She wondered when exactly she had created a monster. This time, there was no warning that Electrum, or whatever took his place, was dead, or rather, no longer existed; it was simply assumed after enough time passed that the Inferius was not going to return. The current theory of the Department was that though undead could usually last until the bodies entirely rotted away into nothing, none of them that previously existed were as functional as the one they modeled after one of her followers, and they decided that it was effectively a tradeoff, and the more capable they were, the more likely they were to simply stop working at some point. It was possible that Electrum had stopped all higher functions, or perhaps stopped functioning altogether; unless the body was recovered they really had no idea.

After months of the local authorities searching the country of Georgia for the body, however, they had effectively given up. Whenever Umbridge collapsed they could figure out what happened to her. It was not as if there was no interest at all, but there was a list of priorities and this was not the highest on it.

Ebony had already tried to investigate the matter in the simple, direct way; she had asked the investigators and those communicating with them what exactly they did find and what else there was to be known other than that a single undead was missing after an attack that killed around a hundred people. It was not a detail that was considered particularly important in light of the circumstances, and in light of the fact that it was impossible for the enemy to still be located in the country. In the month following the coalition certifying that Voldemort had not fled to any place in Georgia, the local Ministry put forth that the country should be entirely sealed off. It was a self-serving decision, perhaps, but the coalition granted it; there were advantages to keeping the Death Eaters and their master from returning to their old haunts.

At this point, there was nothing left to do but travel down to the Department of Mysteries and go over their theoretical reason for believing the Inferius had collapsed. With a break in her teaching schedule, she took the elevator and descended. No one spoke to her except an Unspeakable she was having a hard time identifying. Either it was a witch, or a wizard doing an excellent job with the voice, though she could not imagine any point in pretending.

"Excuse me," she said as soon as she arrived at what was effectively the departmental front desk. "The advanced Inferius is, to some extent, my responsibility, as I compiled some of the memories and I submitted the name of the test subject to whom they belonged. I have a sufficient ideological clearance to review data collected by Unspeakables."

"You've had quite the remarkable career," the Unspeakable at the desk said. "You started in Improper Use, then you were an Inspector for years, and now you're teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"Is this relevant?"

"No, not exactly; I was just curious. You can't become an Unspeakable without a healthy sense of curiosity."

"Then again," the one from the elevator said. "I think we all know that there's an extent to which curiosity is actually unhealthy."

"For cats, perhaps. Some of us have the necessary clearance to avoid unfortunate accidents."

"Indeed," Ebony said, agreeing with whoever was serving as a clerk. "I am usually aware of how much clearance I have and the accidents I can avoid based on that. My curiosity is tempered."

In truth, she hated this sort of game whenever it was just getting in the way, which it was, presently. She was allowed to go to the Brain Room and noticed that the employee from the elevator was following her.

"Are we going to the same place?" she asked, trying to be remotely polite. It made sense to assume they were sensitive, but this one certainly was not.

"Of course. Where is it?"

She rolled her eyes.

"We're going to the Brain Room. Enough of the people who were working on the project to expand Inferius capabilities were working here. Are you familiar with the project at all?"

"Oh, no, I was running errands for the other Unspeakables until they canceled my project. I was working on the time turners, but apparently we have no need of them, not even with a hundred dead on our watch."

It was as if the strange employee expected her to feel guilty, though, that too was hard to tell. She squinted at the gaping black hood. It was rather annoying when someone concealed information about him or her that would normally be easy to tell just by looking. It was like pixie dust for narcissists. Whenever someone felt concerned about sharing information for personal security, it was one thing, but refusing to be categorized necessarily pointed to a desire to be recognized as unique, more so than everyone else in the universe.

"Tell me about the Time Turner Project, if you're going to be bothering me."

"Very well. The materials were translated upstairs, so if anything I had hoped for a modicum of news from you, but if you have not heard, I suppose it costs me nothing to relay what little I know. I regret only that I did not copy for them for my own records, as counter to policy as that might have been; I was exposed to very little of the details except in memoranda that I was not meant to read. I found the whole thing fascinating, beyond belief, actually."

"You have no practical purpose in mind, then?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No one's interest in time travel is purely academic. Of course, I learned my lesson about how power can only exist in an inequality- try and guess why else I would be working here- and yet, if I could only change one thing before the whole thing were shut down, I would still take the chance."

Ebony did not bother to ask what it was. The Unspeakable with whom she was talking on her way to the Brain Room was a Time Room flunky, and one with more interest in her secrets than she had in whatever hid behind the shadowy hood. Realistically, there was not a lot that he or she had that was relevant to the case of Electrum, but it was still possible that having an employee with her would help her get past checkpoints. She wondered, momentarily, how they told each other apart.

"Are you the one responsible for developing the new Inferi?" she asked when she arrived at what she thought was the appropriate desk.

