Hermione puts down the New York Times, letting loose a soft yawn. The work postings aren't promising, but she'll apply to them all anyway. She's sick of being useless, of sitting around in a mansion with nothing to do or occupy her time with. She walks to the balcony and studies the Hudson River. It is smaller and greener than River Thames. The New York City skyline is a beautiful congested backdrop against it.
"Hello?" someone says from behind her.
At the interruption, Hermione jumps and turns around. The bedroom is still empty. She frowns at the closed door. Who said-?
"Yes, yes, speaking," the same voice says. It sounds like a young man. Too young to be Kreacher, the grouchy butler. The voice is coming from above her on the balcony. She steps outside and looks up at the wooden slats of the balcony above her, where the shadow of a man strides back and forth across the floor. She can see his feet pacing through the mahogany slots. The underside of shiny, buffed shoes gleam in the channeled sunlight at her. Malfoy, she thinks. The real Malfoy.
"…Yes, it's coming along rather quickly," her mysterious host is saying as he walks back inside. "…shall be ready in at least four days…"
Hermione stays where she is frozen on the balcony, hoping he'll come back so she can finish eavesdropping. A door closes and locks above her. Bullocks.
I know where his room is now. The new knowledge gives her an idea. Maybe she could go there tonight when Malfoy disappears on one of his midnight rendez-vous. She would like to know who the real Malfoy is and why he won't show himself. Why is he so keen on keeping his identity a secret? Even his staff lied straight to Hermione's face about him. To go to the lengths of setting up a decoy to deceive her through that conman she met the other week was so strange...
There must be something in his room.
Hermione has never been the sort to break rules frivolously, but desperate times call for desperate measures. She frees a brass pin from her hair, twirling it in her fingers. Before she ever came to Wool's Orphanage, the twin brothers of the Weasley family that she had worked for had taught her a thing or two about picking locks. Years have passed since she tried her hand at lock-picking, but perhaps locks are like bicycles, she thinks. You never forget how to ride a bicycle... or how to be a sneak.
Ten minutes past the clock striking twelve, Hermione slips out of her bedroom and makes her way to the fourth floor.
The lock is not like a bicycle. She fumbles with her pin in the lock until it breaks in half in her hands, clattering softly to the floor. "Well, I'll eat a hat," Hermione mutters to the dark hallway. She keeps her ears pricked for the sound of Kreacher lurking in the stairwell, but he is sleeping in his quarters. She takes a second pin out of her hair. The artful bun that she'd wrestled her frizzy hair into is collapsing around her ears like a deflating soufflé. A loose curl tickles her neck like the tongue of a snake. She shivers in the empty mansion. It seems so cold without any of the help around. Jamming the pin in the lock again, she twists it back and forth gently, gently. Click... click-click... The bolt thuds as it is shoved aside by the tin. Yes!
Hermione grins as the door to Malfoy's room swings open before her. She checks the corridor twice before stepping inside.
Inside, the bedroom is not a bedroom at all... unless Malfoy doesn't sleep in a bed. Hermione shuts the door behind her soundlessly. She looks around, taking in the paint-splattered walls and rolls of canvas, the bunches of half-used oil tubes littering the floor. It's an art studio. Her eyes fall on the balcony where Malfoy had stood earlier that day. A tattered sketchbook lying off to the side pushes unwelcome memories at her, but she doesn't dwell. The studio feels eerie enough without an extra dose of paranoia. She has never stepped foot in here before and yet it feels... familiar.
"Focus," Hermione whispers to herself. "He isn't here. You're alone."
Hermione starts looking. She'd previously thought it would be easy to find dirt on this host of hers, that she'd just fling open a filing cabinet and somehow stumble upon his birth certificate or something. She sees how stupid this idea is now. Because there aren't any papers in here – none except for the ones in sketchbooks – and there isn't anything to allude to a person's identity either. She huffs and sits down on a cardboard box of terracotta clay, stumped.
It is now that she remembers what all artists do to their work with a burst of revelation…
They sign it.
She spins around, looking about at the pieces splayed haphazardly throughout the room and searching for a complete one, one that the artist would have signed already. She finds a huge oil on canvas propped on an easel. It's an abstract painting of triangles and squares she can't even begin to see the meaning behind – but then, she's never understood art. She's a bookworm, not an art junkie.
