Oh geez.

Oh geez, oh geez, oh geez.

She'd been okay. Really, she had. She'd been making it up, one step at a time.

And then she'd looked out the thrice-blasted window.

Twelve months ago, Dixie Cade would have ran up the steps two at a time, probably tripped on one of them and tumbled into the wall, laughed, and kept going. But twelve months ago she hadn't yet broken most of her bones in a bad fall from a broom and smacked her head hard enough to crack her helmet and give her a concussion that still gave her dizzy spells.

Why wasn't it getting better?

The pint-sized spitfire draped in Salem purple looked nothing like her usual self. She was clinging to the rail of the staircase like her life depended on it, shaking like a rag doll in the wind and distinctly pale and green underneath the dusky gold of her complexion. She knew it was only her imagination that made it feel like the whole tower was swaying in the wind, but she couldn't seem to make her arms detach from the railing, where they were wrapped like chains. She'd been trying to fix this…this glitch in her system. Face your fears, right?

Wrong.

No, right! But, but wrong right now.

What would the Salem folks think if they found her like this? Quodpot Captain, loud-mouthed, exuberantly fearless little wildcat that DC was. Merlin, she couldn't let them find out. Which meant she needed to get down. But her feet were as frozen as her arms, and even her lungs seemed to be ignoring her, drawing rapid, panicky gulps even as she told herself to take deep, slow breaths.  She could feel the stone crumbling under her feet as the wind knocked the tower off its spindly supports, could feel the rush of the air as it tumbled down…down…DC only barely swallowed a shriek as her imagination blinked off because she'd involuntarily slammed her eyes shut, and lost her balance from shaking,  falling flat on her bottom in the process, still clinging to the rail.  At least now she couldn't see the window.

"Oh Merlin, oh Merlin I'm gonna be sick." It came out a bit squeaky, but hearing her own voice calmed the pounding of her heart a bit--not much, but it was a start. C'mon arms, let go so I don't puke on my lap…

Figaro was trotting down from the tower where he had met some mates for some Exploding Snap.  He usually took another way down, but since he was headed straight outside he figured this way was quicker.  You could never tell with Hogwarts Castle, so a good bet was always a way where the stairs didn't move.  He was a sixth year now.  He oughta know a few tricks.

He slowed as he approached someone on the stairs below him.  As he circled around the winding case, he realized the barnacle clinging to the railing was a person.  A girl.  From Salem.  He full stopped when he reached the stair she was on.  He couldn't see her face or what she was doing.

"Hi," he said.  "You alright?" 

There was no one else around.  She must be lost or something?  Their Head of House had told them that would probably happen more than anyone would be willing to admit.  "They'll be like First Years. But don't treat them that way.  Just be good Hufflepuff, alright? Friendly. But don't smother them.  They'll sort it out soon enough."  Figaro wasn't a master of tact, so he hadn't worried to much about it.  But this was kind of weird right now, so ....

This time, DC did shriek. Caught up in her delusions of gravity-induced death and trauma, the approach of a fellow living creature had gone entirely unnoticed.  Following the shriek was a colorful expletive involving a rather creative use of Merlin's boxers and the nether regions of a basilisk, which was accompanied by a surge to her feet, and a break of the paralysis that held her pinned as she stumbled back and smacked into Fig who was, delightfully, solid. And human-shaped.

Without processing much more than that, Dixie flung herself at the robed form and managed to locate an arm, which she clung to, slamming her eyes shut and trying to keep her legs working. "You! Walk! Down, preferably. Now? Hurry. Please?" The last bit came out as a breathy squeak, because she was still quivering so badly her teeth were rattling, and she wasn't entirely sure her legs would work for much longer. Or that she wouldn't empty her stomach on--his? yes, from the voice--shoes, which were about all she'd caught a glimpse of.

The human-shaped thing had talked, right? And it had gotten here, which meant it could get down, presumably. Blindly trusting that her garbled, desperate orders would be obliged, DC remained with her eyes shut, ready to move her feet when she felt movement from the appendage she had attached herself to. The heated flash that had accompanied her surprise was quickly turning back into a chill in the pit of her stomach, and only a panicky fear of sending them both tumbling kept her from shoving the Hufflepuff to make sure he listened to her 'request' to move.

Figaro had not expected for the Salem witch to leap to her feet and nearly tackle him.  There was a sort of frantic grappling for position in the end Figaro had stabled himself against the wall, and the short-statured witch was holding onto him very very tightly. 

He didn't immediately obey her squeaked and gasping commands that he walk.  Instead he laughed nervously.  If he'd come up the stairs and seen any of his mates in this predicament, he'd have started in taking the piss immediately not let up on either of them until St. Foible'd Day. 

