I don't really know how to start this, so I just will. Also, I don't own the Harry Potter series.


"There was this one time that the castle fell over.

No one had expected it. There was no prelude, no warning, nothing, not a single thing, in advance except for the creaking and the grinding of the stones right before the castle slid off.

Tipped over.

Needless to say, this was terrible for everyone involved. A great deal of confusion.

Yes, a great deal. Or, perhaps not.

You see, the castle had been abandoned for quite some time at this point. No one had been there for a long time. Dust had settled over all and everything. All that once gleamed had long ago succumbed to rust and the wood had become rotted then cinders, as one after another the torches fell from their enchanted heights. Even the Black Lake was uninhabited, the only thing passing through it waters in living memory being the stones of the castle as it began its slow descent.

Everything that had at one time been holding the castle together, magic in particular, had long ago faded. All that had held down the castle for the longest time had been gravity. The same force which slowly, inexorably, drew the castle ever further into the lake.

It was mournful, a somber occasion. The ancient monolith older than old and an austere example of the power and celebration once wrought upon the living stone so long ago, lifted off of its foundations. It journeyed so tragically, down, down, deep beneath the voided waters, to crumble in obsolescence, in a place no living eyes had ever seen.

Of course, the castle had been built with longevity in mind. Even time would not have so completely ruined the thing in all but an instant. Pushing the depths of the castle up from below, was a tail.

It was a large tail, of something that had never stopped growing, and still again might never stop. The basilisk, as old as the stones it upended, was finally free. After so long, so unimaginably, so excruciatingly, so painfully long, the creature had grown large enough, through some sorcery or another, that its sheer girth was enough to push the castle above up, and over, and down.

So very far down.

A lament, a celebration, a tragedy. After all, what will happen whence the snake reaches the outside world? Maybe nothing does. After all, there might not even be anyone anywhere anymore. This is wrong though. Why is there a snake? Why is there nothing else?

Snake and stone and lake and sky,

and mountains which eternal lie,

shouldn't someone have killed the damn thing a long time ago?"

Everyone was staring at Ron.

"Ron, when I said that I felt guilty about killing a creature as old as Hogwarts, this is not what I expected as a reply. At all."