Harry Potter and the Moving Stairs — Print & Oil Painting

The walls are papered in portraits. Gilt frames of every size and shape hang edge to edge from the bottom of the picture to the top, oval and rectangular and arched, and inside each one a painted figure in doublet, ruff or robe stands and waits. There are several dozen and no two are alike.

Through that wall of faces the staircase cuts a long diagonal. One flight climbs from the lower centre towards the right, another crosses above it to the left, and both are carried on nothing beyond their own stone balustrades, with squat turned balusters and a heavy timber handrail worn pale along the top.

The light is entirely artificial and entirely warm. Two iron lanterns on brackets, one low at the left and one low at the right, throw amber up the stonework and hold a soft ring of glare around themselves, and a lit archway at the head of the upper flight glows the same colour. Everything else is a slow fall into brown.

Three pupils stand in that archway looking down over the rail: a girl with heavy auburn curls, a boy with dark hair and round glasses, a red-haired boy behind him, all in black robes with the same striped tie. They are the smallest thing in the picture and the only part of it that is not architecture. Part of our Harry Potter collection, and the route between the empty classroom and the hall laid for Christmas.