A Headless House

It was only that morning that Aje accidentally knocked a student flat on their back. It was a terrible mistake, one he wasn't prone to making often. He had been large his whole life both in length and in build and has thirty long years to get accustom to his frame. He was more graceful than most, painfully aware of how much space his body took up and the trajectory of his various limbs. He made this awful mistake on his first full day as a Dueling Professor, likely due to the fact he was slightly panicking after being lost again in the maze these people called a castle. To compound matters, he received a memo just a few hours later summoning him to the Headmistresses office.

Getting to her office was a challenge. The stairs, mischievous as ever must have sensed his presence and held some sort of unknown grudge against him. Aje had observed many children and adults alike climbing from floor to floor without so much as a twitch from those staircases. Perhaps there was some trick to it? Some secret step that activated the staircases to shuffle themselves around but no one seemed to avoid any spot in the stairs or pay them any mind. Eventually he grew bold enough to attempt his descent, taking them at a speedy walk two at a time. When he was nearly at the bottom they shifted underneath him and Aje, not having the patience to be lost again jumped to the landing, flopping against the ground with a hard thump. The wizard rolled over, grinning broadly at the stairs as he sat up and crossed his arms triumphantly over his chest. "I have won! You are not so clever now!" In his gloating he nearly forgot his trepidation over the meeting with the Headmistress.

Aje picked himself up and headed off to the woman's office. His palms were warm and sweaty with nerves as he drew near. He knew Headmistress McGonagall vaguely from the Order and she always struck him as a strict but fair woman. Perhaps she would hear out his side of the story regarding the incident. He regarded the spiral staircase that led to her office with apprehension but arrived at her door none the less. He knocked meekly and waited until invited inside to enter but once inside he immediately began to plead his case.

"Headmistress." he inclined his head, hands spread out in front of him in a gesture to show how harmless he was. His hands tingled, magic lurking just beneath the surface of his palm and he folded his arms back, hiding said hands to head off an accidental display of magic before it happened. "Headmistress, it was an accident I promise you. The student is not damaged, they were maybe startled but there are no marks or injuries."