Stairgasm ((Open RP))

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

It's the stairs that make Arthur decide he likes Hogwarts.

Like most students, he's turned out of the sorting room with a house name and the clothes on his back. The directions he's gotten are unreliable at best, ranging from "over there somewhere" to a series of twists and turns that finally lead him to a dead end. He's heading down a hallway, looking for the next person to ask when he runs out of hallways and comes out onto a landing leading to the staircases.

The staircases lead up and down and wherever they want to. He watches one staircase detach from the third floor and lazily stretch itself up to the fifth. Another set of stairs decides that being linear is boring and twists into a tight spiral, ending up on the same floor but on the other side. It's almost too much to take in, and frankly, it's one of the most amazing things he's ever seen.

Arthur is a bit of a stair nerd.

He'll claim that he merely has an appreciation of impossible architecture, that it comes with spending so long around people who can bend cities in their dreams. But there's a reason why the Penrose stairs are one of his favorites, why it's what he shows off first. They're simple, elegant, useful, and embody the fantastical nature of dreams that he finds so intriguing. While these stairs lack the subtlety of the Penrose ones, the sheer grandeur of them captivates him completely.

Which is why he's still there half an hour later, watching the stairs and walking up and down them to see them shift under his feet and swing him around to places he had no intention of visiting.

Comments

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

Arthur reflected on how pretentious a person would have to be to go by a title. He also recognized that as a man who preferred to go by his first name only, he was a pot calling the kettle a slightly darker shade of black.

"I haven't met him, but I've only just got here."

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

"Me, too. I wondered if maybe that was the case - you still seem excited to be here."

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

He wouldn't say that he was excited, but he was. It was like dreamsharing; a whole new world to explore, where the rulebook had been tossed out the window.

"And you? Are you excited to be here?"

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

"Oh, yes! Just the very existence of magic is fascinating. Being able to really study it is great. And then, of course, there's the people..."

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

He ignored what he saw as an invitation for gossip. "So you travel through time and space but haven't encountered magic before? Or is this just the first chance you've had to sit down and study it?"

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

She laughed. "You mean the TARDIS? But that's science. Not science that I really understand, mind you, but after all, I was still at the Academy when I left. It might be sufficiently advanced technology, but it's still technology. This - it's not that I don't understand it, but that it can't really be understood in the first place."

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

"I wonder if they're sick of Clarke's laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws) here." He smiled, just barely. The second was his favorite.

"Yet here we are, at a school to understand it. Unless we've been lied to by several different people."

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

Susan was rather fond of Clarke's Laws; while she had no definitive proof one way or the other, she strongly suspected that her grandfather had inspired them. She gave Arthur a wider smile in return. "They've always been favourites of mine. And they're quite accurate, in my experience at least.

"I know!" she added, a little dreamily. "It's just brilliant, isn't it? Well, the school of magic bit. Not the being lied to bit, which I highly doubt is the case, unless someone's gone to an implausible amount of trouble faking it all."

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

"In your experience?" He turned from the stair railing. Arthur asked questions to get information, and so far Susan had been a font of it. "I think we've covered the third one. You must also be familiar with elderly scientists with strong convictions. If time and space travel is within the realm of possibility for you, I'm curious to know what would be going outside of it."

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

"Not scientists, per se. Maybe a Doctor, though." She shot him a teasing grin. "Well, I would have thought magic was outside the realm of possibility - my first school was very big on there always being a sensible explanation for everything. But mostly I like seeing it be applied to other people."

[3pc-point.livejournal.com]

His self-contained expression had only changed once, and just by a fraction, but something in what she said made him prop back up his wall of stoicism.

"What do you do if they don't want to go past those limits?"

[timelady-susan.livejournal.com]

"Nothing, of course." She paused - that wasn't quite accurate. "Well, unless there's some sort of mistake."