Astronomy Office Hours!

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

Monday afternoon after the tumultuous events of the Halloween party seemed like an ideal time to hold office hours.

Miles had cleaned up his office with the assistance of Martin, his newly acquired house elf, so that it was in a state to receive company. A sign on the office door proclaimed office hours to be in session, and Miles sat behind his desk, a game of Battleship laid out in front of him. Martin had also provided non-magically enhanced cookies for Miles' guests. Miles had ensured their non-magical qualities by eating several himself, and he was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and share any cookies with his guests.

Now, leg twitching, Miles stared at the door, hoping someone would come in and express some desire to learn something about astronomy. Or failing that, about cookies. Or Battleship. Really, he wasn't picky. He just wanted a chance to meet some of his potential students.

Comments

[dungbombsrule.livejournal.com]

There was a knock at the door before Ron stuck his red head in. "Hullo? I'm not an Astronomy student, but I was passing and saw that you were having hours. I thought since we both are staff we should probably meet each other."

He frowned at Miles. "I think I've seen you around, though. I'm Ron, though Mister Weasley, professionally."

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

"Come in!" Miles said, with probably a touch more enthusiasm than was strictly called for. "Have a seat. Would you care for a sugar cookie? I vouch for them myself--they don't have any strange enchantments."

Social duties having been taken care of, he returned to his seat. "It's nice to meet you, Ron. I'm Miles Vorkosigan... I'll probably just, um, be Professor Vorkosigan when I'm teaching, which is still a lot less unwieldy than Lieutenant Lord Vorkosigan, which is my real official title. And, yeah, I audited your flying class. I wanted to experience all the different teaching styles I could to see what I could learn from them."

[dungbombsrule.livejournal.com]

Ron smiled as he moved into the room. "A 'sugar cookie'? With no enchantments? Sounds strange, all right. Is that what you give out to students to make sure they behave? I try chocolate frogs, myself. I figure holding on to them would help them with their Quidditch, too."

Professor Vorkosigan? Ron didn't mention it, but now he was glad he wasn't going to be around whenever the man was teaching. Miles was much simpler. Ron sat down across the desk. "That's right, you were there! Tell me, how did you like it?"

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

Miles grinned. "I loved it!" he enthused. "I mean, what's not to enjoy about being several feet off the ground supported only by a magically enhanced piece of wood? It kind of brought to mind some of my more daring exploits with light flyers." He did not add the "When I was your age" comment to the end of that statement, though, in fact, he was something like a decade older than the bright-eyed young Quidditch professor. "I think I should stay out of actually playing Quidditch--damned inconvenient brittle bones don't exactly make that a good idea--but it does seem like a pleasant means of travel in general provided you've got some means by which normal people wouldn't see you do it."

[dungbombsrule.livejournal.com]

"Loved it? Really? Well, all right then! I was having second thoughts about the safety caps, but they actually might have worked out on the long run. Actually, I never got around to it, but I was going to have the class write about their previous flying experiences as homework. Maybe you could talk about these 'light flyers' next class, if you audit it again. I'm not sure how a grown man could fit on a piece of paper, but then, I guess it takes all sorts."

Ron then raised a professorial finger. "But I think you mean 'Muggles,' when you talk about the people who we want to keep from seeing us fly. Not 'normal people.' Because wizards are as normal as the next bloke! Well, not Luna Lovegood, but she's a special case." A case of what is the question.

[omg-sunflora.livejournal.com]

Sunflora has been watching that leg for a minute or two now. In her experience, a twitching leg foretold an attack, so she was on the lookout.

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

It took Miles a minute to manage to look down at the vicinity of Sunflora. The leg stopped twitching. "Hi!" he said brightly. "Come on in. Want anything?" He didn't know how presumably sentient plants ate, and presumed it would be too rude to ask outright, but he'd watch and see what happened.

[omg-sunflora.livejournal.com]

Sunflora looked up. "You sure you won't attack me?"

