A.N.: This is something I cooked up one day sitting at my computer. I think the inspiration was "What would it look like if one day Hermione finally realized Draco Malfoy wasn't a hot, but evil nasty bastard, but actually an attractive young man who was smart and endearing and horribly useless with everyday office supplies?" I also wasn't really eager to have her be "He's Hott!" and then he be "She's Hott!" and then they be "Lets snog and fall in love instantly and have children!"

Instead, I was going for something along the lines of a young woman finally noticing an old school classmate is attractive, but not necessarily having that mean she's likes him in THAT way.

Though, now that I mention it, I'm not entirely sure this is going to stay a one-shot, so I'm leaving it unfinished. Depending on the enthusiasm I get back, this might stay a one-shot or develop further. I would go either way, but I really want to know what people think first.

Feedbacks great, munchkins. :)

DISCLAIMER: Due to the unhealthy and unfortunate circumstances of J.K. Rowling credited with the ownership of Harry Potter, I regret to inform you that I, Gingham and Basil, do not.

Totally Stapled

Or, Being Utterly Pathetic with Office Supplies is Endearing

Or, The Aftereffects of Epiphanies

I was sitting in the cafeteria minding my own business, I'll have you know, when it hit me like a dead-on frigging train.

Draco Malfoy is attractive.

WHAT? my capslock-y mind shouted, WHAT THE BLOODY BARON DID I--BUT I--THAT'S JUST--OH!--RIDICULOUS! (Followed by several obscenities not deemed fit audio for minors.)

I looked around quickly, making sure no one was looking at me weirdly, in case I had said that a loud. Not only embarrassing strictly on the basis of talking to myself and spouting epiphanies in public, but also since I have been repeating to myself and others for the last nine years "I hate Draco Mafloy; he is (insert synonym for 'egotistical') and a (insert synonym for 'bastard') and also freakishly pale."

With a certain resemblance to a member of the weasel family, respectably.

Experiencing an epiphany in public is not very convenient. First of all, it may be nasty, and a seemingly random sour expression somehow makes people wary of you.

Second, if you are eating, you may lose your appetite. Which I did. Suddenly chicken salad didn't look all that great.

Third, you may not want this epiphany in the first place; you can't cry big fat tears of I'm-so-screwed-what-am-I-doing-with-my-life-how-did-this-happen in the cafeteria of a big shiny fancy fashion magazine.

Especially one you dislike working for.

"Hermione!" Lavender Brown had whined to me four months ago, "This is a perfect in-between job for you while you get back on your feet--you know, decide which Wizarding Prestige Prize you want to try for first."

I had chosen to ignore that bit of snarkiness at the end, thank you very much.

"Lavender Brown, you do realize that I will be working for Malfoy, don't you?" I had said it four times already, but sometimes being repetitive when it comes to obvious crucial flaws is needed.

She had waved her hand. "Look," she'd said, exasperated, "Blaise said they really need a Sub-Editor at the moment, and...well..."

Using one of your girl best friends to patch up the holes in the workplace of your boyfriend's best friend is LAME! I made sure she knew that. Eloquently.

"Puh-leeze, Lav-lav," I pouted, "That's lame and stupid and besides, Malfoy's a bougar-face." Ahem.

Somehow, my esteemed and calculated argument neither gained her sympathy or her withdrawal.

"Shut up, Hermione. Do you know just how many girls would kill--with, like knives and wands and thingys--for this job? A once in a lifetime chance to work with Witch Weekly's Most Eligible Bachelor?"

I think I had mumbled something about ferrets and the dangers of sun exposure.

Lavender smiled "warmly". The unnatural and ineffective puppy eyes were already in place. "Hermione," she coaxed, "Blaise says he's really changed. Sure, Malfoy's beyond good looking, with a rakish grin and toned physique, and hell, he's the owner of a billionaire conglomerate, owning now two broom manufacturers, the magazines 'Wizarding Business Today' 'Gringotts and Beyond' and 'Veela; Modern Looks for the Modern Witch', and a construction company all under the headline 'Malfoy Enterprises', but he's still very down to earth and mature and perfectly ordinary."

If my head hadn't been spinning beforehand, the actual idea of Malfoy being "perfectly ordinary" coupled with his gross amount of money (pun intended? or not intended?) and ugly history of total disregard for the human race, almost made me faint.

Vocally, I just snorted.

"Honey, that's disgusting."

"So is your statement that I should work for the jackass."

I think she would have laughed if she wasn't so opposed to the idea.

"He's very polite now, Hermione." The danger level in her voice was minimum. I decided to push the limits.

"So is an adder before he strikes." Touché.

"Hermione, he even uses muggle appliances." Lavender forced out of her gritted teeth. "See? No more muggle hating."

"So then he's a hypocrite--another reason not to work for the dung beetle."

Her face was rather red at this point. It was comical, in a "one wrong step and you'll be in St. Mungo's" kind of way.

"Hermione, this job pays very well and they need you and besides you don't have a job and Malfoy's perfectly alright and bugger this, you silly thing, don't be so stubborn!!" She had practically shouted in my face, going from zero-to-sixty, or irrational to downright scary, in three seconds.

