059.asc

// 10281
//== TSPE, Curiosity, Pt 9

// 10282
//Broomsticks had been invented during what a Muggle would have called the Dark
//Ages, supposedly by a legendary witch named Celestria Relevo, allegedly the
//great-great-granddaughter of Merlin.

// 10283
//Celestria Relevo, or whichever person or group had really invented those
//enchantments, hadn’t known a darned thing about Newtonian mechanics.

// 10284
//Broomsticks, therefore, worked by Aristotelian physics.

// 10285
//They went where you pointed them.

// 10286
//If you wanted to move straight forward, you pointed them straight forward; you
//didn’t worry about keeping some of the thrust going downward to cancel out the
//effect of gravity.

// 10287
//If you turned a broomstick, all of its new velocity was in the new direction of
//pointing, it didn’t go sideways based on its old momentum.

// 10288
//Broomsticks had maximum speeds, not maximum accelerations. Not because of
//anything to do with air resistance, but because a broomstick had some maximum
//Aristotelian impetus its enchantments could exert.

// 10289
//Harry had never explicitly __noticed__ that before, despite being dextrous
//enough to get the best grades in flying class. Broomsticks worked so much like
//the human mind __instinctively expected them to work__ that his brain had
//managed to __entirely overlook their physical absurdity.__ Harry, on his
//first Thursday of broomstick lessons, had been distracted by more
//interesting-seeming phenomena, words written on paper and a glowing red ball.
//So his brain had simply suspended its disbelief, marked the reality of
//broomsticks as accepted, and proceeded to have its fun, without ever once
//__thinking of the question__ whose answer would have been obvious. For it
//is a sad fact that we only ever __think__ about a tiny fraction of all the
//phenomena we encounter…

// 10290
//That is the story of how Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres was almost killed by
//his own lack of curiosity.

// 10291
//Because rockets did __not__ work by Aristotelian physics.

// 10292
//Rockets did __not__ work like a human mind instinctively thought a flying
//thing should work.

// 10293
//A rocket-assisted broomstick, therefore, did __not__ move like the magical
//broomsticks upon which Harry was such a very good flyer.

// 10294
//None of this actually went through Harry’s mind at the time.

// 10295
//For one thing, the loudest noise he’d ever heard in his life was preventing him
//from hearing himself think.

// 10296
//For another thing, accelerating upward at four gravities meant that he had
//around two and a half seconds, total, to go from the bottom to the top of
//Azkaban.

// 10297
//And even if they were two and a half of the __longest__ seconds in the
//history of Time, that wasn’t enough room to do much thinking.

// 10298
//There was time only to see the lights of the Aurors’ curses arrowing down at
//him, slightly angle the broomstick to avoid them, realize that the broomstick
//was simply continuing on with mostly the same momentum instead of going in the
//direction he pointed it, and activate the wordless concepts

// 10299
//__*crap*__

// 10300
//and

// 10301
//__*Newton*__

// 10302
//whereupon Harry angled the broomstick much harder and then they started to very
//quickly approach the wall so he angled it back the other way and there were
//more lights coming down and the Dementors were sliding smoothly up toward them
//along with some kind of giant winged creature of white-golden flame so Harry
//wrenched the broomstick back toward the sky but now he was still sliding toward
//another wall so he tilted the broom slightly and he stopped approaching but he
//was too close so he tilted it again and then the distant Aurors on their
//broomsticks weren’t very distant at all and he was going to crash into that
//woman so he spun his broomstick straight away from her and then in another
//instant he realized his rocket was an extremely powerful flamethrower and in a
//fraction of a second it would be pointing directly at the Auror so he spun the
//broomstick sideways as he kept going up and he couldn’t remember if it was
//pointing at any Aurors now but at least it wasn’t pointing at __her__

// 10303
//Harry missed another Auror by about a meter, zipping past him on a
//sideways-pointed flamethrower moving upward at, Harry would later guess, around
//300 kilometers per hour.

// 10304
//If there were any screams of roasted Aurors he didn’t hear them, but this was
//not evidence one way or another, because all that Harry was hearing at the
//moment was an extremely loud noise.

// 10305
//A couple of __calmer if not quieter __seconds later, there didn’t seem to
//be any Aurors around, or any Dementors, or any giant winged flame creatures,
//and the vast and terrible edifice of Azkaban looked surprisingly tiny from this
//height.

