Of Masks and Men || OPEN

Outfit

Zoe had difficulties with the basic concepts of Charms sometimes, but yet Ancient Runes seemed to be something that she excelled at. She supposed that you couldn't pick what stuck in your brain, but Ancient Runes tended to. She wasn't the best studier in the world: she tended to do her Ancient Runes homework first and get it out of the way before she would touch any of her other homework. In her brain she just saw it as getting the easy stuff done first, but she would do assignments that weren't due for weeks before even starting her Charms homework that was due the next day. Zoe was clever, you didn't get into Ravenclaw otherwise, but everyone had their faults.

That day, however, it was difficult to focus on the class at hand. She found her mind constantly wandering to the ball and what could possibly happen. Zoe's mind was full of what-ifs, and she knew the majority of them would never come true. She told herself to breathe, and tried to remind herself that the dance wasn't really that big of a deal. It was probably only because it was so formal that put so much stress on everyone. Besides, the whole concept of it was to be anonymous. That was the part she focused on the most. Anything could happen, and as a rather anxious girl by nature, this made her a little nervous. 

When class was over, everyone shuffled out chatting amongst themselves. With Teddy being a year older than her and Hestia not in her class as she shared Ancient Runes with Slytherins, Zoe didn't really have many people to hang out with and gossip about the dance with. It was partially her own fault. She was a little unapproachable. Zoe hardly realized when everyone was gone and it was just her and Professor Ellis left. She shook her head and reminded herself why she had decided to stay after. Zoe stood up and but her books into her side-saddle bag before pulling out a rather thick chunk of papers. She approached his desk with the papers pressed against her chest almost nervously. 

He didn't seem to realize that she was there. He seemed focused on something else and the short girl had to stand on tip toes in her boots to see what he was looking at. 

"Are you planning on going, sir?" she blurted out as the Professor pulled the mask out. She knew that he had been lost in his own thoughts and perhaps asking him such a question so bluntly was a bit out of position for her. She shook her head but didn't apologize - she still kind of wanted to know the answer, after all. She then remembered the papers in her arms. She looked down at them and then handed them to her professor. "I know this isn't due for another three weeks but I had some spare time and..."  she felt silly as she talked. "Well, I finished it. It's a little longer than what you told us to do but I figure some of my larger writing might have contributed to that so I thought maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal."  In fact, Zoe's writing wasn't that big, she was just trying to get away with handing in more than the assignment required. She had tried to shorten it down but she couldn't find any parts where that would work. 

Zoe could actually see her professor's mind come back to him slowly until he realized that she was there. She disliked pulling people out of deep thought. She always thought it was special for people to be in those moments. Those moments always seemed to be the best, and she felt a little guilty for ruining his private moment. She watched him put down the mask and she couldn't decipher his emotions. She always seemed to think that professors must take a class on hiding their feelings as most of them were quite good at it - well, at least, until it came to anger. Zoe knew too many teachers who lashed out for seemingly no reason.

"It should be good fun, though,"  Zoe continued on, though she didn't know why. She mentally scolded herself, but apparently her mind didn't have the same ideas as her mind for it kept talking. "I think a few of the teachers are going. You already have the mask,"  she pointed out as if he weren't aware. "Your mask looks like it's from a Gryffindor or something,"  she paused, suddenly aware that perhaps he had confiscated it from a Gryffindor. However, she doubted it as he didn't seem mean enough to keep a mask from a student on the night of the ball itself - well, unless he waiting for said student to come back. She hushed up about it. She wasn't even sure why she was talking so much about it anyways. Perhaps it was because she was nervous about the ball and she was just willing to talk about it with anyone willing to get it out of her system to try and calm herself down. It was stupid, really. 

Zoe blushed a little bit at his words but she held her gaze. She hadn't expected him to notice that it was more than five pages when she gave it to him, although how he wouldn't notice was beyond her. The thickness of the stack of papers gave herself away rather quickly. 

"Well, you asked for interpretations of some ancient runes that had yet to be translated, like the ones found in Brazil, and so, well, I gave my interpretations,"  she tried to explain. "I edited my work and tried to cut it down, but sir, do you have any idea the implications of untranslated runes?" She let out a laugh. "Well, of course you do. I just don't know how to condense my thoughts on the matter. It's rather exciting, isn't it? It could imply that there are entire civilizations that have been there that we haven't truly discovered yet. How anyone could put that only onto five pages is beyond me but..."  she met his eyes and then looked away. "Sorry."

