Chapter 55.

Space Travel, Part XII: Abilities of Phoenixes

6:52 pm, July 27th, 1993

Harry stared at the data they collected today for phoenix energy and food consumption, with Dad laughing hard and Hermione giggling in the background.

Originally, Harry had estimated phoenixes would consume similar amount of oxygen and food as non-magical birds of the same size. However, Stella proved that assumption wrong once and again.

First, Stella was asked to sleep in the dormant status in the transparent measurement box, which Dad provided the design, Severus transfigured into reality, and fixed by the Stone. The oxygen she consumed and carbon dioxide she produced was only approximately 1/150 of a sleeping non-magical turkey, measured with the same set of device. This meant phoenixes were really efficient in energy conservation, which wasn't that surprising according to the standards of magic, but that was enough to make Professor Michael Verres-Evans' eyeballs drop - he couldn't understand how a bird with slightly higher body temperature than a human being could use so little energy.

The second experiment was to measure the metabolism rate of Stella when she was awake and walked around in the measurement box. This time, the oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production was about one tenth of that of a turkey. Considering the fact that Stella was going on a trip to the Moon, this was a good news.

Then, Harry asked Severus what kind of food phoenixes ate. Severus answered that he had seen Fawkes eating Dumbledore's sweets, while Stella preferred cuttlefish. Harry wanted to ask whether Severus liked cuttlefish, and whether Severus had conveniently omitted certain food items that were attractive to bats, but he decided to ask how much food Stella ate per day instead. To this question, Severus slightly frowned, and answered: "Stella seems to have an almost bottomless stomach. I have once fed her about ten kilograms of cuttlefish, she not only ate all the meat, but also did it without any apparent increase in her weight. And from the looks, she could eat a lot more. However, Stella can also go without eating anything for a whole day."

Harry knew Aguamenti produced water without the disappearance of water from any known lake, and there was a charm named "Arresto Momentum", so the Conservation of Mass, Energy and Momentum Laws of Muggle physics didn't really apply while magic was around. However, this was still somewhat hard for Harry to accept without seeing it with his own eyes.

Harry took out a mechanical balance from his pouch, and asked Stella to stand on it. The balance said 10.4 kilograms. Harry asked a house-elf to get one pound of cuttlefish, and let Severus fed Stella. As the amount of meat on Severus' hand diminished, Harry watched the number on the balance grew slowly from 10.4 to 10.9 kilograms, and suddenly, with a few flaps of wings, the number dropped to 10.5 pounds.

Professor Michael Verres-Evans' eyeballs dropped again, and so were Harry's.

-Stella converted most of the food she just ate into carbon dioxide and water with a few flaps of wings?

That was the only reasonable Harry could come up with, and he had to test this. Therefore, Stella and ten pounds of cuttlefish were put into the transparent measurement box, this time with a larger mechanical balance below the whole system. Stella seemed to enjoy this part of the experiment a lot, for she happily ate the cuttlefish, with occasional flaps of wings. To Harry's slight relief, the weight of the entire system stayed constant, which meant that the Conservation of Mass still applied here. Harry knew this didn't mean much in face of the arbitrary acceptance of Muggle physics by magic, but it was good to know some part of the magical world still ran in similar laws as in the Muggle one.

Just at this moment, Hermione yelled urgently: "Stella, are you comfortable?"

Stella raised her head, curiously cawed, and turned back her food.

Everyone looked at Hermione curiously, and the Girl-Who-Revived explained: "This device was designed to measure slow oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production, so it provided oxygen from the oxygen tank slowly. If my estimation is right, each time Stella flaps wings, the oxygen level in the box should drop to around 1% to 4%, and this could lead to suffocation in seconds for non-magical animals."

And apparently, Stella didn't care about how the stupid respiratory system of non-magical animals worked. She just pecked the cuttlefish, and occasionally flapped her wings, consuming the majority of oxygen in the container.

