Black Rose [Regulus Black]

50 - robbery attempts & deathly captures

"I can't believe this is finally happening," Sirius rubbed his hands together gleefully, the expression on his face not unlike a child's before Christmas Day. "All those years of pranking at Hogwarts have come down to this moment, Moony."

"I know you think this is just another one of those pranks, but it's not. You could actually die."

"Exactly!"

"I'm ser- I'm not joking."

"I'm being Sirius too, Moony," Sirius pouted.

"Shut up, Sirius," Regulus replied. "Gringotts is surrounded with covert Death Eaters nowadays. This could very well be the last time you're seeing your friend, especially if you don't take this..."

"You're looking for a good synonym for seriously, aren't you?" Lupin asked him.

"Yes."

"I've been looking for eight years, champ. Good luck."

Alessandra emerged from the doorway, her hair pinned up in the tightest bun ever. "Barely a year knowing you and I'm already committing a crime. This is not what the nuns at the orphanage raised me to be."

"Yes, breaking into a bank is not very Christian of you," Lupin said. "That is why I think this is a bad idea."

"As opposed to waiting for Dumbledore to take action?" Regulus asked.

"No, he's right," Sirius said before Lupin could even say a word in protest. "Dumbledore will just sit still and wait for the right moment, but we need to act now. By the time Dumbledore makes his move, hundreds of others would've died, and the thing in the vault may have even been moved out."

Lupin threw up his hands, exasperated. "You don't even know what it is you're looking for. You keep calling it a 'thing'!"

"But we do know there's something."

"We should get going," Regulus said. "The goblins may be doing their rotation right about now."

Alessandra grabbed Regulus' hand and squeezed. "We'll be fine," she said slowly, as though trying to reassure him, when in reality, she was reassuring herself.

"We'll be fine," Regulus repeated, leaning forward to give her a chaste kiss on the lips.

"Would you like a goodbye kiss, Moony?" Sirius puckered his lips, and Regulus buried his face in Alessandra's shoulder, gagging.

⚜

"It tasted nasty then, and it tastes nasty now," Rabastan, no, Regulus grimaced, his hair now shorter and his face uglier (in Alessandra's entirely unbiased opinion). "Let's get going, the longer I spend as Lestrange, the more I feel like drowning myself."

"I second that," Sirius muttered as he slipped the Invisibility Cloak on to himself and Alessandra.

The first part of their heist (Sirius had begged for them to call it a heist) was fairly simple, thanks to nepotism - Rabastan happened to work at Gringotts. All they had to do was get a strand of his hair scanned, and he was in.

"Yay, nepotism," Sirius muttered as he and Alessandra trailed behind Regulus/Rabastan (she truly didn't know what to call him). "One would think that during a Wizarding War this place would be more secure."

"Don't even get me started," she whispered back. "You know, you can just walk into and out of Azkaban? No verification, nothing."

"You're joking. Just walk in and out?" There was now a hungry gleam in Sirius' grey eyes, a gleam Alessandra most certainly did not like. Thankfully, before he could ask any more questions, a nervous-looking, older man approached Regulus/Rabastan.