17th October, 1889 — Outside a stationery shop, Diagon Alley, for this

Evander had come out of a shop with a set of new inkpots, box under his arm, when, in the illuminated against the streetlamps in the evening, he saw a poster in the alley, a print of a Prophet front page. EVANDER DARROW, it blared, FIRED FROM MINISTRY OFFICE. Evander halted in place, gaping horribly. There was even a photograph of him beneath it.

He dropped the box of inkpots with a terrible crash that he scarcely heard. People were going to start gawking! How was he supposed to undo this? They hadn’t even told him yet! What was he going to do with himself now? Panic-stricken, Evander shot forwards to try and pull the Prophet page off the Alley wall, trying to decipher the small print.

He managed to tear it down, but it disappeared in his hands and when he looked up again the headline had changed. Red-faced and spluttering, he silently read the news. EVANDER DARROW DOGGED BY UNFORGETTABLE FAILURES.

It flashed again, new words appearing.

EVANDER DARROW: A WASTE OF SPACE, FRANKLY.

FIVE REASONS WHY EVANDER DARROW IS THE WORST.

How could this be -

EVANDER DARROW ACTUALLY DARES SHOW HIS FACE IN THE STREET.

He couldn’t just leave this here for people to read! Fumbling for his wand, Evander stumbled backwards until he was against the opposite wall of the narrow street, trying in terror to understand how his failures had become plastered out in the world for public consumption.

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One of Caroline’s best talents, or as her father would argue - most expensive habits,was finding reasons for new gowns. Since arriving in London she had enjoyed frequently the House of Lytton for new gowns. It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it and it was, in Caroline’s opinion, important to impress when people thought you were less than them. Thus with the cool weather settling in Caroline had decided she needed to order a new winter cloak.

Walking from the House of Lytton content with her purchases, Hope trailing beside her, Caroline watched the crowds. Evening had begun to fall and many would soon be expected home for supper with their families. With Shawn back in the States and Toni at a social obligation for the company this evening Caroline was quite the opposite. She had no desire to return to her quiet home with nothing to do.

A peculiar scene drew her attention. A man stood by a wall of plastered newspapers,, his wand drawn. Never one to miss a bit of news of gossip, Caroline stepped forward to see exactly what the commotion was. The closer she got to the man, the more she realized it was his face echoed back at them from the newspapers.

“Excuse me, sir-” Caroline started, unsure entirely what her purpose was just yet begun filling her evening with something to do. But her words halted as the scene changed.

The newspapers shimmered for a moment then suddenly a set of living room chairs and coffee table appeared before the wall. Most strange. But what was stranger was the tea set peeked through piles of the papers that had the same headlines as the ones on the wall. Caroline stopped, wary, as she realized that the armrests of the chairs had straps on them and locks. Her mouth grew dry. It was like something out her worst imaginations. Down to the very patterns of faded fabric she always imagined on the armchairs.

“Sir?” What kind of trick was this man playing on her? What type of twisted game had she stumbled upon? Her green eyes flickered toward him with a hint of anger playing across her face.

  

Evander was too transfixed in horror by the newspapers to register the witness to it until she got close enough to speak, and even then he only tore his eyes away for a split-second. He didn’t know how he was going to explain any of it to a bystander - almost wanted to beg her not to read them - but if he were such a public failure as this, then the cat was possibly already out of the bag. (The cat was long gone, in fact, if the Daily Prophet had had the time to write quite so many articles as this.)

There was something off about the logic of this - the changing faces of the newspaper headlines, their sudden and mysterious appearance in Diagon Alley (he had read the newspaper this morning, hadn’t he? Just like he did every day -) but it didn’t quite settle into place until he looked back and found the scene changed anew. The newspapers were still looming, but now there was parlour furniture about, out in the street before them, and what was even more odd were the intimidating locks and straps on them. Like no chairs he had ever seen before, save in the bowels of the Ministry courtrooms, but those were not armchairs by any measure.

