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Weird dream.
Last night I beat Lucius Malfoy to the top of the tower. Although when I woke up this surprised me rather, because initially it had been a train. And I felt rather cheated, because there was meant to be a museum, but there wasn't really room in the ten floors we knocked over and didn't explore properly for one, because they were barely a room each. But now I remember that there was a museum, we just ran through it too fast to make out any details.
Let's try and start at the beginning. I wouldn't log in anywhere; I seemed to have forgotten my passwords, and by the time I started working out how to retreive them instead of keep trying to guess, I had an email. I'm not sure whether it was from
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naath or painispretty, but when I got to their room it was a (rather frightening) mixture of both; basically naath, but with painispretty's hair. Anyway, I think she invited me on the train ride. It was a big silver train, but not big enough for what was inside; it was only about the size of an 8-carriage train, if that. Inside I saw seats of all colours ranging from the normal First Great Eastern seats (darkish green) at one end through yellow and orange to a rusty red at the other. We found our seats, in the yellow-green section, and the train started. I don't think any of us knew where it was going, it was the journey and the train more than the destination we were here for. On the train was Hanna and Vicki and Laura, but I soon got restless. Hanna/Laura2 (a mix of Hanna and The Other Laura) agreed to come exploring with me, and we went off down the train, towards the nearest cab (which had a driver in despite the fact we were actually going in the other direction).
The next carriage along was full of lively primary school children, wearing little blazer-and-trousers uniforms which were either the green of the seats or computer blue. They yelled and threw food at us, but I'm sure they were just being friendly. Hanna/Laura2 wasn't so happy about it, though; she was acting a bit more like Laura1 at this stage, come to think of it. Anyway, we pushed our way through the hoards of small children (the train was about 1.5*the width of a normal 8-carriage First Great Eastern train at this point, but then again it was that outside too, so it wasn't surprising, and this carriage didn't seem much longer than normal) and got to the doors at the other end of the carriage. Through these doors was The Library. (It was just a fairly normal-seeming library, but fitting a library the size of Chelmsford Library at least into one train carriage seems to earn it the title.) Hanna/Laura2 seemed quite content to stay here, but I wanted to press on, so after walking down innumerable aisles of books and feeling like I desperately wanted a very long ball of string, I came to the other end of the carriage; but this was just one of the crew doors, which is locked.
I emerged from the library, Hanna/Laura2 in tow (because she wanted to tell the others about the library then go back there), fought through the small children again and just got back into our carriage when the train pulled to a stop at a station. Everyone got out, and I have a few dim recollections of a picnic lunch, but I was mainly interested in studying the train from the outside in more detail. (This was when I discovered there was a driver in the rear 'cab', and I think where I noticed the seat gradient.) The train only looked about 4-6 carriages long; cab (complete with traditional 'train' shape in solid silver-stuff), green carriage (full of litter from the children), yellow-green carriage, yellow carriage, yellow-orange carriage, rusty-red carriage, and finally an engine-house-type thing like the Eurostar has. (I don't actually remember seing a cab this end.)
We all piled back onto the train, and I started trying to get people interested in exploring down the other way. Laura1 seemed interested at first, especially when Vicki said there was a museum at the other end, but after Hanna/Laura2 talked about the library a lot and Vicki said that the train was almost 300 carriages long she decided to go with Hanna/Laura2 to the library. So I set off the other way alone. (Vicki just stayed in the carriage and started to read a chemistry textbook.)
The first carriage I came to was only slightly yellower, and spookily deserted. I realised I needed the toilet at that point, and so went to find one. There were toilets at the other end of the carriage; proper full-set-of-public-toilets sized rooms through doors that definitely only led to portaloo-sized spaces. I went into the ladies, and was confronted by four things against the wall that I identified after a few seconds as female urinals, although they were of an entirely impractical design; what I thought was the catchbasin for each (a slighlty elongated soap-dish affair at about the right height) on further inspection turned out to be just some kind of drip tray, and the actual catchbasin was just a small trough underneath each, opened out from the wall... I'm going to have to draw this. (Look here.)
