AN: Sorry this took so long! I've been trying to get it beta-d completely but have failed completely. So, this is only a tough n ready un-beta'd version. If you hate it, I'm sorry. I'll come back to it later.

Chapter 2 – Revelations

Harry gulped.

Harry's irrational instinctive fear of his own unwanted celebrity had returned with a vengeance, making his skin prickle defensively and his awareness of time splinter into fragmented endless intervals.

The seconds stretched.

He hastily grabbed at the disintegrating fabric of his calm demeanour, a façade he had worked long and hard to perfect, and returned his features to something he hoped resembled neutral. His adam's apple bobbed uncomfortably beneath his goose-bumped flesh.

To the casual onlooker he was as unreadable as the blank shell of a Blast-ended Skrewt.

If only the onlookers were casual.

He became acutely conscious of the hush that had greeted his arrival.

What?

His mind raced, feeling the attention of hundreds of pairs of wide eyes all focused solely on him. Time seemed frozen under the collective pressure of widening pupils and dilated irises that modulated to absorb the weak glow of the levitating candles; all the better to view Harry with. Even the occasional dust particle seemed to freeze as it became visible under the flickering lamps.

The spelled ceiling seemed to mock Harry with a pale lightening bolt mimicking his scar flashing across the vivid picture of the night sky, and a resounding thunderclap echoing up into the concealed rafters. The irony of the melodrama was poignant.

I'm naked, aren't I?

Harry's mind jumped to its inevitable nightmarish conclusion. Somehow my clothes mysteriously vanished between here and the showers and I'm flashing the whole school. Shit. Shitedy-shit shit.

It took a brief glance down at himself for Harry to be reassured that he was in fact still fully clad in his student robes.

His eyes, unshielded by concave lenses and deliberately narrowed to avoid mimicking the reflective stare of a cat caught in a full beam headlamp, flicked around the gawking student body looking for some clue, anything, to help him work out what was going on.

He carefully maintained his facial muscles in its expression of calm disinterest, while his mind began its automatic catalogue of damage-assessment. He tried to find an alternative explanation. What the hell could I have possibly done now?

Standing unnaturally still under the intense scrutiny he allowed his gaze to seek out a familiar pair of heads amidst his fellow Gryffindors, one red-haired, the other brown and vaguely dishevelled. With a lurch of his stomach he saw that they also were staring at him with wide-eyed incredulity.

He was startled to notice that Ron had even let his mouth drop open giving him the look of a gormless ginger chimpanzee. Harry would almost have had to restrain a grin at the sight in different circumstances, but heightened self-awareness kept his expression rigidly dispassionate.

Despairing, almost, he shot a glance to the mottled Slytherin table. Come on Malfoy. I can always rely on you to sneer and point out my latest spectacular humiliation. But he was equally discomforted to see the pointed face of his pale rival completely devoid of its usual haughty contempt. Instead, the expression was curiously vacant, only a slight raising of one arrogant blonde eyebrow to indicate that he, too, was taken aback.

Harry's eyes, becoming somewhat desperate, roamed to the head table instantly seeking out his usually implacable Head of House, but Professor McGonagall too, seemed to have frozen with her fork suspended in mid-air before her, thin lips pinched together in an anxious line.

The moment seemed to stretch out indefinitely as though everyone present had simply forgotten to breathe, though, in fact, it only lasted merely a few seconds.

Harry cleared his throat.

Almost instantaneously the entire population of the Hall seemed to recover and the silence fragmented into various loud coughs and embarrassed laugher as conversation immediately resumed. It was an embarrassingly blatant attempt of everyone simultaneously pretending nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

Everyone's eyes suddenly became intensely preoccupied with anything that wasn't Harry, who's moment of paranoia caused him to shift defensively on the balls of his feet. Even McGonagall found a curious fascination with her plate.

But the rising bubble of chatter couldn't quite disguise the susurration of low whispering that formed its undercurrent. Harry, completely baffled though unwilling to show it, took this as his cue to force his frozen body into action and stride casually down the length of his table towards the empty place saved beside his two best friends.

Harry sank onto the scarred bench, his unease swiftly resurfacing, especially when greeted with only a perfunctory nod by a now tight-lipped Ron. What? Harry looked between his two friends, ignoring that those around him had pointedly assumed an air of nonchalance though their shoulders seemed to have tensed involuntarily at his proximity, and waited for one of the two to break the silence.

