Looking for The Light

In The End

(It starts with)

October 31^st, Halloween, trick-or-treat day (as my little Muggle cousin calls it), however you want to call it this day is one of the most important days in the Wizarding world.

1981 and after that year, there was going to be another meaning to that special day, another name for the 31^st day of the tenth month and all because of a small boy who was orphaned with the most spectacular consequences. It was all a bit haphazard what happened, rather accidental but still everyone worships that boy because of that curse that went wrong, the curse the killed its caster not its intended recipient. And for that reason we now have Harry Potter Day - another reason to celebrate today, another excuse for a party.

I don't feel like a party, I know the boy behind the stories, the truth behind the rumours - the hurt he has suffered, the atrocities he has seen and the hidden guilt he carries inside.

He's just a normal boy and he hurts - just like me.

One thing

I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try

In June, I lost my boyfriend. It wasn't Harry's fault, but I know he blames himself. I try to block the pain I feel, to remember the good times with Ced, not the hurt that has engulfed me in the months that have followed his passing, the grief that made me feel I was drowning.

It's been more then four months now and most of the time I do a good job of it too. Everyone, even my closest friends and family are fooled by the façade that I keep up, the mask that hides the real me.

Keep that in mind

I designed this rhyme
To explain in due time
All I know

I used to spend all of my time cooped up here in the library after it happened. My friends were great - to start with - but then they thought, enough time had passed and I should get a new boyfriend, move on with my life. So, this diary and the library became my life. I couldn't even face and enchanted diary, a magical diary when I first started journaling as a way of dealing with the pain. Not after remembering what happened to Ginny Weasley in my third year when she used an enchanted one - what that monster did to her brings back memories of what he did to Cedric and the horrible times that followed. So a good old-fashioned muggle notebook it was.

Hour upon hour I spent sitting in this cosy window seat scribbling all my pain and hurt down into words that stare bleakly back at me from the paper, but which somehow lessen the hurt I feel inside.

Dumbledore had told us during the leaving feast last year that we had to remember; we had to remember Cedric and what he had died for. Well, that wasn't hard for me, he was my boyfriend, my first love and when I heard he was dead, I felt my heartbreak and a little part of me died too. But this journal, it was my way of making sure that I remembered every little detail and that other people remembered too. This was meant to be my record of the great injustice I had suffered, the crappy hand that fate dealt me, there for any one who wanted to read it in the future - a sure fire guide for how not to mess up your life, but instead it turned into a way to heal, a story of friendship and of inner strength.

Time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away
It's so unreal

I never realised how precious time was, every meal we shared, walking to class - those were moments to be savoured. How much do I regret wishing away the time, wishing we could be doing something more fun? Sure, the time we spent in the astronomy tower was enjoyable and an unmissable part of any relationship here at Hogwarts - but even when we couldn't be there because we were serving detention with Filch after being caught out of bounds - we were together, that's what is important, that's what matters!

Didn't look out below
Watch the time go right out the window
Trying to hold on

But didn't even know
Wasted it all just to
Watch you go

Now I make the most of every minute I spend with people - with the people I used to call friends and the people that have shown me the true meaning of friendship. I make sure to show how much they mean to me; how much I enjoy every minute we spend together.

I kept everything inside and even though I tried

It all fell apart
what it meant to me

Will eventually

Be a memory

Of a time when I tried
so hard

The things that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things we put so much effort into; the things that don't seem worthwhile are the things that do matter, that we should work for and put effort into but somehow it feels guilty and so we don't do it and miss out on so many chances. Well not me, not anymore. A lesson I have learnt the hard way and which I try to teach everyone I know.

And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter

I was the Seeker for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team for years, aiming to be the next captain. I loved the adoration I got for being part of the team, for being the seeker the one who won the games, the one who ended the games, who everyone relied on.

I lost it though. One stupid mistake, a silly moment when I let the grief take over and I was off the Quidditch team, like that.

They had me on suicide watch immediately after the third task. Days on end when I barely got left alone checked on every ten minutes, no privacy, no time to grieve without someone there, making me feel that they were judging me for crying.

Eventually Dumbledore called me into his office and said that they felt enough time had passed and I had regained my control and that they would end the suicide watch and allow me to return to my dormitory for the last few nights of the term but that if I should ever want to talk in the future, he or any member of the staff would be a willing ear.

So the other members of the Team decided that a great way to spend the last day of term would be to go down to the newly reclaimed Quidditch pitch and have a bit of a free-for-all, not a practice as such; more of a fun way to get back into flying.

