black coffee | remus lupin [2]

96. birthday

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

CLAUDIA TURNED 21 ON THE 30th OF JANUARY. She had dreaded the day like never before, all because of her situation, being stuck there in woods with absolutely no idea of the future.

By now, they were staying at the edge of a forest, which was on top of a huge hill. The view from the opening of the tent was actually quite splendid, but Claudia spent most of her days tucked up inside with a patience that was soon to go away.

Claudia spent her birthday thinking about Remus, and Lily and all the people she'd usually surround herself with on a day like this one. It was Lily's 21st birthday as well on this day. Claudia wondered how she was going to celebrate with only James and their little boy, Harry.

During the day, Nicolas and Regulus had left the girl to herself in order to go to London to find some records of every witch and wizard born in the early 1900's so that they could figure out where Voldemort's mother - Merope Riddle - was living before she died.

Claudia was certain that the childhood home of Voldemort's mother would be a possible place for the Horcrux to be, so that's why they were trying to find Merope, and possibly even her parents' names, in order to figure out where they could search for the ring.

Once the boys returned, however, Claudia was displeased to find that they had made no special discovery of the exact house that they could go to in order to find the ring, simply because they had no idea what her surname was once she was born. They could only find a Merope Riddle, and that didn't exactly help. Without the surname, it would take them ages to find that girl's parents.

But they would try anyways.

It was already late by this point, so Claudia wasn't exactly expecting there to be any celebrations of her birthday whatsoever.

She was wrong about that, though.

The girl was focused on her knitting as she listened to a bunch of shuffling coming from the other room. All of a sudden, two quiet voices singing Happy Birthday was all she could hear. A small smile grew on the girl's face as the two boys entered the room and began singing more loudly and more confidently.

They looked like they were struggling to keep singing and smiling, but they still did it as they walked towards the girl, Regulus holding a pancake cake with pride.

She laughed as Regulus put the cake down in front of her, "You can stop singing now."

The boys both stopped immediately, Nicolas taking a deep breath out of relief.