Staring at the Sun

Staring at the Sun

The sun dipped behind the gray silhouette of the Eiffel Tower as it did every day, shimmering in the sultry evening heat, transforming the City of Light into a metropolis of angled shadows and pattering footsteps. Slowly, it burrowed it way below the buildings until it breathed its last golden sigh and disappeared from sight.

Cho exhaled a stream of smoke from her nostrils and flicked the cigarette butt into the street.

It was dark. The streetlights flickered on.

She gestured for another cup of coffee and a waiter brought it to her promptly. "Merci," she muttered, bringing the scalding liquid to her lips.

There was no use sitting there - she had sat at that café long past the bounds of generosity - but she simply couldn't work in that ghastly apartment. Frustrated, she extracted another cigarette from her handbag. It was a terrible habit, smoking, but fuck it, she was going to die anyway. What did it matter if she died a few years earlier?

It wasn't cynicism. It was, quite plainly, the truth.

The Muggle tourists and Parisian residents streamed around her, a garbled language spouting from their collective mouths. She continued smoking and drinking her coffee as she leaned back against the iron-wrought chair. She stared at their widened eyes as they gaped at the Eiffel Tower cloaked in darkness. She stared at their happy, happy faces.

Gathering her things, she left a half-finished coffee on the table along with whatever she could afford to tip and walked away.

As she made her way home, the underside of Paris showed itself to Cho: seedy hotels, dirty alleys, and illegal prostitutes displaying their wares with a lascivious glance and set of pursed lips. She fumbled in her bag for her key and jammed it into the rust-colored lock, the grille door swinging open. She strode up to the third floor and opened another key. In the sink sat a piled of cracked dishes, unwashed for days. Scribbled-on papers littered the small square table in the center of the room. She sat down upon a cot in the corner that creaked as she shifted her weight onto it.

People asked if it was as good as it was going to get. Cho asked if this was the worse it was going to get. A taunting, wheedling no, no, no never failed to answer her.

She drew the ragged pink curtains shut.

Beginning with her shirt, she stripped herself bare of all clothing until she stood nude, the night heat encroached upon her. Resolutely ignoring the mirror on the wall, she laid down on the cot, releasing her hair from its ponytail holder. Almost unconsciously, she ran her fingers through it, fighting through the knots, and spread her locks upon the pillow.

And Cho, with her glassy eyes, stared up at the cobwebs crisscrossing the ceiling and wondered again how it had come to this: a dilapidated room better destroyed and a wasted life better ended.

-

Against the plastered walls she rested, turning away from the morning light streaming in between her rippling curtains. A thick notebook was balanced precariously on her knees. A pen tip rested on an open page.

She ran into the garden, her hat flying away - no, no - tumbled - present participle, not past tense - tumbling away -

The sounds of furious scratching and an emphatic "Damn it all!" filled the room.

-

Cho took a seat at her favorite sidewalk haunt and ordered the first of her many daily coffees. Black and unsweetened, deadeningly acrid was how she liked it, singeing her tongue and throat.

Sighing, she let her eyes follow the lines drawn by the wide boulevards of Paris. She had learned somewhere that they had been built over a century ago. Cho didn't know why she remembered this scrap piece of knowledge. Selective memory, she guessed. If she did not want to remember certain things, then others would have to take their place. Or maybe that wasn't selective memory. Man's natural brainwashing mechanism, she decided. Yes, that sounded about right.

"Cho Chang."

Her mind instantly recognized the sound of a finely cut British accent. A man was leaning against the wall of a nearby building, his arms folded against his chest. Of indecipherable face and straight mouth, he stared at her through a pair of tinted sunglasses.

"Who are you?" she replied in English, her tongue stumbling around the words.

Lifting up his sunglasses and resting them above his forehead, he sat down at her table. Cho surveyed his appearance with the barest flicker of a glance: swarthy, like a pirate, with the typical dark eyes and hair. But such a polished pirate, she added silently. "I didn't expect you to recognize me."

"Mm."

"I was a year below you at school."

The glass surface of the table vibrated perilously as she brought her palm flying down upon it. "I haven't a clue what you're talking about," she hissed.

"What, is Hogwarts really such a blemish on your memories?" He chuckled to himself, seemingly amused. "I couldn't have missed you here, just as I couldn't have missed you all of those years ago."

All those years ago...had it been that long? She hadn't kept track of the time. "And who are you?" Cho snapped.

"Blaise Zabini, Slytherin. I was friends with Draco Malfoy and his type."