Zoe supposed that 'sorry' would have sufficed altogether. She could have just said sorry and left, but she didn't. She couldn't bring herself to leave because that meant that she had to start getting ready like everyone else. It was still early - if she started getting dressed now, she would be ready hours before the ball and would just sit around with people she didn't know. Small talk with her professor actually seemed like the favourable option, although she wasn't sure if Professor Ellis agreed. He probably just wanted to get the hell out of there. 

Zoe's cheeks turned pink slightly at his question. She hadn't realized her wording whatsoever. "I, uh, don't know. It was just sort of the way you were looking at it," she admitted. She hoped she wasn't crossing any sort of boundaries by her saying so. Zoe usually felt comfortable speaking to professors, but Professor Ellis made her feel differently - perhaps because he tended to question why she thought or said certain things. Most professors didn't. Well, in all actuality, most professors wouldn't speak to their students outside of classroom hours if they could help it. "Were you in Gryffindor when you were in school?"  she wondered. Zoe couldn't help but think that Professor Ellis seemed much more like the Ravenclaw type, but people surprised you. Sometimes the most intelligent were placed in other Houses because of how they prioritized their own personality or because of what they were destined to become. Zoe never really had a problem with Gryffindors. Sure, many of them seemed reckless and a little too bold for their own good, but they seemed like an alright lot overall. It never even occurred to her that perhaps Ellis had attended a different wizarding school. There were certainly enough of them out there.

Zoe watched Ellis read her essay and she felt vaguely uncomfortable. She hated when people read her work in front of her. She always liked to pretend, in a way, that when she handed in her assignments that they were read by some non-judgemental third party and was handed back without the Professor themselves ever actually laying an eye on it. She tried to read his words that he wrote, but reading upside down was not a skill that she had acquired. 

"Yes, well, I'm not most people,"  Zoe said in a rather matt-of-fact way as she took her essay back. She wasn't sure if she liked his quickness on grading her assignment. Didn't he want to sit down and read it and truly take in her words instead of just skimming over them? The fact that he could just give it back to her almost immediately stung. There was a need for her to be completely understood and she wanted to hand it back to him and tell him to read it better, slower, but she wasn't so bold. She was pleased with her grade, but it didn't seem like enough.

Zoe tried to understand what he meant and din't know why he had mentioned it - perhaps she was too busy thinking about her irritation to have taken in everything he had said. "Well, isn't that exactly why most people should strive to use the emic system when it comes to doing studies? Of course things don't mean the same thing in every culture. In some cultures they don't respond at all the same to how we do to certain things. In some countries they would describe love as a feeling of attachment and a feeling of elation, where I'm sure other places they would describe it as a stomach flipping feeling and such - more physical symptoms than emotional, do you know what I mean?"  Perhaps Zoe wasn't always the most confident in what she said, as she seemed to try to make sure that the person she was speaking to followed what she said. She knew sometimes she wasn't the best with words when she spoke, so she just wanted to know that they got what she meant. "With ancient runes it's very important. We might see runes that look like they mean depression to us, but to them it meant a literal sickness because of how they portray feelings."  she shook her head. "I'm sure you had meant for me to think about it in my head and not out loud," Zoe said with a laugh. "I'm sorry, I tend to think best through conversation, bouncing it back and forth. I'm sure you probably don't have time for this - it's just habit. My friend Teddy and I do it all the time and I spend so much time with him that it's sort of automatic."

Zoe smiled at Ellis. She had never even thought about writing a book on the subject. She was certainly knowledgeable enough on it. It began to make her think of future careers, but then she remembered she was still in the classroom. She valued her Professor's opinions and thoughts on the subject and therefore his comment meant a lot to her. "Who are you kidding, I'd probably make you edit the damned thing."  she covered her mouth immediately after she spoke. "Sorry. Hadn't meant to swear."

