she won't stop smiling

They barely look at him when he enters. A glance up and then back down again, as if they have seen something illicit, something that they should not have seen. They pretend they haven't noticed him when he strolls to the counter as confidently as a man begging for a job can. It always goes the same way. This is the fifth place he's gone to today, the fifteenth this week. He has the words memorized, the routine down pat. He repeats it in his dreams. The only difference is that, in those, sometimes they say yes.

They all reject him with varying degrees of kindness. Sometimes there's a younger employee, one who probably only needs the wages as spending money to go out with her friends on weekends, who wasn't really alive during the War enough to have formed the hatred for him that the rest have. They are kind at first, and when he hands over his resume, their faces fall at the mention of Azkaban. The words I'll pass this along to my manager die on their lips and they're sympathetic, seeming almost genuinely sorry when they tell him they don't hire ex cons.

Others seem bored when they reject him. A flat out No, sorry, in a voice that tells him they are not sorry at all.

There are the people who kill him with their eyes, their irises full of so much contempt that when they practically spit in his face, he feels that he needs a shower when he steps out onto the street afterwards, fighting tears and struggling to keep his composure.

He feels lowly. He feels unwanted. He feels distrusted.

And it sucks.

---

"Any luck?" Theo asks hopefully, but Draco shakes his head before the question is even out of his friend's mouth. Theo starts to say something else but Draco shoots him a warning glare and he quiets down.

Draco takes a long sip of his whiskey. It tastes decadent on his tongue, and he almost wonders if it changed in the five years he was locked away. But then he remembers that not having something for five whole years can make everything feel different, even the things that you didn't imagine would ever change.

He fights the urge to throw the glass against the wall. The ache to do so is just beneath the surface of his skin like a raincloud waiting to burst. Instead, he downs the entire rest of the glass. "I don't want to talk about it," he mutters.

He hates Theo. He doesn't want to but he does. Draco should be glad that his friend escaped prison, but it's difficult to be pleased for someone who managed to avoid the hell that he, himself, went through. All of those sleepless nights on rock-hard slabs of foam that could barely pass as a mattress. All of those meals comprised of mush that could barely pass as food. All of those cruel comments from other prisoners that could barely pass as conversation.

He loathes Theo for spending five years in freedom that he experienced from a cage. His rage is red behind his eyes, like pinpricks in his skin. He only just manages to keep it from surfacing.

---

One chance. That's all he needs. One fucking chance. And nobody seems kind enough to give it to him. Some say they'd like to help him, they would, but it's just the rules. The fucking rules. Management won't allow us to hire convicted felons. Or, I'm sorry, if it were up to me. And he wants to scream and throw his fist directly into a wall to make a big angry hole in the plaster and say Screw the rules!

But he doesn't. He smiles blithely and nods his head in a thanks for their time and leaves. And on the street he pulls out the piece of newspaper he's been carrying folded up in his pocket and crosses out yet another job listing that won't hire him. The page is almost entirely black now.

Hopelessness feels heavy on his chest.

---

It's a Saturday that he runs into Marcus Flint. He's surprised to see him. He assumed he was still in Azkaban. Flint tells him how he managed to score early release by implicating an innocent, by making up a lie and somehow avoiding Veritaserum. He says it all with an evil smile that makes Draco want to throw up onto the pavement. He almost does when Flint leans forward with a proposition. "Look, I know money's tight, yeah? Come work for me and my guys. I'll hook you up."