Disclaimer: The lovely Remus Lupin and Severus Snape belong, alas! to JK Rowling, bless her.  No stink-bug is harmed during the writing of this fic.  Severus did not wipe out the entire population of stink-bug in the forest; his insecticidal fog only covered an area within a radius of approximately thirty yards around him.  There were plenty of stink-bugs left over to replenish the number.  

Author's Note: Stink-bugs are pure invention, don't ask for their Latin name, eating habits and pharmaceutical properties.     

INSECTS

Water fell all around him in fat, relentless droplets that smelled of moss and tree bark.  Snape shivered, brushing back dripping locks from his face, cursing himself for forgetting to mend the holes in his water-proof cloak.  But who could foresee that the old cloak, previously only a forgotten lump in his cedar-lined wardrobe, would be needed again?  How was he to know that he would be running out of stink-bug powder—a rarely used potion ingredient—and that not even the best apothecary in Diagon Alley happened to stock the amount he required?

So there he was, huddled under an old, gnarled oak tree, drenched to the skin in the aftermath of an icy late summer rain, waiting for the greenish luminescence that signaled the flight of the stink-bugs.  They had remained hidden under the rain-battered foliage all evening, but they should come out very soon now that the rain had stopped.  It would put an end to his cold, wet vigil.  The only regret he had about the end of the rain spell was that, along with the stink-bugs, other insects would also emerge—some of which would surely inflict itching rashes from their merciless bites.

The nauseatingly foul-smelling stink-bugs only mated on waxing moon nights. This week might just be the last nights the stink-bugs would mate before the coming autumn forced them to dig deep into the moist, warm blanket of decaying leaves and branches where they slept the winter away.  Snape cursed Professor Argentius, who invented the Wolfsbane potion, for including stink-bugs in the ingredients.  He cursed werewolves the world over for simply existing and making his already miserable life even more wretched.  He cursed Dumbledore for allowing Lupin to study in Hogwarts in the first place.  He cursed Dumbledore for deciding that Lupin would make a great DADA teacher.  He cursed Dumbledore for thinking that he would gladly make the Wolfsbane potion on a monthly basis for a man he never considered as anything more than a cowardly, worthless excuse for a wizard.  He cursed Dumbledore for knowing exactly where his weakness lay—his pride of his potion brewing prowess—and for going unerringly for it, and shrewdly talking him into consenting to brew the potion anyway in spite of his loathing for the gutless wizard who stood aside and did nothing despite his shiny Prefect badge when his friends were subjecting him—Snape—to the most degrading torment he had ever experienced.  

He cursed himself for being weak.

He bent his head, screwed his eyes shut, his fists clenching on his robes, trying to stem the onslaught of memories that suddenly inundated his mind.

"Severus!  Wait!"

Snape was stumbling breathlessly away, fighting the sobs that burned him from his throat, his hands clutched at his waist, keeping his underwear from slipping down his legs.  He could feel eyes following him: amused eyes, pitying eyes, none of which he cared for.  He could hear people whispering, and laughing.  Gryffindors, no doubt, but there were also some voices that he recognized as belonging to some Slytherin students he knew. He felt sick and his body was trembling, but he kept shuffling blindly, wanting to put as much distance as possible between himself and his tormentors.  He tried to empty his mind from everything but the rigid resolve to get into the Slytherin house and his own room.  He could break down there afterward; not now, not here, where so many eyes could still preyed upon his humiliation like bloodthirsty hounds. 

"Severus!"  That voice again.  "Wait!  Severus!  Listen!  I'm sorry!  I'm so sorry, you hear?"

In the dimly lit corridor to the dungeon, Snape finally stopped, leaning against the cool stone wall beside him. 

"Severus."

Footsteps, light and hesitant, stopping beside him.

"I brought you your bag. And your wand."

Snape opened his eyes and scowled at Remus Lupin.

"I'm sorry," said Lupin in a choked voice.

Snape glared at him, suddenly panting with wrath.  Then he spat at Lupin's face.  Lupin had no time to duck and Snape's spit hit him on the cheek.   

