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It was a strange relief to be back in an English speaking country, Cho thought. No need to be constantly translating in her head, having to remember to say her sentences back-to-front with the verb at the end. Though she wished that were not the case, wished that Japanese and Mandarin slipped off her lips as easily as the world’s lingua franca, wished her parents had taken the time to teach her instead of deciding that she had no need for their languages while she grew up in Scotland.
Aberdeen, which had been home for so long (temporarily replaced for seven years by a castle in the countryside where she spent all of her youth in equal happiness and grief) was no longer home for her, she had come to realise upon returning. She had seen her parents, introduced them to her newborn son, and traveled up to London to update her details with the Ministry of Magic and realised again that despite how much she’d wished to live here as a child, England wasn’t her home either.
Her home, Cho thought with a warmth settling in her breast, was an apartment in the northwest of Sapporo with next to no ability to stay warm in the winter but was beautiful and cool in the summer. It was kneeling on the floor to have dinner with her husband and daughter, and holding her son in her arms.
Her parents had named her Cho Chang – free butterfly. They had always wished for her to be unhindered and to do whatever she wanted in life, and now she had finally fulfilled that.
“Cho?” came a voice from behind her, and despite the years since she had stepped foot back into the country she would recognise it anywhere. She turned to see the bright red hair and pale freckled skin of Ginny Weasley, and for what seemed like the first time in her life, Cho could smile genuinely at her.
“Ginny, hi! How are you?” she asked, accepting the hug from the girl she’d spent so long despising. It seemed that a decade and familiarity led to their actions being far friendlier than they had been in the past. Cho felt as she hugged the woman that her stomach was swollen beneath her Quidditch robes in a way that spoke of mid-trimester pregnancy.
“I’m great, how are you?” Ginny replied, pulling back with a brilliant glow coming through her skin. Cho recognised it because Hikaru had always brushed her cheek with his knuckles every morning back when when she woke up nauseous and with aching feet, and told her that she had never been more beautiful. “I almost didn’t recognise you! It’s been so long, I thought you might’ve fallen off the face of the planet. I’ve run into pretty much everyone else from Hogwarts sometime along the way.”
Cho laughed and tucked her hands into her coat pocket, feeling terribly out of place in the magical center of the United Kingdom with her jeans and trainers, whilst everybody else still wore robes. Even Ginny, in her brightly coloured green-and-yellow robes, felt more fitting than she did.
“I’m doing well, thanks. I actually moved out of the country about eight years ago now,” Cho informed her politely. “I’m only back here to see my parents and update my details with the Ministry, and thought I’d give my kids a bit of a holiday here while I was at it. It’s not like they can really appreciate it yet, but I thought it would be good to expose them to different environments.”
“Wow,” Ginny breathed. “I don’t know where to start! Where’d you move to? Are you married? What are your kids like?” She couldn’t quite seem to decide what question to ask first, and Cho laughed a little at how flustered she was.
“I moved to Sapporo in Japan, I never meant to stay and couldn’t even speak the language,” Cho admitted. “I was only there to meet some relatives of mine at a wedding, my mother thought it would be good to go and understand a bit of my heritage. I got lost within my first day but luckily a man who happened to speak very good English helped me out. In addition to that he was also incredibly smooth and managed to slip me his number.” Cho laughed. “I haven’t looked back since.”
“That’s so romantic,” Ginny teased, waving a hand at her face as if to cool burning cheeks. “What’s his name?”
“Hikaru,” Cho replied, quite unable to keep the loving tone from slipping into her voice. “He’s a physical therapist. Not the most stunning of professions, but it pays well enough to keep our kids happy atop my measly teacher’s salary.”
“A teacher?” Ginny asked. “I wouldn’t have picked you for it. What are you teaching?”
“English. It’s a very easy profession to get into as a foreigner, though they did have some concerns that my students would grow up to speak Scottish-accented English,” Cho laughed. “Most of them thought that would be totemo kakkōi though, and were very excited to have me as their teacher. Most of the others are American.”
