Valentine’s Day.  It had to be Severus Snape’s least favourite day of the year.  Hoards of hormonal brats with an excuse to be even more hormonal.  A nightmare just waiting to happen.  He cursed the fool who had forced such a ridiculous festival upon the world.  These thoughts possessed Severus Snape’s mind as he entered the hall for breakfast that morning.  He passed several groups of giggling, maddeningly cheerful students and, almost without conscious thought, took 10 points from a Hufflepuff boy for wanton abuse of the table (the idiot child had been carving hearts into the wood). 

This day could not be over too soon, Snape concluded as he took his place at the staff table.  He was just settling down to eating a piece of toast when his day got infinitely worse as Professor Remus Lupin walked in the door, looking as cheery as ever.

  “Good morning, Severus!” Lupin said merrily as he sat down next to Snape, “It’s terribly cold out, don’t you think?  I was visiting Hagrid and the lake looks almost frozen!”  Snape made a curt nod in reply. 

  Irritating man.  Too friendly, he thought.  Lupin paused for a moment.  He had hoped for more of a reply, but this was, after all, the terrifying Severus Snape.  He pressed on.

  “Err…yes, well, I was going to take my Seventh years into the forest today.  I thought we could look at the mushrooms.  But it’s so cold I wonder if they’ll all have gone into hiding.”  He gave a wan smile.  Snape sighed heavily, wondering why the usually distant Lupin was coming onto him all friendly.  He thought about ignoring the werewolf (he also considered telling him where to go), but Snape could feel the Headmaster’s sly eyes watching him and thought it best to answer civilly.

  “Those mushrooms are very proud.  I daresay they will be out just to prove how hardy they are.”  There.  Good enough.  The Headmaster had been trying to get Snape to talk more with other members of the Order for several months now.  But Snape didn’t see why he had to make the effort when everyone else in the Order despised him.

  “They don’t despise you, Severus,” Dumbledore had told him two weeks ago in his office after a particularly loud argument with Moody.  Snape had crossed his arms and murmured;

  “Could have fooled me.”  The Headmaster just shook his head.

  “Please, Severus.  Just try to get along with them.  It will make working together more…tolerable.”

  “For who?” The Potions Master had mumbled under his breath.  So here he was, trying to be courteous.  He wondered if he was having any success.

  “Oh, you think?  Hmm.  Well, maybe I will do that after all…”  Lupin was nattering away about his class.  It was at this point Snape wondered why the man was doing a Defense Against the Dark Arts class on mushrooms, so he asked, cutting Professor Lupin off in mid-sentence.

  “Well, I wanted to do a themed lesson, seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day and all…”  Snape grimaces at the mention of the day- he had almost managed to forget,  “…make it interesting.  But of course there isn’t much love involved in the Dark Arts so I thought, what about those forest mushrooms?  They’re often considered Dark Creatures and are used in the Dark Arts and, oddly enough, are used in a lot of Love spells and potions and I didn’t think you’d have taught about them…”  Snape frowned.

  “Do you think it wise to tell the students what those mushrooms can do?” Snape grimaced as terrible visions flashed before his eyes of what would happen if a hoard of those mushrooms were released into Hogwarts. 

  “They’re Seventh years.  They’re sensible enough.”  Snape highly doubted this statement, but said nothing more on the matter.  Anyway, he had nearly finished his breakfast and could escape this tiresome small talk of which he was extremely inept at.  But Remus Lupin had a problem he needed to discuss with the antisocial Potions Master, and he wasn’t about to let the chance walk away.  He would just have to come straight out with it.  So Lupin leaned a little closer to Snape, noticing the other man flinch a little (Lupin wondered if he smelled bad or something), and spoke in a low voice;

  “Look, Severus, I have a small problem,” Professor Lupin shifted uncomfortably for a moment, waiting to see if Snape would say anything.  The Potions Master just looked blankly at him.

  “So…I’ve been noticing the Wolfsbane Potion is having some, erm…unexpected side effects.”

  “Side effects?” Snape drawled threateningly as if to challenge Lupin to dare criticize his potions, “There should be no ‘unexpected’ side effects.”  Lupin smiled weakly.

  “Well, no.  That’s what I thought.  So I wondering if you’d changed the potion at all…” Snape was giving Lupin a decidedly icy look, “…I mean, perhaps it was an accident…” Now he was sure he was digging his own grave, “…or a mistake…” At that, Snape looked like he was ready to throttle him.  Attempting damage control, Lupin continued, “no, no…that’s not what I mean…umm…” He trailed off meekly, deciding his platitudes were only making Snape madder.  Snape was now looking at him with such intense mislike, Lupin was sure he would shrivel up under the intensity of the Potion Master’s glare.

  For Snape’s part, he had a good mind to spit the words back at the werewolf.  Mistake?!  He didn’t make mistakes.  But Snape could feel Dumbledore’s eyes boring into the back of his head now.  So he contented himself with malicious thoughts of seeing how the idiot animal would like it if he did make a ‘mistake’.  Yes, you wouldn’t believe what you could do with Wolfsbane… Snape thought conspiratorially.

  “What kind of side effects?” He asked angrily, “Is the potion still effective?”

  “Yes, yes,” Lupin answered quickly. “Very.  But the side effects.  Well, they’re a bit, errm…embarrassing…”

  “Quite,” Snape said coldly, “Perhaps you could be a bit more specific?”  Snape could have sworn Lupin turned a deeper shade of red.

  “I feel strange.”

  “ Strange?” Snape repeated.

  “Strange.” Lupin emphasized.  Good god, Snape thought, How banal can this conversation get?  Deciding this conversation was going nowhere, he threw Lupin his most unimpressed look and stood up.

  “Fine.  I’ll look into it.” He stated, and left, leaving behind a slightly perturbed Professor Lupin.