Snow was falling again outside the window. Cat felt quite cosy, sat inside by the roaring fire place whilst the blizzard raged without. She curled up tightly in the arm chair, Havelock snoozing on her lap in the folds of her Ravenclaw scarf, which she had wrapped round her neck, more for House pride than for warmth.

Opposite her sat Jo; she was giving the fire a moody glare, “I wish we could attend the Yule Ball…” she moaned; she glanced at Cat, “Are you going?”

Cat pulled a face of absolute incredulity; “Don’t be stupid,” she replied.

Jo smirked, “No one asked you?”

“Well, no… but either way, if someone had, I still wouldn’t go.”

Jo sighed, knowing already that Cat‘s distaste of the upcoming Yule Ball stemmed from her un-girlish dislike of all things concerning frocks and frills; “You are such a tomboy, Cat. You’ll have to go to some type of Ball or party someday, you know.”

“Hey,” Cat said, “It took my mum long enough to get me to wear a skirt. Don’t start on those frilly dress robes!”

“Fine,” Jo shrugged, “I just wish I could go…”

The fire crackled in the ensuing lull.

“You done your Potion’s homework yet?” Cat asked, stroking Havelock behind the ears.

Jo laughed, “No! I’m not giving Snape my time of day.”

“I guess you wouldn‘t,” Cat grinned, “You know, I do wonder why he’s always so miserable. No one else is.”

Jo shrugged, “I don’t try to understand men, especially not him. Maybe he’s just pining for something.”

“Like what? Shampoo?”

“No, something deep…” Jo pondered until a great, evil grin rose on her countenance, “I know! Love!”

“Ugh!” Cat squirmed, wrinkling up her nose in distaste, “Are you mad?”

“It’s true! Perhaps all he needs is a woman’s touch.”

Catherine was a little creeped-out by the turn of this conversation, “I think you’ve been inhaling a few too many fumes from the Whisky down at the Beauxbatons’ horse paddocks,” she mused.

“I have not! It makes perfect sense!”

“Yeah, Jo - who, in their right mind, would want to date him?”

“There’s gotta be someone…”

Jo actually looked like she was giving this serious thought and Catherine felt an urgent need to place a more humorous light on their chat; “I think you fancy him,” she smirked tauntingly.

“DO NOT!” Jo spluttered, backing into her chair as though the mere concept was contagious, “If anyone fancies him here, it’s you, Cat. I’ve noticed how you’ve taken up to staring at him in lessons, especially after that detention, which you never did quite tell us what happened in…”

“I stare at him in distaste!,” she protested, “And I only cleaned out cauldrons in that detention!”

“For all those hours?”

“Yes!”

Jo was still smiling airily, “You fancy him! You fancy him!”

Cat scowled in silence whilst her friend lapsed back in her chair and stared at the ceiling, willing to take full advantage of the situation, “Well, I suppose, to the strained eye, there is some attraction. I mean, he is tall, dark and -”

“Obnoxious,” Cat interrupted, “Plus, he’s got oily skin.”

Jo smothered a giggle, “That’s no reason to hate someone!”

“No, but he could look like dishy Diggory and I’d still hate him. He’s arrogant and spiteful and biased and… ugh! He makes my skin crawl.”

“Which isn’t always a bad thing…”

“JO!!”

“Cat!”

Jo was having a fit of giggles now and all Cat could do was shake her head in exasperation; “He needs a Filibuster firework up his rear just to get a human reaction out of him,” she muttered.

“Now who’s being perverted?” Jo continued, her words coming out in jumps and starts as she laughed.

“Oh, JO, I could strangle you!!”

Jo calmed a little, “Oh, don’t worry… He’s a Slytherin, and snakes are cold-blooded. He just needs ‘warming up’!”

Cat threw her cushion at Jo and placed Havelock on her shoulder, “I’m going to bed.”

Jo was still chuckling, “Pleasant dreams!” she murmured, her voice silky with insinuation.

“Hardly, now!” Cat retorted in good nature as she entered the corridor to the girls’ dormitories and slipped into the third-year’s room.

