Mason was wondering why Prince had come to see him if all he was going to do was argue with him. The man's complete lack of common sense was starting to show. Or perhaps he'd been away from people too long while cursebreaking. "You are in fact, no longer a cursebreaker, you chose to be a professor. Cornered unchaperoned or spotted chatting by a painting, it makes no difference, there is a mark upon reputations and people will always question it from here on out." Gossip was gossip and it was hardly concerned with the truth. Mason didn't like it either, but he knew how to skirt around it so as to keep himself and his students out of the mill.

"I am entirely unsure as to where you get your information, but the rules are clear; you cannot be engaged or married while a student at Hogwarts." Upon his appointment to Head of House, Mason had brushed up on the finer points of everything he could think of concerning the rules, both academic and societal. "Being engaged is for young women who have debuted in society, who are ready to wed, which the young ladies are Hogwarts are not. There are likely old pureblood families who have betrothed their children, but that is a promise to be engaged when of age; it is not an engagement itself."

The mention of the Headmaster's own nuptials was also not news to Mason, but the fact of the matter remained; as far as he knew, and he had been in school with Mrs. Black at the time, as they were in the same year, there had been no mentions of them being seen together prior to her departure from the school. "I don't suggest you throw that in Black's face when you try to argue this with him," Mason warned. "I was a student at the time and a prefect, nothing hit the mill then. You've already miss-stepped, it is impossible to go back now." Sighing heavily, Mason leaned back in his chair, the semblance of an apologetic grimace on his features. "Your choices are limited. Resign and marry the girl, in which she will still have to leave the school, or hope she is not engaged before she graduates, but it will never appear straightforward and will always appear untoward in society, your good intentions aside, whether you like it or not." This was exactly why Mason's own romance pool had been limited to women he had never taught.