The following Saturday, Harry found himself prowling around the fifth-floor corridors with a warm fuzzy feeling in his chest. He was working through his To-Do list, and keeping a promise to Luna at the same time! The parchment on which he had attempted to map Hogwarts was clutched tightly in Harry's left hand, and his wand skated softly over her walls.

Somehow, he had a soft spot for Luna. Luna deserved to be happy far more than she seemed to be.

Somehow, despite the cold wind that was sneaking in through gaps in windows and under doors, and despite the icy-chill on the Hogwarts stone floors, Luna was trailing behind him, barefoot except for rainbow coloured socks.

The following Saturday, Harry found himself prowling the fifth-floor corridors of Hogwarts, his wand clutched tightly in his right hand, his best attempt at a map held more loosely in his left.

Trailing behind him, apparently unaware of the chilly winds that swept down Hogwarts stone-cold corridors, was Luna Lovegood. Harry was a little confused by the wreath of sunflowers and ivy that perched on her head like a fairy-crown and her shoe-less feet, clad only in rainbow-coloured socks. At least little Luna had deigned to wear a heavy purple woollen jacket. Harry just wasn't sure whether she was actually deferring to the Scottish winter weather. It was beginning to seem more likely that Luna had chosen to wear it in order to provide her pink puffskein an appropriate perch: it peeked out of her breast pocket with wide, curious eyes.

It certainly seemed happy enough, humming a droning little tone that seemed to throb in time with Luna's lithe, skipping steps. Ginny had once had one, Harry recalled suddenly. He wondered idly what happened to it. Had she loved it like Luna apparently loved hers?

The thought was fleeting. Only half his attention was on his younger friend, because Harry was otherwise involved in feeling the solid stone beneath his feet and the cool flow of air in his face. His mind was focused on the shape of the castle in space, and he half wondered if he was imaging the familiar swirling colours that surged in front of his eyes. He frowned, then shook his head. This weekend he wasn't overwrought or suffering from exhaustion, magical or otherwise. It couldn't possibly be that same old magical malady again – no matter that they were so familiar to him now.

Perhaps he simply had an overactive imagination. The colours were probably just a symptom of needing to focus on a task that was – while important and necessary and enduring – not the most interesting.

The words of Sirius echoed in his ears and the tip of his wand lightly bumped against the rough-hewn stone walls, as Harry stepped on, tracing the corridors and corners.

"Almost exactly like Daddy does," Luna pottered after him cheerfully. "With his wand and his wine and the walls, Harry. Did you know?"

Harry resurfaced from his thoughts. "I can't say I did, Luna. What does your father do instead?"

"He walks the wards too," Luna smiled, and skipped over to catch up with Harry. "It's not quite will, wand and word, but Daddy says 'will, wand and wine' work just as well for connecting a wizard to his home."

Harry stumbled. "Er. I see?"

"Daddy says by imbuing the will, wand and wine into the Rookery, the home will be filled and joy and laughter. It brings the mice too, you know, when he flicks the wine about and leaves it there. So we always have life and movement in the home."

Harry raised an eyebrow curiously and paused in his walk. "You know I'm not trying to connect the castle to me, right? I'm trying to make a map." Harry waved his left hand and parchment gently in Luna's direction. "You know that. You saw me draw it. What, yesterday? The day before."

Luna smiled. "Yes, Harry. You're wanting another pair of eyes, are you not? Which is why you're sacrificing your magic instead of wine on the walls? Or blood, of course." She added earnestly. "Some people still use blood, even though the Ministry says we shouldn't these days."

Harry thought back to his brief conversation with Sirius before nodding briefly - dismissing the thought before it could distract him too much - and stepping forward again, the tip of his wand still pressed against the right-hand wall.

"How did you know that?" he mused, before: "Wait; don't answer that. Anyways, I figure a little unshaped magic through my wand is more than enough to connect the map to the castle." His eyes darted ahead to see the angled shadows on the floor ahead. "Hang on, can you get the door for me? It looks like we're going in…" he glanced around the quiet corridor before stepping into the abandoned classroom. "Here? And old Defence room, perhaps?"

Holding his wand against the stone walls, Harry traced the nature of the castle onto the ink outline contained within this parchment. In contrast to his own attempt with ink and paintbrush, it was heartening to see how the lines on the map now looked straighter. Thicker too, Harry noticed, realising that he had run his wand over both sides of the thick stone walls; the map now showed that – how fat the walls were in some areas, how deeply inset the doors were in stone.

