Currently, Philo was feeling a lump in is stomach as if he had swallowed a peach pit and it had taken root.

This was because, after lunch he had returned to his dorm room to find his things in slight disarray. His trunk was turned over. Which meant a particular thing was missing from the bottom of it.

Philo had even tried to leave the carpet at home over the holiday but it had returned itself to the bottom of the trunk. And now it had escaped again.

And it was a full moon tonight too. Philo began to wonder if Runner was affected by the lunar cycle. Was it trying to go back to the Room of Ash and Hidden Things?

Philo knew he should find it quickly. When Philo had first been found by the carpet it had ensnarled him the moment he had stepped on it. What if something similar happened wherever the carpet was?

He hoped it hadn't gone far, so starting from the entrance to Ravenclaw Tower Philo decided to search floor by floor, keeping a brisk pace and skimming eye for the animated carpet. He even tried calling "Runner" a few times until the portraits started looking at him funny.

Felinus sniffed the edge of the moth-worn rug, his upper lip curling back into an sour growl. This carpet was not supposed to be here.

Save for the dormitories and staff offices, there were few carpets to be found on the floors of Hogwarts. The walls certainly bore dozens of tapestries, but that was different. Tapestries would never know foot traffic, after all. But even if this had been the rug's designated location it shouldn't be here now. It was the fifth Saturday of the year, which meant that the fifth floor was scheduled for a good scrubbing, and he couldn't very well get that scrubbing done if the house elves hadn't taken the carpets out for a beating at the close of classes the way they'd supposed to.

"Need to have a talk with Knobby," he muttered, thinking of the house elf who organized the hallway cleaners. Knowing the creatures' work ethic he highly doubted that any were slacking, but perhaps he had some new recruits who didn't yet know the castle as well as they should.

For now, there was nothing else to be done about it. Felinus tugged the twin scrub-brush "sandals" off his front paws, tossing them to join the bucket of soapy water that waited along the wall. He'd have to clear the rug away himself. But when he went to place one wet paw on the carpet's corner, he found it hitting stone instead of cloth. The carpet, when he looked, had bunched up at the corner just enough to avoid contact with the wet paw.

Felinus paused. He'd been certain that the carpet was laid flat before. But perhaps he'd been mistaken.

He tried again, and this time he was sure of it. The carpet moved, sliding a full eight inches to avoid his paw and then stilling again, flat as ever, as though he wouldn't notice. Acting on some feline instinct, Felinus snatched for it with his other paw. This time he managed to snag a corner, only for it to slip away, the carpet sliding away from him down the hall. It didn't bother to hide now. Seems its only thought was to escape.

"Oh no you don't!" Felinus pounced, his front paws landing right in the center of the rug, pinning it to the floor. "Ah-ha!"

The rug snapped itself, trying to buck him off. Four hundred pounds of pure African lion proved too heavy for even the enchanted carpet to dislodge, half its body still pinned to the floor. Felinus gave another shout of triumph, but before it'd even left his mouth the front half of the rug leapt up and wrapped itself over the top of his head. The furious bellow the followed as he tried to shake it off echoed through the entire fifth floor.

The longer her searched the more Philo grew nervous. Technically nobody at school really knew where the carpet had come from. Most believed he had gotten it from the trip to Egypt. Only Alvis Norling and Professor Reid's squib sister knew the full truth, as Professor Reid and his Head of House Professor Trishna just knew Philo had gotten it shortly before the trip and at the time of the summer trip had never asked him for the full story.

Hopefully Runner knew to not draw attention to itself whatever it was doing in the school, as that was the only way Philo had survived the Egypt trip. The hope was shattered to pieces before he turned a corridor, because of the fearful roar he heard echoing down the hall.

"Bloody hell," Philo gasped, avoiding one of the more colorful swears he picked up from Arlaug.

It wasn't uncommon knowledge that the castle caretaker was a lion. You saw it at the staff table sometimes and gossip about the lion prowling the halls was common in the students ears. Still, Philo had yet to meet the caretaker face to face and the sight of a great lion wrestling with Runner at the end of the corridor suggested it was not going to be a favorable meeting.

