Everything you recognise belongs to JKR and Ure. This is a rip-off or an adaptation, to please myself, of Ure's gentle bawdy frolic 'You win some, you lose some'. You have been duly warned.
Chapter 6 Just for the one night
In March, they did the assessment which would decide if they could be offered preliminary places in the second stage of auror training for the forth coming September. The assessment was just an ordinary training session, except that they were joined by six boys from another group and were watched from the far end of the hall by all their trainers. The Hun sat solemnly at the table making notes. The session was taken by a foreign wizard with a name like someone sneezing. ('Art Kaszu,' said Hermione. 'He's great.')
Afterwards, they were called in one at a time to be interviewed by the panel of trainers, now reinforced by the sneezing man, who had also taken his seat at the table. They asked Harry what made him want to be an auror (enjoying hexing the evil?), if he enjoyed the training, (to this, the Hun answered for him, 'he does, I can vouch for that.' Harry nearly fell off his seat in amazement. The Hun? Putting in a good word for someone?), why he enjoyed it (It's the thing he did best, what else?), what else he was good at (Quidditch, off course), what he would do if he could not be an auror (playing Quidditch, but he had chosen auror over it).
They said he would be informed the outcome in about four weeks.
He had lunch in the canteen with Hermione and Professor McGonagall, who had come along to give him moral support.
'Off course,' Hermione gave Harry her shining smile with her dewy eyes - 'you'll have had no difficulty.'
He wished everyone wouldn't keep taking it for granted. It was going to make it all the harder if he failed.
'Nonsense!' said McGonagall, giving Harry her penetrating looks, 'I have received excellent reports of you.' (He hoped it hadn't reported his girl problems.)
She raised her glass of water to her lips. 'There is a child over there,' she said, 'who appears to be trying to attract your attention.'
Harry looked; so did Hermione with interest. The 'child' was Sally-Ann. She beamed, and waved at him across the canteen. Harry waved back.
'Girl in my group, she'd been in our year at Hogwarts.' he said.
As he was finishing his first course (jacket potato and cauliflower cheese) Mandy came by the table. She stopped, and dimpled.
'Hallo, Harry … how was the assessment?'
'Not bad,' he said. 'How about you?'
She rolled her eyes. 'Fearsome … if I get in, I'll stand you that Chinese meal we never had.'
'I'll hold you to it.' He said automatically.
Hermione waited till Mandy was out of earshot.
'Mandy Brocklehurst too?' she said with a slight smile that reminded Harry the same expression he had seen in fifth year when she asked him about Cho and him.
***
With the assessment over, and a fortnight's break in training almost upon them, he was able to turn his attention back to that other little matter of importance in his life: namely, his list. He couldn't make up his mind which one of the two remaining to go for. He kept thinking about what Mandy had said: Daphne does it all the time, practically with anyone… Did he really want to do it with someone who did it all the time? Practically with anyone? He wasn't sure that he did. He was growing desperate, but not desperate as all that, and in any case, just recently he had noticed that Cho was showing distinct signs of a thaw towards him. She didn't snap as much as she used to, and she hadn't said 'Do you mind?' for ages. In the event the matter was decided for him by Daphne suddenly announcing, as they limbered up before sessions next day, that she was going away for Easter.
That settled it: he couldn't afford to sit around doing nothing for a whole fortnight. Time was precious.
He played it very cool with Cho. He quickly discovered that her favourite pastime was walking round the shops, choosing outfits for herself (not buying, as far as he saw it) for every conceivable (and inconceivable) occasions. Even if the shops were closed she still got a buzz out of it. What amazed him was that she seemed to remember every single garment she'd ever clapped eyes on. She had a mind like a filing cabinet. (Hermione got a brilliant mind, but he never saw her using it on garment sorting.)
'If I put that dress with that coat we saw in John Lewis … if I wore those shoes with that hat they had in Selfridge's…' said Cho to an absentminded Harry.