"Draco Malfoy, hmm? Interesting. Now, tell me, why have you undertaken the task of accosting me in Paris when there is plenty more to wreck and ruin across the Channel?" She pushed herself to her feet and stomped away, leaving an impassive Blaise gazing at her empty chair. "Bastard," she spat under her breath.

-

He was waiting for her the next day, the lightest of smiles on his face as he pushed the cup towards her. "I took the liberty of ordering your drink, seeing - " He smirked at the sight of her worn expression " - as you need all the help you can get."

Frowning, she wrenched the hot beverage away from him. "I might not be able to afford your custom-made Italian suits, Blaise, but I think coffee is within my budget, thank you very much."

"I can't understand why you like it, anyway. Horridly bitter, isn't it?"

It was her turn to wear a smirk. "Well, anyone can see that, but hasn't it occurred to you that I might like it because it is 'horridly bitter'?"

"You have changed," was all he said.

"Things have changed." Cho shrugged. "People change as well."

"Maybe they do, but almost all cases, only slightly."

"Are you saying that I am the exception?"

"Indeed I am. Admittedly, it has been a while since I've seen you - the Hogwarts Express at the end of your seventh year, my sixth, actually - but it's difficult to connect you to the popular, beautiful Ravenclaw I used to see in the corridors."

She leaned towards him, knowing before she spoke the answer was an emphatic no. "And I am no longer popular or beautiful?"

"Popular witches do not spend their days lurking in small Parisian coffee shops, smoking in solitude. Am I allowed to inquire about this fall from glory?" She met his query with a blatant silence. "All right, might we begin with more specific, easier questions?"

"Two conditions, Blaise. I have my questions too, like, for example, why a well-off British wizard such as yourself feels compelled to find me here in France" He nodded. "And, secondly, would you happen to have a fag or two on you?" He reached into his pocket and laid on the table a fistful of cigarettes. After storing them in her purse, she scribbled a few words on spare corner of paper and handed it to him. "I'll see you tomorrow. I'm free at any time."

-

The water reluctantly flowed into the sink after much wrestling with the faucet on Cho's part. Below it, she scrubbed at the accumulated dirt on her dishes, scowling. Lacking any sort of racks or cabinets, she was reduced to stacking their dripping forms on top of one another. She pushed them into the corner wiped her hands with her shirt. Surveying the room, she wondered how best Blaise and his fancy clothes could ridicule it.

He walked in as she was in the process of shoving a few random articles into her trunk. "Cozy little place you've got here. Very bohemian."

She fixed a wry smile onto her face. "You fancy me a bohemian, do you?"

To her surprise, Blaise merely smiled back. "I do."

"Please," she said, gesturing to one of the two chairs by the table. "I must thank you for those fags. They're about the only things that keep me sane. That and the coffee."

He accepted her offer and sat down, his eyes fixed on the articles scattered about the table. Checks from the national unemployment relief office, ink-less pens, the faded photograph of one named Cedric Diggory - these were the relics of a wayward life. A thin line creased his forehead. "Relying on the Muggles' government for help?"

"Would that be your first question?" She perked up from her tangled bed sheets. "Yes. It's nothing to be proud of, I'll admit, but I need to find a way to survive, don't I?"

Blaise propped his feet up on the table, leaning backwards. "So what is it you do for a living? Where are those much-praised Ravenclaw wits of yours?"

"I write," she began, frowning.

"You write?" All four legs of his chair hit the floor.

"What, the dull-witted Slytherin can't figure it out? I scribble out short stories or poems or whatever will sell. Haven't had much luck lately...but I am trying - really. Not as if I've written anything of worth," she added as an aside.

His face contorted in disgust. "A writer?"

"You're so thick. Do you really think I want to be here?" Cho stomped towards her trunk and pulled something from its contents, throwing it on the table before him. "That's my wand. What's left of it."

Blaise ran his fingers across the fine-grained wood. Erect splinters stood where it had been snapped, a twisted stand and salute to the wand's core: a single wilting unicorn hair. "Did you break this?"

"I did," she stated.

"You left willingly."

She stepped closer to him. "It's not as simple as that."

"Well, then, let's hear the great Cho Chang give her excuses."

The barbed sarcasm of his reply never registered in her mind as Cho realized she had never really thought about the circumstances surrounding her flight. It was a topic best pushed away from the forefront of her mind, and as repulsive as it was to think about where she might next find income, it was better than having to dwell on...on...no, she wouldn't think about it. Tell him you don't want to say anything about it, she urged herself. Or that you can't talk about it yet because you still feel uncomfortable about it.

After all, what obliged her to disclose her greatest shame to a man she had met but a few days earlier?

