Cecilia pulled the comforter up to her chin and snuggled her face into it, the morning sun was streaming through the window but she did not want to get up and face the day yet. Once again, she was unemployed. Fighting the urge to hide away in her room for another day, she rolled irritably out of bed and found an oversized sweatshirt to throw on over her nightgown. It would be spring soon, but in the morning it was still cold as ice in her apartment. She shuffled around her bed to find her slippers then sat back down, her hands between her thighs trying to keep warm. "Well, I'm up." She thought "now what?"
On her bedside table was a small slip of parchment with Lucius' scribbled handwriting on it. It was the note he had sent to her when she first landed the job as his Secretary. She looked down at it and, for the thousandth time, picked it up and studied his handwriting. No one else in the world had handwriting like his. It has the quality of being messy, but still acceptable. She knew that he had taken extra care to write this since she had seen what his handwriting was like normally. That slip of paper and the thin silver bracelet she still wore were her only relics of what now seemed like a dream.
Jobs were scarce. For weeks she had shlepped around her apartment, eating almost the entire contents of her kitchen, and sent out resume after resume. She knew that eventually, if she just kept trying, she would get a job. She was competent and had experience. It was just a matter of finding someone who needed her. She sighed and got up to raid her refrigerator for something to eat.
Soon after she had been ordered out of the Malfoy estate, she had sent a couple of letters to him. She had gotten no response. She hoped in her heart that he had never received them, that Narcissa had managed to intercept the owls before he ever saw the letters, but when she thought about it frankly, she knew that it was just as likely that he was purposefully ignoring her. Perhaps she really was just a nuisance to him. She had stopped trying to contact him, but was still struggling to recuperate from the breakup.
"Not that it really was a breakup..." She had thought to herself time and time again "We were never really together anyway. I was just a toy for him. A plaything."
No matter how many times she repeated this to herself like some painful mantra, she couldn't believe it wholeheartedly.
Today she had an interview at the ministry at noon. Her hopes were not high for landing the job, she knew for a fact that at least ten others had applied for the same position, but she had to try. In the hours she had until she needed to be at the ministry, she lounged on her couch with the blanket from her bed watching daytime muggle television and eating ice cream for breakfast.
The ministry was swarming with people, as usual, when Cecilia arrived for her interview dressed in a gray blazer and simple black pencil skirt. She had pulled her hair back into a slick ponytail, not wanting to spend so long curling it for an interview that would last no more than ten minutes. A rush of cool air and the buzzing sound of numerous voices greeted her when she stepped into the gigantic lobby. She glanced around, enjoying being dressed and out of the house for a change, when she caught a glimpse of long platinum hair out of the corner of her eye. Instinctively, she turned to look and there, about twenty feet away, stood Lucius Malfoy talking to a stout wizard with a gold pocket watch.
She stared. "Of course. I should have anticipated seeing him. He does technically work here." She thought to herself. He didn't notice her. It was strange seeing him again, in her mind the image of his face had begun to fade. She had started to forget the fine lines around his eyes and the way his fingers elegantly clasped around his snake-head staff. Seeing all these details again was almost physically painful. He had begun to fade into the realm between memory and fantasy, and now he had been brought back to life as a true, human, physical person. A person who had hurt her.
The conversation between Lucius and the other wizard ended, the stranger turning and walking towards the door. Lucius stood there a bit longer, seemingly deciding where he needed to go next. She inadvertently thought that if she was still his secretary he wouldn't be so scatterbrained. He hid his fault easily though, pretending to pick lint off of the shoulder of his black cloak. She almost smiled.
She shouldn't have stared for so long. People can only stay unaware of their being watched for so long before that hidden instinct takes over and they looked up. His eyes caught hers for a breathless moment. Her lips parted to speak but no words came out. A small group of chattering witches passed in the space between her and him, causing the eye contact to be broken. When the witches had passed, he was no longer looking at her. He had turned and was striding away from her. She took a step to follow him, but the rigidity of his gait could not leave space for hope. He did not want to talk to her.
She turned on her heel, having decided at that very moment that there was no way on earth that she would ever be able to work in that building ever again. She tried to hide the hot tears that welled in her eyes as she strode out of the building and returned home.