Entry tags:

fic, roger/cho

Recruitment (Roger/Cho)
Title: Recruitment
Author: luvscharlie
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers/Warnings: None
Characters/Ships: Roger Davies/Cho Chang
Genre: Gen (sort of)
Summary: Cho hasn't seen Roger Davies in quite a good amount of time. A lot has changed.
Length: 1,597
Notes: Originally written for the 2009 clever_claws fest. It was gifted to the community as my recipient dropped out.



Honestly, Cho wasn't sure she actually saw most of the match. She was sitting there watching, trying to concentrate, directing her new Quick Quotes Quill to take down the plays as she instructed, but it was just hard for her to get excited about a Ballycastle Bats versus Chudley Cannons game, even if she was reporting on it for the Quibbler. After all, she was a Tutshill Tornados girl, through and through. And a year out of school, this was not the job she had wanted, but times were hard. In fact, Quidditch was one of the only things in the wizarding world that had remained somewhat normal. Sure, there was that incident of the missing Keeper for the Wigtown Wanderers, but in all seriousness, Cho had always thought that man had the look of a Death Eater. Perhaps the Death Eaters had thought so as well, and decided that he needed to be recruited… one way or the other.

The victory cheers of, "Bats, Bats, Bats," signalled the end of the match and Cho stood to go making her way down the bleachers along with the small crowd of orange-clad, disgruntled fans when she heard what she thought was her surname. Of course, it could have just been one of the Cannons groupies saying "dang" or something more colourful. She looked around, saw nothing, and continued on her way.

"Chang!"

Okay, that time Cho was certain she heard her name rather than dang. She turned to scour the crowd and was nearly knocked down by a man dressed all in orange wearing that sour look that was recognisable in die hard Cannons fans. He grumbled at her sudden stop, and she couldn't even be angry at him. After all, Cannons fans had it rough… even rougher than the fans of the recently fledgling Tornados. Of course, Cannons fans also had poor taste, so perhaps she was being too forgiving. At least the Tornados had seen a winning season in the past five years. She could not remember the last time the Cannons had a winning season… in fact, she couldn't remember the last time the Cannons had so much as won a match... even against the Arrows.

"Chang!"

Cho moved over out of the aisle to avoid any more collisions and began to scour the crowd for the identity of her mystery name chanter. She didn't have to look long. He came barrelling down the aisle, dark hair bouncing over his brow, blue eyes as attractive as they had always been. Roger Davies.

"Chang, how've you been?"

"Good, Roger. You?"

"Okay, I guess. I didn't expect to see you here. Did you finally get some good taste, become a Bats fan and give up on those hopeless Tornados of yours?"

"Not bloody likely," Cho responded with a snort of derision. "A Tornados girl till I die, Davies!"

Roger held up his hands in surrender, the ghost of a familiar smile playing across his handsome face. "I got it. A die hard Tornados fan, then."

"Absolutely," Cho said, her face refusing to remain stoic at the handsome face before her and the stark blue eyes that were giving her an appraising look.

"So, Miss Tornados-Till-I-Die, do Tornados fans eat?"

"I assume you're referring to times when we're not busy chewing up Bats fans and spitting them out."

Roger grinned, placing a hand over his chest as if wounded. "Ouch. I may regret this invitation if I go home with bite marks—or maybe I won't regret that at all, on second thought," he added, as a seeming afterthought, including a roguish wink that made her blush. "At the risk of my currently good health, might I buy you dinner, Chang?"

"Only if you stop calling me Chang. We're no longer on the Quidditch Pitch." Cho looked around at the stadium, and felt her cheeks reheat. "Okay, we're on a pitch, but you know what I mean. We're no longer school kids, and you're not my captain. Thus, I'll have dinner with you only if you call me Cho."

Roger held out his hand. "Deal. How about the Leaky Cauldron?"

Rolling her eyes skyward, Cho sighed. "Tom's Bangers and Mash is by far the best in all of London."

"On that, Cho, we are in complete agreement." Roger winked at her again. "But don't tell my mum. She's convinced no one's could be as good as hers."

