After eating a late lunch at the Leaky Cauldron, Sky walked through the Alley with nothing really determining where she was going.  She hadn't had really anything to do since her brother Shade was always off on his new motorcycle, travelling around to find new things to paint or draw.  She was rather bored.

Just as she was about to pass the Daily Prophet office, she made a split decision and walked in and made her way to the reception desk.  While she waited for the receptionist to notice her, Sky looked around.  The entryway she was in was really fancy, and for a small moment she felt like she didn't belong in the place.  But she steeled herself and waited.

When the receptionist finally noticed her and asked what she was doing there, Sky simply said, "I'm looking for work, would anyone here be hiring?"  She paused, "I need to do something to fill my days since I'm not having to watch out for my brother anymore." she said with a smile.

It was about two in the afternoon on a Friday and Figaro Sellaphix was on his way in from a broomride out to Cambridge. There were some old types of photography film that didn't do well in a floo or Appariton, so it had to be sent by Sellaphexpress. Even in the cold and wet of March, Figaro enjoyed long hours on a broom. He landed on Diagon at a trot and continued straight on into the Daily Prophet bringing a cold rush of air behind him. Inside he found the receptionist receiving someone. He overheard a snatch of the conversation as he approached.

   "Working here's not really a hobby..." the receptionist was saying testily. "And you really need, you know, a resume. And an appointment ... "

Figaro came around and his face lit up.

"It's Sky O'Connor!" he smiled and leaned dramatically against the counter. This was how Figaro greeted anyone he managed to run into from school. Sky was a year older and they hadn't been friends, like, at all. He could only recall once that they ever hung out and Figaro had run afoul of her twin brother.[1] The receptionist wasn't really impressed. Figaro Sellaphix wasn't  someone who had the merits to vouch for anyone.

"Whatcha doing here?

1.	6 Dec 09 - Don't Rain on my Parade

Sky was in the middle of rolling her eyes at the receptionist when she heard her name called.  Turning around, she saw an old classmate from school.  "Figaro, is that you?"  She focused on him, "I came in here to look for work.  I'm bored just sitting around looking at my four walls." 

Placing her hands in her pockets she said, "What are you doing here?"  She asked him.  Truthfully, while they weren't exactly friends in school, they did run across each other sometimes. The things she remembered the most of him was that he liked pranks and Quidditch.  Her twin Shade had more interest in Quidditch than her, but she still followed it a little.

"Bored?" Figaro blurted with a sniff. "People don't go to work because they're bored, it's because you need money. C'mon, O'Connor."

    "Or they don't work at all and get sacked?" The receptionist piped up and waved a hand to shoo Figaro away. The unwashed rabble were unwelcome in reception. Figaro was somewhat louder than a decorative ficus or oversized ceramic urn.

"And whom's going to fire me? I don't see Cuffe anywhere," he said sweetly even as he complied with the shoo'ing. He slid away from the desk and unzipped his coat. Then, not forgetting Sky, he nodded towards the doors.

"I can show you around? Just so you know what you're getting into?"

If Sky really wanted to work at the Daily Prophet, depending on what she wanted to do, she really only needed a wand and a pulse. Figaro had certainly come into the job cold with no real idea of how a newspaper worked and how unglamorous it was most of the time.

Sky ignored the receptionist because, honestly the muttering was getting on her nerves.

"Well Sellaphix, I don't need the money and I have nothing else to do."  She had been sitting in her flat and had read every book again. "I need something to do to pass the time, and honestly I have no other idea."

She laughed a little when Figaro asked the receptionist who was going to fire him.  It seemed that he had grown in age, but not personality since school.

"I'd like that, I mean, if you have the time." Sky responded to him. 

Figaro led the way into the double doors. As soon as they opened, a buzzing cacophony met flooded out. Conversations over bull-pen partitions, a thunder of clacking typewriters, owls swooping through the rafters high high above them. One side of the room was dominated by a massive dragon of a printing press. It hummed and clanked and smoked, churning out hundreds of copies for the next issue that would be delivered all over the world. There were people everywhere. Reporters, researchers, copywriters, editors, as well as assistants (like Figaro) and delivery wix. There were photographers and artists and whoever it was that wrangled advertisements. It was like this all the time.

Figaro led the way over to the area where all the assistants camped out. They had some tables and mis-matched chairs, hooks, shelves, and their own rickety kettle for coffee and tea.

"Everybody needs money," he insisted as he dropped his coat off. "How do you not need money?"

Figaro never knew a time where his family didn't need money. It was always on their mind. It was important that their apothecary always ran perfectly and while the boys always had everything they needed, they couldn't have everything they wanted. After Hogwarts Figaro could have lived at home on his parents' sickle for a little while, but he was expected to make his own way. He worked long hours at the Prophet to afford his own flat. He wasn't complaining, but he'd never said in his life, 'I don't need money.'

