Black Rose [Regulus Black]

33 - funny costumes & absurd plans

What. The. Fuck.

Regulus blinked, trying to make sense what was happening.

It did not help.

A little blonde girl holding some sort of stick bumped into his legs, and his eyes widened when she beamed up at him. She had on some sort of green knee-length dress and weird things that stuck out of her back, resembling wings but not quite.

"Trick or Treat?" she yelled, causing him to startle a little. He was completely struck dumb by that, because what the fuck?

The child's gaze stayed on him, expectant and curious, and he did not like it one bit. It made him nervous. His hand reached out to jiggle Alessandra's door handle desperately, the piece of metal making a little clicking sound but not giving way to open the door.

This reminded him of a situation he'd had with a Grindylow. The Grindylow was just as charming and just as confusing as this "child", and he needed to move away as soon as possible.

As though his darling girlfriend was able to sense his desperation through a thick slab of wood, she swung open the door, a wide smile on her face...

...and instead of feeling the familiar sense of comfort he was used to experiencing around her, his heartbeat skyrocketed and chills swept over him.

"What the fuck?" he whispered, ignoring the shriek the child beside him let out.

"Mommmmm! The scary man just used a bad word!"

"Don't swear in front of children!" Alessandra hissed, grabbing him with a taloned hand and tugging him inside. "Here sweetie, happy Halloween."

The girl was apparently mollified by the small sweets Alessandra plopped into her pumpkin (pumpkin??), and backed away, glaring at Regulus as she left. Alessandra beamed at her as she shut the door, and then rounded on Regulus, who did a double take upon seeing her again.

Alessandra was dressed in a flowy black dress that reached till her ankles, and a puffy red wig. Her eyes were lined with smudged eyeliner and red droplets eerily seemed to trickle from them. Her lips were tinted a sickly shade of blue and were those... bloodstains... on her dress?

"What. The. Fuck?" he gasped out, drawing his wand. "What's going on?"

"Jesus, calm down!" Alessandra snapped. "It's Halloween, not a terrorist attack!"

"Why are you dressed like that? Are you even Alessandra?" Reg demanded, his wand not wavering.

"Of course I am," she rolled her eyes. "You need to calm down."

"What is happening?!"

"It's Halloween..."

He wracked his brain, trying to understand the correlation between All Hallows' Eve and dress-up. "I don't get it," he mumbled, feeling stupid.

"Oh! I keep forgetting you haven't experienced enough in this world, sorry, I've seen more of you here than there, you know?" The confusion disappeared from her eyes, replaced with apology. "Children dress up on Halloween here and go from house to house for trick-or-treating, and people give them candy."

"But... why?"

"Honestly, I don't really know," she said thoughtfully. "I remember doing this from a very young age in the orphanage. Every year, this small group of friends would play the most absurd pranks during the week leading up to Halloween, and people would come by to give us candy, which was honestly so nice of them. We played dress-up too — we would go by this thrift store and mix and match the most absurd clothes to come up with something."