Title: Ashputtle
Author: Kail Ceannai
Rating:K+
Working Summary: Every now and then, a stairway would move in an unpredictable manner; it was on one of these rare occasions that Hermione found was racing down to the dungeons.
Disclaimer:Based on stories, backgrounds, places, concepts, and characters that are originally of JK Rowling's imagination.
Chapter One: Rare Occasion
Hermione was an expert at navigating the stairs. During her first year, before she had become friends with Harry and Ron, she had laid on her back on the cold, hard floor of the lowest dungeon just staring straight up at them with a stop watch in her right hand, a pad of paper in her left, and a pencil behind her ear. Hermione would loose herself and her sense of time while watching the complex patterns of movements. She would relax her eyes and the information would fill her mind, almost like reading a book. Eventually a pattern began to emerge.
The pattern varied on the time of day, the day of the week, if the day was a holiday, and so forth. Eventually the muggle-born hypothesized that the staircases had "recorded" hundreds of years the Hogwarts traffic patterns and now they "predicted" when and to where they ought to swing. She also discovered that if one understood these patterns the staircases would provide a quick and direct route. However, if one were to pause too long in one place, walk too quickly in another place, or follow an obscure or indirect path the staircases would only hinder one further.
Every now and then, a stairway would move in an unpredictable manner. It was a rare occurrence and Hermione had only witnessed it twice in her five years at Hogwarts: the first when she, Ron, and Harry had been delivered to the third floor corridor and the second when . Of course, she reasoned to herself, there had to be some event dictating these movements. Perhaps for the first five hundred years of Hogwarts history on that particular day when the stars were aligned just so every student would visit the Astronomy Tower to observe the heavenly movements thus prescribing the stairways to move despite no longer being required by the modern populace.
It was on one of these rare occasions that Hermione found was racing down to the dungeons. Professor Snape would not be appreciative that the Prefect had been held up by one very lost first year that had to be lead to Charms. Leaping down the steps in pairs, she feared she would miss her next staircase. She did not need the embarrassment of Professor Snape's inventible caustic remarks nor did she wish to miss the valuable moments of education under a Master of Potions.
She skidded around a bend and felt her heart sink. The staircase had moved and it was too far to leap to. Her eyes darted around her frantic mind searching for an alternate route. It suddenly clicked. If she ran fast she could catch the staircase going up one flight and then take the adjacent staircase down one flight thus enabling her to catch the staircase from the other side of the stairwell down to the dungeons. Perfect. Hermione reached the top of the first staircase and waited for it to swing toward the landing. She tapped her toe impatiently. Dread settled in her stomach as she realized the staircase was not moving in the direction it ought to. After an eternity, the staircase snapped into place and, now in search of another route, Hermione charged forward.
A burst of white light temporarily blinded the girl and she felt herself falling backwards. Thump, thump, thump! She tumbled down the stairs. At the bottom she groaned, taking an mental assessment of broken bones. It felt like she had been slammed into a brick wall. Her mind screamed as she fell into the warmth of unconsciousness.
Author's Note: I've been toying with this story for some time now, but promised myself I wouldn't write it until "Moldy Lace" (working title) was completed. However, while revising that fic this story suddenly came to me. In a blur of typing not only did I get this good intro completed, but the entirety of what was to be "Ashputtle" took a huge detour into unknown territory. This story is now very much its own creature.
Further note: this is the second release of chapter 1. The first had an atrocious number of errors.