For the second time in less than two months, the lift doors before him opened onto the strangely ominous foyer of the Department of Mysteries.

The werewolf hunter stepped out cautiously, chancing a look first to his right and then to the left. This time, there was no bored scion of the Carstairs family waiting to greet him in an inappropriately-themed jumper. But with no one else here, the shiny black tiles and empty foyer somehow seemed even more unsettling than they had on his last visit.

He checked the memo that he'd kept tightly in his hand before heading for the black door at the opposite end of the room. The directions had been very clear. Through the door to the circular Entrance Chamber lined with flaming blue torches, and then request the Time Room, although the instructions had left it ambiguous if he was supposed to ask out loud or simply think about it very large. Then through a second door into a long, golden chamber, and look for a third door with a brass handle, only make sure not to stray too far off the straight path and don't touch anything on the way.

Under other circumstances, he might have taken his time on the way to peer around a bit, but the Department of Mysteries was intensely creepy as well as being mostly off-limits. Kurby followed the instructions to the letter, until he found himself in front of a door with a small plaque set into it, with copper lettering that read Time Turner Workshop.

Did he knock first, or just barge in? Eager to get away from the creepily well-polished floors of the Level Nine hallway, the werewolf hunter raised his hand to give a few swift knocks and then tried the brass handle. It gave easily. Hoping that he wouldn't regret taking the initiative, Kurby edged the door open and stepped inside.

The interior of the Time Turner Workshop looked at least a little less creepy at first glance than the other rooms that he'd visited on Level Nine. It looked mostly like a normal workshop, with a long workbench and hanging tools that were at least a little reminiscent of his own metalworking desk in his flat. If it weren't for the incomprehensible star charts all about and the strange-looking long display on the back wall, it might have been enough to set him more at ease.

"Hullo?" he ventured into the space. "I'm from Four, here to check in about the clock."

The workshop was a blissful, working hubbub of clockwork and somewhere a bubbling of water. The curls of Francis Pepper were jostling gently as he worked tiny, delicate tools. He was peering through an enormous magnifying glass, the lens being one of what looked like twenty set on spindly brass arms attached to a central workbench. The light of flames licked around the curved glass with a regular flutter.

The sound of the door opening went almost unheeded through the concentration until the out of place voice heralded the arrival.
“Hullo? I’m from Four, here to check in about the clock.” Francis blinked, looked up, regarding Kurby Bagnold through another lens which inverted his body with the distance.

“Ah!” Francis replied, more through stalling than in greeting. This gave him time to set his tools down into the tray with a trim clatter. He drew the stool out across the tiles and dusted his hands on his leather apron as he made his way towards the visitor. “Yes, of course. Expecting you.” Time had slipped away despite the many sources measuring its passage surrounding them, but time had a habit of doing that even to those who made their career out of studying it.

The wizard who had arrived had a southern English accent, and was slight, dark and direct in impression. Younger than Francis, but this was frequently the case, but refreshingly the younger man did not tower over him. Four were all outdoorsy, physical sorts save for perhaps Spirit Division. Francis was a neat, but practical sort. That Tuesday he wore brown corduroy trousers, pale cream shirt with flaxen cravat and fern waistcoat. His leather apron bore countless scratches and pits from long professional use.

“Francis Pepper, well met.” He extended his calloused hand politely to shake through introductions, but didn’t linger, gesturing to his visitor to follow him across the room. They passed racks of neatly ordered tools in descending size or shape, a tank of bubbling liquid which one tasted the briney smell of if inhaled too deeply and a cabinet of what appeared to be a cabinet holding several hundred tiny drawers all neatly labelled in copperplate hand.

At one side, with a backdrop of star-charts and a ‘millennia calendar’ which curled at the corners, stood a conspicuously quiet grandfather clock. Within its work, time stood still, and had done since early January to Pepper’s understanding, stopped at a night hour. The gold lattice across the face gleamed with the strange light of the workshop which was both not too bright but just enough. The scene of London weather, cityscape and the full moon remained dull as it had been on first examination in situ.

