A Star Broom: Fantasy or Reality?
Through the whole history of the global magic community, the most coveted dream has been to reach to the stars! Wizards and witches, because of their abilities to perform Levitation magic on themselves or on brooms, have fulfilled their desire to fly through the air, but space remained out of bounds for millennia. Step by step, one by one, magic inventions have been building a stairway to heaven. The first Apparition to the Moon in the 14th century, performed by the extravagant witch Selena Black, nearly ended in disaster because of the lack of air. The Bubble-Head Charm was not enough to keep air around the witch’s whole body with normal pressure.
The invention of the Unbreakable Charm provided a solution to this problem, but created another, the absolute impossibility to get the witch or wizard themselves out of the stillsuit. After a lot of fails, wizards stopped all attempts to Apparate into space and started to work on brooms powerful enough to bring wizards and witches outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
With some feeling of shame, the wizarding community achieved success after the Muggles. The first broomnaut, Herbert Binns, on his Thunderbolt X, made three circles around the Earth in 1963. But after first success, the Wizarding World broke a lot of records before the “techno” Muggles. The Wizarding Air and Space Agency (WASA) sent an expedition to the Moon in 1967, which brought back some lunar soil for the potions, to Mars in 1982, which found some traces of spells on its surface and to Pluto, which brought nothing but magical photos. The last two expeditions became possible owing to the genius of Solomon Bruerman, who invented the Apparition Broom (A-Broom).
Of course, High-Mag as the new generation of young wizard and witches named such kind of magical research, was not only supported by private investors, but also controlled by the Ministry for Magic because of potentially dangerous uses. But the new challenge of WASA, whether to send their new A-Broom to the nearest stars or not, has started a very interesting discussion between “paranoids“ and “hilarious idiots“, as sides have labelled each other.
The wizarding community has never denied that magic through the ages has carried a burden of responsibility for the Earth and humanity. Whose side will we find among the stars? A green Voldemort and a violet Grindelwald, as “paranoids” claims? Or a blue Dumbledore and a golden Harry Potter, as optimists hope for? Will this trip turn out to be for the greater good or for greatest evil? Alas, should we sit on the Earth and wait when these hypothetical V&G or D&HP come here by themselves?
Anyway, I think that for the first trip, the best choice of suit should be the Invisibility Cloak.