She looks down, to the bottom right corner, and sees a name scribbled in black ballpoint pen there. Voldemort, it reads. She frowns.
Who the devil is Voldemort?
On the opposite side of the studio, the balcony doors rattle sharply, like the hammers of hell are trying to smash their way inside. Hermione jumps a foot into the air at the sound. She looks outside, heart pounding, but it's only a summer lightning storm. The Hudson is swirling and churning, the grey air humming above it rocked with electricity.
Calm down, she tells herself, even as cruel terror threatens a lunar eclipse. It's just the weather. Just a little rain.
Hermione looks away and back at the signature. Voldemort. She traces the letter ridges with the tip of her forefinger. What an odd name.
The balcony doors rattle again, at the same time lightning strikes the river, but this time they tear open wide. Hermione swears when a gust of blistering wind tears inside the studio, sending everything askew and toppling works of art upward and wayward and here and there without a care in the world. She scrambles to her feet, running over to grab the doors, forcing them shut and pulling the lock fast. Papers flutter to the floor gently behind her.
She turns around, blanching at the mess. Her eyes catch on an envelope.
Hermione bites her lip and checks the closed door again. She goes over, picking up the envelope and examining it. It's already been opened and there's only the return address on the label. It's from London. She takes out the letter.
Voldemort,
I cannot thank you enough for your brilliant creations. My sister is thrilled with her portrait and I hope you are thrilled with your side of the bargain as well. Is the locket to your liking? If not, do not even think of trying to send it back. I am hardpressed to ever relinquish one of your fine pieces in exchange! I do love them so, nearly as much as the fellow behind them.
On another note, I am flying in from London especially for your show come July. Save me a dance, won't you?
Yours always,
Hepzibah Smith
Hepzibah Smith? Hermione has heard of that name before. Hepzibah Smith is a famous art collector, notorious for her habits of snatching up the famous and beautiful no matter what the price may be. Her money knows no bounds, according to the magazines. And apparently, her love for Voldemort knows no bounds either.
July... That's only a week away. Hermione returns the letter to its place, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner. Hours have already passed, she should be going before one of the morning staff catches her snooping. But how can she find the exact details of Voldemort's art show? It would be the perfect, if only, opportunity to meet him.
She leaves Voldemort's room, locking the door behind her.
July 1st 1947
downtown Brooklyn, New York
The art show is rather... pretentious... in Hermione's opinion.
The lighting is so low she must squint to see the painting around her. A jazz band plays softly from a shady corner, the lead singer mumbles into a microphone. Rich oak floors and butter-yellow paneling strike a sharp contrast with the dreary, dark pieces mounted on them. Hermione does not dwindle on the art. Incredible as it is, the pieces don't interest her. She hates art the way a stubborn student hates reading. She is only interested in the maker.
Voldemort.
But where on earth is he?
Hermione asks the strangers, the extravagantly dressed wives and paparazzi snapping away their clunky cameras and the suave critics in embroidered scarves and sharp jackets. Some laugh at her question, like she's made a funny joke. Others scoff and sneer at her – but most of them simply say they don't know. Most don't even know what Voldemort looks like.
She sighs, frustrated. This is proving to be a tedious task indeed.
It's two-thirty when Hermione sees - at last! - a familiar face. For stalking in the dimly-lit corner of the showroom is no one other than…
Malfoy.
Hermione tucks a stray curl back behind her ear nervously (though it just stubbornly comes undone again) and she gathers herself, walking over to the man. She tries to talk herself into being assertive – tough. There's information she needs, and nothing shall stop her from getting it. She draws back her shoulders and jabs Malfoy harshly in the back, to which the man turns around with a heavy scowl.
Seeing her, his scowl is replaced by a look of horror.
"What are you doing here?" he says, aghast.
Hermione blinks. Her cheeks tinge red with embarrassment. There goes the 'assertive' plan, she thinks glumly."What do you mean what am I doing here?" she asks.
Malfoy cast a paranoid look about them, then clamps a hand down on her shoulder and pulls them swiftly into a pool of shadow where they're hidden. She quickly shakes off his hand, her heart skipping a creeped beat at the unexpected touch. In the dark, Malfoy hisses, "You better get out of here before he sees you-"
"He?" She narrows her eyes and stabs a finger at Malfoy's chest, declaring, "You mean Voldemort, don't you?"
