The stone floor Buzz is standing on looks mostly intact, if worn by time and weather, but the ceiling is missing large chunks where he can see clear through to the overcast sky. There's no wind, and an eerie silence. This corridor goes on for a length proportional to its great breadth and height before ending in a right turn at one end and a T at the other.

Hmm, atmosphere, gravity, and stoneworks……a rocky planet, or perhaps an artificial construct of comparable size.

With his wrist telemetry still unresponsive, though, there are no readouts to determine what the sinister-looking clouds of this tempest world are made of. It is all calm now, but despite his suit’s thick trillium-carbide mesh, Buzz briefly imagines the brittle chill of a methane snowstorm, the hiss of an acid monsoon. He must take cover, and fast.

Buzz creeps quickly and alertly along the wall's lengthy expanse, heading for the T junction, hoping to see a spot with better sky cover, and wary of any structural weaknesses or traps that the ancient masters of this place may have left behind.

A creature emerges around the corner and stalks towards him. Perfectly silent, cat-shaped, as tall as Buzz at the shoulder, its fur mottled grey and black with a tufted tail like a lion's. It blinks its great yellow eyes and moves closer.

Reflex takes over before Buzz can think. With practiced speed, he engages the stunner at his forearm, thrusts it toward the hulking, grizzled monstrosity, and squeezes, expecting to release a bright slashing beam of positronic energy that will startle or scare off the beast, if not paralyze it outright.

The creature finds this interesting! It trots up and taps the glowy thing with a paw the size of Buzz's face, revealing four presently sheathed needle-sharp claws.

Confound it! Weapons offline, too. “Nice kitty …” he quips wryly.

Even in a playful mood, this beast could maim Buzz with a single swipe of its paw. And Buzz is not especially keen to hang around and learn whether the species hunts in packs. Time to improvise an alternative.

He begins circling the silent hunter slowly, warily, avoiding direct eye contact and trying to line up with its exposed flank—there! In an instant, he lunges toward it and vaults up above the startled creature’s back, preparing to hold on for the ride of his life.

The creature goes BOING straight up, lands gracefully, then flomps over sideways.

Buzz, on the other hand, lands ... less than gracefully.

"Looks like we've got a live one," he manages. Buzz grins despite himself as he scrambles to face down the beast a second time. What a wily creature!

It thwaps its tail halfheartedly and stares at him.

In its languid, recumbent pose, the beast does not seem quite as threatening. Buzz eyes the sprawled expanse of tufted fur. Impressive, really, the graceful way it moves, how it landed so adroitly despite its bulking frame, and so easily outmaneuvered him. Those savage citrine eyes look merely curious now, watchful and maybe a bit disdainful.

Not quite daring to breathe, Buzz takes one step toward the creature and then another, his hand raised in solicitation.

He will be graciously permitted to pet the creature's fluffy head.

There's a sound of multiple sets of footsteps approaching from around the corner.

Footsteps! People! No way to judge yet whether this is a favorable development.

Do I dare make myself known to them?

But of course there is only one way forward! I am a space ranger at heart, and I know that fortune favors the bold. I can only hope that theirs is not a hostile race, and that the universal translator survived my unlucky descent.

They're not hostile; they're puzzled

And curious 

And maybe a little suspicious. 

"What's that thing?"

"Might be Fred and George's latest experiment."

Buzz nearly stumbles backward as he takes in their staggering height and unsettlingly swift loping gait.

Galloping gorbnits…a race of cloaked giants! … Nature, as she so often does, breaching her own absolute decrees with a wink—their mere existence flouts the mathematician's famed square-cube law!

Are they…holographic illusions, perhaps? Mechanical constructs? Low-grav bio-organisms? Well, it makes no difference to protocol. With stately coolness, Buzz turns both palms up in greeting and addresses these strange arrivals.

"Greetings. I am a traveler from a far away land. Although my appearance may seem disturbing to you, my mission is peaceful. I require some assistance understanding your world. Are you able to understand me?"

"Blimey. I'm not sure if I can understand you or not."

"It sounds like something out of muggle television."

(The part-kneazle cat has lost interest and wandered off.)

