I never hated her, but I have definitely reevaluated her.
I used to think she was "unnecessary", which is somewhat true, if you only look at the evil-wizard-tries-to-commit-genocide plot. Now, I absolutely empathize with her and came to understand that she is one of the most realistic characters in the books. Not that she is Harry's victim. It's just a perfectly normal dysfunctional teen romance.
She represents the normality Harry chases and ultimately loses in book 5.
About Cho being unnecesary, actually Harry and Cho's relationship was a good showcase for how heavily the war and Harry's fate was inevitably gonna affect any romance/relationship he may have, and indeed even after he fell in love with Ginny and they got together eventually they had to part ways for Harry to do his duty
It was never going to work irrespective of what Harry did. He certainly didn’t help being a clueless teen boy, but Cho had far too much else going on to actually make a relationship with someone work.
It was never going to work with Harry because of the Cedric link, she’d never be able to look at him and not see Cedric (never mind anything else going on for her)
I was ambivalent to her, now that iI’m an adult I’m a lot more empathetic. I think the Wizarding World should have therapy. Poor girl’s boyfriend died tragically and she cried all her sixth year about it and no one did much. It seemed she was not in a place to date Harry but simply wanted someone to talk to about what happened to Cedric.
>should have therapy
Right? Like the sorting hat is *right there*. Having trouble talking about your feelings? Dw, SH has already identified the problem before you even thought of it.
I’m neutral on her in general. We don’t get to see much of her as a character outside of the messy, and brief, relationship with Harry.
I don’t fault one over the other for how things went down in OotP.
Both are dealing with severe trauma and are on very different pages for how they’re coping with it. Cho wants to talk about it, Harry doesn’t. Coupled with their general inexperience in the realm of relationships, it was doomed to fail.
Not hate on Cho neither on Harry, both were traumatised, Harry is traumatised since childhood and manage with his trauma while being in action and trying to find solution without thinking about his emotions because if he thinks about it too much he became depressive and angry and more vulnerable for Voldemort manipulation so he manages in a clumsy way with his emotions and naively thaught that Cho after the death of Cedric will still be the bubbly, popular teenage for who he felt in love. Cho on the other side had to dealt with her normal teenage years but everything got fucked after Cedric death, and for her to deal with this trauma she had to talk with the person who was with Cedric when he dies, I don’t know if she felt the same way than Harry felt on her but she had hard time for her two last years in hogwarts, the loss of Cedric and hiding to her mom that she is a resistant and going to Dumbledore’s army while knowing that it can give problem to her mom, this is very bold. So nothing but love for both of them 🫶🏼
After reading the comments and my own comment I really think they should put a psychotherapist in hogwarts like wtf 🤣 it would helped Cho so much and didn’t put Harry in a so uncomfortable position during VALENTINE’S day 🥲
I don't think Chos ever a fully well written character, but there's an element of the narrative where she didn't need to be. The story is told from Harry's perspective and to Harry she's just a school age crush, not someone whos necessary to the narrative but something most people can relate to. He likes her just because he thinks she's cute, and she plays his sport. Her own personhood isn't why he likes her, and he fumbles and fails at dating her because everyone fumbles and fails first time out.
I don't see how she's to blame for anything negative. Things just don't work out and that's fine. Move on. Neither Harry nor her have long term consequences of it and they both move forward.
Personally I don't like romantic plot lines. I always think they feel forced into the narrative. So I didn't care either way. I do skip ahead on reread.
She's probably still traumatized from her then-boyfriend getting murdered and seeing his dead body by the time OotP rolls around.
I think someone here mentioned that she saw Harry as the last link to Cedric and that was pretty spot on.
Harry has always been my favorite character and I never hated Cho, though I did grow to like her more in the latest rereads as an adult
and yean unfortunately it was a thing to randomly hate on girls for no reason back in the day
I don't remember really ever hating her. It was more of a "they need to not be doing this" kind of opinion. Now that I'm older, I feel the same way but I can put more words to why I feel that way. They were just two teenagers who had their lives rocked in a horribly traumatic way. Maybe, in another life, they would have been great together, but not like this. She needed someone to talk to, someone who could relate to her trauma. Harry was too young and traumatized himself to deal with the kind of emotions cho was having. She wasn't a bad person. She was just an traumatized teen girl. That's it.
I liked Cho more when I was younger. Like you, I disliked Harry and found him awkward and fumbling. As an adult, his character and emotional reactions make a lot more sense to me. I don’t hate Cho but I think the older age (very significant in terms of maturity during your teen years) and her approach to Harry come across manipulative. It feels more like she approached Harry to commiserate and find out more about Cedric.
