Desk Job

Chapter 2- Too Much Muggle

Chapter Track: Bohemian Like You by The Dandy Warhols

    Before Draco Malfoy was forced to move out of the Manor and into Blaise´s one bedroom flat, mornings hadn´t existed. His day had started after twelve noon, and was spent more or less the same way than if he hadn´t gotten up at all.

    It was for this reason that, as Draco stood in the middle of Blaise´s kitchenette, the foggy morning light seemed unfamiliar and strangely disorienting to the sleepy twenty year old.

    Draco frowned, a line forming on his forehead. He stared fixedly at the shiny metal box Blaise had referred to as a `toaster´, and which she had promised would furbish him some breakfast. So far all Draco had managed to do was poke two pieces of semi-stale bread into the slots, and smush them down with a long forefinger. The results were less than satisfactory, and as soon as Blaise got out of the shower, Draco had a mind to complain to her about the overall Muggleness of the rented hotel room; gratitude be damned.

    "Blaise?" Draco called, sluggishly walking over to the bedroom. The door was closed. Draco leaned against it and whined,

    "Blaise, the toaster doesn´t toast and magic won´t fix it."

    "Sounds like the title of a country song," Blaise called from the other side of the door. "A really bad one."

    "I thought you´d like it," Draco said sarcastically, jiggling the locked doorknob. "The album is called; `Come Out and Fix Your Muggle Shit."

    The door suddenly swung open, and Draco nearly fell on top of Blaise, who was wearing nothing but a red hotel towel that clashed with her half-dried crimson hair. Draco straightened up, and Blaise noticed that he was only wearing his boxer shorts. She held back a grin at the sight of his arrogant expression.

    "Ready for work?" Blaise asked him offhandedly as they faced each other, pressed close in the narrow hallway.

    "Dressed for success," Draco replied. "Time to pay my debt to society. Nose to the grindstone. Another day in the giant hampster wheel."

    "You made up that last one."

    "I know," Draco said quickly. "Say one thing about ferrets and I´ll kill you."

    Draco met her eyes and grinned. Blaise started to lift the arm that clutched the towel to her chest as the two leaned forward slowly.

    A loud knock sounded at the front door. Draco´s bottom lip brushed Blaise´s mouth before she pulled away.

    "Get that, would you?" she called, retreating to her bedroom. "It´s probably the maid service."

    "Um," Draco started, looking down. "I´m in my underwear, Blaise."

    "Hurry up or we´ll be late for work!" came Blaise´s voice from the bathroom.

    Three very loud knocks hit the door again and Draco scanned the living room for something that would provide a little more coverage.

    Spotting the shiny metal toaster on the kitchen counter, Draco pulled it´s cord from the wall and held it in front of himself.

    Another series of quick raps were registered on the door.

    "The room isn´t going anywhere, stupid Muggle," Draco muttered peevishly. He reached the door and yanked it open.

    To Draco´s surprise, on the other side of the door stood not a Muggle woman with an apron and a cart full of cleaning supplies, but a very frightened looking teenage boy, as tall as Draco but scrawnier. The boy had obviously not expected a strange, naked young man to answer the door holding a toaster in front of his privates, and his eyes, behind a pair of thick, black, square-rimmed glasses, grew wide with shock and horror.

    Draco, too, could admit to have felt embarrassed, but as a Malfoy he tried to make the best of any situation, and always come out on top.

    "Good morning," Draco said coldly. "Would you care for some toast?"

    The lanky brown-haired boy, who had backed up two feet from the door, opened his mouth to reply- or to scream- but was cut off by the sudden appearance of Blaise, herself fully clothed.

    "Pollocks?!" she exclaimed, with a rather unwelcoming look on her face. "What are you doing here?"

    "Blaise!" The boy named Pollocks smiled brightly for an instant and jumped to approach the door. He must have remembered the purpose of his call, however, for his electric blue eyes darkened and he wrung his hands nervously.

