Maddie realised she knew most of the ladies in the room by name and face, if not personally, and she was fairly sure there were no immediate threats in their midst -not from most of the ladies at least. There were two she didn't know - a gentleman and another woman some years older than herself, but both had the bearing of ministry types -so probably nothing to fear there. It was distressing to hear that they were sealed in, it probably meatn aparating would be a bad idea -likely to result in splinching or worse.


Maddie, Cecily, and Loretta, as by far the tallest amoung the women were perhaps lucky to be head and shoulders above the crowd and so afforded a little more breathing space than the others

'Could we accio the door key?' she asked, trying to project above the general hubub of people, if someone accioed with a specific enough term - like 'key for this door' they might be able to pull the right key from the pile. She would have tried it herself, but the cabinet was on the otherside of the room, and if she was successful there was a chance she would hurt one of other debutantes as the metal object bulleted through the room. It was the best suggestion she could come up with given the space, and the objects she could see from her crowded vantage point such as it was.

  

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Hugo was grumbling, and Rosie paid him no mind as she made the keys fly into the air so each person could take a look. "Checking to see which key matches is an excellent idea. Someone try the doors while the rest of us start looking through these." She instructed, seeing no reason to panic... yet.

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Magic by Lady

Helga had no practical skills and had not used magical regularly since Hogwarts, but she was bold enough to push through the crowd of people towards the shelves to investigate herself.

"I don't know why they'd lock us in here," she said mindlessly, pushing random objects around in search of anything that might give them a further clue. "If they're hoping we'll do it on our own, why leave us with a hundred different keys? What's the point?" Not just keys, either—there was an axe over here, as well as three aged envelopes and a... mummified pixie? Mmm, she didn't want to think about that.

"Besides, what are we going to do? Look through keys for hours?" Helga didn't know what the others had planned, but she had two visits planned for this afternoon! Two! She couldn't be horrible and miss them both. "Maybe it's a diversion? There's other items in the room, too. The keys are the most obvious ones."

Helga grabbed the axe and held it up.

"Like this thing!"

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The following 2 users Like Helga Crouch's post:2 users Like Helga Crouch's post
   Billie Farrow, Melody Crouch

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— set by MJ! <3 —

Why were they locked? Cecily worried that some dark wizard would show up any minute and murder them all. She was growing progressively more uneasy. She didn't like being this close to so many people, in such a dimly lit room. As a person who enjoyed flying, she could easily get claustrophobic.

One of the young women had wandered into the room and discovered an axe. The dark was playing games with Cecily's eyes and her heartbeat went up because it seemed to her like the woman was holding it too close to her.

"Careful with that!" Cecily chastised. She took out her own wand and cast 'Lumos'. It was too dark in there!

Her wand's beam of light shed towards a piece of parchment on the floor. "There's something there!" Cecily said and picked it up. "I think it's in another language, though?"

Cee only knew English and passable French.

  

On finding the door locked, Adam had glanced around to take better stock of his company in the room, and had only really recognized one other person — an Unspeakable from the Ministry. Anyone from the Ministry, he figured, was not very likely to have been in on the planning side of this ordeal (unlike the girl who could recognize woods out of doors and the blond who wanted them to look for keys, whom he was still uncertain of). He would have made his way over to her, but was spared the trouble as she approached him instead.

"No," he remarked to her comment, with a slight frown at the door. He was speaking quietly, just intended for her to hear and not the entire room. "Particularly since I don't know what sort of spell they're using to secure it. Could backfire." Which, given how crowded the room was already, was just about the last thing they wanted.

Luckily, people didn't seem to be panicking yet, and the walls weren't closing in or anything, so. They had some time.

"This door is magically locked," he told the gaggle of women with the keys. "Finding one to fit that door seems like the best —" course of action, he would have said, except he was interrupted by the debutante who was now wielding an ax.

Well, that gave them significantly less time before people started to panic, then.

"I, uh, doubt that will be useful," he said, voice soothing. He shot the other Ministry woman a look and reached out slowly towards the ax. "Why don't you give that over?"

(He was of no mind to pay attention to any more of these strange clues, whatever language they were in, until the debutante had been safely disarmed. Just in case).

The following 3 users Like Adam Ragge's post:3 users Like Adam Ragge's post
   Adrienne Lestrange, Cecily Gallivan, Helga Crouch

"Ow!" Cried out Loretta as a key got her right in the eye, rendering her with only half a sight as she covered it with her hand. It hurt like the dickens! She looked around best as she could with only one working eye and saw that Miss Scamander was now wielding an axe. "You don't think it could be used to chop through the mahogany door?" She asked of the man who was trying to get her to hand it over.

The following 1 user Likes Loretta Browne's post:1 user Likes Loretta Browne's post
   Adrienne Lestrange

There were very few things of which Melody was certain of, the foremost of which being no one seemed to pay any mind to wanting to leave through the door they entered. Was this some game?! If it was it was certainly some cruel one at that, one Melody wanted no part of. There were already far too many complications in her life presently without the added frustration of being trapped in a boilingly hot room with girls comfortable with swinging weapons around. "Please, Ms. Scamander. Put that down." Melody pleaded delicately whilst pulling Diana behind her slightly. The debutante still had potential for a long, happy marriage. Melody refused to let some panicked child ruin that.

It was then that Melody was struck by flying keys. It was also then that Melody felt her temper rising. One more crazy move might see her exploding.

  

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beautiful set by mj

Up until this point Diana felt fairly placid about this whole affair, even as keys went flying haphazardly everywhere. She instinctively ducked; that wasn't exactly what she meant when she said to check the keys.

