Parvati Patil joins her twin
in this critical mission.
Ministry. 'I wasn’t about to let my sister’s life be endangered by petty inter-departmental rivalry. So now I spend most of my time making sure that everyone’s on the same page, and making sure that the cowboys over in Experimental Charms have actually tested the charms they suggest by the time that they suggest them.'
This isn’t the only role Parvati plays in this mission. A popular scientific Muggle hypothetical considers what happens one twin is sent to space travelling at speeds close to the speed of light (at which point it is hypothesised that time will slow down) while the other stays on Earth. Although no-one has yet achieved such fast space travel—Muggle or Magical—there is still interest in how such a different environment might affect the body, and twins have long been used in muggle science to observe effects over time due to their similarities.
The ideal mode of transport
Apparation was deemed to be too risky, as the only way to test its safety would be to actually try it. Whilst travelling by broomstick would technically be feasible, the distance to the moon, coupled by the top speeds on the market at present, would have made it a journey of a few weeks—not very practical.
The only other viable option (and according to Padma, every man and his puffskein had some ridiculous notion) was the use of a Portkey.
'The workings of Portkeys are astonishingly complex, and even if your readers were to understand them, we’re quite sure the explanation would be too long for your article,' the Portkey office replied to our request for a comment. They did, however, go on to say that the reason they were able to make Portkeys to the moon and not, say, Mars, is because the static human-made landmarks on the moon (like the 1969 US flag) allow them to position the Portkeys correctly.
Criticism & worries
This new wizarding scientific endeavor has not been met with complete praise. Some criticized the endeavour as a publicity stunt to appease the recent calls for muggle integration, and others lashed out at the venture as a flaunting of the tenets of wizarding knowledge.
For many, the the importance of the stars is a basic precept of the wizarding world that helps distinguish us from muggles. For others, they worry about the danger of bringing unknown magical elements to the Earth surface.
Notably, Firenze of the Centaurs of the Forbidden Forest near Hogwarts spoke on behalf of his community: 'The night sky is direly important to the Centaurs and directly involved in the future of the magical races. Though some condemn outright the muggle influence on the night bodies, as a whole, our community urges extreme caution when thinking about witches and wizards travelling and affecting the stars. Should this persist, the Centaurs will not hesitate to bring this issue to the Ministry of Magic.'
The plan continues
Though there are detractors, at the time of this article’s submission, Padma will be landing on the moon and will return, via portkey, over this month. All signs point to this mission being a success. Once she returns, there will be several months of analysing the data she has gathered, testing to ascertain what (if any) physiological changes are caused by space travel and experimenting with the substances she has sampled to determine what, if at all, magical properties they hold. All your correspondents can be certain of at present is the fact that these are two inspirational witches who will not only go down in history as defenders of our people at the Battle of Hogwarts, but will also always be remembered within the annals of wizarding scientific history.
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