well-groomed boys get girls, and Dark Wizards also get girls, but nice well-groomed boys suspected of being secretly Dark get more girls than you can imagine -"
"Not interested," Harry said flatly, as he picked up the boy's hand from his shoulder and unceremoniously dropped it.
"But you will be," said Arty Grey, his voice low and foreboding. "Ah, you will be!"
Elsewhere along the same table -
"Romantic?" shrieked Hermione Granger, so loudly that some of the girls next to her winced. "What part of that was romantic? He didn't ask! He never asks! He just sends ghosts after people and glues them to ceilings and does whatever he wants with my life!"
"But don't you see?" said a fourth-year witch. "It means that even though he's evil, he loves you!"
"You're not helping," said Penelope Clearwater a little further down the table, but she was ignored. Several older witches had started toward Hermione, after she'd sat down at the extreme opposite end of the table from Harry Potter, but then a swifter cloud of younger girls had surrounded Hermione in an impenetrable barrier.
"Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling!"
This was also ignored. "It's just like a play!" sighed a third-year girl.
"A play?" said Hermione. "I'd like to see the play where anything like this happens!"
"Oh," said the third-year girl, "I was thinking of that really romantic one where there's this very nice, sweet boy who makes a Floo call, only he mispronounces his destination and stumbles out into this room full of Dark Wizards who are performing a forbidden ritual that should've stayed forever lost to time, and they're sacrificing seven victims in order to unseal this ancient horror which is supposed to grant someone a wish if it's freed, so of course the boy's presence interrupts the ritual, and as the horror is eating all the Dark Wizards and everyone is dying the boy's last thought is that he wishes he could've had a girlfriend, and the next thing you know the boy is lying in the lap of this beautiful woman whose eyes are burning with a dreadful light, only she doesn't understand anything about being human so the boy always has to stop her eating people. This is just like that play, only you're the boy and Harry Potter is the girl!"
"That..." Hermione said, feeling quite surprised. "That actually does sound something like -"
"It does?" blurted a second-year girl sitting across the table, who was now leaning forward, looking horrified and yet even more fascinated.
"No!" said Hermione. "I mean - he's not my boyfriend!"
Two seconds later, Hermione's ears caught up with what her lips had just said.
The fourth-year witch put her hand on Hermione's shoulder and gave her a comforting squeeze. "Miss Granger," she said in a soothing voice, "I think if you're really honest with yourself, you'll admit that the real reason you're angry with your dark master is that he channeled his unspeakable powers through Tracey Davis instead of you."
Hermione's mouth opened but her throat locked up before the words came out, which was probably a good thing, because if she'd actually yelled that loudly it would've broken something.
"How's that possible, actually?" said the third-year girl. "I mean for Harry Potter to work through another girl even though he's bound himself to you? Do the three of you have one of those, you know, arrangements?"
"Gaaaaack," said Hermione Granger, her throat still locked, her brain halted, and her vocal cords spontaneously making a noise like she was coughing up a yak.
(Later.)
"I don't understand why you're being so unreasonable," said another second-year witch, who'd replaced the third-year-girl after Hermione had threatened to ask Tracey to eat her soul. "I mean, really, if someone like Harry Potter rescued me, I'd be - sending him thank-you cards, and hugging him, and," the girl's face was a bit red, "well, kissing him, I'd hope."
"Yeah!" said the other second-year witch. "I've never understood why girls in plays get angry when the main character goes out of his way to be nice to them. I wouldn't act like that if the hero liked me."
Hermione Granger had dropped her head to the dinner table, her hands slowly pulling at her hair.
"You just don't understand male psychology," the fourth-year witch said in an authoritative voice. "Granger's got to make it look like she can mysteriously resist his seductive charm."
(Even later.)
And so before long Hermione Granger had turned to the only person left she could talk to, the only person guaranteed to understand her point of view -
"They're all mad," said Hermione Granger as she strode vigorously toward Ravenclaw tower, having left dinner a bit early. "Everyone except you and me, Harry, I mean everyone except us in this whole school of Hogwarts, they're all entirely mad. And Ravenclaw girls are the worst, I don't know what Ravenclaw girls go reading when they get older, but I'm certain they ought not to be reading it. One witch asked me if the two of us had soul-bonded, which I'm going to look up in the library tonight, but I'm pretty sure has never actually happened -"
"I don't even know a name for this kind of fallacious reasoning," said Harry Potter. The boy was walking normally, which meant he often had to skip forward a few steps to match her own indignation-fueled speed. "I seriously think if it was up to them, they'd be dragging us off this minute to get our names changed to Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger... Ugh, saying that out loud makes me realize how awful it sounds."
"You mean your name would be Potter-Evans-Verres-Granger and mine would be Granger-Potter-Evans-Verres," said Hermione. "It's too horrible to imagine."
