I honestly have no idea where this one came from. Just re-watched "Chamber of Secrets" recently, and the thought occurred to me. Enjoy!

Dobby's Polka-Dotted Sock

Unqualified

Kevin Roberts took a deep breath as he descended in the lift. On his robes was pinned a badge with his name and the words 'Job Interview'. He rechecked his sleeves for any sign of lint or wrinkles just as the lift shuddered to a stop, the cool female voice announcing his destination: the Department of Transportation.

The recently graduated Ravenclaw did his best not to look hurried as he walked down the corridor, eyes fixed on a door labeled with the name of the Department's Head, Bartemius Crouch Sr., his interviewer and potential boss. Hopefully.

Kevin knocked twice sharply, then with a more faltering third knock. He couldn't help the feeling of nerves; this was his first interview ever, and his dad had had more than enough to say about Mr. Crouch to put him on edge.

"Come in," a clipped voice rang out, and Kevin smoothed a hand through his mousy brown hair before doing as requested. Mr. Crouch, a thin mustached man, glanced up once before gesturing to the chair on the other side of his desk. "Be seated."

"Y-yes sir," Kevin thought it best to voice his compliance. He paused in front of the desk, however, and held out his hand. "Thank you for—"

"Have you turned your resume invisible?"

Kevin blinked. "Er, no. No sir." Hastily he withdrew his hand and instead passed over the requested parchment, painstakingly written down in ink and quill and then copied several times with a charm. Mr. Crouch took his resume, and he sat.

"Hm," Crouch murmured as his eyes swept the inked-in lines. They narrowed for a moment at the bottom, and Kevin tried not to read too much into that. "Well, Mr. Richards—"

"Roberts, sir," Kevin corrected meekly as he could, but the Department Head continued regardless.

"I can already tell you I won't be hiring you." Kevin's mouth dropped open in shock, yet Crouch was not finished. "You have absolutely no qualifications; despite earning above average marks in your O.W.L.s you failed to receive any N.E.W.T.s. At all. I don't think I've ever seen something like it."

"Oh. Oh, no sir," Kevin let out a shaky, yet relieved laugh. "I didn't take the N.E.W.T.s."

"You refused to sit for them?" Crouch's tone was clearly disapproving, but Kevin shook his head.

"No sir, Professor Dumbledore cancelled them."

"Cancelled them?"

"Yes sir. All of the exams, actually."

But Crouch still seemed preoccupied with his last statement. "Cancelled the N.E.W.T.s?"

"Yes, sir," Kevin repeated more uncertainly.

Crouch huffed, dropping his resume to the desk and leaning back in his chair. Still he was the epitome of stern. "Then tell me, Reynolds—"

"Roberts—"

"—how am I to determine if you are the most qualified candidate?"

"…I took all the required classes, sir," he floundered, at a loss.

Crouch looked unimpressed. "It would be entirely unprofessional for me to simply take you at your word. The position of my personal aide is a very important job, one that calls for someone I can be certain of is capable. As it stands, I have no idea if you are even competent."

"But sir, you said my O.W.L.s—"

"Things can easily change in two years," Crouch cut off Kevin's protest. "Now if you would, please vacate my office. I've already expended more than enough time on this ridiculous affair. Good day to you, Rixton."

"Roberts, sir," Kevin said in some despair. He collected the resume and stood, as Crouch seemed unlikely to even acknowledge him further. Shoulders slumped, he exited the office. How could this have happened? Professor Flitwick had said at his Career Advice meeting fifth year he'd be a shoe-in for any entry level Ministry job he applied for so long as he kept his grades up. And he had!

But it didn't say that on his resume. Was this going to be an issue for any of his other interviews?

OoO

"I don't see any N.E.W.T. scores here," remarked Barnabus Cuffe, editor of the Daily Prophet, as he tilted his chair back on two legs.

"Well you wouldn't, sir," said freshly graduated Hufflepuff, Julie Cooper. "You see, Professor Dumbledore cancelled last year's exams after the whole incident with the Chamber of Secrets. But, if this would help, I have compiled this folder for your convenience." This was Julie's sixth job interview. After the fifth, she'd decided to do her best to work around what was quickly appearing to her to be a terrible mistake made by the Headmaster at the end of her last Hogwarts term.

