This chapter is dedicated (with many apologies) to my readers who have been waiting and fighting off hopelessness at a next chapters likelihood. I am also dedicating this chapter to an anonymous reviewer. *Laughs while picturing Mary Sues marching in formation*

Gryffindor-140 Points- Frogfoot is awarded 10 points for doing a proper review (or any review at all

Slytherin-230 Points- if you reviewed and I didn't count you tell me, or review this chapter and get some points for your House.

Ravenclaw- if you reviewed and I didn't count you tell me, or review this chapter and get some points for your House.

Huffelpuff- if you reviewed and I didn't count you tell me, or review this chapter and get some points for your House.

Chapter 42:

The male gulped half his goblet of vodka (courtesy of the female) before making his first real appearance as Snape. His costume had been toned down somewhat. The harness collar and gloves he had left in the group's makeshift backstage room. The cold liquor burnt his throat and the sight of Albus Dumbledore in a tie-dyed shirt and round pink-lensed sunglasses was enough to make him wish he hadn't been left in charge for the night. "Headmaster, McGonagall. Pomfrey."  He nodded to each.

The deputy Headmistress was known for her love of romantic Muggle opera (known among the staff that is). Her favorite opera, Swan Lake, brought tears to her eyes every time she saw it. A rather pretty tiara accented with downy feathers, and a flowing, white, multi-layered dress gave an impression of the tragically enchanted heroin from the story.

"Good heavens, Severus!" Minerva cried. "You look so," her hand wavered in the air as she struggled for the right adjective.

"Androgynous?" he supplied mock-helpfully.

"Is that alcohol?" She prudently ignored his self-directed slight.

Taking another, smaller, sip the male turned to his master. "You said Muggle, I did as you requested."

The Headmaster's bright eyes twinkled in a rather disturbingly cryptic fashion. "I can see that Severus." The old Wizard had the audacity to chuckle. "Androgynous is not precisely the word I would choose. Surprising, is more accurate I believe."

The scent and emotions that the Headmaster was giving off suggested more than surprise. 'Fear, but excitement too. Like something is happening that he half dreads and half longs for…he never knew about the band so the costume means nothing to him. What else- could it just be that I cleaned my hair? Could taking all that time to bathe, have a meaning to him?' The male had gone to a bit of trouble to clean the oils from his hair and skin. The effect was temporary and the chemicals were harsh, but he honestly looked clean, and would all evening. 'He will most likely have me pulling double shifts for the next few days, until the rash goes away.' His decision to come as a Muggle, i.e. without the PMR symptoms, was going to cost him, but double shifts would free up time for work for the Order. 'Why do I always loose when it's a matter of sacrifice?'

"I suppose," Poppy smiled icily, "that you had go to a lot of trouble, washing your hair, to come as a Muggle freak like the rebels that the…singer, described?" The Medi-Witch for her part was dressed in green scrubs; the sort that a Muggle surgeon would wear.

"And I suppose," he quickly wracked his brain for the name of the character that Black had mentioned in one of his Muggle-land gushings, "that you are-"

A prickling, more sensed than felt, trickled down his spine. Retorts fled at the sudden awareness of focused attention. It was becoming familiar now. The female was watching him. Not finishing his response to Pomfrey's comment on his appearance, he let his eyes drift. Not bothering to excuse himself he left the small group to find the female. He found her, with his usual ease, but did not approach immediately. She was not looking at him. Not indirectly, through a reflection, or by brief glances, or as she panned the crowd, and not even from the edge of her vision. She was politely engaging Lupin in conversation. 'The bleeding Were wouldn't even be here if I hadn't been able to finish the new serum.'  Deep in his chest something was trying to turn over. 'It's a freaking full moon and he can't spend it with Tala?' The –something- convulsed in a spasmodic lurch when the female gave Lupin one of her quiet smiles.