In the end, my feeble surrender was punctuated only by a simple whimper: "But I don't know anything about fashion..."

Walking back to my office was not comforting. Much like walking into the cave of a dragon, or a cage with a very big serpent, or a reptile exhibit with no exit...

Hold on. Think I'm going to be sick.

Must stop with those darn reptilian laced similes.

My office was roomy and comfortable, with a view of London and even my own coffee maker. I should have loved to be walking back to it. Unfortunately, it was conveniently located right next to HIS office.

Bugger.

I opted for brooding during my long walk to my dungeon-like office. I'm always offered plenty to brood on; the walls are something horrible. Exhibit A: Plastered on the nice shiny expensive walls of my nice shiny expensive workplace were magazine covers in nice shiny expensive frames. Plastered on the magazine covers, however, was a face straight from hell and back again.

The headlines read pretty much the same thing over and over. "Most Eligible Bachelor!" "Rich Tycoon Or Sensitive Soul?"

"Raking In The Money!" "Best Looking Smile!" "Voted Hottest Wizard!" "WitchWeekly's Top-Ten Hunks!"

Hold on again. I think I will be sick.

Bending over, hands on my knees to try and breathe properly, I wondered about the possibility of walking back to my office without looking up. Once the absurd but very appealing idea had passed, I straightened, only to come face to face with a smirking, winking, posing, histrionic Draco Malfoy with drama queen tendencies.

My heart only stopped racing after I realized it was only a bloody picture. "Merlin, you ugly son-of-a-bitch," I swore at the offending headshot, "Don't do that!"

The picture merely winked back, and commenced preening.

"..." Deep breath in.

I'm talking to a picture. I'm talking to a bloody picture. Merlin's Holy Bloomers, I need to quit before I lose my last shred of dignity, composure, and sanity.

I don't believe I had ever run back to my office quicker.

"Malfoy!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, "Where the hell are you? I need you!"

Suddenly the real smirking, winking, posing, histrionic Draco Malfoy with drama queen tendencies appeared. "I hear that from all the women, love," he drawled, inspecting a fingernail and leaning on my doorframe. Bastard.

"Get your mind out of the gutter!" I sniffed, "You know I didn't mean it that way!"

"Oh really?" He smirked, the infuriating idiot, and commenced his verbal torture, "That's not what I've been hearing."

I think I went down a shade or two towards "freakishly pale"; my skin felt like it had been turned to ice. Had he--did he--how?--was I that--no way anyone could have known--just balderdash!

"That's the--quite absurd!--disgusting and inappropriate--withdraw your statement or I'll hang you from the ceiling fan by your earlobes!" I first sputtered, and then barked. I think my lips started to sneer. If he didn't withdraw his statement or apologize in the next five seconds I assure you I would have started growling.

Malfoy looked slightly put out. "Alright, alright! Geez Granger, I was only yanking your chain." He sniffed melodramatically. "Sorry to have assumed you would have had the taste to appreciate humour in which I assume you have the taste to fantasize about me."

If I hadn't been so used to hearing Ron weave trails of confusion around every sentence, I would have been completely lost. Instead, I nodded once, ceased my glowering, and said "Now, Malfoy, I have something to tell you."

I think you're attractive...Wait! What? Why would I tell him I think he's attractive? The whole point of me quitting is so my thinking he's attractive goes away!

I gulped.

Malfoy pursed his lips. "Yes that's all well and good, but first I get to say something." He pushed himself away from my doorframe and came bounding over. He would have been exactly like a puppy if he weren't evil incarnate.

He then proceeded to sit on my desk. My desk! The offense was taken, greatly.

"No, no, Malfoy, I do believe this cannot wait. You see--"

"Hold that thought, Granger," Malfoy interrupted, picking up my stapler, "I go first. I'm the boss." He flashed one of his "I'm so gosh darn cute, huh?" smiles.

I almost strangled the git. Almost. Strangling would have constituted touching him, and that was a no-no right now, with my hormones seemingly going haywire and my integrity skewed.

"You see," he elaborated, taking my words, "I've been having trouble with my secretary, Georgina."

My eye-roll was laborious, long, and caustic.

He pointedly ignored it. "Now, she's a nice girl and all," his smirk hinted at more than that, "But somehow the idea of being properly organized eludes her. Why is it that she puts the Franklin papers in the Bergeson file, and the Lasjavek transcipts clearly in the Beijing drawer? Huh? Tell me, Granger, how come?"

"Because she's a total idiot?" I resisted the impulse to add "Duh?"

"Precisely!" He smacked his thigh with the stapler, the impact sending an unused and now totally useless bent staple flying. He would have looked like Sherlock Holmes, if it hadn't been the teensy fact that he wasn't. "You got high marks in Hogwarts, right?"

Again with the "almost strangled him" feeling. Idiotic questions have a way of doing that to me. "Yes, Malfoy, top of the class," was forced out instead of my initial, and fantastically snarky "No shit, inbred."