    "S-something awful has happened at work, Blaise," Pollocks gushed.

    "Pollocks," Blaise interrupted. "How did you know where I live?"

    "Who is this?" Draco demanded, sick of feeling invisible.

    "Uh," Pollocks started in a small voice, glancing sideways at Draco. "Blaise, who is he?"

    "Never mind," Blaise breathed impatiently. "What did you come here to tell me, Pollocks?"

    "Blaise, please don´t tell me you´re seeing this kid," Draco scoffed. "I mean, he´s a little young, even by your standards."

    "He just works in the same Department as me," Blaise said carelessly. "Go get dressed already, you´re making me uncomfortable."

    "Now there´s a switch," Draco muttered.

    "I guess you can come in, Pollocks," Blaise said, pulling Draco out of the doorway by his arm with a little more strength than was needed.

    His expression a mix of nerves and delight, Pollocks entered the room cautiously. Draco eyed the boy with a frown. He noticed Pollocks was wearing a white lab coat over a bright red T- shirt, blue jeans and red Converse sneakers.

    "Classy," Draco commented with a smirk. Pollocks glanced down at his outfit and then nervously lifted his eyes back to Draco.

    "You, too," the brown haired boy said quietly. Draco gave Pollocks´ a deadly glare, but it was wasted. The boy´s head was already turned toward Blaise. Pollocks´ eyes shone with something foreign to Draco, something that made Draco want to throw the toaster at him.

    "Tell me what you came to say," Blaise told Pollocks as she applied lipstick in front of a mirror in the kitchenette. "I don´t want to be late for work."

    "Oh!" Pollocks exclaimed. "R-right. I, um- I-I got an owl this morning, and, well- Mr. Noonan´s dead."

    "WHAT?!" Blaise spun around, a jagged line of red lipstick streaked down her chin.

    "I-I, um... " Pollocks faltered under Blaise´s horrified expression.

    "Mr. Noonan?" Draco echoed, looking at Blaise. "You mean your boss?"

    "I don´t believe it," Blaise said breathlessly. "I saw him yesterday."

    "N-no you didn´t," Pollocks stammered. "You didn´t come in to work yesterday. I- I waited for you, by the door, until this guy from the third floor made me leave so he could steal from the candy machine."

    "Oh yeah, that´s right. I was with Jul- uh," Blaise´s forehead creased with this new agitation. Draco eyed her suspiciously but didn´t say anything, so she said,

    "Draco, I´d better get to the office right away."

    "Why?" Draco said indignantly. "It´s not like the boss will notice you´re gone."

    "Be serious for once," Blaise sighed, brushing past Pollocks to grab her coat. "A Head of Department has just been killed. The officials sure as hell won´t be making wisecracks."

    "Mm," Draco said. "But I suppose they´ll all have bright red lipstick running down their chins."

    Blaise turned quickly to the mirror on the wall and wiped at her mouth with a forefinger.

    "Pollocks?" she said.

    The lanky teen started at being directly addressed, and stared at Blaise with wide eyes.

    "I´ll meet you at the office, okay?"

    Pollocks nodded enthusiastically and allowed Blaise to shove him out the door.

    Pollocks stood and stared at the outside of Blaise´s hotel room door for a few seconds before leaving. The room number, 1219, shone in little silver letters over the peep hole, through which he could only make out dark shapes flashing past, as Blaise and that rude blonde-haired man prepared to leave. The seventeen year old sighed and turned toward the elevator at the end of the hall. A number of questions were springing up in his scientific head, a few of them concerning the rude blonde man, and one other, which came much like a dark shape, and with a small chill, as he pushed the button on the elevator.

    All these questions he tried his best to push out of his mind, to clear his head for the rather unpleasant task that awaited him at the Ministry Headquarters. The dark question, however, wouldn´t be ordered away, even as Pollocks left the hotel and crossed the street. Even as he nervously walked down an empty alley and made sure no Muggle would observe his Dispparation, the nagging question pulled at him. How?

