Draco shook his head in disbelief, eyeing the empty plates scattered on the table. He didn't know where she put it all away.
Hermione knew what Draco was thinking the moment she caught his expression. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, which she promptly launched at his face.
"What?" he asked, as the napkin narrowly missed him, the tip slightly grazing his ear.
She gave him her best quelling look. "You were looking at me—funny."
"Really, Granger." Draco replied condescendingly. "I would have thought that after all these years, you'd be used to me looking at you—funny."
"Well, you never looked at me like this."
"That would be because I've never seen anyone eat something that resembled of house before."
She made a perfect O with her lips but no words would come out.
"Yes?" Draco drawled, enjoying the novel speechlessness of Hermione. "Is there something you'd like to say?"
Hermione's eyes narrowed to mere slits before she finally replied. "Obviously you haven't matured. Still."
"Oh please." Draco rolled his eyes upwards before looking into Hermione's eyes. "You probably want a compliment, don't you? Let's see."
Hermione tried not to fidget under Draco's gaze. It was something she had never been subjected to before. Fleeting glances, scowls, smirks; those she knew. But she had never been, well, appraised by him before. As if he was searching for something inside of her. Something only he knew was there.
"There's a quill stuck in you hair."
Hermione looked at him curiously. "A what?"
"A quill," he repeated a little louder. "It's stuck in your hair."
Hermione touched she hair self-consciously. "Oh that. Well, it was all I had to keep my hair up."
"And your shirt."
"What about my shirt." She looked down at her blue button-down shirt. Plain, simple, it served its purpose. What was wrong with that?
As if hearing her thoughts, Draco smirked. "It's worn. Terrible worn. And it looks like it belonged to your father. In its past life." He rudely pointed a finger her. "And don't bother denying it. You know it's true."
It was true. Hermione crossed her arms and turned her gaze to the window. "Okay, that's enough."
Of course, Draco ignored her. "And you're wearing slacks. Brown slacks." He grinned, blatantly pleased at Hermione's discomfort. "Brown slacks that are much too big for you. And your hands are covered in ink. I'm positive that before coming here you were thinking about work, wishing that you had your nose digging deep into a mountain of papers."
As much as Hermione wanted to deny all that, she couldn't. "And your point is?"
"You, Hermione Granger, have successfully turned yourself into a man."
Bookworm. Teacher's Pet. Know-It-All. Smart Aleck. Mudblood. Nosy Bitch. Names she had heard over years. A man? She had never heard that one before.
"I though you were going to give me a compliment," she spat out angrily. "You didn't tell me you were going to insult me."
"I did compliment you. A woman doing a man's job. You don't see that everyday."
Hermione almost laughed at his face. "No, Draco. YOU don't see that everyday."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means," Hermione explained with as much patience as she could muster, "that your exposure to women has been very minimal."
Draco raised an eyebrow. Hermione stopped. And blushed. Very deeply.
"That's not what I meant," she clarified. "I simply meant that you haven't met a lot of take-charge women. Strong women. Women who don't need a man in order to survive. Women who are very unlike Pansy."
"Pansy?"
"Yes, Pansy." Hermione twirled her plastic fork around on her the table. "By the way, how is Pansy?"
"I can't say."
"Eh?"
"Well, it's really either of two things," he told her plainly. "Either she's weeping by her dying husband's bed or he's already dead and she's doing her best to spend all the money he's left her."
Hermione gasped. "Malfoy, that's the," she began, grasping for words right and left, "worst thing I've ever heard anyone say about someone else."
"I'll tell you something worse, Granger. Marrying an eighty-year-old man because he's richer than even us, the Malfoys, has no heir and has lurking at Death's door for quite a while now."
"Oh," was all Hermione could say. She didn't want to sound more of a stupid chit than already did.
"Granger, Granger, Granger," Draco sighed, in a tired sort of way.
Hermione remained silent.
"Why are you so adamant in biting my head off?" he asked off-handedly. "I mean, what have I ever done to you?"
Hermione didn't hold back this time. "You mean aside from persistently calling me a Mudblood at every opportunity, wishing me death and making my life a general hell—I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"
"People change, Granger."
"Oh, and I'm supposed to believe that you've changed?"
"I'm not like other people," he retorted.
"And thank Merlin for that."
Draco smirked at her. Smirked, because truthfully, he didn't know what else to say. She really hadn't changed over the years. Still annoying. Still able to get under his skin. Still able to make him speechless and feel like an idiotic prat right after. Damn her.
"I wanted to know what it was like."
"What?" Hermione asked suspiciously.
"Being a Muggle," he explained in an almost pained voice. "Everyone who doesn't have an once of a brain in their heads claim that Muggle-borns, Half-bloods and Purebloods are all the same. I just wanted to see if it was true. This," he said, gesturing at their surroundings with his right hand. "Is all an experiment on my part."
"Oh, I understand. We're like laboratory rats to you," Hermione replied sarcastically.
"Only if you choose to see it that way."
She shot him a pointed look. "You know, this so called 'air of ambiguousness' doesn't fit you. You'll need long white hair and a hundred more years to your age before you can pull it off properly."
Draco smirked.
Hermione smirked back. She leaned over the table before whispering. "I've been meaning to ask you something."
"What?"
A/N:
Thank you to all who reviewed. J I'll try to update more often. The R-rating won't come into affect until later chapters. In the meantime, I'm trying to set the tone for the story. Wish me luck!