Witch's Eye Stairwell

Eglantine approached the stairwell. She had not used it since she had become chair ridden and now the idea of hiding Excessum in a place she would not be able to access seemed rather...well daft to say the least. But having no better idea at the moment, she looked back at Professor Kaminski.

Sevastyan followed Professor DeLanquar to The Witch's Eye - a staircase in Hogwarts that was as mysterious in appearance as it was in name. In a niche at the landing stood a sizeable statue of a witch with a pointed hat and an eye-patch; a crystal ball in one hand. The center of the crystal ball seemed to have an eyeball-shaped center. He wondered briefly if this witch was someone in history or if the image stood to convey something else?

Feeling a pair of real eyes upon him, Sevastyan looked to the professor curiously. "So... let us see..." he began pensively. "How might ve entreat the castle?"

Looking back to the statue again, but still listening, Sevastyan focused on the crystal sphere in the witch's hand that contained an eyeball at its center. If he didn't know any better, he'd assume that the subject of the sculpture was a mediwitch of the past according to her style of dress. Then again, he had no idea what the costumes of the eras were here so he could've been entirely wrong.

'Ve need a place to hide this vand . . . excessum . . . from prying eyes,' his mind-voice echoed within his head. Sevastyan stared at the statue for several seconds, trying to project this thought to see if it would have any affect.

There was a cracking sound loud enough to frighten Eglantine considerably, but thankfully there was no one else in the hearing vicinity.

A piece of the steps fell away revealing a hidden door, with multiple runes engraved over the top of it. Eglantine cocked her head to the side, levitating herself up from the wheelchair to hover slightly in front of the door.
"Obviously, the castle likes you, Professor." she stated, sounding amused. "Speak your names and enter in." she read aloud from the runes.
Taking a breath, she placed her hand against the door. "Eglantine DeLanquar." Glacing back at Sevastyan, she waited for him to do the same.

Sevastyan jumped at the sudden noise, and personally hoped that the school was magic enough for to keep the reverberations that he felt largely isolated from the other occupants. Though the magic of the situation should not have surprised him in any way, Sevastyan couldn't help but stare in awe at the revealed door.

He laughed slightly at the comment from Professor DeLanquar. "Vell, that's good to know," Sevastyan replied, equally amused.

After observing her actions, Sevastyan approached the door and placed his hand upon it. "Sevastyan Maksimovich Kaminski."

As the door opened for them, he turned to the professor. "My full name, for extra security," he explained the strange new jumble of sounds between his first and last name. "...and ladies first." There was an amused but respectful smile on his face, the former emotion mostly out of amazement that his theory had worked so well.

Eglantine nodded, carefully entering the downward door that seemed to lead into a room of some kind under the stairwell.
"Lumos." she whispered, holding out her wand to shed some light on where they were entering.

It was staircase leading down until it wrapped around a corner.
"A staircase inside of a stairwell. How ironic." Eglantine remarked, ignoring the spiders crawling along the walls.

Sevastyan followed, summoning light to his wand with the same incantation. Once they were both in, the door shut. It would be interesting to see how they would get out of here once their business was concluded. He added his wandlight to DeLanquar's as they traversed the secret passageway.

"Indeed," he agreed, pushing a cobweb here and there, their arachnid owners hardly on the top of Sevastyan's lists of concerns.

Once passed the stairs, the pair of professors were met by another door. "Does this door reqvire anything?" he asked, unable to see clearly as Eglantine was in the lead. Sevastyan was perfectly fine with that, however - after all, he did say 'ladies first'. He almost thought he saw another carved inscription, but considering the age of the school it could also be old teenage graffiti... the likelihood of such a thing uncertain for him.

Eglantine pulled another handkerchief from her pocket, this time a white lacy one. Using it, she wiped the dust from the inscription on the door. It was rather difficult to hold her hand steady, her body levitated and to wipe the door clear, but she finally managed to clear away enough to read the Gaelic writing.

"The Door Beneath the Doors." she turned to look at Sevastyan. "An appropriate name, wouldn't you say?" a hole the perfect size for a wand tip was bored underneath the inscription. Placing her wand into it, she smiled as the door opened with a faint pop and crack, swinging open to reveal a round room with a hovering scale at its centre.

"Qvite," he answered, with a nod.

Following her inside the room, Sevastyan made several mental notes about the appearance of the room: the curves of the walls, the scale at its centre, the neutral medium blue carpeting. Looking up, he sort of smirked to himself at the relief carved into the ceiling: roses, more than the eye could count, were painted upon its surface. The fact that they were "under the rose" - from a phrase in Latin, Sevastyan knew, that was meant to indicate confidentiality - was all too fitting for their situation. In fact, it was this phrase that he was required to say upon approaching the portrait that guarded his quarters.

