseas too in order to make contacts among like-minded pure-bloods. Even worse, it seemed to be working. Just as they had in the first war, bigots everywhere saw in the reborn and ascendant Voldemort the powerful wizard who could lead them to restored supremacy, and Ministries all over the continent were facing unrest.

The reporter explained that it was an open secret in Europe that the British Ministry had been taken over by the Death Eaters, even if Thicknesse had yet to officially acknowledge that the regime had changed (opinions varied as to whether he had been a Voldemort supporter all along, or had merely been placed under the Imperius Curse). He presented evidence that one or two smaller European Ministries might already have fallen too, and raised the gloomy possibility of a new and worse version of the Grindelwald wars of seventy years before. Once Voldemort had dealt with the main remaining local difficulty of the Boy Who Lived and was able to turn his attention to wider goals, his path seemed clear. His supporters had already laid the groundwork ...

It was exactly what she'd predicted at the Beijing Ministry -- without the help of magical parchments.

Cho almost cried.

But she couldn't do it. She wanted to cry, wanted to let all her frustrations out, but she couldn't. Somewhere along the line, the disgust and discomfort everyone had shown around her when she cried for Cedric seemed to have burned the ability to do so out of her.

Cho crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it across the room instead. She needed to do something, to strike back at them. But there wasn't anything she could do.

Well, there was one thing she could do. Cho found quill and paper, sat down, and began to write to Michael to give him what little consolation he could get from her sympathy and encouragement. She didn't dare say too clearly that she knew what had happened, but what she could say was to be strong, and that she wished very much that she could be there with him. And she discovered as she wrote that she really didn't care which way he took that statement; it would be right either way.

密信 -- message

Cho waited in apprehension for the next letter to arrive, but none did during the next fortnight. Even her job wasn't much fun any more - or perhaps it was just that however much she threw herself into it, she was distracted by the thought that everything she'd known as she grew up was being steadily stripped away.

She woke with a start one morning and looked at the clock with bleary eyes. Ten past six. Way too early. And why did she feel hot ...

Cho sat bolt upright. The fake Galleon was lying on the small table by her bed, and when she touched it, it was still warm - somebody in the DA had just sent a message, even though it must be late at night in Britain. She almost didn't want to read it and find only irrelevant or depressing news. But there was no point in putting it off until later, so she picked it up and mentally deciphered the markings. For a minute, she couldn't take in the result.

H back Help needed fight App Hogs Head Nev

It was a struggle not to laugh hysterically and wake the rest of the household. Harry back? At Hogwarts? A fight? So most of the people she knew back in Britain, most of the friends she had from her old life, were about to get themselves killed in some useless fight?

It's not useless! Somebody's got to do it! It still sounded like bravado, even to her own ears.

She glanced at the clock again. Six-fifteen. Why on earth was Harry there?

Ordinary wizards and witches who had happened to be there at the time. A last-ditch stand that had worked, against all expectations.

I thought you were supposed to be the intelligent one? I thought you had more sense than that!

Six-seventeen. Why wasn't he there in secret? Was this what he'd been planning all this time? A last stand? Why at Hogwarts?

Harry can do it if anyone can. Don't give up hope just yet.

Maybe Harry really could do what everyone, including Cho, said he could. Or rather, hoped he could.

I'd still be willing to stand with him.

Six-twenty. Ten minutes since Neville Longbottom had sent the message. People would already be on their way to join him. In another hour they'd probably be fighting.

In another hour and a half, she'd be on her way to work. Not that it was likely she'd be able to concentrate, under the circumstances. What on earth would she tell Yang Honghua?

Cho smiled. Let him think she'd gone mad. It would probably be the truth.

She jumped to her feet, tossed aside the work robes neatly folded across her chair, threw on jeans and a T-shirt, and grabbed her wand and bag from the desk. The house was still quiet, her parents safely asleep. She picked up a quill and scribbled a note:

Dad, Mum -They're fighting at Hogwarts, all my friends are there, they need me, I can't not go. I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I didn't mean to leave like this, but there's no time. I love you. Yours always Cho

She tiptoed downstairs, wincing at the creak of the top step, slipped into her father's study and left the note on his desk.

