A/N: There's use of the 'C' word in this chapter. Not in a lemony context, but as a pejorative.

There was precious little that Harry was able to get out of Snape on the subject. For all that Severus had seemed ready to speak about his interlude with their visitor when he'd first brought Harry home, he'd clammed up tight once Harry actually began pressing him for details.

Snape's second bid to get Harry to forget and change course was far more successful than the first. This time, he managed to distract Harry by shooing him upstairs, asking whether he planned to head to the concert in his school uniform.

There was little chance of that. Though the older wizard wasn't privy to the workings of Harry's mind as he sat twiddling a pencil between his thumbs and index fingers in school, doubtless if he had any inkling of exactly how much time Harry had devoted to considering what he'd wear to the KISS concert while he was meant to be doing arithmetic, he'd have had words for the boy.

Harry had precious few clothes for a child his age. Of course, Snape had been made to borrow his uniform from the Padiernos family, and likewise, Harry's street clothes were also acquired in ways that proved to be more creative than having been bought off the rack from the department stores that his aunt had frequented.

Not that he minded in the least. The clothes that Severus provided for him actually fit, even if they were a bit fusty and old-fashioned.

He'd chosen his one pair of black trousers, even though they were flares, which were out of style by many years. Harry didn't need to punch new holes in his belt in order to cinch it tight enough for them to stay up on his lean hips. For that matter, Snape had also gotten him a new, smaller belt that actually seemed to be fit for purpose, the leather not so old that it threatened to crumble at the creases into dust.

As far as shirts went, there was nothing he owned that looked anything like what the band members wore on stage, and Snape had drawn the line at allowing Harry to wear two old black belts criss-crossed over his chest like a bandolier.

"You can't 'zhipp' me something?" Harry asked the man, his face crestfallen. He pantomimed poking an imaginary stick at the plain black t-shirt that Severus had loaned him as though it might manifest itself into something else.

"Zhipp, Potter?" Snape's eyebrow crawled near enough up to his hairline. He looked honestly confused.

"You know—like with the wand? You can't go—" Harry waved his imaginary wand over the shirt and made the strange sound once more, "and then it's a leather vest, or got spikes or something?"

The wizard's mouth thinned with annoyance. "You test my patience." He withdrew the curly-Q wand from wherever it was that he'd stashed it—Harry never could quite be sure, although he'd long suspected that Snape had a hidden seam along the leg of his trousers—and tapped once on the folded shirt.

To Harry's eyes, nothing much changed, though it seemed a bit bulkier, but when he went to shake it out, his fingers pinching each shoulder to hold it up for inspection, he found a webbing between the arms and the torso that was cut to look like bat wings—an approximation of Gene Simmon's signature style.

He let out an appreciative, low whistle. "That's wicked—"

"Wicked enough for the creators of Wicked Lester, certainly, and don't ask for any more alterations. You'll not be arriving in full costume."

"We won't?" Harry had asked, not needing to feign his keen disappointment.

Shaking his head, Snape snorted as he pulled at his own worn shirt. "No. I'm as dressed up as I'm planning to be. And don't even think about asking for face-paint."

His mouth opening and closing a bit like a fish, Harry stuffed down the protests that wanted to bubble forth.

Apparently, he needn't have voiced them at all for Snape to anticipate them. "Don't tell me you actually wanted to!"

"It's part of it!" Harry argued, "I thought I could be Gene and you could be Paul—"

"Paul!?" Snape sounded truly scandalised, and looked outraged. "The day I lower myself to slather my mouth with lipstick—like some bewer—is the day all magic dies and withers away forevermore, Potter. That is to say, never!"

Backpedaling now against the indignation that Snape was spouting, Harry tried one last gambit, thinking that perhaps Snape's persona was more in line with Simmon's bat-like intensity anyway. "You can be Gene if you want, Severus, I'm sorry—"

"We'll neither of us be going in face-paint, Harry. Even KISS isn't wearing face paint!"

"Won't they be?" he'd asked, his voice betraying how doubtful he felt at this news.

"No, they won't be. They've not played in face paint for several years now. Not since you were just a couple of years old, even."

Harry's face fell. For a moment, he felt his enthusiasm waning a bit, but then he remembered why it was that he'd been excited to begin with.