Pacing around the scale, Sevastyan wondered curiously what its purpose was. Would placing the wand on the scale do anything, he wondered? It seemed like the most obvious place to put it.

"Shall ve veigh the vand?" he asked, his amusement allowed to take the forefront for now. It held extra amusement for him because of the Triwizard Tournament's custom of weighing the champions' wands before the tasks began. The custom had fascinated him greatly: the fact that a wandmaker could determine a wand's specifics at a glance baffled and impressed him at the same time.

Eglantine pulled Excessum from her pocket and gently laid it on the scale end closest to her.
White light spilled from the scales as it morphed into a single plate, elongating until it took on the shape of a wand holder, floating perfectly still where the scales had been.
Words written with fiery strokes appeared in the air about the wand.

Here entombed is Excessum. The Door Beneath the Doors guards it well. Blood shall enter and blood shall leave.

A quill appeared along with a piece of paper. Those undersigned shall enter the blood bond of the Door Beneath the Doors was written in elegant curl along the top of the page. Eglantine picked up the quill and signed her full name, gasping as blood was taken from her shaking hand to use as ink.

Eglantine Karis Rosier-DeLanquar

The name shone red on the page. Handing the quill to Sevastyan, she absently rubbed her hand.

Sevastyan gently took the offered quill and examined it briefly. He did not have any reservations about it, just steeling himself against the upcoming onslaught of pain. Making sure his hand would not smudge his blood-signed name or the one above it, Sevastyan deliberately held the quill at an angle most would have considered to be quite awkward. A grunt of pain left his lips as he felt something like the nub of a pen slicing open the skin of his hand, acquiring the blood that would be substituted for a rather thick ink of crimson. He would be sticking to black ink for the next couple of weeks instead of his usual reddish-hued pigments.

Sevastyan Maksimovich Kaminski

The thick pen-strokes of his name glittered a darker red than the rest of the penmanship of his signature. Sevastyan then replaced the quill to its former spot, flexing his fingers as though his hand had fallen asleep.

"It is done, then," he stated solemnly, though wasn't sure if they should take their leave or if there was something else the professor wished to discuss.

Eglantine nodded. "So it would seem." she concurred. The parchment vanished into thin air, but she assumed it still floated unseen in the room.

Obviously only those whose names were sighed in blood could enter or leave the Door Beneath the Doors now. Excessum was now safely hidden.

"We should go before someone starts looking for us." she murmured, glancing back at the door they had entered, which had closed just as the first door had. Another door had appeared while she had been writing her name, but she failed to see it in the dim light afforded by her wand.

((The door will lead out into the DADA office or into the Transfiguration office depending on who uses it...))

((Okay. ^_^))

"It vould look odd if the both of us vere missing..." he agreed, glancing around to the way they had come. But, it seemed, that the Door Beneath the Doors had pretty much sealed itself. This was likely a precautionary measure, what with Excessum now safely hidden. Aiming the light of his wand this way and that, Sevastyan noticed the glimmer of a door handle.

"This door vos not here before, vos it?" he asked, striding towards it. Without thought he opened it, and came across an irregular sight. It appeared as though the door would lead straight back toward his office. The only thing was, the threshold appeared... warped. It was as if he was looking into a wacky mirror in a funhouse that made everything look squiggly, only he couldn't see his reflection.

"It looks like it vould lead back to my office, though something is odd about it..." he remarked. "Vould you tell me vot you make of this, or if my eyes are simply playing tricks on me?" Sevastyan requested, holding the door open for Professor DeLanquar much like he did before back at his office. In Russia it was still somewhat expected for a man to hold the door open for a woman, and it was something Sevastyan did both out of habit and out of courtesy.

Eglantine turned to look where Sevastyan was. However as she approached his location, hovering slighting above the ground, she raised an eyebrow as her office came into view through the open door.

"It would appear that it alters its destination according to who enters it." she stated, obviously impressed. "Shall we?" Eglantine smiled and entered the door, slightly disoriented as she walked out of her office wall and nearly fell over her desk chair.

Both of Sevastyan's raven brows rose upon hearing that the destination had changed when she approached. 'Impressive...' he mused to himself. That made getting back to where he needed to be all that much easier. Not that this errand was an inconvenience - just that it helped to lessen any suspicion as to his whereabouts.

"Ve shall. Until this evening, professor," Sevastyan bade her farewell courteously, referring to when the entire school sat in the Great Hall for dinner. Once she was through and had doubtlessly arrived in her own office Sevastyan followed suit, arriving in the hallway leading to his office. Now, perhaps, to get back to his massive Rubik's cube-like puzzle. It would take days to complete, but Sevastyan hoped to accomplish at least another five more minutes' worth...

((Sevastyan is now in the Defense Office... trying to get Viper's familiar, Drakon, out of the plumbing in his ceiling. ^_^))

((lol, yes, I read some of that. Hilarious))