For "The Characterization Competition" on HPFC, ran by the brilliant lunalestrange4.

My minor character was Rose Weasley, so here's my piece; I own nothing.

"Rose Weasley?"

I hear my name called from the far side of the office, and look up; it's time for my interview. Great. All around me, there are other potential candidates, all of whom are far more smartly dressed than I am, and look as if they've got years more experience in journalism than my three and a half spent at the New York News, their version of the Daily Prophet.

It's slightly embarrassing, to be honest, coming back to England, for this interview at our biggest newspaper, because I sort of told most of my year – when drunk, obviously – that I hated England that I would never stay here, even if the alternative was living in a rat-infested hovel in the middle of Siberia. And yet here I am, interviewing for the senior editing position at the paper I still read – Mum leaves it on the sofa every evening for me to conjure in my apartment – just because I may have accidentally-on-purpose told my previous editor-in-chief about the fact that her husband was cheating with the intern.

She gave me a good reference, of course, but you could tell that she wanted me gone…especially because the intern is my cousin, Dominique…but that's not important at the minute. What's important is that I have an interview, I look a mess, and the woman waiting to take me to whichever dragon is my interviewer has the biggest boobs I've ever seen. Which, in a normal situation, wouldn't make me panic, but given every other female waiting to be interviewed has at least a DD cup, makes me worry that those who are more endowed are more likely to get the job.

"Yep, that's me," I manage to say with a smile, standing up and striding towards the woman, folder of work in one hand, whilst the other tries to make sure that the back of my skirt is definitely not tucked into my knickers. "Pleased to meet you!" I exclaim as I reach the person who called my name – her name badge helpfully informs me that she's called Naomi – but she doesn't say a word in response, merely rolls her eyes as though I'm an idiot.

"This way," she calls over her shoulder, and it's only then that I realise she's already stalking off down a corridor, behaving as though I know exactly where I'm going. Given that this building has the most complicated set-up I've ever seen a building have – work experience here in seventh year taught me this – I'm sure that the idea behind the 'run-off-as-fast-as-possible' manoeuvre is to see whether or not the candidate has an ability to remember things. Thankfully, due to my mother being the cleverest witch of her age (a record I managed to replicate, though some would argue that Scorpius Malfoy deserved to be given the witch version, rather than the wizard), I pretty much have photographic memory, and I can make the rest up, with reasonable success.

Because of my flat shoes – I knew it was a good idea to wear them – I catch up to Naomi relatively quickly, and she seems surprised, though, naturally, she doesn't speak. I'm beginning to get the impression that she's not really the talkative type; I don't know why I'm getting this idea, but it's coming to me all the same!

"Mr Malfoy is waiting for you," she says as she stops to the side of a door, and I'm just about to thank her when I realise what she's said.

Mr Malfoy is waiting for me!

Amidst a rather unladylike bout of spluttering, I somehow manage to ask, "Malfoy? What's his first name?"

The response I get to this is a motion towards the door which has a bronze name plaque on it, Naomi flashing me a tight smile before disappearing. My only issue with the plaque is this: the door is open, and the plaque's reflecting the light in my direction, so the only real way for me to discover whether this is Scorpius Malfoy – the boy voted most likely to strangle me in seventh year, when we were Heads together – is to walk into the office, read the sign, and hope that he isn't Scorpius.

Alternatively, I could just walk into the interview, appear blasé at seeing Scorpius – how the hell he got to this position already is beyond me – and just blag my way through the entire "so, how are you?" thing that will undoubtedly occur if my potential new boss is my one time nemesis…a situation brought on by my dressing him in a bra and tutu when he was drunk in the Common Room midway through sixth year.

In my defence, I was—no, I don't really have a defence, other than I was mad because he beat me in a Transfiguration test, and I was bored. But that's not the issue; once again, I must focus on the present and try and make it through the interview – if it is him; it may very well be Astoria…though last I heard, she was working in Thailand – without trying to kill him. If I do, that's something I can put on my CV: resisted killing interviewer, who once put ants in my pants.

"Rose, if you don't come in now, I'll tell Naomi to cross your name off the list and make sure that you don't even get to look at a copy of my paper ever again." The surprisingly rich voice of Scorpius Malfoy scares me out of my wits, almost, especially when I realise that I haven't actually moved any closer to the door.

Tentatively, I step up to the door and peek my head around the frame, looking suspiciously into the room in some sort of faint hope that Scorpius' voice box had been transplanted into some other member of his family, but no, unfortunately that is not the case; my interviewer is none other than my one time school colleague, Malfoy comma Scorpius.

"How did you know I was there?" I can't help but ask as I step into the office properly, knowing that if I ran away now, it'd look like I'm scared of Scorpius. Let me tell you, when he decides to spread a rumour, it gets around the entire country within about three seconds; I don't want him pretending that I'm worried to be in the same room as him.