As a reward for tramping the streets - Oxford Street, Bond Street, Regent Street, Knights bridge - she let him kiss her on the doorstep when he delivered her back home. He couldn't take her back to West Hampstead, because Terry was there. Terry was always going to be there. He'd obviously stopped fancying his two girl friends and hadn't yet found himself anyone else - didn't seem to be tying very hard, either. It was really rather a nuisance. He wondered, if he were to put to her nicely, whether Cho would come away with him to a hotel.
Old Cho was really quite fastidious. He'd discovered that over these last few days of tramping around. She wouldn't drink from a cracked cup or eat off a not-spotless plate or anything like that. The least little speck and back it would go, it didn't matter where she was, a tea shop in Diagonally or some posh place in the West End. She had standards, did Cho, and he couldn't see her just lower them just for him (Hermione had liked his untidy room), even though Cho did let him kiss her good night. She once had let him do a tiny bit more than just kiss, which had encouraged him to hope, though after Mandy he didn't place too much confidence on girls necessarily meaning what you thought they meant.
'I was wondering if you'd like to come away somewhere for the night.' said Harry, when Cho was window shopping again. He was sick to death of tramping the stores.
'What d'you think about that little black jacket? That might go with it.'
'I thought maybe next Saturday, after class.'
'What? Go away?' She turned at last from the shop window to look at him. 'You and me?'
'I thought it would be fun to celebrate a late Easter.'
'But where would we go?'
'There's this hotel I found,' said Harry. 'Down by the river. Near Richmond.' (It's class that would satisfy the fastidiousness of hers.)
Cho considered him for a while.
'You mean --' he'd noticed before, she was a girl who had brains - 'You mean, sleep in the same bedroom?'
'Um - yes.' That was what he meant definitely.
Cho considered him a bit more.
'Are we going to be married?' she said.
He recoiled at that. Who'd said anything about marriage? Then he twigged: people who went away together to hotels often signed the register as Mr and Mrs. It had been very naïve of him not to have thought of that for himself. He knew old Cho had brains: an expedient!
'I s'pose we'll have to,' he said.
'Harry!' Cho flung both arms round him. 'Now I can go and choose an engagement outfit!'
He was a bit nervous about that: so long as it was only one of her imaginary ones …
'We'll have to get a ring,' she said. She sounded really happy about it. 'I'll get the wedding ring, you get the engagement ring.'
'What do we want an engagement ring for?'
'Because you can't have one without the other, silly! It would look ridiculous.'
'Oh. Would it?'
'Of course it would! Don't you know anything?'
Not about engagement rings, he didn't.
'What sort of thing have I got to get then?'
'Oh, anything'll do for now - so long as it look like a proper engagement ring. But you don't have to spend a fortune. We can always get something better later on.'
He wondered what she meant by later on. If they went away a second time, he supposed.
Cho tucked her arm through his.
'It's the sort of thing they do stories on … Partners in Aurors - Partners in Real Life …' She signed and snuggled closer. 'I always thought you were romantic. Right from the very beginning.'
He didn't know what to say to that. He couldn't very well say he'd thought she was romantic right from the very beginning. After all, he'd only put her down as reserve. If Daphne hadn't gone on holiday, it might have been Daphne coming with him to the hotel.
On Monday evening after training he experienced a rather embarrassing moment. Cho had hung around waiting for him (the girls finished half an hour earlier than the boys) and in front of the Hun and all the rest of them threw her arms about him and pressed a fond peck on his cheek. Were he in the habit of blushing, he would have blushed. Fortunately he wasn't, but still he could have done without quite such a public display. He disentangled himself, to the predictable accompaniment of jeers and catcalls. Cho didn't seem to mind them - she even seemed quite pleased.
'Have you got it?' she whispered.
'Got what?'
'You know … the ring.'
'Oh.' The ring; it had completely slipped his memory. 'No, not yet. I'll get it on Friday.'
'Not till then?'
'Well, we're not going --' he lowered his voice - 'we're not going away till Saturday.'
'You'd better get it,' said Cho. 'I'm not coming without a real engagement ring.'