"Uh..." he began.  "Um, are you lost or something?  Why the death grip? You alright?" 

A few possibilities ran through his mind, including that she'd been hexed or something.  Whatever it was that had a grip on her, it strong.  Speaking of that, he moved his arm to test her grip.  It was rock hard. 

"You're stronger than you look, you know.  Can you... ease up, some?"

At the nervous laugh, DC growled, which was perhaps more invoking of the image of an enraged puppy unable to catch his or her tail than anything else. "Watch it buster, or I'll find your wand and shove it where the—" A particularly violent wave of adrenaline-fueled nausea swept through her, and she dipped uncomfortably. "Right. Sorry." He was her best chance at rescue at the moment, or at least enabling her to rescue herself. Except, she sight and muttered wearily out loud, "You ain't doing so hot a job, short snout."

She opened her eyes to glower at him—and got a good, solid look out the window over his head. Cliffs, field, sky…Merlin! So much sky!

The young woman pitched abruptly forward, death grip gone slack as all the color her temporary fervor had brought back to her cheeks drained rapidly away to leave dull, slack gray. The dizzy almost-faint lasted lonely a second or two, and DC fisted her white-knuckled hands in the fabric of Figaro's robe, dimly trying to heed his complaint. The roar of blood in her ears drowned out most of his question, but she caught the tail end and was able to deduce the rest. "Yes." Bravado dictated. The floor spun. "Er. Not really," she amended. "Usually? But…no. Not exactly. At the moment. Um—" To her abject horror, she felt tears spring into her eyes and was forced into a hiccupy half-sob to get enough breath to finish, "Justgemmedownthedamnstairs."

Figaro was still a little baffled, now that he was being clung to and threatened, but it was all in a good day's Fig.  He couldn't help but laugh again just because what was going on was so wierd but he seemed to catching better wind of it as the girl started making more sense. 

Well, half-sense.

Figaro watched as she looked up at the window and then shriveled up again.  "Oh.  OH!"

He'd got it sorted now and for the first time so far actually lent a hand to support her so that she wasn't hanging like a koala off his robes.  She was up here, like this - crying now! - because of... the heights?  "You don't need to cr- uh, yea, yea, we can go down," he said quickly now that he had the gist of this dilemma.

"That's fine.  Was going down anyway."  He shifted his weight and slowly took a step down with her more or less attached. 

"It's the heights, isn't it. This is one of the wobblier towers we've got.  At least these stairs aren't going to move on their own though, right?" He laughed bluntly, hoping the joke would lighten the mood a bit.  "I'm Figaro, by the way."

DC would have winced as the realization hit her companion, but she was too busy being grateful.  But she did snarl, "I ain't cr—" But he'd cut off and so did she, abruptly closing her mouth and raising her chin gamefully, despite the water leaking out of her eyes despite her attempts to, you know, not be a wussy little baby about this.

She thought about lying, or snapping at him because she was embarrassed, but Dixie was a dreadful liar, and well, he was being real nice to her now, even if the sort of pitying sympathy made her want to cry even harder. Tracy must be wearing off on her. The honesty part, not the sniffling part. So she closed her eyes again and mumbled miserably, "It's a recent development." She sighed and managed a choked, "Quodpot accident." And then timidly, she opened one red-rimmed eye and mumbled over a sniffle, "Can you…you know, maybe not tell anyone?"  But before she could elaborate, he'd let out an easy laugh that made her feel a little better until he spoke again.

"Oh shit. Oh shit that's a joke, right?" Her voice went high again, and cracked on squeak. "They…they don't really? Oh Merlin, they do, don't they. While you're on them?" Hogwarts was going to kill her. She was going to die. Her poor father was going to get an owl. Dixie Cade, Death by Staircase.  Forget the Tournament—which DC was debating not entering, lest she have to get on a broom and disgrace her whole school and country—she wasn't even going to make it through the first day of class.

She was going to die.

And it was going to be painful.

Something like a whimper and a gasp escaped, as her eyes clamped firmly shut again, and she would have frozen again entirely except she felt him move, and she numbly ordered her feet to follow, desperately grateful for the support he'd lent.  The minute they were moving, her hands spasmed a bit but she didn't stop. Her heart was hammering like a bludger in a box and to distract herself from the mental, distorted image of the stairs being an endless, straight-up-and-down monstrosity ending in abyss, grasped blindly in her fuzzy brain for something to say. Figaro? Right. "Like…like the cat?" Did British wizards watch Disney? Maybe not, but it was all she had right now. "That's cool." Her voice was shaky, and still wavering, but she was trying. That's what this was all about.  "I'm DC." She thought she was going to shake herself until she shattered, smash into thousands of pieces that no one would ever find. Distraction! Distraction!  "Thanks. You know. For…yeah."