// 10306
//Harry got the broomstick pointed toward the Sun, faintly visible through the
//clouds, it wasn’t high in the sky at this time of day and month of winter, and
//the broomstick accelerated for another two seconds in that direction and picked
//up an amazing amount of speed very quickly before the solid-fuel rocket burned
//itself out.

// 10307
//After that, once Harry could hear himself think again, when there was only the
//howling wind from their ridiculous speed, and Harry’s enchantment-assisted
//fingers gripping the broomstick were merely resisting the decelerating drag of
//moving way faster than terminal velocity, __that__ was when Harry actually
//thought all that stuff about Newtonian mechanics and Aristotelian physics and
//broomsticks and rocketry and the importance of curiosity and how he was never
//going to do anything this Gryffindor ever again or at least not until after he
//learned the Dark Lord’s secret of immortality and __why__ had he listened
//to Professor Quirinus “__I asssure you, boy, I would not attempt thisss
//if I did not anticipate my own ssurvival__” Quirrell instead of Professor
//Michael “Son, if you try anything to do with rockets on your own, I mean
//__anything whatsoever__ without a trained professonal watching, you will
//die and that will make Mum sad” Verres-Evans.

// 10308
//“__WHAT?__” shrieked Amelia at the mirror.

// 10309
//The wind had died down to a bearable level as the air resistance slowed them,
//giving Harry plenty of opportunity to listen to the buzzing, ringing sound that
//seemed to fill his whole brain.

// 10310
//Professor Quirrell had been supposed to cast a Quieting Charm on the rocket
//exhaust… apparently there were limits to what Quieting Charms could do… in
//retrospect, Harry should have Transfigured a pair of earplugs, not just trusted
//to the Quieting Charm, though that probably wouldn’t have been enough either…

// 10311
//Well, magical healing probably had something to treat permanent hearing damage.

// 10312
//No, really, magical healing probably had something to treat that. He’d seen
//students go to Madam Pomfrey with injuries that sounded a lot worse…

// 10313
//__Is there some way of transplanting an imaginary personality to someone
//else’s head?__ asked Hufflepuff. __I don’t want to live in yours anymore.__

// 10314
//Harry shoved it all into the back of his mind, there really wasn’t anything he
//could do about it right now. Was there anything he __should__ be worrying
//about -

// 10315
//Then Harry glanced behind him, remembering for the first time to check whether
//Bellatrix or Professor Quirrell had been blown off the broomstick.

// 10316
//But the green snake was still in its harness, and the emaciated woman was still
//clinging to the broomstick, her face still charged with unhealthy color and her
//eyes still bright and dangerous. Her shoulders were shaking like she was
//laughing hysterically, and her lips were moving as though to shout, but no
//sound was coming out -

// 10317
//Oh, right.

// 10318
//Harry took off the hood of his cloak, tapped his ears to let her know he
//couldn’t hear.

// 10319
//Whereupon Bellatrix grasped her wand, pointed it at Harry, and suddenly the
//ringing in his ears diminished, he could hear her.

// 10320
//A moment later he regretted it; the imprecations she was screaming at Azkaban,
//Dementors, Aurors, Dumbledore, Lucius, Bartemy Couch, something called the
//Order of the Phoenix, and all who stood in the way of her Dark Lord, et cetera,
//were not suitable for younger and more sensitive listeners; and her laughter
//was hurting his newly healed ears.

// 10321
//“Enough, Bella,” Harry finally said, and her voice stopped on the instant.

// 10322
//There was a pause. Harry pulled the Cloak back over his head, just on general
//principles; and realized in the same instant that they might have telescopes
//down there or something, in retrospect pulling down his hood for even a moment
//had been an incredibly dumb move, he hoped the whole mission didn’t end up
//failing because of that one error…

// 10323
//__We’re not really cut out for this, are we?__ observed Slytherin.

// 10324
//__Hey,__ Hufflepuff objected in sheer reflex, __we can’t expect to
//do anything perfectly the first time, we probably just need more practice
//FORGET I SAID THAT.__

// 10325
//Harry looked back again, saw Bellatrix looking around with a puzzled, wondering
//look on her face. Her head kept turning, turning.

// 10326
//And finally Bellatrix said, her voice now lower, “My Lord, where are we?”

// 10327
//__What do you mean?__ was what Harry wanted to say, but the Dark Lord
//would never admit to not understanding anything, so Harry replied, dryly, “We
//are on a broomstick.”