At least the translator seems (mostly?) functional, and insofar as Buzz can cold read alien expressions, the newcomers seem interested but not upset. In his line of work, you’d call that a good day.

Buzz looks up at them, and at the gleaming-grey fragments of sky beyond that impossibly distant ceiling. “First, I want to know how safe we are to speak here. What should I know about any immediate danger you or I might be in? Although we may not be in any danger at all, any information you share could be useful.”

"If we're going to have a conversation we should find somewhere more private. Don't want the 'Inquisitorial Squad' finding us." He makes 'Inquisitorial Squad' sound like something you'd find on the bottom of your shoe. "We're not far from." Head-tilt the other two seem to find meaningful.

"Lead on," replies Buzz.

No doubt he moves slowly by their standards, but otherwise an expedition should be just fine; the terrain here looks flat and easy to traverse by foot—even picking his way across the grikes, Buzz bets he can comfortably handle a standard day’s trek like this if he needs to.

Yeah no he's getting grabbed around the middle and carried. This decision may seem a bit less rude when they go around the corner and come upon a staircase whose individual steps are almost as tall as Buzz is. And also it briefly becomes impossible to look straight at it and then goes back to normal but pointing in a different direction.

Snap judgment here says this development is useful, not threatening or particularly out of his control. Buzz'll take advantage of the aerial overview. The cloaked stairwell was a surprise.

One floor up, the giant teenagers walk back and forth down the same stretch of hallway three times and then open a door that was toooootally there the whole time guys, promise.

Inside is--not ruins. It's a cozy sitting room with four chairs, one much smaller than the others and with a Buzz-sized ladder leading up to it. There's a set of cabinets on the wall, some at a reasonable height and size for Buzz and some at a reasonable height for the others.

Intriguing.

"So," says the mildly scarred one as he sets Buzz down in the appropriate chair, "I don't suppose you'll just tell us what you are, who made you, or what you're trying to do?"

(Oh, they’ve got dedicated facilities for hosting aliens; that’s informative.)

"Certainly. I am Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger, Star Command. Due to a … uh, currently unidentified anomaly … I was diverted off course to your world. My current objectives are to determine my galactic position, establish subspace-relay contact with my command, and secure departure from this world to resume my duties."

There's no way all of those are real words.

"So you're saying you're a space alien. Who looks just like a human but tiny and made of plastic." She turns to the others. "I think he might be like a portrait, but of someone who never existed."

"There's portraits of what people think Merlin looked like. Not many, though; they're all tossers."

"What is Star Command?"

A tiny suspicion, sharpened by years of experience, begins to worm its way into Buzz’s thoughts. So they’ve made interstellar contact, but they supposedly haven’t heard of the Galactic Alliance? How is that possible? Are they pretending—trying to confirm he's a real ranger? Is it a bug with the translator? And on that note—plastics? Seriously?

“Uh, quick correction—I think my translator might be malfunctioning—this covering is not my body. It's a suit which contains and protects my body from the harsh conditions of space and of other worlds. Space ranger suits are engineered for protection and durability from the finest state-of-the-art materials—ancient petrochemical polymers wouldn’t cut it.” Buzz makes a fair attempt at a conciliatory grin.

“As for Star Command, they are my commanding authority. As you may know, we are explorers, scientists, peacekeepers, educators, and diplomats, representing a force for good in the vast emptiness of space. Do you have a hierarchical ruling body around here yourselves, or are you some kind of autonomous collective, decentralized tribe, ascended decision theorists, egalitarian utopia, hive mind, et cetera?”

Privately, Buzz hopes he hasn’t crash-landed in another egalitarian utopia. They’ve all either got a diabolical secret, or else some hegemonizing outsiders that they’re too peaceful or decentralized to fight back against. Such an object lesson. Buzz muses grimly. Really makes you think.

"Your face looks like plastic too but that's beside the point. Hogwarts is run by--"

"Professor Dumbledore, but he's not here right now, so Umbridge is claiming to be Headmistress."

"And the country's run by the Minister of Magic, who's elected and also a git."

