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Not Hiring


In time since his release from Azkaban, Jasper had suffered untellable nightmares. He would wake up screaming into the night and Edgar would hear him from the next room and run in to check on him and find Jasper reduced again to his mantra of “I didn’t do it” and he would flinch and cry if Edgar tried to rouse him out of it… and when he couldn’t, Edgar would whisper, “I’m here Jasper, just right here if you need me, okay?” and he’d sleep on the floor by his brother’s bed and listen to his mumbling because hearing that mumbling here, in the tiny flat that they now had in London, was better than imagining Jasper far away in Azkaban.

But the nights were not the only time that Jasper Odair seemed haunted.

He’d been granted some money by the Ministry - what was supposed to be some sort of retribution for being given an unfair trial and sent unfairly to Azkaban (as though galleons could undo the suffering) - but between the cost of rent for the flat and food and essentials that he and Edgar needed, the money was quickly being spent and Jasper knew it wouldn’t hold out for long. So he had forced himself to be brave and apply for jobs - he’d tried every shop of Diagon Alley, but most of them knew he’d been in Azkaban, they recognized him from the newspapers or else the moment they read his application, where he was required to reveal that he’d been to Azkaban, they would turn him away, even if he explained the situation.

“Once you’ve been there, you ain’t never the same,” said the hiring wizard at Quality Quidditch Supplies, “Guilty or not.”

“Sorry, we ain’t hiring no criminals,” muttered the owner of Eeylops.

“The position’s been filled,” the woman at Flourish and Blotts said.

“We’re just not hiring,” said the manager at Buford’s as he tried to discreetly hide the Help Wanted sign in the window from view.

Jasper fell into a seat outside of Florean Fortescue’s heavily and buried his face into his elbow. The smell of freshly baking waffle cones drifted around him from inside the shop, making his stomach growl. He had some silver sickles in his pocket that he could spend on a treat, but he didn’t want to use any of his money frivolously - eventually, these could be the last silver sickles he had and if it came to that point, he didn’t want to be knutless, watching Edgar cry for food and guiltily remembering the ice cream cone he didn’t have to have… so he sat and cried into the crook of his arm, wondering what he was going to do.

“A muggle job,” he whispered, “I’ll be needing a muggle job.” But he had no idea how to go about getting a muggle job. Was it like getting a wizard job? And what was he even qualified for in the muggle world? Anything?

Honestly, though, he wasn’t much qualified for many wizarding jobs, either. Despite the Ministry’s gift of a new wand as well as his financial retribution, and their offer to re-enroll him at Hogwarts, Jasper had opted to stay with Edgar instead. Edgar couldn’t go back to Hogwarts, and Jasper didn’t want him to go back to their mother’s house alone… so Hogwarts hadn’t even been a choice.

There was a gently nudge at his shoulder and Jasper looked up, his eyes red, to find Florean Fortescue himself standing beside him.

“Sorry, I’ll go,” he murmured, thinking Mr. Fortescue was looking to shoo away the boy taking up space in his parlor seating without having made a purchase. “I just needed to get out of the cold air out there and… I’m sorry…”

Jasper started to stand up, but Florean put a cup of butterbeer ice cream on the table instead. Jasper stared at the little pink striped cup and bright green spoon sticking out of it. He looked up. “You look as though you could do with a cup of cheer,” Mr. Fortescue smiled. “On the house.”

Jasper felt as though this was the nicest thing anybody had done for him since he’d left Azkaban’s gates. “Thank you,” he said and he took up the cup. “Thank you so much.” He quickly started to eat the cold ice cream. He hadn’t realized how little he’d eaten ‘til he started spooning the ice cream into his mouth.

Jasper wasn’t the only person in the parlour - there were a couple other people, though they’d already gotten their orders and sat down at various tables. There was nobody in line, though, so Florean wiped his hands on the apron that he wore over a striped pink-and-white shirt and green trousers, and he sat down opposite Jasper at the table a moment and sort of watched him scarf down the ice cream as though he’d never eaten before in all his life.

“You’re the Odair boy.”

Jasper hesitated. He waited, expecting Mr. Fortescue to take back the cup of ice cream, to kick him out, to say that people who spend time in Azkaban don’t deserve to take warm seats in ice cream parlours and kick him out or something… but instead:

“I’m a friend of Charlus Potter’s,” Florean Fortescue said.

Jasper pulled the spoon from his mouth slowly.

“How has it been?” Florean Fortescue asked gently, “Since you’ve been released? Are things going alright for you?”

Jasper shook his head. He put the spoon down. “Not really.”

Florean frowned.

Jasper said, “I’m trying to do better, I am… but it seems like the entire world’s against me… I mean, I s’pose I understand… nobody wants to employ a - a convict…”

“Is it a job you’re needing?” Florean Fortescue asked.

Jasper said, “It would be a start. But not a soul on Diagon Alley wants to hire someone like me, and I’ve not a clue how to go about getting a job in the muggle world, nor what I’d do there…”

Florean Fortescue drew a deep breath… Then, “Well, you know, you may just be the answer to a prayer, Jasper!” Florean said, “I’ve been thinking just today that I could really use some help about here…”

Jasper looked up.

One of the few customers that were in the shop already left, making it even emptier. The last thing Florean Fortescue needed was help. There was already nothing to do.

“I wouldn’t be able to pay much…”

“You’re offering me a job, Mr. Fortescue?” Jasper asked, shocked.

“If you don’t mind getting a bit messy and dealing with the crying children that visit,” Florean Fortescue smiled.

“I don’t mind,” Jasper said quickly.

