Closed Questions With No Answers

[Nell Night]

"Okay, but why did someone think it was a good idea to make staircases that move?" Nell continued her quizzing as she followed Stella down the hallway, taking quick steps to keep up with her big sister. "And if they wanted the stairs to move why would they make it so you still get in trouble if you're late for class? And why didn't they make a big map or something? And what happens if a staircase breaks or something and you're stuck on the wrong floor?" The logistics of this castle intrigued Nell no end, having heard Dad talk about the fascinating and confusing architecture of Hogwarts her whole life. Now that she was here in person, experiencing it herself, it made less sense than ever before. It seemed as though not only had no logic gone into the design of the school, it was almost as if it had been designed to be illogical on purpose. Nell was quite sure she could design a much more functional school herself, and she was only newly twelve. "And why are the dormitories so spread out? We have to walk so far between our rooms and breakfast and the Slytherins barely have to go anywhere. Why wouldn't they put the dormitories all on the middle floor so it's an equal distance to everywhere you need to go? And why aren't there magical elevators or escalators? Surely we could have some kind of elevator so we wouldn't have to walk so far every morning?"

 

[Stella Wright]

Stella was glad she had offered to show her little sister around the castle; someone else might get annoyed by her constant questions, but the Wright sisters had grown up questioning everything together, and to Stella it was familiar and enjoyable to try to be the one who knew the answers - and to brainstorm them together when she didn't. Stella knew Nell's priorities well, so she was leading her first to the library. "I think in the original Hogwarts, Rowena Ravenclaw wanted to challenge the students' minds, though I agree this is rather a silly way to do it. I did try to analyse the staircases' movements in first year, but they seem to be random, which is simply impractical. There's usually another way to get to where you're going if one of the stairways takes you to the wrong place. Or you can wait for it to move again." The stairways had frustrated and fascinated Stella too, and she wished she had more useful advice for her sister about them. "The dorms are spread out for the aesthetic, I think. We Ravenclaws like to be up near the stars - at least I do - plus there's the ivory tower metaphor. Gryffindor is high up where they can pretend to be reckless. I think Slytherin is in the dungeons because Professor Styx likes it there, honestly. But there aren't any elevators because the castle was built before they were invented, so they didn't leave space for a shaft. I guess they could remodel it, but that would be a lot of work in a stone castle, and as the only school of magic it'd probably cause too much disruption."

 

[Nell Night]

Nell listened to Stella's explanation, nodding slowly. She had realised a very long time ago that her sister seemed to pretty much know everything, and Nell's entire life ever since had been a race to catch up, one that she never quite seemed able to win. "Okay." She said slowly, pondering everything Stella had said. Nobody else was ever quite as willing to answer Nell's litany of questions on any subject as Stella was. Her answers about the impractical school layout were less satisfying though, but seemed to crystallise a mental picture of the founders in Nell's mind. "So they were more interested in how the school would look than making it actually practical for students to use?" She asked, wondering what these people had been like. "And nobody since has thought of making any changes?"

 

[Stella Wright]

Stella nodded, disappointed she didn't have more satisfying or more concrete answers for her sister. She preferred to know things, or at least to be able to perform experiments so she could find out - even if at this stage of her study her results tended to be frustratingly inconclusive. "Well, it is a castle. That was never going to be the most practical design for a school. You haven't seen them yet, but there are whole wings that are practically abandoned because the castle is too big for the amount of students it has. Come to think of it, it would make more sense to move things there and have the school as a whole less spread out . . . but then everyone would realise how ridiculous it is. They do make great places for experiments, though." Stella shrugged. "Apparently not. It seems to me that quite a lot of the wizarding world enjoys living in the past - we still have quill pens on our official supply list, for goodness sake - but I'm afraid I don't understand why that is." Stella didn't like to have to tell her sister she didn't know something, but she would certainly never shy away from being honest with her. Stella herself had never really bothered to use quill and parchment at school, much preferring her ballpoint pens, pencils, and galaxy-patterned notebooks.

 

[Nell Night]

Nell had to admit Stella had a point about this being a castle, nodding slowly. "So it was more a case of trying to figure out how to fit things in a building that already existed." She said slowly, considering it. That made a lot more sense than someone just designing a school this way of their own accord. Satisfied with the answer on that front, Stella listened again as her sister explained more about the old fashioned views people seemed to have, giggling a little as Stella mentioned the quills. "You don't like them? I've been trying to learn to use the quill really well, it's so fancy! I wanna get good enough to use it in my journal, I think it'd look so fancy and nice journalling with a big quill." The old fashioned look of the quill appealed heavily to Stella's appreciation for vintage things, and she quite liked writing with it and imagining she was an old timey person in the past.

 

[Stella Wright]

"I think so, yes," Stella agreed. "Although I believe the original founders of Hogwarts Scotland actually built their castle, so the same doesn't apply there. I don't see why they made it a castle, other than for the aesthetic." Of course, aesthetic was a perfectly valid consideration, and one that Stella appreciated, but practicality had to play a part too, and as far as Stella could see, in the case of Hogwarts it simply hadn't. Stella smiled at her sister as she enthused about the fanciness of quills. "I agree that they look cool, I just don't like to use them for classes. It's too easy to mess up and get blotches on your work." Stella could write fairly well with a quill, but she liked to include diagrams in her notes, and draw those in pencil so if she made any mistakes she could erase them. She didn't want to risk the ink running, or dripping from the tip of the quill. Pretty things like Nell's journal were a good use of quills, functional things like notes for classes were not.