Harry began to feel distinctly uncomfortable as Hermione's intense gaze seemed to flay him open. What the hell was she looking at him like that for? It was him, Harry. She looks ready to attack me! He was unaware just how close to the mark he had struck, as he caught sight of Ron's expression.

He was glowering. He was furious. He was glaring…at Hermione.

Harry could feel his nose wrinkling in his utter bewilderment. The terse uncomfortable silence stretched between them like a palpable barrier of brick and mortar as Harry did not trust himself to open his mouth. It was Hermione that finally spoke.

"Hey Harry. How was your summer?" Her voice was deceptively light.

Now it was Harry's turn to gape.

"You're kidding me, right?" Harry's voice vibrated with his soft incredulity as he allowed his mask of indifference to slip. "My summer? How was my summer? I just got the welcome reception of a Professor Snape who had been caught read handed at a charity event wearing nothing but rah-rah skirt, offering sweets to small children and putting flowers in his hair, and you want to know about my summer? What, have I grown a spare head, or something?"

Harry was momentarily satisfied to see Hermione's cheeks flame scarlet up to the roots of her curls at his little outburst. She seemed hesitant to reply.

"Oh, that… It's nothing."

She punctuated her speech with a shrill little laugh that made Harry's lip curl in distaste as it reminded him of his equine Aunt Petunia.

"You just took us all by surprise, I guess. You look so… so…" Hermione seemed to lack a supply of adjectives.

"Sexy." Ron supplied the word almost viciously, and treated his dorm-mate to a sullen glower before he paled from the sensation of a sharp kick on the shin and a hissed "Ronald!" causing him to shift his gaze to a convenient chicken-drumstick.

Harry stared at him blankly.

Hermione looked up quickly to Harry, a quick smile playing over her features in a pathetic attempt to disregard Ron's interjection. The blank stare remained. Harry's brain was having slight difficulties in translation.

Sexy... Sexy… Sexy… hmm… sexy…

Before:

Sexy? Fuck! Ron thinks I'm sexy? His head slowly began to shake in denial. Oh nononono. No you don't. I've put on weight not had radical plastic surgery.

But the longer he noted the deliberate avoidance of Ron's eyes, the more the almost imperceptible shakes of his head began to mutate into painstakingly slow nods of realisation and it took a several of these mute nods to reassure himself that he wasn't about to break into hysterical laughter at the absurdity of the situation.

Calm is the key. Calm now, facts soon, catatonia later.

He cleared his throat again, barely controlling his voice in the masculine registers. "So… Sexy, you say?"

Hermione did well not to cringe. Instead she gave a protracted sigh of characteristic exasperation, making Harry half-suspect that she believed that he was being deliberately obtuse:

"Oh, Harry! When was the last time you took a look in the mirror?" Answer: never.

To be honest, even if Harry had been exposed to a single mirror at his time with his Aunt and Uncle, catching sight of himself, malnourished, gangling, bespectacled and with the dubious addition of Dudley's cavernous cast-offs to complete the finished picture, he would not exactly been compelled to lose himself in narcissistic reverie. In fact, Harry had avoided mirrors like the bubonic plague.

He opened his mouth to say as much but Hermione ploughed on, her voice uncharacteristically breathy and her eyes gaining a feverous gleam as they raked over her friend.

Harry, never slow on the uptake, internally debated the wisdom of legging it as the import of her words began to gain surreal implications.

"What the hell happened to you over the summer? You've grown so tall, for a start! And, and…have you been working out?" Harry was surprised to see a slow flush rising up her neck prettily.

"Sorry, I couldn't help but notice. You look like you've been playing as a professional beater for the Cannons or something. And... Oh, and your glasses are gone. And the way you just stood in the doorway scowling and flexing your arms… it was so… so…"

Harry was only aware that his mouth had dropped open when she had added, "you look like some sort of Witch's Weekly Most Spankable Stud of the Month Winner."

Some sort of constipated noise like a chicken with gastric problems seemed to come from Ron's general direction, who had begun to look how Harry felt – decidedly ill.

It took Harry a few stunned moments in which to come to the conclusion, "'Mione. Sorry, but you've gone insane. I'm about as attractive as a flobberworm."

His eyebrows tightened in a scowl as this only caused her to bark out a caustic laugh, that sounded a little too close to the hysterical for his comfort. Harry spotted Ron looking between them with his jaw clenched, his teeth clenched. Harry was completely mystified by his temperamental friend's sudden aggressive hostility.

