A/N: It seems like it's been a really long time since I've written anything, and I kind of missed it. I've had this story stuck in my head for nearly a year now, so I'm happy that I've finally gotten part of it written out now. I hope you enjoy it!
"What is this about, Filch," Severus snapped, already annoyed. Severus had inventory to check, paychecks to write, and accounts to balance. He didn't have time for another one of Filch's "important meetings" about whatever nonsense this was about.
Albus merely raised an eyebrow at his tone, a slight upturn in his mouth. Whatever. Albus Dumbledore may be the owner of Fawkes in name, but Severus was more of an owner of the clothing store than the older man. As far as Severus was concerned, Albus was only there to make sure all the customers felt at ease, something they often needed after catching a glimpse of Severus's permanent scowl. For whatever reasons, their customers seemed to enjoy the company of the old, near-senile man, his odd robes, and his crazy socks. Severus tried not to analyze it too deeply. It brought in customers, and that's all he really cared about at the end of the day.
"What have you called us here for, dear Filch," Albus asked much more politely. Severus snorted.
"Watch this," was Filch only answer as he clicked play with his mouse.
All of a sudden, the previously blurred television screen cleared up to show a brown haired teen wearing a red and black plaid shirt flipping through some shirts on a hanger.
"Wow," Severus said stoically. "We actually have customers. What a surprise."
Really? Why did Filch insist on wasting his time like this? Hopefully, this would be the final piece of evidence Albus needed to fire their current (and absolutely useless) Head of Security. He was, to be frank, a waste of time and resources. The small, dim room they were currently standing in was officially Fawkes' security headquarters but only really housed two big monitors, a desktop computer, and a black chair. If they just knocked down the wall separating the room from the store, they could fill it with more shirts and pants and make a profit instead of use it to house Filch – something Severus was convinced was actually losing them money.
Severus, on the other hand, actually had things to do. He, unlike others in the room, had enough of a conscious that he'd feel guilty taking money from the company for just twiddling his thumbs and calling people in for meaningless meetings.
"Patience," Albus reminded him quietly. "Let's see if there's anything else."
And, as if by magic, the video did start becoming interesting as they watched the boy pick up two of their Red Lion shirts – a top seller among the rebellious, suburban teenage boys who drove their parents' spare Lexus and were still growing out their outdated (and now shameful) Justin Bieber haircuts. That he was picking up two identical shirts wasn't precisely out of the ordinary. The kid was fairly thin and probably wore a small, but maybe he wasn't sure about how the fit would look. What was out of the ordinary was the quick movement in which he pulled the bigger sized shirt off the hanger and pulled it over the smaller sized shirt before heading off to the dressing room.
"My, isn't that peculiar," Albus stated calmly. Which was absurd. This was no time to be calm since it was more than obvious what was about to happen.
Unsurprisingly, five minutes passed and the kid came back with only one shirt on the hanger, the larger one. If their cameras weren't crap and could actually zoom in, they'd probably be able to catch a sliver of the smaller red shirt beneath his plaid top, but it was more than obvious that the shoplifter was now wearing the smaller shirt.
"When did this happen?" he snarled at Filch.
"This morning. About two hours after we opened," Filch answered, squinting to read the timestamp on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
Severus nodded and pulled out his phone.
"What ever are you doing?" Albus asked, resting an old but strong hand on his wrist.
"I'm calling the police."
"I think that's a bit much," Albus said just as the kid returned one of the shirts to the rack and then walked out of the store without a single glance at the cash register. "He's just a boy."
"A boy who walked away with a forty dollar shirt, Albus," he explained. "And the last time I looked, we weren't in the business of handing out clothes for free."
"Except for during our winter buy one get one sale," Filch mumbled, receiving a scathing glare from Severus.
"But surely we don't need to alert the authorities over one incident. It could have been an accident."
Did Severus say "near-senile" earlier? What he meant to say was that Albus was an escapee from the local crazy house.
"I realize that I'm the only one in the room with an MBA, but I don't think it's hard for the average person to understand that a business loses money when it gives it's products away for free. We need to catch him now before he tries to do it again. For all you know, he could come by and pull the same tricks again tomorrow or even try it at other stores in the mall. And it all could have been avoided had we taken action right now," he reasoned sensibly. This shouldn't have even been a debate. It was clear what they needed to do. "Filch, can you find a clear image of his face and print it out?"
Filch shook his balding head. "I'm not…I don't know if…How do I print from the sc-"
"Useless," Severus exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "Remind me again what exactly we're paying you to do, Filch."