Zoe was admittedly surprised. "I never would have guessed,"  she admitted. "Your voice hides it well." she wondered if perhaps he was faking an accent, but if he was faking it he was doing quite well. Or perhaps he spoke like an American and she just was so enthralled with what he had to say that she just never paid attention before. Either way, like most students she knew, she had a bit of a prejudice towards Americans, and she was even more sceptical of their education system. She couldn't help but think that at least Ellis got through. Zoe knew true intelligence shone through always, even if their system wasn't the greatest. She kept these thoughts to herself, though, as she didn't want to anger Ellis. Perhaps he liked where he came from and she wasn't about to get into a debate about it. She was so attached to Hogwarts that the idea of someone believing that another school was better was outrageous to her. "Why'd you come here, then?" she wondered. "Surely you would have had your pick of schools in America."

If Zoe was American, she probably would have went to Hogwarts to teach. It had a reputation after all, unlike most of those other wizarding schools in the world that were unknown unless you lived in the area. If you wanted to make a career for yourself, she doubted teaching at some dumpy small school would do you much justice. Well, unless you were into that sort of thing - helping those who were in such schools. Zoe tightened her cardigan around herself even though she wasn't cold. 

She didn't appreciate the choice of the word 'failed' but she let him continue. Zoe knew she wasn't perfect and misunderstandings happened all the time. She thought what she just said was quite clever, and therefore she had thought she had known what he was trying to get at. She furrowed her brows in concentration as she watched him draw. She waited for an explanation that never came. She thought she knew what he meant by it, but she wanted to hear it from his mouth. 

"With all due respect, sir, I don't think I was vague," she told him irritably, although her mind kept telling her to shut up, her mouth seemed to disagree. "I know what runes - " she cut herself off when the owl flew into the room. It was almost like a chance to save her from herself. It dropped a Howler and Zoe couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you have opened that or... let it do it's thing? It's from the Ministry."  As if he didn't know. 

Zoe sort of grimaced even though she hadn't meant to. America was, in her opinion, so uncultured. "I'll make sure I visit there whenever I want a super sized McDonald's meal,"  she said mostly as a joke. When she was in Muggle foster care, they were shown photos of how large the meals were there. It was an incredible waste. Zoe couldn't help but wonder why his parents hadn't sent him somewhere actually cultured. "It's a little hard to go anywhere cultured nowadays. No matter where you go, you can still find all the familiar haunts of your hometown."  She was talking off of her train of thought, but also from experience. She had lived in more towns than she cared to count in the foster system and every time she worried that she wouldn't get used to it, but most of them were more or less the same. Well, until she moved to Russia. It was a bit different there. 

Zoe smiled at his answer, completely forgetting her argument. "You're a bit of a wanted man, aren't you?"  she smiled. In all honesty, Ellis was a bit of her hero and she looked up to him. She only hoped that one day she could be good at the subject as he was. That was when her brown eyes caught the time and it felt like her heart skipped a bit. "I'm sorry, sir, I have to leave. It was really nice talking to you, but I'm going to be late for the Ball if I don't get ready now."  She looked at Ellis' mask and added, "Maybe you should do the same." 

Zoe's somewhat rude comment made Ellis laugh, which she realized was a nice sound. He had a laugh that matched the rest of him, which was strangely calming in a way. He just felt so much like a professor to her, like he was the exact essence of what being a teacher meant to her. She just felt like a lot of the other professors at Hogwarts lacked that certain je ne sais quoi that Ellis seemed to possess. Ellis didn't seem intimidating, but he still had command over his classroom, and that was the type of behaviour that earned respect instead of fear. 

She shrugged at his comment. "I'm sure that's the same everywhere, but it doesn't mean I'm not allowed to poke fun a little,"  Zoe said with a cheeky grin. 

What Ellis said next completely surprised Zoe and caught her off guard. Her brown eyes went wide as she listened to what he had to say. It was the type of work that she wasn't expecting to do until she was finished school. She bounced a little on her feet in an excited fashion. "I- I would love to! Thank you, sir, this... this is fantastic, thank you so much! I can't imagine anything else I would rather do. It would help me so much with my future endeavours I mean... this opportunity would be like a dream come true."  Zoe didn't know how truly she looked forward in a career in Ancient Runes until that moment, and now that he said it she knew it was exactly what she wanted.