Closed One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

[Santiago Torres]

Santiago was feeling pretty pleased with himself. His lack of friends had given him plenty of time to walk around the castle by himself. Even though it had only been a week or so he had a decent knowledge of how to get from one place to another. Even the moving stairs didn't seem to cause him much trouble. Granted he always walked as quickly as he could up or down to avoid any tricky situations. But today he was filling comfortable which he knew should have been his first sign that something was about to go wrong for him. He was taking his time up to the seventh floor up to the Gryffindor house when he suddenly felt the ground beneath him start to shift. "No no no." he muttered to himself as he looked around and realized the stairs were moving. He had only been a few steps from the top and he cursed under his breath. Was the school trying to test him? Santiago looked around and sighed. At least he wasn't alone.

 

[Conan Elliott]

Conan was trying his absolute hardest to try and search every inch of Hogwarts to try and find as many secrets as he possibly could. Which did help when trying to map out the complex layout of all the corridors and shortcuts he had found so far. The only thing he couldn't account for was the moving staircase. One second he was heading in the right direction, and the next, the staircase had decided to move with him stuck right in the middle of them. "Oh great," he huffed, clutching at the banister as to not lose his footing, glancing across at Santiago. At least he had gotten stuck with someone else. And, once the stairs had settled in their new position, Conan frowned, peering up and down the stairs before his dark landed back on his dormmate. "So," he offered, hopping up the couple of steps separating the two boys, "Any idea where we've landed?"

 

[Santiago Torres]

Santiago gave Conan a vague nod of acknowledgement once the stairs finally stopped moving. He wasn't sure what to do now or how to answer his roommate. "Somewhere else on the seventh floor I'd guess." he said slowly. It was obvious and he tried to figure out where it might have dropped them off but his mental map of the castle wasn't that good yet. "Do you think if we stay here it'll just move back?" he asked, thinking out loud. He weighed his options and wasn't sure what to do. He could either say for who knew how long so he could get to the dorm the familiar way or risk getting lost in an unknown part of the corridor. Both didn't sound great and as disinterested as he tried to seem he did wonder if Conan had any ideas.

 

[Conan Elliott]

"Well, yeah, I could have worked that out," they might be a magical moving staircase, but he didn't think they could lead to different floors. He was more asking where on the seventh floor they might actually be, but it seemed as though Santiago didn't really know. "Maybe." He didn't really want to just stand around on the stairs waiting for them to move back again, that just sounded boring. "Maybe they'd just move somewhere else. C'mon," he nudged the other boy with an elbow, already heading up the last couple of the stairs, "We can work out where we are no problem. No point in standing around waiting for the stairs to change back again."

 

[Santiago Torres]

Santiago grinned slightly at Conan's sarcastic response. He was used to getting a worse reaction whenever he tried to be smart so this was a nice change of pace. He was still uncertain about what to do and before he could argue to stay on the stairs his roommate was tugging at his elbow, encouraging him to follow. He hesitated for a moment but couldn't actually think of a better reason. Finally he sighed and followed Conan. "You sound confident." he observed. If the stairs could move, what was the rest of the castle capable of.

 

[Conan Elliott]

If Conan did know one thing about their situation, it was that they absolutely weren't going to work anything out by just standing around on the stairs. So, he was slightly thankful when the other boy didn't put up some kind of fight for just staying put. "Well, yeah," he offered, casually throwing a glance behind him as he started to stride away from the staircase, "How hard could it be? We can't have gotten too far off course." They were on the same floor, so, realistically they should probably be able to find their way to somewhere recognizable and find their way back to the common room no problem.