Sky followed Figaro through the double doors and just paused.  She was awestruck by the bustle of activity in the bullpen.  People were everywhere and no one seemed to be slowing down.  She was so busy looking around that she didn't move from the doorway for a moment, that is until she noticed that Figaro had moved over to an area with mismatched chairs and a few rickety tables.

Walking quickly over to where he was, she heard him ask her how she didn't need money.  Sky thought about it for a moment, "Well, my parents, while not well off, owned a respectable Bed and Breakfast and make quite a bit of money." She took a deep breath, "Since they day we were two years old, they've been putting money aside for me and Shade.  Last time I asked the goblins how long they thought my trust vault would last, they laughed."

Sky sat down on one of the chairs and laughed as she thought about her brother.  "Evidently, my brother thought that I couldn't handle things on my own, so he made some investments when he was 16 and has been putting money into my vault. So, the goblins laughed at me because I am set for at least 10 years."  She looked around the room, "But I don't want to rely on my parents... or my brother... I want to make my own money."

"So you're not bored," Figaro said with a laugh. He hadn't known the O'Connor twins were as wealthy as Sasha Schlagenweit-now-Snow who was at Cambridge University now.

"You're tired of being rich. Well, nowhere will make you feel like a nobody like the Daily Prophet," he said not sounding down about it all. It was hard work and you had to have a thick skin, but he really did like it. It was never dull even when it was mind-numbing. It did occur to Figaro that not everyone shared his experience working here. When he'd started he'd been fresh out of Hogwarts and an idiot. Now he was an idiot with eight months of experience. He'd even had his name in the paper twice.

"Okay, you want a coffee or anything?" He began to get some for himself, pouring it straight black into a mug that said I My Grandmother.

Sky laughed at his conclusion, "Something like that.  I like that I have money to fall back on, but I want to earn a living, not just use it like my brother does." She paused, "I mean, he does make some money with his paintings some times, but not often." 

She turned around to face where Figaro was, "Coffee sounds good, you have milk and sugar?" She asked him as she watched him pour coffee into a mug that professed loving a grandma.  "I like alright, I think I like more sugar than coffee, but it's alright."

Milk and sugar? Figaro shook his head and clicked his tongue. "No, no no no, old Cuffe won't pay for it."

Figaro handed her the Grandmother mug and then poured another coffee for himself. This mug had a very faded Daily Prophet logo on the side.  Then without any more pre-amble he began a tour.  He stood at Sky's shoulder and began pointing.

"The cubicles in the middle is all reporters," he said. "Not everyone gets one, you have to have paid your dues a bit. If you're not careful someone will steal your chair. That section of desks there..."

He pointed now to a bunch of desks pushed together in clumps. They each had massive typewriters on them. "Copyeditors. Bunch of nerds. Copyeditors are different from actual editors - they, you know, take the unreadable garbage the reporters write and fix it."

    "Piss off, Sellaphix," said a reporter as he brushed by them both.

"Love you!" Figaro called after, not missing a beat. "The actual editors are over there. They're in charge of sections, deciding what stories to print and bossing around the reporters."

He paused to check in with Sky. Everyone had a part to play, everyone but Cuffe had a boss.

As Sky took all the information Figaro gave her in, she was torn between regretting coming into the building in the first place, and actually thinking she might like it here. But then again, this was more of an impulse coming in the first place, she hadn't really thought out the details.

"Okay, so I know what those guys do." she began and she turned to him, setting the cup of coffee down by the coffeepot, "What is it exactly that you do here?" she asked with a smile.  From some of the comments she'd heard from the other people who walked by, she assumed it wasn't anything glamorous.

"Loads of shit, basically," Figaro answered but he didn't seem grumpy. "House elf kind of thing. Fetching things, carrying things, running errands, courier - I get to be on my broom a fair bit."

Then interrupting himself, Fig pointed to a rickety exposed iron staircases winding up the back walls all the way to the roof. "Owlry's up there. There's people who care for them and managed owl deliveries. Other delivery is done by hand - Apparition, broom, Floo and all that - but that's not us. All that happens dark-arse-o'clock."

"I'm in the archives sometimes. Pulling old articles for reporters, putting them back. That's the bit I don't like. It's musty and dark and haunted, I swear."

He turned back to Sky gauging her reaction. He loved working at the Prophet but his job wasn't very glamorous. Considering he wasn't good in school it was the best he could get other than getting stuck working in his family's shop. Loads of their friends had landed jobs at the Ministry, but Fig didn't regret where he'd ended up, at least for now.

"What do you think? Not exactly Auror-in-training."