~~

The hilarity of the previous night’s conversation had worn off by morning, mainly because the two girls found it had actually been way too absurd for it to be safe to admit being a part of. They therefore didn’t tell any of their friends about it and tried to bury it in the backs of their minds, along with the rest of their lives’ embarrassing and unwanted memories.

They had Charms this morning, but the castle wasn’t being friendly to them. Every time they tried to descend a staircase from the third floor, it decided to change when they were halfway down, forcing them astray down alternative corridors. Jo suggested at one point, when this began to get beyond a joke, that they jump over the banister onto the staircase below, but Cat pointed out that the staircase below was likely to change when they leapt and leave them falling to a rather large splat on the ground floor. Even if it worked, they would wind up with a sprained ankle and detention for irresponsible behaviour at the least.

Already late, Cat and Jo were running down a corridor on the fifth floor, hoping to beat the next staircase to the second storey before it changed.

“What is up with the stairs today?” Jo panted, satchel swinging wildly in her wake.

“I dunno,” Cat replied breathlessly, taking a turn and dodging beneath a tapestry, hiding an archway, before running on toward the nearest stairwell, “I think we’ve offended them somehow.”

“Walls must have ears. I bet they’re friends with Professor ‘Snake’ and told him what we said about him… So he’s told the staircases to make our lives Hell.”

“That’s stupid, Jo,” Cat scoffed, “Every pupil who’s not in Slytherin would be stuck on the stairs then. You know everyone else gives him slack, too. Why would they just pick on us?”

“I dunno…” Jo shrugged, “Maybe we’ve said something particularly offensive, even by the standards of the usual Snape insult.”

Cat smirked, “I think we’re just having an off-day.”

To make matters worse, the suits of armour they approached further along the hall put their legs out to trip them up, managing to catch Jo off guard, though Cat dodged them. Jo smacked them with her school bag afterwards, leaving a conspicuous dent in one of their helmets.

“Serves you right!” she snarled as said suit of armour gripped his helmet and whined.

They managed to reach the central stairwell and found themselves facing a staircase leading down in a southerly direction.

“If we go down there, we should end up on the fourth floor, near History of Magic,“ Cat deduced.

“Great - I know a secret passage down there, a few paces from Gregory the Smarmy’s statue,” Jo replied, “It leads straight to the second floor.”

They exchanged looks, “Can we make it, though?“ Cat whispered.

Jo squared her shoulders as though she were about to play the final of the Quidditch cup against Bulgaria single-handedly; “Yup. We’re eagles! We do not quell in the face of …er…“

“Recalcitrant flights of stairs?”

“Ooooh, I like that word, Cat! Did your mum and dad feed you dictionaries when you were young?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Cat laughed as she offered her hand to Jo, “C’mon, we’ll do it together.”

They clasped hands, both equally apprehensive about descending this next stairway after the last few had left them swinging about to floors or places they didn’t want. They took a breath and, as one, stepped onto the first step. When it made no move, they exchanged quick glances before, in silent agreement, they simply ran for it and headed down, down, down, their feet clattering against the stone steps, until they reached the landing below and hurtled through the door straight ahead of them.

“This is NOT History of Magic,” Jo sighed after they had stopped for rest, their backs to the wooden door through which they’d just come.

Cat rolled her eyes, staring about uncertainly at the unfamiliar hallway, “Where are we? I thought I‘d seen most of the fourth floor, but I don‘t recognise this at all.”

“Oh, Merlin’s crumbling staff…” Jo groaned, raising her hand to her face, “What day is it?”

Cat was hit by the same bout of realisation that had swept across Jo, “Friday,” she sighed.

“Do you remember the Prefects warning us on our first day here?”

“ ‘Do not use the fourth-to-fifth floor staircase, past the old man’s portrait, on a Friday’,” Cat recited.

Jo kicked the door behind her, “Merlin’s stupidly-long beard! We could be anywhere! This staircase, somehow, always leads elsewhere on Fridays!”

“Flitwick’s gonna blow his top…”

“That’ll be nothing compared to what Filch does if he finds us here… wherever we are,” Jo shrugged, looking around warily

“Well, we’re gonna miss Charms. We’ve just gotta live with that.”