Yet it was because she knew so little about him, and he so little about her, that made her tongue less hesitant than it might have been otherwise. No enmity, no camaraderie. Two individuals in a disconnected universe chancing to share their stories. Comfort in anonymity. Nothing more.

"There was the war, as we all know, made official after Professor Dumbledore was killed," she began, sitting down across from him. Her voice was low, barely audible. He leaned in. "Everyone took a side. We had to. Neutral, not Light or Dark, was the worst position you could be in. You were courted endlessly by both factions, each one wanting to be greater than the other, and if you insisted on remaining uninvolved - " A cruel smile twisted her mouth " - well, if the Death Eaters didn't get you for it, the Order would.?

Blaise's disposition remained unreadable. What she had told him was general knowledge, but she needed to say it to herself, to remember how it had all began.

"I'm guessing that we were enemies during the war. It was the proper thing to do, siding with the Order. Besides, I felt I had a personal score to settle with You-Know-Who." Her eyes flickered towards the crinkled photograph lying on the table; however, they quickly returned to Blaise. "It was righteous and noble to struggle against a Dark lord, or it was righteous and noble to fight for wizarding purity. That's what the idealists said: Potter, Lestrange, what have you. But, God, there were so many more that simply wanted to keep on living, living their normal lives, and they were all forced into this war and this bloodbath and - "

"You were one of them."

Cho's gaze fell to the window.

"The war dragged on for much longer than anyone had expected. The stakes grew higher as the fighting began to spread into continental Europe. Both sides grew desperate, and that's when I realized how pointless this all seemed. How many deaths, Blaise? How many lives ruined? A Muggle dictator of some sort once said something about one death being a tragedy but a million being a statistic." She dropped her shoulders. "Merlin, we had been fighting for so long and nothing, absolutely nothing had been accomplished except that little statistic kids will learn about in books. I was young, and youth is supposed to be the carefree and fun. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Death Eaters or attending funerals."

Burying her face in her hands, Cho slumped onto the table, speaking to its cracked surface. "So, one day, I decided that I didn't want anymore of this. I packed only what I needed and set fire to my house. Snapped my wand to make it final, made my way to Muggle London, and found my way here to Muggle Paris. I thought it would be safer here: French wizards traditionally avoid meddling in British affairs, and visa versa, after all of the past warfare between then. Besides, there aren't many Purebood families, if any, left here. As least that's what I remember from History of Magic: they were either slaughtered in the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or they left."

"The Malfoys," Blaise said. "Draco told me his family was French in origin."

"Probably true. Not a safe place for ideologically inclined wizards, France. If You-Know-Who is going to try to conquer France, it'll be last on his list.

"I've been living here ever since. I haven't been able to find work because I don't have any skills that would be of any use to Muggles. Can barely make myself dinner, honestly. I turned to writing - it was the only thing I could do. It was selfish and stupid, I know. Many of my closest friends had been willing to donate their lives to the cause, and there I was, running away like the bloody little coward I am."

The sun had drifted away from the window, dimming the room. Optimism - what remained of it - reassured her that telling him could only help. But the words had felt empty in her ears. How does one express the sensation of water pouring in from all sides, rising to the ankles and the knees and the hips and higher still, until one is all gone beneath its churning roars? How does one relate a deadening weight that grows heavier by the day, a weight that, in the end, replaced one's humanity?

Blaise stood up, his chair screeching unkindly against the floor. He placed a hand on her shoulder and was still. "I am sorry," were his words before retracting his hand and striding out the door, closing it as he left.

She watched the doorknob turn, heard the snap as the door fell into place. She touched where his fingers had grazed her skin. Brief. Momentary. Temporary.

I am sorry.

From his likeness, Cedric gave her a reproachful look. "Oh, not you too," she whispered, tearing her gaze away from it. "I don't need your pity - or Blaise's."

It was true. She did not need pity because only pity could make her feel what she swore she would never feel again. That was the most dangerous thing of all, she realized as she cradled herself to sleep, tears splashing down her face.

-

Cho walked, her world steadily shrinking until it was only her and her frantic footsteps. Writers have no deadlines except those self-imposed, and today, she waived the obligation of needing to write something...anything (it'll end in failure, anyway). She had no destination in mind, and it was comforting, fighting a losing struggle against unyielding pavement. So Cho walked.

Minutes might have melted into hours - they probably did - but, in any case, she wouldn't have known.

The city petered away; the storied French countryside shyly began to emerge from the shadow of Paris, beckoning with its the earthy scents of openness and fertility. It was quieter here.