Malfoy's eyes widen as he realizes his mistake. He flushes, which makes his strange colorless hair seem even brighter than before, and he mutters, "Er… who's Voldemort?"
Hermione snorts. "Nice try. But that's my question, actually." She stares at him suspiciously. "And what did you mean by 'get out of here before he sees you'?"
"Look, it doesn't matter what I meant – and I'm not saying that you're right either. What matters is that you scram."
"I'm not going anywhere." Her heart is racing from all her daring. She lifts her chin, looking Malfoy directly in the eye. "Not until you tell me what's going on."
Malfoy scowls irritably. "Fine. Stay then, because I'm not telling you a thing. I'm not crazy enough to value your life over my own." And he stomps away, swearing and skulking. Hermione hurries after him.
"Wait!" she says quickly.
Malfoy shows her a choice finger.
"Look, you don't have to tell me everything," she wagers, catching up. "Just tell me a few things."
"I don't think so."
"Why not?" she demands, offended.
Malfoy sends her a quick, frigid smile. It's not becoming at all. "Because I've been told not to."
"By Voldemort?"
He pointedly ignores that.
"Ok, fine. Don't tell me." Hermione takes a deep breath. "I just- I don't understand what the big deal is. Is he anti-social or something? Is he shy? Is that why he doesn't want me to know about him?"
Malfoy barks out a harsh laugh at shy. "He's anything but that, Miss Granger, I assure you. He's quite adamant to meet you actually."
"Voldemort?"
Malfoy nods, then freezes midway and glares at her poisonously. She smiles back.
"So," she says innocently. "What are all the…theatrics…for?"
"Hell if I know." Malfoy sighs. "I just manage his finances."
She mulls over that.
Malfoy glances over at her and stops, as if considering something. Slowly, he says, "If you want a bit of advice, however… I'd suggest that you pack your bags as soon as you get back to that big house you're staying in. And leave. Immediately."
She laughs, but instead of coming off as nonchalant and unconcerned, she sounds nervous. Because how can she leave when there's nowhere to go? "You think I should run away?"
"I don't think you should, I know you should." Malfoy receives his jacket and hat from the coat check. Donning both, he sends one last unfriendly eye-muster at her. "If I see you again, you'll be a stupid fool, Miss Granger," he says matter-of-factly. "If I don't, you're one of the few smart ones."
And he leaves.
Great, Hermione thinks, frowning as she watches the blonde go. Now I know even less about this Voldemort than I did before.
She makes to leave, but before she can there's a voice at her ear, a man extending a hand to her with a secret smile. She regards that hand warily.
"Cygnus Black," the man introduces. He drops his hand when she doesn't shake it. He doesn't look insulted though. Just smooth. "I assume you are Miss Granger?"
"Yes." Hermione eyes him untrustingly. "How do you know that?"
"Everyone here knows who you are." Cygnus leans closer, smile gone fox-like, and whispers, "They just don't know it yet."
She raises a brow.
"Anyway." Cygnus leans back, cracking his knuckles in a way that makes her cringe. He has brown curly hair. "I was eavesdropping on your conversation with Mr. Malfoy there and I couldn't help but notice you've a little dilemma."
"Oh?" she says. "And what is that?"
"Voldemort." Cygnus evaluates her, with dark brown eyes that could have seen guns fired at innocents as easily as they could have seen the moment in which they could have stopped the trigger from being pulled. He has the gaze of a bluffer, Hermione thinks. "Do you want to meet him?"
"Yes." She's surprised, but her answer has no doubts. She tilts her head. "You know where he is?"
"Of course." Cygnus rubs his jaw, slightly scruffy with a five o' clock shadow. It gives his attractive looks a rough edge. "I run the shows here all the time, Miss Granger – and besides, everyone knows. Most of them just don't know it yet."
Hermione frowns. Before she can ask what the devil he means by that, however, Cygnus is already walking away, gesturing for her to follow and disappearing through the revolving brass-gold doors in a flash. Reluctantly, she goes after him.
Art people. Why do they always have to be so god-damn dramatic?
