Chapter Three- Starstruck

Where did Draco want to work? He needed to make a lot of money fairly quickly, but how? Most of the places with large paychecks required experience, which he lacked. However… Draco was fairly certain that he recalled one conversation about summer jobs a Muggle-born Hufflepuff had had with her pureblood friend. In that conversation, Draco thought he remembered the Mudblood mentioning that she could make over fifty pounds a night in tips while working as a waitress. He wasn't up to date in all forms of Muggle money, but he knew that five pounds was almost equivalent to one galleon, so the girl had been earning ten galleons a night. While not impressive compared to the wealth Draco was used to, it was a considerable sum of money and could easily help him obtain a plane ticket. It was settled, then. Draco Malfoy would become a waiter.

Draco knew exactly the sort of restaurant he wanted. It couldn't be too upscale because those sorts of restaurants required that their staff have previous experience, but it couldn't be a poor-man's type restaurant either, or the moneymaking would go unacceptably slowly, and such a dive would force Draco to demean himself unnecessarily… he would never be able to look his father in the face again.

Draco set off, scanning each restaurant he passed and dismissing each in turn as unsuitable to his oh-so-specific purposes. He refused to think about the sheer number of people pressing in on him on all sides and the difficulty of finding a decent job in a place with this many people, many of whom must have already snatched up the good jobs. He also refused to consider Potter and the way that he had left Potter to fend for himself in a situation that could possibly be considered by some people to maybe be partially Draco's fault. He most definitely would not think about his esteemed father and what his father would say about a member of the illustrious, purebred Malfoy line becoming a Muggle waiter, forced to serve magicless freaks the way lesser creatures like house elves served the Malfoys. No, Draco didn't think about any of these things and instead considered the fluttery feeling in his stomach to be excitement. After all, New York was an exciting place, being the City of Love. Or maybe it was the Big Apple. No, Draco dismissed that nickname as entirely too stupid for the city. Who would name their city after an overgrown fruit?

Suddenly, Draco stopped short and the person directly behind him bumped into him, flipping up his middle finger while saying something that might have been "duck, fool!" Draco wasn't really sure, as the man had an odd accent, and the man's accent wasn't the point. The point was that Draco had found his perfect restaurant: Ellen's Stardust Diner. It looked… what was the Muggle word… retro. It had a sort of 1950's setup, the type that Draco knew from watching Muggle movies like Grease and Pleasantville over at Pansy's place. There was a blue overhanging canopy that jutted out into the street, as if to draw more attention to the place and offer protection from rain and presumably snow, though neither was in evidence at the moment. There was a smaller black and yellow sign below it that said "signing wait staff." How extraordinarily lucky: the very first restaurant Draco spotted that looked both busy and moderately pricey was also looking for waiters. The outside of the restaurant was made of exceedingly vivid red sheet metal which reaffirmed all of Draco's opinions about the dubious quality of Muggle taste or the lack thereof. Still, necessity breeds desperate measures, or something of the sort.

After mentally donning the facade that Draco had perfected over the years, the expression that simultaneously said "I am better than you" and "give me what I want," he felt much more like himself. Some people may call him selfish, especially those Hogwarts students with the dismal luck to be sorted into houses other than Slytherin, but Draco knew that he was really just dedicated. His father had once told him that he was proud of Draco's dedication and perseverance. It wasn't that Draco was spoiled or had never been denied something he wanted—he had been denied his way far more often than he would like to admit—it was that… Draco paused and realized that he had been standing outside of the restaurant, staring at the garishly red wall for almost five minutes. Once he realized that he was procrastinating, he could fight against it.

Draco Malfoy half-marched, half-sauntered into the restaurant. "Good afternoon, can I help you?" asked a bored but still vaguely polite voice. Draco turned and surveyed the host, who was leaning against the host stand in what was probably not regulation "greet the guest" stance. The host—his nametag said "Michael"—was wearing what appeared to be the official male uniform of the restaurant: black shoes, black pants, and a shirt that was almost all black, except for a red collar that connected with a thick red stripe running down the center of the shirt, a stripe spotted with black buttons. It fit in with Draco's idea of the retro part of the restaurant, but it didn't stop him from gazing with what he hoped was superiority and confidence into Michael's bored green eyes.

"I'm here for a job," Draco said, his voice steady, even, and as confident has he intended. "Where do I apply?"