A rusted playground stood upon the grass. Her brain counted her steps syncopated against the squeaking of the swings one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, one, two, three, four -

A blackened bench sat beside the path. Cho stopped at seven and slumped onto it, her legs and feet suddenly exhausted. She watched the Muggle children clamber around the metal structure, fly down its slides, and chase each other in wild circles, shouting I'm going to get you! in high-pitched French. Off to the side, their nannies kept an observant eye on them, but the children seemed unaware of their presence, laughing and laughing as they ran.

Unbidden, Cho smiled. How painful it was, this display of innocence. She supposed that was the reason why young children were almost universally adored and cherished. They did not possess any worth - oh, no, no one had any goddamned worth on this goddamned planet - but because they were living, tangible reminders of a Rome before her fall, of wizarding Britain before her deflowering.

Her arms were shaking when she decided it was time to return to Paris. The Muggles had long since departed; the swings quivered in the wind. But in her mind, the children were still singing and dancing as if they had never left, and she wondered if they had always been there, merely looking to be rediscovered.

-

When she returned to her cafés after an extended absence, she refused to admit that her sole purpose of being there was the hope that Blaise would be also there, a smiling playing with his mouth as he pushed her coffee towards her. No, she had returned to the café because there had been nowhere else to go, because empty sheets of paper and progress-less poems looked better in the sunlight than in the shadows of her apartment.

Whether or not Cho knowingly elected to acknowledge it became irrelevant, however, as it became understood. Oh, he infuriated her, discomforted her, and still did not know what to make of his reaction to her story, but fury and discomfort reminded her that her veins ran with warm blood, her heart pulsed, her conscience still felt. He reminded her she was alive.

She frequented the place daily, smoking and restlessly twitching in her chair. Sometimes, others would ask if they might share her table, and Cho would sometimes wordlessly gesture to the seat near her. Usually, however, she kept that chair empty and she waited, waiting more often than not for someone to tell her that the café was closing.

-

The buildings beside her glittered with morning. The traffic on the Champs-Élyseés bruised along, blowing a stream of wind and exhaust in its wake. Smoke trailed innocuously from the cigarette caught in her hand, spiraling up to the tourists that stood atop the Arc de Triomphe. The wretched, cursed notebook lay before Cho.

Civilisation.

There it was, one word, written simply enough in her small print. In the midst of the glory and grandeur of France, the collective ideals and virtues of civilization wanted her to write, and, oh, she would, but where were the means to execute that inspiration? Was that not the most essential part of writing?

But she wanted to funnel that inspiration into words on paper, and she wanted to watch a blank sheet blossom with words of beauty and wonder. Was that all that was needed? A few meters away, a man played leaping thirds and octaves on a fiddle in a frighteningly fast succession, nodding his head slightly whenever a passer-by dropped a franc or two into the instrument's case. A couple held hands as they stared up at the towering reminder of national greatness, whispering between themselves.

Beneath the Arc de Triomphe, there is lit a fire that never extinguishes, burning by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It is a symbol of the nation and the common brotherhood of humankind, impervious to the elements. It was an everlasting flame that filled her mind.

"Cho?"

She did not need to look around to recognize the voice. "Blaise."

He sat down beside her. For a long time, they did not look at each other, instead allowing the impressionist blur of morning fill their silence. Then he turned towards her and said, "How are you?"

"I'm...well, I've done a lot of thinking," she finished. "And I was trying to write."

"Was it the good sort of thinking?"

The children and the playground flashed through her thoughts. "I suppose you could say that."

She broke off with an awkward silence and they busied themselves with other matters, Cho pondering the words that just needed to find their form, Blaise brushing off the dust on his shoes. Talk to him, won't you? she hissed inwardly. Haven't you wasted the past week of your life absolutely hoping for this moment?

Caressingly, he laid a hand on her arm. "Would you mind coming with me?"

Blaise set off down a less busy avenue and she scrambled along behind him, dropping her cigarette and ramming her notebook back into her bag. It wasn't until he turned into an even smaller alleyway did she ask him where they were going.

"Shh, I'll tell you in a moment." He grabbed her hand, pulling her flat against a wall. "Do you remember how to Apparate, or did you tear your Apparating license into shreds as well?"

"Of course I ripped it up," she sniffed, "but I remember how to do it."

"Follow me, please."

With a crack, he disappeared and Cho wasn't sure if she could Apparate, not having done it for years. "Right," she whispered to herself, "just calm down and think. This is easy. Focus. Visualize."

The question where is Blaise? preoccupying her mind, she let herself lean forward -

Her nostrils filled with the soft scent of fresh. "You can open your eyes now," a distant voice told her, sounding half amused. "Welcome, welcome to my humble abode."