Harry blinked a little, his eyelids sounding loud in the absence from Luna's immediate presence. To his great interest, his best attempt at map-drawing had not only had stuff added, but also – yes, Harry wasn't imagining it – some of his lines had moved. Changed. The proportions seemed strangely more accurate, Harry finally decided, as he absently heared Luna skip towards and them past him to the rhythm of her little humming puffskein. The classrooms to corridor ratio in this wing did look better now, and some tension in Harry released as he realised he'd resolved a previously unnoticed issue. Perhaps he really could manage this well.

He took a glance toward Luna's lightly flitting figure before stealing one more moment to admire his handiwork. The eleven doors that he and Luna had walked through so far, both sides of which he'd traced carefully onto the map with his wand, had little inky details that Harry hadn't put there purposefully. He looked closer: those little blotchy notches seemed to indicate what side of the doorframe the hinges were on, and wasn't that a wonderful idea? He would have planned it that way on purpose if he'd thought of it!

Harry stared at the delicate features in confusion for a moment as another small detail caught his eye. Why had all the doors – the wooden ones that belonged to each doorframe he'd walked through – been filled in as half-open?

Harry couldn't explain that, and the only idea he had – that his map might show doors opening and closing when complete – seemed a little too far-fetched. The Marauders' Map hadn't had this detail, Harry remembered. It seemed too unlikely for Harry's map – made alone, kind of desperately, with a lot of luck and the distant help from an unknowing Azkaban escapee – to better than the original.

"Nah," Harry snorted softly and shook his head back into focus. He'd paced the empty room already and sped up his footsteps to catch up to Luna. She'd paused by a portrait of Timothy the Timid just before the corridor corner, and appeared to be having a very engaging conversation by the time Harry caught up to her.

"Sir Timothy." Harry nodded.

"Young Gryffindor," the portrait trembled and Harry was momentarily arrested by the mad twitching of the man's moustache. "A bold quest you find yourself on, I hear. Braving the perils of the unknown, wot?"

"Mmm," Harry attempted. "That's the plan."

"Be bloody, bold and resolute, as they say."

Harry shuffled his grip on his wand just long enough to scratch behind an ear. "They do?"

The portrait visibly started and his moustache wobbled some more. "They don't? Oh dear, perhaps I was wrong? I don't quite remember…perhaps there's been a mistake, wot? Oh my, oh dear, oh no…"

The portrait's conversation degenerated into a kind of desperate mumbling and Harry stood in the corridor, bemused. Was he supposed to wait for the murmuring to end?

He glanced hopefully at Luna.

She smiled his way. "Timothy guards a secret passage, he tells me."

The portrait jerked out of his introspection and glanced, worried, at Harry's face.

Harry blinked. "He does? But that was never on the Marau…errr, my impression?"

The portrait turned to stare quellingly at Luna, and Harry bristled in her defence.

"They are watching!" the timid portrait hissed out. "Do not let them know! Who knows who might be listening?"

Luna smiled, apparently unaffected by the sullen-looking pigment. "Oh, you can trust Harry. He won't spill your secrets."

Harry considered that. He certainly had no intention of casually spreading the portraits mysteries. "True enough, I guess. Where do you go?"

The intense stare moved to capture him. "As if they can trick me into sharing them out loud!"

Licking his lips, Harry turned to Luna, who had apparently charmed the first secret out of the portrait in under three minutes.

"I guess I'll add it to my To-Do list," Harry offered finally. "Figure it out myself, you know, uh, and with Luna, of course. So you can keep your secrets. Since you don't want to, um, be overheard?" Unable to help himself, Harry turned to glance around the corridor they stood in. It was completely empty of all students, and even the other portrait frame was currently empty. "All in the name of adventure and stuff, I guess. Brave Gryffindor, and all that. Um...We appreciate the help though."

"Oh, I say," the portrait replied, switching from panicked to flattered like someone had turned a switch. "Students are braver now than they were in my day. Keep the faith, young wizard," he favoured Harry with a mildly pleasant gaze, "young witch." To Harry's amusement, Luna got a much bigger smile.

"Thanks," Harry nodded, and paused in his steps long enough for Luna to conclude her conversation before continuing down the corridor, wand to wall. There were more secrets to discover than he thought, Harry realised with delight, and suddenly the task seemed far more exciting.