Because Severus loved KISS. Because KISS was the man's favourite band, and Harry was managing, for once, to do something for the taciturn wizard who'd saved him. Instead of forcing his hand in forking over every last piece of Snape's fragile dignity, and demanding sacrifices of him left and right, Harry could, in this one small way, give back to Severus something that he otherwise wouldn't have managed on his own.

Whether Harry himself enjoyed the evening was of secondary concern, really.

Besides. KISS wasn't his favourite by a long shot—if anything, they were a bit old, a bit slow, and a bit... well... lame, when compared to the likes of David Lee Roth and Skid Row.

They waited a few hours, and Harry felt his excitement building again, each passing minute feeling like a new piece of kindling on the fire.

As Severus had explained to him, there was no need for them to be early, given that they'd be apparating, and there was far too much trouble that they could find by loitering around the questionable mass of people who would attend such a show.

Harry might have been tempted to cajole Snape, but his mention of the two deaths at Donington Castle a month earlier hadn't fallen on deaf ears. Concerts ought to have been fun things, and often they were, but wherever large groups of people gathered there was a potential for danger, and the young wizard couldn't pretend that he wasn't feeling a spot of anxiety over the prospect of what might happen.

"What if I lose you? In the crowd?"

"You have your lapel pin?" Snape asked, checking him over right before they were to depart. He had, for the first time, allowed Harry to purposefully muss his hair up to make it more outrageous than it naturally was, offering up only a roll of his eyes and muttered commentary that was spoken too low for Harry to know what he might have said about it.

Lifting up one of his bat-wing sleeves, Harry pinched around near his armpit. "It's here,"

"Good, don't remove it. In fact," Snape withdrew his wand and tapped the lapel pin, causing it to flash for a moment. "Now you can't remove it—when we return this evening, I'll ferry it back to your uniform. So long as you've got that I can find you."

Feeling himself a bit mollified, Harry glanced up at the ancient, wooden, mantel clock the chime of which Severus had long ago disabled. "Can we go now?"

"You'll remember the rules?"

"No wandering off, no drinking anything anyone's given me, and we leave when the show's over—"

"And don't forget it. You've school in the morning. I really ought not to be considering this at all—"

Harry's cheeks stretched into a saucy grin. "You wouldn't miss this for the world."

All he received in return was a glower, but from the way Snape had ducked his head he couldn't quite conceal the blush that had crept up to the shells of his ears. He held out one arm and roped Harry's shoulders in underneath it, pulling him against his side. "Take hold of my waist and hold on tight. If you feel the need to vomit, don't do it on me."

That was all of the warning Harry got before he felt as though one half of the atoms making up his body were rebelliously attempting to split from the other half, before they joined up again, somewhere as dark as the sitting room had been light.

Between the feeling of being atomised, and the shift from brightness to shadow, Harry did indeed narrowly avoid upchucking his afternoon snack onto the front of Snape's faded shirt. He missed him by mere inches, and only because Snape had immediately spun Harry around and bent him forward upon arrival, bracing him by the shoulders as Harry's food reappeared in a pale, peach-coloured mess all over the patchy grass.

They'd apparated to the back corner behind a garage off of the main road, enclosed on three sides by chainlink fencing, and carpeted by weedy crab grass and dirt. Snape must have scoped it out earlier in the week, as he didn't seem troubled in the least over whether they'd soon have company, feeling at liberty to withdraw his wand to vanish the vomit at Harry's feet. He stooped to snatch up a spare crisp bag which was littering the ground and transfigured it—zhipp'd it, rather—into a cloth napkin which he handed to Harry, instructing his charge to blot at his mouth.

Another few taps saw a rock transfigured into a cup, which the wizard filled with water for him to sip, swish, then spit.

From where Harry's eyes were trained on the dirt clods below, he saw the toe of Snape's polished boot tap an impatient percussion against the ground. "Might we go, now? If you've properly recovered yourself?"

"I'm okay now, Sev'rus," Harry insisted, even though he couldn't manage without a bit of a slur to his words. In truth he still felt rather queasy, but they were cutting it close as it was, and he didn't want to be the reason that Severus missed the start of the show.

Snape urged him on then, having the younger wizard precede him out of the alleyway so that he was at Harry's back, an ever watchful eye kept on him at all times, but even with Snape's obvious impatience to get to the venue, Harry felt a tell-tale blow land against his upper back where Severus had clapped it with the hint of reassurance.