He was leaning, nonchalant, against a granite countertop, his hands tucked in the pockets of his cream-colored suit. The pale warmth of his attire, she noted, matched the soft contours of his flat. "Did I ever mention," he said, moving closer, "that I, too, am an expatriate?"

"I - I wouldn't have known, Blaise."

"Here, let me pour you some wine. It'll taste better than that vile coffee you drink every morning, I promise."

"I don't want any wine," Cho gasped. "Not particularly fond of it. Could I sit - sit down somewhere?"

His demeanor darkened. Blaise ushered her further into the flat, where a silk canopied bed awaited her in the corner. The mattress did not creak or groan as she gently lowered her weight onto it. This, she recalled, was what comfort felt like: a soft pillow for one's head, a gleaming wooden floor, a corner labeled mine separate from the mob. "So, you're an expatriate?"

"I saw the state of the so-called bed you sleep on - " He fluffed up the pillows - "and you are welcome to take a nap, if that's what you want."

But Cho would not be moved, though her voice was constrained. "Are you an expatriate or not?"

"Bloody Merlin, I've already told you that I am one!" Shooting her a malice-filled glance, he paced about the length of the room. "What did you think I was, an operative employed by Death Eaters to take you back to Britain?"

Yes, she thought doggedly, but now that Blaise had voiced her fear, it sounded ridiculously far-fetched. Beneath her icy veneer of solitude and self-exile, something stirred. "You never told me."

"You, by default, must have assumed I was in some way connected with the Dark Lord, didn't you?" he challenged, sitting down next to her. "For all of your supposed brilliance, it doesn't seem to count for much when it matters most, wouldn't you agree?"

"No, I won't agree, bastard!" She aimed a punch in his direction, but he effortlessly caught her arms and held her fists at bay. Struggling, she spat, "And I was supposed to have picked the other option, then, and believe that you were another victim of war? A real likely story that was."

"Yes, yes, you were, Cho," he whispered, pulling her nearer, "for why else have I spent the last few months of my life wandering Paris, looking for people like you, people others believed had disappeared?"

"Then what was your story, hmm? Why have you never explained to my why you're here in France? As a fellow expatriate, I would hope you'd understand why I automatically think the worst."

Blaise leaned forward. She could count the specks of hazel in his eyes. "I never told you my story, my dear, because you had already told it for me - and quite skillfully, I might add. Your writing career has potential."

"I told..."

There were many more who simply wanted to continue with their lives.

Cho inhaled, a small flutter of a breath entering her, and she knew. Blaise's unadorned apology had not been token pity, the same meaningless compassion one must dispense at the occasion of any tragedy. No, Blaise understood, understood the panic that races through your skin when the walls close in, throbbing ever more rapidly, understood the broken promise that is retreat, understood the realization that, when the structure falls to your feet, you are the one person that can look across the desert and say you are alive, yet you are not.

Then she saw her fault. There had never been any pity, only two lonely beings in a world gone astray, one man and one woman, ultimately finding solace in the other's loneliness. "I am sorry if I misguided you in any way," he said. "It was never my intention."

"Why didn't you tell me everything at the very beginning?"

"I really don't have to answer that one, do I?"

He dropped his hands and allowed them to fall to the curve of her waist. Shuddering, Cho moved closer, inhaling his scent, heavy, musky, alluring. As his lips fell upon hers, she saw in her mind all the intricate lines that had connected her to the rest of the world, the lines that had hung severed and useless. But there was a new line forming, spinning and weaving into existence, and she grasped it tightly, pulling one and one together to make one, hoping and praying that, this time, she wouldn't be stupid enough to let go.

-

When he awoke, his naked form half covered in a sheet, she was already dressed, sitting in the alcove by the open arched window. The scent of dinner from a nearby restaurant drifted into the room. Outside, a flock of birds shot towards the moon as the dusk bid farewell in a final show of pinks and grays.

"I wrote something while you were still asleep, and it's about the only damned thing I've written in a while," she explained, handing him a ripped sheet of paper. "I'm actually rather pleased with what I came up with, but I was hoping you might read over it for me, maybe some constructive criticism...you know, the like."

"I'm not well-read in poetry," Blaise laughed, but he accepted her offer nonetheless, tilting his head at the sight of the small black lines running across the paper.

Her handwriting was perfectly small.

children

turned to wilderness

lost oh lost

civilisation

gone oh gone

marble fallen to

dust and

shadows

darkness

shrouds

from ruins we peer

staring at the sun