Harry knew what Stella was doing was not that impressive by the standards of magic - for whatever reason, his pouch could ate heavy books without any increase of weight on a mechanical balance - but this was still amazing.

-And in the name of Atlantis, how do phoenixes store energy?

Professor Michael Verres-Evans was also admiring the golden-red firebird, and said in a mesmerized voice: "Oh my God, Stella is designed for space travel, isn't she?"

Before Harry knew about magic, he had been against the idea that the appearance of any natural animal was "designed" by some higher power. However, the two years in the magical world already taught him better. Wizards had been breeding magical animals according to their arbitrary designs for thousands of years. For example, after reading the Auror interrogation reports on Hagrid, Harry had absolutely no idea how the half-giant cross-bred fire crabs, which were a kind of arthropods with gems on their shells (if Muggle taxonomy meant anything here), with manticores, which were sapient lion-like mammals with human-level intelligence. Harry didn't really want to ponder on the ethic questions on how Hagrid made a proud English-speaking creature to mate with a crab, or whether blast-ended skrewts were sapient.

Therefore, Harry decided to test the bold hypothesis that Dad proposed. After several hours of testing, it seemed that Dad was right: Stella could withstand heat up to 150 degrees Celsius; and she could stay in a container submerged in liquid nitrogen for at least 15 mins, and the inside temperature of the container was around -150 degrees Celsius with firebird's slight heating. Stella could also live with low oxygen level and low vacuum, for 1 Torr of oxygen alone could make Stella happy, and she could withstand vacuum around 0.01 Torr (the lowest pressure Harry's cheap second-hand mechanical vacuum pump could provide) for at least five minutes. And phoenixes obviously didn't suffer from decompression sickness, for Stella could jump back and forth between the vacuum container and atmosphere without any problem.

By the end, everyone agreed: phoenixes were indeed designed for space missions.

-Therefore, the rumor that phoenix came from the Mirror might be true, and Atlanteans probably did want the good and brave phoenix owners to explore the space. And for thousands of years, wizards on Earth didn't figure this out.

Then, a weird idea came to Harry, and he asked: "Professor Snape, can Stella eat some non-traditional food, such as sulfur, and metals?"

Severus, who had been both amazed by Stella's ability and annoyed by Harry's ideas to "torture" the poor creature, stared at Harry as if he would protect his pet from any further cruelty: "Mr. Potter, although sulfur is a potion ingredient, and some stupid Muggles had considered gold ingestion as a good idea, I wouldn't recommend metals to anyone as food."

Harry and Dad had to explain green sulfur bacteria and iron bacteria metabolism to the wide-eyed potioneer. Finally, Severus reluctantly agreed to let Stella try. Harry briefly considered the possible products of sulfur oxidation, and decided that need to be tried in a closed container with a lot of alkali. However, after Stella reluctantly ate some cutted iron wires, and excreted some red solids - possibly iron(III) oxide, Harry guessed he didn't really need to try sulfur. However, there was indeed another reaction that Harry wanted to try. "Err, Professor Snape, can Stella eat magnesium and burn it in nitrogen?"

The bad-tempered phoenix owner seethed through gritted teeth: "Mr. Potter, you have at most two other experiments to run with Stella today, so plan wisely."

Stella cawed in agreement.

Harry supposed that coming up with various seemingly cruel experiments that you wanted to conduct on a phoenix wasn't the best way to consolidate the loyalty from its owner, and the "two experiments" limit was particularly cruel on a Ravenclaw.

Harry stuttered: "Em, ah, Professor Snape, it's time for dinner now. Could you give me sometime to think?"

The moment Severus and Draco disappeared in Stella's flames, Hermione began giggling and Dad began laughing hard: "Oh, Harry, this - this professor does know you!"

Harry tried to focus on the datasheet, and determined that he was the only sane person in the world at this moment.

Note: Has anyone considered the questions that whether Hagrid's mother was capable of consent, and whether Hagrid's father raped her? And to mate a crab, and a creature with human-level intelligence? Seriously?