"What are you doing?"

Cho jumped in alarm and turned round. Ming was standing there in his pyjamas, staring at her with his usual maddening curiosity.

"What?"

"Why were you sneaking downstairs? I heard you."

"I got called in to work early," she lied. "I didn't want to wake them so I thought I'd better leave a note. See you later, Ming." To his surprise and disgust she scooped him up, kissed his forehead and hugged him, trying not to let herself wonder if she'd ever see him again. Finally she put him down, grinned as he wiped his head with a revolted look, then turned on the spot and Disapparated.

She landed neatly in the small crowded Portkey station, and rushed up to the witch at the travel desk at the far end. "Excuse me, when is the next route to Britain? Will it be soon?"

The witch shook her head regretfully. "I'm very sorry, but there are only two per day now - morning and evening, nine and twenty-one hundred hours. Few people care to travel there at the moment." Cho's face fell, and the witch pointed to a mixed group of Chinese and European wizards and witches with looks of trepidation on their faces, who were clustered around an old tattered fan lying on a table. "Would it help to take a Portkey to Brindisi and travel on from there? It would be a rush, departure is in two minutes ..."

"That's fine." Cho rummaged in her purse and dropped some gold on the table. "Please, never mind the change. Call it - a donation to charity!"

She rushed over and touched a finger to the fan just as it started to glow blue, and felt the familiar jerk behind her navel. The next few minutes were spent in great discomfort as they revolved across continents, heads reeling, with everyone hoping that the wizard whose face had turned green would make it all the way to the heel of Italy without spraying vomit over them all. Luckily, he just managed to last until they landed with a bump, and Cho reeled away, fighting to bring her own dizziness and nausea under control. She'd require all her concentration to complete her journey.

She'd covered thousands of miles with multiple Apparitions before, between Guangzhou and Jinan. But then, she'd been able to plan her route well in advance. This time, it was Apparate and hope.

Cho Disillusioned herself, took a very deep breath, then launched herself across Europe. She travelled as far as she dared at each stage, picking as destinations places she knew or had simply heard of, and hoping against hope that if she landed on top of anyone, the falling darkness would cover any weakness in her invisibility charm. From Brindisi it was Rome, by the Trevi fountain - then Florence, a hidden wizarding shop overlooking the Ponte Vecchio - Milan, near La Scala - Besançon, at the gates of Beauxbatons - Paris, the Champs-Élysées, where she nearly did knock someone over - London, a hasty escape to the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron - and finally, because her head had now stopped spinning and she couldn't bear to wait any longer, all the way to Hogsmeade and the Hog's Head bar in one final wrenching jump. She'd gone halfway across the world in about half an hour.

"Cho!"

The roar of delight took her by surprise, and she looked round to see the Weasley twins and their friend, who all immediately ran up and hugged her. "We thought you'd left us for good!" cried Lee Jordan.

"Can't keep away from the action, eh?"

"Playing it by ear, like me!"

Cho gaped. "Your ..."

"Yeah, well, never mind that. Better get going; we don't want to keep those poor people waiting in suspense, now do we?"

None of the three boys had ever been particular friends of hers, but meeting them again still felt like coming home. The landlord had evidently been expecting visitors, and with a grumpy look pointed them towards a passage over the mantelpiece. She held back for a moment or two as they stepped into what they assured her was the Room of Requirement, not quite knowing whether she wanted to slip in unnoticed or make a grand entrance. It ended up being somewhere in between: Michael's face lit up when he saw her, and Harry's jaw dropped. Cho smiled at him; she felt triumphant.

"I got the message," she said, holding up her Galleon, and went over to sit with Michael.

