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Gatsby has been wondering which professors he should consult over the building of his mansion. In the end, he decided that to get the approval of a senior member of the faculty before asking the Headmaster would be prudent. If the Headmaster doesn't like it, he'd have an ally who could...persuade him. And who's a respected and senior member more than the Professor of ANCIENT Runes?

Gatsby knocks, re-adjusting his tie.

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Wednesday opens the door readily. No Hogwarts robes for him outside the classroom; his snazzy Armani suit might impress even a Jay Gatsby.

"You must be a new student. If you are looking for the Ancient Runes professor, look no further: I'm your man. Mr. Wednesday. If your search is, rather, for the restroom, it's down the hall and up the moving staircase."

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He doesn't smile instantly, because that might be coming on too strong. His hands drop from his tie, and he makes as if to tip his hat; that is, he puts his thumb and forefinger together at his brow. He'd tip it if he were wearing one.

'Professor Wednesday, wasn't it?' he says, almost sparkling ~~like a certain vampire~~, giving off the impression he's struck by the honorific. Gatsby probably is, seeing as how he regards places of great education. 'I wondered if I could...' he hesitates for a moment. 'talk to you' sounds vulgar. ...'engage in discourse with you about a certain project of mine?'

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"Professor of ancient runes, yes." Hmm, what does this fellow want? "You can call me Wednesday. Come on in and we can discuss your project."

Almost certainly not a project having anything to do with ancient runes.

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Gatsby walks in, consciously respectable with his back straight and head high, trying to show a polite interest, and not to goggle at how old this place is. It really is ancient--maybe even older than Oxford college itself.

'What a view,' he says, gesturing out of the window. 'Endless grass, and trees. Lucky for any man to see that every day.'

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"Pastoral. Idyllic," Wednesday agrees, though spring hasn't yet fully sprung and the view out his West Tower window doesn't conjure up pastoral idylls (maybe in a few weeks...) "A man could get used to it."

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'I've been thinking, ol--Mr. Wednesday,' Gatsby says, eyes shining as he visualises his new home. 'Much as the castle is pleasant to me, I have to say I regret infringing on the hospitality offered here. I've been thinking of building my own place. Just on the lakeside, perhaps...I miss a house that backs on to water, you see.'

There, he's got to the point.

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Yes, 'old sport' isn't a term that describes Mr. Wednesday very well.

"So you're looking into real estate development on the grounds. What sort of a place would you be wanting?"

If it's going to be an eyesore, Wednesday will oppose it. If it's going to be something Wednesday might enjoy looking at, that's a different story.

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Nick once described his home as 'a great incoherent failure' of a house. Gatsby disagrees. His one before had been built to impress Daisy; some factual imitation of some Normandy place, brand new, sparkling clean, wreathed in the freshest ivy. He's past that now. Not such a sprawling place.

'Something nicely-put-together. Maybe Gothic architecture, to complement the castle.' Only he'll be much grander. 'I've got nothing against red brick, but it'd only clash. I don't suppose you have any real estate experience?'

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Wednesday's experience in real estate consisted of squatting in various buildings, conducting various scams, and on a couple of memorable occasions actually selling swampland in Florida.

"None in Scotland, I'm afraid," he said cheerily. "If you look to build on Hogwarts grounds, though, all you really need is the permission of the Headmistress."

A pause. "To which end I suppose the endorsement of a faculty member could prove to be quite an asset."

Which was what Gatsby wanted from him, wasn't it? Wednesday turned the full force of his friendliest smile on Gatsby. It wasn't that golden impossible smile of which Gatsby was capable. It was a look that said, very plainly, What's in it for me?

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Gatsby blinks innocently Wednesday's way before breaking out into a smile. 'My God! You're right!' He sounds genuinely surprised, and gratified, by this turn of events. 'You know, I did wonder about asking the Headmistress, but it seemed a little presumptious, as she's not met me before.' Gatsby puts a lot of stock in connections.

'I suppose,' he continues, ignoring Wednesday's look, 'she wouldn't object to the parties I intend to hold on-campus. And gambling's legal here, isn't it?--Yes, I suppose for those the endorsement of a Professor would help.'

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"Just about anything's legal on school grounds if the Sorting Hat and the Headmistress smile upon the endeavor," Wednesday noted. He restrained himself from using the phrase anything goes, for fear Gatsby might feel compelled to dance the Charleston.

Parties. Gambling. These were opportunities for someone like Wednesday. The energy, the desperate hope, people on the make, people trying to win a bedmate or a bankroll ... Yes, he thought Gatsby's proposed addition to the campus quite a promising one.

"Why don't you write to dear Kahnooloo and mention I suggested you do so? Professor Wednesday. Ancient Runes. Put me on the guest list for your first party."