"A democracy!" How unexpectedly civilized. "The system that ensures that everyone's complaining, instead of just the chosen few. Well then, according to protocol, I need to speak with someone in charge who can authorize me to stay and possibly grant me temporary resident status. Who is the top government official you can directly put me in contact with?"

She opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again.

" . . . I need to ask you some more questions first. Can you say some things about your own subjective experiences?"

Buzz blinks. “Ah, of course—I’m a surprise visitor asking to see a government official. Naturally, I intend to cooperate with whatever vetting process your custom demands.”

Some sort of biometric lie detector, he’d bet, glancing around the room. A well hidden one, too, apparently. The caginess of his hosts suggests that he might currently be talking to higher authorities than he first supposed; no wonder they're reluctant to answer before they know more.

“Let's see…externally, my body has four conductive senses and one radiant sense, with the radiant one being predominant for my species. My suit normally extends and filters this sensory range to ecologically typical levels, and I'm able to see and interact with you comfortably in the current ambient conditions. I'm in what appears to be a receiving room with a wall of storage lockers. I see three individuals, seated. Biometrics are currently inaccessible so no exact numbers, but I can tell you my core temperature feels close to the usual five-fifty-eight °R, breathing and pulse slightly elevated above normal due to a recent xenofauna encounter. Finally, in any case, I can assure you I am who I say I am—you can verify my service number and biotag with Star Command—and that my purpose here is exactly as I report.”

"And how would one go about contacting Star Command?"

He struggles to keep his expression neutral. “Uh, I expect you'd use subspace radio to contact headquarters, assuming you don’t have any more local star command presence.”

Another one of those strange questions.

Hmmmm.

“If there's a problem with the galactic registry, I can transfer the diplomatic bands to your console myself and you can handshake after you’ve made contact.”

"So, the thing is, this planet doesn't actually have contact with any other planets. And subspace radio isn't a real thing. I think you were created on Earth, recently, by magic, with fake memories. I'm sorry."

"Also you really shouldn't talk to the government. They're not--whatever you're expecting."

Buzz permits himself a brief moment of silence for the idea that these extraterrestrials might have been straightforwardly helpful: Here's a star-schooner for you, Captain. they’d have said. Nearest Command outpost is a few parsecs over that direction—best of luck to you, and to all who serve. Really, it’s the least we could do.

Instead, it’s ranger business as usual today, apparently. What had they said? We do not speak to other worlds. Oh, we’ve never heard of subspace radio. We must meet in private; we don’t want them finding us here. Don’t speak to our democratically-elected government.

Yep, all straight from the insurrectionist playbook. Time to nod along until the moment comes to spring into action.

"Fair enough. I might be a clone or construct with a lifetime of implanted memories— it happens. Granting that possibility, I must insist that I be treated in any case as a full person, and not as chattel, criminal, subsapient, sacrifice, totem, or science experiment.

So long as that's clear, I'm prepared to honor your request to avoid government contact at this stage. Although announcing myself and complying with local rule of law is standard procedure to avoid an interstellar incident, I can understand that the political situation here is…more complex…and I don't want to act recklessly if I have an opportunity to make a more informed decision instead."

He lets the tacit request for information hang in the air. Let them come to it.

"Harry's right--oh, we never introduced ourselves, did we? I'm Hermione Granger and these are Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. Anyway, if you go to the Ministry they will not treat you as a full person. Especially if you can't use magic. They'd probably obliviate you--wipe your memories--at best, and decide you're a dangerous artifact and destroy you at worst."

"I should explain more about magic. Some people--some humans--are wizards and witches, which means we can do magic." She pulls a stick out of her sleeve and a piece of parchment out of her bag, and waves the one at the other. The parchment turns red, floats into the air, folds itself into a little paper boat, and then undoes those transformations and tucks itself back in the bag. "Wizards and witches nearly always have magic children, but sometimes muggles--that's people without magic--have magic children too. There are various magical beings whose whole species are magic but I don't think any of them have governments per se except the merfolk, and they live underwater and don't like visitors. Any questions so far?" She sounds like a teacher giving an introductory lecture, and also like this and not the earlier conversation is her natural mode of being.

"Well, that's new." he observes.