As Filch opened his mouth to defend himself, Severus merely rolled his eyes. He'd seen the elderly man's resume before Albus had decided to hire him. To be brief, Filch had no skills to speak of aside from his menacing aura that Albus had been convinced would scare away any wrongdoers and keep everyone in line. Severus had tried arguing that he could do a patrol of the floor himself whenever he had breaks between his other duties, but Albus was convinced they needed to hire someone else for the job. And see where that he gotten them? Thousands of dollars wasted on a man with gray, lanky hair who was probably twice as old as and most certainly more useless than the computer he was supposed to be manning.
"Severus," Albus warned. "Why don't you go back to your office and finish up whatever you were working on? You can even snag a lemon drop from my candy dish if you'd like."
Severus knew a dismissal when he heard one. Whatever. He had a cup of cooling coffee to get back to anyways.
"And you'll handle this, Albus?" he asked, the one thing he wanted to know before he left.
The older man nodded. "Of course, dear boy."
Severus frowned, not at all convinced. But what could he do? Albus was the owner, and he was just a mere manager. So he went back to his office, tucked away in another corner of their shop, and went back to work.
Exactly a week had passed since the meeting, and Severus was now positive that absolutely nothing had been resolved after he had left. Why? Because the shoplifter was right there in the store yet again, standing not two yards away from him.
Today he was dressed in a yellow and black plaid shirt and was eyeing a black t-shirt that had an artistic sketch of a sword on it. It was a new item that they'd put on the racks just last Friday, but Severus was pretty positive that the price tag read $39.99. He could at least give the young criminal points for being ambitious. There were plenty of smaller items – ear buds, socks, hemp necklaces, etc. – that he could have targeted that maybe didn't have a big retail value but would have been much easier to sneak out with.
Instead, he flicked through the hangers until he found a small and extra large shirt and plucked them off the rack with ease and practice. But this time was different because there would be no easy escape this time.
"Do try to be original," he spat, coming up behind the boy. "Nobody's going to pay to see the same tricks over and over again."
Severus had seen the boy jump at the sound of his voice, but he gave the boy credit for trying to cover it up. Now that the boy had turned around to look at Severus, he got a closer look at him. If pressed to guess, Severus would say the boy was no older than twenty and no younger than seventeen. More specifically, he was too-old-to-be-pulling-this-shit years old. And he had on these odd glasses with circular frames that Severus supposed would fit in with the rest of the hipsters that came by the store. His worn, black Converse and torn jeans certainly fit in with the overall image.
"I…I don't know what you mean, sir," the boy claimed boldly.
Severus rolled his eyes. "I can get the authorities here in two minutes," he stated in response, nodding down towards the walkie talkie attached to his belt. He hated the stupid device. In reality, it only allowed him to communicate with (and by that, he actually meant yell at) the other employees, but the young criminal didn't need to know that.
"Okay, but why would you do that?" he asked with a tilt of his head.
Still playing innocent? This kid was bold and stupid if he thought he could get away with stealing from Severus's shop by acting innocent.
"We have video evidence, you idiot. Now put back the clothes and come with me."
The boy looked down at the clothes in his hands and seemed to contemplate his options. Sure, Severus was more than ten years his senior, but the only exit was behind Severus's back. The boy would have to be quick and clever to get past him.
Fortunately, he seemed to come to that realization himself and calmly replaced the two shirts to their rightful place. He folded his arms, looking as willful as any teenager he'd ever had the displeasure of metting.
"So what's going to happen now?" he asked.
That was the tricky part. When Severus had first seen the video, he wanted the police to track the boy down, haul him from whatever store he'd gone to next, and have him permanently banned from stepping within a foot of Post Moore Mall. But as Severus slept on it, he realized that that wasn't good enough. So he considered the option of jail. But he wanted to be able to watch the boy suffer a bit. Basically, he hadn't really come up with a plan of action, but there were a few things he knew he wanted.
"You can start by telling me your name," Severus began.
The boy raised a suspicious eyebrow, sensing that this would be the easiest portion of his punishment. "Harry Potter," he answered slowly.
Severus snorted. As if Severus would buy that the thief gave up his name that quickly. "Let's see your I.D."
"You don't believe me?"
How daft was he?
"You're a thief."
