Atropos → george weasley

viii. ancient secrets

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eight

ancient secrets

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Early the next morning, sunlight crept in through the bewitched windows. Ottilie jumped out of bed while the other girls were still fast asleep. She hurriedly collected her robes for the day—the black tie she'd changed into on the Hogwarts's Express now in green and silver. Reluctantly, she grabbed the pointed hat as well, even though she thought it looked stupid.

She went down to take a quick, lukewarm shower and then headed out into the dungeons, planning to explore the castle before breakfast started in an hour and a half.

Her heart was palpitating, unable to handle Ottilie's intense excitement as she emerged into the entrance hall from the Slytherin dungeons. A large window above the oak doors allowed honeyed sunbeams into the hall, turning the grey striations in the marble staircase blue.

She climbed the first set of stairs, tilting her head back so she could see up the chamber all the way to the glass ceiling, far enough away it was difficult to spot through the tangled sets of stairs. What made it even more difficult was the fact they—the stairs—would move.

On the third floor, she encountered a staircase leading to nowhere, the landing held precariously aloft over empty air.

With knit eyebrows, Ottilie stepped on the first step. When the sound of grinding stone filled her ears, she shot out a hand to keep herself steady. The stairs aligned themselves with the third floor and she finished the climb, careful when stepping off the staircase so she wouldn't plummet to her death if it happened to move abruptly.

As soon as she was safely on the third-floor landing, the staircase moved back to its original position as though it had moved just for her.

She stared curiously at it for another moment before glancing around again. 

As she'd done on the other floors, she glanced down to see if she could spot anything interesting, but the corridors looked like all of the others: lined with portraits, lit by torches on the wall, and guarded by the occasional empty suit of armor (although, she could have sworn she saw one moving when she glanced down the second-floor corridor).

Before she could climb to a higher floor, she stilled in place, slowly turning her head to the right. This was the corridor Dumbledore had warned the students about the previous night. Ottilie's mouth was dry and her heart restarted its stuttering rhythm.

She wondered why it was forbidden. It didn't have the same cold, strong undercurrent of magic that Knockturn Alley had—its magic was, as far as she could tell, the same as the rest of the castle.

Dumbledore struck her as odd, but not a liar. She figured the danger was lurking behind one of the heavy wooden doors. Or even invisible.

If even only walking down the corridor caused a painful death, there would surely be stronger precautions to prevent students from entering, accidentally or otherwise. What if someone sleepwalked down here?

Ottilie was moments away from taking an experimental step when a loud cough issued somewhere behind her.

Her body iced over with a jolt of adrenaline and Ottilie whirled around to see who had made the noise. Standing there—or rather floating—was Slytherin's ghost. The Bloody Baron, she thought Ernie had said he was called. He and Ravenclaw's ghost had kept to themselves during the start-of-term feast, unlike the Fat Friar and Nearly Headless Nick, both of whom had delighted in welcoming their house's new students.