"You don't develop Inferi. It's the spell for- never you mind. It's been too long since you went topside, Ebony." She scowled. Though she had continued using the codename in other chapters of her career, it was annoying that he seemed to know her, and all she could tell was that it was a wizard's voice. As an Inspector, she had worked with Unspeakables before, but only in a limited capacity as she had really only been there to look for dark magic and any kind of anti-Ministry sentiment in Hogwarts. As she was more of an agent than an analyst, even the lowest of the low among them had taken whatever opportunity they could to look down on the Inspectors. Responding in kind seemed petty and unnecessary.

"I'm still responsible for what I did here. I'm sure you've seen the memory I submitted about him. I know you watch all the memories that interest you." It was a common practice in the Brain Room. There had been a regulation from upstairs about how frequently they were really supposed to be viewing them, but various directors were on the side that they should be able to watch each other's memories whenever, since there was hardly any point in keeping secrets within a room, within a department, and others argued that should really apply to the entire Ministry, if to anything.

"Oh, sure, I know why you're here. I don't have any illusions about that. You took a young, impressionable wizard and led him to believe you were a fellow student, and then when you steadily revealed the truth to him, he still believed you." She could practically hear the smile from under the hood. "Ah, but if we were to explain that, you'd have to go to some other room than the Brain Room."

While it was pointless to deny it outright, it seemed stupid to confirm the suspicion.

"Think what you will. I am here to see if there is any truth to this understanding that the new Inferi can degrade and fall apart. Umbridge seems fine; what happened to Electrum?"

"If you must know, they're not identical; we had more memories on hand for the toad witch, so really it stands to reason that her mind was more complete, and yet, who knows, perhaps we'll have to go and do some work on her to make sure she stays up and running."

"Are we just going to lie to the rest of the Ministry while investigating it ourselves whenever we get the time for it?"

"What's all this 'we' rubbish?" It was an interesting way of responding to an appeal to save time by being direct. "Merlin, Ebony, you can't just go up and down the elevator like it's an-"

"An elevator?"

"-like it's a child's plaything. If you start out down here, you're meant to stay down here. If you start out up there it's fine, but if you come down here, you're really not supposed to take a job upstairs."

"There was no one else who had been in Hogwarts as long as I had; I was the obvious choice for the Defense position. Secondly, it's hardly my fault if Crouch wanted an idea of what was going on in the department. On my first day I found a length of parchment on my desk requesting an explanation about everything I knew of the Time Turner Project."

"You weren't in the Time Room. You weren't even meant to have access to that information."

"Well, no, and that's why I was only able to explain in general terms, and I only said what any other Department employee might know."

"It doesn't matter if he's the Minister," the Unspeakable said as though she was simply not getting it. "He's an outsider. He can give himself all the clearance he wants; we tell him a little bit more than what we tell the rest of the government and send him on his way."

"An outsider? Didn't you imply that I was an outsider the moment I left? More importantly, are you implying that this Department needs to be protected from those who fund it into existence? I remind you that we have entirely purged the blood purists from the Ministry."

"More importantly, it was an extremely unusual circumstance and a severe mistake you were allowed to leave in the first place. At the very least you should have been treated to a memory charm-"

"As an Inspector I made regular reports to the Improper Use of Magic Office; I was trusted with discretion by the conditions of my position and I used it. Crouch is trustworthy. He has dedicated every moment of his career to using whatever means necessary to ridding the world of blood purism and dark magic, in that order."

"While he may be an ideologue, he only has the power that we consolidated for his office. He doesn't appreciate it. He may do what has to be done for the ideology, but will he do what has to be done to get the power? From everything we know about him, he didn't even want it. Temporary, he called it- the man's mad. It's one thing to tell the public that it's meant to be temporary, but our Inferius reported, if unconsciously, that behind closed doors he seriously wanted to make a plan for things to go back to normal."

"He's not immortal," Ebony said. "Eventually, someone has to replace him."

"Well, yes, because he wants to retire and spend the last few years of his life swimming with the sirens in the Aegean Sea- none of that is important. If mortality were a concern for him, we have ways of helping with that; we could transfer his memories or his entire brain to a new body; some of us have been doing that for ages- what he proves by looking for a return to popular control is that he does not care enough about the consolidation of power. Perhaps at some point the people can be trusted to submit officials who are not blood purists, but they're always going to want to know what's going on down here and we can't have that."

"They wouldn't be able to do anything about it if they knew-"

"Yes, and only because of our constant commitment to the increase and consolidation of the Ministry's control. Umbridge's Edict becoming law was our doing, at least in part; we memory charmed its opponents- power builds upon itself, Ebony; if we lose enough of it, we'll lose the rest. Before the Edict, enough people could have overwhelmed the entire government, including us. We were this close to ultimate power with the Time Turner Project, and he canceled it. Said it wasn't worth the risk." It was hard to see that the wizard was shaking his head. "That was just a confirmation of what we already knew. Upstairs, only Umbridge understood that power was something that you keep building indefinitely."

