January 24th, 1891 — Hogwarts Corridors

Addison's head hurt. He wasn't too sure why, he'd just been out in the Great Hall having breakfast, and gone absentmindedly out into the corridor. He looked at his notebook to see if he had anything planned today, as he liked to keep a schedule in there in case he got off track.

As he felt around the pockets of his rather shabby robes, he touched his head and realized it felt a lot more...slimy than usual. Was that scrambled eggs? Who'd dumped eggs on him? That didn't seem to make very much sense. He stuck a finger in the mixture and put it in his mouth, something that was quite uncharacteristic of him. If anything, it was more reckless.

"Hey, hey you!" he called out at a passerby, a habit that most thought he had abandoned in second year, "Why've I got eggs on me?"

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Addison is the victim of an improperly brewed Befuddlement Draught leading to general confusion and recklessness!

  

Sloane was, unsurprisingly running late to breakfast. Not for any particular reason other than she hadn't wanted to get out of bed thanks to quidditch practice yesterday afternoon. Weekends were for resting after all, weren't they?

She hoped there were still some pancakes left— and some coffee. The fourth year had recently acquired the taste (with some sugar and cream of course!) but rather enjoyed the bitterness in the back of her throat. Skidding down the bottom of the marble staircase that led to the entrance hall, Sloane was momentarily distracted by an unfamiliar voice calling in her general direction.

"Ah, you don't?" She was both amused and alarmed by the question as she stared at the Ravenclaw carefully. Chatham maybe. The petite Gryffindor wasn't great with names and faces, but she thought that might be it.

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Addison was rather surprised to hear the Gryffin..puff...in...whatever house this girl was from, tell him that there were no eggs on him. Her house crest was a little hard to read. Were people supposed to wobble like that? He glanced at his hand, which still felt slimy.

"Wh-what?" he said. Was this a joke? He patted himself on the head, but it still felt slimy to him.

"That's...strange." he laughed nervously, which appeared to release a haze of smoke. At least, to Addison it did. He covered his mouth, then stared at the side of the girl's ear, which continued to wobble. He was silent for a few seconds before trying to see if he was still slimy. Maybe this was all a practical joke.

"You sure about that?" Addison said. He tried to grab a handful of slimy substance to prove himself correct. Maybe it wasn't eggs. That had to be it. He tried to hold out the substance to the unknown girl, "Okay, then what's this?"

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Eying the boy suspiciously, Sloane drew nearer, but she really couldn't see anything on his head. "Unless Peeves put something invisible there, I really don't see anything." Sloane shrugged, looking around for anything that could have fallen on his head or if Peeves was indeed lurking in the corner somewhere.

"That's nothing," She said, peering conspicuously at the Ravenclaw's outstretched hand. "Maybe you out to go to the hospital wing?" She suggested. Sloane had spent enough time there herself this year to last a life time.  She felt her stomach rumble a little, thinking about her pancakes as she ran her hands down the front of her plain blue dress idly. It would be harsh of her to just leave him here when there was something clearly wrong with him.

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The girl's face was morphing weirdly. Sometimes her mouth launched two inches in front of her face, and Addison had absolutely no idea what was going on with the rest of her body. This, at least, seemed to be cause for concern.

"Peeves?...Hospital wing!" Addison nodded his head slowly, "Yes, yes, yes, that's very good, yes, hospital wing. That should get it all fixed up. The slime, of course. And your wobbles, too. Whatever you've got going on."

He jumped back, nearly landing on his backside before clapping his hands. "Where...where is the hospital wing?"

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Passing a longing glance a the Great Hall and the smells wafting from the breakfast tables, Sloane sighed softly and edged closer to her classmate. "Come along, are you alright to climb the stairs?" Sloane hadn't the slightest idea what he meant by her wobbles, but was highly starting to suspect he was either hit with a wayward jinx or something along those lines. If he'd said her hair was pink or something like that, it wouldn't have even phased her, but she was perfectly fine otherwise, no wobbling at all that she could feel.

The deja vu from the orange juice incident with Mr. Montgomery caught her then and she chuckled quietly to herself. "Careful there," She warned as they reached the bottom of the giant marble staircase. This could go so many different ways and the the diminutive brunette would be useless if he stumbled or toppled over. Hopefully they'd make it and fortunately the Hospital Wing was not too far away.

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"Stairs. Yes, stairs will be fine," Addison processed the meaning of the word a few times before he glanced at the girl again, then towards the stairs. He took a few steps forwards, and was confident that he could continue to do so.

The staircase was much bigger than it seemed, and when Addison put his foot on the first step, it screamed. He pulled his foot back suddenly, muttering apologies. This was all wrong. This wasn't right. Stairs did not scream! He didn't know what was going on, and the stairs looked oh-so-large now.

Gulping, he put his hand on the rails of the stairs, which felt as soft as a stuffed animal he'd once been given as a child due to the poor stitching on it, done by an apprentice. It had fallen apart after a while, but it was still quite soft. He skipped the first step, this time, and tried to ignore whatever else was going on with the stairs.

