A young gal with fiery red hair stepped quickly off the cobblestone streets of London. The young woman's lips became taut; apparently horse-drawn buggies were not required to stop for pedestrians. Her long, spidery fingers twitched toward the slim stick of wood buried deep in her Elizabethan gown, but she refrained from retrieving her wand and hexing the smirk off the coachman's acne-covered face. The beautiful young woman took a deep breath and picked up her skirts to walk. Though the air was tainted with the smells of horse poo and unwashed bodies, it was still incomparably cleaner than any ‘fresh air’ that she had smelled in quite a while. As the sky darkened around her, she began her trek through the city.

The biggest issue with time travel was the inexactitude of it all. It was simply impossible to travel to the exact time you wanted to be somewhere. There was just such a hassle with all the rules and regulations, and it was so easy to just slip up and forget one simple thing and the future could be altered forever, that's why there were only a select few in all of existence that were privy to time travel. Of course, there would always be the black market time turner, ‘guaranteed to get you where you want to go’… It would get you there alright, just not back. Most were completely useless, but occasionally there would be a turner that would actually travel, but break as soon as the unlucky wielder would touch down in a different era.

Tonight, it was Jacqueline's job to pick out the one thing that didn't fit and remove it from the otherwise serene atmosphere of times long past. It didn't take long to find the dimwitted couple dressed in the gaudiest of robes and flashiest of accessories, common to witches and wizards touring the timeline. “Blithering idiots…” the woman whispered, in a voice much older and mature than her appearance would lead one to believe.  A crowd of muggles had already gathered to gaze openmouthed at the phenomenon. Jacqueline's hand disappeared into her garb and appeared again with her wand held tightly in her grip.

Spell after spell hit the unsuspecting muggles, wiping their memories of the past events completely. After confiscating the illegal time turner, she led the couple behind the nearest building. She instructed the couple to hold on to her shoulder tight, grabbed a gold chain from around her neck and twisted the hourglass at the end several times. The loudness of modern day London assaulted her ears as the three landed in a damp alleyway. After looking around, Jacqueline gripped the couple by their arms and disapparated to the Ministry of Magic where she turned her wand upon herself and allowed the glamour of youth fade away. Seconds later, the real Jacqueline Claire Lumpkin stood in the atrium of the Ministry in extraordinarily outdated clothing with a couple of complete nuts.

She dropped the couple off at the hitwizard headquarters and continued her voyage into the bowels of the Ministry. She held her tongue until she reached the door and then let her torrent fly, “WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS?!?” She screeched in the circular room, gliding briskly to her office. “Why exactly were there two people stranded in 1847 for three days and I’m only now hearing about it from someone NOT on my team?” She asked when she reached the door to the Time Travel Investigation and Regulation Bureau doors. Jacqueline wasn't even sure anyone else was in the office, but she really hoped there was. She needed to get some things off her chest and things just weren't happening like she wanted them to.

Sadly life was not always about chasing down rouge time travelers, diffusing explosive devices (or rather timing them to explode at the right moment), pitching things outside of the space-time continuum or making the clock spin backwards. It was inevitable that all the fun stuff would spread itself thin and disappear. And that left the one job of all modern bureaucracies: paperwork.

Applications for permitted time travel use were numerous so Sissel was forced to spend his shift filing through them. Some were incredibly humorous. [Wish to en-capture a live dinosaur, preferably a T. Rex, to study in relation to the Welsh Green Dragon] [Believe I could solve the national Galleon debt with time travel to ensure winnings of the Lukard Wasburtis Lotto Draw] [Looking to recover an antique china cabinet, a family heirloom, that due an unfortunate vanishing error I believe it to be continually two days ahead in the future]

The truly unusable request could be voided and shredded, an oddly cathartic practice. Others deemed important and reliable were to be notarized and continued along the pipeline.

Instead of an 80s classic, an electronic and whimsical song was stuck in his head. He hummed a few bars, filling the tune with nonsense lyrics. Not that anyone was bothered. The Bureau always appeared in a state of near emptiess. Excluding field workers, if you had the chance to arragine the perfect work shift and squeze an 8 hour day into a 30 minute session, why wouldn't you take it?

Although he counted Divination amongst his NEWTs Sissel was no Seer. However this type of fickle work cemented certain sensory skills. Almost like noticing the barometric pressure dropping, he could sense Jacqueline Lumpkin on the warpath moments before she appeared. The volume of her complaints also helped.

