'Why are these Hufflepuffs everywhere?', Draco thought with tired exasperation as the blonde woman (who he was sure belonged to that stupid house) placed his order of steak and kidney pie in front of him.
"Anything else?" she asked. Draco shook his head and waved her off rudely. Then he wondered if he should have asked for a glass of firewhisky to wash down this abomination of a meal staring at him. He decided against it; he would have if he hadn't planned to head back to the Ministry to finish his research on the illegal trade of dragon eggs. Unlike some others, he realised the importance of deadlines and the need to put social obligations, personal chores and dates at fancy French restaurants on the backburner to meet them. Even if it was Friday night. Really, he was almost a Hufflepuff himself, Draco sneered inwardly as he took the first bite of his pie.
It was as horrible as it looked, he decided, chewing 35 times (as manners and Narcissa Malfoy dictated) while glaring at the rest of the room as if everyone of its patrons was personally responsible for his current misfortune of being forced to eat this dry, hard mess. Well one of them certainly was, he thought as he spotted MacMillan and Hopkins by the bar (both bloody Hufflepuffs) looking like they were trading banter over a post-work drink. MacMillan's long windedness made him the more irritating of the two (though not the worst Hufflepuff by far – that title was reserved for that pompous fucker who had sauntered into their office last night), but it was Hopkins from the Department of International Magical Cooperation who Draco hated with a passion.
In the summer of 2000, two years after the end of War, and a year after Draco had graduated from school, the Ministry had declared vacancies in various departments for a number of junior positions. Normally a Malfoy wouldn't have needed to seek employment, much less in the Ministry – that refuge of the mediocre, the lazy and the corrupt (and the Malfoys could only be described as one of the three). But post-War reparations had depleted their fortune irreversibly, with their only remaining asset being the Manor. And it wasn't like anyone was lining up to buy the temporary residence-cum-office-cum-torture chamber of the Dark Lord.
Still, Draco had been optimistic. He ought to have been a shoo-in for the Department of International Magical Cooperation, given his fluency over four international languages. French, he thought viciously, was practically his mother tongue. He wouldn't be the one reading out coq au vin as 'coke-oh-vinn' or ordering 'goo-gay-ray' when he meant Gougère. Not that anyone of quality worked at the Ministry or they would have considered these skills before going – before handing off the job to Wayne Hopkins. For Merlin's sake, the man looked badly groomed enough to have grown up with the Weasleys'. And the Hufflepuff sense of loyalty could only make for wishy-washy diplomats who sang paeans to international brotherhood and peace. No, you needed Slytherins as diplomats – cunning interlocutors who could suck up, manipulate and coerce if necessary to ensure that they got the best deal, irrespective of whether the forum was to discuss Muggle-Wizarding relations or acceptable length of broomsticks for international Quidditch tournaments.
Instead, the most promising Slytherin to have graduated from Hogwarts since Lucius Malfoy had been relegated to the lowly position of Research Analyst in the Policy subdivision of the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. And he had remained there for the last three years, where his immediate boss (because Merlin forbid, she had to rise up the ranks from junior positions) had set out to lacerate his nose against the grindstone, day in and day out. Even the ancient Head of the Department (Kettleburn, another Hufflepuff) did not have as strident a work-ethic as Granger on a regular day (Draco's hunger had been satiated enough to concede that today was a bit of an aberration for her). But that wasn't a surprise because the only thing worse than a Hufflepuff was a Gryffindor who claimed membership of the Golden Trio. And because it wasn't a terrible day already, the door of the Leaky facing Diagon opened, and in came the other two-thirds of the said Trio.
Draco hoped that they were just passing through to go to Muggle London, because he knew from his previous round of glaring around the room, that all the tables were occupied. In fact the only empty places (besides a single stool at the bar) were the three seats at his table. If they were anyone else, he would have been reasonably confident of repelling them by glowering in their general direction, and maybe sniping about their clothes or ill-breeding, just a little. But of course, it had to be Potty and Weasel, two of the three misguided arseholes on the planet, who were not only inured to his wit, but whom Draco was forced to be polite to, and not just because Witch Weekly had positioned them at the top of the Most Powerful Wizards in Britain list, five years in a row. There was also that matter of the life debt.
It really was unfair that he had had to carry this sense of obligation towards them, so many years after the War. You could argue that he had saved their lives too – that night at the Manor – when he had vacillated about whether it was Potter and his acolytes or not that Greyback had brought in. Of course, that's not the same as swooping down towards an all-destroying fire to save the people who had not only tried to hand them over to the Dark Lord but also conjured the fire in the first place. But not everyone was a reckless Gryffindor with a saviour complex. That didn't mean that Slytherins didn't deserve respect or jobs with visibility or being thought of as valid potential love interests, Draco thought glumly. Then when he thought it couldn't feel worse, he saw the inevitable happen –Potty and his ginger side-kick had spotted Draco's relatively empty table and were headed towards it – and a sense of helpless melancholy washed over him.