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

"That wouldn't be very productive of me, considering I'm trying to meet my fellow students, would it?" Miles asked, managing, with herculean effort, not to smile.

[papayagami.livejournal.com]

Having returned from a rather embarrassing venture in Glasgow, Soichiro got as far away from Ravenclaw as possible, at least until tomorrow. He intended to go to Gryffindor, but ended up going the wrong way thanks to a moving staircase.

Seeing an open door and office hours posted, he poked his head in. "Hello?"

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

"Hi!" Miles enthused, getting up again. "Come on in. I'm Professor Vorkosigan. I'm pretty sure I haven't had the honor of meeting you before, sir."

[papayagami.livejournal.com]

"Soichiro Yagami. I doubt you have, the last astronomy professor I remember was a child." He came in and sat across from Miles.

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

"I, um, saw that," Miles said. He indicated the Battleship game board. "Whjy do you think the house elves thought I might find this useful?" Out of a need to do something with his hands, he moved one of the game pieces around absently.

[vislor-turlough.livejournal.com]

Astronomy was one of the few things Turlough actually cared about. Chalk it up to traveling through time and space, and long hours futilely searching Earth's skies for Trion.

So when he heard that there was a new astronomy professor, and he had open hours, he decided to pop on down and see what he had.

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

Yet another enthusiastic greeting. "Hi! Come on in. I'm Professor Vorkosigan. Want a cookie? I can vouch that they're not enchanted or anything."

[vislor-turlough.livejournal.com]

Turlough laughed. "That's good to know." He did take one. "So tell me, how extensive is your astronomy knowledge?"

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

"Well, I'm learning," Miles hedged, straightening a little. "If you're asking if I'm actually qualified to teach this class, then I'd say I am qualified to teach the general principles, but I come from significantly farther in the future from this place, so a lot of my knowledge is... different."

[righteous-pen.livejournal.com]

Enter the new teaching assistant. Mikami had been reading up on astronomy, in the study time that wasn't devoted to searching through ever-more-obscure texts on Memory Charms (there were spells that would let a person recover lost memories, but so far he hadn't found anything that kept one from losing them in the first place), but he ought to know what the next lesson was going to cover. Assuming Professor Vorkosigan had planned enough by now to be able to tell him.

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

A familliar face. Always a good thing.


"Hello, Mikami," Miles said warmly. "Come in and have a seat. The cookies are fresh-baked, and not enchanted with anything." He idly wondered if continuing to reassure people that the cookies were, in fact, harmless, would end up doing more harm than good.

[righteous-pen.livejournal.com]

"...I certainly hope not. I assume you know of what happened on Friday, then?" He hadn't noticed Miles there, but he hadn't been looking for him. Or anything, really, except a way out. At least he'd escaped before somehow being forced to do karaoke.

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

Miles did his best immitation of Simon Ilyan's bland countenance. "Yes. I was there for some of it on Friday. Very briefly." He didn't want to go into his own particular experiences. "I take it you were, as well?"

[superfraternal.livejournal.com]

Simon rapped on the door and let himself in. "Office hours? I'm impressed. It's like an actual school."

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

Miles grinned and rose in greeting. "Hi, Simon. Yeah, it is kind of school-like... Until you realize that in a real school I'd be holding these weekly and not whenever I feel like it. Care for something to drink? Or a cookie?" He indicated Simon should take the guest chair as he bustled around playing the host. And since Simon was someone he knew and liked, he would even offer the man the best that he'd been able to have Martin the house elf dredge up from the Hogwarts wine cellars.

[superfraternal.livejournal.com]

"I think I'll pass. Nothing against your hospitality, I'm just trying not to overdo it on the sweets. The food here is so much more plentiful and appealing than what I've been used to for the past year on Serenity." Simon didn't look like he was in any danger of putting on weight. "We need a gym around here."

[chaotic-miles.livejournal.com]

Miles nodded. "I've noticed that," he said. "A gym would be useful. I wonder how you go about requesting magical construction to be done around here? I can't say I've ever tried."