Oh Godric, where they on solid ground yet?

Figaro's wry comment about the moving stairs at Hogwarts did not improve the situation and seemed to send the poor girl into another wave of panic, but he tried to keep them moving, one step at a time.  He had to physically clamp his mouth shut when he almost said, 'Only 400 more to go...'.  Mark it down one time that Figaro chose not to say exactly what he was thinking.  But he'd never seen someone so freaked out and he'd certainly never been someone that people relied on for comfort or stolidness.

"S'alright, we're fine," he tried to console her, but her hold on him was no less frantic or death-grippy.

And then, "What?"  A cat? He wasn't named for a cat.  He was named for an uncle. 

They kept on creeping down the stairs one step at a time.  Figaro tried to keep talking and hopefully that'd make her feel better.  "You play Quodpot? Get brain damage or something then in some explosion? You'll all have to play a bit and show us sometime," he said, conversationally, still not sure what this was.

It was kind of hard to ignore that a pretty girl was clinging to his torso, but she was so wigged out, he tried not to read into it too much.  Figaro had had a few girlfriends in the past, but he was aware most girls didn't find his torso to be all that cling-able.  At least by now he was touching her back with some amount of confidence, supporting some of her weight.

They were moving. It was going to be okay. DC firmly kept her brain on the subject of blood through veins, the way her feet felt, what they were doing: shifting weight from heel to ball, muscles in the ankle stretching, rather than on where they were going. Figaro Whatsitpuff was officially qualified for knighthood as far as she was concerned. Unfortunately, she didn't have that kind of authority.

We're fine, he said. Right. They were. Come on, brain. Listen to 'im. Sheer willpower made her clamp down harder on the panic, dig her heels in even as it was running away with her. She was not going to count steps. "A…it's a muggle movie." She swallowed, tried to loosen her grip. "About a…a puppet, and an old toymaker who wants a son, so a fairy comes and brings the puppet to life. But he's got a cat named Figaro. Cute fluffy thing. I don't really like cats, though. Dogs are better." As usual, her mouth was moving and she wasn't entirely sure what was coming out, though she realized inadvertently she'd already compared him to a cat. Her eyes flew open. "OH! I mean, not that—I mean you're not really a cat, just—yeah. You're alright. I'm rambling. I don't usually? I—oh geez." The girl closed her eyes again, having made the mistake of looking away from Figaro's face to the stairs. With a groan, she stiffened, but didn't stop moving.

For a minute, she considered trying to tell him that she wasn't totally crazy, and that she was perfectly capable of producing coherent sentences, but somehow she figured she wouldn't be at her most convincing at the moment. DC snickered sadly, and completely ignored the Quodpot question for a minute until she felt too rude. Her grip tightened in the quick way of someone hugging an item of comfort. Figaro was delightfully solid and his robes were warm—since most of her blood had fled her extremities thanks to survival mode, this was pretty nice. Awkward to maneuver, but nice. "Quodpot's…um. Blow-uppy. Pretty wicked fun. Brain damage common. I'm not sure why it ain't as big over here. Coach Hart's gonna do a seminar." She bit her lip and mumbled miserably, "I think I'll stay on the ground, all things considered."

Having no problem at all holding a blind conversation, she tried to match his conversational tone. "So, aside from avoiding being murdered by your staircases, what's big around here?"

Lovely!  She talked as much as he did when she was nervous and out came a stemless flow of bibble-babble.  Figaro didn't know if that meant she was feeling better or worse, but it did fill the time between the dozen steps.  There was a landing coming up soon and the option to take a corridor off to another part of the castle.  It wasn't the fastest way back to the rest of the castle, but wasn't steep stairs with just a railing between you and a dead-drop to a Persian rug. 

Ah, Pinocchio.  He knew that story.  He'd seen movies and some television before, but just not that one.  But she talked on and on in her American accent about puppets, cats, dogs, Quodpot and brain damage, and soon she came around to a question mark.

"Oh, you know, loads of fancy English things," he joked.  He'd already heard that for whatever reason the Americans found everything English to be fancy.  "We get mad for Quidditch, of course.  And some weekends we all go to Hogsmeade and go to the shops.  I listen to a lot of Three Owl Standard.  Do you know them?  They're excellent.  I've been to three of their concerts, have all their music.  Yea, loads of stuff to do. "

It was about that time that Figaro stopped taking steps because he'd run out of stairs.  A pair of double doors was set into an alcove at his right.  And even though there were more stairs leading the rest of the way down the tower, he said, "I know that I am very dashing and all, but you can probably release my abs now."