black coffee | remus lupin [2]

41. lupin cottage

｡･:*:･ﾟ★,｡･:*:･ﾟ☆

SHE WANTED TO RUB it off of her skin. She wanted to do it harshly so, so that her skin would turn red as it removed all the black.

Claudia had had the busiest week in forever. Sunday night had been spent in hell with the Dark Lord, Monday night had been spent at the Changs dealings with the Horcruxes, and Tuesday night had been spent babysitting Cho with Remus.

She had barely even had the time to process the Dark Mark that decorated her skin ever so involuntarily, and it seemed that the small little gap she had gotten in her schedule for herself that morning was the first time she could truly see it.

The first time she could truly see herself after getting it.

Claudia honestly couldn't even grasp how fucked up her entire life was. She had an entire list of awful experiences or anxious thoughts that pained her mind - a list so long that she couldn't even remember everything.

With everything from the fact that the night before she had babysat Cho with Remus and felt awfully at home, to the fact that she had a party to go to in two days and no proper costume, a mission to attend to in a week and a Death Eater meeting to attend in a week and two days, Claudia was not even sure what the hell to think, do, or say.

All she knew was that she couldn't let herself see that mark and that mark only when she looked in the mirror. She had to try to see her mum's face, those arms that could hold that sweet little child and those lips that had just recently kissed her favourite person in the whole wide world.

She had to see the beauty instead of the pain.

But it was so fucking hard.

She was, however, positively surprised to how well she had handled it all. Sure, she was in the middle of the worst fight she and Regulus had ever had, she was an emotional wreck who had let Remus kiss her and she had spent all night heartbroken over the fact that she would never get to have a kid with him, but even so she was strangely okay if you'd look at all the horrible things that kept happening to her.

And, to make things a little more bearable, she did have somewhere to be that day.

She was going to Lupin Cottage to see Hope and Lyall; something she had been dreaming of for over a year.

She figured it could put off all the bad thoughts for yet another day, and that was all she needed. A distraction from the fact that she was a Death Eater and a distraction from the fact that whatever her fate was, it probably wasn't going to be good.

It was a life that would end up with imprisonment either way - to get thrown in Azkaban or to stay a follower of the Dark Lord.

Or, it was a life that would end.

She had no other options to her future, she knew.

But Claudia was sick of feeling awful all the damn time, so she ignored the thoughts, concealed the Dark Mark, did her makeup and had a cup of tea.