战 -- battle

It felt strange to be back at Hogwarts again, but the next hour was exhilarating, almost like old times. She even felt amused by Ginny Weasley's obvious jealousy of her, once the first disappointment of not getting the chance to go back to her old haunts in the Ravenclaw common room had passed. In fact it wasn't until a group of them were moving as fast as possible down into the grounds, led by their old Defence professor, that it began to sink in just how dangerous things were about to get.

Why on earth had she done it? She'd never even been in a duel for real before, let alone a whole battle!

Michael pulled her aside for a moment as they settled into position. "Thanks for coming," he said, and he sounded so grateful it gave her heart. "You were so brave."

"Wish I was. I'm shaking like a leaf," she told him. Her pulse was racing now as it approached midnight. Breathing was getting harder.

"So am I." Their eyes met for moment and then they seized each other, sharing a long lingering kiss; urgent, feverish, almost desperate, both of them trying to give the other comfort and take some for themselves. They pulled apart after a minute or so and Michael rested his head on hers. "I wanted to ... just in case ..."

"I know." They remained like that for a moment, then looked up, aghast, as a series of bangs shook the whole grounds.

"What's happening?" yelled Michael.

"I don't know!" Cho could barely hear herself above the din. She watched in fascinated horror as the sky lit up. The gates of Hogwarts were being bombarded with spells, hitting them in relays. Cho flinched; it looked as if the curses would pass straight through the gaps between the bars, but somehow Professor Flitwick's defensive spells successfully repelled them. The outer walls were trembling, as if struck by some huge, powerful force that needed no magic, and when she tried to see past the dazzling lights to what lay beyond, she could see huge dark shapes towering over the walls. "Giants," she said dully, but only she could hear.

The wait for battle to actively commence seemed worse than actual fighting. As minutes ticked by, both walls and gates seem to be holding for the moment, but Cho could tell that they wouldn't last for very much longer against the assaults being hurled at them, whatever Flitwick had come up with. Even as she thought that there was a huge explosion, so loud it made her scream with pain; the flash of light was so bright it burned her eyes. When she looked up the gates were still there, but they were buckling; one more hammer blow would surely blast through the defences ...

"We ... we'd better get in position," said Michael in her ear. He sounded as terrified as she was.

She nodded. "Hit them as soon as they come in!" That was definitely bravado. Did Stunning Spells even work on giants?

Her hand was shaking as she moved as close as she dared and aimed her wand to hex anything that came through. She could see dark-robed shapes massing outside; they paused for a minute or so before launching their assault on the gates. It was almost quiet, eerily so; she could hear sounds of battle from elsewhere, but they were no more than noises off. As the seconds ticked away, the tension became choking.

Then there was a loud cry from all the Death Eaters at once, and another massive explosion as at least a dozen spells hit the gates. They came apart with a final tortured scream, and the breaking of the enchantments protecting them unleashed a last defence, a wave of raw magical power that seemed to blast outward in all directions, scattering attackers and defenders alike.

When Cho regained her senses and scrambled to her feet she wasn't sure where she was or which direction she was facing. For one moment she wondered why she'd forgotten where the Portkey had come from, then everything flooded back, and she looked around wildly. She couldn't tell if she'd actually been knocked out or just temporarily disoriented. Small battles seemed to be taking place all around her, but a hundred yards away the lights seemed most dense, so she clutched her wand tightly and staggered in that direction.

A masked figure dashed past before she even realised it was there, and acting on pure instinct she whipped round and aimed a Stunning Spell at its back. It hit, and the Death Eater faltered, stumbled, and then crumpled to the ground.

Yes! She'd never Stunned anyone for real before! The sudden flood of elation helped keep a lid on her fears. She stepped forward and fired off another couple of curses in the direction of dark shapes that looked too big to be human, then yelped and ducked hastily as a spell flew past her ear. Like a Bludger, only a Bludger she told herself manically; she spun round and got another shock.

The man she thought she'd Stunned was already getting up.

What? ... why? ...