The resulting emotional convulsion forced an unguarded reaction. His eyes widened and he jerked his head back a fraction, just enough to set his hair swishing against the dark green of his duster. Panicking at the emotional vulnerability he sharply turned away only to be faced with a group of wide-eyed Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw seventh year girls, who had been staring at him for sometime.

'Obviously not recognizing the bane of their young existence.' Sarcasm was an old friend and something familiar. The familiar was always calming. Except for his next, all too familiar thought, 'If he found out that anyone but the Headmaster Mcgonagall and Pomfrey knew…I'd go back to the cage. Forever.'

"Well?" he snarled. The realization of how precarious his position was had brought him back to full control.

The girls nudged one another for a moment then tried to answer, all at once, "You look like Trent Rezno." "You have beautiful hands." "Can I touch your hair?" "You have the sexiest mouth." Much blushing squealing followed.

As the band's cold and aloof drummer he did not smile but shifted his stance to lean slightly in toward the girls. This was the part he had chosen to play. Every band needs a member who acts like he has ice in his veins and a heart sized hole in his chest.

Before the last masked girl could dash off in a storm of giggles, he cornered her. She had on a short blue jumper, white leggings, a wide black belt and a mask with huge blue eyes and blonde ponytails. Speaking with a soft purr, he stepped even closer. "Thank you Miss Witherbourn." 'She had thought herself anonymous behind her mask. Even without being able to see her eyes I couldn't miss her scent. Or her excitement at my invasion of her space.' He nearly laughed at her youthful emotionality.

Abandoned by her Housemates she swallowed and tugged at the skirt of her Muggle costume. "You smell nice too." She was obviously trying to say something more. He waited until she could hold it in no longer. "How old are you- I mean-" she gasped at her own forwardness, "I mean that Professor Weasley says you were in school together, that you were a few years ahead of him." Her eyes skittered back down. "Is Side-strike your real name?"

He tilted his head down, a few lazy black waves fell forward and he could feel her longing to touch the, grease-free, strands. "Miss Witherbourn, when you wish to pick up a snake the safest way to do so is to grasp it firmly just behind the head." She looked up into his eyes and seemed entranced by his voice. Even though he wasn't trying to snare her. "As a snake's fangs point down from its upper jaw, holding it behind the head prevents the animal from being able to reach any flesh to bite." He placed one hand on the wall to the side of her head and leaned against it. "A Side Strike though has fangs pointing perpendicular to normal. If you attempt to pick it up you will be bitten. And die in a very few hours. Are you so enamored of self punishment that you would actually waste your time on me?" He had to take a step back so that she could run away in confused humiliation. 'Well at least she didn't recognize me.'

"She's pert."

A more appropriate target of his torment took up the bait. The male turned to the band's fishnet and leather clad bas guitarist. "She's also my student, Gaf," he tossed the hair back from his face.

Tall and lanky the young Irishman tried to draw out a smile from everyone he met. Making friends with the band's drummer had been his life's mission, ever since he had been told it was impossible, "…on account of the freak bein' a walkin' corpse..."

"Aye, bu' come th' end o' next term an' she'll be leegal. 'Leven yars is nuthin' t' us." Gaff was still trying, after all these years.

"Unless you are offering yourself…" he stripped Gaf with his eyes. "Don't ever talk to me about this again."

"Tis a cold mistress, yer brand of emotional celibacy is." Gaf's tone was pained. The male had hit his target, rebuffing yet another sincere offer of friendship. "But ye take et t' th' extreme, Side-strike." He looked away, "I've got'a mingle. O', there was sum'un wantin' a word wi' ye. A Charlie, or sumthin'." The last was thrown over his shoulder as he drifted into the crowd to answer questions and flirt.

He clenched one fist. 'Bugger,' the male thought as he slunk away victorious. 'The only Charlie I know that would want anything to do with me in a social setting, while I'm alive, is the first Weasley whelp.'

Finding Professor Weasley was not hard. The newest addition to the faculty had a gaggle of admiring girls hanging on his every word as he described some encounter with- as expected, a Dragon.

