Cho Chang
Age: 26
Birthdate: February 18, 1979
Family background: Cho grew up in a traditional and insular migrant family. Her father came to England on a scholar’s visa just after her oldest brother Long was born. Long was followed by five others: Mai, Weilei (“Winnie”), Qiu, Xiaochun (“Chun”), and Cho bringing up the rear. The Changs spoke Mandarin at home – without exception – but her father, recognizing the importance of beginning language learning at a young age, had all of his children learn Cantonese as well. Growing up, Cho only remembers having Chinese friends, and can’t think of many instances where they visited outside of their close circle of friends and family. Every now and again, and usually for work purposes, they would entertain foreign guests, but those instances were few. One would naturally assume that she had to fight for attention as a child, but as she was cute as a young girl and beautiful as a young woman, Cho was never left wanting for attention.
Her father has since retired, though he remains in England most of the year to keep an eye on his youngest of his brood – namely the two wildcards of the family, Chun and Cho. His other four children have all made stunning lives for themselves: Long is a respected Healer, is conducting research in blending Chinese and Western medicine, and has a beautiful, intelligent family; Mai married a businessman and moved to Beijing, where she has a comfortable life with her husband and children; Winnie cuts hair in Glasgow and lives with her budding family there; Qiu, though as yet unmarried, works for Gringott’s and is experiencing great success there. Chun, unlike his brother and sisters, has few marketable aspirations. He wants to be an artist, but that doesn’t quite fit into his father’s idea of a “good job”, so he aimlessly floats from odd job to odd job, hoping his dad will give up and let him do as he pleases. Chun still lives at the house, though he’s got a room (which doubles as his “studio”) in Cho’s flat, where he stays often. They all truck down to the house every week for dinner, at least the five in England do, and out to the family compound in China at least three times a year to visit their family.
House in School: Ravenclaw, finished 1996
Bloodline (and does it matter?): Cho is a Pureblood. While she certainly wishes no ill-tidings for half-bloods or Muggle-borns, Cho proud of her heritage and isn’t afraid to admit blood-status, despite the current backlash against Purebloods in England.
Political Views: Cho is very utilitarian: she one-hundred percent supports personal liberties, so long as a) nobody is hurt in the process and b) nobody else’s freedoms are being squashed. She’s certain this comes from growing up in a family where she had a myriad of expectations placed on her (which only gave her more impetus to rebel). As far as the reparations are concerned: while she only feels it’s fair to compensate those who suffered personal losses during the war, many a pureblood – including herself – fought on those lines as well, and that shouldn’t be ignored.
Appearance
Visual Representation: Zhang Ziyi
Description: Cho is average height (5’ 5”) and slim. She’s got long, black hair, dark eyes, and delicate features. She has an immaculate air about her: her wardrobe is modest, but sexy; her hair and make-up are always appropriate and pristine, not a hair out of place; her nails match her wardrobe day-in and day-out. That is to say, despite the fact that she may or may not have been
Psychology and Personality
Strengths and Weaknesses: Cho’s biggest strength is that she’s got a sense of justice about her; she defends what she thinks is right. She can generally keep it in check – now more than when she was 16 – though she most always pipes up in the name of fairness. Her biggest weakness is that she’s want to get caught in the middle of things, and when this happens she often has a hard time figuring out what to do. In an attempt to act how she thinks she should she can be a bit inconsistent, and makes herself miserable in the process. These instances are decreasing in frequency as she ages, though they still rear their ugly heads every now and again.
Habits\Quirks: Cho has a habit of twirling her hair between her fingers when she’s reading, though she’s trying to break herself of it. Aside from that, she’s generally habit/quirk free.
Likes\Dislikes: Cho likes timelessness – things that have been passed down for centuries and existed hundreds or thousands of years before she. She played the violin when she was young, and is known to pick it up every now and again to this day. When she plays, she’s filled with that timelessness, and it thrills her. Words also enthrall her – she could read for ages. She’s also taken to using more Chinese magic than Western magic. Quidditch was once a love of hers, and she keeps up with it to this day, though she hasn’t been on a broom in what feels like ages. She enjoyed the feeling of the wind against her face and being able to tumble with the boys who thought her so delicate, but she had no urge to turn pro. Cho dislikes, above all, unfairness. She’s also not a fan of people trying to control her, though even she admits she’s doing exactly what’s expected of her at the present.
