maple syrup | remus lupin [1]

42. rumour has it...

"BETTY, PANDORA! WAIT UP!" Claudia called after her two blonde best friends as she left her final class of the day; Study of Ancient Runes.

"How was class?" Pandora asked as Claudia caught up to them and the three started to walk towards their dorm.

"Dreadful," Claudia said, although she carried a big smile on her face.

Things were good for once in Claudia's life. Things were great between her and all of her friends, even though both Inez and Remus had been acting a bit strange for the last few days.

And even though Betty and Pandora had starting asking questions she couldn't answer that easily.

But they obviously had reasons for that, and Remus and Inez both had reasons for acting strange; one was a werewolf and one was being threatened.

"Doesn't sound like it was too bad," Betty pointed out.

"Well I'm just happy because it's Friday, of course!" Claudia said cheeringly. "Which reminds me, did Inez agree to come tonight?"

That very night, the 26th of March, there would be a birthday party for none other than James Potter in the Room of Requirement, with only the nearest and dearest invited due to what Sirius called "Claudia-Maple-reasonings", which was something that made her feel rather guilty, but James continued to assure her that he liked it better with fewer guests anyways.

Which wasn't exactly true, but she didn't need to know that James figured.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Good. Where is even Inez by the way?"

"She left to hang out with Cole," Betty shrugged. "Her new man."

"Another one?" Claudia said with a grimace, because Inez was clearly going through something, considering the fact that she changed boys like she changed socks.

Claudia was not concerned about this due to reasons like what doing that would do to her reputation, or that it could hurt those boys or that it was considered "slutty". She was furious that people had started to say horrible and misogynistic things about her best friend, but that was not her biggest concern at all.

Claudia was concerned over the fact that Inez was clearly struggling.

Because she knew that Inez wasn't accepting who she was. She didn't even know if Inez liked boys, but she did know that Inez liked girls; and that Inez was not true to herself when it came to that.