"So how do you know Voldemort?" she asks, while they sit on the subway chugging them through the tunnels webbing the city underground. The train is cramped and sweaty. Cygnus impatiently drums his fingers on the steel safety pole he's gripping. Hermione wishes that she'd put on one of the dresses in her closet when a bead of sweat dribbles from her damp hairline and onto her lip.
The dresses that fit me like a glove and are all varying shades of purple. The dresses that give her unexplainable goosebumps every time she looks at them.
"I'm a friend from his school days," Cygnus answers briefly, pulling her out of her thoughts. She looks up.
"What school did you go to?"
He grins slowly. "You know already...you just don't know it yet."
Hermione purses her lips at this living paradox. "You know, you're quite annoying, Mr. Black."
"Call me Cyg."
The subway suddenly squeals to the eighth stop and when the doors slide open this time, Cygnus stands. She stands, too, listening to the intercom to see where they are and congregating with the crowd onto the platform outside. Cygnus finds her amidst the faces and waves, indicating for her to come over. She struggles through the hot mass to him.
"What are we– or what is Voldemort, I mean – doing in Queens?" she queries.
"Waiting."
"For?" she prompts impatiently.
"Meh, one second." Cygnus fumbles to light a cigarette as they ascend the metal stairs leading to higher ground and he offers one to her, wriggling the box. She shakes her head.
"I don't like the smell of nicotine," she finds herself explaining.
"Oh, ok." Cygnus takes one quick drag of his cig and drops the rest, kicking it into a grate that rumbles from the subway roaring on rusty tracks beneath them. He coughs. "So what did you say?"
"I asked what Voldemort is waiting for."
"Ah, that's an easy one." He shoots her a teasing smile. "You sure you can't figure it out on your own, honey bunch?"
She grits her teeth, growing irritated at the nickname. "Would you just tell me already-?"
"Ok, ok, relax." Cygnus ignores her witch glare and walks on obliviously, guiding them through a shabby neighborhood with broken streetlights and shifty eyes lurking in the alleyways – or maybe that last part is just her imagination. Either way, Hermione steps closer to her newfound companion on instinct. "He's waiting for you, actually. And so are the others."
"What?" And what of others? What is he talking about?
Patiently, Cygnus repeats, "Voldemort is waiting for you-"
"No, I heard that part." She stares ahead of them, trying to figure out where they're going. What are they doing in a neighborhood? she wonders. "But why? What's going on?"
"Beats me." Cygnus, it seems, is just as unhelpfully unknowing as Malfoy. It is this fact that makes her all the more determined to find out what is going on.
He stops them at an herbal shop called Snape's Specialities and sweeps his arm out in an ironically gentlemanly fashion, holding open the door. "Ladies first, ma'am," he says in a Southern drawl.
If I see you again, you'll be a stupid fool, Miss Granger. If I don't, you're one of the few smart ones.
Hermione is many things, but 'a stupid fool' is not one of them. Curious, sometimes rash and quite stubborn might fit the bill, but stupid and fool most certainly do not. She is only tired of running away from her problems. She is only determined to be the first to confront the bully for once in her life.
New York must be getting to me, she thinks drily, going into the shop.
The herbal shop is a nasal assault of tea leaves, incense, what may or may not be pot and a number of other strange stinky objects that sting her eyeballs. A bell overhead rings at their entrance. She discreetly fans the air in front of her nose, coughing.
"Don't worry, it gets better," Cygnus assures. But his eyes water.
"Voldemort is in here?" she sneezes incredulously.
He scoffs. "Don't be silly! He's under here, at the Fat Lady's."
Under? Hermione frowns and begins to say, "What's the Fat Lady?" But she's cut short by the arrival of a tall bat.
Except it's not really a bat. It's a man, dressed like a bat in black ensemble, with greasy hair and oily-black eyes. He steps out of an employees only door and regards them with the expression someone wears when they find a half-dead, twitching cockroach in their French fries.
All in all, he doesn't look pleased to see them.
"Mr. Black, what are you doing here?" The man, who Hermione assumes is the owner of the shop, looks right over her at Cygnus. His lip curls. "And why, pray tell, did you bring that...unsavory thing into my store?"
She bristles.
