James had thought he'd handled his entrance moderately well: he hadn't yelled, broken anything or opted to just hex the stranger and sort it out later. And what he'd got for his trouble was an armful of Death Eater - who was, apparently, also Diana's brother. It was enough to make anyone regret the subtle approach.
And now that he was staggering back under the Death Eater's - Matthew Selwyn's, he supposed - weight, the simplest, most instinctive thing to do was just pull his wand out of his pocket and perform the nastiest curse on the bastard he could think of. Something that would knock him out in a hurry so they could decide what to do next. In fact he had come very close to doing just that - since, at the moment anyway, it didn't sound much as though Diana would mind - when Finn arrived.
That complicated things. His new approach to concealing his identity had never been a problem at home before. It was a matter of a moment to do away with the disguise, and his less-familiar flatmate was always sleeping like the dead when he got home. Until now, anyway. But then again, they'd never had a brawl in the doorway before now. It didn't do a lot for his temper; all right, it wasn't Finn's fault the noise had woken him - but he could bloody well blame the Death Eater. He could just about blame him into so many little pieces that his mum wouldn't recognise him.
"I don't think the lady wants to see you right now, sir," he said, trying to balance the sort of fear and deference that a half-blood (or a Muggle) would show a Death Eater with an implication that he wouldn't exactly be against dumping Selwyn's body in an alley somewhere if he made things difficult. He'd just have to hope Finn didn't decide he was trouble too - they really didn't need another brawl, or any awkward explanations.
As for what Selwyn was saying ... well, that was odd and somewhat disturbing, but definitely a matter for when they'd got rid of the bloody Death Eater.