But Mr. Cuffe's eye's widened as she attempted to place a folder bulging with her sixth year exam results and all her seventh year homework assignments on his desk. "Merlin's beard! I haven't got time to read through all those."

"But sir, it's the only records I have for the past two years," she pleaded, willing her blue eyes to well up with tears. "You only have to skim it to see I maintained good marks. Couldn't I at least come on as an unpaid intern?"

But Cuffe was already shaking his head. "Sorry, little witch, but here at the Prophet we hire only the best, and the best have the N.E.W.T.s to back it up. If you'll excuse me."

"Of course. Thank you for your time, Mr. Cuffe," Julie replied, her tone dejected as she allowed a curtain of her strawberry-blonde hair to fall over her face.

All Cuffe did, however, was holler to his secretary as she opened the door, "Hey Dana, where's that batty Skeeter? She's supposed to have that expose on my desk five minutes ago!"

OoO

"You see, I knew this would happen!" Donna could hear her mother shriek even from her bedroom. She simply laid on her bed staring up at the ceiling. It had been like this for two months now. "Sure, magic was fun and exciting while we were throwing money at that bloody school, but now she's out what's it doing for her? Well, Jack?"

"She'll get in somewhere, love," Jack Spinnet's exasperated voice floated up after a moment or two. Donna tried not to notice how unconvinced even her dad sounded. "Just let me get in touch with some old friends in administration. They could find a spot in reception for her to start out. Our Donna's brilliant, she'll work her way up."

"From receptionist to Healer?" Her mother gave a hysterical laugh. "No qualifications means no training, remember? God, she could've been getting ready for med school! Why I ever agreed to that bleedin' Hogwarts I'll never know—"

"There's nothing wrong with Hogwarts!" Was her father's heated reply.

"Oh really, I wonder if your brother will be saying the same when it's Katie's turn to be told seven years of schooling is going to get her nothing? But no, she's got that Cridditch—"

"Quid-ditch!"

"—to fall back on, hasn't she? Suppose even wizards have to have their sports."

"Is this just the Donna thing you're upset about, or is this really about the magic?" Jack demanded, and upstairs Donna placed her pillow over her head. It did little to muffle the voices. "Cause when I asked you to marry me you said it was fine—"

"It was! It is!" Rachel Spinnet added after a pause. "But all these years it's been 'magic this' and 'magic that' and 'I wish you could do magic, mummy, it's much more fun than the muggle way'! Well maybe she would have been bored without a magic wand, but at least our daughter would have a future!"

Donna threw the pillow aside and sat up, blindly reaching to turn on the Wizarding Wireless her dad had gotten her four Christmases ago. She let The Weird Sisters drown out yet another argument between her parents since she graduated. Despite her seven years as a Gryffindor, she didn't feel very brave right now.

OoO

Rodney Warrington was silent at the dinner table as his father continued to sound his own praises while his mother paid him simpering compliments. After a somewhat embarrassing round of failures on the new Slytherin alumni's part to secure a job for himself, Warrington Sr. had come through for his son with a position in his own ministry office, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

It hardly mattered that the position held no interest to Rodney, of course not. His father had allowed him to try to strike out on his own, and since he had proven unable it was up to him to listen to the head of the family. He resented the implications that he hadn't been ambitious enough or charming enough to win over interviewers on his own; if the bloody Headmaster had just let him sit half his exams it would have been enough.

Only his younger brother Cassius looked at him with some small amount of sympathy. He gave a curt nod in thanks and both returned their gaze to the head of the table. After all, it wouldn't do to be caught not paying attention to their father.

OoO

Perhaps the plight of the 1992-1993 Hogwarts graduating class would have gone unnoticed if Flourish and Blotts had not placed the Helped Wanted sign in their window midway through the summer. As it was, they did.

Within the week, a swarm of young alums descended on the front desk in their best robes to get their application. As other shops up and down the alley announced their own need for additional staff for the summer rush, the spectacle repeated itself over and over. Yes, they understood it was a part-time position. Yes, they understood it was minimum-wage. Yes, they understood it was only seasonal. Yes, they understood there were very few positions available. Yes, they understood these jobs weren't typically the type sought after by Hogwarts grads. They just wanted work.

