"DO YOU RECKON she's listening to them?" Peter Pettigrew curiously asked his three best friends from the Gryffindor table, eyeing a specific girl who was sat at the blue and bronze table a few yards away from the group of boys - the so-called Marauders.

"Who?" James Potter asked his friend as he continued to shove some mashed potatoes into his mouth.

"That Ravenclaw, Maple," Peter said as he realised that he didn't even know her first name.

Everyone at Hogwarts, except for a couple of people, called the girl Maple instead of her first name for, well, unknown reasons. She didn't really mind though, as her first name meant "lame" in Latin; and Claudia was determined that she was not a lame person.

Another one of her dumb father's ideas most likely, since he didn't even manage to get a son out of the biggest mistake he had made in his life. The man most likely channeled his inner hatred for her through her name, and her mother was most likely blinded by her love for the name.

"I dunno Wormtail, why do you ask?" Sirius Black asked his friend as he wore a suspicious look on his face, his grey eyes practically drilling holes into Peter's skin as the blonde boy coughed nervously.

"Just... curious," the blonde boy replied. That was not a lie, he was curious.

Peter had recently been potions partners with the Ravenclaw, whom he had a difficult time to understand. For some reason the girl had caught his attention ever since then, the way she was reserved and distracted one minute and cool and sassy the next. He couldn't quite place her out, something that annoyed him more than it should have.

"Oh, does Wormy have a little crush?" Sirius teased with a smirk, as Peter blushed furiously.

"Do not!" He exclaimed, much to nervously for it to come across as truthful.

"You do!" James joined in on the teasing, "Wormtail is in loveeeee!" He sang.

"I am not, honestly please just stop. I was just curious about her."

"Curious, aye?" Sirius smirked, James doing the same from the other side of the table as he grabbed a roll of bread and threw it towards Claudia. The bread roll hit her back, and she turned around due to the sudden commotion as James tried to speak:

"Hey, Wormtail here ha-" James yelled but was interrupted by Peter, who smashed his hand against James' mouth to make him stop talking. Claudia only looked confused as she gave James a quick glare for hitting her with a bread roll. She decided that he probably missed his target and got her by accident. She then turned back to her book and pancakes covered in golden syrup, her specialties in life.

"Stop it James!" Peter hushed angrily at his friend, who knew just the way to get out of his grip.

"Uh, did you just lick me?!" Peter said in a disgusted tone as his hand flew back down to his lap, his other hand grabbing a napkin to dry it off as James and Sirius snickered.

"So, where did all of this come from, Wormtail?" Sirius asked.

"I told you it's nothing, I don't even know her name for crying out loud!"

"Her name is Claudia," Remus Lupin spoke up for the first time during the entire dinner, not even looking up from his book.

All three heads turned towards their fourth friend due to him speaking out of nowhere.

"How do you know that?" Peter asked.

"She's a prefect," Remus shrugged as he looked up from his book, his finger left on the last word he read so he wouldn't get lost by the distraction. "She was in the carriage on the first day this year."

"But Moony, there are like twenty-something prefects, how do you know her name specifically?" James smirked.

"Well, she is in the same year as us, so maybe that's why," Remus said bluntly, turning his attention back to his book.

"Yeah, maybe that's why," James said, still a small smirk on his face.

•••

A few yards away from the Marauders, Claudia was sat with her two best friends, Betty Arnaud and Inez Harper. The three girls where in a "heated" discussion over the sudden attention Claudia had received from the group of, apparently rather popular, Gryffindor boys.

"I'm telling you it was on accident! I've never even spoken to any of them, only Peter Pettigrew one time!" Claudia whisper-shouted, feeling very done with the whole conversation.

"Well there you have it, Peter Pettigrew has a crush on you Claudia!" Betty exclaimed with a bright smile.

"Did I mention we spoke one time? There is no way he has a crush on me! And besides, what is so incredible about getting a bread roll thrown on your back by the boy that won't leave Lily alone?" She pointed out as she recalled James Potter's obsession with her friend Lily Evans.

"Claudia, they're the Marauders! Everybody knows who they are, and everyone would kill to have one of them throw bread at them!" Inez reminded her as she rolled her eyes.

"But why? What's so special about them? I only see the boy who keeps pestering Lily, the one whose last name is Black, some random lad with brown hair and a very nice boy that I've spoken to one time!"

"You really need to get your nose out of all of those books!" Inez exclaimed sarcastically. "The boy who keeps "pestering" Lily is called James Potter, the boy with the last name Black is called Sirius, and the "random lad with brown hair" is Remus Lupin. Did you honestly not know this?" Inez asked her oblivious friend.

