At Arthur’s laughter, Amelia merely rolled her eyes, knowing even before she had said what she did that her honesty might not be met with the seriousness that she wanted. When Amelia was honest, many people mistook it for sarcasm or a joke. It was the plight of humanity because, for most people, sarcasm or jokes were the way they said what they really felt, just behind a guise of playfulness. Amelia was not exceptionally playful to begin with, and thus it was unsurprising that she did not laugh along with Arthur as he chuckled, but instead stood with her arms crossed and her lips in a straight, unmoving line.
Amelia scoffed at Arthur’s excuse for his laughter but didn’t say anything more on the subject. If he wanted to laugh, she would let him. She was already growing bored of this conversation because, from her perspective, it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Amelia rarely changed her mind about people, mostly because people to her were unchanging entities. First, second, and third impressions, in Amelia’s experience, rarely differed by more than a few degrees, which is why she was having a difficult time accepting Arthur’s hypothesis that his in class behavior was any different than the way he behaved in any other situation.
“Your current behavior is likely not all that far from your future behavior,” Amelia retorted, avoiding the temptation to heave a sigh after Arthur’s lengthy description. It was not that she was not intellectually capable of having this conversation, but rather that she had no interest in it. To Amelia, Arthur was someone she put up with in class, nothing more. Why this bothered him, she could not fathom, nor did she want to. Amelia was equally cold to everyone, because everyone annoyed her to some degree or another, and she couldn’t be bothered to sort through who annoyed her least or most, so she just avoided people in general. Her level of annoyance was probably heightened by her attempts at self-protection, the ingrained need to push people away, but Amelia didn’t rationalize her behavior in this way. It was easier to just be annoyed.
“And as for acting to be negative,” Amelia continued, answering his questions in far fewer words than he had used to pose them, “I can see no reason why a person would portray himself as being pompous and self-appreciating if there were a more likable person beneath that exterior. People act to make themselves more likable, more acceptable, more wanted, not the other way around.”
“And speaking of want,” Amelia said, dropping her arms from her chest and bending down to pick up her bag, “I think I want to leave now. As stimulating as this conversation is, I am quite busy, and I believe we have reached an impasse,” Amelia said, keeping her dismissal curt to avoid an interjection that might give him an opening into which he could try to sneak a few more words in. Amelia didn’t know why she had come here in the first place, and thus could find no reason to justify staying. Nothing was going to change if she stayed any longer, she and Arthur would just continue to lob opinions back and forth, he suggesting that there was more to him than Amelia saw, and Amelia battling against his arguments. It was a waste of his time and, drastically more valuable, hers.
“Goodbye, Arthur,” Amelia said with a nod to him, “As always, I will see you in class.”
And with that, Amelia turned and left Professor McCoy’s office and headed for the Ravenclaw common room.
((I am about to go on a Spring Break Trip, so I needed to end this thread. I also thought this was a natural breaking point. We can start the next one after I get back in a week.))
by Arthur Severus Poe Sun Mar 21, 2010 4:44 pm
