House: Gryffindor

Position: HoH

Category: Short

Prompt: "Literally everything about this is illegal."

Word Count (excluding header and AN): 697

Beta: Shay

AN: In canon, Lavender is either killed outright during the battle or severely injured by Greyback. This story deviates from that. I hope you enjoy.

Lavender casually looked around the elaborate lobby of Gringotts. She spotted enough desks for twelve goblins to work, but there were only three goblins present. There were also two security wizards guarding the walkway to the carts.

She had been visiting the Gringotts lobby on random days over the past few months to watch the people coming and going. She determined when the most opportune time to put their plan into action was. Tuesdays at 10:30 seemed to be the quietest time at the bank.

It was currently 9:45, and she needed to dodge down Knockturn Alley to meet her partner.

Hustling out of the bank, she bumped into a tall man that she vaguely recognized as someone she'd seen around Hogwarts, but not another student. The man grunted at her when she blew past without an apology.

She wove through Diagon Alley and rounded the corner. Instantly, she found herself pushed into a wall.

"You're late," snarled her partner.

Lavender gulped. Although she'd sought out her partner following the Battle of Hogwarts, he still scared the hell out of her.

"I'm sorry, Fenrir. I just wanted to make sure that everything was as it should be. Literally everything about this is illegal. I'm nervous."

"I've told you time and again, it's only illegal if you get caught."

Yes, he'd told her that before.

After the Battle, Lavender had woken up in a stupor in a room full of corpses. Some had been her friends and other had been her foes. But now, they were all unified in death.

Her stomach had immediately rolled at the stench of decay. The smell was nauseating and yet somehow appetizing. She needed answers and she suspected that only one person could give them to her.

It took her almost a month to find Fenrir Greyback. She wasn't the only one trying to track him down, so he'd made himself scarce. But her newly heightened senses, in particular her keen sense of smell, allowed her to locate him.

He took one look at her and started planning. He was a wanted criminal and was easily recognizable from the wanted posters that plastered the walls of the Wizarding World. But she was presumed dead and could blend in well enough as an average witch.

She went along with his plans and executed his schemes because he allowed her to stay with him. There was nowhere else for her to go. Not now that scars marred for flesh and made her nearly unrecognizable to anyone who might have known her before.

"You promise that this is the last job I'll have to do?" she asked. "Then we'll have enough money to finally flee the country. We can move to Europe or maybe America and be able to live out in the open."

"I said it would be, didn't I?" he snapped.

Yes, he had said that. Just like he'd said it after they finished robbing the Gringotts branch office in Hogsmeade last year.

But she wanted to believe him, because somewhere along the line he'd become more than just her partner in crime. He'd become her only friend; her partner in life.

Her alarm signaled that it was 10:30 and time to sneak into the vaults. She lowered her head and casually walked back into Gringotts. Raising her head to scan the room for goblins, she was startled to find dozens of wands pointed at her.

"Lavender?" asked a voice she never expected to hear again.

"Hello, Ron." Her shoulders sagged. She knew that she was caught.

"Ms. Brown, you are under arrest for attempted robbery," said the man who she had bumped into when she left Gringotts nearly an hour before. She recognized him as Kingsley Shacklebolt while he bound her hands together with his wand and recited her rights.

He marched her out of the bank with a team of Aurors forming a perimeter. She felt eyes following her and glanced up to meet the stare of Fenrir Greyback. She could hear his mocking voice in her mind. 'It's only illegal if you get caught.' She was caught and he was free. Where was the justice in that?