A/N: I will be updating this, though it will be sporadic. The Five Winters is still my priority. However, once that is complete, updates to this story will become more regular.

Thanks to April93 for her awesome beta-ing skills. =) Seriously, she is absolutely amazing. Please give her a round of well-deserved applause.

Please review!

Life resumed as normal after the night of January the ninth. Snow continued to fall, plaguing the streets of the London Underground in white, blanketing the world. It was deathly cold outside, but inside the insulated walls of the teahouse, it was cozy and warm. Business picked up as high-ranking men, finding that simple Warming Charms were simply not sufficient enough to ward off the cold, stomped inside, tracking snow on the floor—which was promptly vanished by Mother, who always wore a hard smile that never reached cold eyes— and found a table to sit and work. They brought paperwork, reports on incidents that occurred in some obscure branch of London, were busy drafting up laws and figures to turn into their bosses, and found themselves desperately in need of some company.

Many of these men were unmarried.

Hermione would approach one of them, often bearing a gift of tea, warm cider, or hot chocolate, and take a seat next to them, sliding the mug toward them. She would look over their shoulder, often giving suggestions that could be construed as petty but welcome. She would sidle up to them, offering to serve them refreshments or supply entertainment, and more often than not, they would leave the teahouse two or three hours later, smiling broadly despite missing some Galleons from their pocket.

Hermione was not a prostitute in the usual sense—that was, she did not work at a brothel, nor did she work out on the streets soliciting men— but on occasions, she would accept offers. She never brought them up to her room, instead leading them to a private upstairs room for occasions such as these. Sometimes it was the money; more often than not, it was a man who had a good position in Snape's new order but was not an Officer, and Hermione would use the opportunity to extract information from them. Though it was her job, she was very picky about who she chose, and sometimes the sex wasn't half-bad. She always Obliviated them at the end, wanting them to have no recollection of her.

But she never brought them to her room. It was her one sanctuary. It was in her room that she hid documents that she sent and received from the order, made plans, brainstormed ideas, read at leisure, and allowed herself some privacy. And it was also in her room that she had begun making Arithmancy charts, having made a list of all she had observed of Lord Snape—his habits, his behaviour, his appearance, the food he ate, the drinks he took—and plugging it all in to her calculations, trying to figure out how to proceed. Would he return? Was he vulnerable enough for her to slip him a poison unnoticed? Was he malleable enough for her machinations and manipulations to have effect?

She spent long nights working on these calculations, discarding and rewriting them in frustration as she added more variables when they came to her. Crookshanks often sat atop her desk, paws tucked underneath him, watching her through intelligent copper-gold eyes.

Two weeks passed before Hermione's plans began to show any sign of coming to fruition.

It was a particularly miserable day. The world outside the teahouse was practically infused with snow; you couldn't breathe without getting half a dozen flakes up your nose. No one was willing the brave the streets and people were choosing to travel by floo or Portkey, which meant business had drooped somewhat.

Hermione was therefore very surprised when Lucius Malfoy arrived, dressed so impeccably with barely a single snowflake on him (she suspected an Impervious Charm), and approached Mother for a private discussion. As a regular customer, he had stopped by often in the days between now and Snape's birthday celebration. Their voices were kept low, and Hermione could not read their lips, but she sensed that what Malfoy had to say was distressing. She continued to sit behind the counter, helping Cook wipe glasses clean by hand—a very meditative task and she didn't feel like entertaining the customers today— and watched them have their little discussion.

She peered closer. It seemed to her that there was a shimmering form behind Malfoy, nearly invisible, but it seemed to her that it was possible someone was Disillusioned—

She promptly dropped the glass she was holding when Severus Snape suddenly appeared; standing directly behind Malfoy, in the very spot Hermione had been staring at.

The glass fell to the floor and shattered. Hermione stumbled back a few steps and pulled out her wand, glancing up at where Malfoy and Snape were watching her while Mother eyed her fearfully. Malfoy seemed bemused; Snape's face had soured, as though he couldn't believe she was so clumsy as to have dropped the glass. Mother was looking on in the same manner that a wide-eyed meerkat might watch two hyenas closing in upon its fellow.

Hermione carefully repaired the glass, removing the shards that had embedded itself in her leg, and quietly excused herself to retrieve the healing salve from her room. Snape broke away to follow her.