And nothing explained their presence here. They were almost sinister looking -

Evander glanced at the woman again, struck by her youth and the arrested expression on her face. “This is not my doing, ma’am, I’ve no notion what...” He trailed off, still gripping his wand dumbly, as another thought clicked into place in his mind, contradicting his words even as he said them. He knew what this must be.

If only knowing was quite the same as dispelling it.

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If the man had looked any less frightened himself Caroline would have been apt to not believe his words. But a hint of panic played across his features in way she doubted a common street shuckster’s would have if trying to capture her in a trick of their’s. However, if it wasn’t the man causing this, what was it?

His words trailed off and Caroline looked at it, wondering if he had indeed identified whatever tasteless spell this was. Afterall he did seem like he was rather capable of sorting out this mess.

Eyeing the living room set that seemed to be growing ever closer to its mates as an endless flow of newspapers piled onto it, Caroline couldn’t help the growing alarm that the chair’s holds might grab her. She took a step backward, warily, trying to think back on her own studies. They had been some time ago…

Looking back at the gentleman and his wand she reached into her purse for her own. “Any ideas how we might rid ourselves of this mess?” She asked, a tinge of worry unbidden in her tone. The last thing she needed to deal with now was a scene on the street. Why had she even come over here?

  

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.

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Caroline had read about boggarts in her schooling, although practical application of getting rid of them had never been practiced. In theory she knew what to do, but it had been years since she had learned such lessons and they had dimmed with time. Indeed, she had rather hoped never to find out what exactly her boggart would turn into. Yet here she was, faced with it and all she could think was that it was, essentially quite ridiculous in itself the scene the confused boggart was attempting to display.

"That shouldn't be too terrible." Caroline's tone might have been a bit more nonchalant had the man next her not looked like the newspapers piling up on top of the cushions of the couch would leap up and eat him.

Despite that it appeared that it would take more than thoughts but a spell, one the man seemed quite ready to cast. She gave him an encouraging smile as he readied himself.

  

“The incantation is riddikulus,” Evander continued, because concentrating on his explanation was the only thing giving him the faintest vestige of calmness. Reason and logic coupled with his relief at coming across as capable - the young lady sounded at least partially reassured - could only shelter him for so long, though, because, even with her encouragement and his wand aloft, he couldn’t dredge up the presence of mind to follow through and banish it.

This shouldn’t be so terrible. He was a grown man, surely well past petty personal fears. And the boggart - well, it must be already confused, caught between the both of their fears, but it would not be fully dispelled without laughter, and somehow the sight had almost the effect of a dementor on him: his face was ashen white, frozen by the sense of doom, unable to find the doorway out of it.

In the end, he finally tore his gaze from the boggart’s scene for a moment, latching onto the young woman’s coaxing smile but unable to quite return one of his own. Feeling sure she would see the truth in his eyes anyway, Evander gave in and confessed it, his voice cracking slightly: “I’m afraid I -  I can’t - think of anything remotely funny -” What would make him laugh now, amidst the panic, when he could so rarely drum up confident laughter at the best of times? What would she do, with her sinister armchairs? What exactly could he make of the dreaded newspapers?

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Caroline nodded at his explanation, the incantation sounding farmiliar from lessons long ago. She repeated it in her mind, as she remembered being told to picture the boggart as something funny.

Her mind began turning as newspapers shot out the spout of the tea kettle. It almost reminded her of canons on the fourth of July, of fireworks exploding in shimmering sparkling lights.

The man, however, did not seem to think this. His frightened (at this point it was the only word she could think for it) gaze meeting her own, his admission on his lips. He seemed capable and the admission of defeat surprised Caroline. Perhaps it was because the boggart had cornered him first and Caroline had stumbled across the scene when the creature was already confused, but she was quite certain she could get them out of this predicament.

