Yes he can tell that the Headmaster was getting impatient, but Corin wasnt about to get rushed into declaring something safe or otherwise on an object that may or may not be a malfunctioning prophecy orb.

Or something else entirely.

He looked around the neat office for a moment "I cant quite run the battery of tests in your office Headmaster, not unless you want me to make a mess of things." Yeah damaging the Top Man's office wasnt really part of his agenda today. "But maybe I can run a few diagnostics..."

He drew his hand back from the orb and instead flicked his wrist to bring out his wand. Silently he levitated the orb out of its box and suspended it in mid-air, spinning it around slowly as he observed, taking its physical measurements-- height, weight, density. As he did so he realized that the orb didnt have a single scratch on it, nothing that would say it was damaged.

Good, because whatever this is it means its still working. Also not so good because it means it can still do whatever Tate was afraid it might do.

He paced around for a moment staring at the floating orb. He sooo wanted to bring this back to the Ministry and run as much tests at his disposal. "How about... stimuli..." he murmured as he held out his wand and cast a charm to heat up the orb, gradually building up until the orb was enveloped in flames. With a wave of his wand the flames died down.

No change on the orb thus far.

He then tried a charm to cool the orb all the way to the point where it just about froze. He peered into the orbsicle suspended in the air, then waved his wand to get rid of the frost.

Orb looked exactly the same as when he first saw it.

He crossed his arms before him and turned his head to Tate, both baffled and amazed at the mystery before them. Then he had a thought. He turn back to the orb and held his wand aloft, then with a wand stroke uttered a revealing spell.

Staaare. Anything?