"Of course I did," Claudia lied, much to obviously. She did know all of their last names, but she had a hard time to recall all of their first names, despite them being the most popular boys at school. Claudia's friends and her teachers always called them their last names, and they called each other weird nicknames, so their first names had over time simply just slipped her mind. She did however make a mental note to remember all of them.

James, Sirius and Remus.

"You definitely didn't!" Betty laughed, which caused Claudia to snort.

"Yeah, no I didn't," she laughed as her best friends joined in.

"Okay, I'm going to go to the library now, are you done with your shaming?" Claudia  asked her friends with a smile as she picked up her bag and placed her book inside of it.

"Yeah, I think we're done darling," Inez said in an even more posh accent, and then blew the girl a kiss as she started to walk off.

"Don't be too late!" Betty yelled after her, also blowing a kiss to which Claudia did the same as she left the Great Hall.

"Ah, Wormtail's girl just left the hall," Sirius sighed dramatically.

"Shut it," Peter muttered.

"How about we start a make-Maple-fall-in-love-with-Wormtail mission lads!" James exclaimed as if he just had the best idea ever. Peter rolled his eyes and placed his head in his hands as he shook it.

"How about we stop meddling with innocent people's business lads," Remus said in a blunt tone.

"Oh, looks like you've got some competition for Maple there Wormtail," James snickered as he patted the blonde on his back.

Remus only rolled his eyes and sighed, very loudly, as he shut his book and stood up. "I'm going to the library, see you gits later."

"Don't be too late smartie!" Sirius yelled after him.

•••

Claudia arrived at the library at seven P.M sharp considering she knew just when Madame Pince was off either cleaning or organising the restricted section of the library - the one that was the furthest away from the muggle books.

She was there in the search of a specific book called "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier, her next read off the list she had created a few months ago.

"The list" was a list of books that she knew had stood on her aunt's shelves at her house. Since she never got the chance to finish reading all of them, she made a list and tried to read all of them while she was at Hogwarts.

At home, where she lived with her father and his family, she had no chance of reading muggle books. It was simply too dangerous of her to do so.

So she sticked to reading at Hogwarts. There was no denying that the girl was immensely grateful for the fact that Dumbledore had installed a muggle section in the library many years ago, much to many parents and students' dislike. Practically nobody loaned books of off those shelves, which meant that Claudia knew that only the best people did. The people that were accepting of muggles, and did not share the beliefs that had grown more and more common over the recent years. The beliefs that the people she lived with had.

Claudia did however have a specific way of reading books. And that specific way involved doing something that wasn't approved by Madame Pince, the librarian.

So, Claudia did what she had to do as she found "Rebecca" on one of the shelves - she grabbed it and pointed her wand towards it as she uttered "liber liberate", which let out a small black spark from the book. Then, she put the book in her bag straight away, looking around in an attempt to make sure that no one had seen what she had done.

However, this time somebody had seen what she had done.

It was Remus Lupin.

Remus looked confusedly at the girl in front of him, who was currently planning out a list of excuses to use for her action of what seemed to be stealing. She wouldn't call it stealing though, more like an act of not allowed borrowing.

"What are you doing?" Remus asked the girl suspiciously walking closer to her, as she picked the book right back up from her bag when he started to speak.

"Nothing." She said awkwardly, shifting her weight with her feet.

"What's that?" He asked nodding to the book.

"A book?" She said, though it sounded more like a question than a statement. She wiggled it a little back and forth with her hands. "Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. You see?"

Remus laughed a little before he spoke again:

"If I were correct I'd say you were in the middle of stealing that book, and that is something I do not take lightly as a prefect, Maple."

"Well, Lupin, I don't know if you've forgotten but I'm a prefect as well," she smiled as she pointed to her badge that was stuck to her Ravenclaw robes.

Remus cursed himself internally for forgetting something he already knew of. He was also quite impressed that she knew his name. She just didn't seem like the type of person to care about people that she didn't know, he figured.

"So I assume that you can't really do anything about this, because I'm not really doing anything wrong if I'm going to return the book as soon as possible, which I haven't even gotten the chance to loan yet due to your interruption."

"Um, well I guess you're right." Remus said as he rubbed his neck nervously.

"I guess so," she smiled and walked over to pretend to write down her name on the list of loaned books. Remus wouldn't know that she didn't actually put it down, she figured.

Well, she wasn't right about that.

As soon as the girl had left the library, Remus walked right over to the list to find no trace of her name, nor the book she had in her hands as she left.

This girl had now sparked some curiosity for more than one Marauder.

___________________________________