Another empty corridor filled with silence. Earlier this morning, there had been chatter from students as they left their dorm room but now since classes had begun, it was silent. Well silent enough save for the stone along the wall that gave out, causing a fracture like a tree branch to appear. It started on the lower wall and then journeyed out halfway across the floor. The snickering and bickering portraits were lucky that it hadn’t knocked them off of their perches against the wall.

Be careful of the crack. Stepping on it may result in breaking your mother’s back.

Delilah had pretty much gotten over the disappointment of not being sorted into Slytherin. Mostly. Somewhat. She sort of, kind of, might have been strolling down the dungeon corridor just because every once in a while it hit her, and she just had to venture down to Slytherin headquarters. Besdies, she was here anyway all thanks to Potions class. Might as well stay a few extra minutes. It didn't seem like too much was going on, though, so she should probably head back up.

She was simply minding her own business while heading for the stairwell, when a sudden sound from the wall caught her attention. Uhh...had those cracks been there before, or was she just imagining things? It seemed to her like the structure of the school was literally giving way. She looked before her and behind her. Did anybody else see that? She SWORE she didn't do it!

Javier had been heading up to grab something to eat after his class when he heard something...strange in the corridor. What was that sound? It almost sounded like he'd stepped on glass or something, which was impossible unless one of his students dropped a vial on the way out of class. So what on Earth was that?

He heard it again, this time catching the movement of the crack in the wall expanding as it did so. Wait...why was the wall CRUMBLING? Immediately flashbacks to vines attacking his classroom from last term hopped into his brain and he went into slight panic mode. He blinked and followed the crack to the floor, his gaze traveling over to Delilah who stood nearby. He raised an eyebrow.

"Did you hear that too?" he asked the young girl.

He'd had a question for Professor Hernandez regarding something he'd read in his text, and Evan was trying to get to the dungeons in order to bother him quickly between classes. His text was open in his hands, scanning the line again and again in order to remember exactly how he wanted to formulate his request for information, but the loud noise in the corridor was enough to startle him into snapping the book closed and giving a small jump, question flitting away entirely to only be replaced by others.

"What in merlin's name?" He quickened his steps, his eyes still looking down as if checking for any pesky vines that might have withstood the destruction from the previous term.

He did not find any greenery, but his eyes did catch the fracturing in the ground. "Are those... cracks?" He glanced up finally, noticing that Professor Hernandez and the first year, Delilah, were both there as well. "Did someone drop something heavy to create that?" He pointed at the floor, blinking at them while taking note that there was nothing else in the halls that could have created that.

What in the world?

Delilah had literally just decided to a run for it and literally play innocent if anyone ever asked if she'd seen anything, when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Oh, great. A professor. No getting out of this one. She was here, and it was very obvious she'd seen the damage, so now she was officially a part of things.

He was asking her if she heard anything, which was good, because at least he didn't think she'd done anything. She silently nodded then pointed toward the cracks, which she could assume by now he'd seen. "I swear I was just walking along. I was taking a short walk after class, and I was about to head back up when it happened," she said. "It was just...like the castle started giving way."

Should they evacuate now or something?

Soon enough, they were joined by someone else. Delilah turned toward Evan and nodded. Yes, they were cracks. "Nobody dropped anything, though. At least not while I was standing here," she said. Just WHY did she have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Violet could not believe it! Everything that could go wrong this week was going wrong, it seemed. Today she'd forgotten an essay she had worked long and hard on; instead of resting properly in its place in her book bag, it was lying somewhere in the Slytherin dorms (she hoped).

Running along the corridor at top speed, she was just congratulating herself that she had enough time to make it to her room and then on to her next class when, rounding a corner, she suddenly saw a large crack gaping in the floor ahead of her. She skidded to a dead stop just in time, falling over on her backside as she did so, her book bag falling on the floor and its contents flying out all over the corridor.

"Oof!!" she exclaimed loudly as she mentally checked herself for injury. Nope, nothing too bad--except to her pride. Picking herself up off the floor, she looked more closely at the cracks spreading up the wall and across the floor. "Dear Merlin, what fresh misery is this?!" she exclaimed.

No dropping? Evan's eyes turned to Delilah when she answered, giving a small blink before turning his eyes to survey the damages again. What could have caused that then? For a moment, he nearly felt a panic while glancing for any greenery. Could they have missed some of the vines? He didn't see how, but... well if they'd grown under the castle? Was that even a possibility?

He supposed at Hogwarts anything was a possibility, but also there was nothing green to be seen, so he was going to assume that would not have been the case. Something else then. But what? He opened his mouth to ask Professor Hernandez if he had any ideas, when the oof could be heard as Violet had arrived. And promptly fell. Evan grimaced on behalf of the Slytherin, before carefully picking his way over to her and offering a hand to pull her up. "Are you alright, Violet?" As for the question? No answer.

But in the mean time... Eyes turned back to the Potions Master. "Professor Hernandez, is there a spell that would be best to use to fix these so no one else falls?"

Javier paused at Evan's question and examined the cracks in question. "We could try, but I worry about why they even appeared in the first place. If we fix them, will they just come back?" he pondered, thinking out loud as he raised his wand and waved it a few times in an attempt to fix the crack. Nothing. Not even a little nudge from the stone. Hmm. That was concering.

"We need to alert the Headmaster to this. In the meantime...be careful, please. Watch your step as you walk and...stay away from anything that might fall on you if something were to damage the walls," he added, glancing up at the stone ceiling as he spoke.

For the first time ever, he was just...a TEENSY bit weary about being housed underground.

Violet was picking herself up off the floor when she noticed Evan offering her a hand. Her first impulse was to wave the hand away and insist that she could do it herself, but today...hmm. Well, she could do it herself, she always had since childhood, but still...it was nice for someone to offer to help. So instead she just took the hand, muttered "Thanks, yeah, I'm all right," and let him help her up. She brushed herself off and bent to gather her scattered papers and put them back in her bag, and then peered for a minute into the crack in the floor, because she had a bad feeling that one of the pages of her assignment had falled in there. But she could see nothing.

Violet edged over to the professor and said to him in a low voice, "Professor Hernandez? Do you think there's any chance of...you know, of any...water seeping in down here? Because we're kind of underneath the Lake in the dungeon." And Violet anxiously looked up at how far the cracks had spread overhead.

Javier shook his head at Violet's answer. "I don't think so. This area of the dungeons is mostly just underground...but the common rooms are another story," he admitted with a frown. "If these cracks show up there, I'd be a bit more concerned," he said. So, in short - he wasn't worried about flooding...yet.

"I'll go alert the Headmaster. You all stay safe and alert when traveling to class, ok?" he said, eyeing the students who'd gathered before heading off towards the Headmaster's office.