For a long time, nothing happened. A glance at her wrist watch told Minerva that they had been in the steel box for some time over an hour, with no progress. She had begun to think that perhaps it had only been tea in the bottle, that the power of this liquid was as fake as Sybill's divination abilities.

The light from the fluorescent bulbs made circular patterns on the metallic walls as Minerva pushed her head back against the surface behind her. Was it just her, or were there rainbows colours swirling, undulating, in a pattern? A dream like pattern, paisley… no, tartan… pink tartan, with black and yellow threads. Zigzags, then waves, then circles, then straight lines again. She shook her head. No.

But then Sybill gasped. "What on earth is that?" Her eyes were fixed on the wall just down from her, and Minerva followed her line of sight down to where she was staring.

The steel wall was growing inwards in a gigantic egg shape, shimmering with blues and purples and greens, like a soap bubble. Minerva could see their distorted faces in it, eyes wide with shock. It was expanding even as she watched, but keeping its shape, as if someone were blowing up a balloon.

Sybill whimpered, and scuttled over to her side of the elevator. Minerva peered at her curiously. "Oooh, I hate bugs."

Bugs? Minerva's gaze snapped back to the egg in the wall, and, sure enough, there were huge black beetles squeezing through it to land with plops upon the floor, and crawl over the walls. They were the same iridescent shade, their wings shimmered with spectrums, but they were as big as her palm, so she didn't quite appreciate the beauty. Their legs were spindly and hairy, and she could almost feel them crawling over her, even though they weren't.

"They're disgusting." Sybill crouched beside Minerva, eyes as wide as saucers.

Minerva whispered. The bugs might hear her otherwise. "Maybe I can transfigure them."

Sybill clung to her arm. "But… your wand… won't the muggles see?"

Minerva smiled. "Not if I don't use it."

"Can you do that?"

"Does it matter?"

The physical sensation of transfiguration was familiar. Minerva stared hard at the beetles, and pushed at them the first thought that came into her head, as she would push an incantation through a wand.

"Ha! Socks!" She exclaimed, as the beetles turned to knitwear, and fell all around them, off the walls, from the ceiling.

Sybill made a noise of wonder. "Look at them! They're all different colours!"

And so they were. Red and green and blue and yellow and pink and indigo and orange, and mixtures of all of them, with little moving patterns. It didn't take long before the socks were covering the floor. One had little snitches with flapping wings on them, and the next little stars that twinkled. There was a pair that pulsed with purple and blue, and a pair patterned with checkers that shifted like a Rubix cube.

"They're so soft and woolly," Minerva reached out to touch them. "I wonder whose they are."

Sybill made a strange noise in her throat. "Err… Albus?"

"Albus!" There he was, poking his head through the place where the egg had been. There was now a hole. His pointy hat had made it, she was sure. A red one covered in yellow stars. "Are these… your socks?"

He smiled at her, but did not speak. Instead she saw his hands come through the hole, and stretch the steel like rubber. He squeezed through it, or more it squeezed him through, as though it were giving birth to him.

Sybill smiled dreamily. "God, Minerva, we're so ripped. You and me. Tripping. Merlin…"

Minerva chuckled. Yes, it was a bit odd, wasn't it? Somewhere in her head she knew Albus couldn't be squeezing through the side of the elevator, but here he was, and it was rather interesting to watch.

"Merlin, Albus why are you naked!" Minerva shrieked, as she watched the Headmaster plop onto the floor. She managed to admire his form even then, how amazingly agile he was for a man of his age. She shook her head, and watched the Albus-that-was-but-wasn't climb to his feet, attempting to preserve his modesty with the bottom triangle of his beard, but not quite succeeding.

Sybill was laughing, and Minerva wondered why. She thought she must have wondered aloud, because Sybill spoke, though it was more semi coherent noises coming through snorts. "Funniest…dance…ever…seen."

Albus was dancing. It was just a little twitch of the hips, at first, and then he seemed to get into it, tapping his feet and lifting his arms, swinging his hands in little circles. He turned his back to them, and gyrated his hips like he could hear some music they couldn't. Sybill was in fits of giggles, tears streaming down her face. Minerva could simple feel one of her eyebrows right up near her hairline.

But it wasn't music. Sybill noticed first. "House elves?"

There were house elves in his hair, little tiny ones, and they were tickling him. Minerva could see their little ears, and their long noses poking out from within the long white strands. All of them were wearing little tartan tea towels.

Albus winked at her, and then his hat began to melt. It melted into something like what the elevator was made of, only blue, and as it dripped down his face he melted like a candle, into a puddle on the floor.

Minerva pushed herself back further against the wall. "If it touched us it's going to melt us like it melted Albus!" There was genuine panic in her voice, and it seemed to affect Sybill, who screeched and pushed Minerva into the corner as the blue goo swelled and seeped toward them. At the middle of the puddle there seemed to be a hole, as if the elevator was dissolving, too. They cowered together in the corner, clinging to one another, as they watched the substance that was threatening them seep ever closer.