"Right!" He continued, leaning forward slightly. He was still playing with my stapler, which made me nervous. After all the years of being referred to with verbs such as "charming, graceful, suave, cool, feline" he had a remarkable tendency to make a complete idiot out of himself with simple, everyday objects.

Take the cereal bowl last week, or the instant broom cleaner Monday, or even the quill sharpener my first day on the job, for instance. Harmless in anybody else's hands. In Draco Malfoy's perfectly manly hands, however, they became epidemics.

"You know that expression, 'you're rubbing off on me'?" He looked like a ten year old about to unleash the long awaited punch line of a joke. A joke he hadn't even understood yesterday. A joke about chickens and roads and stoplights, or something.

I nodded, warily. My gut knew where this was going, my brain had yet to catch up and was operating on cruise control.

"Since Georgina is such a complete idiot--well, a nice, kind, hot idiot, it'd be a shame to fire her simply on the basis of being one." His logic astounds me. The punch line was nearing.

"So, in order to keep such a valued member of the employee family, I've decided to let a bit of that ole' Granger intelligence rub off onto Georgina, ergo for the next week you will be shadowing her and doing everything she does! Brilliant!"

The punch line was inane.

So I told him so.

"Malfoy, that's entirely inane!"

His smile essentially grew wider. "No, see, that's the beauty of it! It's so backwards its forwards! It might actually, no, on second thought, it will work. Trust me!"

Trust me, he says. And then he threw a curveball. His smile became all crinkly like, his eyes became happy, like crows-feet laugh-line happy, and his shoulders shrugged. It was a look made to melt cold hearts, and it was totally genuine. Also totally bizarre, but that's not the point.

The point was that my knees seemed to have acquired some sort of magnetic pull to floor, thus rendering them almost incapable of helping me stand up.

During Hogwarts, I had always known he was considered hot. After all, you don't have your own fan club for nothing. The squeals of Parvati, Lavender, and other ludicrous girls infiltrated my ears daily, with such random and totally uncalled for statements like "Ooh, he's so dreamy, in an evil bastard kind of way." and "Look! LOOK! He's walking past us right now--now!--quick, jump him girls!" and "I now welcome you to the official first meeting of 'I Heart Draco Malfoy Forever Club', ordained by our Leader of the Draco Ravishers and the Mrs. Malfoy Ladies."

But being hot and being a hot, evil, nasty, rude, prejudiced, arrogant, egotistic, violent ass are two different things. The former might have brought on blushes and dreams and secret longings from me. The latter however brought on red-hot anger, nightmares, and secret plans of mutilation and revenge.

But now I found that my whole basis for hating him was slowly rotting away, a bit like that casserole in my fridge.

Four months of seeing him stab himself with scissors and explode a muggle copy machine had softened me slightly. Four months of editing with him side by side had shown me he was somehow good at what he does, and this time it wasn't evil or debasing or even mean. Four months of walking into my office, of seeing him five days out of seven, without the need to support house rivalry or the affection of teachers or silly immature pride was enough to send my previous anger packing.

In its place was now total...acceptance. How odd. And how wholly freeing.

And then I realized "What the hell would happen to him if I quit?"

Who would put up with him like I do? Who would clean up the ink spilled and the papers thrown and the floo powder tossed? Who would listen to his girlfriend woes and untangle his shoelaces and admonish him for being an absolute mess? It was no wonder the Sub-Editors never lasted very long!

And who would...gulp..."rub off" on his secretary?

Who else was willing to put their sanity on the line simply to help him keep a beloved--and perfectly useless--secretary?

Scarily enough, I realized there was only me.

Here goes nothing.

I glanced at Malfoy. He was still waiting for my answer. His smile faltered just a tad. I smiled, too, to reassure him.

Now or never. Deep breath in. "Fine, I'll shadow your damn secretary."

There was silence, and then..."Yes!" he crowed, looking altogether, I realized with a start, perfectly attractive. "Now we're getting somewhere!"

And then he decided one more slap on his thigh with my stapler would add to the effect.

One more slap with a stapler that was now open-faced thanks to his reckless fidgeting.

"HOLY F-ING MERLIN!"

Yes, I was quite sure Accounting three floors below heard him. As well as my entire eardrum. And while he howled about the "damn bloody fucking useless ugly" staple stapled rather firmly in his leg, and while I tried my best to remedy the blown out of proportion injury whilst being assaulted by high level dramatics ("Oh fer' the love of Pete, I'm going to die! Granger, my dear sweet unassuming faithful Granger, I'm going to die! My life is flashing right before--wait, you mean you already got it out?") I came to another epiphany.

Yes, Draco Malfoy is attractive.

But he's also an inept, exhausting prat.

A.N. Yes, my dears, this IS entirely frivolous and absurd, but I rather like it all the same.

Please review or…don't. Actually, I don't see what I can do about. I can't actually physically harm you, or blackmail you, and threatening to pull my account doesn't do me any good, because if you don't review then you don't really care.

You see how irrelevant and extraneous our constant nagging for reviews are? It's like we're hamsters in a spin-y wheel.

WHEEEE!

Loves to All,

Gingham and Basil.

P.S. Should I continue it?