"Allow me to accompany you." It wasn't a question.

Hermione's mask, which was always in place, immediately hardened, solidifying and steeling itself for the task ahead. She bowed low to him in greeting, ignoring the trickle of blood dripping down her leg. "That won't be necessary, Sir," she said, knowing he intended to follow her up to her room. "If you need me, I will be back down in just a moment."

He pulled out his wand and gave it a lazy flick in the direction of her cut leg, and the trickle of blood instantly drew back into the wound before it sealed itself. Hermione blinked in surprise, and was tempted to ask him what spell he'd used—she'd never seen anything so efficient as that—when Snape brought a hand to grip her jaw.

Hermione forced herself not to swallow. Give nothing away.

"I need to speak to you privately."

It had hardly been a disabling injury, but she had been planning on taking it as an excuse to go upstairs and collect herself. She could just as easily have Vanished the blood herself and pressed a napkin to it for a minute or two to stem the flow.

Hermione inwardly winced. She didn't like having her plans interrupted. But she took it in stride.

"This way, Sir," she said, ascending the stairs. "Is there any way I can help you?"

"Take me to your room." Hermione winced again; another direct order.

"Sir, my room is off-limits…"

"Did I stutter?" His voice was dangerously soft. It was the tone Hermione recognized from her days as a student as one that should never be disobeyed.

"Of course not, Sir." They'd reached the top of the stairs and Hermione stepped out into the hallway. She couldn't let him into her room—there was too much he could find. But he had made himself very clear, and she had a feeling that if she went into, perhaps, Mitsuki's room, it would become quite apparent that it was not her's. For one, there were pictures of her family on the wall, and none of them remotely resembled Hermione. She stopped at the door to her room.

She put on her most seductive, winning smile. The one that she'd learned to use when subtly conveying to a man that there was something she wanted very much.

"If you could wait just a moment," she said, opening the door a moment and slipping through. "I can make it presentable enough for an honoured guest." Such as yourself, she added silently.

Snape gave a sharp nod and backed away to lean against the wall. Smiling at him once more, Hermione turned away and shut the door behind her.

Her heart thudded loudly in her chest, and she wanted nothing more to slump against the wall to collect herself, but she did not have time to spare. Whipping her wand out, she sent all of her Arithmancy calculations, notes, journals, and textbooks to their secret niche under the floor, pulling out the tatami mat to lift the door up, and sliding it back over once everything was safely hidden away. The entire thing took no more than forty seconds to accomplish. Her wards tingled dangerously against her skin, and she knew Snape was preparing to open the door.

She strode over to the bookcase, making a show of straightening it up.

He didn't even bother knocking. He came in, sliding the door shut behind him, and Hermione turned around, pulling on a look of surprise.

"I apologize for the mess, Sir," she said, gesturing at the bookcase, which was organized in an almost as exacting manner as the Hogwarts Library. "I usually keep it very neat—"

"You must be delusional," Lord Snape said, smirking as though he found her dilemma amusing. "It looks quite organized from my vantage point."

"I don't usually let people into my rooms," Hermione said slowly, brushing a hand lightly against the backing of one of the old leather-bound books on her shelf. "I feel it incumbent to tell you that, other than my sister—" Hermione referred to Mitsuki as her sister, given that she took care of the younger girl like an older sister, "—and of course, Mother, you are the only other person to ever enter these rooms." And the first man, she added silently. She had never brought another man here or let them explore her quarters.

Snape regarded her words dismissively. "Interesting as that is, it is not why I came here to talk."

Hermione could have sighed with frustration. What an infuriating man!

"Your… suggestion last time I was here was rather helpful." Hermione's attention perked at this; he had taken her bait. He added silkily, "I understand that working at a teahouse doesn't allow for much time for personal hobbies, and your skills are wasted."

Hermione had turned away to continue straightening her books—which didn't need straightening, in all honesty—and her eyes narrowed at these words, away from where he could see. What was he up to?

His eyes were roving across the room now, more with curiosity than anything else. The potions on the shelf at the far end of the wall, the books, stacks of parchment, quills that had so much ink splattered over their feathers that they looked quite wretched…

"This wasn't what I expected."

"What were you expecting?" Hermione asked, slowly circling the room.

Snape's eyes were locked onto her as she made her circuit.