"Fascinating I'm, sure," the fraudulent Snape broke in, "but not terribly Muggle." He saw the slight tensing of Weasley's shoulders and neck at his tone, as the interruption scattered the admiring listeners. When Weasley turned to face him though, the redheaded weasel had regained his composure enough to smile. Letting a breath out in a slow hiss he tried to remain calm. 'Does anyone have the bleeding decency to not smile tonight?! Too many people with too bleeding many perfect teeth!'

"Side-strike! I can't believe you're still in the band!" Charlie held out a hand, which the male soundly ignored. Dropping his hand to his side Charlie tried again. Quieter this time, aware of the students around them, he prodded. "Come on, it's been over a week since I was hired here and I haven't even seen you."

"I attend meals," the male corrected. "I am not, 'Still in the band,' as you put it. I was never a member. And it's not as though we are or were friends."

"Right," Charlie nodded in good-natured defeat, while radiating hurt so loudly that the male was almost remorseful. "You've been to a few meals and are just filling in for the drummer, off and on, for twenty years now. Side-strike, you really haven't changed."

'Maybe he can deliver my latest report to the Headmaster. It can't really wait and I haven't got cover to talk to him tonight. There shouldn't be anyone by the lake...' "You should be more careful," the male softly hissed back. Once on the lawn, and away from the Ball, he continued. "If Malfoy had been standing there he would know everything that you do. Maybe getting them to transfer you back to base was a mistake. I haven't exactly advertised that I know how to play a Muggle instrument, or that I have more than one name. There must have been some reason you put Gaf after me."

Like the good little Weasley he was, Charlie took up the unspoken request/demand for an explanation. "I wanted to ask how in Merlin's self cleaning shorts you managed to cure Remus."

 Coolly he answered, "Weasley, you don't have the capability to understand what I did."

"I did bloody well on my potions NEWTs, if you remember." Charlie hotly shot back.

The pseudo-Snape continued to lead Weasley toward the lake. (Without the Care of Magical Creatures instructor noticing that he was in fact being lead). The male didn't even deign to raise a brow when he replied. "If you remember, the only reason you passed was because I tutored you." After a few paces more he continued, "I owed you a debt. That is the only reason I tutored you, and I have not tutored anyone since because it was such a disaster. I didn't cure the Were. I just looked at the situation in a way that it had not been looked at before, and saw something that no one else had. He didn't need curing he needed balance. I've already tested it on a few other Were Canids and one WereOwl." He couldn't hold in the shrug as he admitted, "It'll never get published, but it works."

They both glanced up as a large dog, long legged and deep chested, broke from the Forbidden Forrest and dashed toward them. With unnatural speed it approached, stopping an instant from flattening Weasley in its haste to get to the male. As the blue-eyed Potions Master slipped a scroll from the dog's jaws, Charlie finally had a chance to notice the red ears and eyes on the otherwise white dog.

"A Yelper?!" Charlie gasped in amazement. The animal's thin silver collar flashed in the engorged moon catching his eye. "A collar? But, who owns a Yelper?" A sudden paling of his face as he swallowed caused the male to mentally roll his eyes. "Herne?! If The Hunter is sending you notes-"

'The guy is starting to babble.' "Weasley," he interrupted some sort of offer of privacy. "Send Mister Malfoy to the lake. I will wait for him there."

~

As Draco approached, the male smirked. 'Of course he's dressed as a wealthy Muggle businessman. What else would a Malfoy dress as?'  

Draco tried to return his smirk, but came off sly rather than morbidly amused. "Sir? There was something you wished to speak with me about…"

Silently the male led him around the lake to a spot where the trees would trap any noise, preventing it from echoing across the still water.

"Mister Malfoy." He turned to face his most promising recruit. "There was an attack against some Muggles earlier this evening." Draco's fast realization of where the conversation was going showed plainly in his deepening Slytherin cool. "Your father was killed. His death has been, for the moment, ruled a tragic accident. According to the current official report he was caught in the crossfire between a team of Aurors who had been given an anonymous tip, and a group of Death Eater copy-cats."

