In the Room of the Vortex, Laura Madley looked rather ill. Her skin was tinged with an undertone of green and her pupils had shrunk to pinpricks. In a scant ten minutes, Laura appeared to have aged ten years.
"I'm looking again," she announced to the only other person in the room, her colleague, Lily Potter, who was looking rather ill herself as she sat in the deepest shadows of the room.
"Damn it, Laura!" Lily shouted, suddenly shooting up off of her seat and banging her fist on the desk in front of her, "This will be the third time you've looked! I tell you, you can look into that thing thee times or three thousand, but you aren't going to see anything different!"
Laura sank to the ground next to the Vortex, placing her head in her hands, "But it can't be…it just can't…"
Lily looked down at her hands; they were clenched tight on the edge of the desk in front of her, "But it can be, Laura," she hissed quietly, "It is."
The other woman ran a shaky hand through her graying hair, "But Protocol One, Lily? Are-are you sure that this is our only option? It's never even been tried before."
Lily gave a harsh, bitter laugh that made her sound almost mad, "Nothing else will work. You know it as well as I do." Lily walked closer to Laura after finishing, placing her hand breifly on Laura's shoulder. As she walked, she spared a glance at the Vortex, now pulsing even more wildly, the red within the black now deepening to scarlet. Lily shuddered at the ominous sign, the Universe was losing to temporal changes, and badly, the formerly bright red now looked distubingly like blood.
Laura sighed and gave a defeated nod, "I suppose the only other question is who to send back…"
Lily's thin brows shot up in surprise, "I would have thought the answer obvious, Laura," she paused briefly, "Me."
Laura looked up, no longer weary at all, her eyes positively hawk-like, "You?" she reesonded increduously, "Lily are you seriously asking me to send you off to one of the most dangerous periods in wizarding history? To have you-to have you…you know…and then to wait out the rest of the war? Keeping an eye on everything to make sure nothing else goes amiss?"
Her redheaded counterpart replied casually, as if commenting on the weather, "Yes. Yes, I am."
She shook her head vigorously, appearing to be near panic, "I'm not letting you…I won't allow it."
Lily hissed in frustration, "Laura there is not a single person in this entire department who has enough expertise to pull this off! It's not as if you can do it! Excuses can be made for me, but everyone in Britain will notice if the head of the Department of Mysteries goes missing!"
Laura raised an eyebrow and assessed Lily with a critical eye, "You're too young," she said, with a note of finality.
"Exactly!" replied Lily looking exasperated, "Anyone else who would be brought in to handle this would have been alive during the war! Their magical signature will register with the Ministry! I won't have been born yet! So long as I keep my head down and my nose clean, not a single person outside of the Department need know that I exist!"
Laura's gaze pierced her, "Listen to me and listen well, Lillian Luna Potter. You have no idea what that war was like," she raised her hand as Lily opened her mouth to speak, "Oh, I know that your family fought, I know that you've grown up hearing tales of the war…But you cannot truly know the horror of it all until you've witnessed it firsthand. I was fourteen during the worst of it, you know," she shook her head, "And I was Muggleborn too. I spent nearly all of my fourth year in the Room of Requirement because I refused to register," she raised her head proudly, "Ask yourself, are you truly prepared for this?"
Shaking her head, Lily replied, "I think that I am, Laura. And, in the end, it doesn't really matter, does it? I'm our best option, maybe our only option. Nothing is more important than this task. Sirius Black has to die."
Laura sighed and stood up, "You're right, of course," she said, walking over to Lily and briefly shaking her hand.
Lily nodded, returning the shake, she responded, her voice unnaturally steady, "The standard time period, then? For assuming the worst?"
Laura returned her nod, "One year from the day of your departure."
"I'll go tomorrow, then," Lily replied, "I think that my parents should hear it from me first, rather than some-" she gulped down the rest of her sentence, she couldn't bring herself to think of a faceless Ministry employee informing her parents that she had died in her line of duty to the Department.
Laura raised an eyebrow imperiously, "Keep it minimal, Lily. Remember, an Unspeakable's greatest honor-"
"Is her silence," Lily finished ruefully, bowing her head, "Trust me, I know."
"I'll make the arrangements, then," Laura replied stoically, "Good luck, Lily."
Lily responded with half of a weak smile, "And to you, Laura."
The two women departed the room hastily, each off to perform her own task. As the doors shut, the torches went out, leaving the only source of light in the room to be the Vortex, ominously pulsing it's scarlet light.
