Ford wrinkled his nose at the question. "Well, I've heard a bit — but I don't imagine I'll tell it half so... er, theatrically as they would tell it if we waited until we were there," he pointed out. He did not expect it to actually be haunted, after all, so was not putting much stock in the story. Even if it was haunted, the Muggles probably had the story all wrong. They had a habit of mistaking banshees and ghouls and things for ghosts, and thereby attaching some phony story to them to explain their origin, when in reality banshees had never been human in the first place.

He probably ought to have waited and let the staff at the manor tell the story, so that Lestrange could have the full experience, but he'd asked and they still had half a glass of wine to get through before they left, and they had to talk about something.

"So it's — allegedly, anyway — supposed to be this family in like, the late eighteenth century. So around a hundred years? But there's like five of them, I think, and they all died on the property and all in different ways. Little girl drowned in the garden fountain when the nurse wasn't watching, then the nurse got chased off by the mother and... died in the woods, somehow, I think," he said with a shrug. "Eaten by wolves? I don't know. They're very dramatic, Muggles."