His confusion must have showed because it was then that Ron seemed to find his voice, with a concerted effort to keep it civil,

"Whatever Harry." The words were terse. "Just have a look around… those people aren't staring at your famous scar for once." He nodded in the general direction of over Harry's left shoulder. For a second Harry remained immobile, uncomprehending. But curiosity eventually won over his impulse to keep Hermione firmly within his field of vision. It was with intense trepidation that Harry steeled himself and looked...

"Oh no. This is not good."

..:…

Lust.

"Not good, at all…"

Base, primal, raw lust greeted Harry's eyes from every direction in the Great Hall. Harry's consciousness seemed oddly disconnected from his surroundings as it automatically began to evaluate his situation, a reflex borne of a life constantly spend in varying form of dire peril. It swiftly assessed the danger of his position:

Dire Peril is about right. His hand began to grope between the steaming platters, laden with the multitude of different foods, for a glass of water to help ease the rapid constriction of his throat. When his hand found the smooth surface of a tumbler, his knuckles almost blanched white with the strength of his nervous grasp before he willed himself to loosen his grip. He began to count the faces.

One… Two… Five.… Seven…? What is this? A sick joke?

It was true; no less than a dozen faces were turning their lascivious attentions towards him. If Harry had not been distracted with the disconcerting realisation that the vast majority of those gazes belonged to decidedly male owners, he would have been offended that the large proportion of eyes were locked on nothing less than his arse. Hardly the most aesthetic part of his anatomy, in Harry's own opinion though obviously many would disagree.

A pair of moist vapid eyes seemed to appear in clearer focus than the others for a moment and it was with a shudder of revulsion that Harry recognised the face of none other than Pansy Parkinson gazing with undisguised hunger at his posterior.

Harry deliberately shifted forward in his seat to leave himself as little exposed to the inspection as possible without actively curling up in a ball under the table.

But she hates me!

Suddenly, as though the world had gone into slow motion purely for the pleasure of torturing him, Harry witnessed her glistening pink tongue emerge from behind her teeth and lick slowly along her bottom lip; leaving a trail of warm saliva in an unmistakeable symbol of invitation. Harry was temporarily transfixed with horror. Oh…oh…ergh…

He barely repressed a shudder before an even more desire-transfigured expression arrested his reluctant attention a couple of seats further down from his salivating contemporary, belonging to none other than the effeminate, notoriously promiscuous and flagrantly bi-sexual Blaise Zabini.

Harry could barely stand to consider the connotations of the calculating gaze that swept his visible torso and the pouting lips contorted into a self-conscious smirk. He knew of Zabini's reputation in the bedroom; nothing short of brutal. "Penis over Venus", was said to be the sallow youth's motto and Harry's confirmed-straight mentality simply refused to even consider it further than that. The rumours of his countless sadistic conquests, regardless of gender or age, had guaranteed that a circle of empty space immediately formed around him wherever he went. He'd approached Harry once, almost casually, with an offer but had never so much as deigned to glance at him again after Harry's fist had connected solidly with his perfect nose.

But that was nothing.

Nothing compared to what sat next to him.

There, hulking behind the Slytherin table was located the most mentally scarring image that Harry could remember in his entire cognisant existence, including the deaths of both Cedric and Sirius. Those at least were something that could be diminished by time and acceptance. Neither time nor acceptance, Harry firmly decided, could EVER dull the memory of the twin boulders, Crabbe and Goyle, eyeing him over with salacious appraisal.

I will never be clean. Never. Oh, that's foul.

Both were leaning greedily forward across the wood and, to Harry's abhorrence, Crabbe's hands seemed notable by their absence from sight. Both of them. Harry took a swift gulp of water in a desperate attempt to cool the rising flush he could feel creeping up his neck.

It wasn't only the Slytherins. Somehow the beady unflinching gaze of Justin Finch-Fletchley confirmed beyond all possible doubt that this was not simply some Slytherin fabrication at his expense. The usually proud and rigidly upstanding boy was giving him a sultry look from beneath his fair lashes that was worthy of a Comedy Award, at the same time triggering the sour taste of bile to dry Harry's mouth.

He took another long swig of the water, subtly curling over the glass protectively as he noticed every pair of eyes instantly flick to the pulse of his throat as it accepted the swallowed liquid. There was nothing remotely sexual about a sip of water.

It occurred to him suddenly that this was what a Vampire encounter must be like, his jugular feeling oddly exposed under the pressure of thirsty stares, his veins being too close to the surface, too easily bruised. His mind repelling the idea of any respectable Hufflepuff considering giving him a love bite made his desperate gaze arrive with the Ravenclaws.