    "How did she know?" Pollocks muttered to himself before casting his spell.

    "I never told her that he had been killed."

        ***

    Hermione Granger sat on a spindly-legged oak desk with a coarse blanket, (that she really didn´t want, but that the first officials on the scene had thought perfectly sensible and quite necessary) wrapped around her shoulders.

    The desk belonged, of course, to Blaise Zabini. Hermione wasn´t surprised that the Slytherin graduate was late for the fifth time that month. Blaise had never once gotten into trouble for it, though. Mr. Noonan seemed rather charmed by Blaise, (to put it nicely) and favored her above, say, all other workers not as pleasing to the eye.

    But that won´t be happening anymore, Hermione thought, reluctantly looking over her shoulder into the open office of the late Mr. Noonan. The fifth floor was in absolute chaos that morning, ever since Rolfe the maintenance wizard had discovered two very still bodies on the floor of the office belonging to the Head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement.

    Most there were the many familiar faces of her coworkers, that day somber indeed as they passed her on their way in and out of the murder scene, following procedure with uneasiness to spare.

    Hermione had only been revived an hour and a half earlier, but reporters for the Daily Prophet and other smaller papers were already buzzing around the fifth floor, pissing people off with their persistent offerings of money in exchange for information concerning the murder of a respectable employer.

    Hermione was grateful to have been blocked off from the suffocating media. Although she doubted she could give them any information even if she had wanted to. Maddicott, the chief detective of the department, had already questioned her twice, and both times Hermione regretfully told him that she couldn´t remember a thing.

    This was partly true, (Hermione had no reason to lie) she couldn´t remember much, and what she did was so blurry and confused that it was impossible to put into account. She did remember singular words after a frustrating while of intense thinking, but she was tired, and sore from a night on the hard floor.

    "Report," Hermione muttered aloud. She had pieced together a scrap of memory, making her head one-millionth of a shred clearer, but clearer nonetheless.

    "Hi Hermione," said a breathless voice on her left, breaking her concentration.

    Hermione looked up to see Pollocks Rocket, the new lab technician some of the wittier members of the force had nicknamed "Bollocks and Rocket." Hermione had thought people matured once they left school for the `real world´. How disappointed she had been to learn this wasn´t true for most.

    It had to be said that Pollocks made an easy target for ridicule, (his brown hair stuck up on his head in odd places) and even though he and Hermione weren´t close, he unconsciously received her pity.

    "Hello, Pollocks," she answered wearily.

    Pollocks glanced behind her through the open door to the murder scene, his eyes widening behind his bulky glasses. She noticed he carried a large black camera, and meant to begin his work.

    "Are you all right, Hermione?" he asked in a near whisper.

    Hermione merely nodded. She didn´t want to go into detail about how the feeling of uselessness in a situation where she was the only help was giving her a throbbing headache that no simple potion could cure.

    With an awkward sentence of encouragement Pollocks left her, and entered the office of the late Mr. Noonan.

    Hermione´s attention was then averted to a tall figure standing in the hall just outside the doorway. She immediately recognized the man and for an instant forgot her predicament with a smile.

    "Harry!" she greeted him as he ducked under the yellow tape and entered Blaise´s office. Harry´s eyes were lined with dark, sleepless circles, but other than that he looked genuinely happy to see her.

    "Hello, Hermione," he said, almost cautiously. "How are you feeling?"

    "Awful," she sighed. It felt good just to admit it. "So.. wow! I haven´t seen you in so long. Is Ron here too?"

    Harry shook his head to her hopeful face.

    "I just started working for Werewolf Resources," Harry told her brightly. "I heard you worked up here and I couldn´t wait to see you but..." Harry trailed off, casting a glance past her into the office. Hermione followed his gaze and saw Pollocks, snapping pictures of the scene with a set face. She turned back to look at Harry. He reached out and took her hands in his.

