Sarah’s mother had always told her, “You have me, and I have you. We’re all each other needs.” And indeed, Sarah did not question this. Not until one of her classmates told her everyone has a father.
Her mother had been forced to admit that yes, she did technically have a father. Then she changed the subject and would not let it stray back.
But Sarah could not let it go.
He hadn’t signed her birth certificate; he hadn’t been married to her mother; he hadn’t lived in their town. She didn’t even know his name. Her mother had no pictures hidden in her underwear drawer. Her grandparents were dead. By the time she was eleven, Sarah realized that unless her mother told her directly, she would never know anything about her father.
Then the odd man showed up on the doorstep.
She heard her mother trying to shut him out. “Go away, Longbottom! I’ve told you, I don’t want her to go.”
“You’ve got to send her to school, Cho. It’s compulsory now. You can’t just avoid the place because of what happened there.”
“Hogwarts wasn’t as safe as everyone thought it was, and I don’t see how that could have changed. Goodbye.” She pushed on the door.
“But he’s been gone for eight years!”
“So?” Sarah’s mother said. “There will always be someone out there like him.”
The man at the door resisted. “Then why keep her here?”
“So that I can at least try to”to save her. So that she’ll be with me.” She began to sob. Sarah peered around the corner. Her mother was slumped against the wall next to the door. Her long black hair fell around her blotchy face. “Please don’t make me do this,” she said. “Don’t take her away.”
The man came inside and closed the door. “We won’t take her away,” he said. “But you must see reason. What happened to Cedric was””
“Shut up!” Sarah’s mother cried. “Don’t talk about him! You’re right, okay, Longbottom? She should go. She has every right to go. I’m a horrible, paranoid, over-protective mess of a mother. I just can’t stand the idea that something could happen while she’s away. If I lost her…she’s the only thing that’s kept me alive.”
Longbottom looked relieved, yet uncomfortable. “Erm, Cho, if it’s not too personal to ask, is he””
“Sarah!” Cho called, interrupting him. “Come here, please?”
And so everything was explained. Longbottom was a professor at Hogwarts, and he, Cho, and Sarah all had magical powers”something Cho had hidden from her daughter for eleven years.
But the girl was too excited to be angry at her mother for long. Her elation was not, however, completely due to the discovery of magic. She knew in her heart that her father had gone to this school. And now she had a name to work with. She didn’t know if she had misunderstood horribly or heard wrong, but it was something; it was a link to her mother’s past.
Cedric.
*
Sarah had expected to look up her father on the first day of classes. This was not to be. Running from class to class proved to be almost more than she could handle. She never had a moment to do anything but search for her next classroom and eat. The entire week progressed in this way.
She knew she looked like her mother, and she had her mother’s last name. She also fairly sure that her mother had been at Hogwarts when Sarah was born. Cho was only sixteen years older than her daughter. Sarah hoped that perhaps a professor would know who her mother was dating at the time and ask a question about him. Surely with something so conspicuous as a pregnant student, everyone would know who was involved.
But they said nothing. It was only, “Do you know a Cho Chang?” And Sarah would say, “Why, yes, she’s my mother.” They would raise their eyebrows or frown, but it was a quick gesture. Something that told Sarah that “mother” was not the answer they were expecting. When the first week was over, Sarah came to the conclusion that Cho must have hidden her pregnancy. Perhaps even her father had no idea she existed. The idea was discouraging, but she did not give up hope.
She decided to devote her first Saturday at Hogwarts to searching for this Cedric person. Even if he wasn’t her father, he might have been a good friend of her mother’s, who would know something about Sarah’s birth.
The first place she looked was the memorial in the Entrance Hall. It was a black marble obelisk that sat on a plinth decorated with carved pictures. She studied them. A book, a ring, a necklace, a cup, a headdress, a snake, and a lightning bolt. Set into the obelisk itself were hundreds of names and dates”everyone who had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts eight years before.
It seemed like a morbid place to start, but Sarah had gathered from her eavesdropping that something bad had happened to Cedric at Hogwarts”perhaps he had fallen in battle? Been injured? She looked at every name, but there was no Cedric on the obelisk.
The next place she checked was the trophy room. Her mother was present on quite a few trophies, both for academic achievement and Quidditch. There were quite a few people named Cedric, but none of them were students eleven years ago. Not until she got to a special section that housed a shining golden cup. There were words on the glass in front of it.
