Darkness is a harsh term don't you think? [Emily]

As his involvement with the organization became more and more demanding, Ashley found that he had less time for his freelance pest control work, something that was good and bad but for different reasons. Ashley loved the big hunts, the long weeks and the adrenaline. He loved helping people. He loved the adventure. Even so, it was often a thankless job. It was messy, and he usually went home alone, brooding, about something that he wished he could have done better. He always wondered what he could have changed to hurt one less person or save one last life. If it was a job for the organization it came with a philosophy lesson that he still wasn't ready for, months down the road.

Pest control was different. It was easier in a lot of ways. The job was routine, so to speak, and he knew how to handle the creatures. The potential danger was low, and he usually got personally thanked for his work, with both praise and money. He couldn't do it forever, though. He wasn't paid nearly enough to make ends meet, and he always seemed to cut his clients deals on their rates if they smiled widely enough at him. He couldn't bring himself to take from someone that had lost something, or was truly grateful, regardless of whether or not that was a good business practice.

He had almost ignored the letter. His father had written to him about a pack of grindylows in South Africa that he really wanted a hand with, and Ashley had been really tempted to up and leave to give his dad a hand. The years had been kind on their relationship. Ashley had trouble thinking of his dad as a true father figure, despite it all, but he respected the man for what he did and loved him like as though he was an older brother, an uncle, or something in-between. Still, there was something about the curled, feminine handwriting on the bone-colored parchment envelope that gave Ashley pause. He never could turn down a damsel in distress, no matter the circumstances.

She had written to him about a boggart inside her armoire. That seemed to be a fairly common thing to find, and awful to handle if you were unprepared. Ashley had banished enough boggarts in his time to know that was easier said than done. They couldn't do much harm in and of themselves, but they could be an emotional roller-coaster. Even Ashley still struggled in the face of his deepest fears. He couldn't leave the poor girl alone to handle the boogeyman all alone. He could make a quick trip there and still be down in South Africa in no time...

He gathered his supplies, sent a quick reply back with the owl, put on his work boots, and flew to the address that she'd given him, in a small  wizarding apartment complex in Aberdeen, Scotland. The place was nice. It was the kind of cozy place that he would have liked to live in if he stayed in one place long enough to call anywhere home. He checked his watch to make sure that he wasn't too late before rapping thrice on the door.

When it opened, he found himself face to face with a pretty brunette. He smiled politely at her and extended a hand. “Ashley Morigan at your service, ma'am. I hear a boggart's been giving you some trouble?”

@Emily Fleming

Emily's head was spinning, her thoughts were fuzzy, her vision blurred. Sure, she'd had to deal with an odd boggart or two in classes, but she'd never been face-to-face with one in such close quarters. Never truly understood how terrifying they could really be, how jarring and cynical. There was enough of that circling around in her own thoughts -- the last thing the witch needed was to be faced with a very real materialization of her worst nightmare. Her mother was dead, and had been for an arguably long time now, but that was exactly what made the scene so perfectly relevant every time she opened her armoire and it cropped up again, rearing its ugly head and completely incapacitating her ability to fight back. Her memory of her mother was the only thing she had left of her; the only thing that was still pristine and wholesome... pure.

That's why she'd decided to open up some forgotten-about catalogue lying underneath all the ones she actually paid attention to to frantically write the first pest-control specialist on the list. That line of work was underappreciated, she'd decided. This whole ordeal, the turning upside-down of her home, the only place she really ever felt safe -- besides the bookstore, and she couldn't be there all the time, it was sad -- had proved as much. Boggarts weren't pests. Not by any means. They were monsters.

She sat idly by on the sofa, leg twitching restlessly and shaking, slender hand clutching the reply he'd written rather promptly for dear life. Emily heard a thump come from her bedroom and her whole body seized, a strangled noise threatening to escape the confines of her chest while her eyes squeezed shut. Being scared wasn't a feeling she was too fond of. It made her feel small, and she'd spent enough time feeling small in her life already. Em wasn't too sure how much time had passed since she'd received his reply; she was only sure that it had felt like too long.

Words couldn't explain the sense of overwhelming relief she felt when he knocked on the door and she shot up immediately, hurrying to the door to whip it open. She didn't even attempt to smile at him, just gestured with her hand after she shook his extended one to allow him inside and promptly shut the door behind them. "Thank you for coming on such short notice. I ignored it for awhile, but it's just gotten... much worse in a short period of time."

Another rattle and some indistinct shrieking came from her bedroom and she waved toward its open doorway, attempting to no successful avail to relax the pronounced wince that twisted her delicate features. "It's in there. In the armoire. Do you need anything from me to get it --- out?"

This poor girl was frazzled to the end of her wits. Ashley could tell that she had been struggling, just by her exasperated manner of speech. He would fix it, and he probably wouldn't change her, either. He smiled at her reassuringly. “No, no, I'll be fine. Just stay in here and it shouldn't get you.” He promised. He paused, and then added, “You know, a lot of people underestimate these buggers. They're no joke. They know everything tht freaks you out most. You were right to call.”