The sight there made his stomach constrict painfully and Harry was forced to lower the tumbler gradually to the tabletop with a muted clunk of contact. If he's kept his hold he feared his grip would have crushed it into his palm. Not that he would have cared just then. A pair of black eyes met his own, which were glazed in disbelief.

"Cho…" Her name was barely an exhalation. He wasn't sure how long their eyes were locked, unblinking and almost unrecognising. Harry's tongue felt uncomfortably heavy as all the moisture evaporated from his mouth leaving him dry and breathless, yet he couldn't look away. There was something entrancing in the violently possessive allure that she seemed to radiate.

Something is very wrong with this. His mind, still in aloof detachment, commented.

Carefully, deliberately, Harry compelled himself to blink.

The moment was broken.

He whipped around back to face his friends who had been watching his reactions warily from across the expanse of bench top, Hermione almost possessively, but he could still feel the force of her stare making the hairs prickle on the back of his neck.

Well, at least it's not my arse.

He shook his head - it had been a whole year in which they had virtually severed all contact. No, his mind corrected. In which she severed all contact. She didn't want anything to do with you, jerk. Remember? You make her cry. But there was no trace of her characteristic tears in her eyes just then, oh no. Harry sighed and forced his body to sit up straight, now strangely depressed under his overlying general revulsion.

"Too little, too late." Murmuring the words seemed to strengthen his resolve to win the emotional battle that he had not even realised was just being fought. Carefully he allowed his body to relax and disinterest itself from the dark-haired girl's attention.

"Well, I should bloody well hope so. She's just a bloody cock-tease Harry! You deserve so much better!" Hermione's voice was shrill.

"…" Harry was tempted to cry.

His meditative training forced him not to react. There was Hermione, his loyal bookish friend, gnashing her teeth with indecision. He could almost see her thought processes: One, to rush over and claw Cho's eyes out of their sockets. Two, to leap across the table and eat him alive. Him, Harry. This is getting out of control. His eyes moved over to see Ron's face purpling dangerously and the connection suddenly clicked. He opened his mouth instantly in injured protest,

"No! Mate, seriously, you think I did this on purpose? She's all yours." His features needed no help in forming a look of wounded innocence.

Shit, I knew he fancied her. Shit.

He moved on to Hermione, his tone appearing jocular but distinctly hard-edged. This was getting past any sort of normal joke.

"Oh, come off it! You don't like me like that!" Harry saw her mouth fly open to protest furiously, but for a moment she seemed to hesitate.

Harry's breath hitched in anticipation, hoping against hope he'd managed to spark off the awareness of the undeniable truth to his words. For a few seconds her brows furrowed in confusion, leaving her gaping ridiculously like a fish out of water. Harry was too disconcerted to care.

She was somehow aware that she didn't like Harry like that. She liked Ron like that, she knew this.

This was fact. Undisputable.

But then why was her sensory input screaming out in desire at the tone of Harry's physique, the extraordinarily clear colour of his eyes, the way that his unruly hair suddenly seemed sexy and effortless as though he'd just got out of bed? Why was Harry, suddenly, so goddamn irresistible? Her every synapse was insidiously suggesting new forms of Harry's perfection, her every hormone was raging. A brief struggle seemed to flash behind her eyes as mind fought matter. The impossible happened: matter won.

"Oh, Harry! How can you say that? You know I've always found you attractive. You know you feel the same about me – just trying to… to… distract yourself with brainless bimbos like Cho!" Her voice seemed to be gaining in amplitude and threat.

Harry winced as once again heads began to turn his direction, this time to witness the scene, giving up any pretence of disinterest. He was aware of several figures even half-rising from their seats, including Cho, at her words. Harry tried to make himself as small as possible, whilst maintaining an air of detachment. The look on Ron's face was murderous, a vein throbbing threateningly on his temple as his face burned as brightly as his hair. But Harry was distinctly relieved that the look didn't seem to be directed at him.

"What are you all looking at?" He snapped, loud enough to carry. Then as the heads gradually began to turn back to their half-eaten meals, he continued with his voice treacherously low, "Hermione – what are you playing at?" But when Hermione did not so much as indicate that she had even acknowledged his presence, her eyes now vacantly fixed in blank adoration of Harry, Ron seemed to deflate. A few defeated seconds later he turned mournful eyes to his best-friend, anger abandoned as quickly as it had been raised. It left him sounding tired and decidedly bitter.

"My bet's on a love potion, mate." The two boys shared a look that spoke volumes. Harry nodded his gratitude almost imperceptibly before Ron cleared his throat with bluff nonchalance.

