(one shot)

If he were a better man, he wouldn't be sitting in his cramped, dingy parlor pondering what role he'd play this evening. Perhaps the bulky blue-eyed blond or better yet the black West Indian. Both of these are options he hasn't used recently. The question is more a matter of which fits his mood.

Things had been fairly rough last night – he'd gone as the short, balding husband whose wife refused to let him 'manhandle' her. She may be in need of comfort – one of the gentle ones then.

His right wrist tingles with the charm he's set to let him know when she leaves her flat, and he confirms the time by setting his watch. Using the Tube, it'll take her a half hour to arrive at her spot. For the first few months, he'd follow her every night, Disillusioned, making sure no one else approached her. Now, he simply arrives ten minutes before the earliest possible time she could arrive and wards off any competing suitors. It gives him much more time to make his decision.

Descending the creaky steps to his cellar lab, he lets its dankness surround him. The single naked bulb throws adequate light on the central bench while leaving the edges of the room in shadow. His collection rests in the circle of light, holding pride of place.

~~~

He's created an entire cast of 'regulars' for her by separating and compartmentalizing his various sexual appetites and moods into disparate personas. Polyjuice allows him to house these creations in distinctly different bodies, and a vocal glamour alters his voice and accent accordingly. He smirks, wondering what the Muggle authorities made of the 'Haircut Harasser' – The Sun's appellation for him when he stunned and shaved the heads of a series of men in Manchester a year ago.

Under each jar of hair rests a sheet of parchment with notes in his personal shorthand. They list the name of each particular john, the particular vocal glamour to use, how to dress, how much to tip. After such mundanities, comes the more interesting information: which sexual acts to request, how long to last, how tender/rough to be, how vocal. Lastly, each provides entries on her responses: how wet she becomes, if she ever truly orgasms instead of merely faking. On a separate sheet, he tracks the frequency of each character used because, except for the three who see her every week on the same days – Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays – he varies the visits enough to allay suspicion.

Her Wednesday regular, Gary, is the working-class, rough husband, who tweaks her nipples past the point of pain, bites her neck, and rides her hard and fast. He tips five quid and smacks her bottom before leaving. He never meant for Wednesdays to be so rough, but if she's had a 'good' week, she takes Mondays and Tuesdays off to have a bit of a rest. He makes sure she always has a good week because he doesn't want her to fall ill; yet by Wednesday he burns for her with an intensity gentleness will not satisfy. She grows wet with Gary, but probably only as a protective measure, and never orgasms.

Saturdays, he plays the part of a young, thin, spotty sort with a public school accent – Nigel. Like an eager puppy, he falls all over her, fondling her breasts and rubbing his erection against her stomach, kissing her neck wetly while pumping quickly and shallowly into her. He comes loudly and tips extravagantly. Through him alone, she makes her weekly rent. She typically grows wet and proceeds to orgasm one out of seven times.

For Sundays, he's devised the middle-aged Indian man, Naseer, who loves his arranged-marriage wife, but finds she has no time for him now that there are children. He takes her slowly, moving with a practiced, remorseless pace that he can maintain for at least half an hour, drawing out his pleasure since he won't see her for two days. This languorous onslaught always makes her wet, and she orgasms every third time.

He rotates the rest of the regulars for Thursdays and Fridays. Some see her every fortnight, others once every three months, and none offer their name.

There's the bulky blue-eyed blond, who only wants 'rear entry' while holding her head up by her hair, arching her back into a bow that makes the sensation pleasurable for him, but less so for her. He lasts about ten minutes and is careful to make no sound; she never grows wet or orgasms.

In order to let her realize the possible delights of the position, his young Chinese persona also requests to take her from behind. Only he has her place her hands on the ground and lower her head, improving the angle for simultaneous G-spot and cervical stimulation. This results in wetness and regular orgasms on her part.

The middle-aged character with thinning grey hair, a beard, and washed out eyes pushes into her with gasping pants and always cries after coming. While she never evinces any true pleasure at his attentions, she does hold him for a while afterwards and strokes the back of his neck. Such a cathartic release makes him uncomfortable; he tries to avoid this persona as much as possible, but is called to it once a month.

One of his favorites is the black West Indian, who holds her tenderly and croons continuously in her ear as he slides his cock in and out of her in long, slow strokes. This man is stereotypically well hung, so he always makes sure to prepare her with his fingers first. She is therefore usually wet and orgasms about every other visit.

There's the distinguished looking older gentleman, who only performs cunnilingus. He pretends impotence in this form and never lets her touch him due to seeming embarrassment. In actuality, he hides his raging erection from her and masturbates fiercely as soon as he returns to Spinner's End, her taste lingering on his lips. He makes sure to avoid her clitoris in this form, and she hardly ever grows wet and never orgasms, but the twenty pound tips give her a bit of extra spending money.

Because he can't get enough of eating her cunny, he's added in a second such john – this one a dark-haired, average looking man, who delights in eating her loudly. With moans, smacks, and slurps, he allows himself to give voice to how delightful he finds her taste, her smell, her. He masturbates freely while kneeling in front of her, exploding on her shins, and continues to tongue her clitoris until she too orgasms.

The aristocratic looking blond, handsome and aware of it, refuses to touch her. He demands oral sex, and she kneels before him on the rough pavement while he snarlingly calls her a slut and a whore who must love having his cock in her mouth. Throwing her money on the ground, he stalks off, yet always pays extra. He's never sure if she derives any pleasure from these encounters.

His cruel sense of humor extends to one of his creations: the ginger-headed hoodlum, who never evinces any knowledge of foreplay, comes quickly, and never tips. She gasped the first time he approached her in this guise, and a part of him felt guilty at causing her hope while the darker part of him reveled in the look of resignation on her face when she could see it was no one she knew. He wants her to have no salvation other than him.

The character he plays the least frequently is the one that comes closest to embodying what he'd like to be for her, if he were a better man. For this, there's no Polyjuice. Using glamours, he shortens his hair, resculpts his nose, and erases his frown lines. He charms his voice so that he can only speak in a whisper. He dresses in faded blue jeans, a colored t-shirt, and a tan jacket. It's the only time he gets to taste her with his own tongue, feel her with his own cock. He pays her double and asks for everything: she fellates him to a quick, quiet orgasm; he tastes her gently, lapping at her clitoris while one finger strokes her G-spot until she climaxes; and by then he's hard again, so he stands and enters her, drawing it out, stroking her clitoris so she'll come again with him. He whispers that she's beautiful, that she feels divine, that he loves to hear her pleasure. He holds her afterwards for a few minutes and strokes her hair. Although these encounters give him more satisfaction than any of the others, he worries that if he approaches her this way too often, she'll recognize him.

