Part Two: the Starving Artist

"Many of the pictures I painted were not beautiful.
For what, then? For a truth I did not know how to put into words.
For a truth I could only bring to life by means of color and line and texture and form,"
Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev

1947
New York, New York
America

Hermione looks at the large iron gates guarding an even larger mansion behind them. The drive to Long Island is scenic, and it ends in a dreamy neighborhood where the backyard pools look like small blue lakes and mansions that could compare to castles branch off the road on giant private estates. How can it be that she is going to live here? It feels as if more than luck and Madame Pomfrey's connections have brought her to this beautiful place. Maybe it is magic, Hermione thinks to herself, biting her lip in worry as the taxi cab honks impatiently at the huge iron gates, which are not moving.

Finally, the gates part backward in slow, graceful sweeps that seem to take a lifetime before they are finally open. Her hands are shaking from nerves, in a mixture of excitement and dread that feels like turned milk in her belly. She can only breathe again once they are beyond on the gates and driving up the vast road to the Malfoy Mansion, which sits on top of the hill like a white castle.

They stop at the end of the road. The driver comes around to let her out, but Hermione is already closing the door behind her by the time he reaches her.

"Oh sorry," she says, smiling apologetically. She waits as the driver makes a show of fetching her luggage, grumbling about 'women these days who think they can do everything' and the 'death of chivalry.' While he is talking to himself, Hermione takes in the sprawling estate before them with excitement. She wants to see everything, but there is so much to see that she will need at least a day to acquaint herself with the property.

The grounds surrounding the Malfoy Mansion are lush and green, with a smattering of Greek marble statues and fountains that toss rainbows in the water like coins. There is a boating dock not far off with a yacht resting patiently in the water. On the other side of the estate, she spies a pool with its own diving board. Gardeners flutter in the green hedges around the mansion with scissors and flowers for planting. In any other circumstance, she could be one of them.

What can this man do for a living that affords him a nicer house than the President of the United States? Hermione thinks.

A woman in a black dress sees her gaping at the front doors and instantly hurries to her side. "Miss Granger!" she calls, in a bright, squeaky voice. "Please come right this way. Here, give me that." She takes the trunk from Hermione's hands and scurries ahead of her to open the enormous doors.

Hermione is startled - how does that woman know her name? - but she follows her anyway. As she steps inside, the first thing she notices is that someone is playing the pipe organ. The haunting music fills up the mansion, she can feel it vibrating in her toes. She has never heard the pipe organ played outside of a church before, but whoever is playing it now certainly does not make her feel like she is at Sunday service. She feels as if she has stepped into the heart of a theater, a stage set and waiting with anticipation for the play to begin.

Or perhaps that feeling comes from the book she read in the cab on her way there. Phantom of the Opera certainly does inspire a melodramatic chord within, she thinks to herself. For all she knows, it could be a record player that she is hearing, not a full-blown pipe organ. Still, she shivers with awareness.

The woman that let her inside has disappeared and been replaced by a butler without Hermione even noticing it. One moment, she is looking at a chandelier the size of her old flat in London, and the next she is being escorted to the second floor by a sour-faced man who doesn't say a word except "Do not touch that, Miss Granger."

She follows the butler through hallways and beautiful empty rooms with her mouth wide open in shock. The mansion is magnificent...but the one thing that is missing from it are pictures. Hermione stares past the oil paintings and collected sculptures in bronze and marble, searching for a human face that isn't made of stone or paint. But there is nothing personal in this house. No portraits of Mr. Malfoy or his family, as far as she can tell, which is strange given the fondness of most rich men for paintings of their own faces.

But Hermione has done her research on her new host. Mr. Malfoy's father, Malfoy Sr., is a famous broker on Wall Street, and his son is an established art collector. Which explains the abundance of priceless paintings and delicate doodle-dads in the mansion, and the lack of…well, anything else.

What would happen if she broke something?

Hermione looks at the dour face of the humorless butler next to her and suddenly decides that she would rather not know.

"Here you are, Miss Granger. Your comfortable lodgings for the duration of your stay here," the butler announces, speaking for the first time since she breathed on the Chinese vase several corridors ago. His voice is a gravelly croak, the thin hair around his temples gone gray, and he wears a silk vest and the kind of crisp white gloves that everyone has in an Emily Brontë novel. He uses a fancy-looking brass key to unlock the bedroom door.

"If you require any further attention, ring the bell in your room and let one of the help know what you need. They'll retrieve it for you immediately. Normally, the bells connected to the staff room are only in the main rooms, such as the kitchen and dining room, and of course Mr. Malfoy's own lodgings. However, Mr. Malfoy has taken the liberty of installing a bell in your room in addition to a wardrobe." At her dumbfounded face, he clarifies, "You will find his gift in the second closet, he has left the first empty for your…belongings." He glances at the single trunk that she has brought with her, as if forcing himself not to make a cheeky remark.