“Yeah.” Jo was walking down the corridor by now, “Let’s try and get our bearings.”

It took the girls a good thirty minutes to find that they’d somehow got to the seventh floor from the fourth simply by walking through a dodgy doorway. Jo reckoned it could have been worse and they could have walked straight into a brick wall - a lot of the doors in the castle were only pretending to be real, and either didn’t open when you wanted them to, or opened and let you walk into the wall behind. Cat reckoned she’d rather have been knocked out by a wall than find herself in the middle of somewhere unfamiliar to her, especially up near Gryffindor Tower which they knew was around here somewhere, despite the fact that they hadn‘t a clue where the entrance was, nor how to get in there. Gryffindors were as protective as any house when they found ‘outsiders’ mooching about in their territory, and were likely to be short with them if they discovered them here.

“Everyone’s in lessons right now,” Jo replied to Cat’s concerns with reassurance, “Only a few sixth or seventh years might have free study periods, and they won’t bite our heads off if they cross our path.”

Cat nodded in a vague concurrence - at least Percy Weasley had left last year, the most infamous of Gryffindor Prefects and the most severe of Head Boys. He was now working at the Ministry of Magic, or so it was said, so he was, at least, no longer the bane of the students of Hogwarts. He’d almost rivalled Filch in his time.

Despite Jo’s faith in the Gryffindors being complacent, should they find two Ravenclaws snooping near their Tower, Cat wanted to get off the seventh floor as quickly as possible. Jo had suggested a window at this, to which Cat gave her The Look. It all came back down to the stairs in the stairwell, and Cat wasn’t too pleased about facing them again, either. She was beginning to appreciate Snape’s decision to live in the dungeons - he would never have to face a staircase unless he was required within the main body of the castle - when they found themselves in the presence of the headmaster.

“Professor Dumbledore,” they gasped in unison.

He looked down at the two and smiled benignly, “Unless I’m mistaken,” he said in his light, airy tone, “You two should be in class right now.”

“Yes, sir, we should, but we haven’t been able to get there,” Cat replied.

“Yes, sir,” Jo nodded desperately in tow, “The Staircases have been switching every time we try to cross them, then we took the Friday staircase and ended up somewhere we didn’t recognise, which was up here, and we should be down there, but we haven’t been able to get there -”

“You already said that,” Cat murmured at Jo through the corner of her mouth.

Jo stumbled, trying to pick up her explanation, but lot in the midst of it.

The headmaster merely smiled, “Ah, yes, the infamous staircases. When I was a student here, I once found myself permanently trapped on the sixth floor for a week due to complications with the stairs. My fellow friends managed to get me food, but my teachers would never believe me when I told them the reasons for my absence a week later.” He looked to the windows, through which bright sun was shining, seeming ever the more brilliant as it reflected off of the snow covering the grounds, “They do seem to have minds of their own, don’t they?”

“Please, sir, can’t you tell them to behave themselves?” Cat asked, “Professor Flitwick’s going to be real mad if we don’t turn up at all.”

The headmaster glanced behind him, where the hallway met the stairwell, “They will behave now, my dear. And, do not worry, Professor Flitwick is an understanding teacher. I will tell him myself that the castle has not been your friend today.” He turned back to them, his eyes twinkling, “Now, be on your way. And respect the castle, for it, in return, will respect you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jo said in a tone full of worship. Cat had the strange feeling that Jo was going to bow to Dumbledore and present him with offerings, but she didn’t.

Cat nodded her thanks before she dragged an awestruck Jo away from the headmaster and they began, tentatively at first, to scramble down the stairs, none of which ever so much as budged as the two rushed over them. Jo, of course, managed to get her foot trapped in the dodgy step on one of the staircases, to which a nearby suit of armour giggled, but shut up as soon as it saw Cat brandish her schoolbag.

They made it to Charms as the bell struck for second period.

Jo swore, though no one heard her as the throng of students began to mill around the corridors to their next classes.

They slipped into Charms once the bulk of the class had passed, Matt, Richard and Dale giving them enquiring looks as they passed, which they returned with ‘tell you later’ glances.