Florean Fortescue smiled.




Sirius lay asleep on the bed in the hospital wing when Lily arrived after the match. She was still wearing Sirius’s number jumper. She peeked ‘round the doorway of the ward and saw Remus was nodding off on a chair beside Sirius’s bed, a textbook propped on his crossed-over leg. Lily cleared her throat to get his attention to avoid startling him and he sat up, closing the book as he did. “Lily,” he said, surprised to see her. She stepped into the ward and he realized that she looked rather sad. “Oh no,” he said, “Did we lose? Sirius will be disappointed.”

“No, we won,” Lily replied, shaking her head, “By a good margin, actually.”

“Well, that’s good,” Remus said. “James must be happy.”

“I suspect he is.”

“Why the sad face?” Remus pushed over on the chair and patted the space he’d made beside him - he was narrow enough, or else the chair wide enough, that they could fit side-by-side.

Lily crawled beside him, snuggling into his arm. “He’s happy because he’s snogging McKenna Alliston.”

Remus wrapped his fingers around the spine of his book and stared at Sirius’s sleeping face. “And that’s bad,” he said slowly.

“Yes.”

Remus said, “Because…”

Lily hugged Remus’s arm. “Because. He doesn’t belong with McKenna Alliston. It isn’t right. They don’t go together.”

“No?” Remus asked.

She stared at Sirius, too. “Don’t act like he hasn’t told you already,” she murmured into Remus’s shoulder.

“What?”

“Sirius. Don’t act like he hasn’t told you everything.”

Remus asked, “Told me what everything?”

Lily tilted her head to look up at him in surprise. “Wait. You mean he really didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About… about me?”

Remus was looking down at her with his eyebrows cocked. “What about you??”

Lily was surprised. Honestly, although she hadn’t expected to find that Sirius had told loads and loads of people about the things she’d told him, she had expected him to have told at least Remus and - depending on the mood he was in - maybe Peter as well. But to have actually kept her secret a, well, secret? That was very unlike Sirius Black.

“Are you okay, Lily?” Remus prodded.

Lily took a deep breath. “Yes. It’s… a bit of a long story is all, Remus.”

Silence fell over them.

Remus didn’t know, of course, the full details of what was going on. He knew that Sirius had purposefully broken his elbow to force James to play Lily in the match, and he knew that Lily was now acting quite odd about the idea of James and McKenna being together, just as she’d done when he’d been with Meg.. and it occurred to Remus that perhaps Sirius Black knew a fair bit more about all this than he’d yet told Remus.

Bleeder will tell me later or I’ll hex him silly, Remus thought.

Lily sighed, “Since when does he even like McKenna Alliston anyway? He’s never fancied her before, has he?”

Remus shrugged, “I mean, James never fancied anyone else besides you ‘til very recently.”

She stared at her hands. “Yes, well, he certainly seems to fancy everyone else now,” she said with a sigh.

Remus frowned. “I suppose…” He hesitated, then, “I think… I think he’s just trying to get over you is all, you know? Like he’s trying to distract himself from what he can’t have?”

Lily murmured, “Yeah… what he can’t have.” She pressed her face into Remus’s shoulder.




It was later, much later, when Lily’s nightmare came.

James Potter lay on the cold stone floor, sweat shined upon his face. He was barely breathing… “McKenna?” he called out her name, his voice shaking...

“Hang on James, hang on,” begged Lily. She was inside the cell with him this time, and she was trying to find a way out, but there was none. No window, the door reinforced… She shook the bars and listened to them clunk and echo… “Just a minute more, James, just a minute more, I’ll get us out of here, I promise. You’ll be okay.”

But even as she said it, she heard laughter echoing down the hallway… heard the sound of footsteps… and though she didn’t know who it was that was coming… she knew that the time to escape was almost up… and there was nothing she could do… nothing… they were going to die and it was because of her, because she was a jinx, because she’d dared to say that she liked James Potter….

She woke with a start and found herself still smushed into the chair beside Remus Lupin, who was also asleep, staring into the wide-awake, staring eyes of Sirius Black, who had rolled over in his hospital bed and now lay staring at them.

“Hullo,” he said lowly.

Lily swallowed, trying to regain her wits about herself, her breath still shaking.

“Should I be concerned that you’re sleeping here with my boyfriend instead of off snogging your own?” Sirius asked.

Lily started crying.

Sirius struggled to sit up, forgetting for moment that his elbow was still healing and wincing when he put a bit of weight on it by accident. “Fuck. Ouch. Damn it.”

“Careful before I break you, too!” Lily choked, “Any more than I already have.”

Sirius rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, darling, you are in no way to blame for what I’ve done here. Well. Perhaps a tad, seeing as I did it on purpose to get you time alone with my Prongs.” He eyed her. “Why aren’t you with him, by the way? Did I ask that already?”

“He’s busy,” Lily answered.

“Busy? Doing what?”

“Probably McKenna Alliston by now!” Lily said.

Sirius groaned. “Ferfuckssake, Evans.”




James was indeed with McKenna. His palms were splayed on the wall over her shoulders, leaning in, kissing her. The Gryffindor common room was so loud with celebration over the win that they could hear it even in the corridor outside the portrait of the Fat Lady, where they were snogging in the hall. She felt like the luckiest girl in the whole of Hogwarts. McKenna’s arms were around James’s neck and his mouth moved with a sort of urgency that made McKenna’s heart race and she moaned happily into his mouth as his lips worked against hers…

Although James Potter’s lips were on McKenna’s mouth - but his mind was on someone else.