Harry said nothing about it. The surest way to make the taciturn man clam up and disavow his own sentimentality was to call attention such things. Instead, he allowed himself a bit of a grin, knowing that Severus wouldn't see it.

Snape called out directions—"Left, Right, Onwards..."—to Harry from where he strode at his heels, prodding him on with his voice.

Even without the cues dictating his movement down the streets, Harry could likely have found where they were bound for. The closer they got, the more black-clad revelers he saw walking alongside them, going the same direction.

He saw hundreds of white-and-black painted faces. Genes, Pauls, Peters, Aces, Erics and even a few Vinnies. Some of the fans had created their own designs and characters which accompanied home-made costumes with towering, platform boots. Harry saw more than one man topple over and nearly fall flat on his face while attempting to move in the dangerous footwear.

Shrieking and giggling women who looked like they'd walked straight out of the pages of Snape's abandoned Heavy Metal magazines walked, either in groups, or hanging off the arms of the wannabe KISS members' arms.

He'd never once seen such pageantry. Harry was reasonably certain that had he ever encountered such a group of people while in the company of his relatives, he and Dudley would have had their eyes and ears covered over by his aunt's and uncle's hands, and that they'd have been quickly ushered back to the back bench of Uncle Vernon's Vauxhall, to be driven away from the scene with all due haste.

Snape certainly wasn't trying to drag him away, but he also wasn't allowing Harry to linger, staring at the strange concert-goers for any appreciable length of time. Severus muttered to him a couple of times about how he oughtn't stop and gawk, and continued to prod him forward at a brisk pace, until they reached the ticket booth and Snape could tell the attendant his name, claiming for them the two tickets which Harry had won from Key 103.

The queue to get into St. George's Hall was the most disorganised that Harry had ever witnessed. It seemed to form a broad wedge before thinning out into a trickle of single-file entrants into the doors and then it fanned out again on the other side.

At several key moments, it seemed almost a certainty that he'd become separated from Severus, but whenever Harry began to panic, he'd feel a short tug on the back of his shirt, and when he would turn to look over his shoulder, there would be his guardian, looking stoic and unruffled.

This must not have been his first concert, then. Harry couldn't imagine that Snape would appear half so self-possessed if he was also suffering from the discombobulating novelty of the situation...

Then again, Severus often seemed to thrive and excel in extraordinary circumstances, even as he would fly off the handle and rise into tremendous fits of pique at the smallest and stupidest of provocations.

The man had kept his cool when Yax and Wulf had intruded upon their sanctum and had managed to flee with Harry under his arm, so to speak. Contrarywise, earlier that very week, the clerk at the tiny store where they bought their tinned foods had given him the wrong change and he'd lectured the poor girl for a full ten minutes, his voice and ire rising throughout the exchange until he'd been bellowing at her by the end.

If Harry hadn't been so terrified, he might have instead felt embarrassed. It was only a difference of thirty pence.

It was unpredictable which Snape he was going to get in any set of circumstances, but Harry was gratified to note that KISS-concert-Snape was commanding and in-charge; a responsible adult amongst the joyful revelers whom he felt as though he could trust with his safety. Had Severus instead insisted on joining in with the chanting and inside jokes, Harry might have worried that they'd both be swept along into the undertow of the chaos.

Enjoyable chaos... but chaos, nonetheless.

Snape directed their course until they made it into the main auditorium, and they found a spot near to a wall, but far enough away from the stage that the amps wouldn't blow their ears out—a phenomenon that Snape had had to explain to him, as Harry had wanted as close to the stage as possible.

"We'll remain back, within easy distance to the doors. I daresay Albus would have my hide if I were to allow you to be trampled to death under a stampede of platform boots."

Harry shook his head, feeling a bit miffed. "They'd trip, anyways."

Snorting, Snape had smirked a little, which clued Harry in to the fact that the man likely agreed, at least in principal. "Even so, you're not ready for the spot in front of the stage."

"When will I be?" The crowd was filling in now, all of the stragglers rushing through the doors and finding spots, jostling each other in front of the raised dais where the band was to appear.

Anything Snape might have answered was drowned out by the loud peel of a guitar chord, hovering in the air as the lead guitarist of the opening act bent back and forth on his tremolo bar. He'd preceded the rest of his band out onto the stage, and was warming up the crowd with a lively, yet somewhat ham-fisted, guitar solo.

He might have landed a few more notes along the proper scale if he hadn't been so concerned with showing off his ability to do the splits on-stage in spandex.