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He smiles again, that extraordinarily glamorous smile, and nods. 'But of course, Professor.'

Hell, anyone's allowed to come to Gatsby's parties; anything really does go. The hammers and nails that are needed the next day don't lie idle.

He thanks him in that professive way he has, before he disappears out of the door.

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New professors came and went with a certain degree of regularity at Hogwarts. New professors who actually taught a class, though, were something else. Grant was interested in meeting the only other person to teach at this school in quite some time.

He knocked on the door. Grant wouldn't be surprised in the least to find out that something here had changed, and Wednesday's office was now two floors up. He didn't like the West Tower on general principle, and the faster he was at the place he meant to be, the better.

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Wednesday's Antichrist-radar didn't go off. The man he found at the door must not be Damien Thorn.

"Come on in," he said, stepping aside to permit Grant into the office. "The place has not got what you might term a lived-in look just yet, but I hope I can offer reasonable hospitality."

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"It's an office. I didn't come for hospitality," Grant said. Why did everyone always feel so inclined to be polite? It was office hours, not an ice cream social.

Still, he hadn't come to be rude, either. He introduced himself. "Alan Grant, I teach Care of Magical Creatures. I thought I'd say hello." He looked around the room. "Somebody must really hate you to stick you in the Tower."

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"Ah. Professor Grant. I hear you recently taught a class on the species to which our esteemed Headmistress belongs." Wednesday took a seat, with a gesture inviting Grant to do likewise. That was an instance of hospitality. (Inhospitality might have entailed lack of chairs, or unwillingness to clear them.) "I haven't committed any such offense, no. The West Tower suits me. The study of ancient runes may be a discipline lending itself to such tortuous passages. There is one pattern in which runes are written that is called boustrophedon, after the pattern of an ox-driven plow, back and forth. Such windings echo the Tower's windings. It's a pleasing parallel."

Wednesday had never been short on words. Though he could be laconic, in the right (or wrong) mood, the present kind of expansive discourse was a habit of his.

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Wednesday's loquacious mood didn't bother Grant that much. He wrote research papers, after all: the epitome of verbal masturbation.

He sat down. "So if you have your winding runes, you must have your simple ones, right? It wouldn't be symmetry without something short and to the point."

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"Symmetry is in the eye of the beholder," Wednesday replied, ever affable. "Runes are certainly simpler to wrangle than Furbies ... or dinosaurs, I hear tell?"

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"I imagine that almost anything would be easier to wrangle than dinosaurs," Grant replied. "Seeing as how they were never meant to be wrangled, out in the wild or at Hogwarts." He rolled his eyes. "It's worse than Godzilla."

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So much for keeping an academic distance. Matt had flipped through some of Wednesday's handouts, and they'd got him thinking a little, and, come on, asking a couple of questions wasn't going to send him into some kind of obsessive hyper-competitive tailspin. And they were at a school.

He knocks on Wednesday's door.

Hopefully the fact he'd spent most of the class chatting to Mello and scrawling game cheats in runes wouldn't be held against him.

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As it happened, Wednesday didn't care whether people spent class time chatting, writing game cheats rather than runes, or anything else, as long as they weren't talking when he was talking. He hadn't expected most of the class to get far even with the basics of learning the runic alphabet. This was, after all, Hogwarts.

He merely counted himself fortunate that Tinky Winky hadn't signed up to take Ancient Runes.

Answering the door, he recognized one of his students. "Hello, Matt. What can I do for you?" It was a fifty-fifty chance Matt actually had a question about the class, Wednesday reckoned. (He'd begun to consider having a house-elf run off copies of a map to the restroom, just in case.)

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He wasn't expecting to be recognised, really, never mind be called by name. Matt blinks.

"So the runes are a system of writing, right? What happened to the language? I mean, there's the names of the letters, but..."

He's not expecting to be invited in, either. His experience of Wammy's wasn't really like that.

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Wednesday stepped aside, holding the door open, and waved an arm to indicate Matt should come on into the office. "That makes for a long story. For one thing, runic inscriptions have been recorded in more than one language. Why, I could say there are runic inscriptions in the language we're speaking right now, though so removed from us in time that you would not understand the words if spoken. Some creative spelling and you might be able to read it."

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"Old English sort of stuff, you mean?" Matt stepped into the office but remained standing, taking the room in without really seeming to. (The goggles helped with this impression.) "Were all those languages related? The way so many western languages come from Latin?"

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"In a manner of speaking, yes. Why don't you sit down? I intend to sit," said Wednesday, even as he stepped behind the desk and did so. His chair, though large, managed not to make him seem smaller, only to add to the impression of a presence beyond that occupied by his physical body.

"How solid is your grounding in historical linguistics?"

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