Lifestyle
Occupation: Translator for and liaison between the British and Chinese ministries.
Financial Status: Comfortable.
Residence: Depends. Cho bounces between four residences – her family home in Kent, her small flat in the city, a rented room in Beijing, and the family compound in Jiangxi.
History from student days at Hogwarts to the present time: Cho isn’t the brightest of the Chang siblings (that title most definitely belongs to her older brother, Long), but she’s a fairly smart woman despite. Early on her parents insisted that they all work hard – it wasn’t every day that an opportunity like Hogwarts came about, after all – and due to a mixture of will and natural ability Cho was sorted into Ravenclaw. She was a good student, if anything to appease her parents, but was singled out as “the pretty girl” early on and gained popularity because of it; by 13 she had a gaggle of girls around her for no apparent reason, but she enjoyed the attention nonetheless. It was difficult for her to shine academically in Ravenclaw what with the innate brilliance some of her housemates were privy to, so Cho naturally came to place a lot of self-worth in her looks. When boys started finding her attractive she was at first a little confused, but she fell into the chase with an easy grace, at which point Cedric came onto the scene.
Although her initial attraction to Cedric was that he was the Golden Boy everyone expected her to like, she really did come to adore him during the time they spent together, and they spent a lot of it together. He soon became her closest companion, and his death simply rocked her. She was racked with grief. It’s not so much that Cedric’s death was the very worst thing that could have ever happened, but it was pretty tough to lose a close friend so young, and she hadn’t a clue how to deal with it. At this point she maintains that she simply lost any sense of self, i.e. became the man-eating monster we all came to know and dislike.
When Cho finished at Hogwarts she moved back to her parents’ house in Kent to start looking for a job. There was a war afoot, however, and the Changs made the decision early on that, if Britain became too risky, they would retreat to Jiangxi, where it was safe. By the end of that summer they were packing their belongings to leave. Cho was a bit mortified at her parents’ readiness to flee, and said everything she could think of to get her parents to stay, but to no avail; when they said an uncertain goodbye to their Kent home, so did Cho. They took the opportunity to wrangle some sense into their rebellious youngest two.
Though Cho was at first resilient – as always – she soon began to enjoy the much simpler life in Jiangxi. It gave her time to get to know her family as an adult, and, more importantly, reflect a bit on what had happened and what was currently happening in Britain. It put her at peace, waking up to lush green fields and knowing she wouldn’t be expected to do much more than help around the house. That said, she still felt a needling pang deep within her at taking such an easy out; she should have been in Britain doing the valiant thing, and she couldn’t shake the guilt, no matter how hard she tried.
She bade her housemates keep her up to date on the war, and the more she heard the worse it got. One night, despite her parents’ rather threatening warnings to the opposite, she up and left the compound and headed for Hogwarts – she’d be damned if she didn’t do the right thing at this juncture. She survived the war with a few bumps and bruises and a scar on her right thigh from a curse, but not much worse. She returned home the next day to angry, relieved parents, whose feelings were so mixed they didn’t speak to her for nearly a week.
When they did, however, the result was just as harsh as she expected. After a good seven hours of scolding, Cho was informed that she’d be disowned if she pulled a move like that again, and worse, she wouldn’t be returning to Britain again until they deemed fit. Faced with the choice of behaving like her parents wanted her to or doing as she pleased and losing the family she desperately loved, Cho caved, and spent the next three years living and working on the family compound.
She grew up a lot in those three years, and was all too happy to shed her teenaged skin the year she turned twenty-one. On her 21st birthday, her father picked her up from the compound, and she moved back into her childhood home and began a much delayed job search. When the Ministry job came up, Cho was hesitant – she wasn’t too excited about the prospect of office work – but her father thought it was the ideal job for her, so she took despite her apprehension. She’s been working there four years now, and finds it duller by the day. The excitement in Cho’s life comes from her friends and family now, doubly so since moving into her own modest flat in the city. She still has a bit of a playful, sometimes unruly, streak in her, but it’s nothing too disastrous, and her parents are generally oblivious to it. Besides, she has to have something to do at work between translation jobs.
Cho's Puppet Master is Erin (rockettea)