The first direct look he gives me – I have to admit, he does look good; I think he's been working out more than he used to, because his abs seem…oh, note to self: do not ogle his body – is one of incredulous shock. "You do realise that your name is on a list which I gave to my assistant in order to bring through the next candidate, do you not?" he says, his voice with just an edge of sarcasm. "Or did you expect it to be that I just sent Naomi through and she would select whichever one she fancied the look of, and it was pick and mix until everyone was in here?" ooh, that was definitely sarcasm.

Rolling my eyes, I take a seat in front of him, not bothering to shake his hand and getting away with it by clutching my file in both hands; it can't hurt to pretend that my best work folder is so full that I can barely lift it, can it? "Shall I just leave now, since it's obvious you're not going to hire me?" I find myself saying, hating myself for the slightly desperate edge to my voice.

To my complete and utter surprise, Scorpius shakes his head, the movement causing strands of white blond hair to move out of their perfect arrangement, and reaches out for my file. "You're here, and I don't want to see another thirty four year old middle-aged man who thinks that they have better ideas than me, or at least not until I've had some lunch—you don't mind, do you?" as he speaks, he digs a sandwich out of his drawer and begins to unwrap it. Is this charming or what?

"So you're now telling me that you're planning on eating a sandwich in an interview?" I confirm, knowing that the shock I feel is evident in my voice. "And what do you expect me to do? Answer whatever question I can understand between mouthfuls of egg and cress?"

"It's ham and cheese, actually." Naturally, Scorpius addresses the issue of the food first. "And I was planning on reading some of your articles whilst I eat this, so feel free to spend five minutes getting over the shock about me being your potential boss." The smile he flashes me as he speaks is a smug one, one that just tells me that he's ridiculously happy that the situation is this way around, rather than me being his interviewer.

Biting my tongue, I manage to sit in silence whilst Scorpius eats his sandwich, barely resisting a moan of frustration when he drops a piece of cheese on one of my articles, but managing it all the same.

It's only when Scorpius picks up his quill and looks at a sheet of questions, do I realise that the silence was the best part of the interview.

"So, name…Rose Weasley," he mutters to himself, his usual slight sneer when saying my surname present as always. "Age, thirty three—"

"Twenty seven, actually!" I find myself exclaiming indignantly, my cheeks flushing rouge when I realise he was just messing with me. He can't have forgotten his age, and since we're the same age…dammit, he's already gotten me!

If it's not exactly obvious, I don't always think things through – or, at least, not in the most logical of manners; it's been something I've always struggled with, and I really doubt that it's going to get any better in the rest of my life.

"Twenty seven, you're correct," is all Scorpius says about my age, writing that down. "Now, let's see if you have all the required personality and academic points: thirteen O.W.L grades, yes; ability to smile, yes so long as it's not a day ending in 'y'; ability to talk herself into holes deeper than the Eiffel Tower is high, yes."

He's just trying to mess with me; I can tell in the way that he's looking at me…I can do it, I do not need to respond—

"You actually smiled less than me in the entire last year we were at Hogwarts," I blurt out, unable to help myself.

"Inability to keep quiet, check," Scorpius replies, a slightly impish grin on his face that I don't remember him having before; either he's managed to understand that he can look handsome if he smiles, or this landed him this job – it could be either, in all honesty. "So, Rose, why do you want this job?" is his first question that's linked to the reason I'm here, but because of his messing around before, I feel off balance.

"I…I want to work at a newspaper manufacturing company," I say, this making no sense whatsoever, given that the papers are written here, not printed; he's about to comment on this, when I add, "well, not the actual printing of the paper, but more what's being printed…obviously." It's rather a lame add-on, but it's enough to keep all his comments restricted to the look he flashes me.

"And why do you think that you would be a good addition to the team?" as he speaks, his eyes flash over my body – or, rather, my torso – and I feel my cheeks flushing crimson once more.

"Um, well, I'll bring a set of smaller boobs to the team." Embarrassingly, I realise what I've said after I say it, and cringe; on the other hand, Scorpius' mouth manages to twist into even greater a smile. "No! I didn't mean that! I would…bring some humour, an intriguing writing style, a new method of investigating…um, because I worked in an American version of this paper, I get everything about deadlines, and working in a team. Um, yeah, that's about it."

Even though I've managed to pull myself together enough to give a semi-coherent answer, Scorpius still seems hung up on my first point…and my boobs, given that he hasn't looked at my face since I mentioned them. This sort of reminds me of one time before the infamous tutu night – officially known as a holiday in the Ravenclaw Common Room, where nobody does any homework and instead dresses up in tutus or other appropriate clothing – when I caught him staring at me a lot.

If he hadn't beaten me in that test, I may have liked him enough to ask him to go to the Yule Ball with me; he did, though, so I didn't ask him, and my actions went down in history.