Fun. Yeah, going back to the same place where five days before I had seen my boyfriend's body lying lifeless on the grass really was the most fun I've ever had. So much fun that I lost it and couldn't face the hurt anymore; the flashbacks were too intense and all I wanted was for the pain to end.

Going for my first ever Wronski Feint and not pulling out of the dive seemed like such a good idea at the time. It would all be over with; I wouldn't have to feel like this anymore - that was all I cared about. That little stunt didn't quite have the required outcome though. Madam Hooch had been watching from the sidelines hidden under the Headmaster's invisibility cloak, obviously they hadn't quite taken me off of suicide watch after all.

Another trip to Dumbledore's office followed. A "chat" with him, Madam Hooch and Professor Flitwick later and I was off the Quidditch team permanently.

I didn't enjoy the sport though. Sure, I liked to fly but not to play Quidditch. I just enjoyed the power being on the team gave me, I didn't enjoy the sport. I realised that as I watched Padma Patil playing seeker in our first game of the year. Saw her up their looking like she belonged there and realised that she deserved it much more then I ever did, simply because it is her dream...

One thing

I don't know why
It doesn't even matter how hard you try
Keep that in mind

I designed this rhyme
To remind myself how
I tried so hard
In spite of the way you were mocking me
Acting like I was part of your property
Remembering all the times you fought with me
I'm surprised it got so (far)

The other Ravenclaw's used to think they owned me; I was their Seeker! Except, I wasn't anymore; I was someone who had been removed from the team for an unknown reason, someone to be avoided.

I can't believe it took so long for someone other then the teachers to realise that I was hurting, for me to admit that I needed help and that more then that I needed a friend.

Only one month ago I was still sitting there alone in the Library with only my diary for company. Sitting there wishing that I could be with Cedric again, even if I had to die for that to happen, I would willingly have died if only to no longer be alone...

Things aren't the way they were before
You wouldn't even recognize me anymore
Not that you knew me back then
But it all comes back to me
In the end

I'm not the girl that I was before. I'm me. I'm the real Cho Chang, not the girl who was pretending, the girl who just wanted to be popular and go out with the most popular boy in school, the girl everyone wanted to be with - the Quidditch captain and Triwizard champion Cedric Diggory.

That's not to say that I wasn't the real Cho then too, just that she was weaker, hidden a little bit so that I could give in to the peer pressure and conform to society's idea of what I should be, not what I was.

You kept everything inside and even though I tried

it all fell apart
What it meant to me

will eventually

be a memory

of a time when I
I tried so hard

I really did try to get over Cedric, but it wasn't good enough for my so-called friends, didn't happen quick enough. I suppose in a way its my own fault, I did push them away while I was with Cedric so we could spend more time together. I didn't abandon them completely though. Was it really so wrong of me to think they would be there for me, that we were still friends? I know most normal fifteen year olds don't have to help their friend deal with the death of her boyfriend, but did they have to abandon me?

And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all
But in the end
It doesn't even matter

What I lost isn't what's important. I've found what matters. I've found myself.

I've put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
And for all this
There's only one thing you should know
I've put my trust in you
Pushed as far as I can go
And for all this

I really put my whole trust in Cedric, made him my whole life and knew that he would never leave me. Except, he did leave me, didn't he? He didn't do it deliberately and would never have done so deliberately, deep down I know that but still somehow it is hard to accept that and not to be mad at him for abandoning me; leaving me alone to deal with the pain, to somehow try to face life without him by my side.

To begin with all I wanted was to die, to end the hurt and the suffering and to be with my champion once more.

There's only one thing you should know
I tried so hard
And got so far
But in the end
It doesn't even matter
I had to fall
To lose it all

I've lost Cedric, my first true love, the boy I thought I would spend the rest of my life with and whilst that is important, its not important. What matters here are all of the lessons I've learnt over the last four months. I've learnt about strength. About the strength that I possess inside, who the real Cho is and how much strength she possesses. But what I've also learnt is about friendship and the strength it can provide.

Harry Potter, Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley - before all of this happened I didn't know them. Well, sure I did know them but I didn't know them, know them. Ginny and Ron with that unmistakable Weasley Red Hair, who could miss them? Hermione, the know it all, top of her class muggle born witch who could miss her? Then there was Harry - he was the Boy-Who-Lived, the other Hogwarts champion who stole the glory away from Cedric, the irritating little boy with the embarrassing crush on me. That's all they were, they weren't people to me...

But in the end
It doesn't even matter

Now? Now they're my friends and I don't know what I'd do without them.