You need a padlock to unlock the door.

_ _ B M

E J _ H

I F G _

_ _ N _

"Any time now, Ansel!"

"Shut up, Bill!"

Anselmet studied the puzzle in front of him, trying to block out the sound of Bill's frantic curses. The ground was shaking, dust and rocks crashed from the ceiling and the small, square puzzle etched into the stone flashed with colours illuminated by Bill's wand.

Anselmet could barely concentrate. He shook his head and stared at the puzzle again, but the pandemonium from the corridor was too distracting.

"ANSEL, DUCK!"

Anselmet dropped to the floor as Bill shielded them from the cascade of rocks tumbling from the roof. Smoke flooded the narrow passageway, and Anselmet squeezed his eyes closed as Bill yanked him back to his feet and started firing curses again.

A fiery tentacle whipped through the air, slicing through the stone just inches from Anselmet's head. He yelped and threw himself to the side as another plume of smoke enveloped the corridor.

"You're supposed to be breaking the curses, not fighting them!" Anselmet yelled at Bill, who was dancing around the corridor, blocking and ducking around the chains of fire that whirled through the air, branching from the walls like snakes.

"I'm trying my best here, Ans. The least you could do is help!"

Anselmet would have rolled his eyes if he wasn't currently fearing for his life. Puzzle-solver, that was his job. Not cursebreaker, not researcher; puzzle-solver. He opened the doors, Bill dismantled what was inside.

Evidently, no one had mentioned this to Bill, whose tactic of curse-breaking seemed to be 'touch-everything-and-see-what-happens'. Meaning Anselmet's strictly puzzle-solving role frequently overlapped with a 'try-to-stop-us-both-from-being-killed' role.

Anselmet shot a blasting curse down the centre of the corridor. It hit one of the walls, far down the passageway. There was a loud crash and more fiery tentacles grew from the rubble, stretching and clawing their way towards the two men.

"We have to aim for the trigger!" Bill yelled, throwing up another shield spell.

"What? The one you released which set all of this off in the first place!?"

"IF IT TURNED IT ON, IT CAN TURN IT OFF!"

"THAT'S YOUR LOGIC!?"

"JUST DO IT!"

Anselmet aimed his wand at the loose stone in the floor, the trick step that Bill had triggered. The tentacles were still whipping through the air, above him. He heard Bill firing slicing and cutting curses, but they did little to stop the strings of fire whirling around them.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Anselmet caught one of the heavy rocks that had broken off the ceiling of the corridor and slammed it down onto the trigger step. The tentacles froze, and with a whoosh of air, sucked themselves back into the wall. The dust swirled around them for a moment before falling silent.

Anselmet sank to the floor, though his relief was short lived.

"Wait here, I'll be back!" Bill said, shoving him towards the puzzle.

"Where are you— "

"Just get the door open!"

There was a crash, loud enough to vibrate the stone floor beneath his feet. Anselmet scrambled towards the stone as Bill took off back down the corridor.

"A four-by-four square, sixteen letters, and we need a padlock to open it," Anselmet muttered. He tried to remember the research Bill had done on this place. It had been a hideaway. A secret bunker where the alchemist, Jabir ibn Hayyan, made his most famous discoveries before he'd had to hide them from the Muggles. No one knew what those discoveries were; Bill and Anselmet may be the first to see them in centuries.

If he could get the door open.

You need a padlock…

Padlock.

"It's a magic square," Anselmet muttered. "Jabir locked it with one of his magic squares."

Anselmet smiled as he poked the letters in with his wand. The familiar satisfaction of solving a riddle washed over him as the door melted away.

"Oh, good! You opened it, time to go!"

Anselment yelped as Bill grabbed his arm, sending them both tumbling through the door. Anselment only caught a glimpse of fiery tentacles before Bill raised his wand, sealing the door behind them.

"What the hell was that?" Anselmet gasped, dragging himself from the floor.

Bill smirked and held up a slab of stone.

"You took the trigger stone?"

Bill grinned. "That weird tentacle curse is etched into it. We'll need to study it to learn how to break it. Figured it would be easier to take it with us."

Anselmet shook his head at him. "You are insane. You're going to get us both ki— you're bleeding..."

Anselmet grabbed Bill's forearm. His shirt was ripped, a large, red welt was beginning to blister on his arm, and a small trickle of blood was starting to soak the strap of his battered watch.

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." Bill looked down at his arm with a vague curiosity. "That'll be a fun one to show Charlie."

Anselmet rooted around his bag and threw the vial of dittany to Bill. "Is Charlie the dragon one?"

"Yeah, the dragon one." Bill chuckled, rubbing the dittany onto his bleeding skin. "He came home with a huge burn down the side of his leg last summer. Looked savage!"

"Your family baffles me."

Bill laughed before throwing the jar back to Anselmet to pack away. "Are you hurt?" he asked, fixing Anselmet with a scrutinizing look.

"Physically, no. Although I may have nightmares for weeks after that."

"Good! I did my job then," Bill smirked

"Your job is to break curses," Anselmet grumbled.

"My job is to keep the curses from getting you," Bill replied. "And also to break the curses. Which—" Bill waved the stone slab above his head, "—I did."

Anselmet rolled his eyes. "I'm not carrying that thing. And you owe me another bottle of dittany."

Bill smirked and set off down the corridor ahead of them. Anselmet scowled but followed him into the darkness.

A/N: For more Anselmet and Bills' exciting adventures, see my other story 'Osiris' Grain' that was prompted to me by my wonderful beta and Gryffindor teammate beawrites.

This particular story is dedicated to Claude Amelia Song on ffn for keeping me so wonderfully occupied with puzzles I couldn't help make my own and put in into a story.

The puzzle has an answer btw. Let me know if you figure it out what goes into the blank spaces =).

THC:

House: Gryffindor

Position: Astronomy

Drabble

Prompt: [Speech] "Wait here, I'll be back."

Word Count : 992 (wordcounter . net and google docs are counting the puzzle as 9 words. It would be 983 without it)