Stan pulled his thin jacket tighter around him as he knocked on the door to Ford's cabin. For the fifth time.
"C-c-c-c'mon Ford…" he muttered, brushing snowflakes off his sleeves, but there was still no answer. This was dumb. Ford had to be expecting him, right? He'd only gotten Ford's owl a couple days ago, and Ford knew he'd never been any good at apparating. He couldn't have given up on him already, could he?
Stan knocked again, then tried the doorknob, just in case. Locked. Of course. It wasn't a magic lock, so alohomora would do the trick, but… Whatever. Not like there was any use standing around wishing he still had a wand.
Especially when he did have a lock pick.
"Ford! You here?" Stan called into the gloomy house, closing and locking the front door behind him. Something flickered at the edge of his vision, and he turned to see… a ghost? A ghost that looked like—
Stan's heart froze in his chest.
"Stanley!"
"Wha—no—St-Stanford?"
"What took you so long?!" the phantom demanded, "I waited and waited and now it's too late, Stanley, you understand?"
"No… No, Ford I, I came as fast as I could…"
"It's too late!"
"No!" His fist hit the wall, but he didn't notice the pain. "Ford, tell me what happened. W-we can fix this!"
"Fix this?" Ford crossed his transparent arms. "I don't think so, Stanley."
"At least…" Stan's voice cracked. "At least tell me where your body is."
"Why, so you can hide the evidence before you leave?"
"What? No! I… I'm not gonna leave ya, Ford."
"And why not? You think I want you here? After everything you've done?"
"Ford—"
"Well I don't! Really, Stanley, didn't I suffer enough at your hands in life? I think I've earned the right to rest in peace."
"Y-you don't mean that…"
"I do mean it. Get out!" Upon this shout, Ford's form flickered like an image on a worn-out film reel. Stan's stomach dropped. He knew what that meant.
He wasn't the best student back at Hogwarts, but he still remembered some of his classes, and Defense Against the Dark Arts had often been interesting enough to hold his attention. He knew a couple things about ghosts, and one of those things was how ghosts changed. How a ghost went from the harmless kind of thing you saw roaming the halls of Hogwarts to… the kind of thing you learned about in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Most ghosts looked about like they did in life. Sometimes, though, when a ghost was sad or angry enough and the source of their pain was close at hand, that pain would change them. It'd warp them into something way further from human than your typical spirit. They'd lose their shape, their voice, their character—everything they had that could tell you who they used to be. Ultimately they got all twisted into this ragged, eerie-looking, spectral menace straight out of a no-maj horror flick. These ghosts carried no trace of their original personalities. They were just these… things that all looked basically the same, like what you pictured when you tried to think of a "scary" ghost.
Ford's ghost was starting to look like an angry skeleton in a ragged cloak. It was spooky and… generic. Stan's eyes burned. If he didn't know better, he'd never be able to tell that was his brother.
"Stanley?"
Stan jumped and whirled around to see a cloaked figure lurking in the doorway.
"…Ford?" His eyes darted back and forth between the angry specter before the fireplace and the haggard figure in the doorway.
"Stan," said the one in the doorway, "What…?" His eyes landed on his ghostly double. "Oh for—how did you get out again?" He brandished his wand. "Riddikulus!" The ghost lost its skeletal shape and morphed into something rounder, friendlier, almost cartoon-y. Stan thought it was over, but then it turned on Ford and started changing shape again.
"Riddikulus!" Ford cried, flicking his wand firmly, but this time the creature didn't react. It continued its transformation into… a pyramid? Stan couldn't tell what it was going for, but whatever it was worked Ford into a panic:
"Riddikulus! Riddikulus! R-riddikulus!" His latest assaults had no effect. "Stanley, help me!"
"I don't have a—"
"Quickly!"
Ford reached into his cloak and whipped out a second wand. Keeping his eyes on the boggart, he flung it in Stan's direction. By some miracle Stan caught it, and brandished it awkwardly as he turned on the monster. The wand felt heavy and unbalanced in his hand.
The boggart looked like a giant corn chip. Stan would have to ask Ford what the heck it was supposed to be once this was over.
"Riddikulus!" Stan cried, waving the unfamiliar wand. The tip sparked a little, but otherwise nothing happened.
"Riddikulus!" he tried again. The wand didn't like him, and wielding it felt like trying to coax the last of the ketchup from a glass bottle. Winding up his arm as if about to deliver a knockout punch, he tried one more time:
"Riddikulus!"
This time the spell made it out of the wand. A split-second later the boggart's vague, triangular form was smothered in nacho cheese.
"What the…?" Ford's forehead wrinkled in confusion. Honestly, Stan found the look on his face a heck of a lot funnier than what he did to the boggart. He laughed.
The boggart shrank back from the sound of Stan's laughter. With a little chuckle of his own, Ford surged forward and kicked it into a closet. It banged on the door a couple times, and they watched apprehensively, gripping their wands. Soon it fell quiet, though, making no attempt to escape.
For a while the brothers stood there, catching their breath, both hesitant to break the silence. Eventually, Ford spoke:
"Ghosts, Stanley? Really?"
Stan crossed his arms. He didn't wanna talk through what his boggart really was. Instead he asked, "And what the heck was yours? A traffic cone?"
"It's… complicated. And I'm afraid there's no time to explain." Ford turned and swept through the doorway he'd come in through, beckoning Stan to follow. They wound up in a dark, cold basement. Wasn't this supposed to be the kind of place boggarts liked?
Ford explained the situation in a flurry of words that mostly went over Stan's head, and the whole time Stan had a bad thought he couldn't shake: Whatever weirdness Ford was working on down here was so creepy, it scared the boggart away. If things had gotten this bad already, maybe he was too late after all.
