Ginny swept into her favourite neighbourhood coffee shop, the strong scent of life-giving percolation rousing her senses and perking her up enough to notice, with a worried grimace, the long queue ahead of her. She consulted her watch and calculated a buffer of approximately seven minutes between getting her coffee and being late for work. Normally, she liked to have at least ten minutes, but she'd have to risk it. It was Tuesday, the universally regarded worst day invented, after Monday, and there was no possible way she could get through the next eight hours without her requisite cup of liquid caffeine, nor did she even consider purchasing coffee from the Ministry's canteen, as their stuff tasted like someone had mixed brown paint and water and left bits of dried paint chips in it, and then had the audacity to charge six Sickles for the service of slowly poisoning you.
She bit down a groan upon hearing a woman at the front of the line give a needlessly long and complicated order, and shifted from foot to foot like a child with urgent needs. On one hop, she noticed, with a slight start, a light blond head in the middle of the line, and caught sight of sharp, sculpted cheekbones as the man turned his head just an inch. Ginny stopped moving and hung backwards a bit, wondering what in the world Malfoy would be doing in a place like this and why he kept turning up like a bad Knut in her life ever since she had the misfortune of springing him from jail. Taking another stealthy peek around the people who stood in front of her and getting a view of the back of his head, Ginny frowned to herself and decided it couldn't possibly be him, not in such a Muggle suburb and not in such a Muggle establishment and not ordering such an inexpensive, plebeian beverage as a white coffee. She was probably just imagining things, though why on earth her mind would imagine such a strange thing as seeing Draco Malfoy in her neighbourhood was beyond her.
The man moved over to the pick-up counter and retrieved his drink, then moved quickly past the shuffle of customers and out the door, Ginny staring at him out of the corner of her eye the whole way. Her mouth opened and shut again now that she had had the chance to see his face. There had to be a logical explanation, though it was very much out of her grasp at the moment. Although she considered her little area of the world a rather nice place to live, she suspected that, for Draco, even Buckingham Palace would be slumming, staunchly Muggle as the building was, and what he was doing here was a total mystery. Of course, she considered, it might not have been him at all; she had heard once that everyone had a doppelganger somewhere in the world, and perhaps his just happened to live in England, too. If that happened to be the case, Draco, naturally, would be the evil twin. Ginny spent the next minute contemplating what the good twin would be like, with Draco's features and a functioning soul.
She promptly forgot about it another minute later when a finished customer tripped over his own feet and spilled his coffee dregs down her shirtfront.
The morning had all the makings of the kind of awful day that got progressively worse and worse. Living in a Muggle neighbourhood meant that she couldn't Scourgify the stain on the spot, the hands of her watch hovering just to the left of making it officially nine o'clock meant that she hadn't the time to go home to change and the stain that had woven itself inextricably into the fabric by the time she'd reached the Ministry meant that the shirt was as good as trash, on top of which colleagues kept staring at her as if she had spent her morning getting friendly with a dumpster.
Well aware of the rules of Very Bad Days, Ginny was put out, though unsurprised, when the heel of one shoe broke during her weekly afternoon walkabout with the Minister as he dictated things he needed done to the circle of subordinates trailing him with pads and quills scribbling down his words verbatim. A quick tap of her wand to the shoe salvaged the rest of the stroll, and the other shoe at least had the decency to keep itself together until the Minister went back to his office, at which point Ginny had had to deal with her second broken heel of the day, along with an embarrassing pratfall and a sprained ankle.
It was on her way back from the Medistaff's station that Ginny thought she spotted Draco Malfoy standing by the lifts in the Atrium, and she briefly considered limping back to the resident Mediwizard to ask for a psychological evaluation.
Draco was feeling in fine form. He had gotten an early start to the day -- a conditioned habit as yet unbroken, conquered the underground with a minimum of fuss and managed to purchase a rather good coffee from a quaint little cafe without looking a fool in the Muggle suburb in which he had arranged to meet an estate agent. He then spent much of the day bullying the hapless realtor into chauffeuring him all around London, Greater London and its surrounding areas and inspecting several homes for sale, including a number of properties she wasn't exactly authorised to show, and Draco was pleased to discover that he still had quite a firm grasp on the gentle art of persuasion.