Everyone has heard stories about ascended utopias—worlds that have eliminated inequality and material scarcity through unfathomable technological prowess. This benighted cloak-and-dagger warzone clearly isn’t that. But nonetheless these people have tools that can reshape matter at will.

... the mysterious and ancient minds that assembled it, only to abandon it to time.

Scavengers, then. Devices with powers beyond mortal imagination, found in the ruins of a sublimed civilization, passed down through some sort of primogeniture and jealously guarded from the unworthy.

Star Command must learn about this—if Buzz can set up camp here and do some covert intel gathering, some gadget from this place may hold the key to defeating the dread Emperor Zurg.

"I think I follow so far. What do you know about the colossal stonework we're in?"

"It's not collosal, you're just short."

"I dunno, it's bigger than any of the muggle schools I went to."

She flaps a hand at them dismissively, but smiles while she does it. "Hogwarts is a school for magical children. It's a hidden castle--does it look like it's in ruins to you, or like it's in good repair but the geometry of the hallways doesn't make sense?"

A political stronghold, training facility, and potential trove of ancient weapons, all cloaked from outsiders like him—makes sense; it's the perfect rebel base, really. He wonders idly if the children here are giant-sized as well.

“I saw only ruins, exposed to the elements, before you brought me here. What about the—Inquisitorial Squad, issuing patrols of this area—are they a state-backed police force? A rogue militia? What do they see this place as?”

Harry scoffs at "state-backed police force".

"They're other magic students like us, except Umbridge has appointed them as her enforcers, and if any of them saw you they'd bring you to her in the hope of getting whoever made you in trouble."

Students like—?!…oh, right. Especially among hereditary nobility, “children” can include adult descendants, too, not just youths. Buzz chides himself—why would they even want to arm youngsters with weapons surpassing mortal understanding? “Training camp for adult inheritors" makes so much more sense as a gloss.

“Okay, I see. Is Umbridge a wizard, then? Is this place hidden from her? Also, does her position as commandant come with broader political power? Does she have any authority from or alliance with the current administration—the Ministry?”

"Everyone here is a wizard except you, and yes she works for the Ministry. She and Fudge are trying to prevent anyone from admitting that the dark wizard Voldemort has returned."

"Everyone except you and the elves, but yes."

By the sound of it, Voldemort is presumably some sort of disgraced former bureaucrat in the ruling party: fled the country after a scandal, unwisely came back before the sting had faded from public memory, that kind of thing. Gossip column stuff. Buzz files the factoid away in case it turns out to be relevant—for whatever reason, revolutionaries love to pore over the day-to-day routines and missteps of the aristocracy.

"And what about you? What do you and your faction hope to achieve? You can speak plainly; I know you have grievances with the current administration."

"Oh, y'know, make everyone aware he isn't dead and I'm not a delusional liar, prevent him from taking over magical Britain, get through the year with nobody being murdered. Normal things. Oh, important context, he kidnapped me last June. I survived, obviously."

"That was, what, the fourth time he tried to kill you?"

"Yeah."

"It's so strange explaining this to someone who doesn't know already--Voldemort tried to conquer magical Britain fifteen years ago, killed Harry's parents when he was a baby, tried to kill him but it went wrong somehow and he was disembodied for a while. And still trying to kill Harry. Now he's back, but he isn't attacking openly, and the Ministry wants to believe everything is fine."

Okay, that sounds more like a nefarious villain—possibly even an underling of Zurg, though Buzz dearly hopes the cruel hand of the empire hasn't reached this secluded trove.

To be sure, the story sounds a little dressed up. Never mind the idioms like “disembodied”, “dark wizard”, and “elves”. (And Buzz is absolutely not going to try to unravel all the superstitions and folk understandings of a bunch of warring tribes in possession of transcendental tech—not right away, at least. If their true meaning is relevant, he fully expects it’ll be revealed at appropriate intervals.)

No, the trouble is that these rebels claim to have both an orderly society ruled by popular vote—one they hope to overthrow—and a sensational dynastic struggle involving infanticide, murder, kidnapping, and colonization. They admit that Voldemort’s party controls the Ministry through popular approval and say he’s a brutal tyrant who took power by force. But why, then, was he not arrested for crimes against the state upon his return? To hear the rebels tell it, the government considers him an embarrassment, not a menace to society!