With a confident nod, Caroline turned back to the living room set. Focusing on the newspapers rather than the threatening chairs."Riddikulus!" The newspapers spitting out of the spout began to shoot further into the sky and explode into fireworks, shimmering in cascades of bright colors.

  

He wouldn’t have been surprised, to be perfectly frank, if she had laughed at him. Oh, it did sound remarkably pathetic, even before one found themselves in plain sight of this - boggart. He had done similarly badly against one back in school (the only time he could recall dealing with one), and though it had since faded from his memory, this brought back the one vexing black mark on the rest of his Defence Against the Dark Arts scores.

The stranger had not taken it upon herself to laugh (yet, to his face), but instead had had to take the situation into her own hands, and succeeded in casting the spell. Evander stared as her imagination took effect, wrangling the newspaper chaos into chaos of a different kind. He did not know what had sparked the thought of it, but - well - it would certainly do. Quite in spite of himself, Evander let out a bark of laughter as the first firework shot up from the teapot - though perhaps more in startled surprise than enjoyment just yet.

The boggart must be startled too, at this attack, for the fireworks kept popping. He supposed it was only a side-effect, but the distraction of it did save him from continuing to dwell on the finer details of the newspaper horrorshow. And perhaps at last he might lend a hand and be useful, instead of a complete codfish. “Riddikulus!” He echoed, finding a firmer voice than he’d only a moment ago, and watching as the newspapers fizzed up into more flares, the one on the wall becoming a spinning catherine-wheel. As for the armchairs, Evander concentrated on them and pictured the pillows popping in a similar fashion, finding a terribly odd and relieving sense of satisfaction when the back cushion of the armchair exploded into a firework of feathers. Odd, you see, because he had never considered that destroying things to the rhythm of ear-bursting combustions in the sky might be so satisfying an endeavour. It turned out it rather was. And, indeed - to the boggart’s chagrin, finally, and not his own - he found himself on the cusp of another laugh.

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The effect of the fireworks elicited a giggle from Caroline. The idea of a teapot behaving such at a stuffy tea amused Caroline enough to put a smile on her face, but not enough to escape the lingering concerns of the scene as a whole. Beside her the man’s laugh was more a snort of surprise than anything. But at least he had the fortitude to cast an enchantment of his own.

Suddenly feathers from the chairs rained down on the street around them. Some even catching fire from the newspaper fireworks. The whole scene was chaos. And Caroline - well she was laughing. She couldn’t help it. How could she fear something so completely and utterly ridiculous.

The scene swirled in on itself and disappeared altogether, from the corner of Caroline’s eye she saw the dark thing slinking down the alley and disappearing out of sight,

“Thank you, Mister - ” She didn’t know his name, but she smiled at him nonetheless, even giving him a small curtsey.

  

He echoed her laugh, quite nonplussed at how liberating it was to make such a mess on purpose. Thankfully, still, the mess was not to be left as evidence forever: once their laughter had vanquished the boggart, the creature’s scene dissipated with it.

It was dreadful how ridiculous one’s own fears looked from the other side.

“Darrow, Evander Darrow, at your service,” Evander finished (wishing he did not have to stake a name to his identity, but hardly able to lie about it now, in case she’d seen his surname printed on those newspapers). She had curtseyed quite politely though, and smiled so charmingly, that he felt yet more a fool for what she had been witness to - but nevertheless he inclined his head back in a formal bow, hoping his gratitude came across sincerely. He confessed as much to her, wondering her name... and also, anxiously, whether she would use this as a diverting story to other people later. (He sorely hoped not.) “Though I fear it is you I should be thanking. The fireworks were rather a - clever thought.”

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" A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Darrow." Caroline replied with a charming smile.

Oddly, having defeated a boggart together Caroline felt a comradery with this stranger, even if he hadnt been able to think of a spell at first. After all he had been the one to rid them of the creature in the end. "I can hardly take all the credit."

Before Caroline could say more Hope beckoned to her. "Miss, we are expected home."

"You will have to excuse me." With that Caroline took her leave of the scene.