Hi! question: Harry was high-key horrible towards Cho, and no one ever called him out on that. Which is sort of weird, because a) he is surrounded by people who would, b) he never ever has thoughts "women are stupid cows" etc. Hermione sort of does (because jkr does), but like. It's not the premise of the books that women are stupid cows. I would even argue that its canon that Harry acts like a total twat when he's with Cho (meaning that jkr thinks so also), but you see, because Cho can't withstand Harry's friendship with Hermione and her importance in Harry's life, therefore Cho, s=according to canon, is a stupid cow who is friends with traitors.
ok so with Cho it's probably a matter of jkr not knowing how to write communities as tight as the wizarding ones (because somebody would have said something to him. a) it's juicy, b) they are both quidditch players so have lots of mutual friends between them, like why wouldn't Fred and George play ball with Cho occasionally for example), but still this has always been such a strange plot point to me, because Harry actually occasionally acts like a massive piece of shit to Hermione and Ron never said a thing. no one did. which is yeah jkr is a misogynist, old news, but strange. like what, Ron is a kind of person who won't say hey Harry stop being a twat?
eh... i don't think this is a fair reading of what happens.
while you're right that cho gets whacked with two of the doylist text's big issues - protagonist-centred morality [aka behaviour which wouldn't be tolerated from anyone else is fine when harry does it] and jkr's detestation of anything she views as disloyalty [hence her glee at the idea that marietta was permanently disfigured by hermione because "i loathe a traitor"], which means that cho ends up being positioned as much more in the wrong about the end of their relationship than harry ever does specifically because of her defence of marietta - i don't think harry is horrible to her, nor that the text intends you to think that he is, nor that the text intends you think that cho would deserve it if he was.
instead, harry behaves stupidly and dismissively towards cho - largely unintentionally - for a combination of reasons. some of these are literary - he's the protagonist and the only narrative perspective we receive - but most of them are human. harry is fifteen, dense about other people's inner lives at the best of times, and denser than usual because he's going through a lot.
and this last point is important. harry's relationship with cho is something i always really like reading because it's a really, really good insight into the fact that experiencing something traumatic can make people incredibly self-centred.
[which isn't a sin. but nor is it a virtue, either.]
the basic issue in harry and cho's relationship is how they each process grief. harry - entirely understandably - doesn't want to talk about cedric's death. cho - entirely understandably - does. harry interprets cho's desire to share her grief as insulting - he sees it as an attempt to keep pouring salt into his trauma-induced wound. cho interprets his refusal to share her grief as similarly insulting - she sees it as an attempt to dismiss and belittle her colossal trauma.
it's worth pointing out that their kiss follows the only moment in canon where each of them actually makes an effort to understand the other's process - harry by engaging [however begrudgingly] with cho's desire for reassurance that cedric didn't die because of a lack of talent [that is, that there wasn't anything obvious which she could have done to save him], and cho by recognising that he finds talking about cedric difficult:
She shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "I'm - sorry," she said thickly. "I suppose... it's just... learning all this stuff... It just makes me... wonder whether ... if he'd known it all... he'd still be alive..."
Harry's heart sank right back past its usual spot and settled somewhere around his navel. He ought to have known. She wanted to talk about Cedric.
"He did know this stuff," Harry said heavily. "He was really good at it, or he could never have got to the middle of that maze. But if Voldemort really wants to kill you, you don't stand a chance."
She hiccuped at the sound of Voldemort's name, but stared at Harry without flinching.
"You survived when you were just a baby," she said quietly.
"Yeah, well," said Harry wearily, moving toward the door, "I dunno why, nor does anyone else, so it's nothing to be proud of."
"Oh don't go!" said Cho, sounding tearful again. "I'm really sorry to get all upset like this... I didn't mean to..."
She hiccuped again. She was very pretty even when her eyes were red and puffy. Harry felt thoroughly miserable. He'd have been so pleased just with a Merry Christmas...