"Mind if we join you?" Potter asked politely.
Draco breathed deeply to prevent screaming out that yes, he bloody well minded, and that Potter could take his blasted scar and his politeness and his false humility and go fuck himself. Succeeding, he grimaced and told them to be his guest.
The blonde Hufflepuff materialised immediately (she had kept him waiting for at least seven minutes), and Weasley (who had made it to the top of Witch Weekly's Most Eligible Bachelor list, now that Potter was married to his sister) spent three minutes chatting her up. After she left with their order, Potter told him that he was wasting his time as Hannah (the blonde, Draco surmised) was back with Neville. Weasley sighed at that, and Draco commiserated. It was an unjust world.
A world where he had to share his table with the two people he had hated throughout school because he owed them, a world where one of those two had dated Hermione Granger and then broken up with her while still remaining her best friend (Draco knew because he insisted on dropping by to the Department for lunch and coffee breaks), a world where Hermione Granger saw him as little more than a motivated subordinate who had learnt every law and by-law related to Magical creatures, who worked as many nights as she did to research archaic provisions and international best practices, who could be counted on to tweak the language of the new werewolf legislation as many times as she wanted so that it could be beaten into perfection –
"– looks like she will be late", Potter was saying, glancing at his terribly old fashioned watch.
"Malfoy, do you know if she is in a meeting?" Weasley asked him, as he blatantly eyed Draco's pie. He wanted to reassure Weasley that it wasn't any good, but instead asked who he was talking about before taking a very deliberate bite.
"Hermione. Your boss. About this tall", he replied indicating the size of a midget with his hand, "giant hair, mostly unlettered, Quidditch fanatic…"
Draco stopped him from talking anymore by informing them that Granger wasn't coming to the Leaky to hang with them. As far as he knew, she was going to a French restaurant with Zacharias Smith from the Auror Office. He didn't tell them that he had been there in her office, discussing the progress on the illegal trade report when the glorified constable had dropped in. He refrained from telling them that he had overheard Smith ask her out while leaving to give them the 'privacy' the tosser had demanded. Or that he couldn't hang back for longer to hear her response (Granger's secretary had her desk positioned right outside her office door) but this morning she had told him that she would review his work-in-progress version of the report during the weekend as she was busy today. He just told them that they had scheduled for today, as far as he knew. He wasn't sure.
"Smith? Hermione is going out with that fucker?" Weasley spat out, incredulity evident in his tone. Draco suddenly felt a sense of kinship with his old nemesis. Really, did Weasley even count as a nemesis? He just happened to be friends with Potter, who was of course irredeemable but it was unfair to castigate him for that. It was like saying Lucius Malfoy was an evil bastard because of his brief association with the Dark Lord. Or that Draco was a witless sycophant because he had been friends with Crabbe and Goyle. And Weasley had dated Granger, who had probably ruthlessly broken his heart, no matter how much the magazine supplement of the Prophet tried to tell its readers that the split had been amicable. Granger was a dab hand at managing the Press after all. And look at that, he had ordered the steak and kidney pie as well, Draco observed, as their food arrived.
"Ron, you know you don't get a say in this", Potter told Weasely slowly, rubbing his hand across his forehead in a sign of discomfort.
"Whaddyamean? Unoofzit?" Weasley asked incoherently, having taken his first bite, mid-sentence.
"Yes she told me", Potter answered, presumably having understood his friend. Weasley howled out a "how could you?" which Draco simultaneously echoed, before Potter could say anything else. Really, the man was beyond the pale. What kind of a friend was he, what was the point of him evading death and continuing to populate the planet if he couldn't counsel Granger about her terrible life choice of dating good-for-nothing Hufflepuffs? The least he could have done was to have told Weasley, who clearly had more sense, and would have driven some of the same into Granger.
"He is not that bad anymore", Potter defended himself in his holier-than-thou voice, "people change you know", and then he looked at him pointedly. That was a clear insult, really he didn't have to keep quiet at that, Draco decided. He was just about to make a snide comment about Weasley's table manners not having changed at all (he was not that bad, but he was still an easier target than the Chosen One) when Potter continued, "Besides, she turned him down".
"She did?" Draco asked, trying hard to ensure that his voice did not betray any emotion, namely shock, confusion and elation.
"Of course she did", Weasley nodded approvingly.
"Yes, she is definitely coming here tonight. But she said she might be late since she is busy with some inter-departmental meeting to organise this year's Triwizard Tournament", Potter explained.
Of course she turned him down. The Brightest Witch of her Age was not about to date some self-important wanker just because he seemed to keep up a strenuous regimen of cardio training. She was busy because she was working, like he should be. And not sit here in this sub-standard establishment sharing his table with Potty and the Weasel. Accordingly, he kept his fork and knife down by the side of his half eaten pie, wiped his mouth and left, leaving enough galleons to cover for his meal and a generous tip. The waitress/ owner of the place had been quite efficient after all. Not all Hufflepuffs were bad.