black coffee | remus lupin [2]

63. a family celebration

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LUNCHTIME HAD SLOWLY emerged into dinnertime, and by that point Claudia was in one of the fancier rooms at Maple manor alongside several people, all of which she saw in an entirely different light, which she barely even understood.

Her father was just acting really fucking strange, to be honest. Call it relieved to know that Claudia wasn't going to tell everyone who he truly was, or call it him having a realisation that his daughter deserved the love he never gave her. Either way, he was really strange, and Claudia didn't know what to think or what to say.

She didn't even bare to imagine all the possible reasons behind his sudden fatherly behaviour, because she was too far up in the moment of for once feeling the tiniest of affection from someone so cold.

If someone would've told Claudia just a few hours before that she soon would feel proud over the fact that her father shared a hug with her, smiled her way and even gushed over her a little to his new, creepy and oddly pale friends, she would've bursted out into laughter and told whoever informed her of that that there was no way that she would feel that way.

But she did. Just a tad little.

Okay, maybe she did feel very proud.

But, after all, the only fatherly love that girl had ever gotten had been in small and not normal doses from people like Fleamont, Lyall, David and John. And they had been more like uncle-figures, in all honesty, so the bare minimum from her father felt like the whole world.

She didn't realise what was happening with her and her mind at the time, of course, because she was far too wrapped up in finally feeling like she was enough. Finally feeling like she was worth it, like she wasn't her father's stupid mistake and like he actually cared for her.

And in that moment, the first little moment of reassurance that she had ever gotten from him felt like enough to put away all the awful moments on a shelf, because she finally felt like a daughter to her father. Like her father was a father to her.

Like she was enough.

To put it plainly, as sad as it was, Claudia hadn't felt so proud and pleased in a very long time.

The other people there were of course her grandmother, stepmother, those two weird friends of her father's, as well as Nolan and his wife.

They were all seated on the two large brown couches that were placed across from one another in that large room, all of them sipping on some champagne since Charles wanted to celebrate Claudia's interview and what was to come with the book about him and his life.