Ginny laughed, and at that moment was bombarded in the side by a small boy that barely reached her hip, who wrapped his arms around her legs and began babbling away a mile a minute. His hair was black and all over the place, eerily familiar, and when he looked up at his mother, Cho could see that he was a perfect combination of Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter.
“James, it’s good to see you too, I’m sorry, I know I said I’d be here earlier! Did your father send you to come and hunt me down?” Ginny asked, crouching down so she’d be at the same height as James.
“Nope, I did,” another voice called out. Cho looked over to see a lanky, pale boy with bright turquoise hair strolling towards them in positively grungy Muggle clothing, somehow managing to make an old, ragged cardigan look good despite the fact he couldn’t have been older than eleven. “You know Harry’s always running late himself, and James would not shut up.”
“Teddy said a mean word!” James called out, and Ginny sighed resignedly.
“Please, Teddy, don’t tell your brother to shut up, it’s impolite,” she said, sounding like it was a phrase she’d said many a time. Teddy just rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into the pockets of his cardigan. Ginny looked up at Cho with a fond and exasperated look.
“Teddy’s starting at Hogwarts this year and thinks he’s just so much cooler than his other siblings,” Ginny offered as an explanation. Teddy pouted but didn’t actually say anything to counteract her words.
“I can’t wait until mine get to that age,” Cho drawled sarcastically with a laugh. “How many do you have?”
“Too many,” Ginny groused teasingly, jabbing James in the side. “Teddy’s our oldest and Harry’s godson; he’s Remus’ son. Then we have James here, his younger brother Al who is currently spending the day with his godmother Andromeda, and this one…”
Ginny trailed off, resting a hand on her stomach beneath her robes. James did the same, delighting in knowing that his youngest sibling was in there, just waiting. “This one here’s Lily Luna.”
“Finally a girl,” Cho laughed. “I got one on our first try. Hikaru dotes on her like no tomorrow, but he was very happy when we had a son.”
“What are their names?” Ginny asked.
“Chihiro and… Cedric,” Cho replied, swallowing heavily around the name of her son. Hikaru knew all about her best friend and then-boyfriend, who had been ruthlessly murdered at only seventeen, far too early before his due time. Cho had thought after he died that she would never be able to recover, her life had spiralled downward from that point on – a failed date with Harry Potter, her best friend betraying them all and Cho becoming an outcast when she remained the only one to defend her, being on the run for her life for nearly a year due to her status as a Muggleborn, dead friends, and then many more failed dates that led her only to thinking of Cedric.
It wasn’t until Hikaru had helped her out that one fateful day in Tokyo that Cho had finally thought she’d be able to love again, that the black hole inside her that had forced her out of her home country and out of the magical world she had once embraced with awe and wonder finally started to shrink inside her chest.
With Cedric’s birth, Cho thought that it might have disappeared completely.
Her admission made Ginny quiet for a few moments, as she clearly wasn’t too sure how to react to the news.
“Will you be sending them to the Japanese wizarding school if they show, or to Hogwarts?” Ginny asked, breaking the silence.
Cho chewed on her bottom lip. “I’m not sure if they’ll show any magical abilities. Chihiro’s only two, but it’ll be something Hikaru and I discuss. He doesn’t know too much about the magical world and I mostly stay in the Muggle community back home. But perhaps I’ll send them to Mahoutokoro. We’re planning on the kids being bilingual though, so they could go to any,” she explained. “I don’t want them to grow up monolingual like I did.”
It was then that the still-imposing figure of Harry Potter whirled into their conversation, clad in black robes, with his hair still just as messy as his eldest son’s, glasses resting crooked in front of his emerald green eyes, and his lightning bolt scar faded and barely visible upon his forehead.
“Sorry about that, didn’t even realise what time it was, and I promised that I’d be home all weekend to take you to Mum’s Quidditch game!” Harry said, scooping up James so the boy sat on his shoulders excitedly.