With every stride, his magic reaching out and sinking into the stone as he walked the perimeters, Harry felt the magic in the map grow. His magic flowed out from him and, his developing magical senses somehow reading the subtleties, a kind of ripple flowed back in, and through him, and into the map. Travelling through his body like a tingle – right arm through to left – the parchment connected to Hogwarts castle in a way Harry hadn't quite understood before now. Along with his magic, his striding, his map, Harry also connected with Hogwarts castle.

Hogwarts was old, Harry knew. Far older than muggle castles, far older than a thousand years seemed when he said it. She seemed to hum as he walked it – each room and every one of the one-hundred-and-forty-two staircases that Harry could get to.

Darting ahead of him and sometimes skipping behind, Luna seemed to feel the hum too, Harry figured, as the two of them made their way around the room and back into the corridor. Luna would, of course.

They paced the corridors together, opened every door they could, and strode on in to brush each wall and visit every hidden corner.

Harry did, at any rate. Sometimes Luna fell behind.

"Wh—Luna?" Harry found himself asking again as he turned a corner to discover himself alone. He retraced ten steps. "Ah. Luna! What's that you've found there?"

His little blonde friend looked up from where she stood, having apparently been entranced by the sight of…something on the wall.

Harry stepped closer to follow her gaze. "Luna?" he tried again. "What did you find?"

"It's fascinating, don't you think, Harry?" she replied.

He glanced again at the wall. "…Yes?" He wondered briefly if she was seeing the patterns of light he had discovered, the magic even in the stones pooling and -

"They say the castle is genuine Scottish stone."

"Er." Harry looked again at the abandoned fifth-floor room, empty except for a stack of three and a half old chairs in one corner, covered in mid-afternoon sunlight and dust. It was one of the emptier floors, after all. He rapped his knuckles gently against the cold grey stone, wondering if there was anything special about this room, for Luna to suddenly stop and ponder it.

"Scottish, you say," he eventually had to mumble. "I think I did read that once, actually. Er…limestone, wasn't it? From, uh, around here somewhere was it?"

Luna's left hand reached out to lovingly stroke the huge grey stone that happened to sit in the wall in front of her.

"Daddy thinks so. One reason Hogsmeade grew where it did," she smiled, "was because of the lake, of course. But the reason people chose this lake, instead of all the other lakes, was because they could use the quarry to build good houses."

Harry raised an eyebrow, having never before bothered to learn about the history of places. Beyond the goblin wars, he'd only really worried about the development of wizarding culture, generally.

"Really? There's a quarry around here?"

"Oh, not anymore," she shook her head. "Daddy said they emptied that out five hundred years ago. It's not even in the history books anymore."

"Eh?"

Luna smiled knowingly. "Five hundred years ago, everybody knew about it, so why bother writing it down? And then, of course, people forgot and it wasn't written anywhere."

"I see?" Harry cocked his head. "But, five hundred years doesn't sound right. They finished building the castle well before then, didn't they?"

With a breathy little giggle, Luna shrugged a single shoulder Harry's way. "They used the stone as Hogsmeade grew, silly. The village was here first, you know. Because of the convenient location. Plus, the Forbidden Forest was good hunting. When they cleared space for the township they could use the old timbers, too. And then, of course, it…grew."

Harry looked around the room again, this time looking at the timber struts that reached across the ceiling in old, dark woods.

"I always thought there was some kind of…magic node?…under the castle. Isn't that why it's so powerful? Safe? Famous? Isn't Hogwarts, like, innately magic or something? What do they call it…a hot spot?"

Patting the stone a gentle goodbye, Luna took his left hand and companionably pulled him out the door.

"Yes?"

Harry noticed that they were picking up their pacing and tracing again, and rapidly raised up his wand to the walls to send out his magic.

"Luna?"

In that half-dancing, half-drifting little walk of hers, Luna led him further down the corridor and into other rooms he'd never been in.

"Daddy always says that Hogwarts grew here," she finally continued, just as Harry was about to assume he would never get his answer. "She has her roots deep in mountain stone. Her branches sprouted on the mountain in the thickest parts of the forest. She is fed and watered by the glen's purest mountain rains. She houses beings and creatures and spirits from all over Britain, who come and mingle in her shadow."

"…and wizards?"

Luna did a little odd, shivering gesture with her free hand. The puffskein's hum from her pocket rose one tone. "And witches and wizards, I suppose."

Pausing briefly, Harry cast a quick charm to see if this room had any hidden doors, and then continued after Luna's almost silent pattering.

She really was a font of knowledge, he realised. Hermione would be shocked.

"You make it sound like Hogwarts is some kind of living being," Harry managed to respond.