He wasn't quite sure what constituted a 'real' engagement ring, but presumably gift shops would sell them. It was only for one night, after all. He had never realised the pursuit of experience would come with so much trouble.
'My mother says,' said Cho, 'that you'd better come round on Friday night and have a meal with us.'
She said it not so much as an invitation as an order. He wondered why Cho's mother, all of a sudden, should feel the need to meet him.
'Well, it's obvious, isn't it?' said Cho. 'In the circumstances.'
'You haven't gone and told her.'
'Of course I've told her! She's my mother, isn't she?'
'Yeah, but --'
Words failed him. He tried to imagine Ron telling Mrs Weasley he was taking a girl away to a hotel for a night. All hell would be let loose. 'You mean she doesn't mind?'
'She'd rather we wait,' said Cho. 'She thinks we're a bit young. She said as far as she was concerned, if we've really made up our minds then we'd better go ahead - but obviously she wants to meet you. That's only natural.'
Bloody hell! It didn't seem natural to him. It would have seemed more natural to him if the old girl had turned up at Hampstead Heath with a poker, threatening to beat the living daylights out of him. He thought that's what Mrs Weasley would do if Ginny ever came home and said some yob was taking her off for the night. Maybe it was something to do with the fact that Cho's family was of Chinese origin. But he had heard Chinese were quite conservative when sex was concerned. Maybe not seeing western ways so much Mrs Chang had not known what the westerners were like. Maybe she thought he was just taking her daughter away, out of the kindness of his heart, to give her a day's break from home. Immoral Purposes probably hadn't even crossed her mind.
'Come round at seven,' said Cho. 'And don't forget to bring the ring.'
'No,' he said. He was still feeling a bit bemused. 'OK.'
***
'So we've gone and got ourselves engaged, have we?' said Terry, and winked at him.
Was the woman mad? Next thing he knew, she'd be announcing it in the Daily Prophet. (So this was why neither Sally-Ann nor Mandy was smiling at him any more. They just sniffed and walked straight pass him without so much as a word when he bumped into them in the corridor.)
'It was what you might call expedient,' he said.
'Well, I gathered that,' said Terry. 'You might be green, but you're not stupid.'
'Thanks very much,' said Harry.
***
Friday lunchtime he went into a small shop near Hampstead Heath and bought a ring for eight pounds. It wasn't much of a ring, but it glittered quite nicely when it caught the light.
Duly at seven o'clock he presented himself at the front door of the Chang's residence. Cho opened the door to him. The first thing she said was: 'Have you got it?'
'Yeah --'
He held out his hand for her to see. In her eagerness, she almost scratched his palm bleeding.
Mrs Chang had appeared, at the far end of the hallway, she looked disconcertingly like an older version of Cho.
'So you are the promising young man, are you? I'm Cho's mother. You'd better come in.'
They sat at the kitchen and had a Chinese meal. He was carefully avoiding any prawn dishes. Mrs Chang asked him many questions. He supposed she was just interested rather than nosy, but the way she shot the questions at him, on after another, pop-pop-pop, as if they were on a check list, definitely gave him the feeling that he was being grilled. She investigated thoroughly: how exactly was he getting on with his training? What was the probability of him getting a successful auror career? (What'd that got to do with anything?) Still, he supposed she had to make certain. She wouldn't want her daughter to go away with just anyone (It still amazed him that she was willing to let her go away at all). At last Mrs Chang seemed to be satisfied enough:
'I'll make some tea. I like it with hot milk, and so does Cho. You'll have to start getting used to all her little habits from now on, you know.'
Mrs Chang said this humorously - at least, he thought she did. He was not quite certain.
'Oh, yes,' she said. 'It's not all a bed of roses, I can tell you. You'll find she's got some funny little ways.'
'Mummy! For heaven's sake!' Cho pulled a face at Harry across the table. 'Don't start on that … Harry doesn't want to be put off before we've even done it.'
She was actually talking out loud about doing it - in front of her own mother. He couldn't believe it; this was extraordinary. He didn't know people had mothers that were that liberated.
