CHAPTER 120: Prophecy

Act 2:

"Hermoine, pay attention."

Michael Evans-Verres was starting to get on her nerves. She was usually quite patient, but sometimes enough is enough. "I know. I get it! We have a prophecy and we cannot defeat the dark lord. But even witches cannot make fictional things by willing them into existence."

Alastor Moody had managed to cast his first partial trans- figuration after two days. Minerva was currently portkeying back and forth hauling up a trunk of sheet metal or plastic or silicon each time.

Act 1:

"The ward we encountered the first time," Michael askex, what exactly does it do?"

Alastor answered, "It prevents backwards time effects in the region, so that we could not enter it once having used our time turners."

"Mmmm, I don't think that's quite right." This is advanced physics. If all backwards time travel effects were cancelled, some of the Feynman diagrams for the strong force would be cancelled, which in turn weaken the strong force coupling constant, with catastraphic results. "Are you sure it doesn't act on time-turned individuals rather than anything that travels backwards in time?"

"Without a time turner how would you-Oh, you know a way already and so does Harry. Something to do with vulcan." There was, of course, only one choice. The wards used by dark wizards did not defend against time traveling attackers-they defended against timed-turned attackers, and evading them was as simple as having not used a time turner recently. Michael Evans- Verres had spotted the flaw almost immediately. If all you have is a time turner the defense works very well. If on the other hand you are willing to do it the hard way not so much.

The hard way was building a time machine that operated by ordinary physical laws, but Michael Evans-Verres already knew how to do that, as would anybody who read enough hard science fiction. It was a simple matter of piloting a starship into a black hole big enough to permit access to the inside of the event horizon before the tidal forces ripped it apart.

Petuna Evans-Verres was sent to go ask the astronaut if he would be willing to assist in the construction and navigation of a starship. The astronaut didn't need much convincing. The cosmonauts on the other hand were not willing to help out. It was finally necessary to radio down to Moscow to explain that yes there are extra astronauts on the space station and yes there is stuff going on not being discussed and yes the work was being disrupted and yes the cosmonauts would return to their scientific work soon.

On the other hand NASA was buzzing like a disturbed beehive already.

Act 3:

"Hermoine, I know we've been confined up here too long and are getting short tempered", Minerva began. "I'll see if I can manage it. There's a big difference between something fictional that you have no idea what it might look like and something you have a diagram for." This was not new information: she and Harry had worked this out long ago, but it was comforting anyway.

Minerva stretched forth her wand, and the steel and silicon and plastic and lithium turned into oils and flowed together into one incomprehensible whole, then came the finite and it turned into chunky blobs again. Another failure same as before.

"Michael, isn't there a way we can do this one material at a time?"

"Sadly, no. There isn't." He was holding back the part about the plans not being really detailed enough to build a warp core; they were more like the first grade level cutaway "how it works" diagrams. That's all it took to transfigure anything else so why not; just so long as they believed it was good enough it tended to work. But if someone tried it one layer at a time, the deficiencies stacked on top of each other would result in a device that doesn't work. If the one trying to cast the transfiguration ever realized this, they'd never be able to put that idea away and trick the source of magic to allow this to happen. But as transfiguring a desk into a pig worked, so would this.

Alastor Moody took another look and said "Partial transfiguration. It has to be partial transfiguration." Minerva just looked sheepish.

Alastor looked intently upon the diagrams and stretched forth his wand and began. Slowly, much slower than last time, each material turned into oil and flowed and melded together and took on startling complexity and cast twisted shadows on the walls and then slowly the shadows took fixed shapes as each piece in turn achieved its target shape and solidified. As the transfiguration progressed the shadows cast took on a more blocky shape until there was just the shape of the outer casing to be seen. Long minutes after the changing had ceased he finited it and absolutely nothing happened.

Then he inserted his wand into each of the four access points and cast the same unbreakable charm on each one. This was the key. The capacitors used to generate the negative field should break down from overvoltage long before building up enough negative energy to outweigh even the dielectric within the capacitors. But the unbreakable charm would prevent the overvoltage failures and allow the negative energy buildup required to bend space outwards.

Auror Mike Li and Amelia Bones stood upon the top of Azkaban. Two days. That was all it took for Magical Britain to fall. Azkaban, once and still a prison, was now the last fortress and refugees were fleeing to it. They believed the dark lord dared not approach. While none of his death eaters could cast patronous they were right of course, but a few of them recalled Salazar Slytherin could cast patronous.

The sun was rising, and dawn is ever the hope of man. The concentration of patronouses in the top level was now so great that the dementors could not reach the roof very well and hope remained.

Emmiline Vance joined Li on the roof. "With each day brings new hope" she spoke, misquoting something she had long forgotten the source of.

All of a sudden Moody's patronous appeared before her and asked "Does Gringotts stand?" to which she answered "No, Gringotts has fallen."

She turned to Li and said "Mad-Eye is still with us."

"That is good news. Let us take heart that we shall yet overcome."

Amelia Bones frowned and then seemed to look far off. "His might is not enough, and his paranoia has gone through the roof. But I cannot help but wonder, where is he and what hope did he seem to place in that muggle. Alas for the mighty, his mind seems to be on the verge of breaking down."

"Michael,", Alastor began, "are you now willing to believe that our cause is desperate? When the stock of gold I have with me is gone I shall not be able to obtain more. As for your money and your credit, I don't know how long it will hold out."

"Not this again. We're almost through."

"Hermoine", Michael said, "why is it that wizards believe muggles have no souls."

"Because muggles leave no ghosts. But that's not important because ghosts are just afterimages left behind of a wizard's magic."

Michael took a long breath and began slowly, patiently. "We scrabble in the darkness for knowledge having not the light. But we know the human soul exists. Long ago we did an experiment. The less fluorescent gas in the tube, the less current can be made to flow through it, up to a certain point. But beyond that point, almost at a vacuum, the electrons tear free of the fluorescent gas and travel across the tube, and the current goes way up and they strike the far end and it turns bright green. So it is with souls. So long as the brain is working the soul is constrained to the brain. Patients under deep anesthesia with no brain activity have reported what was going on around them in the operating room. I recall a case where the patient recognized a doctor whom she had never had a chance to see before and was operating on her knee during heart surgery. She asked why. The answer of course was to obtain a blood vessel to replace one in the heart with. But the important thing is she somehow knew who specifically to ask.

"Those born blind can yet see during near death experiences. That ought to be impossible. Even if the eyes were restored to working in an instant the brain cannot see, but such patients report details and even colors.

"Humans have souls. Don't ever forget that."

AN: I did not make up Michael's ideas or knowledge about souls.