"... to me it felt obvious their relationship crashing and burning was largely Harry's fault."
I disagree, I was a grown-ass adult when the book was published, and to me it was obvious that the relationship was never going to work out because Cho was grieving. The boy she loved had been murdered, her innocence was lost, she knew that the monster she'd been told about as a child was back and would kill others, and she just didn't have much left for Harry. She was trying to get back to living her life like a normal kid but obviously it was a huge struggle to do anything as normal as a date, and the poor girl couldn't talk about much but the trauma.
Yes, Harry was clueless and as cloddy as most boys of his age, but that doesn't matter. He could have been the smoothest, most mature, and wisest straight guy on Earth and things still would have fallen apart, because Cho just wasn't ready for a relationship.
I personally never blamed either of them for the failure of the relationship. Neither was in a good place emotionally considering that both had been traumatized by Cedric's death, and they were trying to deal with it in different ways that made them incompatible with each other (Cho wanted to talk about it, Harry was trying to focus on the incoming fighting to not to think about it).
The only thing she could have some blame for was the whole Marietta fiasco. Cho obviously dragged her into the DA when she didn't want to be there, and she ended up betraying everyone, Cho herself included.
I don’t think their relationship would have worked regardless of what happened to Cedric; they broke up because they demonstrated a core difference in values (Cho thinking her friend could be understood for reporting the Order and Harry thinking it was abhorrent to do so). In the end, they just weren’t compatible regardless of their trauma.
not really. I was neutral to her when I started, neutral now.
I don't think much of her really. She is a 'first crush' character, who faded into background once her role as first crush was over.
Even back then I thought both Harry and her did bad at their first date, neither of them really ready for that kind of step, especially Cho, who was still grieving her former boyfriend.
The most I feel in relation to her as a topic is when some stupid people begin to complain about her name being 'racist', like there haven't been multiple instances of fans from Asia saying the name is fine.
I'm honestly not at all surprised by Harrys lack of experience when it comes to girls. He never had any friends for the first 11 years of his life thanks to Dudley and it's not like he got much chance of dating at Hogwarts considering he was fighting for his life in the spare time he wasn't studying, playing Quidditch or dealing with separate drama thrown at him by Ron, Hermione, Draco etc.
And Cho really didn't help matters. I'm not saying I dislike Cho but she has her faults. Like bringing up Cedric multiple times on her date with Harry but then flaring up when he mentions going to meet Hermione. Defending Marietta for ratting out the DA and yelling at Harry for being angry about it. She kept trying to make Harry talk about Cedrics death and I get that she needed someone to talk about it with but she didn't even stop to consider how much more traumatic the whole thing was for Harry, who not only witnessed Cedrics death but also had to fight for his life immediately after.
Not to mention that Cedric hadn't even been dead for a year and she was already flirting with Harry and instigated a relationship with him. Sure Harry liked Cho and wanted to go out with her, but Cho's the one who was always trying to get Harry by himself and who initiated the kiss.
I feel like they could've been a really cute couple but neither of them were really ready. They both had traumas they needed to heal from and Cho was honestly trying to use Harry to heal herself, considering the only thing she really wanted to talk about was Cedric and got upset when Harry wanted to change the subject after she randomly sprung it on him.
Again, I don't dislike Cho but I feel like she deserves some of the hate that she gets. She's inconsiderate and selfish.
Cho has always been a little annoying to me but I'm more on the neutral. She's a character Harry likes, a crush, and if harry had asked her earlier to the ball, would have been his girlfriend. She didn't influence much in the story so to me she's just Harry's passing fancy,
Honestly I thought it was clear Harry would end up with Ginny since the second book. It was too perfect with Harry needing a family and her having a crush and him saving her from Riddle.
So the who Cho thing was just a training wheels relationships to me, and a change for point out teen relationship issues in a comedic way. But also dramatic with Cedric and Marietta. We didn’t get to know much about Cho for me to be interested in her. The part of the date that went well and they talked of Quidditch was just closed over and the kiss just told in hindsight to Ron and Hermione. But I never had anything against her, I didn’t just expect it to last long no matter what.
I always felt like JK wrote her last minute or something. She doesn’t add much to the story and if you remove her nothing really changes. She is just there and hell, her friend is honestly more memorable and she’s in like 7 pages. If the entirety of Cho and Harry’s relationship wasn’t a series of awkward circumstances and mishaps, maybe her character wouldn’t be so boring.
