[ddc] to be human [zacharias]

Training hadn't started in full earnest yet, but as part of her onboarding process, Ariana was sitting through what felt like innumerable mandatory training sessions, some with only new employees of the Ministry, some that appeared to be annual sessions for all members, although she never exactly saw someone seriously important sitting through one of those. No plum Wizengamot robes; she supposed they were above this kind of human resources struggle. Or maybe they had decided that they were incorrigible. Still, Ari had mostly free time, and now that she had reconciled with Freya, that time was more full, making this a little more bearable.

Honestly, Ari was still working through a lot of things. The conversations she'd had with Dennis and Freya were strong and inward-facing and she was glad that she wasn't being thrown in headfirst into training. Into fighting, even in a simulated setting. This was all right, really.

Normally she tried to find someone like Alex to sit with, since the two Hufflepuffs were going through the exact same trainings for the exact same role together, but today she'd arrived later than usual and had decided to find a seat somewhere closer to the back to be less disruptive. Picking an open seat, she excused herself and slid into it, resting her head against the cool back of the desk in front of the row behind them. Today's training was supposed to be interactive, the kind of thing where some severe-looking witch went through some demonstrations and then asked everyone to discuss for a few moments with the person beside them about what they had seen. No one ever actually discussed the subject matter, and Ari was somewhat reticent with strangers, so she didn't expect to talk much. She cast a glance to her right anyway to see who was next to her, and blinked in surprise.

"Zacharias?" His name slipped out of her mouth before she could consider whether he'd want to talk to her or not. Zacharias Smith had been three years above Ari, in Harry's year, but in Hufflepuff, so she'd known his name. Chaser, like her, played on the team before she and Skylar were old or good enough. He'd been in the DA, but he hadn't stayed for the Battle. Three years ago that might have bothered her, but now...she thought about the invisible wounds she'd gained recently. Things were different now. Ari knew he had a reputation for rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, but he was a Hufflepuff. That had to count for something. It did in her book. "I'm sorry, you probably don't remember me. Ariana."

@Zacharias Smith

Zacharias didn’t know why they bothered with this human resources nonsense. It wasn’t as if anyone paid attention. Or maybe they did, he didn’t talk the subject over with anyone enough to really know, but he didn’t think it affected the way anyone behaved at all. They all either had enough sense to do what they were supposed to in the first place or they didn’t and a lecture from a weary witch wouldn’t do anything to help that. Whether Zach considered himself to be in the former or latter camp depended on the day, and how angry he was at the time.

He was slumped in a chair near the back, having managed to avoid being sat next to and able to splay his legs out as far as he liked. However, shortly after the witch up front began her spiel, someone slipped into the seat to his right, forcing him to retract himself into his own space. Zach recognized her immediately from school and looked off in the other direction, hoping she’d pay attention to the presentation (yeah, right) and not realize who he was. He avoided all schoolmates on principle. But she addressed him…somehow even with what sounded like interest. Zach turned his head back.

“No, yeah,” he said. “I remember you.” He had a pretty good memory, actually, and he’d known the names of most of his schoolmates even if they spoke rarely or never. Sometimes it was a useful skill but mostly he used it to be offended whenever anyone didn’t remember him in return. Ariana, though, had recognized him by sight. The thought flattered him more than he’d have cared to admit, and he wanted to assure her he’d known her name as well.

She’d been too much younger for him to have memorized by precisely how much, though, and hoped the fact that he hadn’t seen her around the Ministry before now meant she was fresh out of school. “Are you new?” he asked, then glanced up at the witch leading the seminar as she turned the page on her easel of visual aids with a flick of her wand. He’d never been skilled at getting away with talking when he was supposed to be listening, so eventually he’d gotten out of the habit. Leaning over after a moment and trying to speak more quietly, he said, “They do this every year. They think we’re idiots, but at least it gets us out of work for a while.” Zach was grateful they hadn’t crossed paths in a long time and had the whole gamut of small talk before them. If only everyone he knew had the decency to wait years before trying to have a conversation.