He hadn't gone asking for mansions, of course -- Williams had warned him against it, plus if Draco had wanted to hear his own voice and footsteps echo his seclusion back to him he'd have camped at the Manor -- but he wasn't looking to slum it either. Although prison had forcibly weaned him of attachment to material, superficial and superfluous things, the Spartan quality of his three years there hadn't exactly endeared minimalism to him either. If absolutely necessary, he could go without many luxuries in his life, and did, in fact, draw some measure of strength from knowing it, but now that he had the choice, he could see no reason to deny himself some trappings of the wealth recently returned to him. What was money, after all, if not made to be spent? And with the Galleon to pound conversion rate as favourable as it was, he would be daft to settle for a shack when he could thrice over afford properties much more suited to his tastes and demeanour. Besides, he figured he would catch enough flak as it was once people found out he was living among Muggles, and having a house that plainly illustrated just how much more well off he was than his naysayers would shut them up nicely enough, or at least reduce the snide mutterings to those of envy.
The day was wearing on into late afternoon by the time Draco deigned to release the poor estate agent, and it was with a touch of reticence in her voice that she told him to feel free to give her a ring any time if he had any questions at all or wanted to shop around some more. She dropped him off in the heart of downtown London, putting on a brave face for the start of the rush hour traffic jams she was about to endure, and drove off, quickly getting stuck behind a long, torpid row of cars. Smoothly picking his way through the crowds, Draco found a narrow, unfrequented alleyway and slipped in unnoticed, and disappeared with a soft 'pop', no one the wiser.
His destination was the Ministry of Magic, and he checked his pockets for the letter he'd received the day before from the head of International Magical Cooperation -- an invitation to interview for an open position in the department, along with a metal-plated visitor's pass, without which he would not be able to get anywhere past the entrance. Security measures had been beefed up considerably at the Ministry some years ago as a result of a failed, but too close for comfort, assassination attempt on the then-Minister's life. From then on, only Ministry employees were allowed to move freely in and out of the premises, with identity checks conducted every now and again at random intervals; unescorted visitors were few and were required to request advance permission for entry. The decision, and its subsequent execution, had ended up in a small employment boom, as the call for heightened security meant more officers on duty. Several more staff were required as well for the processing and approving of visitor's passes, and therefore creating more unnecessary red tape along the way. It was bureaucracy at its finest, and Draco was well on his way to bask in all its stuffy glory.
Easing himself into the red telephone box that constituted the visitor's entrance, he fed his visitor's pass into the slot that had once freely dispensed visitor badges. A pleasant and professional voice welcomed him to the Ministry as the telephone spat his pass back out, and Draco grabbed for it before the box chugged its way downwards to the main floor. At the conclusion of his descent, the doors slid open, and Draco was stopped at once by two hulking guards.
"Hold it there, sir," said the one on the right, pushing a vertical palm forward. The other shuffled a little more slowly to his colleague's side. The slightly vacant look in their eyes told Draco that these particular guards had been placed there more for the virtue of their brawn than cunning in the hopes that any visiting scoundrels with nefarious purposes would drop their plans to avoid being tackled by two very large men. "Pass, please."
Draco produced the item and waited for them to finish inspecting it with their wands.
"Clean," said the second guard with a lilt of disappointment to his voice. They lumbered aside to let Draco through, and after a brief consultation with the floor directory, he headed for the lifts with a fluttering feeling of being watched.
The quiet, tinkling melody floating in the lift was drowned out as soon as the doors opened to Level Five, and Draco had to stoop quickly to avoid the rush of interdepartmental memo aeroplanes hovering just outside the doors, claiming the lift for their own as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Straightening, he took a brief moment to survey the scene before him -- the floor, divided into sections by department and by glass walls, was a flurry of activity; brightly coloured memos were merrily zooming overhead, the sound of quills scratching against parchment were magnified by dozens of people writing in unison, employees were doing their best impressions of panicked speed-walkers.
A tall woman with a strong Roman nose and greying hair strode forward, a gleam in her eye as she caught his. With an outstretched hand, she smiled. "Mr. Malfoy. Right on time, I see. Thomasina Quigley. Ms. Quigley, if you please," she said, elongating the sibilance of her title in a bee's drone. She had the sort of sharp, plangent voice that lent itself well to the barking of orders that needed only to be barked once.
In an instant, Draco was suddenly aware of the absence of noise -- it was jarring, actually, the way dozens of quills fell from fingertips and clattering heels arched themselves into tiptoes. Even the paper airplanes trailing across the ceiling seemed to decelerate, moving at the interminable pace of people passing by a magnificent wreck. There were a number of workers unabashedly staring, and the silence was dotted with the sound of curled hands cuffing the backs of heads, blows dealt to colleagues by the slightly more sophisticated among them, to whom staring was decidedly beneath the station of a Ministry employee.
"Ms. Quigley," said Draco, playing by the rules and pretending there was nothing amiss. He pumped her hand firmly, twice. He wondered how exactly the Unit had orchestrated getting him an audience -- most likely a job -- with this woman, the head of the department, who did not look as if she suffered fools. The thought did occur to him that she was part of the Unit as well, but he certainly wasn't going to bring it up, and she didn't appear the sort of person to offer such information wantonly. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I was rather surprised to receive your letter."
