Chapter 2. Landing a Job for Dummies

"I'm going to wring Seamus' little chicken neck," seethed Ron as he set down the paper. "I would do it to George too, but him being called 'Twin MIA' was punishment enough," he added through gritted teeth.

"Do you need me to lock Rita in a jar again?" hummed Hermione as she poured them both tea.

Ron ruffled his hair with a sigh. "No, don't bother. It's already out—nothing we can do about it now."

"Well, let me know," she offered with a smile. "I would be more than happy to." She twirled her spoon in the steaming cup ahead of her before gently clinking it on the porcelain and setting it aside. "What are you going to do now?"

He scoffed. "Nothing! What do you want me to do about this? Demand a retraction? Publish an op-ed in The Quibbler?"

"Well maybe not—but you're going to need to mitigate the damage, one way or another."

He looked at her through squinted eyes—Ron never liked it when Hermione used that tone. He'd been her roommate—and her friend—long enough to know it meant she was up to something. "What are you implying?"

She rolled her eyes. "Nothing ludicrous, Ronald! But this is in The Daily Prophet! What do you think will happen once the entire country has gotten wind of it?"

"They will… ignore it and move on?" he suggested tentatively, wincing—he knew he was wrong and he knew how much Hermione loved it when he was wrong. Fuck.

"Don't be so naïve. This is as bad as putting a price on your head. You're going to be torn apart by the vultures."

"Fine. I'll just deny it."

Hermione sipped on her tea with mild disbelief. "Sure, that will do the trick," she said ominously.

"What do you suggest I do then?"

A smile graced her lips. "Lean into it."

"What?"

"Come on, Ron, isn't it obvious? The more you deny or ignore it, the more you're going to be hounded about it. Everything you say will be dissected and rephrased—you will be assigned prophecies you never made, and blamed when they don't pan out. But if you steer into the skid, you can dictate the narrative. Make it your own. Take back your power!"

"You're sounding an awful lot like that twat Celestine Warbeck, with that bollocks girlboss propaganda of hers."

"And you're an idiot if you don't think she has manufactured that drivel to explain away the accusations that she stole lyrics from some poor warlock."

She had a point. Everyone had already forgotten about the plagiarism allegations—Celestine had rewritten the narrative in her favour.

"I see your point, but I'm not a bloody Seer. I can't actually make predictions. How exactly do you propose I 'steer into the skid'? Make up some bollocks prediction and hope it pans out?"

"Gods no, that would be much worse! No, you just offer a tragic backstory: 'My visions traumatise me and I would rather not share them' or 'I don't know I'm making a prediction until it comes true' or whatever else can get you out of this. You hang your head low, act like a wounded puppy, speak of the betrayal from the friends who aired your dirty laundry to Rita Skeeter—remind the public that she tormented your two best friends during the Triwizard Tournament with her trash reporting—and voilà! No one will bother trying to prove your every word is a prediction after that." She set down her cup of tea and stretched on her chair, oblivious to the bemused expression on Ron's face.

"How the bloody Hell do you know any of this?" He squinted. "Was it Malfoy?"

How Hermione and the ferret had become friends, he would never understand. It hardly came up anymore, but he still found it odd, even all these years later.

It had been long enough that Hermione refused to entertain the subject, even now. "Take the advice. Or don't. I have other things to do." She sent her cup to the sink with a swish of her wand and proceeded to walk out of the kitchen.

"I'll have you know 'Blonde Hottie' is definitely Malfoy!" yelled Ron through the door. "You might want to question your little ferret friend about it!" The words floated out of the kitchen, but never met their destination—she was already long gone. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. "Fuck this shite."

He pondered over the article for the rest of the day, his copy of the Daily Prophet hanging loosely by his side as he paced across the flat, only occasionally disturbed by Crookshanks trying to trip him. "Bloody creature," he would say before kneeling down and petting the cat. "I still hate you." He would rub his belly and Crookshanks would purr.

It hadn't taken him more than a few minutes to figure out who had spoken to Skeeter. Irish Delight was obviously Seamus and Twin MIA must have been George. Blonde Hottie was Malfoy—and decidedly not a hottie—and French Femme was Fleur. Tall Arse could only have been Neville. It had, however, taken him the rest of the day to decide in which order he ought to execute them.

"I really should punish them all, Crooks, don't you think?" he asked the cat as he scratched him between the ears. Crookshanks kept on purring, oblivious to Ron's dilemma.

He took it as a sign of approval.

"Alright, let's go wring Seamus' pretty neck first," he smiled. "You get whatever parts aren't too mangled once I'm done with him."

Crookshanks protested, his tail rigid and his ear flattened. Ron rolled his eyes. "I should have known you'd be of no bloody use. Too much of a bleeding heart like your mum." He sat in front of the chimney and Floo'd 'Irish Delight,' eager to get his hands on his now new nemesis.

But—as if by the grace of an almighty God—he was stopped just as he was about to drop the Floo powder in the chimney.

The doorbell was ringing.

"Bloody git will have to wait," muttered Ron under his breath before getting up and going to open the door. The thought of Seamus evaporated from his mind as soon as he saw the nightmare standing in front of him. "Malfoy?"

