"Stay close, first years," Percy Weasley ordered impatiently as they trundled up the moving staircases like little ducks in a row behind him. The fifth-year prefect had been snappish from the very start. He had little patience for slowness, less for what he called feeble-mindedness, and he did not hide it. Ron said his brother had been different before he went to Hogwarts but admitted that he liked him better this way. Harry wasn't so sure. "Stay close and don't dawdle!" Percy snapped. "Move it, you lot! We lose someone here every year and I will not be impressed if it's one of you. I have a bet on. Longbottom, watch where you put your feet!"

Harry watched as a boy called Neville Longbottom stumbled over a disappearing step but the kid behind him caught his robe and together they hopped over. Then they all had to scramble when the staircase swung around at a breathtaking speed, intending to deposit them back on the ground floor, any way possible, while up ahead Percy berated them from the landing for being slow. Next to Harry, Percy's brother, Ron, swore under his breath:

"I did not fight a troll to be dying on the bloody staircase."

Somewhere above them, a kid screamed—something blurred past them, black cloth flapping, tumbling down the dimly lit stairwell, and the scream was abruptly cut off by a thud.

"That's what I mean," Percy snapped. "Watch where you put your damn feet! Did anyone see the house colour? Ravenclaw?"

"Hufflepuff!" a disembodied voice called from above.

"Hufflepuff?! What on earth were they doing up there?!" Percy yelled back. "Idiot."

He went back to shouting at Harry's group to get a move on and they all managed to alight on the right corridor alive and intact. Well, mostly intact. There was the one girl with bushy hair—what was her name?—that had stopped to explain how the stairs did not differ much from escalators and had lost a thumb in a bannister-pinch. She was crying next to a life-sized portrait in which a fat woman dressed from head to toe in pink snored away beside a table laden with pastries. One of the girl prefects was stemming the blood with a spell, orange light fizzing into the stump. "…it's too late to go down now; we'll get Madam Pomfrey to regrow it tomorrow."

It wouldn't be the first limb regrown the school year. Madam Pomfrey, who had been introduced as the school Mediwitch, had set up a healing station next to the star-lit arena, and after the third arm had been regrown, Harry had stopped looking. Two students hadn't made it, their bodies literally ripped apart by the troll, and Harry had thought that was that, but the Mediwitch had re-assembled them on gurneys and a Phoenix had cried them back to life.

"It's the head," Ron Weasley had whispered next to him, looking decidedly green. "As long as your brain is intact, you're okay."

That had been reinforced by Percy later telling them if they do fall off the staircase to not do it head first.

Harry had come out of the fight with the troll—a smelly, mindless… thing… made out of rock and snot—fairly unscratched, having been at the back of his group. There would probably have been more 'deaths' had the bushy-haired girl—what was her name?—not remembered that you can make a troll sleep with music. That resulted in an impromptu choir and their group were able to find their houses. By all rights she should have gone to Ravenclaw, but she ended up in Gryffindor, Headmaster Dumbledore saying that speaking up in public was as brave as you can get.

One of the not-so-dead-anymore students had gone on to become a Gryffindor also and was standing behind Ron. Seamus Finnegan. He was vibrating. He hadn't stopped trembling since Madam Pomfrey had pronounced him well enough to join the rest of the students, and he looked like a bloody patchwork quilt. He said the scars should be gone by morning. And that they burned. Harry was trying his best not to stare.

Behind them, another scream was abruptly cut off. Harry wondered if it was too late to ask to be in Slytherin. He heard they were in the basement.

For some odd reason, Percy was banging on the portrait with his fist. "Wake up!" he snapped. "Wake up you fat old hag! This is a fine example to set for the new students!" She woke with a yawn, reaching for a cream puff, and Percy turned to the group he was herding. "Who remembers the password I gave you?"

"C-carrot?" Nevill Longbottom offered and was immediately zapped by a lightning-bolt shooting from the frame. "I-I-I…" he stuttered, his hair smoking.

"That's why you should pay attention!" Percy snapped. "You're alright, it never kills. Well, there was that one time but that was exceptional circumstances. Just don't stand in a puddle if you are going to forget the password, brains fry first, you know. Caput Draconis!"

The portrait swung open and they all scurried inside.