The spiralling stairway didn't move for me. I waited desperately in front of the growing wideness. The portraits, I believe, were rolling their eyes in a frightful manner. I felt my hands sticking to my throat in a gesture of panic.
I don't know when someone eventually found me. I was sitting on the edge, with my feet dangling into thin air and I was listening to the soft sounds of the mice scurrying across the dungeon floors. If I let my eyes wonder, I could catch the glitter of their beady eyes. It was unnerving how similar we looked to one another, the mice and I. They seemed so insignificant to me and I was nothing but a statue to them, a living statue.
'Umbridge. Umbridge, are you alright?' a shrill voice called out.
I shrank into myself and turned my head away. I couldn't match the voice with an image. I believe it was a stranger. But he knew me. He knew my name. I suppose my name is easy to remember.
'You're stuck aren't you? Hang on, I'll get help,' the voice added.
I heard the footsteps slide across the wet floors. They were always wet, always a bit damp from the cold and the warmth.
After a while, he found Professor Slughorn and brought him there.
'Dolores!' he yelled. 'How on Earth did you get yourself up there?'
Perhaps it was my imagination, but his voice seemed much farther away. He could not reach me. I was up in the air, standing on a fragment cut out of an ever reaching 'escalier'.
I was finally alone. I breathed in and out.
Would my thoughts be quiet now?
'Dolores! Don't move! I'll help you come down!'
My beautiful white socks were slightly muddy on the back. I had run through the Green House on my way to Care of Magical Creatures. I spat in my hands and started cleaning them vigorously.
As I leant forward into the airy nothingness, my eye caught the sleepy faces hanging loosely below me, in hollow frames. I extended my hands listlessly and jumped.