“Well excuse you too.” Hermione muttered as a businessman who was too focused on the conversation he was having on his cell phone to bother paying attention to anything else like say, where he was going and if there was anyone else in the way brusquely brushed past her.
It wasn’t even noon yet, and she was just... done. Put a fork in her and why can’t it be tomorrow already (although she was certain that tomorrow wouldn’t prove to be all that much of an improvement over today) done. Mostly with people; she’d had to deal with rudeness at her preferred coffee shop, rudeness at work (what else was new), and now rudeness in the streets. Such was her life it seemed; just one never ending parade of suck.
At least it wasn’t... No. Don’t even think the rest of that sentence. One did not simply tempt fate like that even if nothing was actually said out loud. The universe was actively listening and waiting to say hold my beer every time you even thought that things couldn’t somehow manage to get worse. So why would you even want to bring that down on yourself.
And it looked like she was in luck; the bus she needed (and lucky it was. This particular route had the unfortunate reputation of being horribly unreliable - some buses were so late that they arrived at the time the next one was due - and had a lengthy wait time between when the buses were scheduled to arrive) had just pulled into the stop. Her mood brightened as she slipped onto the end of the queue that had formed while passengers that had been on the bus disembarked. She idly watched the departing passengers leave as she waited (a smartly dressed blonde man who was walking in completely the opposite direction from her pinged her sense of ‘I know this person from somewhere’, but since she hadn’t gotten a good look at him she wasn’t sure if she’d ever met him before, and if she actually had, under what circumstances it had been. There were times she dearly loved her quirk, but more often than not she found it to be more of a hindrance than a help. Apparently there were limits to just how much information a human mind was equipped to handle; who knew), making sure to move up when the person in front of her did - and that she had her bus pass handy so as to make the business of getting on the bus less of a hassle for everyone involved.
She was just about to climb aboard when the doors to the bus shut as soon as the person in front of her cleared the last step and the bus pulled away from the curb. “Oh for the love of!” she practically screamed, ignoring the stares her (justifiable) outburst had garnered.
“No, I don’t... ... I understand. ... Yeah, ... Yeah, ... Look I get it, ... Uh-huh. ... But... ... But... ... Will you just let me speak for a moment?!” Draco rolled his eyes - aren’t people a pain? - and then shot a glare back at the older woman who was glaring at him. Yes, he was sitting on a bus and having a phone conversation, but he wasn’t being loud or anything. No really. Even if his last statement had been said with more than a hint of exasperation, he wasn’t shouting or even raising his voice above a low conversational tone. In fact there were plenty of other people on the bus having louder conversations (some even on their own phones). But for some reason, he’d been the one singled out as (what he gathered was) an example of What’s Wrong With The Youth These Days. (He might’ve just assumed that the woman just had a resting bitch face, but the way she seemed oddly focused on him and just him - as opposed to the window behind him or the adverts above - made that seem less and less likely the case). He pinched the bridge of his nose as the idiot on the other end of the conversation went on, and on, and on about why the entirely reasonable request Draco had made was just not possible with excuse after excuse that had absolutely nothing to do with what Draco had actually wanted (and everything to do with what scam the idiot thought Draco was trying to pull). Really though. All Draco wanted to do was find out some rather basic information (did the store have what he was looking for; yes they did, no they didn’t, or I’m not sure and I’ll have to check). He didn’t need a lecture on him having to do - exactly what he was trying to do if the idiot on the other line would just shut up and listen for one goddamn minute!
Biting back a scream of frustration, and not caring one single wit about how rude he was being, he hung up on the guy mid sentence (if the idiot was going to refuse to listen to anything he had to say, why on earth should he listen to anything the massively unhelpful idiot was saying). He spent the last minute or so of his bus ride trying to rein in his temper and continuing to be glared at by the old woman (so maybe it wasn’t his being on the phone in public that had put the bee in her bonnet. But if it wasn’t that then what was it? He wasn’t sitting in courtesy seating, and it wasn’t like there was a lack of seating in general (in fact, the courtesy seating was roughly half empty so there was plenty of room for someone who needed to sit there to sit there). He didn’t have any packages on him, so it wasn’t like he was taking up the otherwise empty seat next to him or any of the aisle. And it wasn’t like he was dressed outrageously by any stretch of the word; a plain dark green t-shirt paired with a pair of dark jeans no tattoos, piercings, unnaturally colored or styled hair. In fact, he looked down right respectable).