Luna stopped her dancing steps forward to turn and look at Harry, her huge grey eyes oddly serious. The scent of sunflowers suddenly caught his attention and made him want to sneeze.

Harry felt a little shiver of anticipation: Luna knew all sorts of things. Was this going to be some great revelation?

"Living beings have power, you know."

Then she paused to take another good look at Harry. He found it mildly uncomfortable: when Luna looked at something, she really looked.

"Harry," Luna began slowly. "Why do you think the Grand Staircase has moving stairs?"

"Huh?"

"They're not spelled, Harry. It's the whole castle that's been enchanted."

"Well, yeah, but…"

She smiled at him again, in a way that made Harry think Luna knew many more secrets than he'd suspected.

"Do you think that the castle is always this size, Harry?"

He blinked, taken aback. "What do you mean?"

"It grows and shrinks, don't you know? This is the smallest school year we've had in decades, Daddy says. So many families died in the last war."

"Well, yes, but—"

"But we don't rattle around the castle like we don't fit it, do we?"

Of course there were spare rooms on every floor in Hogwarts, but…each floor was in use now, wasn't it? Harry's eyes darted suspiciously around the corridor as if he expected it to shrink or rearrange itself while he was looking.

"Perhaps that's where the Nargles hide their nests, until the witches and wizards need the space again, in the hidden parts of the castle. I'm sure Hogwarts is happy to be home for all sorts of creatures, don't you think?"

Embarrassingly, all Harry could worry about was what this would mean for his Map. Would it somehow be less complete than his father's, made many years before the war?

Luna's radish-looking earrings seemed to swing under his gaze as she uttered: "Magic herself is a living thing, Harry."

Luna turned and flitted away from Harry again, like she had not revealed any great truth.

Well, obviously, Harry knew the whole castle was enchanted. He also knew that magic was more than just another form of…of muggle physics, for example. Obviously, Hogwarts was more than just the sum of her parts...

It was just, having it put this way made him think a little deeper.

Wand to wall, Harry kept turning Luna's words over in his mind as they completed a full circuit around the entire West Wing of the fourth floor, and then moved their attentions east. Apparently not minding Harry's attention being elsewhere, Luna kept up a cheerful patter of conversation. When his attention drifted outwards, Harry caught cheerful phrases about the living conditions of Nargles and the mating dances of Heliopaths.

"You don't say," he managed, as Harry and Luna turned into the main corridor of the rarely used East Wing. Mid-afternoon as it was, the sun was now on the other side of the castle and Harry shivered a little and pulled his cloak closer as the shadows grew cooler and deeper.

"They always start anti-clockwise, Harry," Luna meanwhile insisted, possibly keeping warm through the sheer enthusiasm in her dancing steps. "It represents the unbinding of previous loyalties as Heliopaths are true believers in monogamy and faithfulness."

"Is that so?"

"The nest is always built in a clockwise fashion for precisely the same reason. When the Heliopaths come together they are uniting for a positive, trustworthy family development. They're very good parents, you know. For the first six weeks, anyway."

The afternoon shadows lengthened as Harry's map grew more complete.

They'd found three secret rooms on this floor so far, although one might have just been a large cupboard. Aside from the small surprises, the afternoon progressed smoothly, and it fell to Luna to keep the rhythm from falling from 'methodical' into 'boredom' by beginning a series of fascinating conversations with the inhabitants of the fifth-floor portraits.

Few of them seemed the type to chat, Harry had thought, eyeing an old witch with an – was that an ear-trumpet? - but he got used to each portrait falling for Luna's strange charm, well before they stumbled across the most impressive portrait to date.

Harry watched in amused distraction as Luna drifted up to the six-foot-tall painting of three witches stirring a cauldron and complimented the second witch on the wart on her nose.

"It's quite dignified, I have to say," Luna began, mid-conversation, as if the exchange had been going for some time. "Did you grow it yourself? Or is it natural?"

Amidst the surprised responses and cackling grins of the other two witches, Luna's target dropped her ladle to stroke the side of her nose with pride.

"Natural?" One of the other figures cackled. "You think it's natural?"

Luna shrugged. "Oh, I didn't want to be rude but – if you could just tilt your head just-so…yes, just like that. Thank you – oh my! I couldn't help but notice that your wart seems to have a wart on it."

With an arch look, the witch in the portrait preened some more. "Well, some people can't help their bad taste," she shot a look at her companions, "but I'm not surprised it caught the eye of a young witch of sensitivity, like yourself."

