"You want me to what?"

"You heard me."

"I did but I'm still in shock."

"I said, Granger, will you be my girlfriend," Draco Malfoy shifted uneasily from foot to foot. He looked disdainful; Malfoys did not do uncomfortable.

"But…why?" Hermione looked utterly bewildered.

"Well, the choice seems very self evident to me. You are an unattached female and from Gryffindor house itself. Also, you are Muggleborn which will increase the faith in my father's new 'diversity first' campaign plan. Most importantly, I need a girlfriend who won't mind that I am flamingly gay," here Malfoy struck a slightly mournful pose for the weeping masses, "Such a surprise, I know." Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She had known Malfoy batted for the other team ages ago. She wondered who exactly he thought he would fool with this little scam of his.

"And what makes you think that I would agree to be with a flamingly gay boyfriend, as opposed to anyone else?" Malfoy looked momentarily taken aback, as if someone had questioned why the sky was blue or why one doesn't wear brown shoes with black pants.

"Because," he explained patiently, "you're a lesbian!" Hermione blinked.

"No I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you very much are," Malfoy's pretty face pinched into a frown. "Granger, who exactly do you think you're fooling? Your two best friends are rather fit blokes and you don't even bat an eyelash. You spend all your time in a library reading dusty tomes like there is no tomorrow and you wouldn't know a mascara brush if it swatted you on the nose, you have never had a boyfriend and," he paused to draw in a breath, as if to seal her list of crimes, "you wear flats, brown flats. They practically scream, 'Lesbian! We have a lesbian coming through!' Honestly, did you think no one had caught on?" Malfoy huffed exasperatedly. Hermione maintained her dazed expression, blinking occasionally and swaying slightly from side to side. She wondered bemusedly how anyone could ever possibly believe that Draco Malfoy was straight.

"So, will you?"

"A…a…alright," she blurted. Malfoy beamed.

All that morning, and into the afternoon, Hermione sat in the common room, buried in thought and parchment. She had thought briefly on her breakfast encounter with Malfoy but decided it could wait. It was, after all, Saturday morning and she had a Transfiguration essay due Wednesday and a Potions lab due next Friday by five. She was already behind schedule. She frowned at Parvati and Lavender who were giggling and pointing to the centerfold in Witch Weekly. She wondered churlishly if she was the only person in the entire school who had not become completely obsessed with the opposite sex. Professor McGonagall's Animal to Mineral Theory in 14 inches is due Wednesday! she thought with frustration.

After completing Ancient Runes, the Transfiguration essay, and a large chunk of the lab, Hermione reluctantly took a break. It was quarter to one and lunch ended at one fifteen. Hermione had an ironclad schedule when it came to meals. She refused to visit the kitchens and impose upon the house elves so her mealtimes were always strictly to schedule. Missing an allotted time meant missing a meal. Not a pleasant prospect. With a sigh, she stuck a mental post it note to the unfinished lab. Sometimes she really missed Muggle inventiveness.

Hermione put away most of her notes and books and quills and spare pieces of

parchment and revisions and extra resources and ancient scrolls and book bag, and headed down to lunch with only Hogwarts, a History tucked under her arm. Light reading helped her digestion.

When she arrived, most of the student body was already there. Some were awake and active; others had only just woken up from their slumbers. Hermione made slight disapproving noises when she realized that Ron and Harry were from the latter group. They greeted her sleepily and stifled their yawns as she glared at them. She bet, galleons to grasshoppers, Sunday night around nine, these two would be scurrying around like ants, desperately finishing their assignments and sending vicious glares her way for not helping and for being done and, mostly, for being right. She sighed. Her boys were a handful. Malfoy's words echoed in her ears. Hermione eyed them critically. Harry was still rather short with his owlish glasses and skinny wrists. Ron was gawky and unwieldy, with a long freckled nose and long gangling arms. She supposed they looked decent enough, nothing to be ashamed of for sure. Hermione scanned the crowd. In fact, none of the boys were that attractive. Seamus Finnegan with his enormous ears and wide mouth was hardly handsome; Ernie Macmillan was much too nervous to be cute. Clarence Gerber was built like a refrigerator and Adrian Hallowspring bore a striking resemblance to a toothpick. How odd. She had never noticed before.

At that moment, Susan Bones came over and asked, quite nicely, if Hermione would lend her a tray of butter pads, Hufflepuff had run out. She was blonde, and rather nice looking, with a heart shaped face and a lovely smile. Hermione blinked. It wasn't just Susan. All of the girls were rather good looking. Not all of them were conventionally pretty, but each one seemed to have a small something about them that told Hermione that someone would eventually find them attractive. Mandy Brocklehurst had clouds of soft auburn hair and Lavender Brown had those long, long legs. The Patil twins were striking, in an exotic sort of way. Even Hannah Abbot looked cute with her round face and adorable dimples. Hermione turned her gaze to the Slytherin table, relieved when she saw Millicent Bulstrode, and thought of nothing except That girl is gigantic. And rather androgynous. Then she began to see how someone could find her cute in a butch sort of way. Hermione stood up. It was too much. She grabbed her copy of Hogwarts, a History and fled to the one place that had always given her the answers; her beloved library.