“Surely you’re not still playing this far into your pregnancy?” Cho couldn’t help but ask, taking in Ginny’s Quidditch robes. The fact remained that even though Cho still played casual Quidditch each week with her local female team, the Higashi-ku Hō-ō, she’d stopped playing as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Flying metres in the air on broomsticks with enchanted balls rocketing about intent on knocking you off hadn’t seemed too good for her unborn child.
“Oh, Merlin no,” Ginny breathed. “But the team’s playing the Tornadoes this weekend and I thought I’d come along and support them.”
It was at this point that Harry seemed to notice that Cho was there, and his smile was genuine yet slightly forced. Cho wondered if he was remembering their last, embarrassing interaction – Cho walking out on him on their first and only date, making a scene of it in only the way a spurned and grieving teenage girl could.
Cho smiled back but didn’t offer a hug like Ginny or even a hand to shake. “Hi, Harry,” she said. It was perhaps the first time she’d said those words without butterflies in her stomach.
“Hey Cho,” he replied, equally as subdued. At that moment Cho’s phone chimed, and she pulled it out of her pocket to see a text from Hikaru.
“It was lovely to see you, Ginny, but my husband is waiting outside with the kids. Apparently Ced’s getting hungry,” Cho said apologetically.
“That’s okay, we were just going to leave and have lunch anyway, we can walk you out,” Ginny said brightly, well aware of the awkwardness on Harry’s party but ignoring it anyway. Cho hid the twist of her lips and thought that perhaps Ginny was the perfect match for Harry Potter.
The five of them turned and headed towards the Muggle entry to the Ministry. Just as Harry opened the door to allow them all to enter when a voice called out across the lobby.
“Mrs Ishida!” the voice called. Cho turned around to see one of the Ministry employees she had been talking to running towards them, holding some papers in hand. They were panting when they came to a stop, and handing them over to Cho.
“Sorry, we just need you to sign these forms, I totally forgot about them, they’re a relatively new addition,” the employee said apologetically. Cho pulled out a pen and signed her signature with ease, and the employee bid them a good day.
“Not Cho Chang anymore?” Harry asked.
“Nope,” Cho replied. In Japan it was law for a married couple to have the same surname, and although Hikaru had offered to take her surname, and in a way Cho wanted to keep her Chinese heritage, the name just reminded her too much of all the pain she had been through. Cho Chang had been the girl who had lost her best friend, had been ostracised and made an outcast, been on the run, nearly died, and lost more loved ones than she could count.
Cho Ishida was one of the most liked teachers in her school, was married to a man that made her laugh every day, had two children that she adored and would do anything for, and was becoming more fluent in Japanese with every passing day.
Their small group took the lift up to the Whitehall streets, the weather for once calm and not overcast and pouring rain upon them all. Across the road from the red phonebox they exited stood Hikaru, holding Cedric in his arms and with Chihiro sitting on the bench next to him, her small feet dangling far off the ground, her hair in short twin braids.
Cho’s heart melted at the sight of her family, and with a quick goodbye, she crossed the road and scooped up her daughter. Chihiro squealed and wrapped her arms around Cho’s neck, while Hikaru stepped forward with their son in his arms, pressing a kiss to Cho’s cheek.
“Everything sorted?” he asked her in Japanese, voice warm and still able to make her utterly melt after five years of marriage.
“Yes,” she replied in the same tongue. “All in order. Was there anywhere you wanted to go first?”
Hikaru shared a sneaky look with their daughter. “Chihiro wanted to try a treacle tart with hot chocolate, but I told her that she’d have to ask you if that was okay before we had lunch,” he laughed.
“I don’t see why not,” Cho said, kissing her daughter on the crown of her head. “After all, we are on holiday.”
The four of them headed down the road, Cho intent on showing them the best of what the United Kingdom had before they went home, and she didn’t even once look back to see if Harry and Ginny were watching.
Cho was no longer the young girl who cared what others thought. She was a woman with a family, and even if she wasn’t really all that involved in the magical world anymore, she was happy and content.
All was well.