    "Do you know what happened," he asked her quietly. "Did you see who did it?"

    Hermione looked down for an instant, searching her memory one last time.

    "No," she answered heavily. "I don´t remember anything. Maddicott thinks the murderer put a powerful charm on me before stunning me. I´m really lucky to still be here, Harry.

    "We´re all lucky," Harry said, grinning at her.

    There was a loud shout from the main floor and both their heads turned in the direction from which it came, but they couldn´t see what the commotion was. More shouting replied, and Harry shot Hermione a questioning look before releasing her hands and heading out the door.

        ***

    "Hey, watch it! That´s an expensive camera!"

    The shout had come from a cross reporter- one of the many- after a slim young man with fair hair and a pointed face had tried to push his way through the crowd of media on the fifth floor of Ministry Headquarters.

    "Really?" Draco sneered nastily. "I´d like to see you price it after i shove it up your-"

    "Aren´t you Lucius Malfoy´s son?" called another reporter at Draco´s left. The swarm of quills, paper and cameras was closing in on him and Blaise, who had just arrived at the offices.

    "Please," Blaise said loudly. "I´ll ask you all kindly to get the fuck out of our way."

    "Did your father get you a position here?" The question was thrown at him as if from nowhere.

    "Do you know anything about the murder of Noonan?"

    "Does your father know anything about what happened here last night?"

    Draco felt a vein near his temple swell to the mad point of bursting.

    "Malfoy Junior," blurted a young female reporter with large, bright yellow hair that Draco thought vaguely familiar. "If you were trapped on a deserted island without your magic, what one item would you take with you?"

    "How about all the sad sacks in this room," Draco yelled at her. "So I could kill you all and escape on a hot air balloon made with your carcasses!"

    The many voices dropped to a dead silence as everyone stared at Draco in disbelief. Blaise tapped Draco´s elbow.

    "That probably wasn´t the best thing to say," Blaise whispered. "Considering a head official has just been murdered and no one knows who did it."

    "Right," Draco said loudly. "I change my answer; I´d bring my bible." He looked at Blaise. "Satisfied?"

    "With you?" she grinned. "Never."

    The crowd ahead of them suddenly shifted, and from there midst came one of the many people Draco was looking the least forward to seeing.

    "It´s Harry Potter!" The reporters whispering and flash photography reached a new high. Draco thought he was going to have a seizure. The young reporter with the bright yellow hair slid past Draco in the direction of the exit.

    "Malfoy!" Harry Potter growled, stopping in front of Draco and Blaise, his eyes livid.

    "Potter," Draco replied smoothly. "I should have known you were here, what with all these reporters around. What happened now? The lowly office coffee burnt your tongue? You got your first pay check? You´re being promoted to Minister?"

    "Stop being a f-" Harry cast a glance around at the many quills scratching every word of the conversation, which was, much to the owner´s delight, slightly more interesting than the Noonan murder.

    "I work downstairs," Harry said through his teeth to the other man´s smirking face. "What are you doing here?"

    "Well, well," Draco said slowly, relishing Harry´s obvious annoyance and reluctance to say anything that might tarnish his image as public action figure. "I," Draco took a long look around the offices, as if he didn´t think it was the fifth gate of hell. "Am about to be a part of the Ministry team. Yep, there´ll be some changes around here, mark my wor-"

    "You," Harry said in disbelief. "Are going to work here? Doing what, exactly?"

    Draco took deep resentment to Harry´s sarcastic tone, and looked at Blaise before replying,

    "I hear there´s an opening for Head of Department."

    "You fucker, Malfoy," Harry said, abandoning his image in a spasm of anger. "Seeing you here I knew you had to have had something to do with it!"

    "Potter, what are you talking about?" Draco scoffed, holding his pale hands out in front of him. "I think you´ve been spending too much time with those half breed werewolves; I almost expect you to start frothing at the mouth soon."