Sybill, eyes wide with something that might have been revelation, pointed her finger at the mess. "Evanesco!" she cried, and watched as it turned to smoke. "Ha!" She was grinning. "I win!"

Minerva slumped back against the wall in relief. "But where is the smoke going to go?"

The smoke, it seemed, was not content to just go away. Instead it thickened, and twirled around, until it was so thick that Minerva could not see the other side of the elevator, and could only just make out her companion.

"Aaah, we're going to suffocate!" Sybill was beating her palms against Minerva's arm, and the transfiguration mistress wished she would stop.

"I can breathe just fine, Sybill!"

The beating stopped. "Oh yes. Actually, it's a rather pretty shade of purple, isn't it? It smells kind of like lavender."

Oh Merlin, it did. Minerva hated lavender. She coughed, and covered her nose with her shirt, and tried not to smell it, but it stank, and the smell got into her nostrils and wouldn't go away. The smoke did have a purple tinge, too. How disgusting.

Sybill moved away a little, seemed to relax, as if smoke she could hardly breathe in was normal. Minerva's eyes were watering, poking out from the collar of her shirt.

"So… relaxing…" She arranged herself in the lotus position and took a deep breath, and with it, sucked in all the smoke in a pale purple stream, sighing contentedly.

Minerva brought her nose out from beneath the cotton blouse to sniff the air tentatively. Thank Merlin, it was clear. But Sybill was another story. Her eyes were closed and she was rocking slowly from side to side, emitting a very low hum.

But her attention did not stay on Sybill for long. There was something… happening. It wasn't freakish things on the other side of the elevator, or strange colours upon the walls. It was within her. Like something growing. Like a vine.

A vine.

Her head spun, and then her eyes came into sharp focus on the shawl around Sybill's shoulders. It was intricate, weblike, net-like. Like it was woven of many, many pieces of grass. Only red was the wrong colour for grass. Wasn't it? The shawl became grass. It turned a dark green-brown, and went all coarse. Different to before. Not just visions, Minerva was sure. Actual grass. Had she done it?

If it was a vine it should have leaves then, shouldn't it? No use in doing things by halves. The vine sprouted leaves, tiny ones at first, but then bigger, huge green curling ones as big as Hippogriff tongues. It grew and grew until it had engulfed Sybill's torso completely. All that could be seen was a pair of legs poking out underneath it, and little head resting atop, with comically large, closed eyelids.

Minerva thought she had better stop, if she was doing this. But it was kind of fun.

The bandana around Sybill's head, it looked kind of like a banana leaf. Well, it did when she concentrated, and it turned into one. The woman was just wearing so many clothes that looked like other things. It was rather amusing, really. Her skirt, forest moss, like a spider's web, growing over her knees and spreading onto the floor; her blouse invisible beneath the vine that obscured her.

The cardboard tube that lay on the floor, discarded, looked kind of like the trunk of a tree. Indeed, it was made of trees. Perhaps it was time it was allowed to take on its natural form. One end began to sprout feelers, like long probing worms that lengthened like jelly, feeling their way. The spread out in a fan, until they found the gap beneath the elevator door; and, with something that looked a bit like glee, all slithered in that direction and fastened there.

The cardboard tube seemed to have been formed in a spiral, if the way it sprag up into the air in a DNA like spiral was any indication. It seemed to solidify as it went, turning to wood, and she watched it and willed it to grow.

It did.

Branches, bursting forth and erupting in showers of leaves, one branch like a weeping willow, the next like an Australian gum tree, a hybrid of every tree she had ever seen. The greenery blocked the ceiling light so they were shrouded in twilight, swimming in a sea of leaves. Minerva smiled to herself. Each leaf grew and changed into a flower that sprouted from the floor, and moss webbed itself across the walls. The temperature seemed tropical, but cool.

Minerva closed her eyes. She almost felt as though she was drifting, as though she were moving, like that feeling when you are nearly asleep. She could almost feel a wind against her skin. She could almost feel a flow of air.

That was how the muggles found them. Their senses didn't quite believe it, but here was a tree, way too big to have ever been fit inside an elevator, and moss covering the walls that would have taken a week of moisture to even begin. A blanket of leaves, some curling brown, as though they'd just entered the jungle. A woman they could not rouse wrapped around with a vine, wearing a banana leaf on her head and a skirt that seemed like an elasticised fungi. And right in the midst of it, an old lady who wasn't really old at all, in jeans and a blouse, sitting with her eyes closed as if in a dream, a serene smile upon her face.

There were monkeys in her jungle, Minerva thought, monkeys come to take them away. Ugly monkeys, in uniforms, ugly loud monkeys.

And then she thought of Albus, and he was there, in nothing but a bathrobe and bunny slippers, and his mouth made a little 'o' of surprise.

Hmm, at least he wasn't dancing because there were house elves in his beard, this time.

Whatever.