“WHY AM I SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS?!? Why exactly were there two people stranded in 1847 for three days and I’m only now hearing about it from someone NOT on my team?”

"And good morning to you too sunshine," Sissel waved. He paused in thought. "I've heard rumors that a Centennial model was floating around outside Ministry control. Wonder how a bunch of tourists got their hands on it." Regular Time Turners that relived units of one hour were bad enough.

"Though is your grievance with the fact no one noticed from the time these people left or, given how far back they were in time that nobody noticed since the days the office started?"

Jacqueline was nothing short of livid. She took a deep breath and watched as Sissel gave his spiel, eyes blazing. The young wizard was certainly not one of Jacqueline’s favorites and though she used to be able to tolerate him, recent events put him so far up on Jacqueline’s bad list that the poor boy may never make it off. As the man spoke, Jacqueline’s lips began to tighten, a sure sign of an impending torrent of ugly.

Time travel in itself was a very complex and confusing thing, and it was something one could never actually grasp the complete concept of. That being said, it takes an extremely intelligent person to be able to cope with the stress and strain that comes with being a member of the Time Travel Investigation and Regulation Bureau. To give credit where credit is due, Sissel was a very intelligent individual… Annoying… but intelligent. “You heard rumors?!? You heard talk of a Centennial and you didn’t feel that information needed to be shared with your supervisor? By your complete irresponsibility, you could have caused a catastrophic event that altered all of history, do you understand that?”

Jacqueline knew she was being harsh, but she needed someone to take her frustration out on, time travel was very tiring and she was always irritable afterwards, even after only an hour or so… this time she travelled over a hundred years in the past and she was feeling the strain. The weary witch walked to the nearest chair and slid into the seat.  “Some peddler sold it to this couple on the streets of Diagon. Stupid people decided to turn it and see what happened. I’ve turned them over to MLE.” She snapped, keeping short sentences so as to not start on a rampage.

She was starting to diffuse when she remembered that Sissel had been doing paperwork, and why would he be doing paperwork while she was out in the field all alone? That was completely uncalled for, especially after she had sent out a memo earlier that day. Her temper flared up again, “I completely understand that you are incapable of following protocol, but can you please explain to me why you didn’t answer the urgent interdepartmental memo I sent to everybody in this office earlier this morning?”

Sissel shrugged when Jacqueline called him out on not sharing suspicions. "Like I said, rumors. Of the variety like 'my best mate's cousin's mate's associate said he saw something', about as likely as a Heliopath sightings.[1] No proof. I wasn't going to bother you unless I got a lead. I've been looking into it during my downtime but I have only the one confirmation of a rouge time turner." Meaning the current blip on the Bureau's radar, the Cowled Figure.

Jacqueline had found the offending artifact so all was not lost. Her eyes grew harsh again as she looked over his desk. “I completely understand that you are incapable of following protocol, but can you please explain to me why you didn’t answer the urgent interdepartmental memo I sent to everybody in this office earlier this morning?”

Sissel blinked to make sure he had heard that correctly. This morning? Memo? He hadn't gotten a memo, and if he had Sissel was never late on a date, even if he had to do some time flipping to get there. He began to look under the time travel applicants on his desk to see if the phantom memo was there.

"When did you send it?" Sissel asked, rustling through more paper. If she had really marked it urgent, she also would have triggered his egg timer to ensure that he made it to the office. He patted the pocket it was in.

And patted some more. No egg timer.

Now that Sissel thought of it, the events of the morning seemed hazy. He thought it had just been due to the deluge of paper work but what had he been doing before then? He fished out his wallet, a safety measure he had developed for this reason. Sissel had a way of arranging his pound notes in certain sequences, changing them every hour and a half or so unless he was reliving borrowed time. He checked the notes. Out of sequence. And the coin clutch was lighter by 5 sickles.

Continuing through his back up measures, Sissel opened each of his drawers in tandem, checking the contents of each. At last, in the drawer he rarely used, was a crumpled bit of parchment. He smoothed it out. A paper airplane, folded for the quickest build of office memos, wrapped around his egg timer.

Although the complications were enormous, Sissel was oddly calm as he said simply: "I think I've been obliviated. Or in similar memory altering circumstances."

1.	http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Heliopath