"Yes, well, that's very…interesting," he mumbles, tearing his eyes from my chest when I clear my throat loudly. "And, uh, what do you think of two colleagues having a relationship?" this question is way out of left field; I was expecting something like 'what is your usual deadline for a story?', but most certainly not something about the personal side to the working life.

"I think that so long as it doesn't get in the way of work, and as long as they don't start sleeping together in the store room, things should be ok," I say hesitantly, drawing on my experience with the whole fiasco in New York as a basis for my answer. "And as long as they don't go, 'oh baby, come and help me with this will you?' then it should be alright, because that gets really annoying when you hear it non-stop. And…yeah, that's my answer."

He grins at this, having somehow managed to stretch his already (ridiculously) wide grin out to one that seems to make him like a beaming sun. It's slightly scary, especially as it's a side to Scorpius I didn't see in school – I barely knew he could smile, to be honest – and could maybe make me consider apologising for the tutu—no. I won't ever apologise for that…but, if I happen to bump into him again, maybe we could go for a coffee and we could discuss the hilarity of my interview, given it's obvious I won't get the job, and then consider rewriting the final two years of Hogwarts together. It'd be cool to reminisce about the things we did as Head Boy and Girl – we did have some decent times, inbetween our constant rivalry and hatred for the other…mainly when we were drunk, but that's by-the-by – but that's obviously if ten years apart have allowed us to forget why we hate the other.

"Well, Rose, that's about it, I think," he says to wrap up the interview, which, at five and a half minutes, has to be one of the shortest I've ever had. Ones shorter than this, I didn't get the job. Most of the ones longer than this, I didn't get the job either. So it's a pretty decent bet that I won't get the job, if only on the statistics, forgetting about the mess-ups I've made in here.

"I'll see myself out," I sigh, reaching over for the file on his desk and standing in one move. "See you, Scorpius; it's good to see that you've managed to get over your bragging, since you've not mentioned your superior position to mine once in the entire interview."

The smile I catch on his face just before I turn away makes me realise that, once again, I have said something I shouldn't, because he would (possibly) never have mentioned how he's the editor-in-chief here. Now, if we meet up ever again, he'll rub that in my face.

"The reason I didn't mention it is because I'm going to be using it every time you come to me and moan about how much work I'm giving you, and how you deserve so much more money than you're going to get," Scorpius tells me as I'm almost out of the door.

Though, this is me, and I don't process what he says. So I carry on walking out of the door, take a few seconds, stop, turn around and walk back into the office with a sheepish expression on my face. "You're…you're hiring me?" I confirm, shocked. "But…my interview was crap, I told you I have small boobs and I thought I worked at somewhere which prints the papers, not writes them. Why do you want me?"

He shrugs. "You're clever, witty, and above all, you're funny; you've done more hilarious things in the past fifteen minutes than most of those I've seen already have probably done in their lives. I need a bit of humour in – or from - somebody I'm working so closely with, so I want you. And your writing's not half bad, either."

At this, I raise an eyebrow, deciding that it's time to be cocky. "Excuse me, that writing is better than half bad, it's the best writing that you'll ever find in the New York News." Uhoh, my mouth has landed me in it again; I'm now apparently the best writer that's ever existed.

"Given that I've written for that paper, I think we should have a comparison of work sometime," he suggests, a note of competitiveness evident in his voice. "Say, over dinner on Friday, to celebrate your new job and the fact I'm a better writer than you." It's in this moment that I realise the old Scorpius never left; he's still as cocky as hell, but he's just better at hiding it behind the charm.

"I'll accept the job if you tell me it's not just because of the boob comment," I challenge, and he snorts.

"It's not just because you appear to have delightful breasts, let me assure you," is his response, and I flush even more; basically, my face could be sold as a tomato, it's that red. "Now go on home; I expect to see you tomorrow at nine in the morning, ready to be worked to the bone."

I walk out of the office without saying goodbye or thanks – seriously, though, I've never had a job interview which has consisted of me getting the job at the interview; maybe Scorpius is bending the rules here – and then have to rush back in to say both of these things. It's rather amusing, how idiotic I am, yet still have the photographic memory to recall which way I need to go in order to get back to the waiting room.

As I walk past the other candidates, I begin to feel a little more excited about the fact that I'm both hilarious, and a brilliant journalist…until I realise something.

All the other people sitting in here are waiting to be interviewed for the assistant's position. I was the last candidate for the senior journalist job…so all my competition may look completely different.

Oh well, I have the job, and a scarily weird new boss…someone I used to like, then I hated, then I liked in the middle of hating, and then never really stopped liking—it's just taken until now to realise.

All this thinking is hurting my head; it's time to go out with Dominique for a beer. I have a job! I deserve it!

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