(No, I'm not caught up, I just had a thought and I think others have pointed it out, so clock me late if so.)
I fucking remember the Harry Potter shipping wars, they got nasty before Deathly Hallows destroyed the minds of Harry/Hermione fangirls everywhere. Nobody could agree on who Harry should end up with, but it was near-universal that Ginny was an incorrect choice. It just rubbed a lot of readers wrong for Harry to date and marry his best friend's little sister (even though that's not uncommon irl), but mainly it was because the two of them just... had no chemistry together. Even Cho Chang could've worked better as a couple dynamic had Rowling handled it better, but at the same time, it made sense for Harry's first true crush to not go over well, and not because she was older than him or was a chink girl (this casual racism existed in the fandom back then).
If Malfoid had existed as intended, I wonder how bad the shipping wars would've actually been. I think at best, you'd just get a love triangle scuffle between her and Hermione, although it is interesting Harry apparently always saw Hermione as like a sister when there was chemistry that suggested otherwise. Though what if Ron had struggled with finding Malfoid hot even though she was vitriolic towards Hermione being a mudblood? There could've been some interesting conflicts between friends in that regard, in which perhaps Harry's broody outbursts in Order of the Phoenix would've not been seen as narmy and be a combination of him hitting puberty (realizing he was finding himself attracted to someone like Malfoid, whose dad is a Death Eater), and still processing Cedric Diggory's death. He'd be practically at an impasse at that point in his life that he'd need to brute-force his way out of, which could be what led up to his Sectumsempra confrontation with Malfoid in Half-Blood Prince.
Wait, this is supposed to be me contemplating about how the shipping wars would've gone, not the narrative. I suppose this would suggest that Harry's rivalry with Malfoid would've worked so much better than what we ended up getting. I always wondered why it is Harry couldn't reach across the aisle to Draco more when the two of them were constantly always crossing paths and keeping a growing rift between them seemed OOC for what Harry would later come to represent.
I guess that's what Malfoid here looks to me, a hopeless romantic foid: it's just a glimpse of a "What if?" universe that could've existed, and it wouldn't have felt out-of-place in 2000s children's media. This could've been a big turning point in iconic couple dynamics, like, Harry/Malfoid could've been huge. However, I am not denying that this is a correlation of the male loneliness yearning for a good woman and the nostalgia of our school years of innocent first loves that has been taken away from the younger generation, which is why I find it fascinating we're seeing this surge of male fans (or new fans) coming out about it after years of being beaten down by the female fans and troons. I think the guys deserve to feel this level of happiness and have the power to gatekeep the perverts from something they enjoy, and I hope it inspires them to go out and find a girl they can love and protect as much as they do with Malfoid.