"I know it must be horrible for you," she said, mopping her eyes on her sleeve again. "Me mentioning Cedric, when you saw him die... I suppose you just want to forget about it..."
Harry did not say anything to this; it was quite true, but he felt heartless saying it.
"You're a r-really good teacher, you know," said Cho, with a watery smile. "I've never been able to Stun anything before."
"Thanks," said Harry awkwardly.
They looked at each other for a long moment. Harry felt a burning desire to run from the room and, at the same time, a complete inability to move his feet.
"Mistletoe," said Cho quietly, pointing at the ceiling over his head. [OotP 21]
sadly, neither of them ever repeat this feat again...
but there's a second layer to harry and cho's divergent approaches to grief, which is that harry isn't great at recognising that other people's traumatic experiences affect them as - or even more - profoundly as his own affect him.
harry's view in order of the phoenix is that because he's the only person who had to experience the specific trauma of watching wormtail murder cedric and then seeing voldemort return from the dead, his trauma is worse/more impactful/more important - whatever term you want to use - than that of anyone who hasn't had this specific experience.
this is where his dislike of cho crying comes from. while i know this is how a lot of people take it [and jkr certainly doesn't help herself when it comes to this interpretation], harry doesn't object to her emotions because she's a woman, so much as because he thinks that her emotional reaction is disproportionate in comparison to his own. he - the person who saw cedric die - isn't constantly crying about him. so why is cho, when her experience of cedric's death is a rung below his on the trauma ladder?
he does something similar in half-blood prince, when he's under the impression that tonk's misery is caused by grief for sirius. when he realises that it's actually about lupin, he actually kind of gets it...
and also in half-blood prince, harry views both hermione and ginny's tears at dumbledore's funeral as entirely sensible because they're proportionate to his understanding of the occasion.
now, this is certainly somewhere where the doylist text's views on gender - especially its belief that women are inherently "sensible" and women who have emotional responses which jkr deems irrational are letting the side down - creeps in.
and there's also a bit of narrative context which needs to be borne in mind, which is that order of the phoenix is a coming-of-age story.
harry spends the book learning to be the chosen one, completing an arc which begins at the end of prisoner of azkaban. and part of how he does this is by coming to appreciate that the death eaters impacted society more broadly than just him and his parents. in the first three books of the series - and in deathly hallows - the first war [and, in deathly hallows, much of the second] is framed in such a way that the reader would be forgiven for thinking that james, lily, and harry were the only people ever targeted by the dark lord.
in order of the phoenix, however, harry is forced to recognise that plenty of people he knows are also grieving losses caused by voldemort and his minions - above all, neville.
but the lesson harry has to take from this - since, of course, he's the series' singular hero - is that his job is to avenge all of these losses because he's more important than everyone else.
cho becomes a victim of this learning curve. the harry of half-blood prince would behave completely differently towards her, because he'd view her as one of voldemort's victims who was going to be comforted by his destruction of the dark lord.
but even without these twin narrative lenses, harry's behaviour in order of the phoenix is - while certainly not sympathetic - completely understandable. he's not in a place where he has the emotional bandwidth to truly appreciate that cho is just trying to survive the process of grieving her dead boyfriend, because he's not in a place where he's able to put aside the idea that his experience is "worse".
but there's also a non-trauma-related issue in harry and cho's relationship - or, a non-trauma-related issue from harry's perspective, i should say - which, while it's harry being dense rather than cruel, also contributes to cho feeling dismissed.
and that's how the two of them understand their relationship's place within the passage of time.
from harry's perspective, the two of them getting together is the natural conclusion of the crush he developed on cho in prisoner of azkaban. as we see throughout goblet of fire, his view isn't that cho preferred cedric, it's that cedric got there first - he sees it as completely without question that, if he'd asked her to the ball more promptly, she would have been with him.
in harry's mind, then, cedric was a minor blip in the linear progression of his relationship with cho - a simple obstacle to something inevitable, now removed.
from cho's perspective - however - there's nothing inevitable about it.
