Brannon had stepped out of the office for a moment. Honestly, he had been stepping out of the office for most of the morning; the committee had an unexpected dearth of applications for new spells, and the ones they'd seen recently had all been referred back to their creators for tweaks (some minor, some potentially life-threatening), so there wasn't much to do. He was still waiting on a stack of routine and exceptionally mundane paperwork from the dueling commission, but he certainly wasn't in any hurry to have it. It was exceedingly rare that anyone came up with a new spell on-the-spot in the midst of a duel, and combing through documentation of every spell that had been used in the latest tournament was mostly just something to keep busy with. He'd sort through them when they got to his office, but in the meantime, he certainly wasn't going to harass anyone in the dueling commission to get them to him faster. He'd just find ways to fill time talking to coworkers, and collect a tidy paycheck for doing so. He didn't particularly care if that stack of paperwork never arrived at his office.

Brannon made himself a fresh cup of tea and traded out his section of the Daily Prophet for a different one — he didn't particularly care about the gobstones tournament featured in the sport section, but it was something to read, anyway — then headed back to his office. He was surprised to see someone was already there, and even more surprised to find his desk was on fire.

"Merlin," he swore, dropping his tea and the paper as he reached to draw his wand. "What's happened?"