"We're here for the Fat Lady, Snape." Cygnus nods at Hermione casually, seemingly unruffled by Snape's pessimistic mood. "She wants to come along."
Severus Snape's eyes shrink into suspicious slits. However, all he does is hold out a hand and wait until Cygnus drops a rather thick wad of cash into his palm. Hermione blinks and squints at it. Are those twenties? Before she can figure it out, Snape has whirled around and is striding away to his cash register, carelessly saying, "You know where to go, I presume."
Cygnus nods.
Hermione, feeling much like Alice going down the rabbit hole, goes after Cygnus Black into the employees only backroom. The interior isn't very impressive. It's dark, organized but terribly cluttered, and filled with filing cabinets galore. Cygnus goes to the very back and pulls aside a curtain, which reveals a portrait of a rather pudgy woman dressed in Renaissance garb. The Fat Lady. With what little art knowledge she has, Hermione gathers that the painting is a Rubens copy.
Cygnus knocks on the door, thrice.
The eyes of the Fat Lady slide aside – it's a slat – to be replaced by two very small, watery blue ones. "Who's there?" a nasally voice says.
"Use your eyes, idiot." Cygnus stares back into the ugly eyes impatiently. "Who does it look like? I'm here every week."
"What is the password?"
"Open the damn door, Wormtail, you little rat crap."
Wormtail's ugly eyes flash with annoyance but he concedes, climbing off of what sounds like a stepstool from the other side. Then the Fat Lady, which turns out to be a secret entrance, swings open backward and reveals a stairway lit by torches... going down into the unknown. Hermione can hear music from below and realizes this must be what Cygnus meant before by under.
"What is this, some sort of a club?" she stammers. Cygnus looks amused by her nerves.
"Actually, Voldemort's throwing a party." He steps back. "Go on. I'll be right behind you."
She can only hope he'll keep that promise.
Carefully, cautiously, Hermione steps onto the first stone step. Wormtail, who turns out to be three inches shorter than her and quite rat-like, scowls at her with yellowed buck teeth. She looks away quickly and goes down the stairs faster after that, until she reaches the entrance of a - well - a party.
She stops on the bottom step, looking around wonderingly. The lights have a strange tint and simmer so low it's hard to see more than one thing at a time. Everyone wears white here, their stylish dresses and suits glowing as they pass under a gleaming bulb, and silver confetti seems to have passed in a rain, because it dresses the floor like a shiny coat and clusters in girls' hair. Hermione's white shoe laces are the only things that glow on her.
Cygnus bumps into her back suddenly, having run right into her. She stumbles. "Keep going," Cygnus tells her, and he has to shout into her ear for her to hear him. "Unless you'd like to stand here and gape at everybody like a stunned fish all day?"
She looks over her shoulder, sends Cygnus a withering glare he sticks his tongue out at, and steps inside. To her right, a crowded bar made of sleek steel offers cyber-green cocktails and petit fours on metallic platters. Cygnus snatches one glass up as they pass, downing it in one fluid movement. Hermione doesn't touch the liquor. She doesn't want to end up like the girl doing a strip-tease on the ninety-something-year old's lap while a group of half-naked guys – or girls maybe? – have a tap dancing contest around them.
"I'll catch up with you later, Hermione," Cygnus shouts over the swing, which is smashing out of the orchestra pit. His sly eyes catch on a leggy Indian girl sauntering into a gyrating mass of white wearers and slant. He has the look of a hungry lion prowling in the savannah.
Hermione is worried. "But how am I supposed to find Voldemort? I don't even know what he looks like-"
"Don't worry." He's already walking away. "He arranged all of this just for you. If you don't find him, he'll find..." The remainder of his words are swallowed in the music, in the sensational party. Hermione's eyes widen. Feeling the air beside her go colder, she looks up to see Cygnus stalking after his possible hook-up.
Fantastic. Now I'm alone (yet again) and hardly any closer to finding Voldemort than I was an hour ago. Why did she bother with Cygnus? Sure, she doesn't have many leads, but obviously this is a mistake.
