He knew he ought to be worried on the young woman’s behalf, as any respectable gentleman should instinctively be, in the presence of anything unnatural or perilous, but oddly - awfully - Evander felt rather bolstered to not be alone in the presence of this. This...
“I believe,” he said to her sidelong, with a cautious air, as if somehow any movement might alter the vision in front of them - possibly for the worse - “it is a boggart we face.” Evander did not like the thought of boggarts primarily because they were creatures, thinking entities. A spell out of place, an improperly-cast hex, a broken rule... fine, no problem, merely an error to be righted; something that lived and changed and adapted? Why, it was horrifying in itself.
Admittedly, Evander also did not like the thought of this being a boggart’s doing purely because in pointing it out he was revealing his darkest fears to an utter stranger, and that was almost on par with living the fear out, in his case. It was a humiliating fear to have, failure. Shame. Rather pathetic, really. The only thing that would be more pathetic than her gleaning this from all the headlines around them was if he, a Ministry official, an educated man in - past? - the prime of his life, froze up and did nothing to rectify the situation.
(He did not know what her fear represented, exactly. But it certainly had an ominous air, as far as furniture ordinarily went.)
But he had his wand out and he had a NEWT in Defence Against the Dark Arts (though some lessons were long forgotten, at this point). And she had asked what they were to do. “And the traditional way to defeat a boggart, if I am not mistaken,” (though he would not have ventured anything if there were a real chance he was mistaken, thank you indeed!) he said slowly, out of the corner of his mouth, as though the boggart could hear them, “is to turn one’s fears into something funny.”
Evander did not add that, more than almost anything else in life, he was... well, woefully unequipped to find the funny side of things.
“I believe,” he said to her sidelong, with a cautious air, as if somehow any movement might alter the vision in front of them - possibly for the worse - “it is a boggart we face.” Evander did not like the thought of boggarts primarily because they were creatures, thinking entities. A spell out of place, an improperly-cast hex, a broken rule... fine, no problem, merely an error to be righted; something that lived and changed and adapted? Why, it was horrifying in itself.
Admittedly, Evander also did not like the thought of this being a boggart’s doing purely because in pointing it out he was revealing his darkest fears to an utter stranger, and that was almost on par with living the fear out, in his case. It was a humiliating fear to have, failure. Shame. Rather pathetic, really. The only thing that would be more pathetic than her gleaning this from all the headlines around them was if he, a Ministry official, an educated man in - past? - the prime of his life, froze up and did nothing to rectify the situation.
(He did not know what her fear represented, exactly. But it certainly had an ominous air, as far as furniture ordinarily went.)
But he had his wand out and he had a NEWT in Defence Against the Dark Arts (though some lessons were long forgotten, at this point). And she had asked what they were to do. “And the traditional way to defeat a boggart, if I am not mistaken,” (though he would not have ventured anything if there were a real chance he was mistaken, thank you indeed!) he said slowly, out of the corner of his mouth, as though the boggart could hear them, “is to turn one’s fears into something funny.”
Evander did not add that, more than almost anything else in life, he was... well, woefully unequipped to find the funny side of things.