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Sloane had zero confidence in Mr. Chatham's ability to climb the stairs reasonably. She hovered nearby, not too close and slightly behind him, but still she was useless if he toppled. Everything seemed very out of whack even for a person who could willingly give herself a mustache.

"How can I help?" She asked uncertainly without any idea of what she could actually do. "Should I get the nurse and bring her to you?" Maybe that would be the best course of action. She really wasn't sure how to handle this. Her usual wit and charm, nor her tenacity was going to get her very far in this situation.

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Addison frowned. "A nurse."

He slid down so his back was leaning against the handrail of the staircase, while the stair below him muttered something about horses. Horses and slime. He still felt like there was something on his head, something slimy. "A nurse would be nice, I think."

"But--I should help you. There's all your wobbles to worry about. Wouldn't want you to be too wobbley to get any help. No, no, no, that wouldn't be any good at all." His frown deepened as he pondered on what to do, though the oscillating form of the girl did not make the choice very easy to focus on.

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Oh this was... not good indeed. Sloane looked about to see if there was a third party she could harass into helping. It wasn't as if she could move him somehow and running to get the nurse would leave him here by himself and she worried he would move if she did that. Neither option seemed like a good choice.

Carefully, she sat down on the stairs nearby, maybe whatever it was he'd been hit with would pass in a few moments. "I promise the only thing that's off about me is that I can change my hair color at will, no wobbles at all." Whatever it was he was seeing was mildly alarming if he was concerned about her as well. "Perfectly fine over here." It was not really in Sloane's nature to be soft-spoken or quite so patient, but she felt bad for the poor bloke.

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"Change...hair colour?" That didn't seem to normal to Addison at the moment, but then again, he was still feeling rather slimy. He ran through his brain which was still feeling like goop. There didn't seem to be anything he could do to make it not do that, though, but he at least recognized that it seemed unlikely that wobbles were the normal state of being for anyone human.

"If you're fine...oh, it's me!" Addison tapped his nose. That, at least, didn't feel slimy. The stairs continued to mutter something but had switched to what Addison thought was French. "You can't hear the stairs, then?"

He held his breath. Maybe whatever was going on was like the hiccups, and he could get rid of it that way.

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"Yeah, change my hair color." She laughed lightly. Sloane thought most people knew, since she hadn't really mastered keeping it under control until this year, her hair often changing with her moods, but it would make sense for some of the students in the other houses not to know.

Pulling a face, quirking an eyebrow and cocking her head to the side at his comment about the stairs, she looked away quickly as she heard the door to the Great Hall open. "Hey you! Can you go get the nurse please?" She vaguely recognized the boy as a a Hufflepuff in her year who clearly knew better than to argue with her. Thank Merlin for that.

"Nope, I cannot hear the stairs, are the saying anything good?" Man He must have been hit with something good to her the stairs making noise.

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Addison nodded solemnly, he was pretty sure he'd heard something about someone changing colours and that, but his head still felt foggy, among other things. He was glad, at least, that the wobbley girl seemed to find another way to grab a nurse.

That made sense, that she couldn't hear the stairs. Well, as much sense as anything was making at the moment. They continued babbling in French.

"Not unless you can understand French," Addison sighed, "It doesn't sound like they're sayin' anything nice anyways. Bit rude sounding, yeah? Like, em, the tone's nasty."

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Though she knew she shouldn't Sloane chuckled to herself at his comments about the stairs. At least she was able to find another way to hail the nurse without leaving poor Chatham here by himself. "My French is very poor, but doesn't it always sound a little angry?" At least to her it had. Maybe that was German? Her mother had never really forced a language upon her, thank Merlin.

"Well hopefully the nurse will be here soon and you can tell them to be quiet." Sloane really was curious as to what was causing all of these hallucinations for the Ravenclaw.

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Addison shrugged, "I don't know any at all. I'm guessing, really...could be anything 's not English." He frowned. It was a bit annoying, filtering out the blabbering stairs, not to mention the fact that most of whoever he was talking to (a distinction he could not yet make) continued to spin around and wobble.

"Yeah, bloody stairs. Don't know when to keep quiet. Guess nobody listens to them," Addison laughed, a bit louder than he might have done had he not been feeling terribly odd in the past few minutes. Stairs weren't supposed to be saying anything, though he did have a bit of an idea that it would be nice to understand whatever it was they did say while he could hear it. Then again, he doubted it would be coherent.

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Sloane covered her mouth to hide the snicker that threatened to follow at his comments about the stairs. She knew he was in a bad way and shouldn't be laughing, but a befuddled student was kind of funny. Especially when the stairs were talking.

Hurried footsteps behind her announced the arrival of the nurse. Sloane stood quickly and passed the matron an uncertain smile. The poor nurse was probably tired of her face this year, between burns, serious illnesses and quidditch injuries, the Gryffindor felt like it was her dorm this year. "Not me this time!" She assured the woman with a nod. "I think Mr. Chatham's been hit with something, hard to tell." It was her best guess really. "But he's not very stable while walking." That was how they'd ended up on the stairs in the first place.

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