// 10328
//__Does she think she’s dead, that this is Heaven?__

// 10329
//Bellatrix’s hands were still chained to the broomstick, so it was only a finger
//that came up and pointed when she said, “What is __that?__”

// 10330
//Harry followed the direction of her finger and saw… nothing in particular,
//actually…

// 10331
//Then Harry realized. After they’d gone up high enough, there hadn’t been any
//clouds to obscure it any more.

// 10332
//“That is the Sun, dear Bella.”

// 10333
//It came out remarkably controlled, the Dark Lord sounding perfectly calm and
//maybe a little impatient with her, even as the tears started down Harry’s
//cheeks.

// 10334
//In the endless cold, in the pitch blackness, the Sun would surely have been…

// 10335
//A happy memory…

// 10336
//Bellatrix’s head kept turning.

// 10337
//“And the fluffy things?” she said.

// 10338
//“Clouds.”

// 10339
//There was a pause, and then Bellatrix said, “But what __are__ they?”

// 10340
//Harry didn’t answer her, there was no way his voice could have been steady,
//would have been steady, it was all he could do to keep his breathing perfectly
//regular while he cried.

// 10341
//After a while, Bellatrix breathed, so softly Harry almost didn’t hear,
//“Pretty…”

// 10342
//Her face slowly relaxed, the color leaving its paleness almost as quickly as it
//had arrived.

// 10343
//Her skeletal body slumped down against the broomstick.

// 10344
//The borrowed wand dangled lifelessly from the strap attached to her unmoving
//hand.

// 10345
//__YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING -__

// 10346
//Harry’s mind remembered then, the Pepper-Up potion came at a cost; Bellatrix
//would __ssleep for a conssiderable time,__ Professor Quirrell had said.

// 10347
//And in the same instant another part of Harry became utterly convinced, looking
//back at the chalk-white emaciated woman, seeming deader in the bright sunlight
//than anything Harry had ever seen alive, that she __was__ dead, that she
//had just uttered her last word, that Professor Quirrell had misjudged the
//dosage -

// 10348
//- or deliberately sacrificed Bellatrix to guard their own escape -

// 10349
//__Is she breathing?__

// 10350
//Harry couldn’t see if she was breathing.

// 10351
//There was no way, on the broomstick, to reach back and take her pulse.

// 10352
//Harry looked ahead to make sure they weren’t about to run into any flying
//rocks, kept on steering the broomstick toward the Sun, the invisible boy and
//the possibly dead woman riding off into the afternoon, while his fingers
//gripped the wood so hard they turned white.

// 10353
//He couldn’t reach back and perform artificial respiration.

// 10354
//He couldn’t use anything from his healer’s kit.

// 10355
//__Trust Professor Quirrell to have not endangered her?__

// 10356
//Strange, it was strange, that even genuinely believing that Professor Quirrell
//hadn’t meant to kill the Auror (for it __would__ have been stupid),
//thinking of the Defense Professor’s reassurances no longer felt reassuring.

// 10357
//Then it occurred to Harry that he had yet to check -

// 10358
//Harry looked back, and hissed, “__Teacher?__”

// 10359
//The snake did not stir within its harness, and said no word.

// 10360
//…maybe the snake, not being an actual rider, hadn’t been protected from the
//acceleration. Or maybe coming that close to the Dementors without a shield,
//even for a moment in Animagus form, had knocked out the Defense Professor.

// 10361
//That wasn’t good.

// 10362
//It was to have been Professor Quirrell who told Harry when it was safe to use
//the portkey.

// 10363
//Harry steered the broomstick with whitened fingers, and thought, he thought
//very hard for a small unmeasured length of time, during which Bellatrix might
//or might not have been breathing, during which Professor Quirrell himself might
//have already been not-breathing for a while.

// 10364
//And Harry decided that while it was possible to recover from the error of
//wasting the portkey in his possession, it was not possible to recover from the
//error of letting a brain go too long without oxygen.

// 10365
//So Harry took the next portkey in the sequence from his pouch, as he slowed his
//broomstick to a halt in the bright blue air (Harry didn’t know, when he thought
//about it, whether a portkey’s ability to adjust for the Earth’s rotation also
//included the ability to match velocity in general with its new surroundings),
//touched the portkey to the broomstick, and…

// 10366
//Harry paused, still holding the twig, the mate of the twig he had snapped what
//seemed like two weeks ago. He was feeling a sudden reluctance; his brain seemed
//to have learned the rule, by some purely neural process of operant
//conditioning, that Snapping Twigs Is A Bad Idea.

// 10367
//But that wasn’t actually logical, so Harry snapped the twig anyway.