He’d have asked which department she was with, but Ariana was wearing the robes of an auror trainee. Zacharias internally sighed. Of course—that was what all the good kids did these days, if they weren’t like Justin and trying to make a difference through bureaucracy instead. He tried to smother that feeling of embarrassment that surfaced every time he came across a classmate who surpassed him, approximately daily. There was no need for it to become an issue unless he made it one. “So how are you finding things around here?” he asked. They were going to make it through all their small talk if it killed him.

Ari offered him a genuine smile, surprised but quite gratified that he had any idea who she was. "Yeah, I am," she said quietly, trying to stifle a laugh. "It's almost worse than Binns's lectures used to be, and here I thought I was done with school for a while. Hopefully I'll appreciate it more next year when I'm actually working." The woman's voice was rather more pleasant than their old History of Magic professor's has been. She'd heard Professor Fitzgerald was much better, but by then she'd dropped the course for N.E.W.T. levels. "You're three years out, right? Have you been here since graduation?"

They were going through small-talk stages, but other than her superiors, Ariana hadn't really gotten the chance to talk to anyone older than her. It was a strange feeling; even though they were talking about nothing, she sort of felt like she was being addressed as almost an equal. In school they were far enough apart that she was just an underclassman, DA or no. Ari had talked to a good many underclassmen when she was a prefect, but the role of authority that she'd had sort of did away with any ability for them to exactly act like equals. She supposed this was what being an adult was like; ages blurred and lines shifted. Her yearmates were less of a cohort now and were more defined by their individual friendships.

Ari shrugged. "Training is dull, but I guess that's to be expected. Other than that it's about what I thought it would be. Dad works in International Magical Cooperation so I kind of have an idea of what the Ministry's like and all. Not that he talks about it much, and he quit for a few years when I was a second year so mostly I was too young to pay attention to work stories when he had them, but it's something," she said, keeping her tone as light as possible. Alexander Laurier wasn't the only Ministry employee who had resigned in protest of the Ministry's policies during the early years of the war, so she figured he'd understand the reason. He'd been even happier about his choice when her fourth year rolled around and Mum, the love of his life, had gone on the run. Eliza had supported Alexander returning to a similar job and Ari's own decision to go into Auror training, but she wondered if she didn't still have some trust issues about the Ministry.

"How about you? Anything you wish you'd known when you started around here?"

He wrinkled his nose when she reminded him of Professor Binns. School felt so foreign to him now, as if it were an eternity ago he’d been taking History of Magic instead of five years. He didn’t really care to remember any of it. “Not since,” he said. “Took a year off.” There was no need for her to know details, even though he knew the question was close to inevitable. There was a chance she wouldn’t care and he could leave it at that. He wasn’t sure why taking care of his mother embarrassed him so. It should have sounded much more noble than his current job. But it felt like an invasion of privacy to admit, whereas the Ministry was the least private thing he could imagine.

“My dad too,” said Zacharias, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Not that we ever really talked about it either.” This was not strictly true. Clyde Smith had given him a great deal of advice over the years, but most of the advice had been the sort of advice one gives to a person capable of self-improvement. It had been summarily ignored. Zach didn’t intend on giving that sort of advice to Ariana on principle, but he wasn’t much for any other kind of advice either. “I dunno,” he muttered with a small shrug. “I don’t really know what the aurors do.” Glancing back up at the presentation, which had become another partner reflection while he wasn’t paying attention, he gave her a half of a smile. “All I know how to do is hide from everyone on level five.”

Ari nodded. It made sense. He had graduated the year of the war, and it wasn't her place to judge anyone who needed time for any reason. "I was close to having to do that, actually," she admitted candidly. The low points in her psychology were being improved with time, as the Auror Office's assessors had expected they would, but she was glad they hadn't forced her to take more. She didn't know what she would have done. Publishing, probably, like she had done the summer before. She had some proclivity for the work, but Ari had also spent less time with books and writing as she had gotten older.

