Chapter 10 – A Few Hiccups

For the next fifteen minutes the founders, Wilbur, and Rhys chased the bludger around the school, watching helplessly as it smashed through doors, windows and one of the staircases.

Finally Wilbur managed to catch it, or more accurately it flew at him and he just happened to keep a hold of it as it hit him in the stomach.

"What did you let it out for anyway?" an exhausted and exasperated Helga asked as she clutched at her sides to try to relieve the stitch she'd now got from racing around the castle.

"Didn't mean too," Wilbur replied. "Was looking for my dinner and it sort of escaped."

"I take it that's a bludger?" Salazar asked as he nodded to the now contained ball that was straining to escape once more.

"That she is," Wilbur replied with a satisfied nod. "Got a right good deal for them too."

"Er…them?" Rowena asked with a frown.

"Yep, got two for the price of one," Wilbur answered with pride. "We were only going to use one in the game but how could I refuse an offer like that. Took them both off the seller's hands for him. Might even make it more exciting with two in the game."

"Exciting?" Helga squeaked.

"What would anyone want with those things anyway?" Rowena asked. "I mean besides for your Quidditch?"

"They're demolition bludgers," Wilbur replied. "Been used for years to clear away derelict buildings and what have you. Nothing stands in their way when they want to destroy something."

"Yes." Godric nodded. "I can imagine. Pity about that staircase though." He pointed behind them and the others turned to see that one of the steps in the staircase he was referring to was now completely gone. Had it been a normal staircase the position of the missing step would have been such that the entire staircase would probably have collapsed. Luckily the magic that had been used to create it prevented this from happening and instead there was simply a gap in the stairs.

"Oh, not to worry," Wilbur said as he quickly pulled out his wand and waved it at the staircase. "I'll soon fix that for you."

"No!" Godric shouted but it was too late.

They watched as a stair materialised in the gap, with nothing giving away the fact that a moment ago it had not been there.

"I thought you said no one else could alter the structure of the building?" Rowena asked as she looked at the stairs.

"No one can," Godric replied as he walked down the stairs towards the newly created step. "Cosmetic changes like fixing broken windows can be done but not creating something from nothing."

"Well it looks like you've messed up somewhere," Helga commented as she followed Godric down the stairs. "Because that step looks pretty well created to me."

"Just because it looks it, doesn't mean it is," Godric answered as he poked towards it with his wand. But instead of hitting the wood the tip of the wand carried on through the step which vanished at its touch.

"That's never happened before." Wilbur sounded confused as he joined them. "Let me try again."

"It won't work," Godric informed him. "Only the founders can alter the structure of the school, including the staircases. Let me try."

With that Godric pulled out his wand and waved it at the now re-appeared step. Unfortunately when he tried to tap the stair again there was nothing there to hit.

"That's probably because of my spell," Wilbur muttered.

One by one all the staff attempted to bring the missing step back but to no avail.

"We can't just leave it like that," Helga pointed out after Salazar had made that suggestion. "What if some little first year falls through it?"

"I can't say I'm particularly pleased about the idea. I don't like the thought of falling through it myself!" Salazar retorted. "But what else can we do?"

That was the problem. There was nothing else they could do. The spells of the founders were being halted by Wilbur's spell and his was being thwarted by the magic that made it so only the founders could alter the building. It was an impossible situation and one that left them with a staircase with a potentially lethal missing step.

"We'll just have to make sure to warn the students," said Godric. He didn't add what everyone else was already thinking. There were so many staircases and so many that moved that there was virtually no chance of all the students remembering exactly which step was missing in the hundreds that were in the castle.

The founders sat around the table in Godric's office later that day. Jocelyn had been tended to and was now back in her library, none the worse for her encounter with the bludger and the rest of the staff were making themselves busy around the school.

The founders meanwhile were now about to face the job that they had all been putting off for some considerable time. Sorting the students into their individual houses.

They had decided to sort them prior to their arrival at the school and on the basis of their responses to the questionnaires that they had all completed as part of the admission process.

For half an hour they sorted through the applications, reading about the students who would soon be arriving at the school, and deciding which youngsters to take under their individual wings to nurture.

However it soon became apparent that one member of staff was not taking his fair share of the students, in fact he only had one application form from the main pile in front of him.

"What about this one?" Helga asked as she read the parchment in front of her. "She says she helps her parents to train wild horses…that sounds pretty brave for a twelve year old girl."

Godric nodded and took the parchment from Helga to add to the application of the manticore owning boy who, until this point, was the only child who Godric had found to be in possession of the virtue of bravery.

"Here's another one you might like to have in your house," Salazar said as he studied the next application. "Seems to be one of Rowena's distant relatives…says the bravest thing she's ever done is taste one of Rowena's fruit pies."

"It doesn't say that!" Rowena exclaimed. Salazar passed her the parchment and she saw that it did in fact say exactly that. Helga snickered; she'd tasted Rowena's fruit pies once too. Rowena passed the application to Godric who reluctantly added it to his own pile.

"This eleven year old says that he once asked Merlin for his autograph," Helga commented.

"Merlin's been dead for at least thirty years," Godric pointed out as he took the parchment from her to check she was reading it properly.

"Doesn't mean people don't keep seeing him," Salazar replied. "There've been more reported sightings since his death than there ever were when he was alive. He's been spotted everywhere from Egypt to Paris."

"Didn't you say you spotted him in Jorvik a couple of years ago?" Rowena asked Helga who blushed and suddenly busied herself with sorting through her parchments.

"If we could get back to the matter at hand," Godric asked. "Who wants the delusional little tyke in their house?"

No one volunteered until eventually Helga snatched the parchment back from Godric and placed it on her own pile.