Hermione is stunned. She has two closets? And one of them is full of new clothes for her!

Wow.

"That's…very gracious of Mr. Malfoy," she says, voice half-strangled by shock. She attempts to school her face into one of indifference for the sake of the snobbish butler. He must be used to people that have three closets and a room full of bells. "I would like to thank him personally – if I could," she adds uncertainly, at the suddenly dark look on his face.

"I'm afraid that will not be possible today. Mr. Malfoy has just arrived from Milan, where he attended an auction for a go. He is resting at the moment."

"What do you mean by 'a go'?" she asks in confusion.

"A go. Van Gogh." The butler looks as though he would rather be polishing silverware with his toes than speaking to the likes of her. Blushing to the roots of her hair, Hermione thanks him for his help and says goodbye.

"Um, thank you, Mr..."

"Kreacher," the froggish butler sneers.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Kreacher." She hurriedly shuts the door between them. She can hear Kreacher growling under his breath as he stalks away from her bedroom, the loathing in his grumbles all too painstakingly clear even with a locked door between them.

It's so… big. Hermione turns in place to take in the huge room that she has been left in. Her new bedroom. She can hardly accept it. This polished paradise of some sort, with gleaming hardwood floors, creamy peach-colored furniture and a balcony that overlooks the entire Manhattan skyline, is hers. It is temporarily hers, but that hardly seems to matter. She can still hear that pipe organ recording through the walls.

Malfoy Mansion is nothing like any place she has seen before. It is not like the cellar of a flat that she rented from the Dursleys, nor anything similar to the cold, gloomy rooms of Wool's Orphanage where she…

She shakes off that last thought. Some thoughts, even if they start out good, can take her to bad places if she is not careful.

Hermione sits on the rose-print divan, curling up in a white fur throw blanket that feels soft as a kitten against her skin. It is cold despite the humidity of summer outside the fortified walls of Malfoy Mansion, the glass balcony doors are misted from the muggy air. She feels frigid inside and out. Perhaps it is the suspicion that is making her so cold.

She goes down the list of things she must do tomorrow in her head, such as going to the bank to convert her pounds to dollars tomorrow morning, and finding out who on earth this Malfoy figure really is. She should thank her generous host for letting her stay in his gorgeous house. She also ought to find out what sort of arrangements Madame Pomfrey made to convince a strange, rich man to take in a nobody like Hermione. She isn't stupid.

A new wardrobe of gorgeous clothes and a giant bedroom all for herself at seemingly no cost is quite incredible… Did Madame Pomfrey pawn her to be a whore? Her eyes narrow at a sparkly silver dress dangling in her closet. It looks fit for the likes of Edith Pilaf or Josephine Baker, not Hermione Granger.

She doesn't trust any of it.

Madame Pomfrey did say that Mr. Malfoy is an extremely generous man, but if roughing it in London the past few years has taught Hermione anything, it is that no good deed is without a motive. She meditatively sips the green tea that has been left on the desk by one of the staff. The tea is cold, but it still soothes the turning in her belly.

This is a temporary situation, she reminds herself. Everything is temporary until something better comes along.

More importantly, Hermione Granger does not spread her legs for a stupid silver dress.

Days go by, then a week and some, and still there is no sign of Mr. Malfoy. Hermione hoped that at the very least, she would have secured a position at a company or private firm by now, either as a typist or bookseller or – at this point – anything that pays a decent sum. She doesn't need money, for the mysterious Malfoy has provided her with everything she could ever want with seemingly no limits, but the notion of living off a man that she has never met without giving anything in return doesn't bode well with her. It seems too good to be true to be handed everything after so long of nothing.

It is too good to be true. She just doesn't know why yet.

But Hermione has more pressing problems than solving the riddle that is her host. No one wants to hire a young, inexperienced woman for anything important in New York any more than they wanted to in London. Since the war ended, there is no more lack of men in the workforce for women to compensate for – in factories or offices or otherwise – and it seems that ladies have been sent back to their kitchens and teaching positions respectively in America, too. There is nothing wrong with being a domestic, but there is hardly any glory to be had in perfecting a steak marinade recipe either.

Hermione scowls at the dinner that Mr. Kreacher has set before her. It is delicious as usual, a bowl of escargots swimming in a broth pool of lemon and garlic with thyme. They look like they are drowning in it.

She is eating alone, again. She has rang countless ads and showed to interviews for positions that she doesn't even want all week, only to never receive a call back. She has been catcalled on Broadway at least once today, and everything seems to be going to pieces before it has even begun. She angrily spears a snail with the tiny silver fork that Kreacher told her – contemptuously, of course – was specifically meant for scooping little shriveled snails out of their shells. They taste very good to her surprise.

