First Floor: Moving Staircases

[Wilber Winterbottom]

To get to History of Magic, or Muggle Studies, one will have to make use of the first floor corridor. Getting here is usually relatively easy if you're coming from one of the lower levels of the castle as you need only deal with the moving staircases for just a few minutes. Rugs with intricate patterns have been placed on the floor to soften your footsteps so that any learning going on inside the classrooms isn't disturbed.

Make sure you are not dilly dallying on your way to or from class. This corridor in particular is often times filled with students during the school day and a few professors pointing those who have managed to get lost in the right direction. Various doors flank this corridor, so make sure to memorize which of the portraits are outside of the classrooms you should be entering. And don't freak out when the corridor comes to a sudden halt -- the door at the end of the hallway will take you outside to the stone bridge and then to the rest of the first floor over in the next tower. Just keep moving!

[NiallNIP]

Today's point to be tackled on Maddox's curiosity agenda: figuring out the ins and outs of these staircases. He wanted to know where each one led to, where they moved around to, and find all the weird little nooks and crannies that people wouldn't necessarily stumble upon. This was a big castle, not all of it used for their classes, and Maddox wanted to know it like the back of his hand. And this was one of the more complex places to map out.

He had a little bit of time today and was determined to tackle this beast of a room, even if only a little bit. He started at the bottom on the first floor, taking the staircases up to places he specifically didn't know. When he encountered a moving set of stairs he would stand on it, watching where it moved to, trying to lay out all the branching paths you could take on them out in his head.

And it was starting to give him a headache. Not to mention, he was getting his exercise in at a markedly increased rate—maybe he wasn't, you know, the most athletic of kids, so spending a prolonged period of time just going up and down stairs wasn't something he was quite prepared for. As he climbed up a set of stairs from a hallway that only led to a locked door (which he would figure out what was behind it ONE DAY...not today though), his legs were feeling like jelly. When he made it to the landing he leaned against the wall, catching his breath. Maybe this was an even larger task than he originally made it out to be.