Chapter 1 – "This is it"
"This is it." Rose Weasley stared at herself in her full-length mirror. "This is your chance to prove what you're made of. Don't be a fool. Don't ramble. Be smart. Make eye contact." She straightened up and smiled. "This is it."
"Shit," Scorpius shot up, his head immediately coming into contact with a beam that hung off the low ceiling above his bed. "Fuck." He rubbed his forehead where the beam had hit him. He looked at the Muggle alarm clock that was on the night table beside his bed and a bright green fluorescent 7:30 flashed back at him. He could have sworn he had set it for 6:30 the night before. "Bloody useless machine." He muttered, annoyed. He scrambled out of bed to find the new set of work robes his mother had sent to him the day before, only to trip over a pair old Omnioculars he purchased several World Cups ago and fall onto his back.
"This is not a good way to start your first day on a new job," he muttered to himself, turning over onto his stomach.
"Bye Dad! Bye Mum!" Rose called as she headed toward the fireplace of her parents' house.
"Good luck!" Her father's voice came from the kitchen.
"Make good choices!" Her mum's voice followed.
"Don't make a fool out of yourself!" Her brother, Hugo, called.
Rose took a pinch of Floo Powder out of the vase beside the fireplace and threw it into the fire. She stepped into the emerald green flames and stated clearly, "The Daily Prophet."
Scorpius had gotten ready in record speed. He had just swallowed the last of his toast and ran a brush through his hair right at 7:45 before apparating to Diagon Alley. He walked quickly down the street toward the Prophet offices. Arriving in front of the large building, he swung open the heavy glass door and stepped inside.
"This is it," he whispered to himself. And he started across the marble floor to report to the fourth floor.
Rose had just arrived on the fourth floor of the Daily Prophet offices and walked up to the large wooden desk in the middle of the floor, the name plate that sat on top of it read: Harvey Horton, Receptionist.
"Hi," Rose smiled.
Harvey looked up, looked bored. "Yes?"
"My name is Rose Weasley. I'm a summer intern. I'm supposed to be reporting to a Richard White."
"What did your name was?" He asked, clicking a few buttons on a monitor in front of him.
"Rose Weasley," she repeated.
"Yes," he nodded, looking at the monitor. He turned to Rose. "Mr. White will arrive shortly. You can wait over there for him and the other intern."
Rose followed Harvey's gaze to a white leather couch in the corner of the room. "Thanks," she smiled at him and strode toward the couch.
She settled down onto the comfortable couch. 'So far, so good,' she thought to herself happily. She glanced at her watch, 7:54. She picked up a magazine from the table in front of the couch and started flipping through the pages before settling on an interesting article about some kind of Muggle postal crisis. Why Muggles trusted people to handle their mail she never understood.
Scorpius entered the fourth floor and looked around, looking for a receptionist desk of some kind. People were already bustling about and it was getting hard to maneuver around them. Finally, he found a large wooden desk that stood in the middle of the room.
"Hello," he walked up to the desk. "I'm here for the summer internship."
The receptionist looked up at him. "Name?"
"Scorpius Malfoy."
The receptionist nodded, glancing at the monitor next to him. "Mr. White should be here shortly. The other intern has already arrived. You can wait over there," he gestured to a white leather couch where a young witch, the other intern he assumed, sat, her face covered by a magazine.
"Thanks," he nodded at the receptionist, then turned and walked toward the couch.
He took a seat once he reached it and then turned to the witch sitting next to him. Her face was still covered by the magazine. He cleared his throat. "Hi," he smiled. "Are you the other intern by any chance?"
The witch put her magazine down and turned to him. The magazine fell threw her fingers and hit the floor. "Scorpius?" None other than Rose Weasley gaped in front of him.
Scorpius gaped right back. "Rose? You're the other intern?"
"You've got to be kidding me," she said, reaching down to pick up the magazine.
"What are you even doing here? Aren't you supposed to working at the Ministry with your parents or something?"
"I have no interest in working at the Ministry," Rose responded. "And shouldn't you be off flying on a broomstick chasing some golden winged ball? At least that's what I heard when you graduated."
"Plans fell through," he responded, eyes narrowing. "I'm interested in journalism now."
"When were you ever interested in writing in the past?" Rose asked, annoyed that Scorpius, of all people, was here, at the job that was supposed to lead her down successful career path at the Daily Prophet.
He opened his mouth to respond, when a large figure loomed over them.
They both looked up to find a smiling, large man wearing a set of sparking green robes. "You must be Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy," he said pleasantly.
Rose and Scorpius quickly stood up. "You must be Mr. White," Rose said.
"Yes, I am," the man responded. "I'm so sorry I couldn't be here for your interviews, there was an emergency in Prague regarding a rumored weed that could bring back dead people. Of course, it was just an ordinary weed. Nothing special. But I hear from Brian, who did conduct your interviews, that you're both quite clever and qualified."
Rose smiled humbly.
Scorpius, from beside her, rolled his eyes.
"Well, I'm looking forward to working with the two of you. If you would just follow me, I'll let you know what's going on." He said as he began to walk.
Rose quickly followed behind him, Scorpius behind her.
