12th September, 1895 — Magical Barrier, Irvingly

The barrier thrummed in a slightly ominous way as Marlena carefully walked around the perimeter, her quill and parchment hovering at her shoulder, making notes as she observed anything and everything that could be counted as unusual. She was going to run out of parchment soon enough, but she doubted she would get away with submitting a report that simply stated everything was unusual about the situation and, at present, she had no more idea what to do than the grunts from the auror office did.

When something was vanished, Lena mentally recited from her schoolbooks, it went into non-being, which was to say, everything, so there was a possibility that the poor souls who were known to have been absorbed by the mist had not gone far. But that was pure conjecture – realistically she knew they were likely gone for good.

And people said London was dangerous.

“Any changes?” She asked as she approached the end of her circuit. It had taken several hours and she was none-the-wiser, however at least Lena had had plenty to think about. ___ was still standing in the same spot she had left them when she had set out.

Open to one of the following who may be amongst the skeleton crew: an auror, a mediwitch or mediwizard, or a couple of A&C employees.

  

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MJ: still raising the graphics bar as of 2022

This whole thing, now almost a week later, was starting to make Angie itch a little. It had rarely taken her this long to do research and figure something out in the field. Only when preparing to enter a tomb or some other ancient building had she spent copious weeks making sure she was prepared. This, well, this was baffling and she had no more answers than anyone else and it was driving her a little mad.

She'd kept playing with the edges of the mist, sticking things in, watching exactly what happened, testing how far she had to push in for things to disappear, anything else she could experiment with but it wasn't yielding much in the way of results. Currently she was sat on the ground near the edges, supposedly keeping an eye on the mist and anyone who might want to run into it, but really, it was quiet and nobody else was around and it was boring.

So she was reading. Revisiting some of the finer points of the laws and theories of magic, how to stretch the limits. It was research at the base of all things, but she was hoping something about revisiting the basics would give her something more to think about. "Not unless you count the rock, parchment and leaf I stuck into the edges... for science." She shrugged, looking up at Scamander with a wry grin.

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Grinning back Lena lowered herself to the ground next to the other woman and looked over her shoulder at the book. It was once she had perused herself many times, though not one she had thought to pick up since the mist had settled in – then again, she had been rather busy. Not that her efforts had done any good, they were no closer to identifying the origin of the latest disaster. It was, quite gratingly, totally unfathomable.

On the other hand, books were usually the solution to any problem so Lena approved of the method enormously.

“Any interesting results?” She asked, stretching her legs out in front of her leisurely. She did not know Angie Swan especially well, but Marlena took for granted the fellowship that existed between unwed professional women, and flexed her feet to ease the ache. It had been a long walk.

“I need to put something in the report other that doesn’t just sound like I’m a weather witch.”

  

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MJ: still raising the graphics bar as of 2022

Angie really didn't have many answers, but she was still working through a couple of theories. "It seems to defy some of the laws of both magic and physics." Both had basic principles of not being able to make something of nothing and physics, in the reverse, matter could also not be destroyed. Ang had spent many nights by a campfire studying both sets of rules. Magic was fascinating, but so was the muggle world of science. They overlapped more than most wizards would like to admit and more than muggles could even imagine.

"The matter cannot just cease to exist." Where was it all going? Was the mist expanding because of it? Was that why it had slowed? Because it had nothing else left to consume? How was the magic simply vaporizing everything? The questions kept piling up with fewer and fewer answers. "It cannot have been conjured from nothing either? So what started it?" Magic, though sometime spontaneous, still stemmed from a magical person or object, it did not simply come from nowhere. "I have traveled the world extensively and seen a lot of strange magic, but nothing has every stumped me quite this." She was taking it a little personally at this point.

With the uptick in annoyance, Ang closed her book with a piece of scrap paper in it where she would pick up again later. "Nothing from the basement either?" Surely if Accidents and Catastrophes weren't having any luck, the Department of Mysteries had to be making some progress?

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