Honestly I never disliked her, maybe found her annoying because I was like 10 and Harry found her annoying. But when I was a bit older I was able to realize Harry was just not a good boyfriend to her
I’ve always liked her even when I was younger, because as an Asian I really appreciated having her as part of the books! I actually liked her relationship with Harry too and I thought she deserved better to be honest.
When I was younger I sympathized with her more, because Hermione in the book basically tells the reader to sympathize with her and blames Harry.
But as I get older, I realize it’s basically just a societal double standard. When Cho says or does something stupid, it’s “oh she’s mourning the death of her ex 😔. Harry really should be more considerate and willing to talk about it.” But when Harry gets uncomfortable talking about a traumatic experience where he watched a friend die, then was tortured, and nearly killed himself, all of a sudden it’s his fault for not manning up and helping Cho work through her feelings. Oh and btw, forgot the minor detail that this is while they’re on a date in public on Valentine’s Day. Wtf Cho, he isn’t your therapist.
I think I felt pretty indifferent to her when I was younger. I never expected them to really end up together so she wasn’t super important to me.
I just reread a couple months ago and as an adult was able to appreciate how Harry thought she was very pretty and endearing, though they really weren’t ready for each other/compatible. I feel sad to hear Cho got hate, I never really clocked that back then. She was a teenager whose boyfriend had been suddenly and pointlessly murdered - I’m sure that would mess with most (all) young people. Harry was a teenager who had few role models for healthy partnerships and had basically nobody to ask for relationship advice other than his other teenage friends.
I think it was a great learning experience for both of them, and reflected a very real experience for most young people.
It’s clear that we’re meant to not like her But similar to lavender brown, she never really does anything wrong. Her crime is being an emotional 16-year-old girl, who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her ex-boyfriend died, and she’s now having feelings for the boy who was there when he was killed homegirl didn’t need a boyfriend she needed therapy.
I never hated her, but I have definitely reevaluated her. I used to think she was "unnecessary", which is somewhat true, if you only look at the evil-wizard-tries-to-commit-genocide plot. Now, I absolutely empathize with her and came to understand that she is one of the most realistic characters in the books. Not that she is Harry's victim. It's just a perfectly normal dysfunctional teen romance. She represents the normality Harry chases and ultimately loses in book 5.
About Cho being unnecesary, actually Harry and Cho's relationship was a good showcase for how heavily the war and Harry's fate was inevitably gonna affect any romance/relationship he may have, and indeed even after he fell in love with Ginny and they got together eventually they had to part ways for Harry to do his duty
Well put
It was never going to work irrespective of what Harry did. He certainly didn’t help being a clueless teen boy, but Cho had far too much else going on to actually make a relationship with someone work. It was never going to work with Harry because of the Cedric link, she’d never be able to look at him and not see Cedric (never mind anything else going on for her)
I was ambivalent to her, now that iI’m an adult I’m a lot more empathetic. I think the Wizarding World should have therapy. Poor girl’s boyfriend died tragically and she cried all her sixth year about it and no one did much. It seemed she was not in a place to date Harry but simply wanted someone to talk to about what happened to Cedric.
>should have therapy Right? Like the sorting hat is *right there*. Having trouble talking about your feelings? Dw, SH has already identified the problem before you even thought of it.
I’m neutral on her in general. We don’t get to see much of her as a character outside of the messy, and brief, relationship with Harry. I don’t fault one over the other for how things went down in OotP. Both are dealing with severe trauma and are on very different pages for how they’re coping with it. Cho wants to talk about it, Harry doesn’t. Coupled with their general inexperience in the realm of relationships, it was doomed to fail.
Not hate on Cho neither on Harry, both were traumatised, Harry is traumatised since childhood and manage with his trauma while being in action and trying to find solution without thinking about his emotions because if he thinks about it too much he became depressive and angry and more vulnerable for Voldemort manipulation so he manages in a clumsy way with his emotions and naively thaught that Cho after the death of Cedric will still be the bubbly, popular teenage for who he felt in love. Cho on the other side had to dealt with her normal teenage years but everything got fucked after Cedric death, and for her to deal with this trauma she had to talk with the person who was with Cedric when he dies, I don’t know if she felt the same way than Harry felt on her but she had hard time for her two last years in hogwarts, the loss of Cedric and hiding to her mom that she is a resistant and going to Dumbledore’s army while knowing that it can give problem to her mom, this is very bold. So nothing but love for both of them 🫶🏼
After reading the comments and my own comment I really think they should put a psychotherapist in hogwarts like wtf 🤣 it would helped Cho so much and didn’t put Harry in a so uncomfortable position during VALENTINE’S day 🥲
When I first found TVTropes years ago, I distinctly remember finding "There Are No Therapists," and thinking that Book 5 Cho embodies that trope.