"Something far less interesting. This, for example," he said, plucking a phial of dark green potion off Hermione's shelf, "is not something you find in the average dunderhead's repertoire."

"Perhaps I am not as much of a dunderhead as you thought me to be, Sir," Hermione said, smiling mysteriously.

"I knew you weren't a dunderhead the minute your suggestion worked," Snape growled. "This merely confirms it."

"If my suggestion worked," Hermione said, bringing a finger to her lips, "then why have you returned?"

"Perhaps you are not as intelligent as I gave you credit for…"

"No, no," Hermione said, waving a hand dismissively as she came to a stop by his side. "I just can't believe that you would be interested in picking the mind of a slip of a girl such as me. I am, after all, merely a teahouse girl. I serve and entertain as best I can."

She was surprised when Snape brought a hand to finger a stray lock of brown hair. Her reaction was controlled, but quick, as she grabbed his wrist in her comparatively smaller hands, though he did not flinch.

Perhaps Lucius had warned him about her. The blonde man did know Sakura's habits, after all.

"My time has a price."

His lips quirked.

"I have already paid for it."

"How am I to believe you?" Hermione pulled away and circled him until she was on his other side. "I don't trust men. They have a habit of lying now and paying the consequences later."

Snape did not smile at this. Quick as a flash, before Hermione at time to react—which was rather insulting, given how honed her reflexes were—he reached down and grabbed her wrist, his fingers easily circling it in an iron grip. He held it up between them.

"Do you see this?" he whispered dangerously.

Hermione resisted the urge to swallow and instead put on an expression of curiosity-tinged amusement, rather than fear. "Yes?"

"It belongs to me now." He let go, allowing it to drop limply back to her side. "Lucius is making negotiations as we speak."

Hermione's flawless mask did not crack, but it did freeze for a moment, in an expression of shock, before she skilfully morphed it into one of interest. But inside, Hermione's traitorous heart was beating faster than Sakura's should, and for the wrong reasons.

Sakura would be pleased if she knew she had caught the attention of a man with enough money to throw around that he could afford to be her patron.

Hermione was bewildered, feeling like a knight on a chessboard whose rules had been changed so that she could no longer play castle, but could go diagonal. It was confusing, shocking even—and completely without warning. She had expected—no, hoped— he would return. She had not expected him to pay for her so that she was now something akin to his personal call girl. It was expensive, particularly at upper-class establishments like the Magic Eye, and most men didn't care enough to bother with it.

"What do I have that would make you throw so much money around?" Hermione asked with the general wide-eyed curiosity that characterised Sakura.

He leaned into her now, wearing an unpleasant smirk.

"Brains."

~o~O~o~

Hermione later understood.

She was an investment. If she was as useful as she'd been previously, then he would keep using her. If she wasn't, then he could simply withdraw his patronage, cut the strings with ease. If he'd taken her away from the teahouse—and never let anyone doubt that he had the authority to do so—and later decided she wasn't worth the expense, that she wasn't as valuable as he had supposed, he would have to find a way to remove her as a burden.

Right now, she was property. She'd sold herself into the teahouse—where she was admittedly very well treated—and was now a horse that was being leased rather than rented out for a single run. The comparison was insulting, but Hermione had learned to live with it long ago. She didn't care.

She was property. Property changed hands.

She now belonged to Severus Snape.

The only good thing Hermione could see of this—besides the obvious, which was that it got her closer to him—was that he wanted her intelligence, not her body. Most men in his position would do the same with prettier, more promising, promiscuous, girls, not wanting to share them or risk getting a wizarding disease from them, and then when they tired of them, let them go. This was apparently not the case for her.

Small favours.

She had made an impression on him. Enough of an impression that he was willing to throw some money around to see if she was as much of a worthwhile investment as she seemed. After she found out what he was here for, he had questioned her extensively on her education, her knowledge. Hermione denied ever being his student and did her best to leave out knowledge that he had given his students exclusively; instead, she substituted her own research, which seemed to please him more than repeating what he had taught her probably would have. He didn't care about her family or her history, but instead delved and demanded knowledge, asking her what the most difficult magic she'd ever performed was, quizzing her on complex recipes or spells. He thoroughly picked her brain to near-exhaustion, but Hermione knew he was aware that he had only scratched the surface.

He left over two hours later, rather satisfied with what he'd gleaned from her, leaving Hermione to revise her plan of attack.