"Choose me."
"No, choose me."
"No, no! Choose me, Harry! Me! Me!"
A large crowd watched the scene in the Great Hall like a three-way tennis match while Harry cowered behind Dumbledore's throne-like chair. Girls were not his forte.
It had been a normal morning. Breakfast was delicious as always, served with the house-elves usual gusto. The post came at the regular time and then left with a few thieved pieces of bacon. Some students were hurriedly attempting to finish some last minute homework and others were lightly chatting with their housemates.
And then three girls just snapped.
They rounded on Harry like the Furies and then clumped together to look like Hagrid's pet dog, Fluffy. Apparently they had had enough. Quick jerking us around, Harry. Stop sending us mixed signals, Harry. Stop dragging us into broom closets and snogging us senseless, Harry.
That's when he took refuge behind the headmaster.
Harry had been through many dangerous situations in his lifetime. He survived years of the Dursley's abuse. He faced Voldemort more times than he could count. He stupidly started a conversation with acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest. He tangoed with a dragon. He once washed Ron's frilly pink knickers. But no way in hell was he willingly going to go up against these three women.
Hermione, Ginny, and Cho.
He wasn't stupid. Well, actually he kind of was. But he knew if picked any one of them the other two would turn him into a eunuch faster than you can say 'Merlin's saggy y-fronts."
"Harry. Harry."
That was Dumbledore. He was twisted around his chair in order to look at the terrified boy behind him.
"You have to pick one of them!" the crotchety old man furiously whispered. "You need to love someone! It is the power Voldemort knows not! Love, my boy! Love!"
That's when Harry slowly crawled away from Dumbledore.
"We've been friends for years! Let's move it to the next level!"
"You killed my boyfriend! You owe me!"
"I look just like your mum! And you look just like your dad! We can be the next Lily and James!"
Harry's face visibly paled. His efforts to get away from the creepy old man had brought him to a corner of the Great Hall and he pulled his knees to his chest and began to rock back and forth like the sad, little emo boy that he was.
"Mr Potter." No! No more sodomitic professors! "Mr Potter, end this nonsense now or I shall be forced to take five bajillion points from Gryffindor for making me a witness to this disturbing scene."
Damn that Snape and his tricky Slytherin ways.
Harry stood up defiantly, arms akimbo, hair blowing in some non-existent wind. It's really too bad he didn't have a cape. No snarky potions master was going to rape the sacred House points system. Besides, if Harry lost five bajillion points, how would he win the Cup at the end of the year? Duh.
"I-I…"
The Hall went silent at his stutters. Hermione, Ginny, and Cho grabbed each other's hands like beauty pageant contestants and squeezed their eyes shut for some reason.
"I…" Harry didn't love any of them. Who was he supposed to choose? He had to end this quickly or else the other Gryffindors would never forgive him and his whole world would come crashing down, down, down!
But, he thought, I do love someone. It doesn't matter who I pick as long as I end this now.
"I pick Myrtle."
The pearly white ghost of Moaning Myrtle popped into the Great Hall and said, "Oh do you, Harry? Do you really?" and Harry answered, "Of course I do, love," and they kissed and Hermione, Ginny, and Cho all fainted and landed in a heap on the hard stone floor with the sight of Harry's tongue wiggling around Myrtle's incandescent mouth forever etched in their minds.
And, not to forget our favorite Dark Lord, five hundred miles away Voldemort keeled over dead after watching a bootleg copy of At World's End because there never was a love so pure and why oh why did that handsome pirate have to die! So thought Tom Riddle at his last breath.