"Hopefully nothing for a number of years," she laughed albeit without too much humor. She could use a break from fighting, Auror department or no. "At least they won't be expecting me to do anything for a while. I think this year is mostly classes and starting to shadow. And training," she said, jerking her head towards the lady at front as a joke. The low hum of unrelated conversation insulated them from trouble. "But I think that kind of, um, practical thing is more what I had in mind." Ari didn't exactly know what he meant by it, but that kind of general comment was what she was thinking of, she supposed. "Isn't that IMC, though?" she laughed. "I guess I forgot to ask which department you're with. I guess you could tell by the clothes," she said, sighing as she looked down at her robes. Ari would really rather wear jeans, but they were in the heart of British wizardkind here.

She seemed surprised, and actually laughed a little, as if the idea of him in International Cooperation was a joke. Which it was, of course—the sort of joke a couple of classmates at a DA meeting might’ve laughed about just loud enough for him to hear. He knew he wasn’t suited to diplomacy, he didn’t lack self-awareness completely. But it made him bristle all the same. “Don’t worry,” Zacharias muttered harshly. “I’m not the one doing the cooperating.”

He sniffed and scratched his nose with his knuckle, returning his attention, or his gaze, rather, to the front of the room. Watching the presentation with blank eyes, he clenched his jaw.

At some point he had to stop this. He had to quit finding slights in everything everyone said to him, quit being so profoundly dislikable and pushing away potential allies. Ariana hadn’t seemed to harbor any ill will towards him. And that was a bit of a rarity around here. He had to take what he could get. “Er, good luck with your training and shadowing, and stuff, anyway,” said Zach, a little hopelessly, with a jerky shrug. He looked down at his lap awkwardly for a second, and then up and off across the room. Anything to distract him.

Ari's expression was thoroughly confused as Zacharias appeared to take her words to heart and not in a good way. From her perspective, she had been jumping off the fact that their fathers both worked in the department that they'd been speaking of just a moment ago; belatedly, as she turned over the situation in her mind as the presentation rolled on, she realized that he must have been talking about his own department. Ari rarely swore, but she was very close mentally. "Wait, I didn't mean--I didn't realize you--" Flustered, the normally straightforward and decently well-spoken young witch was struck at a loss for words as he uttered what sounded very much like a closing statement.

He looked upset and then looked away and she sighed and let her forehead fall onto her left hand briefly, biting her lip. What a mess. It was true that Ari had had problems communicating with her friends lately, case in point Freya, but those relationships had a basis to stand on, and the wounds were approachable for mending. Having developed those bonds of friendship for so long and relying on her strong understanding of how they worked, she was coming out of Hogwarts finding out that she wasn't able to communicate with strangers, to reach across the walls that divided them. First Dennis, now this.

The witch up front finished with the next segment of lecture and once again turned it over to the auditorium full of employees. They couldn't go anywhere, and a wave of characteristic stubbornness rolled over her. She essayed another gentle tentative, determined to at least try. Very Hufflepuff of her, she supposed. "Sorry, Zacharias, I totally misunderstood. I thought you were making a comment about your dad or something." She gave a sort of self-deprecating chuckle. "I guess I forgot how to talk to people, I mean...I was going to tell you I think it's neat that you're working there but I'm guessing it's...not your favorite job in the world?"

She couldn't really tell if she was digging herself deeper into whatever hole she'd stumbled into, but it felt better than giving up.

His attempt to end the conversation seemed to work, but in a sort of terrible way that made everything a hundred times more awkward. Zacharias did his best to ignore it and stared in the other direction. There was something worse about doing this to girls. Or at least these sort of girls, who looked all earnest, like they thought he was probably just an alright bloke who was a little misunderstood. It was also worse because he always fell for it a little. For a good minute or so there he’d felt like he was an alright misunderstood bloke, and had been almost grateful that Ariana, or literally anyone at all, had tried to look beyond it. But no, he wasn’t misunderstood in the slightest.

And then she started talking, apologizing. He almost groaned in frustration. She thought she’d said something he misunderstood, which she had, but he was so far past that in his head that it didn’t really add up as a sensical reason for apology. He knew she hadn’t meant anything by it. He had a reasonable command of general human body language. At this point he’d embarrassed himself into an episode of raving prick behavior, as he was wont to do, and her insistence that she was at fault somehow irritated him. Didn’t she know who she was talking to? Honestly, give up already.