Luna's eyes grew even larger than usual. "You mean, it really is a wart-on-a-wart? I've heard of them, of course, but I never thought I'd be lucky enough to meet one!"

"Oh yes, deary, it really is. I put a lot of effort into cultivating this, I must say…"

In front of Harry's eyes, Luna charmed the witches into a blushing hue of pink, and within six minutes – far, far faster than he had ever expected – the right side of the portrait clicked off the wall like a door opening and they could step through.

Harry peered through the opening with interest, his wand already out and ready to trace around the walls.

However, Luna rushed through first, and with a little cry of delight dashed straight into the centre of the room as if she wasn't worried about spiders or boggarts or doxy infestations.

"Oh my!" Luna trilled, arms wide open as she spun around inside the surprisingly roomy space. "A dancing room! How lovely."

Harry followed more slowly. "What?"

The little Ravenclaw rolled her eyes at him in a fondly exasperated way. "Has anybody ever told you that you need to get better at looking at things, Harry?"

Harry Potter, Gryffindor's champion Seeker, shook his head. "No? Not really?"

"It's all on the floor, Harry."

Following her pointing fingers, Harry saw to his confusion a bunch of silver footprints on a dark, hardwood floor. They all looked chaotic to him.

"Oh, Harry," Luna sighed in disappointment, and pulled him over to locate him near a particularly hectic-looking section. "Now put your feet here. Uh huh, no not that one, the other one. One more."

Somehow Luna pushed and pulled his arms so that she was positioned in front of him, looking up into his eyes with cheerful enthusiasm.

"Now we're ready," she mused. "I wonder how…let's see."

To Harry's amazement, she did a little thing with her wand and suddenly the whole room was full of the swell of string instruments. A metred, rhythmic baseline – a cello, Harry wondered? He had no idea about musical instruments – seemed to thunder out a steady three-beat rhythm.

Stability, creation, luck, sacredness and finality, Harry thought to himself accidentally. Well, at least it proved he was learning something in Arithmancy.

Then before he knew it, his feet were moving with the rhythm, and Luna was swinging him around. There seemed to be violins filling the air with some kind of sweet, almost nostalgic tone and Harry was –

He almost stumbled and would have fallen over if the music wasn't so clear and easy to follow; if his feet hadn't had a life of their own; if Luna hadn't swung him around by his shoulders –

He was waltzing.

"Straighten your spine," Luna murmured near his ear. "Shoulders back. Curve your arm more. Hold your head up. Chin down. Smile, Harry, you're having fun."

Automatically, he followed her instructions, because Harry always followed instructions from good teachers, and found himself twirling around the room as if his body knew what it was doing.

Dancing had never been Harry's thing; he knew it had never been his thing. However, as he looked down at the shining light in Luna's eyes and realised that, well, it wasn't so bad when his arms and legs went to the right places, Harry resigned himself to finishing the map another day.

He'd be dancing, waltzing or whatever, for a while, Harry realised.

Somehow, he didn't seem to mind too much.

It was over an hour later when Harry had to beg for a halt, gasping. He knew he was quidditch fit, but there were muscles in his back and his thighs and shoulders that weren't used to whatever Luna had just had him doing, and now he had arm tremors.

"Stop," he had to pant out. "Sorry, that's enough for me. Perhaps another day?"

Somehow looking as fresh and energetic as she ever did, Luna gracefully disengaged and flung herself down on the floor.

"Haha!" She thrilled. "Another day would be wonderful! Thank you, Harry! That was marvellous!"

Harry eyed the floor suspiciously. He didn't know if he could get up again if he laid down like she did.

Instead, he conjured a seat with a flick of his wand.

"I didn't know you danced, Luna?"

She shook out her long blonde hair. "I don't. Not really. But isn't it fun just to move to the music?"

Harry leant forward and slowly massaged out some of the kinks in his thigh muscles – they'd be tight and sore tomorrow, he knew.

"Er…that was a waltz we just did, right? You did just teach me that?"

She looked absurdly comfy on the cold, stone floor, pale blonde hair spread out like spun moonlight. "Oh, Daddy and I used to dance at home, sometimes. Before I came to Hogwarts." Luna lifted a hand in the air and wiggled it around. Harry assumed it meant something to her, the undulation of her palm and the flutter of her fingers. "But it was never proper dancing like the professors would call it. Daddy just called up some music and we spun and spun and spun together."

He shot a suspicious look back at the silver footprints that were still on the floor. "But didn't we just…?"

