Open Staircase Nightmares

[Liesel Besemer]

Liesel was stuck. It didn't seem to matter how many times the staircase turned; it never connected to another descending flight. The only way she could go was back up to the towers. Even if she took another ascending flight and tried a different route, the staircases above never aligned to any below the sixth floor. And yet, as she stood there, students returning from lunch her somehow managed to pass her by. Logically, Liesel knew that all she had to do was follow their footsteps in reverse, and she ought to be able to get to the ground, but Liesel and logic seemed to repel each other like magnets; what worked for everybody else led her in a circle, right back to the staircase she'd started on. It didn't make any sense! Stupid, stupid, stupid staircase... Why hadn't they just built a normal one? Why did everything have to be so complicated? Why didn't it make any sense??

Liesel sat down and hugged her legs. She willed herself not to cry, only to discover that she was already crying, at which she broke entirely and howled into her knees. She could live without magic. She could live without all of this. She just wanted to go home.

 

[Yuelia Rossingol]

Yuelia wasn't sure she liked Hogwarts as much as she thought she would. There was a lot to discover, but it was all a bit overwhelming after being in her tiny house with her father. Her friend was in Hufflepuff, too, so it wasn't as though she could sit with him at night and read like she hoped she might. At least Thanatos was good company. She'd sent him off with a letter to her father, knowing it wasn't far to travel for the raven, and began the slow trudge back down the stairs, finding her way back to the dungeons.

At least she would have, only she was distracted by the crying of a girl she vaguely recognized as being another first year. Yuelia was not exactly a social creature, but she felt it was the polite thing to do to see what was going on. Careful not to crush her nice new robes, she let them spread on the ground as elegantly as she coukd as she crouched down near the girl, looking at her in mild confusion. "Why are you crying?" she asked, more curious than rude. "Is something wrong?"

 

[Liesel Besemer]

Liesel lifted her head, startled by the closeness of the girl's voice. Oh, thank God, or Merlin, or whoever she was supposed to thank! Someone had come to rescue her. That was, if they didn't both get stuck on this flight of stairs forever. "I can't get - down," Liesel said mournfully, gripping the nearest stone baluster. "I can't get down, there's no more stairs, look!"

 

[Yuelia Rossingol]

Yuelia paused for a moment, looking down at the stairs. Indeed, they both seemed to be stuck in mid-air, rather unpleasantly. Heights didn't really bother her so much, but looking down did make her feel mildly discomforted, and she also gripped on to the railings to keep her bearings, as she did not know how to fly yet nor had worked out any spells to slow her fall. All she could really do yet was summon and levitate items. "Oh dear. My father warned me this might happen," she explained, quietly. "It is a little unfair that so much of magic depends on how you feel," she added, a little sympathetically. She'd had tantrums at home that had caused the house to retaliate on her, and that was just their tiny two story house with non-magical staircases. "Where are you trying to go? Maybe we can work it out together and bully the stairs in to behaving."

 

[Liesel Besemer]

Liesel wiped her face, though trying to dry it completely was futile. She didn't think she would ever be able to stop crying. A valve in her chest had opened, and the only thing that would shut it off was Genna coming to take her home. "The great hall," she said. It wasn't quite time for dinner, but she'd left the common room early in the naïve hope of finding her way down without following everybody else. "But then - then if I go down, I won't be able to get back up, and I'll be stuck on the floor forever and - I just want to go home!" If the stairs were going to misbehave every time Liesel was a little bit anxious, there was no hope. The castle clearly wanted to drive her out, and she was very happy to oblige.

 

[Yuelia Rossingol]

Yuelia frowned slightly, trying to make sense of it all. She supposed that to someone who wasn't used to magic, the logic of it would be a bit strange. She didn't quite understand why someone wouldn't want to be at Hogwarts, though. It was all she'd dreamed about ever since her father had told her about it - after all, she was going to be a great and powerful witch. Going to Hogwarts and studying all kinds of magic was all her dreams come true. Even if it wasn't exactly as perfect as she hoped. She'd just have to be patient.

"Well, you must have gotten up here in the first place, yes?" she started, channelling the spirit of one of her father's lectures. As though to illustrate the point, she pulled herself upright and folded her arms. "If you got up here you can get back down." She turned away, looking at the stairs with a somewhat haughty expression. "We are going to the Great Hall, stairs. You will take us there." The stairs seemingly groaned, but didn't move in the desired manner at all, and Yuelia's rather imperious demeanour seemingly faltered for a moment. "Oh."

 

[Liesel Besemer]

Well, that was true enough. But Liesel had only ever made it up the stairs when she'd been following someone else. There was going to come a day when there would be nobody to follow, and then what would she do? Sleep in a broom closet? How embarrassing!

The stairs did not yield to the Slytherin's demand, but Liesel could have sworn she heard a rumble of stone somewhere beneath them. She sniffed and wiped her nose. "Maybe we have to be nice?" she said, with a touch of disdain. Frankly, the only thing the staircase deserved was a good kicking, and Liesel would happily have volunteered to deliver it, but at this point she was prepared to do anything to touch solid ground again.

 

[Alexander Woodlock]

Alexander was at the towers getting his afternoon class stuff, he tend to leave his school supplies for the afternoon as to not strain his shoulders from carrying too much. He didn't had to worry about hurrying for his first afternoon class as he had a free time after lunch. Taking the Grand staircase from the North Tower down to the seventh floor, Alex had to wait for a few second before the stairs connect. It was like waiting for an elevator for muggles. Although, when he ended up on the sixth floor, he noticed two girls. One seems look familiar to him but the other one wasn't. Alexander, being a patient boy, stopped on the sixth floor corridor. The girl who looked familiar was crying. "Hey, is there something wrong?" The Ravenclaw boy's tone was rather confused. He looked at the both of them.

 

[Yuelia Rossingol]

((hooray for poor mental health i am so sorry))

Yuelia faltered at that. She supposed she ought to be polite to the stairs, but if they weren't behaving themselves she was more inclined to give them a piece of her mind. And she didn't want to go grovelling to the castle, as that would set a bad precedent for the next seven years of schooling. "I suppose so. My father always said you shouldn't show fear to magical things but I guess being nice to them wouldn't be the worst thing." She missed her father terribly, no matter how stern he was. At least it was only the two of them, then. A thought reinforced as an older boy showed up, and Yuelia stiffened, not wanting people to think she didn't know what she was doing. "The stairs are playing a prank."