But he was falling for it again, just enough to turn his head back a little ways in her direction, just enough to be sort of touched.

“No, sorry,” he muttered. “Just me being—y’know.” Scratching his chin, he looked anywhere but her face. “But yeah, I don’t care, honestly. Only there because of my dad anyway. It’s not as if it matters where I run errands and—field memos, and—whatever.” Zach exhaled sharply, a weak snort. “Not as if I’m a war hero or anything, though, so, guess there aren’t really any expectations.”

She wasn't surprised that he responded, exactly. Most humans who didn't hate the person they were talking to would say something when addressed. Ari was sort of surprised, however, that he went on to say something substantive in response to what she'd said instead of just muttering something and leaving it at that, though. Maybe it was what people used to say about him that gave her that feeling, something inadvertently confirmed despite her determination to the contrary. Ari knew that she had a certain fatal flaw of being judgmental, but she was trying. Making a concerted effort, she tried to pretend like nothing weird had happened.

"It's okay," she said casually and a little gently. Whatever it was, it didn't really seem aimed at her, so it didn't hit her the way something clearly personal would have. Mindful of what had happened with Dennis, even though they were clearly different people, she didn't push it. A lesson to be learned. "I mean, I don't think the Ministry would exactly work without anyone doing all of that," she pointed out in a moderately philosophical manner. She tensed a little at the phrase "war hero," though, some of her nerves tensing like a rope suddenly snapped taut. It was something Nicole would have said.

She swallowed, remembering the look in Dennis's eyes and his haunted presence across from her. "So it's just as important. Someone reminded me recently that kids fighting for their lives was ridiculous, anyway." The ends of her words were a bit clipped. She looked down at her hands, turning them over. "I'm kind of tired of fighting, myself." But I'm not a kid anymore.

It was hard to talk about this to people. She had told Dennis how she felt, but with some of her friends--like Jeremy--she didn't feel like she could explain in a way that would make them understand. Zacharias seemed to have some demons of his own, but whether he'd be receptive to hers was something else entirely. It seemed like something she could say to him, even if she didn't understand him at all. Maybe because there was no relationship between them onto which the spectre of this heaviness would be projected forever.

“Someone’s got to, yeah,” he said, shrugging. “Doesn’t have to be me. Probably shouldn’t be.” He stopped himself before he could start whining about his incompetency in earnest to some girl he barely knew.  This was why he hated to share. It was just a small leap for his weak verbal filter from “My favorite color is blue” to “I deserve death.” 

But this conversation was doing some kind of topical Wronski Feint, nosediving into the sort of dark things it was dangerous to talk about. He imagined speaking to someone like this sometimes while he was in bed alone, but in practice it was nerve-wracking. It required a level of trust he didn’t think he’d felt in years if ever. Relationships didn’t just spring into being fully formed. But if anxiety was the price he wanted to forgo the practice entirely. Wanted to. She kept saying things that made it impossible to hold back a response no matter the consequence. “Ridiculous, definitely,” he argued. “But they did it.”

She looked down awkwardly and admitted something he hadn’t expected from her at all. Zach stared at her for a couple seconds. “Why would you join the aurors, then?” he asked, unable to stop himself. It had always mystified them. None of his classmates who had gone into the aurors would give him the time of day so it had remained a private confusion, a judgment in his angrier moments. Imagine being so fucked up that you just…kept doing the thing that fucked you up. (The irony of the thought was not lost on him, but hunting dark wizards felt different than apathy. It was real trauma, for one.)

Zach shrugged. “You’re tired of fighting, don’t do it for a living.”