Examining her rather frightening surroundings, Hermione smooths her best pants and tip-toes past the dance floor to a hangout in the back, where a small group inhabit a format of sleek ivory furniture and various glass sculptures drip from multiple surfaces like frozen tears. Two obese men who look like bouncers take up one icicle-ish couch and a woman with vivid, bright orange eyeshadow that strangely suits her sits in a see-through chair that looks like a carved out block. Hermione hides out on the empty loveseat.
And although she's the one who set out to find Voldemort, she can't help but feel he's the one who has found her now. Not that he's anywhere in sight.
The woman across from her in the block chair pops neon-colored gum and looks at her over an upside-down magazine called the Quibbler. She catches her eye and smiles, alerting Hermione to the white lipstick spread across her pouty lips in generous layers. Apparently, this strange little party has a color code.
"I'm Pansy," the woman says, fluttering her long fingernails in hello. She points at the two bouncer-like men. "That's Crabbe and Goyle. They're my bitches."
Hermione blinks.
"Just kidding." Casting aside the magazine, which hits the wall with a soft slap and ends up in a punchbowl that glows pink-purple, Pansy reaches up and drags a hand of French-tipped nails up her leg provoactively. "You're cute," she continues without an ounce of self-consciousness or the usual engrained social barrier. "I can see why he's so interested in you."
She means Voldemort. Somehow, everyone she's met today seems to know about him. Everyone except her that is. But how does Pansy know who she is? Hermione shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "He's… he's spoken of me?"
Pansy nods.
"And he's...interested?"
"Extremely."
"But what does that mean?" she says, frustrated. "What is it that exactly-?"
Pansy interrupts her interrogation with a sharp laugh – short and sounding of embedded glass. Slyly, she looks at her through false eyelashes. They're white, too, and frizzy-soft like the plucked feathers of a goose. This woman has most certainly taken the dress code to the extreme. "Why don't you just ask him, Hermione?"
Because I don't know him. Because I've never met him, although it seems everyone in New York already has. Because I'm not sure I want to know the answer.
"Do you read the Quibbler?" Pansy says, cutting Hermione's mental tirade short.
"No."
"Well, I know the editor's daughter Luna Lovegood." She laughs wonderfully. "If you think I'm a sight, you should meet her! I'll introduce you two sometime."
"Um…" Hermione isn't sure what to say. Luckily, she's saved from having to respond when Pansy's eyes catch on something behind her and the woman blinks, getting to her feet at a moment's notice. "Come on, Crabbe, Goyle," she says coolly, but pointedly. "It's time to go."
Crabbe and Goyle immediately climb off the couch – which sighs in relief once released from the burden of them – and they trudge after Pansy as she disappears into the crowd. Just before the white-wearing trenches enclose them, however, Pansy looks back over her shoulder and flutters her fingers at Hermione in goodbye. "Ciao, cutie!" she calls.
Hermione waves back.
As she is contemplating the weirdness of this recent experience (and of today's experience as a whole), however, she suddenly becomes aware of the person standing behind her, of the shadow he casts on the bleached granite floor. Of the wide girth of space between this section of the club and…everyone else.
It's Voldemort. It has to be.
But it's not.
Because as she concentrates, she realizes that she recognizes this person. There's something about them, about their air, about their silence, that strikes a chord inside her. It strikes fear. It strikes something else too. Something she cannot identify. It's the same supernaturally familiar feeling she felt when she broke into Voldemort's studio.
The unlocked door. Did Voldemort plan that, too? Plan leaving the envelope in the hope that she'd find it, that she would come to his art show looking for him? Did he send Cygnus to find her there and bring her to the Fat Lady? What for though? Why didn't he just introduce himself when she first got here? Why?
Who would go through such pains to get to her? To get inside her mind and to stick there so fast? To make such a maddeningly intricate plan?
Why get to her at all?
The answer comes suddenly, and it's painfully clear. It's him. It's impossible, but it cannot be anyone else. It doesn't make sense, yet it makes perfect sense. Hermione's fingers go rigid where they grip the loveseat, scratching gouges into the baby-soft suede. Tension makes her tongue twist and heart pound.
He left me. He's found me.
She doesn't understand.
She doesn't want to.
"Hermione," Tom greets in a low murmur, touching the side of her neck with one long cold finger. His touch is cautious, but she can feel the urge he has – the urge he's always had – to touch her just the same. She shivers.
This can't be real, she thinks frantically.
But it is.