~0-0~

After finding an owl to deliver her completed article on the just played match to the Quibbler, Cho allowed Roger to take her by the elbow and lead the way through the city streets. They could have Apparated, but honestly she wasn't much of a fan of Apparation. She preferred the walk, and was glad Roger suggested it. It was late-August and there was a bustle of activity in Diagon Alley. A small girl, no more than eleven years of age passed them in a frenzied state of excitement. "Mum, Mum," she shouted, her voice cracking in frantic dismay. "Ollivander's is closed. I can't start Hogwarts without a wand! Whatever will I do?"

Cho bit her lip. The girl was impossibly cute in her panic. She chose to focus on the positive aspects, rather than take the hard look at the grimness of their current situation. Mr. Ollivander's shop wasn't the only one empty in Diagon Alley. In fact, there were few that had remained open. "It's hard to believe we were ever that tiny," Cho said.

Roger nodded, and Cho looked up at him, standing at his impressive height of six feet, three inches. "Well," she said, "perhaps not all of us were that tiny when we started Hogwarts. Some people had a head start on others of us."

"Well, I may have been taller than you when we started school, but I'm not so certain I'd consider that a head start." Roger used his wand to press into the bricks in just the right intricate pattern to open the wall into the back hallway of the Leaky Cauldron, and they stepped into the tenuous link between the Muggle world and their own. At least in the Muggle world, Cho thought, they were blissfully ignorant of the dangers surrounding them.

There was a bustle of activity and the Cauldron was quite crowded. Cho wondered if people came here looking for some semblance of normalcy in a world that offered them very little to look forward to of late. Roger took her by the hand and led her to an empty booth far in the back, sliding this way and leaning that in order to weave their way through the throng of witches, wizards, and things that used to cause Cho to have nightmares as a tot.

They sat down, Roger sliding far over into the booth and patting the spot beside him for Cho to follow suit. Rather than taking the opposite bench, Cho did as he suggested and the heat of their touching thighs sent a shiver down her spine. Tom eventually made his way over. "What'll ya have?"

"Bangers and Mash," they both said at once.

"Easy enough," Tom said, hobbling away from the table.

The air seemed filled with tension, and Cho found herself working hard to come up with a topic of conversation. She'd always had a bit of a crush on Roger Davies. Could she even call it a crush? Perhaps not. Maybe it was more that she always admired his pretty-boy looks and his prowess on a Quidditch pitch…

And then it happened… just as it always happened… anytime she went out with someone new, the question always came up.

"So," Roger began, "I hear you dated Harry Potter."

Honestly, you kiss someone once and seem attached to them for like five minutes, and it seems as though there was a memo that went out to the entire wizarding world. Well, this time she wasn't sitting around for the rest of it. The questions about dating the Chosen One. One bloke even asked if she'd caught a glimpse of Harry's cock and if it looked the same as other blokes or was it special. Nope, she wasn't sitting through that nonsense again.

She got up to leave, but Roger grabbed her wrist and pulled her back down. "It's not what you think, Chang. I didn't bring you here to hit on you or to ask questions about your love life." He ran his wand over his left hand to reveal a singular gold band, then quickly cloaked it once more.

"You're married?!?!" Cho practically shouted.

"You know, cloaking the ring does little good if you go and announce it to the world," Roger seethed through clenched teeth.

"But I thought…"

Roger sighed and shook his head. "I know what you thought, and I'm sorry to deceive you. I keep the ring cloaked so no one knows I'm married. Times are too dangerous and if I get caught, well, no one needs know that I have a wife. I wouldn't put her in danger like that. I've brought you here to recruit you, but to everyone else who may be watching, we should look like a couple out on an ordinary date."

"I'm just a journalist. A sports journalist at that… for a rag like the Quibbler. Whatever could you possibly want to recruit me for?"

"I heard you were a part of Dumbledore's Army back in school."

"Yeah, so?"

"There's an Order. A very secret Order. And we need all the people we can get…"

And thus, for Cho Chang, the revolution began.