A Wonderful Fortuitous Love

2. Job Interview

"I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong." 

- Lemony Snicket

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Draco couldn’t believe it. He was going to be working for Granger. Mudblood Granger. This was disgusting. Just the thought of it all made his insides squirm uncomfortably. He hated her, hated everything she represented, hated her friends, hated her Muggle family, hated that blasted cat, hated she got better grades than he did, hated that she never reacted to his insults. At least with Potter and Weasley they retaliated and more often made fools of themselves. With Granger everything had to be rational. The stupid bint. How was he even supposed to contain himself from hexing her? The mere sight of her would set him off. There was no way he could do this.

He turned around again, this being the second time he’d decided he would not go through with this, and pushed his way past the crowd of people who made no effort to hide their glowers.

Draco was thinking too much of apples when he agreed to this. He couldn’t do it. There was no way.

But then as he continued onwards through the streets of Diagon Alley, he caught more people glaring at him, some whispering behind hands, some not bothering to use their hands. Some even looked smug.

He tried to remember what things had felt like when people bowed to his family’s every whim and found the fond memories of his father ordering people around were getting hazier and hazier. And if this is how the public reacted by Draco’s presence, he could only imagine how they treated his father. And while Draco had understood why the man avoided leaving the manor, he thought now, as he really considered it and stood in the centre of this sullen treatment, he finally, fully, understood why this was so important. His mother, who once had more friends than the number of students in his year at Hogwarts, saw two or three at most and hardly left the confinements of their house. None of them had been publicly out as a family in years.

And suddenly yet slowly, the overpowering need to make them all sorry was there, pulsing and demanding, and his lack of enthusiasm was flipped completely. He was not going to accept this anymore. 

Draco sneered anyone who met his eye and marched in the other direction, towards Gringotts Bank and to the side where a new cream coloured building, about sixteen floors up, stood. One of the new additions after the war.

The large, finely carved wooden doors opened at his approach and he stepped onto the marble floor for the first time. There were witches and wizards arriving by floo to the left of him, to the right they were lined up for departure. Further up, there was a large peach coloured reception desk and on either side were more walkways where people busily came and went.

He strode confidently to the front desk. If he were being honest with himself, he could not help but admit that this place was rather nice, but there was no way he was about to look impressed with a building Granger worked in. Anyone who employed her was obviously not all there in the head.

“I’m here to see, uh, Miss. Granger,” Draco told the woman behind the desk.

She wearily looked up at him from behind her Potter-like glasses, tucking away a strand of plain brown hair that had came free from her tight bun. “Name?”

He paused for a second. “Draco Malfoy.”

Her lips, coated in brown lipstick, pressed together into a straight line. “I see,” she said, her voice tighter than it had been before. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I don’t –”

“Take a seat over there.” She gestured at the rows of puffy plum coloured seats close to where the fireplaces along the walls were. “I’ll call you in when she’s free.”