Basil felt Lissington touch his sleeve just slightly and he looked down at the small gesture, but said nothing. If something warm tickled the back of his neck, then so be it. Lifting his wand higher to illuminate the path, Basil heard rustling behind them as he stepped over another threshold. The hedge had closed in around them, blocking the path backwards. Basil frowned. He didn’t like being boxed in, but he supposed that was the nature of the challenge. He hoped none of the students struggled with the same vapor-like stresses he did; something like this could easily frighten them and cause an attack.

“You might want to build in a fail-safe,” he mumbled quietly to Lissington. Something about the darkness around them made him want to whisper. "Perhaps some kind of alarm, in case the first years find themselves overwhelmed?”

Up ahead something was dancing vaguely in and out of view. Basil squinted through the accumulating fog around them and inched towards it, skeptical he was going to step on something alarming. He flashed his wand around their feet just in case. He had to admit, this was slightly exhilarating. It had been a long time since Basil had tested his skills at anything akin to a magical obstacle course or maze; he was glad to have come across Lissington in need of assistance. It made him feel like a student again, on high alert! Or… well.. Basil blinked wearily, on… less high alert?

His brain was fogging with the room. Bright yellow squiggles swayed this way and that and Basil figured the idea was to unscramble them. He turned towards Lissington as the redhead second guessed himself, and then eyed the letters again. “No, it’s good,” he mumbled trying to split them apart. L-A-E-V-E-R. R-O-O-D. Two words. R-O-O-D? Rodo? Oodr? Odor! L-A-E-V-E-R… Vealer, Verlae, Revlae, Reveal— “Reveal!” Basil announced. Odor reveal? He scrunched his nose. That didn’t sound right. He tried flipping the letters around again and finally came to D-O-O-R. “Ah-hah! Reveal door!” The brunette tittered, much too pleased with himself for solving only a first year puzzle.

In reality, such a simple clue had taken him much too long to determine, given the mind fog floating about the place. Lissington had been smart in taking his own precautions which Basil entirely failed to notice. Instead, he raised his wand in an attempt to do as the clue asked and reveal a hidden door. In his bleariness, he muttered out ‘revellum’ instead of ‘revelio’ - a simple but dire mistake - as instead of parting the hedges as he’d intended, Basil flooded the small space with a new substance. Little gold sparks shot out of the tip of his wand and danced like stars between himself and Lissington. Basil ducked quickly as they ricocheted off the hedge side and beamed towards him. “Evanesco!” He tried again, this time successfully managing to vanish both the fog and the stars.

“Well,” he chuckled, straightening. “I seem to have fallen into your trap there, eh Lissington?” He turned to grin lopsidedly at the redhead and noticed, too late, that there was still one star spinning above the other professor’s head: a flag announcing the spell had caught a query. Basil’s grin quickly dropped. Uh, oh.

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