Aurora Ackerly.

That was the name of the latest addition to her tutee docket and who she was currently waiting for with stacks of materials dedicated to various subjects laid out in front of her. The name was familiar enough, though the Slytherin was lacking any sort of visual correlation to go with it. After seven terms at Hogwarts, one really would have thought she was more familiar with her fellow students but she kept her circles finite and hadn't felt much of a desire to branch out beyond that which came along naturally.

Pulling a sparkly slate green scrunchie out from her bag, Sage leaned back in her seat and worked on pulling her long box braids up into a messy bun to pass the time. It was probably just about time for her to take them out and give herself an extensive head spa and then maybe it was time for a healthy dose of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion and Scalp Treatment to straighten her hair for a bit.

Bun successful, Sage glanced up at the clock and sighed to herself. It really was her own fault that she had arrived so early and was such a stickler for punctuality. Aurora ought to be along soon enough but Sage did have enough time to read a couple more pages or so of The Will, The Word, and the Wand : A Compendium of British Wandlore she had borrowed without permission from dad and thus she pulled that from her bag and began to read.

Aurora had managed to last five years at Hogwarts without having to employ a tutor, a miracle really that she had somehow scraped her way through middling grades and had passed all the appropriate lessons to be able to progress to NEWT level. The problem now being that not only were the lessons about to get harder but she was edging that bit closer to graduation and she wouldn’t be able to ignore the very real possibility that she wouldn’t be good enough to achieve her dream.

Sixth year hadn’t started all that well with distractions in the form of foreign emotions playing on the forefront of her mind that acknowledging Cooper’s idea of finding a tutor at school didn’t seem like a terrible idea anymore. Or at least it would give her an excuse to have to hide herself away (in the LIBRARY, a rarely explored land). No one had mentioned the name of her tutor when she had asked a member of faculty, nor did she put any thought into who it could possibly be other than that it was obviously a seventh year which was probably why the second the sixteen year old turned the corner at the arranged meeting point her face drained of all its colour.

She might’ve attempted an escape plan had she not accidentally walked into an empty desk and made a racket whilst contemplating her next step. Ordinarily she would’ve laughed at herself and swiftly moved on but this time her pale face turned beet red as she wordlessly slipped into the seat opposite.

Sage was deep in a section comparing French wandlore practices to those found here in Britain when the sound of a table scraping its way across the floor disrupted her. Seeing as she had been in the middle of a sentence, a flicker of annoyance furrowed her brow and her jaw set while her head turned towards the source...and found a dainty looking blonde who looked like she was just about to face a Hungarian Horntail by herself without a wand or any other means of defending herself. If this was an indication of how the girl viewed tutoring then the Slytherin sure had her work cut out for herself. Ravenclaw embarrassed that they needed academic assistance, perhaps? Sage supposed she could relate - after all, pride was her worst vice.

"Never mind it. That desk does have the tendency to leap out at anyone who passes by," she assured with more than a bit saucy flair to her voice as she returned her bookmark to her book and returned it to her bag. "I assume you're Aurora then? I wasn't sure what you wanted to focus on so I brought along everything," she inquired as she turned her attention back to the Ravenclaw and was immediately bombarded with intense déjà vu and she was not a fan. Not at all. "Ah, so it's you," Sage acknowledged slowly and with the slightest tilt of the head to one side as she judged considered this girl silently.

Pride gone and a heat filling her cheeks, the Ravenclaw ignored the comment about the desk. It wasn’t like a moment of clumsiness usually elicited such a reaction from her. Aurora hasn’t particularly wanted to enlist the services of a tutor in the first place. Not because she was shy or embarrassed but because her time was often monopolised by all the activities that she insisted on plus socialisation plus somehow squeezing her homework in. Finding the time to be tutored had seemed like an impossible task and yet here she was..

..instantly regretting her decision.

“If by ‘you’ you mean Aurora then yes” she answered quietly, staring down at the blank parchment she had just removed from her bag and laid down in front of her. Losing all ability to form words was rare but there was nothing that she wanted to say at that moment, nor anything she could say to dissipate the tense air between the pair that wouldn’t make it infinitely worse.

“Potions. That’s all I need help with” she replied to Sage’s comment about not knowing what to bring rather defensively. Even if she did need any assistance elsewhere, she would much rather suffer in silence now.