He fired a jinx at her which she blocked with a Shield Charm, but it wasn't strong enough; the spell hit with enough force to send her flying backwards. Cho landed with a painful jolt on the hard ground. She struggled to get up, but her legs felt numb; whether from the landing or the spell she couldn't tell. She fought down a rising sense of panic. Why weren't her spells working properly?

The Death Eater's mask was askew and he ripped it away in a show of impatience. He was fairly young and his face seemed oddly familiar - and then, in a moment of sudden surreal recognition that left her nauseated, she realised why; he was one of the Tornados reserve Beaters. His picture had once grinned and winked at her from her bedroom wall. "Didn't see you there, you little slag! Funny spells you've got." There was no smile on his face now, his voice was angry, with a strong undercurrent of malice. "Think we should mark that pretty face of yours ..."

As he swung his wand in what looked for all the world like a Backbeat, Cho finally understood the problem. "Protego!" she screamed, and this time the curse bounced harmlessly off and back at him. He hadn't expected that, and had to duck; Cho took advantage of him being off-balance by following up with a rapid "Stupefy!". This time it blasted him backwards when it hit, throwing him even further than his curse had thrown her, out cold.

'Funny spells'? Don't use Chinese here, you fool! she told herself as she grabbed his wand, Banished it into the night, and raced towards the rest of the battle.

One of McGonagall's animated statues, a pompous-looking wizard, was hurling rocks at any Death Eaters who came near his vantage point on top of a large square plinth. He muttered "Oh that's right, make me even more of a target, why don't you?" as she crouched down behind it and peeped over the top, trying to make sense of what was going on. Now that she was able to pay attention to more than her immediate surroundings, the noise was overwhelming; bangs, yells, and occasionally stomach-churning screams that sounded like someone under ... that probably were someone under Crucio.

She couldn't see Michael, Professor Lupin, or indeed anyone else she knew, but there were a few dark shapes lying unmoving on the ground that made her stomach lurch. She didn't dare let herself think who they might be, or whether they were merely Stunned or worse. Once she got her bearings it became obvious that the defenders were being steadily pushed back towards the castle, and after a moment or two to gather some self-control, she slipped out from behind the grumpy statue ("well thank you for nothing") and ran to join them.

She found herself side-by-side with a boy and girl she didn't even recognise - Hufflepuffs, to judge by their badges - all of them hiding behind a low balustrade that marked off a terrace and trying to pick off any Death Eaters who came near. Unfortunately, the ground had been so badly churned up by misdirected curses that the attackers had plenty of cover to work with, and despite the defenders' best efforts they made steady progress towards the castle.

There was a green flash from the grounds, far too close now. Cho threw herself flat on the terrace to get out of its way, winced at the bruises that would be sure to appear soon, picked herself up and sent a Stunner back in the general direction it had come from, through the gaps between the pillars.

"Noooo!"

Cho turned to look, distracted by the agonised cry from behind her, and for a moment she froze in dread. The girl who'd been fighting next to her lay on the ground, slumped, unmoving, her eyes blank. The boy had turned completely white as he dropped on his knees next to her. Cho couldn't take it in for a moment. She hadn't spoken to her when she came to help out - just nodded briefly to let them know help had arrived, and then started casting curses. She didn't even know the girl's name.

Movement caught her eye. "Look out!" she cried as two Death Eaters raced across the ground towards them, wands extended; they were firing spells at random and knocking chunks out of the walls. The boy still seemed unable to move, overwhelmed by his friend's death, and in panic Cho - not wishing to expose herself to any curses - just pointed her wand over the top of the parapet and screamed "Confringo!" The ground erupted in front of her and the Death Eaters were thrown back; but they were still far too close, and soon picked themselves up and moved forward again with greater caution but an air of grim determination ...

The boy she'd been fighting with looked up at her, his expression utterly lost, his eyes beginning to fill with tears. Cho understood that feeling only too well.

"Come on!" she cried, pulling at his arm.