"How's everyone out there tonight?" The blond singer emerged holding a second guitar next to the lead guitar, which let out another peel of sound to punctuate the frontman's question.

A chorus of chanting for KISS erupted from the crowd, which the blond frontman laughed off.

"You think you're ready! You think you're ready! Well, you ain't even close to riled up enough, yet!"

That was the only warning the were granted before Kings of the Sun started in on their short set, the foursome putting on a spirited show for the assembly as the cheering grew louder and more rhythmic.

Any sense of personal space had long ago been lost. Even near their corner, and with Snape protecting him, Harry had been bumped into and his feet trod upon at least five times by his count—and that was when he decided to stop counting.

Severus absorbed the brunt of the damage, scowling out from where he loomed over Harry's shoulder and raising his thin arms to catch people as they fell against them or appeared out of nowhere, toppling sideways, but even that proved limited in its success.

There was simply no containing the energy of the audience, and though it was tiresome and overwhelming, Harry couldn't help but to find himself excited by it. He was hopping up and down as high as his tiny legs could allow him, in time with the music. Almost certainly Snape would be behind him glaring at his antics, but he couldn't summon up a care in the world for that at the moment.

Besides, Snape could glower all he liked. Harry knew that he was having a good time. He'd have snapped already if he weren't.

He even seemed to be enjoying the opening act, and he yelled over the music, while there was a short lull between songs, that the band reminded him of AC/DC if AC/DC had fused alchemically with Mötley Crüe.

Thankfully, most of the people around them were drunk or themselves quite strange, or else they might have wondered at Snape's odd pronouncement.

Even with his obvious enjoyment of the first band, however, it was clear that he, along with the rest of the audience, grew impatient waiting for KISS to appear, and when the final ringing note of the Australian guitarist's chord rang out, and they picked up their gear to decamp backstage, a dull roar erupted where it seemed as though everyone in the crowd was talking at once.

It was only a matter of time. The countdown had begun.

Perhaps five minutes of heavy tension built before the lights in the auditorium cut out.

Rather than screams of terror, a deafening chorus of shrieks began to build as powerful stage lights flickered on in a pre-planned sequence.

First the drum set was illuminated. Eric Carr's form bent over the toms with his hands splayed, as though in supplication, wielding a drumstick in each.

Next, spotlights to the left, right and centre, showing the tangled black heads of hair that belonged to Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley.

They looked diminished from the covers that Harry had always seen with them, wearing a slim black leather ensemble (in Gene's case) and a riot of mismatched spandex patterns (in Paul's) in the place of their signature costumes, and he was disappointed to note that Severus had been right: none of the band members were wearing face paint. The fans looked more KISS-like than KISS itself.

The final blow to Harry's enthusiasm came when, instead of his idol Ace Frehley, the guitarist was revealed to be Bruce Kulick: dressed in an eye-catching black-and-white suit. His red guitar was imprinted with little radioactive symbols that were then repeated down the leg of his trousers, having clearly been coordinated ahead of time.

"I told you they'd kicked Ace, Harry." Snape shouted to him, shaking his head. "You ought to have expected this at least."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, although his face must have shown his regret.

"I wouldn't say Bruce is as good as Ace, but I've heard he's alright live—you'll see." There was that hand again, clapping Harry on the shoulder. Upon feeling it, he couldn't quite muster up the despondency he'd been feeling before. He was instead suffused by warmth and another curious emotion he couldn't put his finger on. It dampened a bit when Snape quickly snatched his hand back, but not so much that it disappeared.

He'd made Snape happy. The wizard was even pleased enough that he was having trouble maintaining the self-imposed distance that he usually insisted on.

If that was the best part of the night, and if the band bombed out on stage before their eyes, at least Harry could take comfort in knowing he'd truly succeeded in bringing Severus a little bit of joy.

Of course, KISS were nothing short of professionals. They neither bombed out, nor did they disappoint.

Harry was hard pressed to claim that he'd ever seen such a display of showmanship, and for years after he wouldn't dare to say that any act eclipsed the night he and Severus got to see KISS on tour.

"YOU WANTED THE BEST!" A voice bellowed forth, seeming to come from everywhere at once. "YOU GOT THE BEST!"