“Well,” Francis began, considering what might be of most use to state. “It is indeed a clock of magical creation, rather than originally muggle and charmed after. It was made by the Bell family - Bartholomew Bell I believe by the number.” He unlatched the glass over the face it and indicated the plate. “In good nick, worth a lot.” 

“So the enchantments would be several hundred years old, if not renewed through repair, but I couldn’t see any clear indication from the mechanisms that any physical repairs have been carried out. It all appears to be of similar age. Without the magic, one can see it begins to show its age.” He gestured with a careful finger to the dial where the colour had faded.

“While I’ve compiled a study for your investigation,” Francis explained kindly, studying Bagnold’s brow, “What are your pressing queries?”

"Uh," the werewolf hunter said intelligently.

Even with the somewhat familiar look of the work bench, standing here in the middle of the Time Turner workshop was enough to make him feel considerably out of his depth. Francis Pepper shared the same professional, smooth confidence of most Unspeakables that he'd met: the kind that implied that they knew exactly what they were talking about, and you either would too or you risked being dragged along with the conversation regardless.

It didn't help that he wasn't really sure what he was after here anyway, other than the nagging sense that something about the clock's silence had felt wrong when they'd stumbled onto Alec Carter's mauled body in his library.[1] Nobody on Level Two seemed to have flagged the grandfather clock as anything important. That was why it had found its way here to the Department of Mysteries in the first place, an oddity of evidence to be examined without any pressing need.

Seeing it again here was a bit unnerving: he couldn't help but think of the foreboding silence and wrenching smell in the library, the look of terror plastered on his former supervisor's frozen face. The clock hands had stilled just before twelve -- just before midnight, which must have been when the attack had come. Kurby had last seen Carter at the Ministry a few hours before that, when the Department Head had followed his usual full moon routine of checking in before heading home for the night, albeit a bit later than usual.

"I guess I'm mostly curious about why it stopped," he said at last. Brows knitting, he examined the unmoving clock face, where a desaturated full moon hung above a dulled cityscape, memorializing the night when its owner had died. "Is there any way to tell if the enchantments were still workin' before the ninth of January?"

1.	January 10, 2012 - The Moon's Gift

Bagnold paused to consider his immediate questions. This was no bother, Francis was quite attune to visitors taking a moment to consider answers to questions they might not have anticipated.

Have you considered the consequences of your spouse seeing two of you? Do you have a safe location to lay low while your past-self occupies your bed or your employment? Though here he wasn’t issuing a time-turner to someone for the first time, they were discussing a clock which had stopped before a man’s brutal death, as far as Pepper understood from the newspaper and the paperworks.

“.. I’m mostly curious about why it stopped..” They both looked to the clock’s face thoughtfully, and then Francis looked back to Bagnold as he posed his altogether trickier question.

“Clocks of magical creation follow the same principles and mechanics of muggle clocks, but some elements cannot be achieved without a little magic.” He reached up and unlatched the face, exposing the inner workings which looked to anyone else like any clock they might have imagined. “We make use of the fact we needn’t wind them, and we might decorate with enchantments.” He gestured to the paintwork which did rotate, but would have probably also animated like many magical paintings could.

“Without the enchantments, the clock will be forced to rely on its original muggle workings, and without winding, well, this one came to an immediate halt.” Francis was glancing back and forth to Bagnold and then realised he might have missed a significant piece of information there.

“But this was the curious part,” he smiled a little at the puzzle, “I assumed at first that the enchantments had been lifted, or had faded,” he brought his wand to his hand, “but they are still there - just locked against each other. Something has disrupted them.”

He cast a wordless spell with tiny, precise gestures, and the clockwork shuddered, trembled, as if fighting against itself.

