Sunglasses and a Fedora

"He was a bloody prat anyways," Hermione seethed to herself as she walked into the near empty coffee shop. Ginny and Terry were constantly setting her up on blind dates out of concern for her love life- and each was worst than the next. She had just left from meeting this week's date- Zacharias Smith. Now seeing him hadn't been so bad, she only had very small trouble trying to keep her blush down at remembering how much she used to fancy him. Yet as her feelings for him started to flair once more, he proved her theory true that men wanted nothing more than a woman's body and didn't care for anything else.

He had started off with small talk (all of which concerned his current affairs and his past love life) then moved on to stare lecherously at her body. Now Hermione was a realistic individual, and knew for a fact that there wasn't exactly... much to stare lecherously at. She didn't really have any figure to speak of- she was like a ruler with small breasts and slim hips. Her hair was still rather bushy and frizzy, though it's current length had taken away the majority of the frizziness, and she had a plain face. But he stared anyways, which irked Hermione to no end.

Then the bastard started trying to... touch her. Touch her in places that she didn't wish to be touched- at least not on the first date. She had promptly smacked him, and fled to her favourite coffee house. Here she was now, taking a seat next to a young man around her age without thinking. She tapped her fingers irritably, and sighed in relief when the waitress came over.

"You're usual, ma'am?" She nodded at the very young waitress, and leaned back. Hermione started to massage her temples, and sent the man next to her a studying look. People didn't often sit in "her corner" as she had dubbed it, so his presence confused her greatly. She was defiantly sure that the man was her age, though at first it was hard to tell. He had a slight stubble along his jaw, and his long, wavy hair almost obscured his face from view. His eyes were hidden from view by a pair of very dark, reflective sunglasses, and on the table next to his half-empty coffee cup sat a rather worn, black fedora.

Absently thanking the waitress as she set her cup down in front of her, Hermione sipped at her strong coffee while looking at the man next to her with now open curiosity. He looked so familiar. She stared at his face. The elegant nose, the full bottom lip, the high, aristocratic arc of his dark eyebrows, the jaw line- she knew who he was, though not exactly. He defiantly wasn't in Gryffindor- she would have immediately recognized him. He wasn't a Hufflepuff either, for the lines in between his eyebrows told that he usually looked as if in an unpleasant mood. So that only left Ravenclaw and Slytherin.

"See something you like, Granger?" Her last name threw her off for a moment, but suddenly everything seemed to click. The teasing, yet not malicious, tone, the cocked eyebrow- it was Blaise Zabini. The first Slytherin she had ever learned to tolerate. A furious blush swept across Hermione's cheeks, and as she was getting ready to bite out her retort, she noticed something.

He had always been very tan during their Hogwarts days- which was obvious as he was Spanish, Greek, and mainly Italian. That, and he lived with his family in Italy over summer and always came back nearly as brown as Dean. But now... now he had paled considerably, and he had slight lines on his face- as if he was constantly worried. His hair, which had always been a deep black, now held a few stray strands of pure white hair. Bad karma, she thought to herself absently. What was going on?

He drained the rest of his cup and placed a few pound notes on the table, before standing up and placing his fedora on his head in one swift movement. What was he doing? Hermione frantically drained her own coffee cup, and flew out of the door, hastily throwing pound notes at the waitress. She saw him struggling to make his way through the midday crowd in London, and used her slim build to successfully follow him. Soon she caught up to him, noting in the bright daylight that his hair was slightly greasy and pulled back into a rough and tangled ponytail.

With one last burst of speed, she grabbed his shoulders, turned around and prepared her lecture. He simply gazed in her direction coolly- she wasn't quite sure what his eyes were looking at, as he still had those infernal sunglasses on. Hermione struggled for breath, briefly wondering why she was going through the trouble of following him around, and opened her mouth. She never started her tirade, for the second she had looked up and blinked- he was gone.