trapdoor from upper floor to basement / Harry's crossed fingers

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 138913

Derek wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/138856 :

<< (And on a lesser, possibly related, note... if the trap door
Fluffy guards is on the third floor, then when the trio go
through it, shouldn't they just end up on the second floor
instead of deep below the castle?) >>

Apparently LOTS of passageways and stairways (and why not trapdoors?)
at Hogwarts take shortcuts throught what television likes to call 'the
fourth dimension', which IMHO is how staircases could 'le[a]d
somewhere different on a Friday' (PS/SS). I'm too lazy to search canon
just now for more examples of stairways that take one flight from xth
to (x-2)th floor, etc.

Ms *Beadsley* wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/138901 :

<< what Harry said about Snape teaching DADA and the jinx on the
job: "Personally, I'm going to keep my fingers crossed* for another
death..." >>

Put in by JKR to disprove those who stated that Draco is irredeemable
because he wished that Granger would be the next to be killed by the
monster.

<< *Wizards cross their fingers? How interesting! >> 

Just because Harry crosses his fingers doesn't mean that wizards do --
Harry could have picked up the habit in  his Muggle youth. But
probably wizards do cross their fingers; they keep picking up Muggle
customs (steam engine railroad, wireless, blue jeans), presumably from
Muggle-born and Half-blood dorm-mates.