"Mer— goodness, no," Ford said, catching himself halfway through the word Merlin, which might have raised eyebrows. "I mean, not usually. I've had things go to — uh, court — a few times, and I'm rubbish at that. Too much pressure," he explained, with a smile.

But how to explain it? Lestrange didn't seem to have understood at all, so he needed to try a different tack. His next thought was to make a reference to one of the more well-known ghosts, like the ones at Hogwarts, but he wasn't sure how to go about that, either. He couldn't just throw out a name like Nearly Headless Nick and expect the Muggles to take it in stride. Maybe he could have name-dropped the Fat Friar, but pretended it was a pub, or something?

"It's more... Hmm," he said, musing over how to express this. It was not a difficulty he'd ever had before; usually when people asked what he did he could just say spirit division and their interest ended immediately. "Well, I mainly work with— people, but some of the other people in my department deal with... animals," he concluded, his tone turning up slightly at the end of his sentence as though it were a question.