DOORWAYS || MARAUDERS ERA

ϟ27: COLOSSAL MESS (PART II)ϟ

"Rhea?"

Rhea, who was sitting on the cool floor of the Ravenclaw Common room under Rowena Rawnclaw's statue, looked at Cho Chang standing a few meters away from her.

"Cho," the fifth year said, tilting her head. "How are you?"

"I'm good," Cho smoothed her robes with her hands. "Can I join you?"

"By all means." Rhea gestured around her. "Welcome to the sulking club."

Cho's lips twitched. "How many members have joined?"

"Now," Rhea said, smiling slightly. "Two."

"I'm sorry to hear about Sirius." Cho whispered to Rhea, her eyes shining with sincerity.

Rhea shifted uncomfortably. She hadn't been awfully close to Sirius—it had always been Harry. But because of their connection, Rhea felt Harry's grief. It was almost impossible for her to walk around without bursting into tears.

"It's fine." Rhea sighed. "Harry's not, though."

Cho sighed too. It had been a week since Sirius Black had died. The Wizarding World was a huge mess—people began questioning the legitimacy of the Ministry and were eager to remove Fudge from his post. 

"I don't know how he manages." Cho said quietly. "First... C—Cedric, then you-know—no, Voldemort— and now Sirius."

"I know." Rhea said just as quietly. Despite their connection, Rhea didn't know how to console Harry, her best friend. "But he's Harry. He'll... he'll be okay."

Times were getting darker. And so were the conversations.

"I really am sorry, you know." Cho said abruptly. Rhea looked at her in confusion.

"You know," Cho sighed. "I'm sorry for... for leading Harry on."

Rhea blinked. Now, she might be a legilimens and all, but honestly, girls were unpredictable. She wasn't, once in a million years, expecting Cho to apologize for leading Harry on when Rhea was currently grieving for Sirius.

Probably Sirius was playing with Cho's soul or something.

"Er, Cho?" Rhea grimaced. "I don't know if it's me, but I'm certainly not Harry."

"You know what I mean," Cho said with a pained expression. "Harry's already been having a difficult life, and I entered out of the blue, leading Harry on. All I cared about was myself."

"Cho." Rhea sighed. "I have legilimency for a reason. I know you did all this unintentionally."

"Unintentional or not, whatever I did was unacceptable." Cho said firmly. "I didn't have any regard for his feelings. All I wanted to do was find some closure after Ced died. Everyone told me they understood how I felt, how they were sorry for me, how I would move on eventually." Cho sniffed, but no tears came.

"But the thing is," she continued, "It was Harry who understood. He understood by accepting that he could never understand the grief. I—" she faltered. "I found that, apart from Quidditch, there was another thing we had in common: Cedric."

Rhea said nothing. It was clear the Chang girl had been bottling all this up.

"For a while I was happy. Genuinely happy. No fake smiles, no fake socializing..." Cho trailed off. "But when we went on our first date..."

Rhea grimaced. Cho noticed and gave a watery chuckle. "Yeah, I know, it really was a fiasco. I wanted it to go well—I really did. But then Harry brought up something about Hermione—"