"It's nice to meet you too, Miss Granger. Or do you like Hermione better? You can just call me Pepper." It's not as if she was anything more here, without her contacts, her cellphone, without...Tony. Here, she was just a woman with a strange overheating problem.

Insistently, she pushed her own problems aside, focusing on the conversation at hand.

"I've been here a few days now. I still don't know what to think of how polite the people are who brought us here. Is it all an act?" Her eyebrows raised slightly, and there was a hint of amusement in her voice, but not enough to be mistaken as actual humor at their situation.