Over the next few months in Hogwarts, opinions of Harry Potter began to ascend as fumes of anger towards him from the Gryffindor students gradually cooled. Ron was still extremely awkward and uncomfortable around Harry, but the others for the most part had warmed up to him. Even though he had lost the House 300 points due to his antics, people in general were somewhat sympathetic to his position. They recognized the pain that he had gone through all of his life, and, recalling the rumors spread by the Daily Prophet the year before, they shook their heads pitifully at this boy, so used to being the center of attention, whose life had just been shattered. They understood that he was going through troubled times.
Therefore when the students noticed Harry's frequent and lengthy visits to a certain boys' restroom, they became a tad concerned, and a rumor even started that he was practicing self-mutilation in the confines of a bathroom stall. But largely they ignored this and let him be. On the other hand, no one particularly minded his sudden and frequent use of his Gryffindor scarf, as they figured it served him as a comfort item. It also made him quite handsome and, one might even go so far as to say, sexy.
This sudden growth of sex appeal happened to help. Ever since the underage porn scandal became public, the thought of Harry as a romantic figure sprung in the minds of many young ladies boarding at Hogwarts. In fact, certain females in Gryffindor, who had been around Harry during much of their short lives, were now starting to notice and eye the boy. And Harry noticed right back. He also believed the videos had an even more positive effect when he started doing much, much better in a certain, previously difficult class involving cauldrons, whose greasy professor he was sure was a fan of James Privet-Parts's work.
Unfortunately, starring in a series of illicit porn videos had a detrimental effect on Harry's malleable moral code, which had still been in the fragile stage of development. He had learned to think that the kind of behavior depicted in these videos was considered perfectly normal and socially acceptable. "Of course the neighbors won't mind if the lady of the house is caught fooling around with the Magical Pest Extinguisher!" Thoughts like theis emerged in his young, impressionable mind, along with those much worse. Just because he was seeing Draco Malfoy in secret didn't mean he couldn't branch out and expand his resources. After all, Malfoy still called out eloquently to him, "Hey, stinky Potty-head!" in the hallway while surrounded by his usual Slytherin cronies. So it was perfectly fine if he kept up the appearance of a healthy, heterosexual boy.
Harry had discovered the life of a player.
Women were so easy to fool if you fed them sweet, honey-coated lies. Harry had learned this from the older actors, serving as big brother, mentor figures, who had worked with him while he was in "the biz". Just tell her how special she is to you, how she's the only one who's ever really understood you, and how that other girl means nothing, and you've got her pegged.
Unluckily, Harry screwed this up on his first try. Things were going fine at first, when he was double-playing both Hermione Granger and the young Ginny Weasley. The former finally threw herself at him during one late-night study session in the Gryffindor common room (they were alone, as Ron was still plainly uncomfortable around Harry), and the latter ensnared him once her previous passion had been rekindled, since she was now confident enough to go after the boys she was interested in.
Harry was clever enough to immediately make both of the girls promise that their relationships would be completely and utterly secret. There would be no flirting during meals, not even a foot-wrestle underneath the table (what if they kicked the wrong person?), and absolutely no pet names. This was all for the sake of Ginny/Hermione's reputation, after all, as Harry had asserted forcefully in the beginning. What would the students think if they caught one of the girls necking with a shameless porn star?! Harry also made the both of them pledge that, under no circumstances, no matter how physical the situation got, they must NEVER touch, handle, or remove the scarf. The gold and red Gryffindor scarf needed to stay wrapped securely around Harry's neck at all times, until he felt it necessary to do away with it.
Harry's first mistake was who he was fooling around with. As we all know, Hermione Granger was the cleverest little witch in Hogwarts and had done quite a few mystery-solving back in the day. She kept tabs on all of Harry's odd behavior, and her suspicions began to tally up. One late Friday evening, the two of them were "studying" deep into the dark hours of night, doing what kids that age do, as Crookshanks glared at them with yellow eyes from a dark corner, when Hermione suddenly stopped. She had been crouching over Harry with her knees around his pelvic bone, as he lay on the couch, and stared at something in the area around Harry's scarf. She carefully reached towards his neck and picked out an object thin and barely noticeable from the fabric.
"Harry..." she started slowly, "What—is—THIS?" She held between her fingers a bright, shiny strand of platinum blond hair.
"Uh—uh—you see..." Harry stuttered dumbly, just as he did when he encountered the owner of that hair earlier that year.
He knew he was caught. Hermione was smart enough to figure this out. No tart in Hogwarts had bleached her hair to that cheap of a color. There was only one person in the school whose locks were that naturally flaxen.
As Harry gasped with his mouth hanging open, Hermione calculated fast and quickly grabbed the Gryffindor scarf, tugging it off. It hung off of Harry's shoulders, displaying a neat arrangement of purple and brown bruises on his barely tanned neck. Hermione's features contorted from dazzled curiosity to snaring rage.
"Harry James Potter, you—you—you..." she started, with smoke nearly about to fume from her nostrils, "you absolutely horrid TROLL! You two-timing, cheap, disgusting TROLL! How could you even SINK to that level, to," she gasped, "HIS level?!"
She threw the scarf aside and got off of the couch and Harry's torso. Hermione stood over his prone body and growled, "WE—ARE—DONE," and stamped out of the common room and up the girls' dormitory stairs. Crookshanks lifted himself up from the floor in the corner, gave a smug look of contempt towards Harry, and skulked after her. Harry was left sprawled on his back over the couch, once again flabbergasted.
The next morning during breakfast, Harry spotted Hermione across and down the Gryffindor table whispering into Ginny's ear. Harry gulped and nearly choked on his oatmeal as Ginny gave a shocked and horrified expression, glancing at both him and Hermione, then slowly towards the Slytherin table. Keeping her stunned countenance, she whispered back into the ear of Hermione, whose turn it was to also look shocked, then infuriated. Both of them turned towards Harry, who quickly twisted away, but swore he could feel many small knives stabbing into his shoulder.
From behind his turned shoulder, Harry could hear the mutterings of outraged Gryffindor girls. His face reddened dramatically, but he tried to keep his cool and ignore it. He finished breakfast, stood up from the table, started to walk away towards his Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and was thinking about how the appearance and personality of the professor for that class felt so vague and mysterious, when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around slightly startled to face a pink-cheeked Lavender Brown. Before he could even ask, "What do YOU want?" she sprung her hand back and slapped him hard right across the face, sending a sound reverberating through the Great Hall.
"How could you do that to them, you scumbag!" Lavender yelled as Harry clasped the side of his face, once again shocked wordless. "I hope you rot in your STD-festering Hell!" And with that, she turned on her heel and strode away, surrounded by the nods of approving and applauding students.
Harry barely found himself able to make through the day, and wouldn't have if it hadn't been for his well-needed stop once more in the boys' lavatory. There Draco embraced and cuddled the boy between his arms, as Harry lay on the spotless tiled floor.
"They'll never understand people like us, Potter," he soothed. "Don't bother trying to get them to. We're far too complex. Simpletons like them will never learn how to fully appreciate such brilliant, tortured, and tragic souls. This is why we are destined to be together, Potter."
As Malfoy tightened his embrace, Harry began to feel queasy and held back a shudder.