This would be the ideal time to flee but Philo imagined further trouble might come from that. After a steadying breath, and cursing that Runner hadn't come with some sort of turn off spell, Philo pelted down the hall.

"No! Stop!" he yelled at the carpet.

Felinus snarled, rearing back on his hind legs as he wrestled with the carpet, trying simultaneously to pin it and rip it off his head in the same motion. It pulled back against him until he toppled backwards, knocking over his mop-bucket. With a jerk of his shoulders, Felnius popped back up and slammed the rug down into the soapy puddle, its body half-bunched beneath his front paws. Its bottom half slapped at the lion's stomach while its top tassels repeatedly smack him in the face.

"BLASTED THING!" he roared, the words barely comprehensible in the guttural growls. The carpet snapped and struggled, whipping him with its tassels as it tried to buck him off. "I'LL REND YOU INTO --"

"No!" cried a student's voice. "Stop!"

Felinus froze. A boy in Ravenclaw blue rushed up, looking frantic and short of breath. His constricted pupils suddenly dilated, a bit of reason returning through the haze of feline instinct. His bit of hesitation was all the carpet needed. It snapped itself like  a wave, caught him across the muzzle like a whip, and shot out from under its paws towards the Ravenclaw boy.

"You...!" Felinus growled. He tried to pounce after it, only for his front paws to catch the soapy puddle and slid out from under him, dropping him face-first into the floor. He face-planted into the soap and came up hissing, shaking the residual moisture from his mane. "That -- blasted -- this is why those things are illegal!"

Philo grimaced as if each time the lion before him flopped on the ground in his struggle that it was a blow to his own human limbs. There was something sad yet comical to see such a beast, a piece of Hogwarts heraldry, flopping about. At the same time, even though Professors Trishna and Reid had also given exasperated looks at Philo on account of Runner, neither of them could transfigure themselves into a predatory cat!

"It's...not what you think at all!" Sir. Your catness. What was he supposed to be titled? "It's not a Flying...and it used to belong here!" Philo had first found Runner in the castle. Even if it was a room that wasn't always attached to the castle.

Felinus growled again, as much at his own disreputable display as at the living rug that now lurked around the student's ankles like one of the little domestics at the heels of their owners. The boy claimed that the carpet belonged here -- used to belong here -- but now it clearly belonged with the boy. To the boy. Beh. Semantics.

Disgruntled with the whole turn of events, he planted his front paws and shook himself as hard as he could, spraying both the boy and the carpet with water. Once he'd shaken the worst of it off he gave his head a final toss to clear the mane from his face and advanced on the Ravenclaw. His upper lip curled in distaste as he glared at the rug, an expression that had been tough enough when he'd the human Head Boy and turned outright fierce with his fangs involved.

"Your name. And an explanation. Now. It'd better be good."

"Ph-ph-f-Philo F-Falkin, sir," kitty, don't say kitty. "I, well, at the end of last year I had found this rug in a room in the castle I've never been in before. And, I haven't been able to find it again." A half truth, Philo had a vague notion of how the Room of (Ashen) Hidden Things worked but he hadn't dared set foot in there again and get accosting by some other magical artifact.

"But Runn--err, this carpet, was in there and began following me around. It somehow knew I was going to Egypt on the summer trip, and it's from there it used to belong to this old wizard Pharaoh, Imalu..." The name was on the tip of his tongue. Philo knew he was probably saying it wrong but he hadn't looked up any information about the ancient wizard in ages. "But he's a ghost now, and the carpet always has to go back to his tomb every millennium to keep the magic, and..." The ghost had been nonplussed about the adventure, although so many months away from that trip the story was sounding very surreal.

Then again, Philo was explaining the situation to a castle caretaker that was apparently stuck as a talking lion. Odder things happened in the wizarding world every day. "So it's fine I guess. The carpet, that is. The ghost said I could watch after it although maybe it's been trying to find a new place to..." Rest? Reside? "occupy in the castle."