Draco Malfoy asked, in a smooth drawl, "So, what's your plan?"

Hermione Granger nearly barred her teeth at him. "What plan?"

Draco shrugged, and somehow he could make even that look elegant. "You always have a plan, don't you?"

"Two days ago," Hermione said, seething, "I had a plan. It failed."

Draco looked unrepentant - expressionlessly so. "You always have a plan. What's the new one?"

"Nada," Hermione said.

Draco smirked, looking smug, "Have I finally struck the Mudblood speechless?"

"Apparently," Hermione said, smirking. "Have another slice of pizza. and tell me your plan."

Draco took another slice, folding it in half to keep the cheese from dripping out of it. "What, now I'm supposed to have a plan?"

"Well, you did just waltz in and offer to help..." Hermione sniped.

Draco Malfoy set down the piece of pizza. "Plans are best when written together. But, before we can make a plan, we need intel."

Hermione tried not to blink. Draco Malfoy, purebred scion, had just used phraseology more typical of James Bond than the Sacred 28.

She blinked. "Yes, ordinarily, that would be true. However, I've been working with this problem for a while now."

Draco Malfoy smirked, leaning backwards and putting his hands behind his head, elbows out. "Oh, good. Then you can draw the diagrams."

"You haven't been keeping up with politics?" Hermione riposted.

"Trying not to, actually," Draco said, "That was my father's thing, and I wouldn't want to copy him."

"And this isn't?" Hermione said.

"Any and all alliances with a mudblood would cause my father to faint dead away out of shame and despair," Draco Malfoy said, taking a bite of pizza, "So, no. Most certainly not copying." Draco grinned at Hermione, a grin with far too many teeth in it. It still seemed more genuine than normal, and was only slightly ruined by the piece of cheese caught between his two front teeth.

"Well, since your father was in politics, I suppose you know the basics." Hermione started.

"Personal grudges, spite and misery, writ onto an entire country's legal system?" Draco Malfoy smirked, "Yeah, pretty much."

"That," Hermione started, then took a bit of pizza. "was not what I was going to say. I was going to say Traditionalists, Liberals and crazy axe-wielding grandmothers..."

Draco Malfoy cracked up laughing, "Thank Merlin for Augusta Longbottom."

"It was only the One Time," Hermione said, in a flawless impersonation of Augusta's stiff formality. She turned towards Malfoy, and asked, "Did anyone ever figure out what Gavin Parkinson did?"

Draco Malfoy shook his head, negating everything he was about to say. "I heard it involved a crup, a kiss, and a kneazle on someone's arse."

Hermione burst out in giggles. Not so much for the awkward juxtaposition, but for combining it with Gavin Parkinson and Augusta Longbottom, two notoriously genteel stuffed shirts.

[a/n: Granger and Malfoy. Get along like a house on fire. Sometimes literally.

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