He was still a bit perplexed and a bit royally pissed off (for different reasons that should in hindsight be obvious) when his stop finally came and he joined the crowd getting off. Once he was off the bus, he was back on the phone - this time to his boss in order to find out what she wanted to do since the person he’d been trying to speak to about a particular antique end table she’d been looking for (that the shop the idiot worked for supposedly had). Personally, Draco would be fine just dropping the whole issue; if the shop didn’t want to do business with Draco - and by extension, his workplace - then Draco simply wouldn’t and hit up their competition (who would hopefully be a bit smarter about things and be willing to work with Draco in a professional manner. Even if a deal couldn’t be made at this time, so long as neither party did anything to totally turn off the other one - like say obstinately toss up roadblock after roadblock in an effort to be as unhelpful as humanly possible - there was always the possibility that a deal could be struck sometime in the future). However, Draco was trying to track down a very specific item of furniture which meant that he was stuck with that particular shop since they in effect had the upper hand. It would be up to his boss to decide if the gain from actually buying the end table would outweigh the cost of having to try and deal with people who clearly (at least to Draco) didn’t care about actually doing business.
Hermione glared at her coworkers (when they weren’t looking of course. Because god forbid Hermione not be all sweetness and light and puppies and rainbows where they could see. Never mind that they were free to treat her like utter garbage without fear of any sort of chastisement from the very same hr department they ran to whine about her being less than perfect. If she didn’t need this job - and suspect that they’d actively torpedo any attempt she’d make to find a different one; even if doing so was technically illegal - she’d quit right on the spot and walk right out (without bothering to train up a replacement or write anything down to help whoever ended up replacing her handle her job; petty as that would be. At this point Hermione just didn’t have enough fucks left to care) as she left for the day.
Once again she’d had to go without lunch or even a proper break. Because by the time she got back from running that absolutely ‘vital’ errand she’d been sent on (something that wasn’t even supposed to be part of her job by the way), she had to cover for her coworkers so that they could go to lunch. And as usual, their lunches had gone over, and then it was ‘too late’ for Hermione to go take hers (not that any of her coworkers would lower themselves to cover her while she was at lunch. Wasn’t it enough that they - begrudgingly - did so when she was out on official company business?) and why didn’t she just grab something while she was out despite the fact that if she had, she’d be yelled at for ‘stealing company time’. Never mind that she’d still lose an hour of pay for the lunch she hadn’t been able to take because that was the way her contract worked.
Well nothing to do about it beyond what she was already doing. Soon she’d be free of all of them (she hopped anyway), and she’d laugh while the whole company burned without her there to keep everything together (this was not as egotistical as it sounded. Despite being treated like she was lower than the ground that the worms dug through, she held a key role in the company; for reasons she didn’t quite understand (thanks to them being completely illogical), she was the only one who actually understood how to use the software that handled the invoices worked. Not that the program was particularly quirky or difficult - in fact it’d turned out to be rather easy and self explanatory; surely a person didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out. Without her there to work that program, they wouldn’t be able to generate invoices or really do much when it came to anything having to do with the money coming in or going out.
She was starving though. Breakfast was hours ago, and only a couple of pieces of buttered toast at that. And hey. She was almost at her favorite curry shop. She felt like she deserved some tasty butter chicken with a side of roti for having to put up with the shite she’d had to today (she really shouldn’t make a habit of it though. Sure the prices at the shop were more than reasonable, but it did quickly add up in the long run and she wasn’t exactly making bank). Now in a better mood, she automatically navigated around a small collection of window shoppers to buy herself a nice dinner as a reward for not committing homicide.
They hadn’t even had the bloody table. Or even a bad knock off of it. In fact, they hadn’t had much in the way of furniture (and none of it could really be described as an end table even if you were being very generous with the definition of what an end table even was), and what they did have was in such bad condition that it made even the worst off charity shop finds look like they’d been sitting in a high end furniture store’s showroom. So. Much. Time. Wasted. And for nothing.
At least if there was any sort of silver lining to this, it was that he was in no hurry to go back to the auction house (even if his shift hadn’t technically ended already. One of the perks of his job was that his bosses didn’t mind him taking his time on retrieval jobs like this to do a bit of his own shopping if he so chose. Of course, he always made sure not to abuse that trust too much and he did have a habit of returning with some hidden treasures he’d stumbled upon so it was really in their best interest to let him have that bit of freedom). There really wasn’t much to find; this area seemed to be mostly made up of chain shops, restaurants, and service end businesses. Still, even if there wasn’t anything that his workplace would want, there was no harm in doing a bit of casual window shopping or some browsing if something just so happened to catch his eye. Like what was being displayed in the window of a leather goods shop.
For a moment he thought he caught the sight of someone he knew in the reflection of the window but when he turned around to check, there was no one but strangers surrounding him. He brushed off the feeling and went back to debating the merits of leather pants. On one hand, they’d be kind of a pain to clean, and if he gained an ounce... But on the other hand, he’d probably look pretty hot in them, and it would definitely get a reaction from his housemates, which was always fun.