Luna laughed. "Oh, I didn't know what was going on, Harry. The castle told me what to do."

That…sounded a lot like Luna, actually.

"I see."

Harry let himself subside into silence, giving Luna time to enjoy her memories or her ponderings or musings. Whatever they were.

She seemed happy, smiling to herself and lying on the floor and making shapes in the air with her hands.

He smiled fondly, revelling in her joy. Luna deserved to be happy, he figured. Harry found himself wishing for it with desperate force. Of all people, Luna deserved to be safe, and joyful and at peace. He couldn't bear to ruin her moment; he'd be happy to take all the time in the world if Luna could indulge in pure pleasure for another moment more.

He didn't mind the break, himself.

By the time they left the room, it was almost dinner time. Harry decided to take them back towards the Great Staircase in an effort to reach the Hall on time.

Luna cheerfully told the three witches in the portrait that, before they walked into the corridors.

"We'll be back, Harry says," she chirped their way cheerfully. "We have to go to dinner now, because the house-elves work hard on the food and they'd be ever-so-disappointed if we missed their meal. But the dancing was wonderful."

"It was, was it?" the grumpiest looking witch asked in a husky kind of croak.

"It really was," Luna beamed. "Harry says we can come back another day. He had fun too. Didn't you Harry; you're not just saying that, are you?"

Harry felt himself flush under Luna's suddenly worried glance and the suddenly foreboding glares of all three witches on the wall. He swallowed. "I did have fun, actually. No idea what I was doing, but it wasn't bad."

"Oh, thank Merlin." Luna put a hand to her chest, and then blossomed back into enthusiasm for the witches. "It was simply delightful, with the music and the footsteps and the spinning. I'll come back by myself sometimes, too, if that's alright."

"It's alright if it's you, deary," the warty witch winked.

She wasn't looking at Harry, he knew; he didn't have the ability to charmed the portraits to favouritism in less than five minutes.

"Well-practised, are you?" the third – and so far, silent – witch leaned forward.

"Oh no!" Luna didn't seem to read any judgement into the question. "I have no idea what I'm doing. Neither did Harry. But that's alright. It's all in the music, isn't it?"

"And the rhythm of the Earth and the spinning of the stars, my dear."

Harry nodded his head awkwardly. "Yeah. Thanks for, um, letting us through and all that."

The witches waved them out the door.

"Come back when you want more," they shooed cheerfully, one and all picking up their stirring rods and ladles again. "Daytime only, mind. No dancing sky-clad by moonlight for a good more years yet. You're too young for all that."

"But it's something to look forward to," another witch cackled.

"All in good time," Luna waved back.

Harry stubbed his foot on a flat piece of ground and wondered madly precisely what Luna chaos might draw him into next.

They were halfway down the stairs to the second floor, Harry's thigh muscles screaming exactly as he had expected, when he felt two hands between his shoulder-blades suddenly push.

"Oi!"

He tumbled forward.

Muscles screaming, Harry twisted madly left. Grabbed the bannister. Spread feet, knees wide.

Stop the tumble.

He felt a muscle in his stomach pull; something in his back twitched and stretched.

Harry's hands scrambled for purchase on the staircase – the moving staircase, he remembered, as the flight of steps they were on lurched into movement with a sudden and unusual jerk.

"Harry!" Luna gasped behind him.

He barely heard her over the sudden rush of adrenaline, the pounding of his heartbeat.

Hands scrabbled.

Just when he thought he had caught himself, the jerk of the ground beneath him pulled his grasp away from the step and Harry felt himself fall backwards, head over feet and each solid stair-edge dug into his spine as he rolled, spun, almost bounced downwards and downwards.

He flailed more desperately, fingers skimming surface after surface. Grasping, reaching, grabbing.

Adrenaline surged higher, his heart rate sped up and up. The little pulse started fluttering in his temple but he barely noticed under the punishing bruises from the stair-edges. His eyes clenched shut –

Then he stopped.

Slowly, very slowly so that he would not dislodge anything, Harry cracked opened an eye.

Opening first one eye cautiously, then the other, Harry took a moment to assess his condition.

He…he didn't feel caught on anything. His cloak hung behind him, dragging his weight backwards. His thighs were wrapped tightly in the robes that should have kept him warm; the traitorous things, Harry thought idly.

His awkwardly naked legs, actually. His school robes were riding up embarrassingly high on his thighs, leaving his skin exposed to the cold air of the drafty old castle.

His skin grew goosebumps and all the little hairs stuck out, whether because of the adrenaline or the cold, Harry wasn't sure.