"See, Hermione, he's just speechless." In an undertone he added with a quick glance at the other tables, "you've got more problems then just that lot Harry. Check out down there, and…" Ron's eyes almost twinkled in a moment of spiteful pleasure at Harry's cost, "and up there."

With that he stood, exerting all 6"3 of his rangy form to clamp Hermione to his side and frog-march her out of the hall. As she opened her mouth to screech a protest he stifled it with a quick, "Harry's following in a second to give you time to change, aren't you Harry?" Harry nodded hurriedly and silently promised to buy Ron and his family a mansion, a private Quidditch team, a 100 acre estate and a pony in payment for what he had just done.

It was then Harry realised what the first half of Ron's terse warning had been alluding to.

Further down, seated at his very own Gryffindor table, their faces flickering livid in the garish glows of a low sailing candelabra, were Seamus Finnegan, Colin Creevey and with a sickening spike in his heart-rate non-other than Ginny Weasley. Oh God, Ron will really kill me

In an instant in occurred to Harry how desperate this situation was. I share a room with Seamus – I have to go to sleep with that boy a bare two feet away from me. I'm going to be raped as I sleep! A clammy fear seemed to clutch at his heart and Harry couldn't look into their familiarly lust-filled countenances any longer. He spun around in his seat and abruptly the second half of Ron's intimation was made clear.

"No, no… please, no. Not the teachers." But with a moment of dreadful comprehension, that made Crabbe and Goyle look like True Love, Harry saw that it was not simply "the teachers."

It was a teacher.

One repellent, hook-nosed, slimy, morbidly sallow teacher that had his thin lips curled in a cadaverous sneer of ardour. A thousand images like a cinema archive on interminable loops flashed over the front of his skull as he imagined every different torturous experience that being made love to by Snape would present. It was about the time his mind reached "doggy style in detention" that Harry was positive he was going to vomit.

Oh save me. It was that thought that made him finally, desperately; seek out the headmaster's chair in the hope of gaining some reassurance.

One look was enough to dash any such hopes. The pale blue eyes of Dumbledore, unerringly honest in their expressiveness, refused to meet his. No matter how long Harry tried to subtlety attract his attention, or waited for his gaze to the scan room and land on him; it did not happen. Short of waving his arms above his head in a final effort, he knew that this was deliberate. After a moment of sitting in blank shock at this flagrant abandonment; Harry began to scowl with the first grains of suspicion beginning to blossom.

What had Dumbledore said? "The others will barely recognise you, you've changed so much."

Changed so much! Hah!

Coincidence? Harry would normally have been inclined to think so, but somehow 'Coincidence' was not a word synonymous with 'Dumbledore'. Things happened at his contrivance, never at random. Somehow, Harry knew with a harsh clarity, he was in someway responsible for this.

The wildest of theories somehow appeared quite likely under this new perspective as Harry began to consider the matter from this dangerous new angle. The training had honed his body, sure. But honed it for what? Harry, in his naivety had assumed what any boy naturally would – it was training for stamina in battle and physical supremacy. He nearly shook with self-disgust at his sluggishness as it dawned on him, why need muscle with wands? I'm hardly going to end up in a mud-wrestle with the Dark Lord, am I? This training wasn't for a fight. He snorted with contempt at the Muggle train of thought his mind had instinctively taken, deluded him, when the innocence of that supposition began to mutate before his eyes into something far more sinister, something that fitted all to well with his current situation:

Mud-wrestle? I'm not supposed to seduce him, am I? Not even Dumbledore is that crazy. Complete outrage tinted his vision red. I'm supposed to be a weapon not a killer page-three model! I'm sorry Sirius. I've failed you again. What's Voldermort supposed to do? Masturbate himself to death over me? Oh god, that's even more repulsive than Snape. If I'm going to think things like that, I'm not going to think at all!

That did it. With a violent gesture that caused those around him to start in surprise, Harry stood from the bench and stormed down the aisle between the two central great tables, keeping his eyes fixed on the flagstones before him. It was only as the chatter of those left behind began to recede into the distance that Harry sank with relief into a stony alcove. Resting his head against the cool forgiving stone, he heaved a long sigh of relief and began to quickly run over the list of names he would be sure to avoid for the immediate future.

Unaware to Harry, there was one name he absented. Draco Malfoy's clouded eyes were still trained on the door through which he had just seen his arch-nemesis depart and they were a picture of shock and repulsed confusion. Confusion easily traced to the embarrassing tightness of his trousers over his groin.

"Oh fuck…"