    It was then that Harry clenched his fists and thought about reaching for his wand, but there was a sudden surge in the crowd behind him, and the noisy collapse of a skinny body on the floor at his feet drown the thought quite effectively.

    The body belonged to Pollocks, whom Draco immediately recognized as the doofy boy who saw him half naked that morning. Draco resisted the urge to kick him as the boy scrambled to his feet, brushing off his bright red shirt nervously.

    "I-I tripped," he mumbled lamely, and pushed up his glasses, grinning weakly at Blaise.

    "Thanks for clearing that up for us," Draco sneered. "There we all were assuming you had been brought in on a litter with six beautiful women. Now tie your Goddamned laces and get your circus freak arse out of here."

    "Shut up, Malfoy," Harry told him coolly. "We´re not in Hogwarts anymore, you can´t insult people like that."

    Pollocks, who had bent down and begun to tie his laces with a sulk, stopped and looked up at Harry gratefully.

    Draco felt a white hot anger rush through him. He could hear the quills scratch down Righteous Potter´s last words, and hated the black-haired man for humiliating him in front of the whole room, and soon the whole of the literate wizarding world. Draco opened his mouth to retaliate when a hoarse voice sounded behind him.

    "What in Hell´s crapper is going on here?!"

    "Oh no," Blaise groaned, and dashed from Draco´s side and into the wall of wide-eyed reporters.

    A large wizard in gray robes pushed his way past Draco to stand in the middle of the crowd. Draco scowled at the man, who looked in his fifties and had a very disturbing comb-over.

    "WELL?" the man practically screamed at everyone. "What are you god-botherers milling about for?

    The reporters looked at one another uncomfortably and started to back away. Draco stared at the man with the raspy voice until he remembered Potter was in need of comeuppance for his ill remarks. Draco scanned the disbanding crowd. He saw Pollocks walking off in a disoriented manner and a flash of crimson hair that was Blaise´s head, but no Potter.

    Not really knowing whether he should be pleased by Potter´s absence or not, Draco slowly turned to speak with Blaise, but instead found himself confronted by the big face of the large, loud man.

    "Uhg!" Draco uttered and nearly jumped back. The loud man eyed Draco suspiciously.

    "You´re Malfoy´s kid, aren´t you?" he said gruffly. Draco nodded his head slowly.

    "I´m Detective Maddicott," said the loud man. "Follow me."

    Draco didn´t see anything else to do but to go along with Captain Comb-over. He was led to the very back of the floor, to a blockade of beige cubicles lined up near the glass wall that separated the lab from the rest of the messy desks. Maddicott stopped in front of one of the cubicles.

    "This," he grumbled, wheeling the chair out from under the desk. "Will be your new home. Lucius Malfoy sent an owl this morning ordering Noonan to give you a job."

    Draco looked from the desk to the chair and tried to hold in his grimace- he couldn´t.

    "I wouldn´t complain if I were you, boy," said Maddicott, shaking a stubby finger.

    "Oh, I´m not complaining," Draco said coldly. "No, I just suddenly got this really awful taste in my mouth. Do you mind if I use the private washrooms?"

    "Yes," Maddicott growled. "Sit down and get to work."

    "What do I do?" Draco hissed through his teeth.

    "In the top drawer of your desk," Maddicott told him, turning away. "Everything you´ll ever need to know about upholding the law."

    Draco violently gave his new boss´s back the finger before opening the drawer.

    Inside was a book. Not just any book, oh no, Draco could have dealt with a simple book. This was the biggest, thickest book Draco had ever seen. He couldn´t even lift it out of the drawer. All he could do, sitting at the tiny, walled-in desk, was stare at the ugly, brown -colored title and sulk.

    "So You´ve Chosen to Be a Part of the Wonderful World of Magical Law Enforcement: Desk Job Edition."