"Harry" twisted his mouth as if he found the term offensive. Nonetheless, "Harry" reached into his back pocket and pulled out a raggedy, brown wallet. Severus would be shocked by its thinness had he not known how kids these days preferred to carry Mommy and Daddy's MasterCard instead of cold, hard cash. Eventually, "Harry" held out his driver's license for Severus to see.
"See, I was telling the truth," he proclaimed, giving Severus a disapproving look. As if Severus was the wrong one in this situation.
"How wonderful. As a reward, I suppose it's only right that I forgive you for trying to run off with another forty dollars of my money and let you go on your merry way," he said sarcastically.
Harry scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I'd really appreciate that, actually. I promise I won't do it again."
Severus snorted.
"You don't believe me?"
Was their conversation going in circles? "You're a thief, Potter," he said for the second time.
"Yes, but I really do promise."
Severus growled. Kids these days always thought they could get away with everything. Well not today. Harry Potter was going to get the punishment he rightfully deserved.
"Why, Severus! How rare for you to be talking to our customers," a cheerful voice said from behind him.
Severus only rolled his eyes. It was true that Severus normally left the customer service side of the business to their employees and his annoying boss, but this was a special occasion, and he explained as much to the newcomer.
"So you see I have someone to introduce you to, Albus. Please meet Harry Potter," he introduced. "I'm sure you recognize him from the security footage. And Harry, this is Albus Dumbledore, owner of Fawkes."
The boy had the grace to look ashamed of himself for once. "I'm so sorry, sir," he apologized. "I know what I did was wrong, and I promise never to bother your store again. It's just…It's been hard these past days."
Albus gave him a warm smile. "Why, whatever do you think you've done, my boy?"
That's it. Severus was doing research on the best assisted living facilities in town because he no longer felt comfortable leaving Albus on his own anymore. He clearly needed to be heavily medicated and supervised at all times.
"He's the thief, Albus," he explained for what seemed like the millionth time.
"Now, now, Severus. Don't be rude to our customers," the older man chided gently.
"Customers are people who buy things, Albus. Which is precisely my point. Harry leaves our store with our merchandise, but he doesn't buy anything. In fact, I think we both know that he's probably going out to the streets and selling them to make money to line his own wallet. Now, I was thinking of bringing him to the back to take pictures of him, which we can have Neville post around the mall. Then I was going to try to find a lawyer so that we can press charges immediately. This is just a preliminary plan, so I am open to suggestions."
"But what evidence do you have to charge the boy with?"
Severus just gave him a look. "The footage Filch saved on our server."
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Filch never could quite figure out how to save the footage. There were some buttons to press or software that we were missing." He waved his hand dismissively. "I admit I'm still not up to speed with all of this new technology. But from what I understand, the footage is set to delete itself from the server every three days or so, which he says is actually quite convenient because then our server would be cluttered with hours of tape," Albus explained as if nothing was wrong.
And, really, why was Severus even surprised? It was foolish of him to hold Filch and Albus to any sort of standard. They would only disappoint him time and time again.
"So what do you suggest? We just let the boy go?"
Harry was looking hopeful again, and Severus was ever so tempted to wrap his hands around the boy's throats and squeeze ever so tightly…
"You said you'd fallen on hard times, my boy?" Albus asked, ignoring Severus in favor of addressing the Golden Boy who could apparently got away with any and everything he pleased.
"Yeah…," Harry mumbled, failing to elaborate.
"Well, lucky for you, we've got a position open."
"We have WHAT?!" Severus shouted, only to be ignored yet again.
"Do you think you'd be interested in retail? I can't promise more than minimum wage, but we do give bonuses to those exceptional employees," he said with a wink.
To be fair, Harry looked just as surprised by the outcome of things as Severus. But he snapped out of his stupor quick enough to grab onto Albus's offer before it left the table.
"Of course! I'd love to! Thank you, sir! I- I don't know what to say. Thank you so much! I really appreciate you giving me this opportunity."
"Wonderful," Albus said, all smiles. "Why don't you come in tomorrow at 8 so that we can get you trained and fill out all that nasty paperwork? You can start working as soon as you're finished if that suits you."
"Sure, I'm ready to start whenever you want."
Albus patted Harry on the back, both of them grinning like they were high as kites. Severus wanted to be sick.
"He. Is. A. Thief," Severus reminded them one last time with a scowl.
None of them seemed to be listening.
A/N: *hugs* Thank you so much for reading this first chapter! I really appreciate it! :) If you guys have a spare minute, I would love to hear what you thought about it. I'm still not sure if it's worth it to continue…