"Good day, Weasley."

"Don't even try to get in. Hermione is not here and we have a strict agreement that you're not allowed here if I'm here and she's not. You should know that." Ron placed a finger squarely in Malfoy's chest and pushed him away.

"I'm here to see you, actually."

"No you're not."

"Let's not be childish, Weasley."

"Me, childish? Didn't you just go on the record with Rita Skeeter to tell her about the fact that you're still upset that Harry wouldn't befriend you nearly twenty years ago?" he mocked, barely containing a snicker.

He rolled his eyes. "I'm here to talk to you about the article, as a matter of fact. So, will you let me in or not?"

Ron tentatively backed away and gestured for him to come in. "Fine, but don't put your ferret germs anywhere. You can sit—" he eyed the room and smiled, "—on Crookshanks' box."

Malfoy walked in and squinted at the shredded cardboard box laying limply on the floor. "I'm not staying long," he said. Everything about him was stiff and rigid—how Skeeter could have thought him a hottie was beyond Ron. And he would know. He had fucked his way through a good number of hot wizards in his oat-sowing days.

He tapped his foot impatiently, sole knocking against wood. "Well?"

Malfoy cleared his throat. "Right. I'm here to offer you a job."

"You have to be kidding." Bubbled of laughter escaped his lips. "What does that even have to do with the article?"

"Look, I know this article is bollocks. You know this article is bollocks, I'm sure. But the optics are good, and Malfoy Inc. could use… good optics. Right now."

"Right, Malfoy Inc., the cartoonishly evil corporation needs Seer Ron Weasley for optics. That sounds… not ridiculous at all." He did his best to keep his laughter contained—even for him and his rotten luck, this was a little on the nose.

"Don't make me grovel for it, Weasley," muttered Malfoy under his breath.

"Oh, best believe I will! What was the last thing you got blasted for? Diluting the company coffee supply with crushed doxy powder to cut down costs? That was a good one!" he roared. "What's next? Hiring vampires for the blood drive you'll launch to redeem yourself?"

"I didn't know it was doxy powder! Hermione showed me something similar and called it instant coffee! I just got the order wrong when I had Marcus place it!"

"That's even worse—you have to see how that's worse, right?" And by 'worse', he meant better. As in—funnier.

Malfoy's shoulders slumped, a petulant child being denied his thirtieth birthday present. "Forget I came here. Clearly, you're not open to hearing me out."

Ron lifted an arm to stop him from leaving. "No, no, come on, Malfoy. I want to hear it."

"Something tells me you will refuse anyway."

"Oh, I probably will, but I need this. I've had a shite day—you can relate, right? I'm sure seeing that article come out about the doxy debacle felt just about the same as when I saw the old wench's tell-all this morning." He straightened his shoulders and tried a tentative smile. "And it would be bad business etiquette to refuse to even let me hear the offer."

"Fine," conceded Malfoy. "Fine." He dug through his pockets and pulled out a notepad. "I believe having you on as a Seer consultant might quell the… controversies we're facing at the moment. You'll get a cushy job, which I hear you're desperately in need of, without actually having to perform any work—because I refuse to believe you're a Seer—and we'll have, err, optics." He nodded to himself frantically. "Yes, optics."

"You're not even convinced of this brilliant idea of yours."

"Well, I can't say it's mine." He paused and pursed his lips. "It was Hermione's. She owled me at lunch."

"That—"

"She says you've been moping about since that one brother of yours closed the joke shop. Grown bored. She says you've started playing with Crookshanks and made him a little mermaid costume."

Ron was aghast. "She did not. She wouldn't dare."

"Well, she must have if I'm here, grovelling like a common Weasley. Nice work on the shading of the shimmer, by the way—mustn't have been easy." His lip stretched into a smile as he watched Ron grow redder by the second. "So. You're bored. I need an image revamp. Here's what I'm offering."

He wrote down a number on the notepad and handed it to Ron, whose eyes promptly bulged out of his eye sockets, growing twice as big as Dobby's, his woes about his new cat costume venture suddenly forgotten. "This is the moment where you tell me you're joking."

Malfoy's spine solidified again with all the dignity of a stick in the mud. "I certainly am not."

"Maybe using doxy powder really was a good business decision." He raised his head to meet Malfoy's gaze. "Fine. I'll do it. Whatever you need me to pretend to be for optics, I'll do it."

"Good. I'll see you first thing on Monday, then. I'll send the contract over the week-end." He returned his pen to his front pocket and began walking out before being interrupted by Crookshanks head butting his shin. As he'd been trained to do by Hermione, he kneeled down to pet him on the head before making his exit.

And though Malfoy would later deny this very fact until his last breath, Ron distinctly heard him whisper: "I'm sure you look great in that mermaid costume, mate."

"See you on Monday, Malfoy."

"See you then, Weasley."

After they parted ways, Ron made a mental note to add Hermione on his list of people to execute—something he was still very much intent on doing but—later. It wouldn't be good to find himself the prey of a manhunt right now—for optics, obviously.