Michael cocked an eyebrow and smiled, dropping the veneer of ennui. "Oh, you're British!" he said, his voice rather higher than Draco had thought it would be. "How cute. How old are you, British boy?"

Something about the boy's slightly… effeminate manner of speaking made Draco uncomfortable. "I'm seventeen," he replied, still trying to maintain his confidence. Really, he was less than a month away from turning fifteen, and two years was so little as to be almost insignificant.

Michael leaned so close to Draco that he had to fight not to draw away slightly. Were all Muggles this invasive of personal space, or was that trait unique to Americans? "In the lovely US of A, you have to be eighteen to live on your own and get your own job," he whispered.

"But my birthday is June 5th, which is just a few weeks away," Draco continued smoothly.

"Per-fect!" Michael put all the emphasis on the first syllable, drawing out the word in a manner that was almost musical. "Well, my young English friend… what's your name?"

"Draco. Draco Malfoy." Draco wasn't sure whether to offer the host his hand or to simply stand there awkwardly, but Michael made the decision for him by reaching over and grabbing one of Draco's hands, holding it rather longer than was strictly necessary, and… was he rubbing his thumb on Draco's palm?

"And I am Michael Mattison, very pleased to meet you." Michael smiled and dropped Draco's hand, just before he would have pulled his hand away by force and taken the risk of losing this job even before he had applied. "You're in luck—the manager is in today. Follow me, and I'll show you the room where you'll audition."

Draco wondered at the choice of the word 'audition.' Was this a bit of American slang, to say 'audition' rather than 'apply,' or was this simply New York posturing: in the city that houses Broadway, every job requires an audition? He concentrated on this question—better to think about this than what was to come.

The room to which Michael led him was obviously a storage closet of some sort—why else would it hold an old piano? "Have a seat in one of those chairs" said Michael, waving expansively towards a group of three chairs, covered in what was once shiny red leather, but which age had darkened to a dull brown, and which decades of derrieres had rubbed to the point that the chair was pocketed with white dots where the stuffing had begun to show through. "Don't worry—the audition process isn't scary, even if it is selective. Only the best of the best work here, you know." Michael winked in a way that Draco hoped was meant sarcastically, because otherwise it would point to him having an ego to rival the ex-Professor Lockhart's. "Just relax, and it'll be over soon enough!" With one final grin that was probably meant to be encouraging but which came across as a continuation of his over-the-top wink, Michael left, presumably to get the manager.

Draco stared aimlessly at the walls, wondering why what was presumably a long-ignored storeroom was scrubbed scrupulously clean. Perhaps the Ministry of Restaurants, or whatever it was that Americans had, ruled the Muggles with an iron fist. Really, Draco had only a dim understanding of what it was that went on in kitchens—even the kitchen of his own manor. They had servants and suchlike to attend to that. An insistent, whispering voice deep in his mind told him he was even lower than a servant now, a Muggle without any marketable skills. Draco told the voice to put a sock in it. He was a Malfoy; he would manage.

Realizing that he had been staring through the same picture for about five minutes while engaged in that inner argument, Draco mentally shook himself. He was a Malfoy and he was a Slytherin and he had all of the cunning and guile and whatever else he needed to succeed. Draco Lucius Regulus Phineas Abraxas Orion Malfoy was a wizard, descended from wizards, and therefore better than every Muggle here. Ignoring the snippets of music and conversation from the main portion of the restaurant, Draco stared pointedly at the posters on the wall. One among them caught his eye, and he half-rose from his chair to take a closer look at the poster with a plain black background and an unadorned white mask. It was its simplicity that caught his eye. This, then, was a musical that did not depend on spectacle but on beauty: the beauty of the story, or perhaps of the song. Above the mask, Draco read the words "Phantom of the Opera," and below the mask was a name: Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Andrew Lloyd Webber… Draco knew that name from somewhere, but where? Of course! Last year, Pansy had become obsessed with wizarding musicals, and one of her favorites was Kneazles, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the lyrics by… someone whose name Draco had forgotten. She had spent the entire blasted summer singing about "Jellicle Kneazles" and "Grizabella, the Glamour Kneazle" until Draco had been almost ready to scream. It wasn't that he disliked wizarding musicals; it was simply that Pansy's off-key, scratchy voice ruined already inane and pointless songs about prancing animals. Draco actually really enjoyed one of Webber's other musicals, Banshee of the Opera-

His thoughts on West End wizarding musicals were interrupted by the abrupt opening of the room's small door, through which Michael entered, with two other people following close behind.