The phantom announcer waited for the crowd to swell with noise for a moment. All around the audience surged, and the cheers were nearly deafening. From every corner burst shrill wolf-whistles, and perhaps fifteen to twenty women were climbing up on the backs of some of the sturdier men, sitting astride their shoulders so that they could watch from the best seats in the house.

"THE HOTTEST BAND IN THE WORLD—KISSSSSSSSSSS!"

The spotlights broke and an enormous sign spelling out "KISS" lit up behind the drummer, the lights popping with sparks as they blazed, showing a full wall of fake amplifiers upon which, the three standing members played. Around them firecrackers ignited and illuminated the crowd in a red-orange glow.

The opening notes to Love Gun began, and Harry finally was treated to what a real concert was like.

The energy was impossible to escape, and had they not chosen a place near the wall, Harry felt certain that he might have been smothered by the press of bodies. Everyone around them was going wild, and when Harry kept looking back behind him, even Severus looked rather pleased, although he'd maintained his composure enough not to be jumping or loudly singing along to the music.

There were tell-tale signs, if one had the sense to notice them.

It just so happened that Harry by now knew his guardian well enough that the fact that Snape was making odd, twitchy movements—in the exact cadence of Eric Carr's timekeeping—wasn't lost on him.

It was probably as close to dancing as the man would ever allow himself to get. And the strange way that Snape pitched forward so that stringy locks of hair obscured his face was all to mask the fact that he was chanting along to the words of the songs under his breath, his lips quirked in a revealing quarter-smile that he seemingly didn't have the heart to squash.

Oh yes. Snape was very clearly enjoying himself. Which meant that Harry felt entirely at liberty to jump and shriek as loudly as Snape was quiet.

The notes to Heaven's on Fire were dying away when the band took a moment to rest, and Harry felt a keen sense of sadness over the loss. That was the first KISS song he'd heard with Severus in the car, and he treasured it above their other songs, but before he could mourn for it too much, the next song was announced with a bit of Paul's famous call-and-response.

"HEY BRADFORD! I gots a question for all a yous!" Paul crooned into his microphone, tipping it forward as though he were dipping a lover in a dance. "How many of y'all... like the taste of alcohol?"

Apparently, the true fans in the audience knew what was coming, for they cheered in unison, and Harry even heard Snape's distinct voice bellowing his agreement from behind him.

Which might have seemed odd, for Harry had never known Severus to drink to excess, but then again, the wizard had just informed him earlier that night that that Malfoy bloke had gotten Snape drunk plenty of times.

"Aaaalright, alriiiight! It's gettin' a little hot in here, and y'all need a little something to cool you off..."

It seemed that the crowd agreed, if their shrieks of approval could be trusted.

"How many of y'all like to drink TEQUILA?"

There was mild applause to this, but it seemed as though this wasn't the correct answer, and the mixed response only spurred Paul on.

"No...? When you're down in the dumps and you need something to bring you up, there's only one thing that's gonna do it! WHAT IS IT?!"

From behind him—from all sides, really—the call was uniform and came as one: "Cold Gin!"

"What's that?"

"COLD GIN!"

"I can't hear youuu—"

"COLD GIN!"

The crowd chanted for several more bars as the guitar wailed, and Harry could hear Severus behind him, his voice one of the hundreds gathered, as fully enthralled and enraptured as anyone else in the crowd. He was no longer hiding his face, and he wasn't even pressing his lips together as he so often did to avoid showing his teeth. His right fist was punching the air to punctuate his cries for 'Cold Gin,' and his snaggle-toothed, yellow grin was contagious.

Harry beamed too, just to see it.

The rest of the concert felt rather like an out of body experience. Harry tried his best to memorise every moment, but when that seemed as though it may cheapen his recollection—after all, what was a concert except an occasion to be enjoyed, rather than immortalised—Harry felt himself sinking into the sensations of the night.

The beat, so loud and steady that he felt it jarring his bones.

The buzzing in his ears, as he lost certain ranges of his hearing to the blaring noise of the amplifiers.

The feeling of his winged shirt, sticking to his back with sweat, and the soreness of his legs, so tired after his continuous jumping, even as Harry hadn't the heart to stop.

He'd simply have to endure until the final notes of the final song...

And Harry managed, if only just, to maintain his enthusiasm throughout the entirety of the set, and through the three-song encore.

By the time the lights began to turn back on in the wake of Detroit Rock City, he was thoroughly spent, and Severus protected him as they allowed the other concert-goers to leave before them.

