maple syrup | remus lupin [1]

47. strange behaviours

BETTY AND INEZ had been acting weird ever since they had returned from the Easter holidays. It had been a few days, but Claudia had barely seen them at all.

They would eat breakfast, and one of them would be gone. After that, they would go to class and neither would say much. Then they would eat lunch with an unfamiliar silence, and as soon as classes were finished they both would disappear. Behind they left a confused and bored Claudia to herself, since Pandora had some project she was attending to about some weird creatures.

Exactly that happened on this specific Friday night. Claudia was bored out of her mind, flipping through the pages of her current book "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

She couldn't read. Couldn't do homework. Couldn't listen to music. She was too busy wondering what the hell was going on with her friends.

So, she decided to go to the library.

Maybe she should have taken the Marauder's map and looked for her friends. Maybe she should have gone and bothered the boys instead. But, she didn't. Instead she left to one of her favourite places in the whole castle.

As she entered the library, she was immediately met by the sight of Regulus, who was sitting by a table reading a book.

She didn't know why she decided to approach him, but she did. Regulus was confusing, but he was nice. Claudia had learned that.

"Hey," she said, causing the boy to look up at her with a confused look on his face. "Mind if I sit?"

"No," the boy replied with a small smile twitching on his lips.

Claudia brought out her books, and the two sat there in silence for a long time. The girl found that to be rather unbearable.

"You're not very talkative, are you?" She asked bluntly, immediately regretting it. "Sorry, that was rude."

"It's fine," Regulus said with a small chuckle, immediately growing quiet again after.

"So..." Claudia said awkwardly. "You know what? I forgot to thank you for, uhm, earlier."

"For...?"

"For shutting your friends up. It was nice of you. So was all the other things, you seem to have a streak of helping me out."

"Yeah, it seems that I do," he said with a small smile. "No worries though, I owe you."

"You don't owe me anything."

Regulus didn't respond to that, instead he shared an almost unreadable look with Claudia. But the girl understood it, he still felt that he owed her for the incident from their childhood.

"You're in this," Regulus pointed out after a few silent minutes, holding up a copy of Witch Weekly, a magazine for witches (and wizards) filled with gossip, quizzes and advice.