Written for Hogwarts' Granger Danger Event - HermionePansy, First Meet and the Roald Dahl Day Event: Coffee cream room - Coffee-shop!AU.

Word count: 962

Meet Cute

At this time of the day, the Starbucks down the street from her university is filled to the brim with sweaty and exhausted students―something that, unfortunately, includes Hermione as well―but it's also the cheapest and closest option for the only drinkable coffee on campus (unless you've burned out all of your taste buds already), so Hermione deals with it for yet another day, daydreaming about the days she used to be able to stay awake on willpower alone.

See, the thing is that Hermione hates the taste of coffee. The smell is fine, but the taste just makes her flinch every time, and no amount of sugar, cream and other sugary things ever quite manage to hide that bitter aftertaste that lingers on her tongue. Plus, all that sugar is terrible for her teeth, so if she has to suffer through this beverage, Hermione prefers not to add that her pain.

Drinking her coffee black makes her seem like some kind of otherworldly being to most of her friends, who heap mountains of whipped cream and sugar on top of their coffee, but it also means that once Hermione's chugged down the repugnant liquid, she can clean out her mouth with some water or some mint-flavored gum and not feel like there are cavities waiting to ambush her whenever her tongue brushes against her teeth.

Her parents would kill her if she ever came home with cavities one day―she's almost twenty now, but they still insist on checking out her teeth whenever she comes back home for a visit.

They're actually the reason she's decided she'd never go into the medical field―if she ever has children, she won't become her parents, who still can't get over her getting an operation to adjust the size of her too large front teeth.

Today is a particularly bad day, though, and Hermione's dreading to have to ask for a bigger dose of coffee than usual. She's got social studies followed by a history class next, and while she finds both subject fascinating, her teachers have a tendency to drone on and on and put half the class to sleep.

Normally that wouldn't be too much of a problem, but she was up late putting the finishing touches to a paper last night, and she got less sleep than she'd have liked. Add to that an unfortunately early wake-up call when her neighbors started yelling at each other an hour before her alarm clock could ring, and Hermione is practically sleepwalking her way to class this morning.

She needs this coffee to get through her day.

But her tired state means that she doesn't even notice that when the barista hands her a cup of coffee with an illegible name scrawled across it, it isn't her order.

It isn't until the liquid touches her lips, Hermione already bracing for the bitter taste that will soon follow, that she realizes that there's been a mistake.

"That's not coffee," she states flatly, staring at her cup in confusion.

"No, it's tea―chai tea, to be exact," a voice interrupts. "And it's also mine."

Hermione blinks up and finds herself staring at a girl holding out her right hand demandingly toward Hermione. Her nails are painted a red so dark it's almost black, and her eyes are painted with the best smoky eyes Hermione's seen outside of the makeup videos she had tried once in high school.

She's also holding onto what can only be Hermione's coffee with her other hand.

"Well?" she asks. "Aren't you going to give it back?"

"I drunk from it already," Hermione replies stupidly.

The girl sighs heavily, sending a dark glare to the overworked baristas buzzing around the counter back inside the shop.

"I know," she replies. "I was there―I saw you do it. But I'm also already late for my next class, and if I have to go back inside and ask for a new one someone will die, because then I'll actually be missing my class, and if I'm more than ten minutes late the teacher will kill me.

"So, please," she continues, dark eyes bright with a determination that does things to Hermione's stomach, "give me my tea. I'll even give you back your disgustingly black coffee, unless you'd rather get a new one."

Hermione chances a look inside―it's still as busy as it was thirty seconds ago, but she can hope―and deflates, swapping cups with the other woman.

"Awesome."

Hermione looks down at her coffee, and she's about to drink it―once again bracing herself for a few moments of bitterness―when she notices the dark lipstick smudge on the top. Her heart flutters.

"Hey, wait," Hermione calls out as the woman starts to leave, "did you drink from this too?"

"It seemed only fair," she quips, lips pulled into a smug smirk. She winks, and then she leaves so quickly it's almost as if she outright vanished from existence.

if Hermione couldn't see her retreating back as she practically runs toward the university buildings, she'd think she'd made this whole thing up.

"Uh," she says to herself, lips pulled in a little, absent smile.

It's not until she's almost in her own class, and about to throw her empty coffee cup away, that Hermione notices the scribbled note on the side, its handwriting so different from the quick (and misspelled) Hermione written in black sharpie on the paper.

It's short, but also unmistakably inviting.

It's a phone number, followed by a very curvy Call me, Pansy and a winky face.

It makes Hermione skips a beat, and she almost empties half her bag onto the ground in her hurry to get her phone out and type that number in.

It seems like her day is finally looking up, though.