He knew they stuck out because he had a great view of his legs, half-way curled above him as they were.

How curious.

Slowly Harry relaxed his muscles.

He didn't slip.

He relaxed a bit more, fighting his way through the robes to raise himself up the better to see with, finding purchase in the step beneath his shoulders.

He lay firmly heels-over-head, on his back and perilously balanced before a long, long drop down the stairs that ended awfully close.

"Harry?"

Luna's voice distracted Harry from the contemplation of the Great Staircase's depth, and suddenly he flurried around trying to cover his legs.

"Harry, are you alright?"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, gravity was working against him, so Harry simply held his school robes around thigh level and peered around his own body to smile reassuringly at Luna Lovegood.

"Luna," Harry grinned from where he lay. "Apologies for the shock. Are you alright?"

Ridiculously, all Harry noticed at first was that her Puffskein had stopped humming. Then he saw her quirky eyebrows looked even more peculiar than usual, and as Harry took Luna in, he realised that she was more than mildly worried about him.

She was also holding him at wand-point, apparently being the reason that his sudden fall had stopped.

Behind her floated Peeves, who blew a rather loud raspberry and scowled a little with disappointment.

With significant awkwardness, Harry rolled to his front and began clambering up.

"Peeves!"

The poltergeist blew another raspberry and dashed forward to poke an accusatory finger in Harry's face.

"Peevsey-Weevsey was having a ball;

Potty Wee Potter, you just wouldn't fall;

Your enemy hates you although you be small.

Yet no death for you but a tempting close call."

Harry was still working through the logic of Peeves pushed me, and I almost fell over five stories, and how deep do the Hogwarts dungeons go, anyway, when his attention was caught.

"Wait. Someone told you to push me?"

Peeves drew back and attempted a look of innocent confusion. It made him look constipated. "Who? Push you? No! Impossible! Not Peevsey!"

Harry finally managed to scramble to his feet and held strongly onto the staircase railing just in case Peeves tried a second time.

"No, no. I'm very sure that I just heard you say that someone wants me hurt."

Extravagantly, Peeves waved away the accusation. "Oh no. Not in Hogwarts Castle, surely not."

Harry squinted thoughtfully. "Who've you been talking to, Peeves? What did they give you?"

A grin slipped out from Peeves' mischievous face. "Peevsie's been short of dungbombs, he has. Poor old Peevsey, what a sha—"

At which point in time Luna twitched her wand in the poltergeist's direction, and something orange shot out of her wand. Peeves squealed and rose three feet in the air before rapidly moving off.

Harry thought Peeves might be developing purple blotches as he went. The thought idly crossed his mind at the same time that Harry catalogued his slowing heart rate and the sudden coldness in the extremities of his fingertips. He'd been caught by surprise. Utterly, absolutely shocked.

Harry didn't like that feeling. He usually knew when something was about to go wrong, after all.

He scowled.

Briefly thanking Luna while he patted himself down and brought himself to rights, Harry looked up just in time to see his little blonde friend replace her wand behind her left ear. Her previous look of intensity was already fading from her face, a slight smile returning to grace her lips, her eye's unfocussing that usual amount.

"You're helping me all over the place today," Harry told her, before: "Did you hear him say that too? Did someone pay him to push me downstairs?"

Somehow only Luna could look that calm, and simultaneously that confused. "You seem to have a lot going on this year, Harry Potter. Do you think you were supposed to die from that?"

Harry swallowed. "I hope not. I mean, I never heard of Peeves trying to kill students before…"

She nodded wisely, one of her eyebrows drifting up to hover higher than usual. "That's true. I dare say they wouldn't actually keep him around if he was murderous."

Harry bent down again, to pat over his knees and ankles and check that nothing was injured. There were the smallest tremors in his fingers as they fluttered over joints, as his fingertips poked at hard, tense muscles and probed for sore spots.

Thank goodness that he had good reflexes! That he'd been with Luna. That Luna kept her wand behind her ear, instead of other places...like in a mokeskin pouch that lay under his robe collar, for example. Damnably unreachable in an emergency. Harry filed the thought away for later.

But who had planned this?

Suddenly Harry's knees gave way, and he sprawled to a sitting kind of lean on the step right beneath him. Luna made a sudden grab for his arm - did she think he'd fainted? - and Harry took a long moment, just to breathe.

In. Out. In.

Sweet Merlin, he'd almost died.

