The tour of the house was everything that Ford had been expecting, and the Muggles were going so over the top with this story that he couldn't help but smile every once in a while. Lestrange was doing a better job of keeping a neutral expression, but if the side glances the pair occasionally shared were any indication, he seemed to think this was as amusing as Ford did, so things were going swimmingly. And Ford hadn't done anything too obvious yet, and outed them as skeptics (or as wizards, for that matter). He was doing a fairly good job of looking sombre when the Muggles were paying attention, and the occasional comments he made were nothing if not appropriate to the setting.

Then Lestrange had to go and ask him about work, which was not something Ford could talk about while maintaining the cover that he was a Muggle who believed in the story of this particular haunted house. It was so ridiculous that at first he thought Lestrange must have done it on purpose, as a joke, but he couldn't recall if they'd ever talked about it before, so maybe it was a genuine question. If it was, though, how was he supposed to answer it around a bunch of Muggles?

"Oh, uhm," he said, buying himself a minute to think. "Not rude at all. I guess it never came up, did it? I work — in government," he said vaguely. The word Ministry was probably safe but he honestly didn't know enough about Muggle politics to say for sure, so best to avoid it just in case. "With... some of the..." Ghosts. Spirits. Banshees. Ghouls.

"Older residents of the county?" he concluded, wondering if Lestrange was following.