It took a moment or two for this action to register, and another several seconds of frantic tugging before she could get him to move, but then a curse zipped past just above their heads, and after another agonised moment he joined her in racing for the cover of the school. They'd lost their pursuers in the cover of darkness when Cho tripped over something lying on the ground, looked down and almost collapsed right there and then in anguish.

"Pro - Professor Lupin?" she said stupidly. The second shock so soon after the first was paralysing.

"Come on!" This time, her Hufflepuff comrade-in-arms pulled her back to her senses as spells flew out of the night towards them, and they started running again.

She had talked to Lupin, just - minutes, or was it hours? - before, as they went down the stairs. He'd been encouraging, the same way he'd always been. And now he was gone too.

决斗 -- ultimatum

Cho had completely lost track of where she was, but once they got closer to the castle it became apparent that they were on the north side, within sight of one of the entrances. Hogwarts was looking the worse for wear now, with several lower battlements already beginning to crumble. As she surveyed the position it dawned on her in dismay that there were several Death Eaters between her and the doors. They seemed to be regrouping, waiting for reinforcements to arrive, which suggested that it would be a very bad move to still be out in the grounds when they did.

Cho exchanged hopeless looks with her fellow fighter. "H -how do we get through?" he asked, his Adam's apple bobbing rapidly. There were still some people inside sending spells at the Death Eaters - but there only seemed to be a few of them. The assault, when it came, would surely breach the defences.

"I don't kn -" At that moment, a bright flash of silver lit up the area around the entrance, making the battlements tremble alarmingly. By its light Cho saw that the Tornados player she'd Stunned was among the Death Eaters present - although he was moving gingerly, as if his chest was causing him discomfort. No doubt he'd been revived by a colleague and brought along for the fun. He'd even retrieved his wand. Her sudden overwhelming fury at this thought gave her an idea, though one born of desperation as much as anything else.

"Let's get as close as possible," she said urgently. "I daren't use a Disillusionment Charm, we might get cursed by our own side. As soon as the enemy spot us, though, I'm going to try and create a diversion. Run like hell for the entrance when I do. And keep a Shield Charm up, you'll need it."

"OK. You're the expert."

Cho paused for a moment, taken aback by his simple trust in her. "I am?"

He shrugged. "You were in Dumbledore's Army, weren't you?" He sounded numb from accumulated stresses, and Cho belatedly realised that he probably hadn't had any training for this. That thought didn't help much.

"OK then, ready?"

"Yeah. Oh -" he held out a hand, a gesture that was almost an afterthought "- Franklyn."

She shook it briefly and found a smile she didn't feel. "Cho."

They set off slowly, and by taking advantage of cover and darkness managed to get a lot closer than Cho had expected before one of the Death Eaters noticed and yelled at them to stop. He aimed his wand in their direction, but before he could do anything Cho stood up, waved her own wand in a loop and bellowed an incantation at the top of her voice. The Death Eater clearly had no idea what the spell was supposed to do, and as he looked around wildly trying to see something happening Franklyn broke into a flat run, closely followed by Cho.

For one appalling moment, as the Death Eater regained his concentration and turned towards them with raised wand, she thought it really hadn't worked - but her Chinese version of the Descending Spell was just as sluggish here as her Latin spells had been in China, and as it finally started to take effect large chunks broke away from the already weakened battlements and brought a pile of rubble down on top of her opponent. Cho and Franklyn were already close enough to the castle to miss the worst of it, and their Shield Charms kept out the rest. There were loud cheers from the small group of students inside as they made it to the entrance.

"Can't keep away from me, eh?" Lee Jordan was there, grinning at her in pride, and Cho grinned right back in relief at seeing a familiar face again.

"You wish. I'm still not sure I've forgiven you for saying I couldn't Seek!"

"Happy to concede the point! Right, you lot!" he added to the remaining defenders. "This is where it gets interesting. Don't get trapped in this corridor when they attack. They'll overwhelm us anyway, so let's pull back and try to pick them off from the balconies! Got that?" There was a chorus of assent. "Good - uh-oh. Get ready, everyone, here they come!"