It was as though a spell had been broken, when the darkness receded, and the surging throng of sweaty bodies, with their streaky, dripping face paint, and drunken guffaws were revealed to his eyes.

Harry gave a mild wince from where he leaned against the wall, his eyes peering out past Snape's torso.

When the throng had mostly moved through the doors, Snape finally tugged Harry from his place at the wall and pushed him ahead in front of him. It seemed that he preferred to keep a watch over Harry's head, rather than keeping the boy in lock-step behind him, although Harry knew that at a moment's notice that were there the mere hint of trouble, he'd be drawn back under the man's scrawny arm.

It seemed that most of the crowd weren't finished with their evening, even given the fact that it was a Wednesday, and the pubs that lined the street saw queues forming of black-costumed KISS fans who seemed ready for real cups of cold gin to soothe the ache that Paul Stanley must have inspired with his song.

"Sorry you can't go to the pub after," Harry called back over his shoulder, feeling a bit regretful. It seemed to him that everyone who'd been in St. George's Hall was now preparing to finish off their evening with a wind-down nip at the bottle and seeing as Harry was one of the only children in attendance, the boy suddenly realised just what that meant for Snape's own post-concert plans.

"Like I'd bother drinking at a pub when I know very well what it's like to scrub these imbeciles' vomit from the floors." Snape scoffed, throwing a poisonous glance at the drunken revelers, many of whom were wandering out across the street without a care in the world for the cars that were honking to get through.

Harry almost wanted to stop to ask Severus about what he'd said, but knew he'd be prodded forward once more if he did. He'd never really considered what Snape's day-to-day looked like, working at The Jiggered Yow, and now he felt worse than ever, some of the post-concert euphoria he'd been enjoying dying a violent death in the pit of his stomach where it soured quickly into a feeling of nausea.

Snape had to clean up after drunk people every day. Probably had to withstand torrents of abuse from the customers who came in late and resented being tossed out with the closing of the establishment each evening. Perhaps he even had to defend himself from physical attacks...and all because Harry had come to stay. All because he'd had to give up his job at the magical school up north for the stupid wretch who could barely do his times tables properly...

In that moment, it felt as though the KISS concert wasn't nearly enough to repay the debt he held to Snape, and Harry felt the rest of his joy in their evening vanish.

At least until he heard the odd, nasally sound coming from his rear.

Turning his head enough so that he could peer over his shoulder, he saw Snape's own head pivoting left and right, scouting the street and sidewalk before them as he kept watch; but what was more interesting was that the man was humming the melody to Deuce to himself, a satisfied little smirk twisting his lips up at the edges.

He'd evidently taken no heed of Harry's descent into self-recrimination, and he apparently had taken no offense to Harry's apology over his inability to go out cavorting after the show.

All was right with Snape. There was no reason why all couldn't be right with Harry too, the boy decided, then. If Snape was happy enough? Well then... so was he.

They'd almost made it back to the alley they'd apparated into when the two found their way blocked by another rowdy group of fans.

Four young men, variously attired in skin-tight jeans, sleeveless leather jackets, hobnailed boots, and each looking as though they'd enjoyed themselves, perhaps, a touch too much that evening, were loudly cat-calling a couple of girls who were attempting to stalk away with the tattered remains of their dignity intact.

It might have been more convincing had neither of them been wearing sky-high heels upon which they teeter-tottered, looking as though a stiff wind would have caused them to collapse in on their unstable ankles, but each lady was making a valiant effort at rebuffing the drunken advances in her own way.

One girl by ignoring the ape-like display in its entirety, her red-laquered talons digging into the flesh of the other girl's upper arm as she attempted to drag her away, while the friend she was dragging...?

Well. Had it not been for the display of raw aggression that Harry had seen from Snowdrop Hill not a month before, he'd have been able to assert that he'd never seen a woman acting in such a fashion.

She answered every call with jeers of her own, and for each lewd hand-signal that the men used, she responded with her own two-fingered salute.

Her lips were red, her cheeks streaked with a shocking pink. The kinky blonde hair that she'd teased into a towering top-ponytail over her fringe looked like it belonged on some Amazon from Heavy Metal magazine, and not on some random woman walking the streets of Bradford on any given Wednesday. She was wild, and she was beautiful, and Harry instantly felt indignation on her behalf as the men followed her and her friend down the street, staying at all times perhaps two meters behind the women.

