A Nose By Any Other Name

Usual Disclaimer. My response to the Crossdressing Snape Challenge on WIKTT. I own nothing here except the stuff you don\'t recognise *sob*. If I have borrowed I apologise, it is not intentional but there is so much great stuff out there it\'s hard not to be influenced. Making no money.

Sorry this is dragging out updates for my other fics but I have a thing for men in corsets and I missed April\'s Whitby :-(

*****
A Nose By Any Other Name.


Chapter 1 - Recognition


Hermione Granger as a rule didn\'t normally stare, but today she was making an exception. The object of her concentrated gaze sat unknowing on the balcony below-and-across from the hidden window that looked over that particular dance-floor.
He, at least she assumed it was a he, (not every cross-dresser looked like Dame Edna and had an obsession with Gladioli) had been there for a couple of hours now. Toying with a glass of wine he had not even tasted, inglingly looking for someone judging by the way he was scouring the crowd.
Very nice though, she couldn\'t resist grinning to herself. Carefully applied make-up, wrapped from neck to ankle in a long chinese style dress and a waist-line that could in no way be natural. Very, very nice. Even the nose was right, she had to admit she had a thing for big noses. Take Viktor for example and then there was...well best not dwell on the impossible. Funny though she thought with a frown, she had the distinct impression she\'d seen him somewhere before.

An impatient sigh reminded her that she wasn\'t the only one in the room.

\"Hermione for god\'s sake stop drooling over my office furniture and go buy him a drink!\"

Feeling slightly indignant she turned to her friend and current employer.

\"I\'m not drooling!\"

\"You have been standing there since you got here, staring at the same man in the same seat like a dog eyeing a distant bone. Just go down there, buy him a drink, get his number. Then finish your shift and invite him home, spend the rest of the night shagging him out of your system. Then come back tomorrow and do what I pay you for without distracting the customers with the disgusting amount of \'screw-me\' pheromones you are producing.\"

She laughed at that, Mandaan was nothing if not brutally straight to the point.

\"How can I even be sure it\'s actually a bloke, I mean sometimes it\'s difficult to tell?\"

Rolling his eyes he gracefully glides around the desk to stand next to the young woman.

\"Trust me, it\'s a man in a dress.\"

Hermione open her mouth, but anticipating the question he continues, staring with slate grey eyes at the man below.

\"For one thing I have eyesight vastly superior to your own and I have centuries more experience at telling which gender my prospective suiters are. nd tnd that nose definitely doesn\'t belong on a woman.\"

A curve of his lips, the sound of a conclusion reached and he turns to regard her.

\"You\'ll have fun with that one. Now get to work wench and leave me to my tax returns.\"


*****


For three hours he had been watching her. The first time he had seen seen her in the two years since that fateful graduation and she vanished off the face of the planet. No one knew why until last weeks interesting little revelatione hae had just gone, leaving her friends confused and worried. Well most of them anyway.
Potter had upheld that she probably knew what she was doing and wouldn\'t thank anyone poking their noses into her business. It was a moot point anyway, she had been untraceable, he knew, he\'d tried.


His first glimpse of the Granger girl had left him open mouthed in astonishment, he had almost missed her. This was not the bushy-haired child who had left Hogwarts.
Her hair was tied at the nape of her neck with a ribbon and eyes accentuated by simple black eyeliner (she was wearing less make-up than he was for Merlin\'s sake!) made her almost unrecognisable.

She was dressed like a good few of the men he had seen around, black shirt laced at collar and cuff, black trousers, his breath hitched unexpectedly. Almost skintight trousers with silver buckles and straps crossing to the opposite legs.
He had never even thought about Granger\'s legs before (if he said that often enough it HAD to be true), and now he couldn\'t seem to drag his gaze away. He could have sworn the temperature rose a couple of degrees then and finally he forgot himself long enough to drain the glass of wine he\'d been avoiding. Merlin! Now he was obligated to finish the bottle.

When Dumbledore had called him into his office a week ago he would never have thought it because, after all this time, after the years of curiosity (he wouldn\'t admit to concern) over her whereabouts Hermione Granger had finally crawled out from whichever rock she had run to.
She had raised her no-longer-so bushy head and the world was once again revolving, he thought with some bitterness, around one of that insufferable three and the prize she had run from the battlefield with.

His mood which had been pensive before he got to the headmaster\'s office had been forced over the edge into mildly furious when he was told that the old bastard wanted to to find out what she was doing and most importantly what had been done with the severed head of the Dark Lord.
The only problem was to do this he had to first find her again. The only address being an anonymous tip-off about a nightclub where in Albus-bloody-Dumbledore\'s words \'It is customary for the men frequenting the establishment to dress as women\'.
That had made him reach the screaming heights of absolutely bloody livid and the yelling had begun in earnest. This time he had promised himself he would not allow the headmaster to manipulate him. Yeah right.


The club had been something of a culture shock, having never been in a muggle nightclub before. Still he was fairly certain that this was not a typical example.