"How about this one?" Rowena asked as she picked up the next application. "He hasn't answered the question about bravery but has listed rearing dragons under ambitions."

Godric snatched the parchment from her with enthusiasm and added it to the others in front of him.

"Perhaps it would be best to look at those who have brave ambitions instead of those who have already done something brave," Helga tactfully pointed out. "After all, most children under the age of fifteen haven't done that many brave deeds."

"By the time I was fifteen I'd already battled my first troll," Godric pointed out.

"It's not like you had much choice in the matter," Salazar chimed in. "And it's not like you'd gone looking for it either, you'd just got lost in the mountains."

"That's not the point!"

"The point, I believe, is sorting the students," Helga said firmly before they were side tracked yet again.

"Here's one for you Godric," Rowena announced with a smile. "Not only has this one heard about Quidditch, he has ambitions of making a living by playing the game. Now that's what I call bravery!"

It took several hours and a lot of swapping of students before each and every applicant was placed into one of the founders' houses.

Rowena was very happy with her handpicked selection of students. Amongst them were two students who were already inventing their own spells and one boy who had been delighted to inform the school that he was an animagus and had the ability to turn himself into a snake. She and Salazar had argued for ten minutes about which of them should have that particular student but Rowena had won out in end.

There had also been a bit of a squabble between Salazar and Godric over a student who had listed his main ambition as becoming a curse breaker and could trace his pureblood ancestry back no less than ten generations.

Helga had been a little shocked when this had been discovered and had started to reprimand Salazar for demanding to know about so many generations. She'd soon stopped though when it became apparent that Salazar had in fact only been enquiring about the parents and grandparents of the students…this particular student had got a little carried away. In the end the boy went to Godric's house purely to make up the numbers.

"Is that all of them?" Rowena asked as they each double-checked through their piles of parchment.

Helga confirmed that it was and they decided that there was no further sorting to be done this year. Godric still had fewer students than the rest of them but not so many that anyone was likely to notice, and not so many that they wanted to waste any more time on the matter.

A short while later and all the letters were ready to be sent to the students informing them of the success of their applications, the date of the start of term and everything they needed to bring with them etc.

Arms laden with letters the four founders entered the owlery and came to an abrupt halt.

"Er, how many letters do we have here?" Salazar asked. "And how many owls?"

"I'm going to deliver the letter to the manticore family personally," Godric commented helpfully.

"Well that's one less," Rowena replied. "But what about the others?"

Salazar looked around the room and soon spotted Zeus. The bird gave him and the pile of letters in his hand a baleful look before attempting to escape out the window.

It hadn't really occurred to them until right now that there were only as many owls in the school as there were teachers and staff. Less in fact as Professor Plunkett apparently didn't own one, or more likely the bird had made its own break for freedom years ago. Also they realised that Wilbur's owl was currently making a delivery in Devon about some cheap goal posts.

"I think we need more owls," Rowena said as she attached the first of her letters to the leg of Hera, her own grumpy looking owl. "And you come and find me as soon as you get back!" she called after the bird as she flew off to the south.

They enlisted the help of all the birds, some more reluctantly giving their services than others, and returned back to the main school with the dozens of letters that they still had to send.

They wondered what else they might have forgotten to take into account in their eagerness to open their school.

"There you are!" called Wilbur as they reached the Entrance Hall. "Been looking all over the place for you. I've got great news. We've just signed up the final player for the very first Quidditch team."

"Congratulations," they each dutifully replied, while privately wondering if there were really seven people in the country mad enough to take up the so-called sport.

"So when's the first match?" Godric asked.

"Well we can't have one until there's another team formed for us to play," Wilbur pointed out. "And that's something else I've been thinking about. How about we have a Quidditch team for each of your houses and matches between the students throughout the year. Make a bit of a tournament of it, eh?"

"Er…" Helga seemed at rather a loss for words.

"We already have plans for some inter-house competitions," Rowena explained as she pointed to the four hour glasses lining the far wall. "The students will get house points for hard work and determination."

"And lose points for rule breaking and misbehaviour," Salazar added.

"I've been meaning to ask about those," Wilbur asked. "Why are they filled with different colour feathers?"

"So we can tell which glass is for which house," replied Salazar in a tone that one might use with a dim-witted child.

"But why feathers?" Wilbur clarified. "You should put something like jewels in there, rubies and emeralds…is something wrong?"

Rowena's jaw dropped while Salazar shook his head in disbelief.

"You can always bewitch the hour glasses so that no one can access them," Wilbur pointed out.

"They're already bewitched so no one can tamper with them," Helga confirmed. "It's not so much the worry that the students might want to steal the gems you suggest that we use…it's more the fact that the cost of filling those with jewels would break us."

"But you can't have spent that much money," Wilbur said with a frown. "I've never known anyone like you for haggling for the cheapest deal."

Helga smiled at the compliment whilst Rowena and Salazar turned to look at Godric, who was suddenly finding a loose thread on his robes to be extremely interesting.

"Ah!" Wilbur said, understanding immediately. "Maybe in a year or two we can upgrade to gems?"

"Perhaps," agreed Rowena with a hesitant nod. "We have some other purchases to make before that though that are of much higher priority, starting with more owls for the school correspondence."

"I see," Wilbur said as he pulled out a parchment and handed it to her. "Although I may just have the answer for that. Look at this for a great deal…ten snidgets for a galleon. I'm going to buy in bulk for the school Quidditch matches but there's no reason we can't see about training them to deliver some letters as well. At least until you get your new owls."

The founders shrugged in compliance. If they wanted to make sure the students arrived in September they didn't have a great deal of choice. They just hoped the birds were bigger in reality than they were on paper. If they wanted the school to open on schedule the most important thing wasn't getting the books, staff and Quidditch items, but getting the students themselves.