They'd stopped right before the space where Harry and Snape meant to pass through to their apparition point, and as they came up short of the six quarrelling fans, he could begin to feel the impatience and irritation rolling off the older wizard behind him.

Perhaps it was Severus' magic which was sloughing from him like a snake's dry skin, but whatever it was raised the hairs on the nape of Harry's neck in a way that made his stomach want to turn.

Now Snape was well and truly angry—and Harry worried distantly that this might well ruin the night for Severus altogether. He couldn't imagine that he had much patience for the kind of public mischief that the group of men before them were engaging in, and even with the flaming glory of their target's ire, Harry didn't think for one second that she'd be spared Snape's anger either, if she and her friend didn't vacate the space they needed quickly enough.

They stood downstream of the fracas for perhaps two to three minutes, watching as the overtures from the drunken men grew more and more outlandish and untoward, until the tallest of the blokes—who looked to be of an age with Severus, if perhaps five years older, with medium length brown hair that he'd slicked back into a ponytail—pushed forward one of his compatriots until the smaller man fell face-first into the lovely Valkyrie's breasts.

She sputtered and shrieked, pushing to get the man off of her, but his weight had brought her down to the pavement, flailing underneath him. Her heels weren't equal to the task of balancing both her own weight, and the added burden of an over-weight, balding bloke who looked to be around thirty and five years.

For his part, he was at least attempting to get up off of her, apologising while his three friends hooted with laughter, but as soon as he managed to extricate himself, the presumptive leader who'd pushed him replaced him and loomed over the woman who'd fallen to the ground. By now her friend had rushed off, apparently too frightened to return to the scene to help the woman who'd been intent on mouthing-off to the four catcallers.

It was all starting to look a bit grim, in all honesty, and it hadn't looked at all good to begin with, but by the point where Harry was beginning to fret that his heroine may well be in need of rescuing, he was the most surprised of all to see that help was coming by way of an irate, greasy-haired wizard who had emerged from his place behind Harry's back and was now bearing down on the four men who had the blonde woman surrounded.

It was amazing that Snape could seem to 'bear down' on them at all, given that the tall, handsome one seemed to have at least five inches on the younger man's scrawny build, but Snape had his own means of making his presence known.

The group's backs were turned to the two magical interlopers, or else they might have been able to see Severus summoning a discarded bit of lumber from a nearby pile before he used it to beat against the back of their knees, sending each hooligan to the pavement with successive cries of surprise and agony, all of them too drunk and surprised to defend themselves against the unexpected assault.

"FUCK—OFF—YOU—LOUSY—CUNTS!"

Harry winced as he watched the rise and fall of the plank smacking against the men's torsos. When he'd felled all four of them, Snape didn't hold to only using his melee weapon. He began to kick at their bellies and ribs with his boots until they all attempted to roll away from him, finally scattering in different directions down the street, looking rather like dogs who'd been beaten away from some anticipated treat. Had the four of them tails, it was a certainty that they'd have been held between their rear legs as they fled from the scene.

By now the blonde woman had backed up until she was watching Snape's heaving form from her curled-up position by the chain-link fence. One baby-blue eye peeked out through the fingers of her hands, looking on while Snape attempted to regain his breath. He was pitched over, grasping his knees as he drew in deep, ragged lungfuls of air, his mouth agape and his eyes pressed shut.

Harry approached with caution, beginning to feel a bit of trepidation over the way in which Severus was seeming to hyperventilate, when he heard the clip-clopping of another pair of heels—the blonde girl's friend, rushing over from where she'd retreated to help her friend up from the ground.

"Tabby! Tabby, babe, they didn't hurt you, did they?"

The towering head of blonde rose unsteadily to her feet and brushed off the hands of her friend, her red-nailed hands flapping a bit to fend the other woman off.

"It'd serve you right if they had, wouldn't it? Fat lot of good it did coming together if you'd leave me like that!"

She was tugging her skirt around her frame, and it seemed that she'd torn her stockings on the rough gravel underfoot, for there was a deep run that went from her shin up to her thigh.

By now Snape had finally managed to straighten up to his regular height and no longer seemed in danger of going completely blue in the face. He gave the two women by the fence a once over but said nothing, turning on his heel. The lumber he tossed so that it rebounded against the metal fencing with a loud clang.

The noise roused the women from their little quarrel and the blonde one who'd been under attack—Tabby—glanced up at her saviour with her eyes wide and her mouth rounded into a tiny 'o' of amazement.

