A voice beckoned Sasha into the Runes office at the sound of his knocking and the Ravenclaw took a deep breath before stepping into the room.  He hazard a quick glance around the office, his analytical mind taking quick and thorough notes of all the changes.  They were subtle, but Sasha had spent enough time here the previous year to have become familiar with the details.  Not nearly as familiar as the Astronomy Tower class room had become, but that was a very different story. 

The castle was starting to feel very empty. 

“Professor,” Sasha offered with a deferent duck of his head.  “Thank you for being willing to see me now; my schedule’s pretty full and you mentioned wanting to meet individually with us.  I’m sure you’re eager to get to the weekend, so I appreciate you taking the time.” 

The Ravenclaw took a seat and fished a long, wooden case from his bag that had become the new resting place for his collection of crystalline wands.  It went without saying that Sasha had thoroughly researched the traits and meanings behind the stones that had ended up in his position.  He still wasn’t sure he bought the whole stone speaking to you metaphysical stuff.  Divination had never been his strong suit for a reason.  That aside, he was intrigued by the properties of the sodalite and onyx wands; the zirconium was simply an example of how even unnamed higher powers were capable of misguiding hands. 

He withdrew the sodalite and onyx wands and set them in front of him before closing the box and setting it to the side.  “I’ve looked up the stones. They make sense-“ for more reasons than Professor Emburne was likely to know about.  Especially, the Black Onyx.  “But, isn’t that a lot like reading horoscopes?  Keep the descriptions vague enough and they could apply to anyone.” 

The new Runes professor was standing beside his desk, the chair pushed carelessly to the side to be out of his way. A clutter of quills, crystal wands, and parchment vied for space with an assortment of objects - a couple of statuettes, a garden trowel, the end of a Muggle hosepipe with a few inches of hose still attached, and more such oddments. A lot of the parchment and all of the miscellaneous objects were inscribed with runes from varying alphabets and in various levels of complexity. It was hard to tell just what the professor was up to, but it seemed to involve gardening somehow, to judge by the items involved. As Sasha entered, the small man's expression was one of frowning concentration, but as he looked up and saw the Ravenclaw, Sachairi's typically cheerful grin lit up his face. "Ah, Mr. Schlagenweit!" He pronounced the name without hesitation, though his accent mangled it slightly anyway. He flicked one hand dismissively at Sasha's comments, gesturing for him to sit down and make himself comfortable.

"I'm always happy to see my students. Anytime we've both got a free period you're welcome to drop by, appointment or not. Besides, it won't be the weekend until tomorrow no matter how much time we take here," the Scotsman added as he moved behind the desk, grabbing his own chair and pulling it back into place before falling into it casually, more the way a student normally would move than a professor. "I'm thinking the only thing we've got to worry about is dinner," he chuckled. "I'm sure neither of us wants to be missing that." As Sasha withdrew the case from his bag, Sachairi said, "Just a moment." He fished around in the clutter on the desk for a moment, found his wand, and made a complex motion with it. The clutter on the desk instantly neatened itself - the parchment formed a nice stack on the left-hand corner, the quills flew into a quillholder, the crystal wands lined themselves up in a row arranged by size and color, rainbow-fashion, and the miscellaneous objects zoomed to various shelves on the bookcases around the wall. "Sorry about that," he apologized. "I've been working on a project all afternoon and lost track of time. Meant to clean up before you showed."  The desk was now much neater - probably neater than it usually was, in all truth, but at least it was tidy for the moment.

