The night spent in sleeping bags in the Great Hall did nothing to increase Richard's fondness for Sirius Black. It did, however, lead him to conclude that there had to be more than one secret passage into Hogwarts. After all, Snape had almost certainly placed Alarm Charms on the passage behind the one-eyed witch.
To make sure he was right, Richard quietly approached the Weasley twins off to one side of the Great Hall.
"All right, lads, out with it. What other secret passages do you know about? You've got a map of the castle."
For appearance's sake, the twins hesitated for a moment. Then, after exchanging a glance, they decided to lay all their cards on the table for Grosvenor. Fred spoke first.
"We know about seven secret passages. Four of them are useless now. You already know about the passage behind the one-eyed witch. Filch knows about another three, which means the professors do too. We're certain they've got Alarm Charms on them."
"Fair enough. So that leaves three more passages."
"Yeah," Fred continued. "There's one behind a large mirror on the fifth floor, but that one's useless too because it's blocked by rubble."
Richard reckoned that a wizard could clear the blockage easily enough if he really wanted to. Only laziness and the availability of alternatives kept wizards from using a known secret passage.
"I'd still like to know how to open it."
"Richie," George said, "we'll make you a copy of the map with all the passages we know about and write down the passwords."
"Excellent." Grosvenor looked pleased. "What about the other two?"
Fred answered this time.
"Back when we were still first-years, George and I found a secret passage behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy. And the last one should be right beneath the Whomping Willow. In theory, it leads to the Shrieking Shack. Only we don't know how to open it. Besides, the Willow itself makes it impossible to get close. Anyone who tries risks getting seriously hurt."
"Which made us very curious," George cut in, taking over. "How did the Marauders use that passage? You wouldn't happen to know, Richard?"
"There must have been a way. Thanks, lads. I'll be waiting for that map. By the way, how are your new inventions coming along?"
"Oh!" Fred brightened. "We came up with loads of new stuff over the summer. Want to see?"
"Of course, gentlemen."
***
The next day, Richard threw himself into a frenzy of activity. He wrote enormous letters and spoke with Arthur Weasley over the wizardphone.
The whole purpose of this activity was to arrange the recruitment of Soviet physicists who, because of the problems in their country, had either lost their jobs or were working for miserable salaries. Grosvenor was particularly interested in scientists from the Soviet U-70 (proton synchrotron) at Protvino, near Moscow.
The wizards at Grosvenor's Workshop were given the task of using particle-accelerator technology as the basis for developing a compact sublight drive for a spacecraft and an extremely compact railgun of a very particular design—with the weapon taking priority.
Magic made it possible to construct a miniature particle accelerator. Under ordinary circumstances, accelerating protons to near-light speed would require spending no less than ten billion dollars on the construction of a particle accelerator. Wizards, on the other hand, would need only minimal funding: a handful of Galleons for materials, with everything else going towards wages.
Suppose you took a tube. Magic could reinforce it to incredible strength. The space inside the tube could then be expanded. Turning thirty metres into thirty kilometres was no problem for wizards. Nor would creating immensely powerful artificial magnetic fields with magic present any particular difficulty. Better yet, maintaining those fields would require no electricity whatsoever. Practically anything could be used as reaction mass.
At first glance, it might seem that magic violated the fundamental principle expressed by E=mc². But that was not the case at all. The reason lay in the mass of the Higgs boson.
If the Higgs boson had turned out to be light—one hundred and fifteen gigaelectronvolts—then the universe would have been supersymmetric. In other words, there would still be only one universe, but it would contain more than merely matter and antimatter. The Standard Model would have a supersymmetric counterpart, with fermions and bosons effectively changing places: instead of bosons organising fermions, it would be the other way round.
If the Higgs boson had turned out to be heavy—one hundred and forty gigaelectronvolts—then the multiverse theory would have been correct, with countless universes in which virtually anything could happen.
But the Higgs boson had a mass of exactly one hundred and twenty-five gigaelectronvolts! And that meant that both antimatter and the multiverse existed simultaneously.
Knowing this led to the conclusion that, whatever happened, the fundamental laws of physics remained intact. If something was lacking when magic was performed, it would simply be borrowed from the surrounding world or from parallel universes.
All of this ultimately led Richie to conclude that, with the support of physicists, wizards could create—without any serious difficulty or expense—a drive roughly thirty metres long, give or take, capable of accelerating a spacecraft to two hundred and ninety-nine thousand seven hundred and ninety-two kilometres per second. Moreover, it could be made reversible, allowing the same drive to be used for deceleration.
The original idea of travelling by means of portal jumps was extremely promising. But for relatively short journeys—for example, within a single star system—such a method was not particularly suitable. A sublight drive, on the other hand, combined with the same sort of magic that allowed the Knight Bus to avoid obstacles, would make travel within a star system both fast and safe.
(End of Chapter)
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