Instead of going on a murderous rampage, he spent the week-end reviewing his contract and and sending death stares Hermione's way, who seemed blissfully unaware of his rage (she wasn't, of course, because she read him like an open book and brought him a bag of candy as a preventive bribe on that Friday evening—and no, he certainly hadn't eaten it all in one sitting—only half. Which, well, was another way she would know his rage to be all-consuming).

"If you and Draco become friends while you work over at Malfoy Inc., we'll be able to have dinner together, all three of us," she pointed out innocently on Monday morning as she buttered her toast. Well, as innocently as a devilish temptress with black horns poking out of her head could.

"In your dreams, Hermione. I'm doing this for the money only. The cold hard cash. The coin. The quid."

"Draco loves money too," she uttered while chewing on her toast. "Maybe you're not so different after all."

"How dare you?"

"I'm just saying," she shrugged. "If you stopped being so Ron about it, you might see it my way."

He hated the way she had become so cavalier about her statements—no longer bursting at the first sign of an argument, no longer responding to his ire with equal fire. It was like the bloody woman was out to get a fucking medal for meditation prowess and calm conflict resolution. Was there anything she couldn't do?

"Do you think I would put crushed doxy powder in your coffee?" he asked instead.

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Ron, it was an honest mistake. And, besides, need I point out the senseless and immoral things that went on at that joke shop? Crushed doxy powder was definitely not the least dangerous product you and your brother used."

"There's no arguing with you," he offered to end the conversation, already annoyed to know that this would not be the worst part of his day. He rose from his chair, squared his shoulders, slipped on his jacket and asked her: "How do I look?"

"Like baby's first adult job," she snickered. "That suit looks like it's brand new."

Ron's face fell. "Well, it is. I bought it while you were out with Ginny."

He could tell Hermione was trying to contain her laughter. "I'm sure impressing them with your Seer skills will more than make up for it."

"But I don't have any Seer skills," he whined.

"I know," she responded as she put her dishes away. "But anything you got will be better than that suit," she added before grabbing her briefcase and Apparating away, leaving Ron to wonder how he would possibly get himself out of this mess. This was worse than the Yule Ball—how that was even possible boggled the mind. Truly.

In the end, he decided to forgo his concerns and simply left the jacket home. He wasn't expected to produce any sort of work anyway—just stand there and look pretty, so to speak.

"A suit, Weasley?" frowned Parkinson when he got there.

"Yes, a suit. What do you have to say about it?"

"Aren't you a Seer? I was expecting something a little more… ethereal," she responded, wrinkling her nose. "À la Trelawney."

"You're more of a nutter than your boss," he muttered.

Parkinson was the head of human resources—though Ron still maintained there was nothing human or resourceful about her. She'd sent him the contract to review over the week-end and a follow-up owl to warn him not to expect Malfoy to be the one welcoming him, since he was after all the head of the company.

"Whatever," she dismissed. "Let me show you to your office." She swayed her hips as she walked him along the drab corridors of the overly modernist building. "I would leave that work to an intern, but they're all busy with the blood drive."

Blood drive? Why did that sound so familiar?

"A blood drive?"

"Yes, it was something the PR consultants thought of, after all the, you know," she waved her hand in the air, "crushed doxy debacle. A double good deed sort of thing: vampires collect the blood donations, you know, so they're redeemed or whatever. And the blood goes to a good cause, like poor people or something."

No—that had to be—

"Malfoy came up with that?"

Pansy turned and stared at him. "Draco? No, he would never, are you insane? The consultants set it all up last Thursday. I don't even think he knows—he really doesn't deal with those things. He is at the head of the company, you know." She resumed their walk without waiting for an answer.

But if it had been set up on Thursday—that meant—that meant—

"Weasley, I don't have all day! Don't just stand there like a blubbering fool."

Right.

No, this was just a coincidence—it had to be. Vampires collecting blood donations was as much of a good joke as it was a good headline for a company wishing to redeem itself in the eyes of the public. Anyone could have thought of it.

"There we are," said Parkinson once he'd caught up with her. "You're all set up. There's a computer, even, because we're so modern and Muggle-loving now or whatever." She rolled her eyes and handed him a post-it note. "Those are your logins. Not that you'll have much need for the computer anyway—really you only need your e-mail. Watch out for Draco's e-mails—he'll be asking you to do all the Seer things for the media, I think—or maybe the PR consultants, who knows. Anyway, I don't care. Please don't come to me if you have any questions. I won't answer if you do. Ask one of the interns, if they're ever returned to me. Or better yet! Keep quiet." She left, true to her word, before Ron could ask any questions.

He turned on the computer and logged on. Might as well waste some time on the Internet while he waited for his first assignment to come through—thank God Hermione had insisted on teaching him how to do that.

The browser directly led him to the company's Intranet. He readied himself to click out of it and go on Twitter (he had some enemies to troll), but something caught his attention—a title written in bold on top of the page, just below the external news subsection.

Crushed doxy powder debacle turned into surprise miracle—profits soar for the company after CEO and founder Draco Malfoy is seen in a remix video saying "I thought it was instant coffee!"

No.

It wasn't bloody possible. He wasn't a bloody Seer. This was all a machination—

A conspiracy.

Right?