from where she's standing, her relationship with cedric was something separate - in which harry did not feature - which she's forced to leave in another life, on the other side of a fucking enormous rift, when cedric dies. her relationship with harry is - as she understands it - an attempt to reach back across this rift, and to connect the strange new world she finds herself in [and the strange new version of herself she finds herself being] to the one she's had to leave behind.
this is why harry interprets cho bringing up cedric as her bringing up his love-rival in an attempt to make him jealous. but that's not what she's doing. he just won't see it that way.
cho is trying to make him jealous when it comes to roger davies. but - i think it's worth being really clear about this - jkr thinks that she's the person in the right here.
[and this is something which connects to the point about hermione - which i haven't got the space to go into more detail about here. harry is indeed frequently really quite cruel to hermione - far crueler, in fact, than he ever is to cho - but hermione is almost exclusively absolutely correct in whatever she's said to trigger his response. she's right about sirius sending the firebolt, she's right about sirius' treatment of kreacher, she's right that harry's vision of sirius being tortured is false, she's right about the prince's book being dodgy, she's right that they shouldn't follow "bathilda bagshot", and so on. the doylist text doesn't see this as a boy kicking off at a girl. it sees this as harry learning the lesson that hermione - like all admirable women - is much more sensible than he is and he should listen to her...]
cho brings up roger as a roundabout way of telling harry that she's chosen him - what she means by it is "i'm not just here because i don't have any other option. i want to be here with you."
she's doing the same thing when she brings up hermione. what she's trying to check is whether harry wants to be with her regardless of his other options, or if he's only with her until something better comes along.
which is what hermione tells him:
"... so then [...] she jumps up, right, and says 'I'll see you around, Harry,' and runs out of the place!" He put down his spoon and looked at Hermione. "I mean, what was all that about? What was going on?"
Hermione glanced over at the back of Cho’s head and sighed.
"Oh, Harry," she said sadly. "Well, I'm sorry, but you were a bit tactless."
"Me, tactless?" said Harry, outraged. "One minute we were getting on fine, next minute she was telling me that Roger Davies asked her out, and how she used to go and snog Cedric in that stupid tea shop - how was I supposed to feel about that?"
"Well, you see," said Hermione, with the patient air of one explaining that one plus one equals two to an overemotional toddler, "you shouldn't have told her that you wanted to meet me halfway through your date."
"But, but," spluttered Harry, "but - you told me to meet you at twelve and to bring her along, how was I supposed to do that without telling her - ?"
"You should have told her differently" said Hermione, still with that maddeningly patient air. "You should have said it was really annoying, but I'd made you promise to come along to the Three Broomsticks, and you really didn't want to go, you'd much rather spend the whole day with her, but unfortunately you thought you really ought to meet me and would she please, please come along with you, and hopefully you'd be able to get away more quickly? And it might have been a good idea to mention how ugly you think I am too," Hermione added as an afterthought.
"But I don't think you're ugly," said Harry, bemused.
Hermione laughed.
"Harry, you're worse than Ron [...] Look — you upset Cho when you said you were going to meet me, so she tried to make you jealous. It was her way of trying to find out how much you liked her."
"Is that what she was doing? [...] Well, wouldn't it have been easier if she'd just asked me whether I liked her better than you?"
"Girls don't often ask questions like that," said Hermione. [OotP 26]
[harry and cho's relationship is also - it's worth noting - a nail in harmony's coffin, which is the doylist reason hermione is the object of cho's jealousy.]
while - yes - this is bound up in jkr's weird essentialist ideas about innate "male" and "female" ways of communicating, hermione is correct in her interpretation of cho's behaviour in this specific context. in the text's eyes, harry is at fault for not knowing how to read cho's subtext.
and harry does actually learn a lesson from this. ginny is massively jealous of several other women - including cho - but harry doesn't rise to her attempts to bait him over this jealousy.
harry also learns a second lesson about relationships from his time with cho - that you can't hope to sustain a relationship on physical attraction alone. harry and cho don't speak in prisoner of azkaban and barely speak in goblet of fire, and the moment they begin interacting with slightly more regularity in order of the phoenix, it's clear that they have absolutely nothing in common except quidditch and cedric.
their relationship - then - is the forerunner of ron and lavender's in half-blood prince. both harry and ron have a humiliating experience [although harry's is less humiliating, because he's the hero], which leads to them learning that going out with a girl when your personalities don't click is a dumb move. this allows them to - in the eyes of the doylist text - become mature enough to "deserve" their endgame couples.
