maple syrup | remus lupin [1]

135. table for six

WORD ON THE STREET had it that Claudia Maple was terribly ill. Or terribly keen on being alone. Or, possibly the most common one, terribly unloved.

Because, you see, the girl had disappeared from thin air. She had not been attending any summer balls, she had not been at her grandmother's birthday celebration and she had not been seen in public at all during the most common time for her to be out at events due to it being such a season for it.

Now, it wasn't exactly uncommon that people questioned what the relationship between Claudia and her father was like, considering just how well known the family was and just how rare it was for a noble family like the Maples to actually have a halfblood walking amongst them.

But, for some strange reason, the Maple girl had suddenly become quite the topic of conversation around curious and gossipy old ladies who had nothing better to do than imagine themselves living in that manor with the world at their feet.

And, before, those ladies would probably wish to be Claudia in their younger days, but now all they did was wonder where Maple mistake had disappeared to.

But, these rumours that for some bloody reason even was covered in the newest issue of Witch Weekly didn't bother Charles at all.

No, he couldn't care less what other people were saying about him, because they would never know if their assumptions and gossipy rumours were true or false.

Even so, the man found himself begrudgingly walking down the steps to the cellar of Maple manor at the order of his mother.

You see, Charles may not have cared for the rumours, but Margaret certainly did.

It was embarrassing to have people assume that either Claudia was ill and uncureable even for being such a bright Maple, and it was even more embarrassing that people believed the girl to be exactly where she was.

Locked away in a cellar somewhere.

And why was that?

Well, when Claudia had found Fayola's dead body and been met by those damn emerald eyes of her father's, she got no chance to say goodbye or get the photo of her mum and her former professor or do anything at all.

No, her father grabbed her harshly, took her wand, apparated away with her, and then all hell broke loose, to put it plainly.

Claudia had never been so furious in her whole life. And, she had never yelled as much as she did.

Sure, the girl had along the way of growing up lost contact with the belief that her mother had so effortlessly held on to. Sure, Claudia agreed with the fact that anger was more effectively expressed if one does it in a calm tone, but she just couldn't hold the yelling in sometimes.

And that scared her to death, because when she yelled she sounded like her father.

Yet, she didn't care for that once she returned to the manor next to her murderer of a father, because she was far too busy threatening him that she would tell someone everything.