To complete the package, Mace had placed a fuchsia pygmy puff on the table. It had been riding around on his hat set at a jaunty angle. It was probably the only holiday-esque thing to his attire, still in the loose fitting white shirts and tan khakis he usually wore casual. It wasn't as if he could send a pink plaid sewn Cap'n Patches in his place. Scarecrows were still more of a Halloween decoration.

His date at the table was an older witch, in that she was above schooling age. Mace regarded her features as a mix of soft but secretly severe.

"Your hair looks nice." The name 'Bellamane' was rather accurate.

Izola’s expression as she entered Madam Puddifoot’s could best be described as fury, thinly veiled by shock at the… fascinating… decorations. Pink, yes, excess, yes, but this was just… too much. Far, far, too much, and since it was Izola saying that it was a dire situation. She was at least fortunate that she’d dressed in blue; it didn’t look good with the copious amounts of pink, but it wasn’t anywhere close to as horrendous as green would have been.

She didn’t have long to examine the room before her… date? It seemed an odd word to use, since what she was doing was looking for a potential candidate for a proper date. In any case, he had arrived, and Izola could tell immediately that there would be no next meeting, no matter how nice he was. Staring with more alarm than polite at the boy sitting opposite her, Izola considered cutting her losses and running. He was very cute, but… he was cute.

“Thank you,” she said, quickly smiling. There was no reason to be overtly rude; after all, it was hardly Milton’s fault that he was far too young. If nothing else, she would have something amusing to tell Arianne, and since this was speed dating, all she had to do was endure the conversation, which would hopefully be over soon. “Is that yours?” she asked, gesturing to the pygmy puff and staring at it rather than its owner, “It fits the mood well.”

[1]
"It can be yours if you want." Mace pinched at the tuft of the puff's puffiness to make it look more presentable. "Got plenty of pink ones I raise up around this time of year," Mace said in his continued duty to bring joy and puffskeins to whoever wanted what were the most easy to care for creatures. Even flobberworms didn't know when to stop eating lettuce.

"So, Izola Bellamane? I think I've seen your name about. Do you run a shop around here?"

1.	How bad is it I think there should be background music alternating between this and this?

Despite herself, the corners of Izola's mouth lifted a little, Mace was quite the flatterer – and a gentleman, there were definitely some people she was acquainted with who could learn something from him. Like how not to be contentious asses.

"Thank you,” she smiled, although she wasn’t sure that she would accept the puffskein – just the offer was worthy of thanks, it would be rude to ignore it. “I run a hairdressing salon,” a hand brushed through her immaculate hair to draw attention to it, “It’s just down the road.” But now, of course, she should ask him what he did, and the less Izola had to think about that, the happier she would be.

“What are you planning on doing?” she asked instead, not that it was much of an improvement, “will you jump into your dream career? Or pursue something else first?”

There was a special circle in hell reserved for people who allowed students to join a speed dating event, Izola was certain of it.

"Hair salon, huh?" Come to think of it he might have seen 'Bellamane' on what he took for a barber's during past times in the village hamlet. Or maybe he had thought 'Belladonna' and the joining of hair imagery suggested some voodoo type shop. "Usually I just cut my hair once it gets to be too much of a trouble. Nearly everyone in the family does it or had mom do it to them first."

"After the end of this tournament, I haven't put a full label on my post school plans. My best field in school is Transfiguration with a dabble in Alchemy," to downplay the Major/Minor system, "but I think I'm going to travel first. Signing onto the tournament is one way to test those waters. Britain hasn't been that foreign as say, the tournament being held wherever Durmmie-strang is hidden away."

Some Scandinavian country far colder than here, was all Mace remembered from the tournament pamphlets. "So I take it your beauty salon was your dream career?"

“Mmm,” Izola agreed vaguely, crossing her ankles and then uncrossing them so as not to say something disapproving about that kind of attitude towards hair care. It wasn’t that he couldn’t get away with it – the mess of hair suited him well – but it could always look better if he put a little time into it. Five minutes was hardly anything, and deliberately messy would look so much better.

Ugh. Just thinking about it made her feel like a creepy old lady preying on the young, it would taint her work appointments for weeks to come.

She didn’t know much about the American schooling system, outside it being different to the Hogwarts one, so she was relieved that he had instead launched into talking about travel, an interest she could fully sympathise with. “But surely somewhere warmer would be far more pleasant?” she suggested, “Italy, or maybe Egypt – I can see that it would be easier to adapt to the UK, but if you’re travelling isn’t going somewhere truly exotic far more fun.”

"So I take it your beauty salon was your dream career?"

She shrugged, nobody had ever quite explained where Durmstrang was to her, and she wasn’t sure that even the students would be able to place it accurately on a map. The important thing was that it was somewhere far too cold for comfort. “Something like that,” she said, “I love it, but accounts are so deathly dull.” For all that she whined, the freedom of running her own business was more than worth it. She had bad days, but they were outnumbered by the good, and she did love being able to talk while she worked.