Raven | 𝘙𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘭𝘶𝘴 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬

Chapter 83

Regulus returned back to his own house for the rest of the night, promising Alexandra that he would come back the next day, so they could meet up again.

       Alexandra didn't sleep the entire night and kept awake, going through her plan a hundred times, over and over again. It had to be flawless. It had to work.

      The next day, as she had planned, Alexandra asked Edna to make her Cullen Skink, which was a traditional Scottish food, knowing that Edna would go all the way with Floo Network to provide the best for her, as a small way to make it up to Alexandra for saving her life. This meant that Edna would be away for long hours, leaving the house empty.

As promised, Regulus showed up that evening, looking distressed as he walked into the house, joining Alexandra in the living room.

"I found something," said Alexandra before even greeting him, taking out a thick book from the table before the couch, opening it up to a page she had marked, with four pictures inside it.

"What is this?" Regulus asked curiously, sitting beside her on the couch.

"It's an old history book, about the Hogwarts' founders," she explained, showing him the pictures. "These are the most well-known objects that belonged to the founders, but no one knows where any of them are now; the sword of Godric Gryffindor, the cup of Helga Hufflepuff, the diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, and this."

She then pointed at the fourth picture, which was a locket exactly like how Kreacher had described it, with a snake carved upon it.

"The locket of Salazar Slytherin," said Regulus in a mutter, staring down at the picture. "This is what the Dark Lord has hidden in the cave. This must be the object he had chosen as his Horcrux."

"Precisely." Alexandra nodded, putting the book aside.

But what caught Regulus off guard was when Alexandra dug into her pocket and took out a locket, somewhat identical to the one in the picture.

"Hang on! Where did you get that? I thought we were using a random locket —"

"I already had a simple locket of my own, so I spent most of last night awake, trying to use as many transfiguration spells I knew on it to make it look like the one in the picture, so we can replace it with the real Slytherin locket," she explained. "The later the Dark Lord finds out that his locket is missing, the more time we have to destroy it and to leave without being suspected."

Regulus nodded, pursing his lips together. He then fished into his cloak's pocket, take out a large glass jar, which contained a dark green liquid inside it.

"This is called the Emerald Potion, or most commonly known as the Drink of Despair. From what Kreacher had described what he had seen in the basin, I guessed that this was the Potion the Dark Lord had used," said Regulus.

      Alexandra frowned. "But where did you get that?"

      "Just bought it. From Borgin and Burkes," he explained. "After we've replaced the lockets, we can pour this potion back into the basin, to make it harder to realize that the real locket is missing."

"So... let's go through the plan one last time, shall we?" said Alexandra after a long pause, avoiding his eyes.

Regulus nodded. "We'll ask Kreacher to take us to the cave. We'll travel across the lake, like he said, and get ourselves to the basin. One of us will drink the potion inside it to be able to empty it, we'll switch the lockets and fill it up with the new potion, and Kreacher will get us out of there."