[michael corner, who ends up with cho, is her male equivalent. he doesn't deserve ginny because he's immature. harry does.]
and something which i think it's worth noting is that harry is called out on this, when ron clocks - while, interestingly, hermione doesn't - that harry's attraction to cho is purely physical, and that he doesn't actually want to pursue a relationship with her:
Hermione looked as though she was restraining herself from rolling her eyes with extreme difficulty.
"Well, I suppose it could have been worse," she said. "Are you going to see her again?"
"I'll have to, won't I?" said Harry. "We've got D.A. meetings, haven't we?"
"You know what I mean," said Hermione impatiently.
Harry said nothing. Hermione's words opened up a whole new vista of frightening possibilities. He tried to imagine going somewhere with Cho - Hogsmeade, perhaps - and being alone with her for hours at a time. Of course, she would have been expecting him to ask her out after what had just happened... The thought made his stomach clench painfully.
"Oh well," said Hermione distantly, buried in her letter once more, "you'll have plenty of opportunities to ask her..."
"What if he doesn't want to ask her?" said Ron, who had been watching Harry with an unusually shrewd expression on his face. [OotP 21]
and this - especially when combined with hermione's reaction to harry's treatment of cho on their date and hermione's response to harry telling her that he kissed cho ["you just had to be nice to her... you were, weren't you?"] - is why i don't think that it's correct to say that harry isn't criticised for his behaviour.
but i also don't think it's fair to say that harry should have had the law laid down with any more force than this. i don't get the impression in canon that anyone other than ron and hermione realises that harry's interested in cho - certainly, the only person other than ron and hermione who notices that they're together and feels the need to pass comment on it is pansy. and - yes - this is partially due to the weirdness of the house system meaning that cho and harry don't end up having any mutual friends, but it's also because the sum total of cho and harry's relationship is about half-a-dozen stilted conversations, one kiss, one terrible date, and one session of mutual stropping about hermione versus marietta.
[in which cho gives as good as she gets - and, tbh, bodies harry with that iconic "go and cope with it, then" line. i think it would be reductive to describe this as a one-sided instance of harry being cruel to cho - it's mutual conflict.]
nobody's looking at their few interactions and going "wow, harry's a real fucking dick to his devoted girlfriend, i should take him aside and tell him to tighten up..." ron and hermione's reactions - "mate, i don't think you actually want to ask her out, so maybe don't?" and "maybe reflect a little on how you conducted yourself there?" are proportionate in context.
i get why people really feel for cho - watching her grief go unacknowledged is legitimately sad. but i think this is one of those times when remembering that books contain literary conventions - that is, remembering that cho's grief goes unacknowledged because the series is from harry's limited perspective - is important and one of those times where it's necessary to recognise that conflict can exist without either party being a villain.
cho is hurt by harry - and harry, to be fair to him, is confused and upset by cho - but neither of them do anything which makes them the bad guy, nor which mandates that they should face some sort of significant comeuppance for their behaviour. it's good to want to defend cho from the idea - which originates far more from the fandom than the text, tbh - that she's an irredeemable bitch, but simply reversing the charges so harry becomes the bitch is no more accurate or compelling.
their relationship can be bad for both of them and still be nothing more evil than two teenagers [a category of people who already lack a certain degree of emotional maturity by default] doing their best under trying circumstances, receiving no support except each other, and not acquitting themselves admirably.