She had higher hopes when she first came here. Visions of herself saving enough money to go to school and then... something exciting and important happening next! She scoffs in disgust, tossing down the damned snail fork. Her stupid dreams are already burning out like flames in a dying candelabra.

Malfoy won't let her stay in his mansion forever. Even if he would, she doesn't want to live on the fortune of some stranger that may or may not have been promised a warm bed with her forever.

Would Mr. Malfoy hire me, I wonder? It is a thought. But she has to meet the man first or at least see him before making any unsolicited offers.

Hermione shakes her head. Lucius Malfoy, son of Abraxas Malfoy, is truly a phantom. A phantom of the Malfoy Mansion that is. His staff claim that he is away at meetings and galleries and auctions and so on whenever Hermione wants to see him. The life of an art collector must be busy indeed if he cannot even make it home for dinner, she thinks, annoyed. Kreacher told her that Malfoy returns home long after she falls asleep, but she knows that can't be true. She stayed up all night sitting on her balcony and watching the front gates to see if they would open on Sunday.

But sunrise came and went again, and the gates never moved an inch.

This all can only mean one of two things. One) Malfoy never came home in the first place and wherever he is, it isn't New York. Two) Malfoy never left his house at all…meaning that he has been here with Hermione the entire time, locked in his office or the attic or something.

The final option, which she has not counted because it seems rather unconvincing, is that Malfoy is not who he says he is at all.

She shudders to think who he could be if he isn't who he says.

Hermione's appetite is shot by all this frustrated pondering of hers. She stands and stalks out of the massive – and eerily empty – dining room, leaving her half-finished plate behind. She has grown used to leaving messes in her wake. New dresses and skirts that lie strewn about her room like silky entrails in the morning are magically folded and stowed away by the time she returns from downtown, and the books that she recalls leaving open on her bedstand or dropping on the floor after she nodded off in the middle of reading the night before are always conveniently bookmarked where she left off them. The enormous feather bed is never messy, although she hasn't made it since the first week she arrived, and there is always a maid or Kreacher hovering nearby to collect her plate or take the laundry basket out of her hands or reproach her for standing too close to the paintings. She isn't allowed to do anything for herself here, and it is beginning to drive her mad.

Hermione stops at the top of the stairs to catch her breath. No matter how many times she has climbed them, they never fail to make her feel like an old woman in need of a walking stick. She looks up from her knees after a moment of gasping and blinks in shock at the sight before her. There is a strange man at the end of the corridor.

It must be Malfoy.

She ducks on the stairs, which is ridiculous because the only thing hiding her from him is the marble baluster, and that is only wide enough to cover her head. But she keeps quiet as Malfoy goes on to a staff member about 'the additions' to the mansion. He is dressed sharply in a pin-stripe suit with feather-white hair that he wears slicked back from his face, which is lined with stress but not old by any means, and he stands fanning himself with a handkerchief as if he is not used to heat or discomfort. That is definitely Malfoy. She squints to get a better look at his face, but the man in paint-stained overalls gets in her way before she can. He must be one of the carpenters, she thinks, trying to see around him. She saw a group of them painting the gazebo robin-egg-blue this morning.

"I want this business finished as soon as possible," Malfoy says, sounding harassed. "My father is going to have a stroke if he returns from Africa and finds out that I've opened his estate like some sort of studio in Paris while he's been away. At the very least, I need to have something from Voldemort to show for all of this. The seasons begins in two days and I need to trust that you will do your part here while I'm gone. There is still so much work to be done…"

The rest of the conversation is indecipherable to her, for Malfoy and the carpenter disappear into a room, talking heatedly amongst themselves. The door closes behind them. Hermione's eyes narrow in suspicion.

So that is Malfoy Jr. But if his father, who owns the estate, doesn't know that Malfoy Jr. is 'opening his estate like a Parisian studio' and allowing Hermione to stay there, what does that mean for her? Is she going to find herself on the street when Malfoy Sr. does return? It would be like London all over again.

She doesn't know what is going on, but she knows enough that it can't mean anything good for her. The only way to know what Malfoy is up to beyond a doubt is to speak to him herself. What did he say about a show? She tries to make sense of the conversation that she heard, remembering that Malfoy is a collector… He must be attending an art show. If she can find out where the show is, then she can finally confront him without the staff getting in her way. Kreacher will never help her, but there are others who work in Malfoy Mansion that can be persuaded.

One way or another, she isn't going back to the street.

Hermione frowns to herself as another thought occurs to her. What on earth is a Voldemort anyway?