August 30th, 1891 — The Minister's Office

This was the final interview round for filling the slot of his secretary; Ross had a few candidates he liked, but one of them was Miss Juliana Binns. She didn't have OWLs — but this would not be her first time assisting someone — and she was not a pureblood, which was shockingly important when the other two members of the office were a Crouch and a Macmillan.

She would be good at the job, Ross thought. The question was — did he want her to be the one to do it? He was trying to decide this today.

"I imagine there will be more similarities between this and the fashion house than one would anticipate," Ross said diplomatically, "But what led you to pursue a change?"

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@"Juliana Binns" Reuben Crouch

  

No one knew that Juliana was here. Or, rather: no one outside of the Ministry knew. She'd been here several times already and obviously the people running the interviews and scheduling things and taking her name at the front desk all knew who she was and what she was about, but she had told no one from her actual life. Mostly it was a function of guilt, though there was a degree of anxiety mixed in as well. There was no guarantee that she would get this job, and if she hadn't told anyone she'd applied in the first place then she wouldn't have to contend with anyone's disappointment if it wasn't offered to her. More than that, though, if she wasn't offered the job then she would never have to admit that she'd been considering taking it at all. She could return to the world before she'd decided to abandon her best friend in her hour of need, and pretend this entire interlude had never happened.

Juliana felt awful about leaving Camilla. The House of Lytton as a business and fashion as an industry she cared not a whit for, but she did regret the impact she assumed this would have on Camilla. But the truth of the matter was that since her brother's death, Camilla had leaned on Juliana in ways that were not always particularly comfortable for Jules, and were well outside the stated duties of her role. She needed so much more than someone to organize the schedule of appointments, now. She needed emotional support; she needed a champion to step in when vendors were being too demanding or a client said something unkind. She needed defending from the world of men who assumed the business would crumble without Marcus Lytton in command. She needed longer hours and more mental work, and at first Juliana had been happy to step into that role because it was what Camilla needed. Now, she was exhausted at the end of the day — mentally and emotionally — and she felt her work, her real work, was going to suffer as a result. She adored Camilla, but this was unsustainable — and unfortunately, there was no easy end in sight.

Unless she left.

So she'd stopped to take a look around and see if leaving was an option, and she'd applied here — she needed a job, yes, but more than that she needed an escape. She didn't care what the position was, only that it wasn't trying to prop Camilla up at the House of Lytton any longer. But she could hardly say that to the Minister of Magic. She didn't want to present herself as the sort of person who ran away from things. She didn't even particularly like knowing that about herself, so it certainly wasn't something she wanted to share with a stranger. So she smiled politely at his little quip about similarities between Ministry work and fashion houses (hopefully only a quip, because it wasn't as though she liked working at the fashion house, even before Camilla's world had collapsed) and tried to think of how she could answer such a colossal question as what led you to pursue a change?

"Fashion was never exactly my passion," she replied with a self-deprecating smile, as if to say as you could probably guess. She'd worn one of her nicer day dresses for this interview, but it was modest and simple — hardly the type of thing for which customers sought out Lytton's. She still hadn't figured out how to answer the Minister's actual question, though, and now she'd done the only thing she could think of to stall for time. The truth, or at least some version of it, would have to suffice. "But after Mr. Lytton's death in March the responsibilities of the role shifted, while the compensation did not."

Did that make her sound callous and superficial? Probably — but probably better to sound callous than to say anything about Camilla Lytton and the emotional burden of being around her all the time and risk having the Minister think her irrational or hysterical.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Ross smiled drily at the first half of her response; he was somewhat relieved that she didn't have a passion for fashion. (Although she did not look like the type.) Fashion was one of the few things that essentially never came across the Minister's desk, which was a relief — he was sure that it would have been more relevant had his secretary also assisted his wife.

"I believe our compensation to be superior to the House of Lytton," Ross said smoothly. (This was not something he had checked on, but it seemed likely, and if it wasn't true then he was willing to invest more in the Minister's office so that he had a permanent secretary who was not Mr. Macmillan.)

"And things are likely to be less — singularly focused, than a fashion house. That is to say, things change every day at the Ministry, and we are often balancing multiple responsibilities at once. How do you manage multitasking?"

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Even though he had responded with sufficient charm, Juliana wondered if she had misspoken in bringing up compensation. Of course it was a consideration — if she didn't need money to fund her research, she wouldn't have worked at all — but it wasn't really the reason she was leaving Lytton's, and she wasn't sure she wanted the Minister of Magic to see her as mercenary. Or did she? Perhaps in this line of work being cool and unaffected would be an asset. She wasn't sure. She was rather nervous about this interview — more than she ought to be, given that she already had full-time employment.

"I've always found the key to multitasking is good organization," she responded. "And with good organization, the ability to set appropriate priorities. There comes a point when not every new task can be finished at the same time, but a good multitasker can focus efforts on the important ones and postpone or delegate the others."