A handful of these young wizarding adults left Diagon Alley to rest up for their first shifts, but the rest found their way to the Leaky Cauldron. Tom the bartender was perplexed to find a sea of young, disgruntled patrons in his pub over the next few nights.

It was inevitable, really, that something big was going to happen.

"It's all bloody Dumbledore's fault, you know, cancelling the exams. What sort of moronic git does that?" Grumbled a young man, formerly of Slytherin house, to his friends over a pint of Ogden's Firewhiskey.

He was overheard, however, by a recently graduated Gryffindor, who naturally felt obligated to rise in opposition against such lambasting of the Headmaster by a rival. "Oi, it's not like we were going to be ready for the exams anyway; they were sending us home, remember?"

"Yeah, well now we are home, and we're going to stay there cause of missing test grades!"

"If only they'd give us a chance," bemoaned Julie Cooper to her old dorm mates, though her voice carried. "There's loads of other ways we could prove we're eligible for the jobs we want!"

"Good luck making them listen. They take one look at that blank spot on your resume and bam! 'Unqualified'."

"Unqualified," Kevin Roberts growled, slouched over his fourth Firewhiskey of the night. Abruptly he slammed his fist on the bar, making all those around him jump and several more turn their heads. "For these jobs we're overqualified! Seven years of learning everything we could about magic at Hogwarts and now we're begging for a few hours' work ringing a register or stocking shelves. Just where does all that knowledge we apparently wasted our time accumulating come into play there?"

He laughed loudly and bitterly, swaying as he turned on his stool to face out to the room. But none of the young witches or wizards seemed to mind their fellow's somewhat inebriated state. In fact, most were nodding along with his words.

"The jobs we're taking are meant for people who never even went to Hogwarts, and what're those people going to do since we've taken those jobs from 'em? They're certainly not becoming the personal aides of Barty Grouch, even if that position's still open! But now we're all fighting for the same jobs, and there's not enough of 'em! What're we supposed to do then, eh?"

"Get Muggle jobs?" Someone suggested timidly.

"Don't be absurd," was a rather immediate response from a pureblood wizard.

"He's right," Donna Spinnet spoke up before the debate could devolve into an argument over blood purity, shocking her Gryffindor compatriots. "We haven't got Muggle schooling, so we won't find anything better there. Not to mention trying to explain where we've been since primary school," she elaborated with a sigh.

"We don't want cheap work, muggle or magical, we want real jobs!"

"We don't just want them, we need them!"

"We deserve 'em!" Kevin had climbed up on the bar top, much to the alarm and dismay of Tom. "We went to school, we took the exams they'd let us take, and what do they give us? Nothing! What do we do?"

"Give 'em Hell!"

"Take what we want!"

"Show them who's unqualified!"

The answers were immediate and many. Wizards and witches surged forward to take up the cry. It might have turned into a riot if someone hadn't burst into the Leaky Cauldron brandishing a copy of the Evening Prophet. "There's been a breakout from Azkaban—Sirius Black!"

Yells and even screams rent the air of the pub, though this time out of fear. The Prophet was passed through multiple hands, but even more noticeable was the number of people rushing for the fireplace or simply turning on the spot and disappearing with a crack! Within minutes, the pub was practically empty, the young witches and wizards returning home to their families in reaction to the emergency.

Tom would later deny to any and all patrons that he'd been relieved when the news had come in about Black.

And that was how Sirius unwittingly halted the social and worker's revolution of the Wizarding World. Seriously, I know it's every kid's dream to have the end of year exams cancelled, but what exactly were the seventh years supposed to do without their N.E.W.T.s? It would've totally hindered their attempts to get jobs they'd actually be suited for, thus causing them to have to look for lower-level positions, thus flooding the job market with unskilled laborers or service workers, thus tanking the Wizard economy. This should have been big news—except then Sirius broke out and that was all anybody wanted to talk about. Only explanation.

So yeah, bit of fun, bit of seriousness, but in the end just me playing around with an idea. I'd love to hear any and all thoughts on the matter though, so thanks for reading and please review!