"Sorry for what?" growled Snape.  "Sorry that your friends didn't get to take my boxers off?  Sorry they only charmed the elastics off and not the whole thing?  Sorry you didn't get to see…"

"I'm sorry they did it to you," cut in Lupin firmly. "I'm sorry for what they've done to you."

"What's this, Lupin?" sneered Snape.  "You're now their mouthpiece?  Don't expect me to believe that they're sorry, let alone ask you to apologize for them…"

"You're right," said Lupin, lowering his eyes.  "I don't do this for them."

"Well, what do you know?" jeered Snape with increasing spite.  "There is such a thing as a Gryffindor with a conscience after all!  Save it, Lupin!  I don't need your apology."

Lupin shrugged.  "I guess so," he said.  "But you'll be needing these."

He handed Snape his bag and wand.  Snape stared at them, suddenly caught in a dilemma posed by the necessity to keep his hands securely on the waistband of the boxer shorts under his robes, and the urge to snatch his things from .

"Get your filthy hands off my things," he hissed at the Gryffindor.  "Get away from here before I hex you bloody."

Lupin placed the bag and wand on the floor.  He straightened up and looked Snape in the eyes.  "I should've done something," he said, his voice shaking.  "It was weak of me.  but they're my only best friends.  It was wrong, I know, and I hate myself for it.  But…"

"Don't waste your breath, Lupin," snarled Snape.  "You didn't say anything back there; I don't see why you should start yapping now."

"But I can do this," continued Lupin. He touched the gold and scarlet prefect badge on his chest.  "Twenty points from Gryffindor."

Snape's eyes widened. 

"It doesn't make it right," said Lupin quietly.  "But at least they don't get off scot-free for this."

His hand rested lightly on Snape's shoulder before the Slytherin recovered from his shock.  "I'm really sorry."

Snape swallowed and tried to think of something nasty to say but found that he could only stare as Lupin nodded to him and walked away with his head bowed. 

Pathetic, spineless, back-stabbing freak… the words roiled in his mind but found no outlet in his voice.  He could only hear Lupin's quietly uttered  "…my only best friends."

When finally he could shout, when he could at last yelled a string of insults and profanities at the Gryffindor retreating into the great oaken door to the school ground, he realized that for once he was not furious at James and Sirius's popularity or their perverse delight in putting him through torture and mortification.  He was angry because Lupin had chosen them to be his best friends.

Snape swore and furiously swatted at tiny tick-like insects which had crawled across his skin, gorging themselves on his blood.  Soon he found that various mites had also found their way to the exposed parts of his skin, causing intense itch where they had pierced his skin.  But the irritation soon vanished, replaced by delight as he noted the chartreuse tinge on his skin caused by the myriad green-glowing insects that flew in pulsating clusters among the trees, bathing the branches and leaves around them in an eerie radiance.  Snape estimated there were enough stink bugs aloft to fill up two ingredient flasks, enough to last three or four months.     

Snape stretched to ease the soreness that he began to feel on his muscles; he stood and without bothering to brush the damp bits of rotten leaves from his robes, strode quickly to the clearing. 

"Insecta mortis," he said, waving his wand.  A billowing grey mist spewed from the tip of his wand and soon spread around him, crawling across the forest floor, penetrating deep into the heart of forest canopy.  Snape soon found himself wrapped up in a thick blanket of fog that felt tingly on his skin. 

Soon, where there was the faint humming and buzzing of nocturnal bugs, there was a steady patter of insects dropping dead.

Snape waited until he thought the drumming of dead bodies against leaves the wet ground had died down.  "Finite," he said brusquely with a wave of his wand, effectively eliminating the fog, but revealing nothing in the dark of the forest, now bereft of its suffusing green glow. 

"Lumos."  In the yellowish light pulsing from his wand, Snape scanned his surrounding and found, to his satisfaction, a fairly thick layer of dead insects on the forest floor. 

Not moving from his spot, for fear of stepping on any precious specimens, he waved his wand above him and said almost leisurely, "Nebulous."  All at once a gossamer net fell like a shimmering veil around him, 

He raised his wand and said coolly, "Accio stink-bugs."