Dennis hadn't questioned her like this when she'd admitted it. Maybe it was because she made it seem like a foregone conclusion, first. Ari leaned back against the hard chair of the auditorium, no longer even pretending to pay attention to what was happening at the front of the room. "I'm good at it," she said quietly. "I'm better at it than most people." Near-perfect N.E.W.T.s in the five core subjects despite the...disruptions. Practical experience in battles in the Second Wizarding War and considerable, Freya and Jere would vouch for it, albeit with rather different feelings about it, experience against the Gauntlet and the creatures beside fully qualified Aurors. She wasn't exactly Harry Potter or anything, but she'd been trained well. "And I'm better at it than I am at anything else." The lines were delivered dispassionately, without the slightest hint of pride. The opposite, if anything. It was true, though. Ari's other skills were either less advanced or not transferable. She was a good Chaser, but not near the level of the big leagues. She was individually good at the subjects she had excelled in for school, but she lacked the passion to pursue any of them to their fullest extents, the way a scholar might. Her strongest talent was in wandwork, but she lacked the artistic and creative ability to build things with it instead of destroying them.

"I worked for a publishing house last summer in Paris," she said contemplatively, almost talking out loud to herself now, even though she knew he was listening and was okay with that. "It was fun and I liked the people, but...there are a lot of people out there who do it better. And not that many who do this better. It seems like I can do more good here--both by leaving that place to someone who can excel and bring some more light to this world through publishing stories and knowledge...and by using the talents I have to protect people as best I can. I don't really have many others." If protection is really what this is about. Ari believed in Kingsley, and Rupert and Jo, but Dennis had reminded her of the agonizing bureaucracy and the erstwhile corruption underneath all of it.

"I'm just trying to do the right thing." It sounded so trite sometimes, but she meant it. "Sometimes I'm not sure I know what that is as much as I think I do, but I'm trying anyway."

She surprised him by giving an answer that made sense. Or at least, that made sense in theory. The idea was wholly foreign to a person like him with neither skills nor passions, but he could see himself making a similar choice if he were like her. He sighed.

“That’s depressing,” he said. “Fair, but depressing.”

He wanted to look down on her for wanting to do the right thing, the sort of thing that came out of the mouths of the good and the incorruptible and the sort of people who bothered him by existing better than the rest of them, the Potters and Grangers and Finch-Fletchleys, who made the idea of perfection valid instead of unrealistic. But there was a bitter blankness with which she said it which resonated with him. A reluctance, almost. A recognition that doing the right thing was difficult. Zach chewed on his thumbnail and couldn’t look at her as his ribs felt too small for his heart.

The people around them started to rise, chairs scraping and startling him. He hadn’t been paying attention. Normally he’d have been counting down to this moment, tapping fingers and feet and convincing himself he would drop dead if he had to wait another second. He looked at Ariana, who was still sitting there like he was.

“Well, see you, I guess,” he said. He had his doubts they’d cross paths again, considering the size of the Ministry and the lack of overlap in their lives. Unless she wanted to. He scoffed, then realized he’d done it aloud and shook his head hurriedly. “I mean, y’know. Thanks.” Thanks. He clenched his jaw. That was not the word he was looking for.

Or maybe it was.

Ari laughed a little. He was right, probably, but to hear it put so matter-of-factly made it seem a little less serious and a little less depressing, paradoxically. "Basically," she said, tilting her head with a shrug. "It's okay though, it'll work out. Hopefully you find your way into something you like better too," she added, her brown eyes flicking up to meet his.

Looking up as people started to get up, she realized that the session was over. Normally she'd be ecstatic to get out of it, but she was a little sorry that it was cutting their conversation short. The HR situation had fabricated a unique moment in time, and it had let her open up a little even though she didn't know Zacharias much at all.

"Yeah, probably in a lift," she said with a grin. She'd learned in the last few weeks that the gold elevators were weirdly something of a hub of connection, since everyone needed them to get out. Ari wondered for a moment whether there were stairs. What if someone used Fiendfyre? She imagined the angry red and orange flames coming up from the courtroom and cut the image out. There was no need to be quite so pessimistic.

Though she was a little bemused by his manner of speaking, Ari had sort of decided that that was just how he was. "Thanks for listening," she said honestly. "It was nice to get something off my chest." She gave him a little wave before heading for the atrium and home.