CHAPTER 122: Fire
"Well done. And please pick up the Elder Wand."
Michael hadn't expected Alastor to speak so soon. "What happened?"
"After the killing curse from this one got one of the others, the remaining two decided to cut their losses and get out."
And Alastor Moody looked into the eyes and mind of Michael Evans-Verres and saw light and fury undampened, far more than enough to call a phoenix in any wizard. He then said to his pouch "Pepper up." "Here, drink this, then hold the Elder Wand like this." It was a gamble whether or not this would work. Far above they saw an orange star neither of them had noticed before. It brightened into an orange fireball as it descended upon them and there was a phoenix. And the phoenix said to Michael "Come!" but Michael could not understand and heard only "Caw!". Yet he reached up to grab hold having only the vaguest guess what was going on.
Alastor Moody was expecting to have to explain it, but when the phoenix was within reach Michael reached so fast Alastor barely had time to grab hold, and they were on fire.
The phoenix took them to the graveyard where Harry Potter had once stood and faced the Dark Lord. This time they were days too late. The phoenix cried out mournfully and seemed for a moment to want to leave, but Michael spoke "Phoenix, I will indeed come to this place and face the Dark Lord and pull my son from death, but I must go my way. See, we are already too late, yet not too late. Will you come with me?"
"Caw!"
At once they were on fire. The fire let out inside inside an optics shop in London. There was no trouble at all getting the shop-owner's attention. Indeed there was trouble calming her down instead. As soon as her voice was at a reasonable volume Michael reached into his left pocket and pulled out a handful of ten bob notes. "We need a bottle of anti-reflective coating immediately."
"I'm sorry, sir. We don't sell that stuff to just anyone."
Alastor Moody had had enough. He reached into a robe pocket and pulled out a Galleon. "This is pure gold. An entire ounce for a bottle. I doubt it costs you half that, but as you can see we are in an incredible hurry."
"All right mister you got yourself a deal."
Not three minutes after that they were back on the space station with their bottle of anti-glare coating. Michael had given a slightly wrong name, but most people will bother to figure out what you mean for enough gold.
The installation of the anti-glare coating on the inside of the windows was the simple process of letting some out of the bottle, transfiguring it into light vegetable oil, hovering it against the window, letting it flow, and finiting it back into the coating it is. Well, simple compared to what they had done so far. Even Minerva wasn't underestimating transfiguration's ability anymore.
Then the process had to be repeated on the outside. That took a good deal longer. It was at this point difficult to say whether Michael or the phoenix was more restless to get started. The phoenix did not count this as having been won yet, yet knowing the limits of its judgment had seen fit to withhold it until it could learn what Michael had seen worthy to risk his life to do. The phoenix song cured pepper-up backlash just fine so he was alert and ready for the action that wasn't ready yet.
On receiving a signal for Mad-Eye, Minerva gathered up Hermoine and the astronaut. Before leaving Petuna Evans-Verres, she handed her a portkey and said "I am sorry, but you cannot come with us. I leave you here in the safest of places, but if the worst should happen, this will take you into a long- disused warehouse in Edinburgh." Then there was a pop and that was that.
"Gleep?" Hermoine reacted to the phoenix first.
"Seriously," Minerva began, "I don't know what is going on here-
Pop, and Alastor Moody was back inside with them.
"nor what inclines a phoenix to pick a muggle-
"Light and fury and pepper-up" Alastor cut in.
"Let's go!" Michael said.
Minerva sighed, pointed her wand at the mounting point on the floor, and said "Alohomara." There was a jerk and they were loose, slowly tumbling. Hermoine put her hand on one of the brooms and the tumbling stopped. The task of star-hunting went fairly quickly, but Sagittarious was behind the Earth so they had a few minutes wait.
The astronaut took his seat with the pair of sticks providing the full twelve degrees of freedom required for the human mind to be able to handle spaceflight. Michael had insisted on a set of cold gas thrusters for contingencies. They lacked any computer so the sticks wired directly from a car battery to the release valves on compressed oxygen tanks. Nitrogen would have been less risky, but they had spare oxygen bottles.
"That muggle", Alastor continued from earlier, "stared down a Death Eater without any apparent way of defending himself. I don't think he knew the device he held would catch bolts either. And that was before the phoenix came to him." Speaking like this would theoretically prevent a certain person from gaining too much knowledge if he hadn't been listening to it for days already. But some people continue futile tasks.
"That's the most Gryffindor thing I've heard in a long time."
Sagittarious was coming up over the horizon, but the ISS was in the way. "Starboard thrusters." Michael was rather too alert, but the phoenix was obviously to blame for that one.
Then Alastor Moody took a steel plug, put one end against the warp core, and applied his wand. And there was a quiet hum and by and by the stars gathered together in front of them and grew dim. An unforseen difficulty. As they got closer they would have to stop from time to time to get their bearings. Minerva McGonagall wavered, but Alastor said "Take heart, for I know how we shall be shown our way back."
On the second day, Minerva got out the bezors and passed them around to everyone. Hermoine didn't need one, but Minerva didn't know that. Slowly the forward facing window became bright as they approached the core of the Milky Way. Still they pressed on, being surprisingly sure of their range for using a wristwatch for timing and very little to steer by.
NASA HQ in Houston had just received a call from Kamikoa in Japan and things were buzzing. Seems they had for the third time in a week tracked a neutrino source across the sky. Ok, the most likely explanation for once is a fluke, but twice starts to sound like a real thing, and this was the third time. They had withheld even then. The director prepared to brief the president again on some nonsense. Some of the engineers thought they had worked out what it had to be, but that was preposterous. On the other hand, maybe now was the time to take another look at the 1980 warp drive equation and see what could be predicted to be observed if somebody was operating one.