Ernest might have pointed out that the Hall of Prophecy was no more treacherous for new Unspeakables than any other department, but he suspected the other man knew. He couldn't have forgotten the explosion that had claimed the lives of many of the upstairs employees as it had seen the Ministry collapse from the bottom up, nor the accidental time loop they'd plunged Britain into (though that hadn't exactly been the fault of a new Unspeakable...) Was having someone accidentally see their own future in a Prophecy worse than having someone make an ill-advised attempt at time travel after a year in the department, or start selling black market love potions, or meddling in memories to create a false past for one of their friends? The whole Department was essentially a collection of disasters waiting to happen. It was nearly miraculous that there had only been a handful of such disasters that had 'leaked' outside the Department during Ernest's career.

Pointing any of those things out, however, could only lead to further regulation in the Department, which was something no one wanted. No one, that was, who put a much larger emphasis on the exciting possibilities of new research and discovery over the protection of human life.

"Oh, you know me," he said, addressing the question he'd been asked instead. "Quite content as long as I can fiddle around with the clocks. Unfortunately I've found myself mired in paperwork more often than I might like," he said with a shrug. That was, actually, his prime motivation in trying to ensure the Department didn't blow anything up or kill anyone — it involved a lot of paperwork when they did, which took up far too much of his time. "And pulled away for meetings. Mrs. Lestrange liked to delegate those sorts of things so that she could hide away in her office — I hope you'll be more inclined to go to them," he added, glancing over at his new boss. "You ought to be quite comfortable in Ministry-wide meetings by this point, I would think."