"Yes, well, let's talk in my office, shall we?" she said, indicating with a quick sweep of her eyes that if they continued to stand out there in the hallway, in front of the whole department, no further work would be accomplished that day. "Follow me."
She bit down a groan upon hearing a woman at the front of the line give a needlessly long and complicated order, and shifted from foot to foot like a child with urgent needs. On one hop, she noticed, with a slight start, a light blond head in the middle of the line, and caught sight of sharp, sculpted cheekbones as the man turned his head just an inch. Ginny stopped moving and hung backwards a bit, wondering what in the world Malfoy would be doing in a place like this and why he kept turning up like a bad Knut in her life ever since she had the misfortune of springing him from jail. Taking another stealthy peek around the people who stood in front of her and getting a view of the back of his head, Ginny frowned to herself and decided it couldn't possibly be him, not in such a Muggle suburb and not in such a Muggle establishment and not ordering such an inexpensive, plebeian beverage as a white coffee. She was probably just imagining things, though why on earth her mind would imagine such a strange thing as seeing Draco Malfoy in her neighbourhood was beyond her.
The man moved over to the pick-up counter and retrieved his drink, then moved quickly past the shuffle of customers and out the door, Ginny staring at him out of the corner of her eye the whole way. Her mouth opened and shut again now that she had had the chance to see his face. There had to be a logical explanation, though it was very much out of her grasp at the moment. Although she considered her little area of the world a rather nice place to live, she suspected that, for Draco, even Buckingham Palace would be slumming, staunchly Muggle as the building was, and what he was doing here was a total mystery. Of course, she considered, it might not have been him at all; she had heard once that everyone had a doppelganger somewhere in the world, and perhaps his just happened to live in England, too. If that happened to be the case, Draco, naturally, would be the evil twin. Ginny spent the next minute contemplating what the good twin would be like, with Draco's features and a functioning soul.
She promptly forgot about it another minute later when a finished customer tripped over his own feet and spilled his coffee dregs down her shirtfront.
The morning had all the makings of the kind of awful day that got progressively worse and worse. Living in a Muggle neighbourhood meant that she couldn't Scourgify the stain on the spot, the hands of her watch hovering just to the left of making it officially nine o'clock meant that she hadn't the time to go home to change and the stain that had woven itself inextricably into the fabric by the time she'd reached the Ministry meant that the shirt was as good as trash, on top of which colleagues kept staring at her as if she had spent her morning getting friendly with a dumpster.
Well aware of the rules of Very Bad Days, Ginny was put out, though unsurprised, when the heel of one shoe broke during her weekly afternoon walkabout with the Minister as he dictated things he needed done to the circle of subordinates trailing him with pads and quills scribbling down his words verbatim. A quick tap of her wand to the shoe salvaged the rest of the stroll, and the other shoe at least had the decency to keep itself together until the Minister went back to his office, at which point Ginny had had to deal with her second broken heel of the day, along with an embarrassing pratfall and a sprained ankle.
It was on her way back from the Medistaff's station that Ginny thought she spotted Draco Malfoy standing by the lifts in the Atrium, and she briefly considered limping back to the resident Mediwizard to ask for a psychological evaluation.
Draco was feeling in fine form. He had gotten an early start to the day -- a conditioned habit as yet unbroken, conquered the underground with a minimum of fuss and managed to purchase a rather good coffee from a quaint little cafe without looking a fool in the Muggle suburb in which he had arranged to meet an estate agent. He then spent much of the day bullying the hapless realtor into chauffeuring him all around London, Greater London and its surrounding areas and inspecting several homes for sale, including a number of properties she wasn't exactly authorised to show, and Draco was pleased to discover that he still had quite a firm grasp on the gentle art of persuasion.
He hadn't gone asking for mansions, of course -- Williams had warned him against it, plus if Draco had wanted to hear his own voice and footsteps echo his seclusion back to him he'd have camped at the Manor -- but he wasn't looking to slum it either. Although prison had forcibly weaned him of attachment to material, superficial and superfluous things, the Spartan quality of his three years there hadn't exactly endeared minimalism to him either. If absolutely necessary, he could go without many luxuries in his life, and did, in fact, draw some measure of strength from knowing it, but now that he had the choice, he could see no reason to deny himself some trappings of the wealth recently returned to him. What was money, after all, if not made to be spent? And with the Galleon to pound conversion rate as favourable as it was, he would be daft to settle for a shack when he could thrice over afford properties much more suited to his tastes and demeanour. Besides, he figured he would catch enough flak as it was once people found out he was living among Muggles, and having a house that plainly illustrated just how much more well off he was than his naysayers would shut them up nicely enough, or at least reduce the snide mutterings to those of envy.