WON 1995 BY
HARRY POTTER AND CEDRIC DIGGORY
HOGWARTS CHAMPIONS
Sarah’s heart leapt. Here was a Cedric who was alive at the right time. And was a champion! She stared at the name for a minute, as though Cedric Diggory would speak to her from the past and tell her what she so desperately wanted to know.
She finally decided to ask Professor Longbottom about it. Not only was he her favorite teacher and her Head of House, but she knew he knew Cedric Diggory. It was the best place to start from, now that she had a full name.
She trotted down the stairs and out of the castle. It was a lovely fall day, and Longbottom was kneeling in the vegetable patch. “Er, hi,” she said.
He looked up. “Why, hello, Sarah. Enjoying the weather?”
She nodded. “Well, I actually just spent the past few hours exploring the castle.”
“Sounds interesting. Looking for your mother? She should turn up in a few places. The trophy room, at least.”
“I’ve actually just come from there, sir,” she said. “But I wasn’t looking for Mum. I was looking for someone else. I thought you might be able to tell me a bit more about them, seeing as you were in school at the same time.”
Longbottom chuckled. “Not Harry Potter, I hope? You wouldn’t be the first to ask.”
“No, sir. I actually wanted to know about Cedric Diggory.”
He dropped his wand. “And, er, why would you want to know about him?”
She looked down at the dirt. “I heard you talking to my mum when you came to call. You mentioned someone named Cedric”so I went looking for him. Please, Professor,” she said. “I just”I’m trying to find out who my dad is. Mum won’t talk about him, and I think that they met here, and everyone thinks she’s too young to be my mum, and I dunno who this Cedric person is, but Mum seems to know him pretty well, so I figure that he might at least know who my dad is. Maybe it’s even him. I just have to find out.”
Professor Longbottom sighed and stood up. “Why don’t you come into my office,” he said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just don’t tell Cho it was me.” He brushed the dirt off his robes.
Sarah jumped and cried, “My lips are sealed!”
*
Longbottom’s office was at the front of Greenhouse 3, where he could keep an eye on the most dangerous plants at the school. He offered Sarah a seat across from his desk.
“I was a fourth year, one year behind your mum. Cedric Diggory was a seventh year. Cho was a Ravenclaw, and he was a Hufflepuff. I didn’t know either of them particularly well. They were both popular, attractive, and seemingly perfect. He was a prefect, a Quidditch captain, and he was chosen Triwizard Champion of Hogwarts”well, him and Harry Potter.”
“Triwizard Tournament? I saw that in the trophy room, but I didn’t know what it meant,” said Sarah. Longbottom explained the three-part tournament to her.
“Cedric liked your mum, I guess, because he invited her to the ball at Christmas of that year. I think that’s when they started going out. Then he saved her from Merpeople in the Second Task. She was the person he would miss most. They were together until the end of the year.” Longbottom put his head in his hands for a moment and breathed heavily.
“The Third Task was a maze. In the middle of the maze was the cup”the cup you saw in the trophy room. Cedric and Harry reached it at the same time, and they decided to grab it together so that they could both win. Good men. Except that the cup was a Portkey. It took them to a graveyard, where Lord Voldemort was resurrected. Cedric was killed.”
Sarah felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. He was dead. Her biggest candidate for fatherhood or possible source of information was dead, and had been since before she was born.
“That’s really all I can tell you,” said Longbottom. “But if he was your father…I wouldn’t be surprised. And if that is the case, I’m sorry.”
She nodded silently. What had she expected? If her dad was alive, it meant he didn’t know or didn’t care. It was better, really, to have a dead father. It was a reason that he wasn’t around that didn’t hurt so much. At least, she told herself it didn’t hurt.
What hurt was that her mother never told her.
She thanked Longbottom and excused herself to write a letter.
*
“Miss Chang!” Professor Slughorn rapped on her desk with his wand. “Please at least pretend you are paying attention.”
“Sorry, Professor,” she muttered. She hadn’t slept much Saturday or Sunday night. Her thoughts raced in circles that revolved around her mother and Cedric Diggory. Was he her father? Was that why her mother was so overprotective? And why hadn’t Cho told her anything, about Cedric or magic?