Anger. Fear. Loss. The male closed his eyes and opened himself to absorb as much of the young Slytherin's emotional maelstrom as possible, without actually touching him.

It was the coldness that pushed him forward. The male kept trying to convince himself that some protective reaction had occurred, not something based upon his own need to hide from the same feelings in his own past. Truth didn't really matter though as he hugged Draco to his chest. 'He doesn't know how to hurt without loosing himself inside. Damn it Lucius!' Carefully he placed a hand on the young Malfoy's pale head, steadying himself for the coming emotional hell.

Draco's thoughts and feelings ripped through the male's mind as he touched the back of the boy's neck. Rage. *Why did you die at some one else's hand?! Didn't I earn the right to pay you back for all of those lessons?!* Terror. *They'll expect me to take his place as a Dark Wizard. Snape can't protect me from mother the way he could from father. She doesn't believe what he says about Snape being more dangerous now than he was during the first rising.'* Desperate needs, never to be met. *I tried so hard! I really did. WHY COULDN'T YOU LOVE ME FATHER?!*

For Draco the pain was suddenly lessened for reasons he did not know or care about.

'You hid from the pain when they hurt you.' He knew that Draco did not have enough psi-sensativity to clearly hear him. With enough force though, even someone as guarded against him as Black would be able to sense his meaning. 'Now you're trying to run and hide but the pain is chasing you further than you should go.' The cold was continuing to creep in, stealing Draco's heart and mind. The male felt real panic for the second time that night. He knew that the further Draco ran from the pain the harder it would be to find his way back. It was how he had locked the male away for so many years, and how he and the Dark Lord planned to banish him forever. 'Draco! You are not to surrender to him again!'

Silver eyes, tear filled and red rimmed, looked up at him. The male stepped back, breaking contact as he did so.

"I hurt." Ashamed, Draco looked away even though he was somehow sure the other already knew. "I just don't know why."

"Don't bother it too much," the male advised. Turning, he began the long trek back to the brightly lit hall where the Halloween Ball was still going on. "Pain, all pain explains its self eventually." The physical awareness he had of his surroundings told him that Draco was not following. "What is it Mister Malfoy?" He spoke just loud enough to sound annoyed.

"Can I ask you a question, sir, about your family."

Continuing back to the Ball he answered with the same tone he addressed Gryffindors with. "I know that for nearly as long as I have been in Slytherin, even before I was made Head of House rumors have been circulated. Which one in particular are you interested in?"

"My fath- Lucius told me stories about you, things you did. Like getting away with force-splnching Forrest Fogerson. He said you got away with things that should have put you in prison, because no one could prove you had done any of it."

"I am late and the rest of the band will either wait and eat or start without me. Either way it is a disaster. Gaff will find a way to get some girl, or two, to snog with him and Bish couldn't keep rhythm if he were threatened with Cruciatus. What is it?"

Draco caught up with him and glanced over for a brief moment. "Is it true, that you killed your father?"

The side door he had used to sneak out of the Hall with Charlie Weasley opened as he approached. He stepped through and swiftly made his way down the side passage toward the band's break room. Counting the people who would need to forget that he was in the band. The male knew that Draco was waiting in the doorway to the Hall, hoping for an answer. When he did answer his voice was so soft it should not have been audible over the noise of the Ball but the strange resonance that Black had noticed when trying to talk to him over the music in his lab, carried his words to waiting ears. "Not. Yet."

~

No one noticed the Headmaster leave the Ball for a few minutes private conference with the drummer. Neville's distracted thoughtfulness went unobserved. Collin and Dillon Creevey however were missed. No unwelcome "candid" photos were being taken and no flash spots had to be blinked away. It didn't take long for the whole school to have it confirmed that the brothers were not returning that year. Or any other. Their family had moved to France when Mister Creevey received a sudden transfer to one of the company's branch offices.