Cho soon lost all track of what she was doing again. The Death Eaters now had numbers enough to force their way through, but once they were actually inside the castle the battle degenerated into a series of desperate individual duels in the confined spaces. Cho found herself retreating towards the Entrance Hall, but by the time she got there things were even more chaotic - curses flying everywhere, suits of armour lashing out at the invaders with ancient swords, portraits yelling at her to watch her back, and peculiar things happening where spells collided. Acromantulas poured through the doorway and carried off Hagrid - Harry appeared from nowhere and disappeared just as suddenly - a giant smashed through the upper windows and started trying to grab people - there were fallen wherever she looked. And then out of nowhere, Voldemort's magnified voice stilled both sides as he called his forces away and delivered an ultimatum that they couldn't accept, nor allow Harry to accept.

The remaining defenders looked at each other and found they had time to think again, to realise they were still alive for the moment, and to register how many people were not.

Cho spent at least thirty minutes sitting slumped against a wall in exhaustion, her mind a near-blank, before she could do anything more than watch people rushing around - at which point it sunk in that battle would recommence at the end of the hour, unless they were prepared to sacrifice Harry. And since that was not an option, then, well ... the people she knew, most of her friends, and Cho herself, were more likely than not all about to get themselves killed.

If they were lucky.

But it wasn't a useless fight.

It was the end for them all, but Cho found to her wonderment that maybe she was a little braver than she'd thought. Better to be killed here and now than watch in dread while Voldemort steadily crushed opposition on an ever-wider scale, wondering all the time why she hadn't fought before when she had the chance. She tried to reason it out, looking for some small crumb of hope, some positive result that their sacrifice might bring even if Harry couldn't work another miracle. They had certainly weakened the Death Eaters. Other people might take heart and fight now. And maybe, just maybe, the savagery of this open battle might scare other wizarding governments into taking direct action ...

A shadow fell across her. It was Anthony Goldstein, bruised but otherwise unhurt. The expression on his face turned her blood to ice.

Oh no. No, please no, not again ...

"M - Michael?"

"No, no!" He held up his hands. "He's all ri - well, he's not all right, but he'll survive. He was pretty badly sliced up by the glass when that giant smashed the windows in. Pomfrey's got him in the hospital wing - she's fixed the wounds and given him Blood-Replenishing Potions, but he's pretty weak still."

Oh Michael. She leapt up. "I should -"

Anthony caught her arm. "Don't, Cho. Pomfrey wouldn't let you in anyway, she's too busy, and - well, we've only got about ten minutes left. We should get into position."

"Right. Yes. Where should we go?"

"Entrance Hall, I reckon. They'll probably attack there, and at least it'll be quick ... I think this time it's curse to kill."

"You too?"

"If I can. Never tried a Killing Curse before. No time like the present, eh?" He made an attempt at a smile. "Unless Harry can do something, anyway."

日出 -- sunrise

Harry did do something.

It just wasn't what any of them had wanted.

The first intimation of utter disaster was Voldemort's voice echoing through the school once again. The defenders listened in shock as they waited in the Entrance Hall, wands trained on the gaping hole where the doors had been, trying to work up the right frame of mind to cast terrible curses at whatever came through. It was a bombastic voice, telling them lies; lies that Harry was dead, that the battle was lost, that their families would be killed if they didn't surrender immediately. Most people shuddered at that, but Cho felt curiously detached. I don't care what you do to me, she thought manically. You can't get them, you can't, they're thousands of miles away, they're safe ...

Then the enemy came marching out of the Forbidden Forest, and she saw that the voice hadn't been lying.

A triumphant Voldemort, jeering Death Eaters, and Harry - oh no, no, no no no, no, no - being carried by a weeping Hagrid. They should have known he'd do that. So brave, and so foolish. And so like him ... She held hands with Anthony and listened with glazed horror and slow-burning fury to Voldemort's exultant speech. Build a new world together? Up yours!

She could escape. She could go back ho - to China.

Her friends couldn't.

"DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY!" she yelled, all of them echoing Neville's cry of defiance.

And then - Cho never saw how it started - everything abruptly turned to chaos again. There was shouting from the far side of the castle, on the road to Hogsmeade, and all of a sudden the Death Eaters were scattering, and there were dozens - no, hundreds - of people attacking them. Cho couldn't understand what was happening, but she didn't care much. The defenders of Hogwarts looked at each other in exultation.

"Yes!" cried a girl who didn't look old enough to be there, dancing up and down in front of her.

"We've got help!" yelled Oliver Wood, too close to her ear for comfort.

"Who are they?" asked a boy she didn't know.

"Who cares?" That was Seamus Finnigan, who sounded jubilant.

George Weasley spoke for them all, his voice ugly. "Let's go and get the bastards!"

There was a huge cheer in response to that, and the remaining defenders rushed forward as one to rejoin the fray. This new battle was no less dangerous but somehow much more exhilarating, now that her side had the upper hand. Cho fired off spell after spell at any Death Eater she could see. Many of the new arrivals were in pyjamas or nightgowns, or had obviously thrown on the first clothes they could find, just like herself all those hours ago. They didn't all have great duelling skills, but they had the advantage of surprise and they seriously outnumbered their opponents, which more than made up for it.

Ordinary wizards and witches who had happened to be there at the time. A last-ditch stand that had worked, against all expectations. Cho screamed in delight. When she looked about her she recognised many of these people - that was Mr Boot, she'd met him once when she visited Terry - Madam Rosmerta, throwing jinxes in every direction with a kind of fierce relish - her father, barely holding his own against a desperate-looking Death Eater - the man behind the counter in Scrivenshaft's who always flir -

DAD?

It couldn't be, he was thousands of miles away - well, obviously not, he was here, frantically fighting. Unlike his daughter he hadn't been trained at school from an early age and it must have been years ago anyway -

"Stupefy!" Cho returned to her senses and threw the spell as she ran. She didn't care about the rest of the battle, all she wanted to do right now was rescue her father. Maybe it helped that she didn't consciously think about her aim; the spell hit the Death Eater full in the stomach and hurled him backwards into the thick of the fighting, where a passing centaur gave him a kick for good measure. When her father turned to see who his benefactor was, the look of mingled joy, pride and relief on his face nearly broke her.

She wanted to stop right there, to hug him, but the flow of the battle didn't give her the chance. Everyone who could stand was being swept back towards the school now by the throng; her father grabbed her hand and they ran through the crowd, following the fight into the Great Hall, pausing only to curse any of Voldemort's people they saw. All of a sudden the situation seemed to coalesce into two fights in the middle of the room, and then - Cho's heart leapt, she couldn't believe it - Harry appeared out of nowhere, miraculously still alive and heroic and fighting. Everyone became very quiet as they realised that the contest between him and Voldemort was about to be finally resolved right here and now, and that the day could yet still be lost if their talisman fell.

And then a wand flew high into the air, bathed by the first rays of the morning sun, and they'd won.

Cho didn't have time to react before she was enfolded in her father's arms. He was hugging her as if he was terrified that she might vanish like a half-remembered dream if he let her go. "Kitten, kitten, you're all right," he murmured over and over. As all the emotions she'd been trying to hold in check throughout the battle flooded over her, she leant into the hug, simply letting him hold her like a little girl again while the fact that yes they'd won, they'd WON! sank in. Tears were pouring down her face, but she didn't care whether anyone saw her cry any more.

"How - how -" She couldn't form a coherent question.

"Ming told us." Dad looked stressed to exhaustion, but triumphant. "He didn't believe your story, he came and woke us immediately."

"But you came here? But - I thought you - you didn't approve?"

"I was wrong," replied her father with a wry smile. "And you didn't pay any attention to what we told you, did you? But it doesn't matter now. Your mother and I talked it over, and we agreed; if our eldest child was risking her life fighting for a cause it would be very wrong not to try to help her."

