Closed hard to laugh it off

[Lumos Walden-Cade]

Lumos stood outside her office, leaning against the wall with his hands folded in his lap, still trying to process through everything that had just happened. He kept seeing it flashing in his mind - him beside Eden - pale, quiet, like a ghost. It had been almost a ghostly image, he thought, but he couldn’t be sure what it had been about. Was his mother worried something would happen to the pair of them together? Did she not trust him with his sister? Was she worried he would do something to Eden? He didn’t think that was the case, Eden was his sister and she was his mum, she knew he wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone in his family, but he might step in front of something to shield Eden, is that what she worried about? That he would put himself at risk for her? Well, he would shield any of his family - even Veronica even though she was annoying. He loved his family, he never wanted anything to happen to it. He’d known boggarts could be cruel, but that was more than he’d expected.​

 

[Professor Geovanna Adler-Cade]

It was difficult to be in an office that wasn't hers. That was probably the most difficult part of all of this, while working at Hogwarts. This room was personal to a man who wasn't here, and Geo wanted to make sure she didn't disrupt it while she was here.

She'd been expecting a few students after her most recent Defense lesson, but perhaps she was expecting to see Lumos most of all. The professor hadn't known what her boggart was before it had stepped out of the wardrobe in front of the students, but she had no doubt the Slytherin would have questions. That was why when she pulled it open and saw the blonde standing outside waiting to talk to her, she was hardly surprised. "Do you want to come in?" she asked, giving him the chance to speak to her in private.

 

[Lumos Walden-Cade]

Lumos looked up at his Professor mum when she spoke and he nodded, his swirling thoughts taking a back seat as he said, “yeah,” softly and then stepped into the office. It was weird, talking to his mum in a space that wasn’t theirs. Whenever he spoke to her at home, they had all the many places they could have sat, in his room, in the kitchen, the living room, outside under Lumos’ favourite tree, in her and Dad’s big comfy bed. Here it felt different, and he knew it was because she was only temporary for now, but it didn’t help to put him at ease, almost like Professor Waldgrave was just going to show up at any minute to tell him off for something, or whatever. He shook his head, deciding not to comment on it because it wasn’t important right now. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hang around I just…” He wondered how Nox was feeling about it, but it wasn’t him that was in the cupboard with Eden. It was Lumos. “I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to step out of there, but… I’m not sure I was expecting me and Eden.”​

 

[Professor Geovanna Adler-Cade]

Geo took a seat on the corner of her desk, watching her son for a moment as he tried to put his thoughts into words. He hadn't been expecting to see himself, although that also wasn't a surprise for Geo. "I didn't know you two were going to step out either. I haven't faced a Boggart for years," she told him. The last time she had was probably before Eden had even been born, and it was natural for fears to change in time. "How do you feel about your classmates witnessing it?" she asked. Perhaps it would have been different if Lumos had seen it on his own, but Geo could understand it would be different and likely more difficult to consider that his own friends and people he knew, had seen him in ghost form too.

 

[Lumos Walden-Cade]

In truth Lumos wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing it, and he still wasn’t sure what was going to come out at him. He felt like kids shouldn’t know their parents worry that much about them, and yet somehow he hadn’t expected to see Eden and himself. Maybe the babies. She wasn’t sure why his mum would worry about him and he wondered if his other siblings would walk out at different times too. He hadn’t thought about everyone else seeing it really, at least, not until she said it anyway. “I don’t know if they would have understood it... but it made me feel weird, knowing that everything you’ve seen was nothing in comparison to the idea of something happening to one of us kids,” he said, thinking maybe that was how he should be interpreting everything. “I thought maybe there’d be a dark wizard, or maybe a giant spider or fire… a wolf, a dragon, anything else really, not… Maybe even dad dying, I thought - I think all my friends know you were an Auror, you and Dad, and I worry sometimes that they won’t think it’s a hard profession.” He thought sometimes that Nox would want to be an Auror, or maybe Bailey - Lumos wasn’t sure he wanted his siblings to be Aurors. He had two parents as Aurors, they all knew what the job was like. He was rambling now - he didn’t really know what to think. “I don’t know how I feel about any of it honestly.”​