~~~

His watch reminds him that twenty minutes have passed. He adds a curly, black hair from his collection to a waiting vial, downs the potion, and performs a cleansing spell on his mouth – she's smart enough to smell the Boomslang.

Once his clothing is transfigured, he Apparates to the doorway of an abandoned building two alleys over from her usual corner. He waits in the dark for her to pass.

~~~

He's not sure exactly how she came to be in this predicament, but he can make educated guesses.

Her parents were killed a month before the Final Battle by Death Eaters, who firebombed their house and place of business; this left her emotionally and financially destitute. Too old to be a ward of the Ministry, she stayed with Potter or the Weasleys until the Battle, whereupon she saw most of them die. The chaos of the first few days of the Dark Lord's rule gave her time to slip away into the Muggle world.

She must have renounced all magic – even the smallest spell could be tracked through her wand by the Death Eater-controlled Ministry. Also, she'd have to assume a new identity – Voldemort may have hated the Muggle world, but knew enough about it to search for someone.

But why wasn't she more prepared to go Muggle? Why hadn't she been able to find something better?

Is it depression, survivor's guilt? He's never been able to ask, but it isn't hard to read the bleakness of her eyes.

As if she feels she deserves no better.

That he can understand.

~~~

Someone walks past, but it's not her. He settles in to wait again.

~~~

The only reason he'd been able to use a locator spell to find her was because of a lock of hair stolen while she lay stunned after Potter's fall. About three months after the Final Battle, he'd cast the charm over a map of England and seen she was in London. Recasting over a London map clarified that she was in an exclusively Muggle area – northwest of Leister Square and too near tourists for most of Wizarding kind, but close enough to the West End to guarantee fairly decent clientele. She was always intelligent.

He watched her disappear into the alley with johns for a month, returning home to masturbate over the sights and sounds. His empty house mocked him.

It took him two weeks to create the collection with its matching personas – two weeks in which he barely ate or slept. His frame became overly thin, his skin dull. Manic fire played in his eyes, and his hands constantly trembled.

When he had her the first time, he was so overwhelmed that he almost lost consciousness upon climaxing.

He'd allowed her to be with no other man since.

~~~

Hearing her stilettos tap out a familiar tattoo on the pavement, he looks up to see her pass his hiding spot and emerges a few moments later to follow her.

She's almost painfully thin; he makes sure she has enough money for food, but he can't fix her lack of appetite. Every step causes her short, platinum blond curls to bounce due to her slightly exaggerated hip swing. The color looks horrible against her skin, highlighting its unhealthy pallor, but he finds her beautiful. The skirt is tight and short, and she won't be wearing anything under it. Her street name is Honey.

He's already hard.

~~~

If he were a better man, he'd tell her she needn't hide anymore – that even though Potter died in the Final Battle, his last curse worked by eating away at Voldemort slowly, killing him within the month; that the remaining Death Eaters were ousted from power a mere two months later.

If he were a better man, he wouldn't be moving within her depths, fighting off his orgasm to increase his time with her, while crooning nonsensical words in her ear.

If he were a better man, he'd save her, so that she could be free of him.

AN: I've left Snape's loyalties purposefully ambiguous, and I hope the story works whether you think he was faithful to either the Order or Voldemort. More importantly, I hope I have not glorified prostitution. While some women enter into it willingly and enjoy it, it can be horrible for women forced into it, as I believe Hermione is here.