Merlin, she had just soliloquized about multitasking as a philosophical concept without giving a single example of how she actually did it. She ought to say something more specific, she knew, but her mind had gone blank — or at least, blank of anything she could actually tell the Minister of Magic. She could not describe the filing system for her research notes.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

It sounded like Miss Binns at least had a system, although she did not do much to describe it — Ross jotted down prioritization in his notes. He could circle back to this, depending on her answers to his other questions.

"Members of this office occasionally have to wrangle — difficult personalities," Ross said, although really he mostly meant Macmillan in this instance. "Do you have prior experience with this?"

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Interviews were stressful, at least from this side of the table. She wondered if her research subjects typically felt as nervous as she did now. It wasn't exactly the same, but one could argue the stakes were somewhat higher, even if she did promise they would remain anonymous.

"Certainly. Despite what women might have you believe from their behavior in a ballroom, I've met with no shortage of difficult personalities," she said. She was trying for a joke but wasn't entirely sure it was appropriate to joke about this sort of thing — hopefully the Minister had some experience with mercenary society women and could appreciate where she was coming from, at least. Unfortunately here she could hardly give specific examples, unless she wanted to sound like a gossip columnist (ha!) Maybe it would be alright if she left the names off, but described a specific situation? She really didn't want to give the Minister the impression that she liked to talk about people, though — was it better to veer more abstract?

"The trick is to make them feel they've had their way, without giving up any of your ground," she continued, aiming for a compromise between the two extremes: specific steps in response to an unspoken example. "Sympathetic expression and some placating comments while fixing them a cup of tea. Often they've burnt themselves out by then, anyway — sometimes they only have so much steam and once they've said their piece they're quite mollified already. Then I just tell them how it's going to be, but in that same tone that makes them think I'm agreeing with something they've already said. Sometimes for the particularly tricky ones I throw in some extra benefit for them that doesn't cost us anything, as though I'm doing them a favor. That works wonders. Say someone storms in and wants to be seen right away, and that's not possible. Three minutes later they're quietly drinking a cup of tea, and two minutes after that they're out the door with an appointment for Tuesday, and they feel as though they've won because I gave them the ten o'clock instead of the noon." She shrugged. "I've actually found it's rather easy to manipulate most people if you don't take anything they're saying personally. Well — perhaps I shouldn't use the word manipulate," she amended with a frown. "I suppose it's not very nice, but it's wonderfully efficient."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Ross couldn't help but smile as Miss Binns described an elaborate series of mind games that she could use on the on the customers of the House of Lytton. That would work very nicely on his department heads — and, more applicably, it could work well on Macmillan. He shouldn't get too far ahead of himself, though — there were just a few more things he wanted to cover first.

"I strive to be a Minister for all members of our society," Ross said. Miss Binns was a halfblood — which was promising — but didn't cover all of it. "Including half-breeds and beings. Can you tell me about a time you've worked with someone different from yourself?"

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Juliana beamed, because this question was positively made for her — except, oh, she couldn't actually talk about most of the answers that came to mind. Obviously she'd done a good deal of work with people who were different from her, but how could she bring it up? She could tell him she'd written some things advocating for the rights of others, but hadn't published under her own name. There were a myriad of reasons why someone might do that, so it would likely be believable. Unfortunately, the most likely follow up question was what name, and she couldn't answer that. She only had a day job in order to support her research; she had no interest in jeopardizing the credibility of her research in pursuit of a day job. Even if Minister Ross didn't seem the type to discriminate — well, he was still a man. You never could tell how they would react to some things.

"Zach," she blurted, after a second of desperate scrambling. "Er, that is, my brother — Zachariah Binns, he owns Wizzhard Books, and he's always putting on events and festivals and things. I've helped him plan some of them. They've done some staged readings of books, you know, acted out a bit, so that people who aren't literate can still enjoy them. We asked a goblin author to come and do a book signing once, and —" Juliana hesitated. "Well, sir, if you want to know about a time I've worked with someone really different from myself, honestly, it was bringing Emerett Picardy in to read a chapter of Lupine Lawlessness. It's — if you've never read it, you should consider yourself lucky. We had a whole selection of counter-arguments presented, too, but — that's the hardest I've ever had to work to stay professional," she admitted. Not that she'd always succeeded — sabotaging his book pick-up over the winter and writing a snarky letter to the Prophet for his birthday being two notable examples — but she had been much more professional than she'd wanted to.

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   Justin Ross

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

Two things occurred to Ross. The first was: if she was excited about this question, then hopefully she would do well when she had to act on her diplomacy as his secretary. The second was: if she hated Emerett Picardy, she was likely at least slightly progressive, and his immediate office could certainly use an additional dose of progressivism.

"This sounds like an — interesting experience," Ross said. "I haven't read Lupine Lawlessness, but regrettably I have run into Mr. Picardy before." He didn't have to deal with the man nearly as often as Morwenna did, but that didn't mean he enjoyed it when he did.