Queuing outside had been an experience. Standing in line whilst a string of muggles walked past openly staring at its outlandish looking inhabitants accasccasionally making unpleasant remarks was not his idea of fun.
Once in the club he had been lost. After the cloakroom three large open doors greeted him. One had a rose carved over the top, another spikes and the center had a mask, most seemed to be taking that route.

He decided to take the less busy doors first, it would be easier he had thought to find her in a room with less people. It had been a lucky guess that the room with the rose was were he found her. Ascending some stairs he had appeared on an upper level where there were many dark corners and drape hidden booths. It overlooked a dance-floor where sea of mostly black clad dancers moved to the oddly dark, grinding music. It also provided an excellent view of one of the bars situated on that level. Purchasing a bottle of cheap red wine he had found a secluded booth and set about scouring the levels for any sign of the Gryffindor know-it-all.


So here he was ing ing the name of the entire Dumbledore line, staring through the crowds below the balcony at an almost unrecognisable Granger serving drinks to the bizarre even by wizard standards clientele.

Drumming his fingers against the refilled glass of wine on the table his gaze was caught by the unfamiliar but exquisitely polished nails of his left hand, it both looked and felt alien to him.
Almost as bad as the cosmetics plastered across his face, how did they do it? How could anyone wear all this powder and lipstick and not succumb to the urge to rub their eyes or lick their lips until the horrible stuff was gone?
Then there was corset. That really hadn\'t cheered him up any. Painful and constricting, a torture device that paled some of Voldemort\'s games to insignificance. Snape shuddered, Hades only knew where his internal organs had been displaced to.


Glowering at anyone stupid enough to gain even the most fleeting of his attention he sat fuming.
Dumbledore was probably pissing himself laughing the lying old bastard. Yes, some of the men were dressed..how did that Brown girl put it...in drag but there were those most definatly not. Some who whilst openly wearing skirts and dresses of varying kinds were not doing it accessorised with the torturous stiff-boned object that was the subject of most of his displeasure, or the make-up.
Okay so he would admit the dress itself wasn\'t too bad, more like like wearing a robe but lighter, with more slits in strange places, but that wasn\'t the point.
It was humiliating.

*****

Hermione was just going to break, several surreptitious looks at the oddly familiar, particularly striking man hadn\'t done anything to calm her down, she looked up again just in time to see a flash of stockinged leg as he left his table, that was all she needed, she couldn\'t stop the exclamation or the feeling of confused excitement.

\"Oh bloody hell!\"

*****

The door to his office opened with a crash, quickly followed by the human whirlwind that was Hermione Granger. Smilingulgeulgently he folded his arms and waited, he hated paperwork anyway.

\"IfinallyfigureditoutIcan\'tbelieveIdidn\'trealiseitbefore!.\"

\"You really are on a one woman mission to disrupt my work aren\'t you. Sit down, slow down and tell.\"

She at least had the grace to look embarrassed.

\"Sorry.\"

He nodded.

\"I worked out who he is, the man I was staring at. I know him! I mean I\'ve never seen him dressed like that before...\"

She grinned.

\"...well that wasn\'t really HIM so it doesn\'t count but I didn\'t recognise him at first. He looks so damn good.\"

Taking a breath her face fell.

\"Oh crap, I can\'t let him see me.\"

\"Why not?\"

\"He was one of my professors.\"

\"At the wizarding school you spoke of?\"

Fee dej dejected Hermione sighed.

\"Yes.\"

\"And?\"

\"I sort of...Isortofhadabitofathingforhim.\"

\"Ahh.\"

Deciding that letting the girl sort it out whilst he listened Mandaan gave up any plans he may have had for the night, that would be none after the paperwork then he thought with some bitterness. He listened seriously as she continued.

\"I can\'t just go and speak to him. What would I say? \'Hi Professor, you probably don\'t remember me, I lusted over you at school. By the way you look really hot in that dress.\' He\'d flay me on the spot.\"

At his look of amusement she winces.

\"No really, he had a wickedly sharp tongue and a temper to match.\"

\"Well as a chat up line it beats \'Pardon me, do you know the way to San Jose?\'\"

She snorted indelicately.

\"Don\'t tell me you\'ve used that?\"

\"Most certainly not! Been on the receiving end of it a couple of times and never sunk so low as to accept the invitation. I know I\'m not going to get any work from you tonight so take the time off. Pounce on the poor man and have your wicked way with him.\"

Hermione slumped, there was a reason she had left the wizarding world and Snape\'s appearance whilst possibly being a happy coincidence (did that apply to Snape, nothing he ever did could be classed as coincidence), it could equally not be.
As though reading her thoughts Mandaan\'s expression became vaguely offended.

\"Within these walls you are completely safe Hermione, there are all manner of monsters to protect you.\"

\"Yes I know, it\'s just I don\'t know what he\'s here for, and if I can\'t handle the rejection, what then. I can\'t afford another break down.\"

\"That\'s what your friends are for. We will always be here. Let me ask you one thing. Will you regret never speaking to him, on his own, with no expectations?\"

\"Yes.\"

It was almost a whisper.

\"Then you know what to do.\"

*****

tbc