The day was wearing on into late afternoon by the time Draco deigned to release the poor estate agent, and it was with a touch of reticence in her voice that she told him to feel free to give her a ring any time if he had any questions at all or wanted to shop around some more. She dropped him off in the heart of downtown London, putting on a brave face for the start of the rush hour traffic jams she was about to endure, and drove off, quickly getting stuck behind a long, torpid row of cars. Smoothly picking his way through the crowds, Draco found a narrow, unfrequented alleyway and slipped in unnoticed, and disappeared with a soft 'pop', no one the wiser.
His destination was the Ministry of Magic, and he checked his pockets for the letter he'd received the day before from the head of International Magical Cooperation -- an invitation to interview for an open position in the department, along with a metal-plated visitor's pass, without which he would not be able to get anywhere past the entrance. Security measures had been beefed up considerably at the Ministry some years ago as a result of a failed, but too close for comfort, assassination attempt on the then-Minister's life. From then on, only Ministry employees were allowed to move freely in and out of the premises, with identity checks conducted every now and again at random intervals; unescorted visitors were few and were required to request advance permission for entry. The decision, and its subsequent execution, had ended up in a small employment boom, as the call for heightened security meant more officers on duty. Several more staff were required as well for the processing and approving of visitor's passes, and therefore creating more unnecessary red tape along the way. It was bureaucracy at its finest, and Draco was well on his way to bask in all its stuffy glory.
Easing himself into the red telephone box that constituted the visitor's entrance, he fed his visitor's pass into the slot that had once freely dispensed visitor badges. A pleasant and professional voice welcomed him to the Ministry as the telephone spat his pass back out, and Draco grabbed for it before the box chugged its way downwards to the main floor. At the conclusion of his descent, the doors slid open, and Draco was stopped at once by two hulking guards.
"Hold it there, sir," said the one on the right, pushing a vertical palm forward. The other shuffled a little more slowly to his colleague's side. The slightly vacant look in their eyes told Draco that these particular guards had been placed there more for the virtue of their brawn than cunning in the hopes that any visiting scoundrels with nefarious purposes would drop their plans to avoid being tackled by two very large men. "Pass, please."
Draco produced the item and waited for them to finish inspecting it with their wands.
"Clean," said the second guard with a lilt of disappointment to his voice. They lumbered aside to let Draco through, and after a brief consultation with the floor directory, he headed for the lifts with a fluttering feeling of being watched.
The quiet, tinkling melody floating in the lift was drowned out as soon as the doors opened to Level Five, and Draco had to stoop quickly to avoid the rush of interdepartmental memo aeroplanes hovering just outside the doors, claiming the lift for their own as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Straightening, he took a brief moment to survey the scene before him -- the floor, divided into sections by department and by glass walls, was a flurry of activity; brightly coloured memos were merrily zooming overhead, the sound of quills scratching against parchment were magnified by dozens of people writing in unison, employees were doing their best impressions of panicked speed-walkers.
A tall woman with a strong Roman nose and greying hair strode forward, a gleam in her eye as she caught his. With an outstretched hand, she smiled. "Mr. Malfoy. Right on time, I see. Thomasina Quigley. Ms. Quigley, if you please," she said, elongating the sibilance of her title in a bee's drone. She had the sort of sharp, plangent voice that lent itself well to the barking of orders that needed only to be barked once.
In an instant, Draco was suddenly aware of the absence of noise -- it was jarring, actually, the way dozens of quills fell from fingertips and clattering heels arched themselves into tiptoes. Even the paper airplanes trailing across the ceiling seemed to decelerate, moving at the interminable pace of people passing by a magnificent wreck. There were a number of workers unabashedly staring, and the silence was dotted with the sound of curled hands cuffing the backs of heads, blows dealt to colleagues by the slightly more sophisticated among them, to whom staring was decidedly beneath the station of a Ministry employee.
"Ms. Quigley," said Draco, playing by the rules and pretending there was nothing amiss. He pumped her hand firmly, twice. He wondered how exactly the Unit had orchestrated getting him an audience -- most likely a job -- with this woman, the head of the department, who did not look as if she suffered fools. The thought did occur to him that she was part of the Unit as well, but he certainly wasn't going to bring it up, and she didn't appear the sort of person to offer such information wantonly. "It's a pleasure to meet you. I was rather surprised to receive your letter."
"Yes, well, let's talk in my office, shall we?" she said, indicating with a quick sweep of her eyes that if they continued to stand out there in the hallway, in front of the whole department, no further work would be accomplished that day. "Follow me."
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