'When exactly,' she said, 'were you planning it for?'
The question was addressed specifically to Harry. He cast an anguished eye in Cho's direction. (He thought she was supposed to have told her?)
'I said,' said Cho, 'We haven't yet fixed any definite date.'
What?
'Well, if you ask me,' said Mrs Chang, 'the longer it's left the better. In my opinion, twenty-five is about the right age.'
Twenty-five? Was she crazy?
He got out as fast as he could at nine.
Mrs Change's parting words were: 'Just don't be in too much of a hurry, that's my advice.'
Cho, fondly, said she would see him out.
'I thought you told me,' he said. 'that you'd told her?'
'What are you talking about?' said Cho. 'I did tell her. You heard her, carrying on.'
'Yeah, but she was carrying on about waiting till we're twenty-five!'
'Oh, well, that's just her.'
'But she didn't seem to know.'
'Know what for goodness' sake?' Cho looked at him, rather irritably. 'What are you talking about?'
'About tomorrow!'
'I didn't tell her that. What d'you think, I'm dumb or something? I told her I'm going to stay with a girl friend. She'd do her nut if she thought I was going away with you.'
Something very odd was going on here. He couldn't understand it. (He wasn't too sure he wanted to understand it.)
'Here, I got it. I bought the wedding ring,' said Cho. 'It's real silver --'
The sweat broke out all over him. She stretched out her left hand, finger splayed with his ring on.
'This looks really cheap … we'll have to get another one some time.'
'What --' He cleared his throat. 'What do we want another one for?'
'Well, you don't think I'm going to wear this for the rest of my life?'
'It's only for one night,' he said. 'You can chuck it after that.'
There was a long silence. Cho's lips had suddenly gone all pinched and thin.
'What exactly do you mean?' she said. 'It's only for one night?'
'Um, people only have proper engagement rings,' he said, desperately, 'when they're properly engaged. After all, it's only the one night, isn't it? That's what we agreed on - it's what I booked for. It's what I said.'
'You said,' said Cho, 'that we were going to be married.'
'Yeah, well … just for the occasion.'
'Are you mad?' said Cho. Now her voice had gone all pinched and thin, like her lips. 'Do you really imagine that I would come away with you to a hotel and sleep in the same bedroom in the same bed unless we were going to be married? Properly? What do you think? I'm a whore, or something? Is that why you bought me a cheap ring? Because you think that's all I'm worth?'
This was like a nightmare. He couldn't understand how it had happened.
'I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding,' he said.
'I should think there has been a bit of a misunderstanding! You're the one that's done all the misunderstanding. You're just like all the rest of them … only after one thing! I thought you were different - I thought you were decent. Well, you're not, you're horrible!'
'No, I'm not,' he said. He refused to be called horrible just because there'd been a misunderstanding.
'Yes, you are!' cried Cho. 'You're horrible. Telling everyone you're going to marry me then suddenly backing out at the last minute.'
'You were the one did the telling. And, I'm not backing out at the last minute!'
'Oh?' said Cho. 'Aren't you?'
'No! I never said --'
'You said we were going to be married! You either mean it or you didn't.'
'I did mean it - but just for the night! Just the one night.'
'People do not get married,' said Cho, witheringly, 'just for the one night. They get married in sickness or in health till death them do part.'
'Unless they got divorced,' he said.
'You can't get divorced,' screamed Cho, 'if you've never been married! You can take back your rotten lousy ring --' She tore it off her finger and hurled it down at his feet - 'it's cheep and it's nasty and I wouldn't be seen dead in it! And you can go away, and get lost.'
In a daze, he got away. Cho's voice came screeching after him: 'If I wanted, I could have you up for breach of promise.'
Harry shook his head: he still didn't understand how it had happened. Hadn't she suggested they posing as the married to check in to that hotel? How did she turn it to a 'real' engagement?
And come to think of it, people did not get married unless they were in love, or at least they thought they were in love. He didn't think he was in love, at least not with Cho, that he was certain.