Rolling black waves of dead stink-bugs rushed toward him with a soft whir.  Soon the fine transparent net was a heavy, thick curtain around him.  Flashing a rare smile of self-satisfaction, Snape rolled the net with a deft flick of his wand.

He stowed the rolled up net into a burlap sack and tied it neatly.  He felt cold and tired, but his job was not done for the night.  The stink-bugs needed immediate further treatment before they could be stored.  As he walked toward the castle, carrying the burlap sack on his shoulder, he envisioned grueling hours of soaking the insects in boiling spirits to remove their poison, followed by spreading the bugs on metal trays to be dried slowly in the specimen oven before the insects could finally be ground, sifted through fine mesh and put in flasks—all done in that permeating stink that would stay in the room and, worse, in his hair and clothes, for days, regardless of the many times he bathed to rid himself of the smell.

Gritting his teeth and scratching a particularly itchy spot at the back of his neck, Snape thought that Remus Lupin had better take his Wolfsbane potion without a murmur.

Epilogue

Snape frowned to hear the low moan coming from Lupin's room.  He rapped urgently at the door. 

"Come in," Lupin's voice answered. 

Snape stepped in and saw Lupin sitting at his desk, a stack of students' papers in front of him. 

"You all right?" asked Snape with a frown.  Lupin never looked the picture of blooming health, but tonight he seemed to be worse than usual.  One of his hand was massaging his temple and eyes, the other clutched around a quill on the desk. 

He looked up and smiled at Snape.  "Ah, Severus," he said.  "I'm fine.  Only I'm afraid if I must read another parchment full of illegible scrawls, I will certainly go mad," said Lupin with an expansive wave over the sheets of parchment scattered before him.  "Oh, you brought the potion."

"Yes," said Snape icily, placing a steaming goblet in front of Lupin.  "You have to drink this immediately."

"I will. Thanks very much, Severus," said Lupin, eyeing the goblet with distaste, lifting it to his mouth.  As he downed the potion, grimacing at the taste, his eyes met Snape's.

"I have a cauldronful of it in the dungeon," said Snape.  "Tell me when you're going to need it.  It had to simmer for at least five minutes before it's safe for you to drink."  He made to leave the office, but Lupin motioned with his hand to stop him.

Lupin put the empty goblet on his desk and swallowed hard.  "Would you sit down, Severus?" he said, gesturing at the chair near the fire.  "There's something I have to say."

"I'm busy, Lupin," growled Snape.  "Make it fast."

Lupin sighed and rose from his seat.  "I know you are very much against Dumbledore decision to take me on," he began softly.  Snape stiffened at the statement, but otherwise showed no reaction.  Lupin ignored the mask-like wariness in Snape's face and went on.  "You even threatened him with your own resignation if he insisted on giving me this job."

Snape glared at Lupin with barely concealed contempt. 

"I don't know what he said to you that made you change your mind," Lupin continued.  He opened a drawer and took out a small phial which he quickly fisted in his palm.  "I know you … don't trust me, to put it mildly.  You're never going to make it easy for me.  I know you're going to be always on the lookout; one wrong step on my part and you're going to do all you can to see that I'm sacked."

The look on Snape's face was now pure venom.  His lips curled in disdain as he opened his mouth to speak, but Lupin waved his hand to signal that he was not through.

"Spare me the sarcasm, Severus," he said quietly.  "What I'm trying to say is: thank you."

Snape, frowning, tried to detect a note of irony in Lupin's voice, but found none. 

"You brew me that complex potion.  You could easily do something to make the potion useless, and I would become an uncontrollable monster and pose a great danger to the whole school…"  Lupin raised his hand to silence Snape.  "But you don't…"

"You are insulting my skills as a Potions master, Lupin," snarled Snape. 

"…so I just want to say thank you," finished Lupin.  "And I want you to have this."

Snape glanced at the tiny glass phial full of thick wine-colored liquid that Lupin had pressed into his hand.   He frowned and gazed questioningly at Lupin.

"A very potent cream for insect bite," said Lupin with a smile.  "Gets rid of the itch and the red spots very swiftly.  Try it."

Snape gaped. 

"Thank you, Severus," said Lupin again with a smile.

~fin~