As Sasha placed the wands and their box on the now-cleared portion of desk in front of him, Sachairi folded his hands in front of him on his side of the desk and listened with a sort of polite attention that would have seemed dismissive and rude from a lot of people but seemed perfectly sincere from Sachairi. (Perhaps because it -was- sincere and not just a pose to seem interested.) He smirked a bit at the astrology comment. "I wouldn't let anyone taking Divination hear you be saying that. They spend a lot of time calculating their seven-degree aspects from the Moon's dark side to Pluto's left buttcheek on the loo in the twelfth house, and I don't think they view those complex horoscopes they draw as 'vague' in the slightest," the professor said, although there was a merry twinkle in the muddy-colored gaze which suggested he quite sympathized with Sasha's point of view on astrology regardless of his words to the contrary.  "No, but really, to be fair to them, my friends who took Divination insist there's more to it than the stuff you get in the Prophet's horoscope section and 'real' astrology is much more detailed, but I wouldn't know," Sachairi shrugged, still grinning, as if the whole idea was rather amusing. Then he leaned forward, looking at Sasha from under his eyebrows, and said slowly, "Where exactly did you do your research? Did you notice anything particularly vague about the descriptions?" The grin had shifted to a faux-neutral expression which still managed to convey a bit of humor or at least pleasantness, from the slight upturns at the corners of the mouth.

"You should be careful what you ask for," Sasha admitted with a slightly rueful grin as he watched the new professor clear the array on his desk.  "I've been known to all but move into Professor's offices before."  Only a slight exaggeration, at least as a generalization.  His frequent occupation of the Astronomy Tower had been a specific anomaly and, while Sasha had been feeling a little disconnected and disoriented without that refuge this past week, he hadn't felt any inclination to find a new hiding place.  Besides, Professor Emburne's office and classroom lacked the cozy warm alcoves with comfortable couches that the Tower featured.

In contrast to the Professor, the Ravenclaw sat squarely at the edge of his chair, his back straight and uniform still as crisp as it had been that morning.  "I typically pack lunch and dinner with me," Sasha admitted, gesturing down towards his backpack.  The Ravenclaw took very few meals in the Great Hall; he typically slipped in first thing in the morning to grab apples, rolls, boiled eggs, slices of cheese and other easily-packable items before taking the food out on the grounds or to one of the study corners.  Grain snack bars usually rounded out his diet for the day.  "There's too much going on in there to really study and I have a dog who appreciates anytime outside he can steal." 

"What were you doing with the hosepipe, if I might ask?"  There had been an obvious theme to the assortment of items, though the hose had been the only one to be physically modified in such a way to render it nearly useless.  At least for its original intended applications. 

A slight blush rose on Sasha's face as a planet's apparent bathroom habits were factored into a Divination equation, but he grinned slightly and nodded.  To be fair, part of his uncertainty of Divination stemmed from his distinct lack of talent; despite his best efforts an Outstanding score remained elusively out of reach.  He was far too analytical, far too logical and far to resistant to the idea of letting someone delve into the secrets in the corners of his mind as a class project.   "It just seems Astrology is so very conceited.  I mean, the universe is so vast and humans are so insignificant in that vastness.  It just seems egotistical to conclude that the orientation of two dots of light in the sky in relation to where I am on this one planet when I'm born somehow impacted who I am and my life.  Especially when the light from those two astrological bodies were separated by millions of miles and eons."  The Ravenclaw shrugged and shook his head.  "I'm sorry." 

He was grateful for the distraction of the crystal wands and quickly leaned over to pull out two books from the library.  The Hidden Depths of Stones and The Earthen Apothecary.  "These two.  I found them in the library.  The second from the Runes section and the first from Divination."  He looked at the two pieces of crystal, both deep, dark hues - one jet black and one a marbled blue.  He gestured with a hand at the black onyx, opened his mouth before changing direction.  The description of the Black Onyx wand had been unsettling in its aptness and, at the same time, was almost convincing.  The description had brought about so many questions. 

"The sodalite, for instance.  They mention it promoting creativity but helping find practical solutions.  It helps with journeys and with insomnia."  Which, if that was really true, this wand could be worth its weight in gold.  Despite his initial random approach to selecting wands, Sasha had noted that protection against nightmares was a trait both the wands shared.  "Calming yet emboldening.  I'm sure I could pick anyone from this school at random and they'd find one shared trait or need with this wand.  Its traits are vague enough it could be a match for anyone; there's no real reason it would be more suited to me than anyone else."