Anyway, I didn't think those looked particularly easy to use, so I looked around and there were in fact two actual normal toilets (just sat on the ground, no partitions or anything) so I used one of them. Having finished with the toilets (nothing else unusual occurred there) I moved on to the next carriage, which showed evidence of some previous occupation (wrappers from some of the picnic food) but contained only one small, frightened child who looked quite similar to a slightly darker-skinned version of Boo from Monsters Inc. At this point I noticed that the train was now at least twice as wide as it'd appeared from outside; two extra pathways with rows of seats outside of them had appeared. I walked along this carriage, watching the seats turn yellow, and then I noticed some stairs going up. I looked up them and saw more orangey seats further up, so I climbed them.
At this point I noticed that there was a second flight of stairs to my right from one of the other pathways leading to an intermediate level, where cartoony small children were playing with animated cartoony animals of the Pokemon/Digimon type, except less violent. I thought for a moment about going down again and climbing to that level instead, but I reasoned that I could see them on the way down. These slightly orangey seats were arranged in an auditorium fashion (each row higher than the first) so at this point I was climbing steps all the time towards another ceiling. The seats went almost right up to the ceiling, but I spotted another staircase (to my left this time) going through the ceiling, so I scrambled across the empty row to climb those stairs instead.
There were people in this next 'carriage' (although by this time they were more floors than carriages), starting off as Y7s and getting steadily older as I climbed higher and the seats changed colour. It was only at about Y9 that I realised that most of them were in robes and quite a few were waving wands around. Nobody was paying much attention to me, although there was the occasional bout of conversation and a wand was pointed in my direction as people discussed who this strange creature in their midst might be. I wondered what was so strange about my appearence, as I was just wearing pink jeans and t-shirt. I kept climbing until I got to about Y10/11, at which point I suddenly recognised some of the people sitting by the aisle; far over to my left were Lily, James, Peter and Sirius, and just to my right were Lucius and Narcissa, with who were presumably Avery and Lestrange. Lucius looked up and asked me what I thought I was doing, casually strolling through the Slytherins' area, and I replied that I was just trying to find the top of the tower, at which point he declared that he would be there first. I ignored him and kept climbing, and he didn't seem to follow me. The seats finally became rust-red for the seventh years and I knew that I was nearing the top of the train/tower.
At the top of the Hogwarts carriage I came to a room with a set of lifts and escalators. All the up escalators weren't moving, but as I walked past them they looked like they were going to start if I stepped on them; also, each one had the face of one of the animated critters from.the other floor on the 'break glass to stop' thingamy at the base of them. I explored the room a little further, and somehow fell *underneath* an up escalator from the critter floor. I was deposited on the lap of a very confused small child, and then the critter she'd been expecting landed on my head. I picked myself up and swung back onto the up escalator - the right side this time.
When I got to the top, Lucius Malfoy was waiting, with his arms folded, and smirking. I realised that I was actually carrying the critter, and the escalator which bore its face had just started up. So I threw the critter at Malfoy and ran up the moving escalator to the next floor. Malfoy soon recovered and raced up the escalator behind me. There was a museum here, which I would write up the rooms we dashed through but I don't really remember much from them, and then there was just a small section of tower, no more than a room wide and tapering with every floor. I threw myself at it and began to climb, and Malfoy began to climb after me, trying to pull me down. I leapt onto the top of the tower, snatching up a notepad and pen that just happened to be there to record the number of floors (there was only 233, which I remember feeling obscurely put out by, notwithstanding that I had most certainly not come through even 100), to discover that Malfoy was only holding onto the ediface by my trousers. I'm sure you can predict the following comedy moment.
To make things worse, I appeared to have left my underwear somewhere else. Much cursing ensued. As I clambered down from the tower, the whole thing decided to fall over, thankfully so that I was clutching the side rather than the base, but unhelpfully smashing a massive plate glass window, the remains of which I landed on. Picking pieces of glass out of my knees and shins, and trying not to get too much more in my feet, I asked Malfoy what he was looking at (you can probably guess), and stalked over to a nearby wardrobe in which I found the grand total of one pair of trousers, which were bright pink at the top and ended up bright golden yellow, with a lacy design down them. Having re-attired myself, I turned to glare at Malfoy again."I hear there's a library at the other end," he said smugly."Been there," I replied. "You want to come?"He shrugged and we set off together back down the train/tower.
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