"And — this is likely to be one of my last questions — the individual who fills this role will have to uphold a strong standard of confidentiality. Do you have prior experience with this?"

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This was an equally frustrating question, because of course she did — but of course she couldn't tell him about that. She considered trying to make a joke about how she was so good at keeping confidentiality that she couldn't give him any examples, but she wasn't sure if he would find it funny or think she was trying to dodge the question. Her hands had been resting in fists on her lap throughout this interview, and she tightened them now slightly while she thought how to proceed.

"You won't have anything to worry about on that count, sir," she said, which was a dodge of the question (or at least the experience component of it). Hopefully the surety in her voice would carry her through the answer and he'd consider it good enough. "Even with the best intentions, a person with too much information can do a good deal of harm. It's better to control what they know, until you know exactly what they'll do with the information once they have it." She offered him a quick smile. "You can always choose to release more information later. You can never choose to call it back, once you've said it. I've always erred on the side of caution."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

She didn't provide examples, but she did answer the question Ross asked — better than most people would. "Quite right, Miss Binns," he said. Ross leaned back in his desk chair. "One last question. Can we revisit the subject of multitasking?" He wanted a little more clarity there, but just a little — she'd done well enough on his other questions that he was leaning towards hiring her, he just wanted to be more sure.

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"Of course," Juliana said, offering a blindingly bright smile. In reality there was little she wanted less than to revisit any of the questions. She was nervous enough as it was without having this tacit confirmation that she'd botched one of her earlier answers. Right now what she wanted was for the interview to be over, so that she could go home and make a warm cup of tea and maybe reconsider her decision to leave the House of Lytton — or maybe not. She didn't know. She didn't enjoy interviewing in general, and there had been several rounds already for this position, but she thought she would enjoy the work well enough. That was more than she could say for her work with Camilla at present. Maybe it was worth a few isolated incidents of being terribly uncomfortable to escape the predicament she'd found herself in at the House of Lytton.

She ought to see this as an opportunity, because he didn't have to ask her again. He could have just written it down as a mark against her and moved on — if he was taking the time to ask, then that meant she must have at least been in moderate contention for the position. She could handle this. She was actually very good at multitasking.

"There's multitasking in my job, which of course I do a lot of. At the House of Lytton there's the appointment book to manage, sometimes months in advance, and reminders and follow up messages to send by owl, vendors to take care of, seamstresses and designers to hire and pay — and designers can be rather flighty, so managing them can be rather labor-intensive, even when I don't have any input or interest in the creative aspect." This was, of course, to say nothing of the emotional regulation she'd been performing for Camilla ever since her brother's death. "And before I worked at Lytton I was a personal assistant, which also involved many of the same types of tasks. But there's also multitasking in my personal life," she continued briskly. Having said nothing but vague philosophy on her first attempt at this question she was now determined to overwhelm the Minister with practical examples, apparently. "I'm sure you have this in your notes already, but I left Hogwarts at fifteen, which meant from that age on I was responsible for my own education." If her lack of OWLs was going to be a dealbreaker for this job, so be it — there was nothing to be done about it now. "Which I took very seriously. I've actually had a few reviews published, of research and scholarly books, and I was doing that in addition to... all of the social obligations expected of a young woman," she said, with a slightly tired expression. The mere concept of the season exhausted her. "And helping my brother from time to time in the bookstore, and everything else."

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules

This answer — with details on her job, and her furthering her education, and her personal life — was much better. Ross smiled at Miss Binns — a genuine smile, not the generic one he usually used — and jotted down a few more notes. But unless one of his other final candidates had an excellent interview and a higher level of education, he did not anticipate picking someone else.

"Thank you, Miss Binns," Ross said, "Your qualifications — and interviews, of course — speak very highly as to your ability to do this job." She would be able to combat Macmillan, wrangle appointments, and — hopefully — withstand the pressures of the Ministry's executive office. And she had not worked in the Ministry before, which meant that she was not coming into the roll with the baggage of someone who had.

"You should receive an owl with our final decision within the next two days," Ross finished.

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Juliana smiled nervously in return. She thought it was a good ending to the interview — it sounded good — but one never could tell. Particularly when people said things about her qualifications; perhaps he meant that she really was well-qualified, or perhaps he meant it as a veiled jab at her lack of OWL scores on record. There was nothing she could do about that now, though, and time would tell if the Minister was being truly sincere or not. Two days, apparently, which was faster turn around than she'd expected. She was going to have to find a way to tell Camilla she was leaving — assuming she actually got the job.

"Thank you, sir," she said as she rose from her seat. "I'm looking forward to it. And it was a pleasure to meet you today."

She could worry about what she would say to Camilla on her own time; she didn't need to take up any more of the Minister's.

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Prof. Marlowe Forfang

Jules