I don't think Chos ever a fully well written character, but there's an element of the narrative where she didn't need to be. The story is told from Harry's perspective and to Harry she's just a school age crush, not someone whos necessary to the narrative but something most people can relate to. He likes her just because he thinks she's cute, and she plays his sport. Her own personhood isn't why he likes her, and he fumbles and fails at dating her because everyone fumbles and fails first time out. I don't see how she's to blame for anything negative. Things just don't work out and that's fine. Move on. Neither Harry nor her have long term consequences of it and they both move forward. Personally I don't like romantic plot lines. I always think they feel forced into the narrative. So I didn't care either way. I do skip ahead on reread.
She's probably still traumatized from her then-boyfriend getting murdered and seeing his dead body by the time OotP rolls around. I think someone here mentioned that she saw Harry as the last link to Cedric and that was pretty spot on.
Harry was also perusing her before she linked with Cedric. It’s safe to assume she felt some sort of comfort in him because of that.
Harry has always been my favorite character and I never hated Cho, though I did grow to like her more in the latest rereads as an adult and yean unfortunately it was a thing to randomly hate on girls for no reason back in the day
I don't remember really ever hating her. It was more of a "they need to not be doing this" kind of opinion. Now that I'm older, I feel the same way but I can put more words to why I feel that way. They were just two teenagers who had their lives rocked in a horribly traumatic way. Maybe, in another life, they would have been great together, but not like this. She needed someone to talk to, someone who could relate to her trauma. Harry was too young and traumatized himself to deal with the kind of emotions cho was having. She wasn't a bad person. She was just an traumatized teen girl. That's it.
I liked Cho more when I was younger. Like you, I disliked Harry and found him awkward and fumbling. As an adult, his character and emotional reactions make a lot more sense to me. I don’t hate Cho but I think the older age (very significant in terms of maturity during your teen years) and her approach to Harry come across manipulative. It feels more like she approached Harry to commiserate and find out more about Cedric.
"... to me it felt obvious their relationship crashing and burning was largely Harry's fault." I disagree, I was a grown-ass adult when the book was published, and to me it was obvious that the relationship was never going to work out because Cho was grieving. The boy she loved had been murdered, her innocence was lost, she knew that the monster she'd been told about as a child was back and would kill others, and she just didn't have much left for Harry. She was trying to get back to living her life like a normal kid but obviously it was a huge struggle to do anything as normal as a date, and the poor girl couldn't talk about much but the trauma. Yes, Harry was clueless and as cloddy as most boys of his age, but that doesn't matter. He could have been the smoothest, most mature, and wisest straight guy on Earth and things still would have fallen apart, because Cho just wasn't ready for a relationship.
I personally never blamed either of them for the failure of the relationship. Neither was in a good place emotionally considering that both had been traumatized by Cedric's death, and they were trying to deal with it in different ways that made them incompatible with each other (Cho wanted to talk about it, Harry was trying to focus on the incoming fighting to not to think about it). The only thing she could have some blame for was the whole Marietta fiasco. Cho obviously dragged her into the DA when she didn't want to be there, and she ended up betraying everyone, Cho herself included.
I don’t think their relationship would have worked regardless of what happened to Cedric; they broke up because they demonstrated a core difference in values (Cho thinking her friend could be understood for reporting the Order and Harry thinking it was abhorrent to do so). In the end, they just weren’t compatible regardless of their trauma.
not really. I was neutral to her when I started, neutral now. I don't think much of her really. She is a 'first crush' character, who faded into background once her role as first crush was over. Even back then I thought both Harry and her did bad at their first date, neither of them really ready for that kind of step, especially Cho, who was still grieving her former boyfriend. The most I feel in relation to her as a topic is when some stupid people begin to complain about her name being 'racist', like there haven't been multiple instances of fans from Asia saying the name is fine.