“It simply cannot restart, as some of the enchantments are - well, reverse or corrupted for want of a better description. It requires stripping back and re-enchanting to bring it back to working order.” He shook his head, knowing that would take some significant work. He waved his wand neatly once more and the clockwork fell still and silent again.

“As for the enchantments working before then, well, I cannot say for certain. They are working in opposition, but they are still very present. After so long it is more difficult to establish. However, here, you can see it was renewed at Cogg and Bell[1] on Diagon last year[2].” He pointed to a brass plate etched inside the casing, and stepped back to let Bagnold take a closer look.

1.	Cogg and Bell
2.	Threads - Alec was living with his parents in threads April 2011, but must have moved out at some point, so figure the clock could have been bought then

Kurby listened intently as the Unspeakable spoke, his gaze following Pepper's gestures as the other wizard pointed here and there within the grandfather clock. Although he knew absolutely nothing about Muggle or magical clocks, he did have some experience with magic and metallurgy. Malleable metals like silver, brass, and zinc took enchantments fairly easily. He was far more familiar with the former than either of the latter, but it still seemed...unusual that something could corrupt the magic.

As Pepper stepped back, the werewolf hunter peered at the brass plate inside the clock's cavity. Cogg and Bell. He filed that bit of information away. It might be something to follow up on later, if he didn't get his fill of playing Auror from this exchange (and assuming that no one from Level Two got wind that he was sticking his nose in where he probably didn't have a right to be). 

He'd been half expecting that the answer today would be simple: that it would turn out that Carter's clock shared the same depressing feature as the McBoid family's timepiece, and had some kind of morbid connection to its owner's heartbeat. But Pepper had called the disruption to the enchantments curious. Kurby hadn't really met the Unspeakable before, but he trusted the master of the Time Turner Workshop to know his craft.

"You ever seen something like that happen before with a clock?" he asked, glancing at Pepper quizzically as he stepped back out of the way. "Don't have any idea what could have caused it, do you?"

To strip the clock back and restore it part by part would be a project Francis would be fascinated to take part in, but he had to remember that this clock had been brought down for inspection for a criminal investigation. A good man had been murdered. It was not the usual fayre in the workshop, but in the Department of Mysteries who could truly say anything was ‘usual’?

“Not to such an extent, or on something so large.” Francis answered honestly. “Small devices can be upset by strong magic, but often the impacts cause other more physical damage than just to the charms.” As he spoke his own pocketwatch came to his hand from his waistcoat pocket, and he gestured as if it were to take a direct strike from a curse.

“The majority of times it is the weakening of charms over time, then a link to the owner’s timeline, or physical damage which brings them to the average clockmaker. This one, well, I might be speaking out of turn, but it lacks individualised features. That, and it would be restarted - rather than jammed.”

He looked back to the still face of the clock and pressed his lips into a thin line of contemplation.

“Strong magic,” he resolved, “either to it directly, or very close by. Temporal disturbance, perhaps, but those alone ordinarily cause repetition, or an excessive wind on the springs. Not a curse with physical impact - everything is in place and nothing has broken, snapped or bent within it. The case is undamaged as well as the mechanism. All the parts are present and unchanged to the best of my knowledge.” He gestured towards it as he spoke, and shook his curls. He turned back to Bagnold, with a slightly sorry expression this time. “I must caution you that long-clocks aren’t my personal specialism, so I cannot entirely rule out my human error on the minor measure.”  He tilted his head to consider his visitor, sensing this information might not be the full puzzle piece the younger wizard might be seeking.

“I have a colleague in experimental charms,” he offered, “who I posed the theoretical problem to. It has us both intrigued on a mutual interest. We have a proposition to carry out practical experiments on some smaller devices, see if we can crack it. You sure you don’t have any lead with it? Were there any other enchanted artefacts at the scene, unaffected?” The problem gnawed at him when he was up in the middle of the night attending to his baby daughter, but he had his own duties to keep on top of, and the merits of solving this problem were limited in the sphere of research.