"Oh, Dad." She rocked in his arms for a minute or two. "How did you get here?"

"Much the same way you did, I expect. A Portkey to London, then I Apparated to Hogsmeade and found your Potions teacher organising a war party. So naturally I joined them."

"Cho ..." The sound of her name spoken in that voice was yet more delight. She turned round and sure enough, Michael was standing there, looking pale and weak but every bit as happy as she felt. She threw herself at him and they kissed fervently for a minute or two, until interrupted by a gentle cough from her father. They pulled apart, embarrassed, but his smile was indulgent.

"Er - Dad, this is Michael."

"I guessed that."

Michael gulped. "Hi, Mr Chang. Er, sorry I wasn't here before."

"Michael was wounded in the fighting, he's only just got out the hospital wing ..."

"Never mind." Her father's next words made Cho feel prouder than she ever had about anything in her entire life. "You fought for us all, both of you. Thank you."

回归 -- homecoming

"What will you do now?" asked her father later, as they walked along the shores of the lake. It was perhaps the least damaged part of Hogwarts, and thus evoked the fewest unpleasant reminders of the past few hours.

"I ... er ..." Cho scuffed at a stone with her shoe, not meeting his eye. She'd been trying to avoid that question as long as she could, mostly because she wasn't sure what the answer would be. It hadn't come up while they were still in the thick of things - congratulating Harry (so distracted by the crowd surrounding him, he barely seemed to realise who she was when she hugged him in thanks), finding out who had been killed in the fighting (every name she recognised on the casualty list had been like a knife-blow), and hearing reports from the Ministry (the man who'd stood up and organised their battle plans was now acting Minister, as Thicknesse was lying in the Hogwarts hospital wing being gradually de-spined). By now, they were more or less alone. Most people in the castle had drifted off to get some sleep, but then they'd been awake sixteen hours longer than Cho and her father.

"You don't have to decide straight away." Her father didn't try to meet Cho's eye either, but instead looked out over the lake with apparent interest, as if hoping the giant squid might surface and wave a tentacle at them in greeting. "I just wanted you to know that - that if you prefer it here, I'm sure your mother and I would find that perfectly acceptable."

"You would?" Cho stared.

"Yes." He spoke sadly. "Of course we'd love to have you at home with us, but - you're all grown up now, kitt - Cho. I think you've shown me that, and I'm sure you'd like to be with your - friends."

"For a while, anyway," admitted Cho. "I don't know what I'll want to do in a year, but - yeah. I'd like to be here, Dad. You and Mum will stay in Guangzhou now?" she added, sure she knew what the answer would be.

"We will. We didn't realise quite how much we'd missed home."

Cho hugged him. After everything that had happened, she could easily handle that. "OK. I'll have to come back for a bit, anyway, while I get my stuff and find somewhere to stay here, then ..."

"I know." He smiled at her. "You will write to us, of course?"

She grinned at him. "You know I will."

***** 完 *****

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Additional Notes:

Su Li is a Ravenclaw in JKR's notebook list of 40 students in Harry's year, although she never appeared in the books. She may in fact have been the prototype for Cho herself, but here I've followed fandom tradition by taking the notebook literally. The mention of Cho's Scottish accent is a nod to Katie Leung, of course, though there's nothing in the books to say she doesn't have one.

As I understand it (which is superficially) 'Cho' is actually not really a name in any form of Chinese, and in Mandarin the sound has some unfortunate meanings that would make it unsuitable for a name. 'Zhang Qiu' is the romanisation of the characters used for her name in the Chinese translation of the books.

My reading of DH is that Neville sent the 'come and fight' message on the coin before he went down the passage to meet the Trio (when he gets there, he tells Aberforth 'a few more people might be coming'), so there's just enough wiggle room in the timeline for the 45 minutes or so Cho takes to get there in this story!

I've lamented before that nobody writes Cho/Michael, despite it being a solidly canonical pairing with some potentially interesting dynamics. So I took the opportunity to write a little of it myself instead.