// 10368
//There was a thunderous boom from behind the nearby metal door, causing Amelia
//to drop the mirror she was holding and spin around with her wand in hand, and
//then that door burst open to reveal Albus Dumbledore, standing there in front
//of a great smoking hole in the prison wall.

// 10369
//“Amelia,” said the old wizard. There was no trace of any of his customary
//levity, his eyes were hard as sapphires beneath his half-moon glasses. “I must
//leave Azkaban and I must do so __now__. Is there any faster way than a
//broomstick to get beyond the wards?”

// 10370
//“No -”

// 10371
//“Then I require your fastest broomstick, at once!”

// 10372
//The place where Amelia __wanted__ to be was with the Auror who had been
//injured by that Fiendfyre or whatever it had been.

// 10373
//What she __needed__ to do was find out what Dumbledore knew.

// 10374
//“You!” the old witch barked at the team around her. “Keep clearing the
//corridors until you’re at bottom, they may not all have escaped yet!” And then,
//to the old wizard, “Two broomsticks. You can brief me once we’re in the air.”

// 10375
//There was a match of stares, but not a long one.

// 10376
//A sickeningly hard yank caught at Harry’s abdomen, considerably harder than the
//yank that had transported him to Azkaban, and this time the distance traversed
//was great enough that he could hear an instant of silence, watch the unseeable
//space between spaces, in the crack between one place and another.

// 10377
//The Sun, which had shone on the two only briefly, was swiftly occluded by a
//raincloud as they shot away from Azkaban, in the direction of the wind and
//faster than the wind.

// 10378
//“Who’s behind it?” shouted Amelia to the broomstick flying a pace away from
//her.

// 10379
//“One of two people,” Dumbledore said back, “I know not, at this instant, who.
//If the first, then we are in trouble. If the second, we are all in far greater
//trouble.”

// 10380
//Amelia didn’t spare any breath for sighs. “When will you know?”

// 10381
//The old wizard’s voice was grim, quiet and yet somehow rising above the wind.
//“Three things they need for perfection, if it is that one: The flesh of the
//Dark Lord’s most faithful servant, the blood of the Dark Lord’s greatest foe,
//and access to a certain grave. I had thought Harry Potter safe, with their
//attempt on Azkaban all but failed - though I still set guards upon him - but
//now I am fearful indeed. They have access to Time, someone with a Time-Turner
//is sending messages for them; and I suspect the kidnap attempt on Harry Potter
//has already taken place some hours ago. Which is why __we__ have not heard
//about it, being in Azkaban where Time cannot knot itself. That past came after
//our own future, you see.”

// 10382
//“And if it is the other?” shouted Amelia. What she had heard already was
//worrying enough; that sounded like the darkest of Dark rituals, and centering
//on the dead Dark Lord himself.

// 10383
//The old wizard, his face now even grimmer, said nothing, only shook his head.

// 10384
//When the portkey’s yank had subsided, the Sun was only just peeking over the
//horizon, looking more like dawn than sunset, as their broom hovered low above a
//brief expanse of dark-orange rock and sand, arranged into lumpy hills like
//someone had kneaded the land’s dough a few times and then forgotten to roll it
//flat. In the near distance, waves rolled past in an endless vista of water,
//though the ground over which the broomstick hovered was above sea level by
//meters at the least.

// 10385
//Harry blinked at the dawn colors, and then realized the portkey had been
//international.

// 10386
//“Oy!” came a brisk, female shout from behind him, and Harry spun the broomstick
//to look. A middle-aged lady was holding up one hand to her mouth in a
//deliberate calling gesture, and bustling forward. Her kindly features, narrow
//eyes, and umber skin marked a race unfamiliar to Harry; she was clad in
//brilliant purple robes of a style Harry had never seen before; and when her
//lips opened again she spoke with an accent that Harry couldn’t place, for he
//was not widely traveled. “Where were you? You’re two hours late! I almost gave
//up on the lot of you… hello?”

// 10387
//There was a brief pause. Harry’s thoughts seemed to be moving oddly, too slow,
//everything felt distant, like there was a thick pane of glass between himself
//and the world, and another thick pane of glass between himself and his
//feelings, so that he could see, but not touch. It had come over him upon seeing
//the dawn’s light and the kindly witch, and thinking that it all seemed like a
//proper end to the adventure.