He pushed up his sleeves as he went into the other room. Just like he had told her, Boggarts were no small task to overcome. They were hard, even as a seasoned professional. Ashley always saw the same thing, his family dead. He saw his brother, his sister, his uncle, aunt, cousin, mother, father, everyone. And some part of him knew that it would happen sooner than later. This life wasn't for the weakhearted—any day could be the last one. Silas and Cheyenne, though, they were his responsibility, and Ashley couldn't bear the thought of letting them get hurt.

The good thing about death was that it was so final, and so silent, and so still. Ashley had once made their corpses dance to Michael Jackson's “Thriller” as one of his Ridikkulus charms, but the boggart could learn, and that was when things got dicey. The things pretend Silas said to him sounded too much like real Silas. It cut deep, and it seemed real. He never wanted to hear Silas call him a monster, even if he worried that he would be one. He never wanted to see his little sister cry that Ashley had broken up the family and that she couldn't side with him. He didn't want his parents to leave and make Cheyenne grow up alone, the way he did. All of those were so much harder than the death...

He swallowed, but bravely opened the armoire. As he predicted, the first thing he saw was death. He had forgotten how real it all seemed, and fought back a tear as he cast the first charm. “Ridikkulus.” One of the corpses let out a snore and Ashley cracked a grin, then laughed. The boggart didn't like it, and morphed again, this time into Silas. Ashley braced himself for it.

“You really need to cut it out, Ash.” Boggart Silas began. “I don't need you anymore, and I don't want you. Maybe the hovering was fine when I was five but I'm eighteen now. I'm an adult, and you're just still a kid, clinging to his favorite teddy bear. Do you really even know me at all, or do you love me because I'm your little brother?” That cut deep. That really hurt. “You can't take a hint, either, can you? I asked to be in Horned Serpent to get away from you.”

Ashley grimaced. “Riddikulus.” Nothing happened.

“Riddikulus, riddickulus...” Boggart Silas taunted. “You're not strong enough to take me on, you know. Maybe you should go kill more little girls.” Ashley's heart stopped for a moment. That phrase on Silas' lips was something that he could completely see. He failed at keeping his temper, and spoke back. “She was a monster.” He replied.

“No, you're a monster. How do you sleep at night after killing vampires in their coffins and werewolves when they're walking around in human skin? How does that make you anything less than a murderer?”

Ashley opened his mouth to rely, but he stopped. He was silent. Silas went on to say more but Ashley was planning. How could he make this better? How could he make it funny? He thought hard, and then imagined Silas as a little kid. He had been cute, adorable, sweet, and not at all the sassy bitch Silas had turned into since then. Ashley forced hard on it and shouted the curse again.

It took four tries until the spell worked, but only once to kill the thing once and for all. His laughter at his little brother's mess was enough to dissipate the dark creature. He wiped his forehead, his eyes, and opened the armorie a few times before he came back to the other room.

“Well, I don't think it'll be giving you trouble anymore, ma'am.”

She heard the exterminator repeat the curse a few times and slumped further back into her chair, her small form crumpled and hunched over. Emily wasn't sure why, but she thought that maybe trying to compress her stomach in this inadvertent way might get rid of some of the nervous churning in it. In truth, she'd just read the paper and called the man. There wasn't any certainty that he actually knew what he was doing, and regardless, she'd have to pay him anyway -- another thought which made her relatively uneasy. Maybe she should have owled the Ministry about it, but then, what good did they usually do? Not much. Except, you know, destroy people's lives and then not really compensate much for said destruction.

From her living room, she could hear him repeating the incantation over and over again, and with each passing one, Emily grew more restless. She thought she'd heard another male voice, too -- perhaps his demon was... related to somebody that he knew, too. Emily thought that made more sense, really. Maybe it was because she was muggleborn, but monsters were monsters. Werewolves and vampires and other things that went bump in the night were meant to scare children, even though upon coming to Hogwarts she'd learned they really existed. People could be all those things, too. They just disguised themselves in human skin and went about their daily lives, deceiving others left and right and most of them managing to emerge completely unscathed. What a strange phenomenon trusting people was, after all.

Her brow knitted unconsciously when the noise of laughter permeated the wall. The sound seemed a little deranged and stale to be comforting, but she'd take what she could get, as long as that thing was out of her house. With what little sleep she got, it was important she could continue holding onto that. Writing and running the shop as well as her million other responsibilities (and emotional turmoil) kept her up into the wee hours, and Emily didn't need a boggart adding to her mile-long daily to-do list.

She bolted upright when he strode back into the living room and Em subconsciously brushed her palms over her thighs, pushing crumbs and other invisible debris off her pants. "I." The brunette shook her head dumbly, a manner in which she never did anything, and paused a second. "You don't. Need to call me ma'am. Emily is fine, really." She insisted in her usual understated voice, one she'd adopted and learned to shove into small spaces when she was scared. In her professional life, she'd gotten better at asserting herself, but when she was scared or felt shrunken by her personal life -- the way she did right now -- Emily possessed a rather... lukewarm presence, or so she thought. "Thanks. I didn't expect it to freak me out as much as it did, to be honest. I don't know how it even got in there. How much do I owe you?" She asked, not even finishing her question before zipping into the kitchen to retrieve her wallet from her handbag.