Snape turned as if to go, before suddenly spinning around, "Potter, perhaps you'd care to tell me why Miss Granger left so suddenly?"

Potter's face fought to pale, as he stood stiffly - his mien crying guilt to all and sundry, "Ron Weasley." He said sullenly.

Snape raised an eyebrow, not needing to say a word as he silently prompted Potter to continue.

"Well, Charlie was telling him about betrothals, and he thought Hermione could just ask her parents to break it."

"Her... muggle... parents?" Snape said slowly.

"Yes, sir."

"You know Miss Granger better than I do, Potter. What was her likely mental state when leaving?" Snape was starting to wonder if - rather than Granger being kidnapped outside her house, she was simply curled up in a library somewhere. The British Library was known to have some rather famous works, after all. And Miss Granger didn't normally live in Londontown.

"Angry, sir. Steamed, even. Likelier to smash something than to do anything else. But... -sir! if she was just going to cool off, she'd have been back by now!" Potter's green eyes flashed with confidence nearing certainty.

"So..." Snape said slowly, "You don't think it likely that she'd be off crying somewhere? Finding someone to spill her troubles on?"

Fred Weasley piped up, "That's just not likely, sir!"

George Weasley said, "She'd sooner skin Ron than cry over him!" That mental image prompted Snape to look down suddenly, as he smothered a smile in its cradle.

"I'll have a look for trouble, and that's all. If she's gone to her parents house, I'm not going to find her." Snape bent over Potter, his head advantage making Potter nearly take a step back, as Snape's hair brushed against his forehead. "You are not to worry, if I do not return."

Snape straightened, looking over his shoulder at Molly Weasley (her matronly body blocking the door to the kitchen), "Molly, do you have work enough to make sure they can't worry?"

"Of course, Severus! Always!" Molly looked at the rest of her brood, and said, "Now, boys and girl, It's time to chop-chop!" The twins groaned, and by the time anyone thought to look elsewhere, the front door had already closed behind Snape.

Hermione Granger wasn't the type to question when she had made up her mind. And she had made up her mind to have a word with this interesting young man. She strode up to him, and said, "That's a long tab you're running..." His blue eyes looked up from his finger circling the rim of his latest glass, and he stared quietly - with an openness that rid the moment of any potential hostility. Leaning over the table a bit, she asked "What's bothering you, stranger?"

In his thick Welsh accent, Draco Malfoy drawled, "Ennui," before tipping back the drink straight and neat.

Hermione found herself smiling, as she responded, "Now I know you're lying. Plenty of better places to fix that - on this street even. You've got something real bothering you, don't you?"

"A man sits at the crossroads, unsure of how he came here, or where he is going. I've a choice to make, and I don't like any of the options. Unless you've got a better one?" Draco Malfoy leans back in his chair, his hand waving out at another seat (also facing the room), "Take a seat, you're hurting my neck."

Hermione Granger sits down gracefully, aware that her new face and hair make her look much more elegant than she normally does. "Funny, you don't look like a man stuck in a quandary."

"Oh?" Draco Malfoy asks, his rounded vowels and drawl making it into a multisyllabic word.

"Most choices come down to risks and rewards. The safe way, or the daring way. You don't have that nervousness about you - the "should I or shouldn't i?" that leads someone to take neither choice."

"Or worse," Draco Malfoy chimes in morosely, "make a choice in haste, having spent all the time for contemplation on wishing someone else would make the decision for you."

Hermione Granger looked at him, blinking for a moment, and then laughed. "So what's really bothering you?" The accent's wrong... so are the clothes... is there anything right about this young man? Who is he really?

[a/n: Write me a review, folks.]