// 10388
//Then the witch was rushing forward and drawing her wand; a muttered word
//severed the cuffs that bound the emaciated woman to the broomstick, and
//Bellatrix was being floated down onto the sandy rock with her skeletal arms and
//pale legs dangling like lifeless things. “Oh, Merlin,” whispered the witch,
//“Merlin, Merlin, Merlin…”

// 10389
//__She appears concerned,__ thought an abstract, distant thing between two
//panes of glass. __Is that what a real healer would say, or is it what
//someone told to put on a performance would say?__

// 10390
//As though it wasn’t Harry who spoke, but some other part of himself behind yet
//another pane of glass, a whisper came from his lips. “The green snake on her
//back is an Animagus.” Not high the whisper, not cold, only quiet. “He is
//unconscious.”

// 10391
//The witch’s head twitched up, to look at where that voice had seemed to speak
//out of empty air, and then looked back down at Bellatrix. “You’re not Mister
//Jaffe.”

// 10392
//“That would be the Animagus,” whispered Harry’s lips. __Oh,__ thought the
//Harry behind glass, listening to the sound of his own lips, __that makes
//sense; Professor Quirrell must have used a different name.__

// 10393
//“Since when is __he__ a - bah, forget it.” The witch laid her wand on the
//snake’s nose for a moment, then shook her head sharply. “Nothing wrong with him
//that a day’s rest won’t cure. __Her…__”

// 10394
//“Can you wake him up now?” whispered Harry’s lips. __Is that a good
//idea?__ thought Harry, but his lips definitely seemed to think so.

// 10395
//Again the sharp headshake. “If an Innervate didn’t work on him -” began the
//witch.

// 10396
//“I did not attempt one,” whispered Harry’s lips.

// 10397
//“What? Why - oh, never mind. __Innervate.__”

// 10398
//There was a pause, and then a snake slowly crawled out of its harness. Slowly
//the green head came up, looked around.

// 10399
//A blur later, Professor Quirrell was standing, and a moment later had sagged to
//his knees.

// 10400
//“Lie down,” said the witch without looking up from Bellatrix. “That you in
//there, Jeremy?”

// 10401
//“Yes,” said the Defense Professor rather hoarsely, as he carefully laid himself
//down on a relatively flat patch of sandy orange rock. He was not so pale as
//Bellatrix, but his face was bloodless in the dim dawn light. “Salutations, Miss
//Camblebunker.”

// 10402
//“I told you,” said the witch, sharpness in her voice and a slight smile on her
//face, “call me Crystal, this isn’t Britain and we’ll have none of your
//formality here. __And__ it’s Doctor now, not Miss.”

// 10403
//“My apologies, Doctor Camblebunker.” This was followed by a dry chuckle.

// 10404
//The witch’s smile grew a little wider, her voice that much sharper. “Who’s your
//friend?”

// 10405
//“You don’t need to know.” The Defense Professor’s eyes were closed, where he
//lay on the ground.

// 10406
//“How wrong did it go?”

// 10407
//Very dryly indeed: “You can read about it tomorrow in any newspaper with an
//international section.”

// 10408
//The witch’s wand was tapping here, there, poking and prodding all over
//Bellatrix’s body. “I missed you, Jeremy.”

// 10409
//“Truly?” said the Defense Professor, sounding slightly surprised.

// 10410
//“Not even a tiny little bit. If I didn’t owe you -”

// 10411
//The Defense Professor started to laugh, and then it turned into more of a
//coughing fit.

// 10412
//__What do you think?__ said Slytherin to the Inner Critic, while Harry
//listened from behind the glass walls. __Performance, or reality?__

// 10413
//__Can’t tell,__ said Harry’s Inner Critic. __I’m not in top critical
//form right now.__

// 10414
//__Can anyone think of a good probe to gather more information?__ said
//Ravenclaw.

// 10415
//Again that whisper from the empty air above the broomstick: “What is the chance
//of undoing all that was done to her?”

// 10416
//“Oh, let’s see. Legilimency and unknown Dark rituals, ten years for that to set
//in place, followed by ten years of Dementor exposure? Undo__ that?__
//You’re out of your skull, Mister Whoever-You-Are. The question is whether
//there’s anything __left,__ and I’d call that maybe one chance in three -”
//The witch suddenly cut herself off. Her voice, when it spoke again, was
//quieter. “If you were her friend, before… then no, you’re never getting her
//back. Best understand that now.”

// 10417
//__I’m voting that this is a performance,__ said the Inner Critic.
//__She wouldn’t just blurt all that out in response to one question unless
//she was looking for an opportunity.__

// 10418
//__Noted, but I’m putting a low weight of confidence on that, __said
//Ravenclaw. __It’s very hard not to let your suspicions control your
//perceptions when you’re trying to weigh evidence that subtle.__

// 10419
//“What potion did you give her?” the witch said after opening Bellatrix’s mouth
//and peering inside, her wand flashing multiple colors of illumination.