It wasn't until Miss Scamander hoisted up a rather threatening looking axe that she tensed up. Her reaction also could be attributed to the fact that she felt Melody tense as well and she allowed her best friend to subtly push her behind her own body. Though Mel couldn't see it, being in front of her, Diana cast her a grateful look and put another hand on her friend's shoulder in an attempt to comfort her.

"I don't think that might be the best solution," Diana said quickly to the tall brunette - Miss Browne, wasn't it? Her sister had just married the Zabini gentleman. Taking an axe to the door if it was magically sealed sounded like it would have disastrous effects.

The following 1 user Likes Diana Abbott's post:1 user Likes Diana Abbott's post
   Melody Crouch

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"We can either break whatever spell is locking the door or find a key to match," Emilia said, audibly exasperated. "But either way you need to stop with the axe."

She had no desire to deal with any accidentally-injured debutantes; she did not want to deal with any of them at all.

---

  

This was rapidly descending into chaos, and Maddie was feeling both exasperated and anxious in equal measures. The whole affair could see those in the frey turn on each other rather quickly. Especially since it seemed that the Ministry chap, and the lady seemed to have had just about enough of the debutantes attempts at helping. Maddie didnt think she would be much use in attempting to break the enchantment on the door so staying out of the way of the two professionals seemed like the best option in that regard.

Taking the point however from one of her fellows, that this seemed like some sort of puzzle, and that the keys were too obvious Maddie turned her attention on the pixie which was nearby on the wall. She removed the glass bell dome from over it to get a better look at the hideous looking thing. They were ugly enough fresh, a dried one was truly hideous. The angry little male was frozen in an expression of loathing in death. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary in it- at least to her, but she didnt know what she was meant to be looking for. She check under its ragged clothing, just incase something had been put inside the dried corpse.

SHe heard someone mention notes in strange languages, 'I can speak Russian and Ulkrainian?' she offered, not looking at the speaker but still focused on the pixie, 'If either of those would be helpful?' she offered, like many of the girls she had french, and a smattering of italian and german - those gentele languages from the rest of Europe

  

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After a while of people both ignoring and being hit by the keys, Rosie decided to let them drop. The axe did make her anxious, so she decided to look at the paper that two girls seemed to be discussing. "Perhaps it is a magical language?" She offered.

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Magic by Lady

Helga was not sure what concerned her more: that nobody wanted to use the axe as a means of escaping, or that everyone assumed she was about to butcher them. She lowered the axe, but did not put it down.

"I'm with Miss Browne. Why couldn't it be used to chop the door down?" She gave it an experimental swing in the opposite direction as the group, but only managed to get it stuck in the side of a nearby bookshelf. She tugged and tugged and tugged at it, and let out a yelp when it suddenly came loose. Helga fell backwards into the person nearest her, managing to slice both her leg and someone else's in the process.

"Maybe not the axe," she agreed, staring down at the blood beginning to drip down the side of her leg.

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— set by MJ! <3 —

Before there was any chance to examine the note Cee had found, the debutante with the axe (who Cee recognized as Helga Scamander) did exactly what everyone in the room was afraid of. She injured herself and Cee, who had been unlucky enough to be standing nearest to her.

She winced in pain, her heart taking up speed. Her new injury, combined with the suffocating heat, made Cecily lose her consciousness.

Somewhere, far away, she could hear her stepmother crying for help.

  

Okay, this had all gone too far. Adam was content to let everyone go about their own devices when all they'd been doing was looking through a pile of keys, but now people were getting hurt, and he wasn't about to stand around and let that happen.

With a commanding presence he crossed to the debutante who had just fallen and plucked the axe out of her hands. He didn't really want to be holding it, but he also didn't trust anyone in this room enough to give it to them instead, or to put it down again, so he supposed he'd have to keep it for now.

"Can you," he said, indicating the nearest woman who didn't seem to be doing anything productive and pointing her in the direction of the now unconscious blond. "Move her out of the way — to the wall here, maybe — and cast a cooling charm? This heat can't be doing her any favors. And you," he said, indicating another, "Find something she" (the axe girl) "...can use as a bandage. The cut doesn't look too deep."

He could have done these things himself, of course, but at the moment it seemed more efficient to find a suitable way for four of the women to occupy themselves so that the rest of them could focus on solving this puzzle... which left them with keys and a note in a foreign language. Plucking the latter up from the ground where the unconscious girl had dropped it, he passed it to one of the others. "Give this to the lady at the door. She's an Unspeakable, maybe she can read it. And let's pull all the keys we can that match the metal from this lock," he said, gesturing at the door behind him.

He still had this damn axe, but otherwise he felt reasonable in control of the situation. He could handle this.

  

Considering Loretta only had the use of one hand as the other was nursing her own injury (hopefully she wouldn't be blind for life!), she left the whole 'move the unconscious body' thing to someone with full range of their senses. But a cooling charm, that she could do. She got out her wand and cast it. Only it did absolutely nothing and room stayed as stifling hot as it had been. She tried another charm that would have the same sort of effect but nothing worked.

  

She shrieked as Ms. Scamander swung the axe about and backed away as far as she could. Melody wasn't certain she would ever experience happiness again, but she definitely didn't want to die! A harsh glare was sent towards Ms. Scamander on the floor. Let someone else deal with that bloody mess. Melody certainly was not.

The keys she could manage. Melody gathered as many as she could that looked as though they matched the door and began feeding them into the lock. On her seventh try one clicked and turned, causing the steel door to disappear.