"It's not about the power; it's about how you use it. As far as that goes, you've told me enough. Electrum was your informant and you don't want the rest of the government to find out about it when they sift through his brain, so you're not letting anyone get near it until you've got the time to do it yourself."

"You've told us enough as well. You're not a wayward Inspector who made a mistake, you're a die-hard anti-blood purist or whatever pointless ideology that we only advanced for more power and we're again finding that it's hitting a wall. You got basically everything you want, so now we can't motivate you to get more power for us; that's why it was decided that the Time Turner wasn't worth the risk. Don't be surprised if we leak some of our old notes to the Death Eaters so they can start working on their own model. There'll only be one way of stopping them, you know."

Ebony ignored the obvious ploy and walked out. It was simply not going to happen that they would release their old notes, if they had any, to the enemy, because simply threatening to do so would carry none of the risk and have the same result. She doubted they would play along and claim that they did have the notes, because they would anticipate the result that might have, but tickling the body populace with enough fear would make them not want to take the risk. Time travel was too powerful of a weapon to be allowed, but even more so it had to be kept from falling into the hands of the enemy, and that would be by any means necessary.

Even if we did develop a working Time Turner, we would be keeping the Death Eaters from figuring out how to make it by destroying our own research on the subject, so the result is the same either way. Except in the exceptionally unlikely event that they develop something similar, we have no particular reason not to destroy our notes.

She realized that what the Unspeakable wanted was for the Department to use the Time Turner to make themselves more powerful, indefinitely of course, but they almost certainly did not actually care whether or not blood purism was stamped out. They had, after all, only advanced the anti-blood purists as a way of increasing the Ministry's consolidation of power, and by extension, their own. If they perceived it to be the dominant ideology, they would have sided with it.

It raised a question as to why exactly the Brain Room, or perhaps the entire Department of Mysteries, considered blood purism to be anything other than the dominant ideology, but it was not a terribly interesting question, or one that she wanted to waste time with an answer. It was not as if everyone could accurately predict the future, but she supposed it could have been some kind of extreme vote of confidence that the revolution would seize power from the purists, but that was uncharacteristic of a wizard who wanted to develop time travel when the coalition nearly controlled the entire world.

There was still China, however.

The Imperial Ministers had expressed they had no desire to join the coalition or even ally with it, but the state ideology was not conducive to the Death Eaters, so there was serious doubt that their enemies would find in the country a place of refuge. They had been interested in the idea of being allies back when Voldemort was doing something other than fleeing from the superior force of the coalition army, but those days were over. Though it was unlikely that China would ever become a threat by virtue of being connected in any way with their enemies, they could well hear about the Time Turner Project now that the notes had made their way upstairs, though she did not share the Unspeakable's lack of confidence in the Minister to keep the information secure.

If anything, recent months had proved the Brain Room to be even less correct than they would have been right after the Time Room's project was cancelled. In that span of time, Crouch had made substantially fewer public spaces, insisting he had important work to do and making speeches was only minimally important, though it had its place. Occasionally he would actually write speeches to be delivered by someone else, and it sounded like he was even reusing certain bits from memory rather than coming up with entirely new speeches; she doubted everyone would notice that, though. He was being decidedly more secretive than he had ever been.

On the subject of consolidating power, the Minister may have passed fewer resolutions that essentially made himself more powerful, but they had reached a sort of natural capacity for the office; he was essentially absolute and in recent months he was really just taking measures to make sure that no one within his government was disloyal, even for non-ideological reasons, so over the past few months there were several people who were replaced as soon as a replacement could be found. Where they were currently, there was no one who could potentially be more powerful than he was except of the leaders of foreign entities and it made little sense to compare his office with theirs.

"Are we leaving, then?" the Unspeakable who had followed her asked.

"We are. If you're still interested in the Time Turner Project, and the research is all upstairs now, you can always transfer. It worked out for me."

"I suppose so." It was annoying, but she could not even tell if it was sarcastic. "At the same time, I rather think it an exception rather than a rule that you have been allowed to retain your memories from working down here."

"Perhaps," she said, boarding the elevator and leaving.

It was a short, quiet ride to the proper floor and then a short walk to the Minister's office. Crouch's new assistant, who was apparently memory charmed and had her head examined regularly, was looking a little confused at her unannounced arrival, and did not approve of her visit to the head of state.

"Just tell me what happened with the notes to the Time Turner Project," she said, rolling her eyes. Perhaps she was annoyed he would replace his assistant so soon, but perhaps there was no use crying over an Inferius that wound up dead again.

"It's all been binned, basically," the secretary said with a blank stare. "Anyone who saw anything got memory charmed, and the information got dropped down the deepest, darkest, hole that Crouch could find. He said it was too dangerous to see the light of day again, even if it did not work properly, which was his conclusion after reviewing it."

"Good," Ebony said after a moment. "I like to have at least one loose end eliminated before lunchtime. You should really try out the closure it brings you."

"Closure, to be sure," the secretary responded tiredly before returning her eyes to what she had been looking over before.