She’d awaited an owl all Sunday, but none came. Breakfast this morning had again been without an answer. Sarah feared that her mother would force the matter to sit until the Christmas holidays. Now that she was so close to the truth, Sarah couldn’t stand the idea of three more months without knowing.
“If you had been paying attention, Miss Chang, you would have heard me tell you that you are wanted in the Headmistress’s office immediately. Take your things.”
Sarah’s stomach flipped. She had done nothing wrong. It was only the second Monday of school. A nagging voice in the back of her head tried to turn the truth into a coherent thought, but she quashed it. The notion was ridiculous.
She got directions from a ghost, who also told her the password. She took the moving stairs and knocked on the door. “Enter,” said Headmistress McGonagall from the other side.
Sarah took a deep breath and walked in. Sitting in a chair in front of McGonagall’s desk was the one person Sarah did and did not want to see”her mother.
“Mum?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”
Cho closed her eyes and dropped her head. “I got your letter,” she said.
“I’ll be back momentarily,” said McGonagall. She left the study.
“Well?” said Sarah. “Is Cedric Diggory my father or isn’t he?”
Cho was silent for so long that Sarah was sure she wasn’t going to answer. “Was,” she finally said. “He was your father. He died just after we found out. I hid the signs with spells so that I could go to school. No one knew but me and my parents. We didn’t tell his family. My mother took care of you until I graduated. It was a very, very hard couple of years. When the war was over, I hid my wand away and pledged to have nothing to do with the magical world again. But then you had to come here.” By the time she was finished, the tears were flowing down her cheeks with force.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Sarah. “You couldn’t have just told me he was dead? I had hope for so long that maybe he was out there. You didn’t have to avoid the subject completely.”
“I don’t like to talk about him,” Cho said. “You would have asked questions that I don’t want to answer. I still don’t want to answer them. I don’t want to have this conversation with you, Sarah. You know the truth. There’s nothing more I can tell you. This changes nothing.”
Sarah stomped her foot. “It changes everything! You lied to me for my whole life, when the truth wasn’t even all that hard to tell! I can’t drop it! I deserve to know more about him. I deserve to hear it from you! I shouldn’t have had to sneak around here in order to know where I came from! Why can’t you just pull yourself together?”
“You don’t know what it’s like, the pain I went through,” Cho said quietly. “First he died. Then I was not only pregnant, but attempting to hide it, play Quidditch, and keep up with school work. Those last two years of Hogwarts were hell for me. When I was able to just go away and raise you…it was heaven. You are my heaven. I’m sorry that I lied to you. About everything.” She held out her hands. “I love you, Sarah. Can you forgive me?”
Sarah didn’t move. “Would he have agreed with you?”
“What?” asked Cho.
“Would my father have thought you did the right thing, leaving this world behind and keeping me in the dark? If he came back right now, would he approve?”
Cho’s silence was all the answer Sarah needed. She picked up her bag and left the office.
*
Professor McGonagall found Sarah in the trophy room. The girl sat in front of the Triwizard cup, trying to fill the empty place in her head with a boy she’d never known by staring at his name.
“It is difficult to fathom, isn’t it?” the old professor said. “Who was he? What did he think of you? What would have happened, had he lived?”
“Why can’t she just tell me?” said Sarah. “It’s been eleven years. Why isn’t she over it?”
“I don’t pretend to know everything,” said McGonagall. “But your mother has her own set of thoughts and feelings that influenced her decision. I do know that everything she has done for the past eleven years, she has done because she believed it best for you. Cedric’s death changed her. I can only guess that perhaps, as traumatized as she was, she imagined you might feel the same. She wanted to protect you from the pain she felt. He was a remarkable young man who I imagine would have been a good father.
“On that note, I believe that while Cedric would not approve of your mother’s choice, he would want you to forgive her. She has suffered more than you can comprehend, sheltered and loved as you are. That is not a bad thing,” she said when Sarah frowned. “I think, perhaps, if you take it slowly, asking little questions every once in a while, she might loosen up. If anyone can get her to talk, it is you.” McGonagall smiled. “You have great potential, Miss Chang. You come from two remarkable parents. I would be very surprised if you do not go far.”
She turned to leave. “Your mother will be departing in a short while, if you want to say goodbye.”
Sarah sat for another minute after McGonagall left. Then she stood up and placed her hand on the glass, right over his name. “Thank you,” she said.