Zoe’s father Fuyuki Yamamoto is a world renowned magizoologist most often noted as being a great expert, but terribly eccentric and somewhat grumpy and antisocial. Rather than have any kind of home base, he always preferred to go from one expedition to the next- something he told Zoe he did mainly to avoid ‘the tiresome wars and other such politics of humans.’. He changed nothing when his daughter was born. When she was still a baby he would leave her with his sister, Zoe’s aunt Akemi at her home in London for months at a time. However Zoe showed to be an extremely intelligent child, with a love of the outdoors, and as young as five years old he was bringing her along on shorter week long journeys, carrying her on his back when she was too tired or slow to keep up with him and whatever colleagues traveled with them. When she goes home for the summer, Zoe tends to spend it all helping her father study the breeding habits of Irish fairies, or the migration habits of demiguises.
She knows nothing of her mother, and no one will tell her anything either. Her aunt claims never to have met her, her father’s colleagues/friends either confess to know nothing or grow suspiciously tight lipped when she asks, and her father point blank refuses to speak of her. The only things Zoe has to remember her by are her wand, and a note she found once while rifling through her father’s things. It reads, in French: “I’m sorry, please do not hate me for this. Shield our daughter from the evil in the world, and give her my wand so in a way I might protect her too. It contains a veela hair given to me by my grandmother- she should at least have something of her heritage, given it seems she will lack a mother. Zoe my little flower, should you ever read this, know that I do only what I think is best. I go to places I would not have you follow. All of my love, Aemela.”
Zoe is an insomniac, and likes to wander the halls when she can’t sleep, or simply needs an escape. Occasionally she’ll take her bedding to an empty classroom, or somewhere on the grounds, and sleep there.
Zoe is graysexual bordering on asexual and bi-romantic, but has pretty much resigned herself to being single forever, as she figures the consent issues involved would be wonky at it’s best, abhorrent at worst.
Zoe knows bits and pieces of many different languages, having spent months in foreign countries before, but knows three fluently- Japanese which is her mother tongue, English which her aunt taught as a child while she was staying with her in London, and French, which her father also speaks and which Zoe learned to feel closer to her mother.
Whenever Zoe starts missing her dad or needs solitude, her favorite thing to do is go for a hike. Once she got lost while hiking and ended up having to climb a very tall tree so she could figure out what direction Hogwarts was and head back in that direction.
She has several pets, both magical and mundane, that she has somehow managed to sneak in past groundskeepers year after year. These pets include two Pygmy Puffs named Soleil and Lune, a one eyed garter snake affectionately named L’bitte, a blind hedgehog named Poppet, an extremely skittish moke named Otoko, four finches she simply calls les petits chanteurs, a great grey owl named Etoile, an old Siamese cat who hates everyone except her that she calls Grandma, and a one armed fairy named Yōsei- all of which she rescued and couldn’t release back into the wild or rehome for one reason or another- save Etoile who was a gift from her father when she was nine.
The amount of pets she has has caused issues with her roommates multiple times- despite the fact that Etoile stays in the Owlery and Grandma tends to stay in the Ravenclaw common room- not because any of them are poorly behaved, but because Zoe has a habit of letting one or two loose at a time to roam the room.
Zoe has intense anxiety, and has had several panic attacks during school because someone’s come up behind her too quietly, or touched her without warning.
At any given time Zoe normally has an animal somewhere on her person