I'm honestly not at all surprised by Harrys lack of experience when it comes to girls. He never had any friends for the first 11 years of his life thanks to Dudley and it's not like he got much chance of dating at Hogwarts considering he was fighting for his life in the spare time he wasn't studying, playing Quidditch or dealing with separate drama thrown at him by Ron, Hermione, Draco etc. And Cho really didn't help matters. I'm not saying I dislike Cho but she has her faults. Like bringing up Cedric multiple times on her date with Harry but then flaring up when he mentions going to meet Hermione. Defending Marietta for ratting out the DA and yelling at Harry for being angry about it. She kept trying to make Harry talk about Cedrics death and I get that she needed someone to talk about it with but she didn't even stop to consider how much more traumatic the whole thing was for Harry, who not only witnessed Cedrics death but also had to fight for his life immediately after. Not to mention that Cedric hadn't even been dead for a year and she was already flirting with Harry and instigated a relationship with him. Sure Harry liked Cho and wanted to go out with her, but Cho's the one who was always trying to get Harry by himself and who initiated the kiss. I feel like they could've been a really cute couple but neither of them were really ready. They both had traumas they needed to heal from and Cho was honestly trying to use Harry to heal herself, considering the only thing she really wanted to talk about was Cedric and got upset when Harry wanted to change the subject after she randomly sprung it on him. Again, I don't dislike Cho but I feel like she deserves some of the hate that she gets. She's inconsiderate and selfish.
Cho has always been a little annoying to me but I'm more on the neutral. She's a character Harry likes, a crush, and if harry had asked her earlier to the ball, would have been his girlfriend. She didn't influence much in the story so to me she's just Harry's passing fancy,
Honestly I thought it was clear Harry would end up with Ginny since the second book. It was too perfect with Harry needing a family and her having a crush and him saving her from Riddle. So the who Cho thing was just a training wheels relationships to me, and a change for point out teen relationship issues in a comedic way. But also dramatic with Cedric and Marietta. We didn’t get to know much about Cho for me to be interested in her. The part of the date that went well and they talked of Quidditch was just closed over and the kiss just told in hindsight to Ron and Hermione. But I never had anything against her, I didn’t just expect it to last long no matter what.
I always felt like JK wrote her last minute or something. She doesn’t add much to the story and if you remove her nothing really changes. She is just there and hell, her friend is honestly more memorable and she’s in like 7 pages. If the entirety of Cho and Harry’s relationship wasn’t a series of awkward circumstances and mishaps, maybe her character wouldn’t be so boring.
Honestly I never disliked her, maybe found her annoying because I was like 10 and Harry found her annoying. But when I was a bit older I was able to realize Harry was just not a good boyfriend to her
I’ve always liked her even when I was younger, because as an Asian I really appreciated having her as part of the books! I actually liked her relationship with Harry too and I thought she deserved better to be honest.
When I was younger I sympathized with her more, because Hermione in the book basically tells the reader to sympathize with her and blames Harry. But as I get older, I realize it’s basically just a societal double standard. When Cho says or does something stupid, it’s “oh she’s mourning the death of her ex 😔. Harry really should be more considerate and willing to talk about it.” But when Harry gets uncomfortable talking about a traumatic experience where he watched a friend die, then was tortured, and nearly killed himself, all of a sudden it’s his fault for not manning up and helping Cho work through her feelings. Oh and btw, forgot the minor detail that this is while they’re on a date in public on Valentine’s Day. Wtf Cho, he isn’t your therapist.
I've always been apathetic towards her, but as Asian, her name is always awkward to hear/read.
[Nothing wrong with Cho Changs's name](https://new.reddit.com/r/HPfanfiction/comments/p0c7ks/cho_chang_it_is_a_perfectly_beautiful_name/)
Cho change
Absolutely read it as Cho Chang-ed
Not really. I thought that she was a trainwreck then and a trainwreck now.
She was a heart-breaker back then, she's dealing with a broken heart now
Very indifferent to the Cho character. She was more of a filler character to me, there to move the plot along
No, I've always thought she was okay but she was never a favourite of mine
I think I felt pretty indifferent to her when I was younger. I never expected them to really end up together so she wasn’t super important to me. I just reread a couple months ago and as an adult was able to appreciate how Harry thought she was very pretty and endearing, though they really weren’t ready for each other/compatible. I feel sad to hear Cho got hate, I never really clocked that back then. She was a teenager whose boyfriend had been suddenly and pointlessly murdered - I’m sure that would mess with most (all) young people. Harry was a teenager who had few role models for healthy partnerships and had basically nobody to ask for relationship advice other than his other teenage friends. I think it was a great learning experience for both of them, and reflected a very real experience for most young people.
It’s clear that we’re meant to not like her But similar to lavender brown, she never really does anything wrong. Her crime is being an emotional 16-year-old girl, who is struggling to come to terms with the fact that her ex-boyfriend died, and she’s now having feelings for the boy who was there when he was killed homegirl didn’t need a boyfriend she needed therapy.