Braeden's jaw dropped but he quickly shut it tight as Evangeline went on about the portrait being smarter because of its age and him being mean for calling it stupid and ugly. Fiiiiiine. So maybe she had a point there. He couldn't admit it, though, so he said nothing, merely listening to Eva throw more attacks at him. Sniffle… why was she so mean? So abusive? What had he ever done to be mistreated this way? Boo hoo.

"It's true and you know it," said the boy rather weakly as Evangeline insisted she wasn't the attacker here. She had pretty much won at this point, instead of arguing Braeden seemed to be curling into some corner of his mind crying like a little girl. Well maybe not literally, but he did realize this battle was lost before it had even started. "I think you should tell me what it was that I did to get you to be so mean to me, Hollywood," said the boy. "So I can make up for it. Unless you're just being mean because you're in Slytherin… in which case I don't think there's much I can do about that…" he muttered the last bit more to himself than to his Slytherin bully.