// 10420
//The man lying on the ground calmly said, “Pepper-Up -”

// 10421
//“__Were you out of your mind?__”

// 10422
//Again the coughing laugh.

// 10423
//“She’ll sleep for a week if she’s lucky,” the witch said, and clucked her
//tongue. “I’ll owl you when she opens her eyes, I suppose, so you can come back
//and talk her into that Unbreakable Vow. Have you got anything to stop her from
//killing me on the spot, if she manages to even move for another month?”

// 10424
//The Defense Professor, eyes still closed, took a sheet of paper from his robes;
//a moment later, words began to appear on it, accompanied by tiny wisps of
//smoke. When the smoke had stopped rising, the paper floated over toward the
//woman.

// 10425
//The woman looked over the paper with raised eyebrows, gave a sardonic snort.
//“This had better work, Jeremy, or my last will and testament says that my whole
//estate goes into putting a bounty on your head. Speaking of which -”

// 10426
//The Defense Professor reached again into his robes and tossed the witch a bag
//that made a clinking sound. The witch caught it, weighed it, made a pleased
//sound.

// 10427
//Then she stood up, and the pale skeletal woman floated off the ground beside
//her. “I’m heading back,” said the witch. “I can’t start my work here.”

// 10428
//“Wait,” said the Defense Professor, and with a gesture retrieved his wand from
//Bellatrix’s hand and harness. Then his hand pointed the wand at Bellatrix, and
//moved in a small circular gesture, accompanied by a quiet,
//“__Obliviate__.”

// 10429
//“__That’s it__,” snapped the witch, “I’m taking her out of here before
//anyone does her any more damage -” One arm came around to hug the bony form of
//Bellatrix Black to her side, and they both disappeared with the loud POP! of
//Apparition.

// 10430
//And there was silence in that lumpy place, but for the gentle rush of the
//passing waves, and a little breath of wind.

// 10431
//__I think the performance is finished,__ said the Inner Critic. __I
//give it two and a half out of five stars. She’s probably not a very experienced
//actor.__

// 10432
//__I wonder if a real healer would seem more fake than an actor told to
//play one?__ mused Ravenclaw.____

// 10433
//____

// 10434
//Like watching a television show, that was how it felt, like watching a
//television show whose characters you didn’t particularly empathize with, that
//was all that could be seen and felt from behind the glass walls.

// 10435
//Somehow, Harry managed to move his lips himself, send his own voice out into
//the still dawn air, and then was surprised to hear his own question. “How many
//different people are you, anyway?”

// 10436
//The pale man lying on the ground didn’t laugh, but from the broomstick Harry’s
//eyes saw the sides of Professor Quirrell’s lips curling up, the edge of that
//familiar sardonic smile. “I cannot say that I bothered keeping count. How many
//are you?”

// 10437
//It shouldn’t have shaken the inner Harry so much, hearing that response, and
//yet he felt - he felt - unstable, like his own center had been subtracted -

// 10438
//Oh.

// 10439
//“Excuse me,” said Harry’s voice. It now sounded as distant and detached as the
//fading Harry felt. “I’m going to faint in a few seconds, I think.”

// 10440
//“Use the fourth portkey I gave you, the one I said was our fallback refuge,”
//said the man lying on the ground, calmly but swiftly. “It will be safer there.
//And continue wearing your cloak.”

// 10441
//Harry’s free hand retrieved another twig from his pouch and snapped it.

// 10442
//There was another portkey yank, internationally long, and then he was somewhere
//black.

// 10443
//“__Lumos__,” said Harry’s lips, some part of him looking out for the
//safety of the whole.

// 10444
//He was inside what looked like a Muggle warehouse, a deserted one.

// 10445
//Harry’s legs climbed off the broomstick, lay on the floor. His eyes closed, and
//some tidy fraction of self willed his light to fail, before the darkness took
//him.

// 10446
//“Where will you go?” yelled Amelia. They were almost at the edge of the wards.

// 10447
//“Backward in time to protect Harry Potter,” said the old wizard, and before
//Amelia could even open her lips to ask if he wanted help, she felt the boundary
//of the wards as they crossed them.

// 10448
//There was a pop of Apparition, and the wizard and the phoenix vanished, leaving
//behind the borrowed broomstick.