Boggart
幻形怪
A Boggart is a shape-shifting creature that will assume the form of whatever most frightens the person who encounters it. Nobody knows what a Boggart looks like if nobody is there to see it, although it continues to exist, usually giving evidence of its presence by rattling, shaking or scratching the object in which it is hiding. Boggarts particularly like confined spaces, but may also be found lurking in woods and around shadowy corners.
幻形怪是一種變形生物，它會變成面對它的人最害怕的事物。沒有人知道幻形怪在沒有人看著它的時候是長什麼樣子，雖然說它仍然繼續存在，通常亂撞、搖晃、或刮擦它藏在裡面的東西為證。幻形怪特別喜歡密閉空間，但也可能在森林或陰暗的角落被發現。
The more generally fearful a person is, the more susceptible they will be to Boggarts. Muggles, too, feel their presence and may even glimpse them, although they seem less capable of seeing them plainly and are usually easily convinced that the Boggart was a figment of their imagination.
通常一個人越膽小，他越可能受到幻形怪的影響。麻瓜也可以感覺到幻形怪的存在，也可能瞥見它們，但他們通常比較不會直接看到它們，而且很容易被說服幻形怪只是他們自己想像出來的。
Like a poltergeist, a Boggart is not and never has been truly alive. It is one of the strange non-beings that populate the magical world, for which there is no equivalent in the Muggle realm. Boggarts can be made to disappear, but more Boggarts will inevitably arise to take their place. Like poltergeists and the more sinister Dementors, they seem to be generated and sustained by human emotions.
就如同吵鬧鬼，幻形怪並不是也從來不是真正活著。它是在魔法世界中存在的奇怪非生存個體之一，在麻瓜世界中並沒有類似的個體。幻形怪可以被剷除消失，但更多幻形怪會不可避免的出現來取代它們的位置。就像吵鬧鬼和更邪惡的催狂魔，它們似乎是藉由人類的情感而產生和維持。
The spell that defeats a Boggart can be tricky, because it involves making the creature into a figure of fun, so that fear can be dispelled in amusement. If the caster is able to laugh aloud at the Boggart, it will disappear at once. The incantation is ‘Riddikulus’, and the intention is to force the Boggart to assume a less-threatening and hopefully comical form.
擊敗幻形怪的咒語有些棘手，因為使用上包括將幻形怪變成可笑的形體，以滑稽來消除恐懼。如果施展咒語的人能夠大聲嘲笑幻形怪，它就會立即消失。這個咒語是「叱叱，荒唐」，而咒語的目的是把幻形怪逼成較沒有威脅性而或許好笑的型態。
Famous Boggarts include the Old Boggle of Canterbury (believed by local Muggles to be a mad, cannibalistic hermit that lived in a cave; in reality a particularly small Boggart that had learnt how to make the most of echos); the Bludgeoning Boggart of Old London Town (a Boggart that had taken on the form of a murderous thug that prowled the back streets of nineteenth-century London, but which could be reduced to a hamster with one simple incantation); and the Screaming Bogey of Strathtully (a Scottish Boggart that had fed on the fears of local Muggles to the point that it had become an elephantine black shadow with glowing white eyes, but which Lyall Lupin of the Ministry of Magic eventually trapped in a matchbox).
有名的幻形怪包括坎特伯里的老驚怪（當地的麻瓜相信它是一個住在洞穴裡的瘋狂食人隱士；事實上它是一隻特別小但是學會製造大部分回音的幻形怪）；老倫敦城的流寇幻形怪（一隻以兇惡暴徒形體在十九世紀倫敦的後街橫行的幻形怪，只要一個簡單的符咒就可以讓它變成一隻地鼠）；還有史特福特立的尖聲幻形怪（一隻蘇格蘭幻形怪，藉由當地麻瓜的恐懼餵養成長到如象一般大而有著閃亮白眼的黑影，但魔法部的萊爾．路平終究把它困在一個火柴盒裡面）。