"Ey!"

Severus didn't stop. He was now making his way over to Harry with a look of determination, and the younger wizard got the distinct impression that Snape wanted nothing more than to be on their way home. It even looked as if he might have regretted the small part he'd played in the fray.

"Let's away, Harry." He grabbed the boy by the shoulder and began to direct him in front of him once more, even as the boy attempted to look back and over his shoulder, impeding their progress.

"Ey!" They were stopped in their tracks, and this time when Harry glanced back, it was to see that Tabby had caught up a handful of Snape's black t-shirt and was holding him back by his sleeve.

"Tabby, come on—" her friend urged her. She was standing a few feet off and looked irritated and uncomfortable that her friend was once more keeping her from leaving as quickly as she seemed to want.

But the blonde woman didn't stop until Snape finally glanced down at her, and by then Harry couldn't take his eyes off of her either.

Because, boy, did she ever look familiar...

"Thank you—thank you so much," She breathed, blinking slowly as her eyes tracked over Snape's features. For a second, she appeared almost confused, and then her eyes widened even more, perhaps seeing something that no one else there saw.

Snape's arm jerked out of her grasp. "Think nothing of it," he grunted.

"No, really! That was really something, that was—" she trailed off, her blue eyes flying over Snape's face again, lingering at his hawkish nose, his black eyes, his overlarge ears, his lank hair. "Don't I... do I know you?"

"I can't imagine that's likely."

"No! No, I do! Snape—Sevvy Snape, from Cokeworth!"

Snape's cringe was violent enough that it didn't merely cause him to grimace, he also seized up about the shoulders and momentarily his hands became claw-like.

"You're mistaken—"

But it was by then in vain for him to deny it, as Tabby evidently was certain of whom she'd recognised, and she was in a towering excitement over it.

Whatever she might have said was lost on Harry, however. By then, he'd also managed to put the name to the face he'd seen twice a week for a month.

She was wearing an outfit that she'd never be caught dead in at Rowky Syke, and a sight more makeup than was usual, but there could be no question that the woman Severus had just saved was his teacher, Ms. Tibbons.

Way too many authors notes, and most of them not particularly important:

A/N: Of course, Harry's flares are a nod to Shaun's in 'This is England.' Also, I don't think I could have written this chapter if my husband hadn't actually been to a KISS concert himself. They apparently follow a rather predictable formula, and their fan culture has proven to have a long shelf-life.

(Secondary aside to this first note at the time of posting this chapter: I, too, have now gone to a KISS concert—one of their final shows in the End of the Line tour—and I used what I learned to tweak or add a few details here and there. I wrote this chapter about a year before I went to the concert, and became a huge KISS fan because of it, even though at the time I wrote this chapter I wasn't actually super into them).

A/N2: A stupid note on something I'm sure no one will check me on—I have no idea what guitars were played by Kings of the Sun, or whether the lead guitarist was a good player. They weren't super popular outside of Australia, and there are next to no photos of them with their instruments. I suspect the guitarist played a Les Paul, so it may have been the case he didn't even use a tremolo, but I just had to write this chapter, I couldn't be as thorough as I'd otherwise like with some of the details lmao

Edit: My husband looked up old concert tape for me. He DID use a trem! Great success! (And now he's invested in listening to them, himself. The perils of including your husband in fic research).

EditEdit: Oh God, he went on eBay and bought a CD. Said he would have bought the cassette but he wanted it so he could play it for us in the car. *mutters to self* What have I doneeeee...?

EditEditEdit: As it turns out Kings of the Sun are actually quite good. I'm sure if there was a lead-in guitar solo that it wasn't ham-fisted, as I wrote in the story.

(omg, there's more) EditEditEditEdit: My husband liked one of their songs so much he made a cover of it on his YouTube channel, and the drummer for Kings of the Sun liked his cover enough that he boosted it on their official Facebook page and now they're Facebook friends and have chatted on video... :x What even.

Final Edit: I'm sad to say that Clifford Hoad (the drummer for KotS) just recently—like within the last two weeks—had a massive heart attack that put him in the hospital in an induced coma. As of posting this today there hasn't been an update in like six days, but lets pray/keep our fingers crossed for him and keep him in our thoughts. I was hoping I wouldn't have to add this final note on here and that he'd have recovered before posting this chapter, but that hasn't been the case.