"This will be your work area," Mr. White stopped in front of a small cubicle. "It's a bit tight space for the two of you, but I'm sure it will be manageable. As you well know, this is very much a clerical internship, but we're always looking for ideas and when my door is open, feel free to come in. My office is right there," he pointed to a large corner office.
"Now," he said, clapping his hands together. "These are your monitors," he walked into the cubicle, turning the monitor on each of the two desks on. "The Prophet is pretty much the only place in the Wizarding Community that has a use for these things, but they're needed for printing and for layouts and such. You'll use them a lot. The second floor is the owl floor; the third floor, more offices. You'll be running back and forth between the floors a lot. Generally, I'll let you know what you'll be doing, but people will give you a little errand to do every once in a while."
"Any questions?" He asked.
Rose and Scorpius shook their heads. "I think we've got it," Rose said.
"Excellent, excellent, excellent," he said. "So," he gestured to their chairs. "You can get yourselves settled. I'll be sending you your assignments and such through the monitors, feel free to ask me anything through the monitors or you can come to my office when the door is open."
Rose and Scorpius nodded.
"Fantastic, I'll leave you two to it then," he said as started to work to his office.
Once he was gone, Scorpius sat down on the chair closest to him.
Rose scowled. "Why do you get that one?"
"Huh?"
"That desk is clearly the better desk."
Scorpius looked at the desk in front of him and then at the desk on the opposite side of the cubicle. "They look exactly the same to me."
"This desk is clearly newer and the trash can is next to it. We'll be doing clerical work so we'll be using the rubbish bin a lot. Which means whoever it's closest to it will have an advantage."
"An advantage to what exactly?"
"A general advantage," Rose replied.
Scorpius sighed and moved to the other desk, figuring it would be easier just changing desks than arguing with her.
"Thank you," said Rose, sitting down.
The job description clearly wasn't lying when it said the internship was mostly a clerical one. Their first task was to go up to the fifth floor, the archives, and pull out a series of previous editions.
The archive room was huge. It was lined with filing cabinets that were extremely organized, thanks to magic, but was still extremely hard to navigate.
Rose and Scorpius stood on opposite sides of the room.
"Is October of 1997 over there?" Rose called, scanning the list.
Scorpius read the labels of the cabinets. April 1978, May 1978. "I'm about twenty years off!" He called the Rose.
"Damn," he heard her say loudly. "It'll be in the middle then?"
"We were just in the middle."
"But it's obviously not at the edges."
"We were looking in the middle just minutes ago."
"Just please help me look me in the middle, okay?" Rose asked, frustrated.
Scorpius trudged toward the middle, arms full of the editions they had already found. He turned down a row of cabinets and found Rose on her knees looking at the labels of the bottom drawers.
"You would think that they would charm the labels to make them easy to find," said Rose, standing up and moving to the set of cabinets next to her.
Scorpius set down the stack of newspapers on the ground and moved to help Rose look. "Well, here's 1995." He moved to the next cabinet. "And here's 2000."
Rose let out a frustrated groan. "It should be there!"
"Obviously."
Rose glared at him. "Well then where is it?"
"Why are you asking me? I'm just as new a this as you are."
"Do you supposed they're up there?" She pointed to the cabinets above them.
Scorpius frowned. He hadn't even realized there were cabinets up there.
"How do we go up?" He asked.
"We don't," she responded, pulling out her wand. She muttered something and the top set of cabinets replaced the bottom set.
"Why didn't you think of that sooner?" he asked.
"Just thought of it now," she said, scanning the labels. Her finger stopped at label marked October 1997. "Yes!" She pumped her fist in the air triumphantly.
Scorpius stared at her. He hadn't seen anyone to triumphant fist pump in years.
She turned to him and frowned. "Why aren't you happier? We've been looking for October 1997 for almost 20 minutes now."
"It's just… I don't think I've ever seen anyone pump their fist in the air like that in a long time."
"Is there something wrong with the way I show excitement?" she snapped.
"If it's like that, yes."
"Don't judge me," she said. "I saw you this morning with your disheveled look and jam all over your mouth. You woke up late, didn't you?"
"What? Of course not!" Scorpius blushed. "You think I would oversleep on a day as important as this one?"
"Don't lie. You're horrible at it," she said. "You could have at least had the common sense to glance in something called a mirror before you left."
Scorpius ran his hand through his hair and straightened his tie.
"It doesn't matter now," Rose said. "You already made your bad impression. I mean, seriously, do have any sense of order and responsibility or did you lose that after you graduated and left home?"
"Okay," he said, getting annoyed. "Stop it."
They were silent. They opened up the file cabinet and started to search for what they needed. After a few minutes passed, Rose spoke.
"Sorry," she said. "I know I can be a bit … overbearing, I'm sure you remember from when we were schoolmates."
"It's actually not a big deal. You're like my mother in that way."
"Comparing me to your mother… is that supposed to be an insult?"
He pulled out the edition they needed. "It's not an insult. If anything, it's a bit of a compliment. Though I would never admit that to my mother."
Rose took the edition out of his hands and smiled. "Let's go deliver these."
Author's Note: Reviews are always appreciated :)