More importantly, he hadn't even seen it coming. He felt the sweat on his back turn cold: where were his survival instincts when they were needed? He hadn't had any suspicion at all! Were his instincts failing him?

While Luna eyed Harry worriedly from a foot or so away, Harry gathered his scattered thoughts together.

He spared a thought for the Weasley twins, but they'd gotten over their revenge-blackmail attempt and were now, apparently, rather interested in his investment opportunity. Besides, he was pretty sure they didn't actually hate him to death.

His relationship with the Slytherins was also fine.

Obviously, Sirius was not, in fact, trying to kill him despite all evidence to the contrary.

Harry huffed, eyebrows furrowed and he swallowed back a range of terrible words. "I think I know who it is. Damn it. And thanks again Luna, I owe you one."

He hauled himself to his feet, using the stairs behind him to prop himself up, and holding the bannister a little tighter than he ever had before.

Luna caught up to him and they once again began stepping down the stairs to dinner: a little slower, this time.

"We're friends, Harry Potter," she told him smiling. "Friends don't owe each other things. We're happy to help each other out."

His eyebrows rose. "True. But thanks again anyway. I…" he sighed, heavily. "I should be furious, you know, but I'm more disappointed in me."

"Is that so?" Things were probably quite bad when even Luna eyes him askance.

He shrugged one shoulder, the one not belonging to the hand that gripped the bannister.

"I should have known better, don't you know?"

Luna tilted her head. "Known to expect an assassination attempt at school, you mean?"

There might have been a bit of sarcasm in her voice, but Harry's thoughts were whirling with self-recriminations and he really didn't notice. "Exactly! I should be used to this by now! And besides, what do you think I've been working so hard for recently? I've got to get stronger! Better at surviving everything, you see?!"

Apparently Luna didn't really see, as she let the silence fill the space between them. Eventally, Harry twitched and changed the subject.

"I don't suppose you know how to free somebody else's house-elf so that it will stop trying to 'help' me, do you?"

"Not really," Luna pursed her lips. "I've never needed to think about that before."

They made it down to the third floor, finally. Harry checked himself over once more, before gamely facing the stairs again.

"Oh," Harry's shoulders dropped. "No great ideas then? I mean, I know that clothes free them, but his master doesn't want to let him go – he's not a great master, I don't think. And it has to be the adult in the family who gives him the clothes, or I'd work on convincing the son."

"Hmmm," Luna hummed. "Do you suppose we'll have shepherd's pie for dinner? I'm always fond of a bit of good shepherd's pie."

Harry's mouth opened wordlessly. Did she just...? Right when Harry was about to make a comment, Luna continued.

"House-elves aren't stupid, you know. They can play word games and be cleverer than the average wizard if they want to. If the elf wants to be freed, then he'll make the rules work for him. And if he doesn't, you shouldn't force him."

Harry had a flashback to house-elf fury at the Battle of Hogwarts, and the years Hermione had spent earning forgiveness from the Hogwarts house-elves after her knitting spree.

"Yeah," he nodded. "That makes sense. Yeah, I'll remember."

"So have you asked him? Does he want to get clothes? I'm happy to do an interview, if you need one."

Harry blinked. "What? Oh, um...it's been a bit complicated, but I know he wants to be freed."

"I see." Luna's shoulders drooped in a confusing kind of disappointment, until Harry realised she really had been wanting to hold an interview. "So you have his consent then?"

"...I...is retroactive consent okay?"

Luna tilted her head and looked behind them, up at the huge expanse of stairs above them. "Not really, Harry."

"Oh." Hopefully, Harry peeked at the shorter girl from the corner of his eye. "You kind of sound like the consent is the biggest problem. Do you have ideas then? For after I've spoken to my elf friend?"

Luna twitched her shoulders. "I've never really thought about stealing a house-elf's freedom before, Harry. But there would be the obvious solutions, I suppose."

"Obvious?"

She looked at him patiently. "But of course. If you need the house-elf's master to give him clothes, but the master doesn't want to, there's really only one obvious solution. Get the master to give him something that isn't clothes."

Sceptically: "And that will help?"

Luna nodded, happily and easily as she paced gracefully down the stairs.

"I...see." Harry furrowed his brow.

Casting a quick tempus, Harry gritted his teeth and started speeding up his steps. Luna followed behind him more gracefully.

"I guess I'll work on that first then?" Harry threw over his shoulder. "I'll...I guess I'll try to have a conversation tomorrow? Maybe the day after...I'll have to talk to Pookey...before Christmas would be good, of course..."

His voice trailed off.