“Ah, Miss Madison, Miss Jackdaw,” Professor Flitwick squeaked from on top of his pile of books, behind his desk, “I believe the bell that has just rung is for your second period. You should have been here when it rang first.”

“Sir, we’re really sorry,” Cat said, still catching her breath from her run down the stairs; she theorised that she must have covered the ground of half the castle in the past hour.

“You wouldn’t believe what just happened to us…” Jo added in an unhelpfully satisfied tone.

“Your dogs didn’t somehow manage to eat your homework, did they?” the professor asked, and Cat, keeping Jo quiet with a waft of her hand, went on to explain about the treacherous staircases, the way the suits of armour had picked on them, and the infamous Friday staircase. At the end of it, Professor Flitwick was chuckling under his breath, “Hmm, well, lucky for you the headmaster turned up, or we may not have seen you for a while now.” He glanced between them, seeming far from angry about their morning escapade, “Now, make sure you do as instructed and respect the castle,” At this he glanced about the walls of his own room, in case the castle was somehow listening, “And be on your way - you’ll be late for your next lesson otherwise. I‘ll have the work you‘ve missed sent to your dorms at lunch.”

“Great. Now we’ve got to do extra work just because the stairs fancied giving us a workout,” Jo grimaced as they marched across the snowy grounds to herbology.

“Well, it must be a boring life, being a flight of stairs,” Cat shrugged, catching the end of the line of students leading into Greenhouse Two, “They probably just pick on people once in a while for entertainment.”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t entertained!” Jo snarled.

“Weren’t you, Miss Jackdaw?” asked Professor Sprout as she emerged behind them, “Well, unless you’d like to talk about it in detention with me and lose Ravenclaw some points, can you please get a move on. We’re late starting as it is - chop, chop!”

The entire class, comprising of the third year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, gave her a collective glare before they gathered round their tables and listened to a lecture on advanced de-Gnoming, which they were soon to put into practise around Hogwarts lake, where the Gnomes had been getting out of hand.

~~

“That was bloody awful,” Richard complained once they finally reached the Ravenclaw chambers (it had been Filch, not the stairs, giving them all grief on the way back, complaining about their muddied feet dirtying up ‘his’ floor), “I’m sure those Gnomes had it in for me.”

“They did,” Jo replied, nursing a nasty Gnome bite to her hand, “Because you were too soft on them. They take advantage of weakness, Dicky.”

“The Gryffindors beat us flat out as far as de-Gnoming went,” Dale went on, his pride dented, “They got rid of thirty-six of the little buggers, and what did we get…?”

“Three,” Cat sighed, kicking her shoes off and carrying them, at a distance, toward the girls’ dormitory corridor, “And that was only because Luna scared two Gnomes into throwing themselves into the lake.”

“No, I just asked them nicely to remove themselves,” Luna piped up behind them as she floated over to a pouffe by the fire; she had somehow come out of the lesson without a spot of dirt on her, and appeared, overall, to be completely relaxed, “And it worked.”

“Ipso facto, you scared them!” Dale snapped sarcastically.

Luna just shrugged at him and picked up her latest copy of The Quibbler.

“I think Ginny Weasley scared them more than Luna,” Richard said, “Did you see the way those Gnomes were running from her?”

“She scares me sometimes,” Cat smirked, “She’s great.”

Jo shook her head, “Don’t go fraternizing with the enemy, Cat!”

Cat scoffed, “What enemy? The only enemies we have here are the Slytherins - I like most people from the other Houses.”

“Except on Quidditch days?” Dale posed.

“Oh yeah, except on Quidditch days, of course,” Cat quickly nodded, placing her hand on the door handle to the dorm hallway, “Right, I’m going to discard these shoes, try and get the cleansing charm to work on them and the rest of my uniform, then go and take a shower and… get ready for third lesson.”

“Meanwhile, Jo can tell us why you didn’t make Charms. We lost you somewhere around the stairwell,” Dale grinned, staring at Jo expectantly.

“Hey, I’m gonna have a wash, too!” Jo replied with indignation, “We can talk over lunch.”

Dale laughed, “Fine! Go and get dolled up for Potions!”

Cat threw her grimy shoes at him then disappeared rapidly with Jo behind the door into the corridor to their dormitory.