Maybe there’s a little truth in all of it, somehow. Or maybe it’s just self-serving rhetoric from a band of desperate insurgents. That’s people for you, no matter where in the galaxy you go: Everyone's got a struggle. Everyone tells their story as best they can. As a ranger, you learn that the decent thing to do about it costs nothing.

“I’m sorry for your hardship,” Buzz says, and he means it.

The real stakes here are getting actionable intel on this wondertech and a report on the general lay of the land; everything else is just cosmic background.

Big picture, what is he still really missing? Hmmm…Ancient ruins shielded from outsiders and used as training grounds, warring tribes of “wizard” aristocrats, a band of anti-democratic insurrectionists, power struggles with the sitting government—oh.

“Can you tell me about the people who don't have access to magic? Do they tend to sympathize more with the current administration or with groups like yours? And I've been assuming they outnumber people who can use magic—is that right?”

"Muggles don't know that magic exists. Wizards have been hiding their existence for centuries; except for the parents of muggleborn wizard children everyone thinks magic is just a legend. That's why the Ministry might want to wipe your memory--if they decide you're human, then you're a muggle, which means you know too much. And yes, muggles outnumber wizards thousands to one."

Oh, quarks. It was obvious all along, wasn’t it? Buzz has careened the wrong way into another town-with-a-dark-secret scenario.

As insight clears the cosmic dust, he sees the inevitable choice that awaits him: with such reality-altering technology, do you break the secret so that the whole world can enjoy it, or is its destructive power too great for an entire species to wield, grav-bound or not? Is this the reason why the wreckage of Hogwarts lies strewn across the planet’s surface like a monument to hubris?

If the technologies hidden in the bowels of this backwater world would be the ruin of galaxies, then Buzz must not allow them to continue to exist, not even to aid Star Command. So much for a silver bullet in the fight against Zurg— not a single relic could remain for him to return home with.

And what of these mind-wipe devices? There is still so much Buzz doesn’t know. He notes with a prickle of unease that he can’t remember the details of how he arrived on this planet—typical crash-landing retro-amnesia, he had assumed. But what if there’s more to it than that?

Ever since this conversation began, a decision has been ticking away in the back of Buzz’s skull. He makes up his mind.

These rebels may be tendentious, lawless scavengers caught up in a bigger conflict than they know, but they have offered him their shelter and leveled with him about their grievances. He doesn’t buy their patchwork description of reality, and he certainly doesn’t endorse their sedition, but he does believe they intend to be honest, and that they’ll try to help him for as long as he doesn't threaten their cause.

Life demands risk, and he's known far worse allies one could take a gamble on.

“It doesn’t sit right with me,” Buzz says. “To keep muggles in the dark about what their elected officials are doing, or that a privileged few would hoard the dividends of a miraculous art. On the other hand, I’ll be honest: I also think an uprising is a bloody and uncivilized way to try to right the wrongs of your government. If you want to send me on my way knowing I disagree with your principles on this, I’ll go peacefully, and I won’t betray your secret—but it doesn’t seem right not to level with you, given what I’m going to ask you.”

"Wait, are you saying you do want to tell the Muggles about magic, or you don't?"

"Uh. To be clear. You-Know-Who isn't trying to take over wizarding Britain so he can tell the Muggles about magic. He hates muggles. And muggleborns."

"I think even if you don't want to explain what you're planning, you should explain what you think all the people we've told you about want. Because I think you might be wrong about some of them, and I don't want you to get killed because I explained things badly."

“I don’t know.” Buzz admits, looking at Harry. “I can only guess at the extent of your magic’s powers, given what little I’ve seen. It seems they could be used as tools for great prosperity, or weapons of terrible evil. I would say that basic fairness demands that this prosperity, this secret, be shared with the world. A people’s government must not keep secrets from its people. But if that secret knowledge could tear apart this fragile existence—”

Then it would be better to destroy this magic, every last bit of it, than let inequity stand or risk the universe falling to ruin.

“—then I would want to find another way.”

And now the tricky part. Buzz meets the gaze of each of these rebel giants in turn, hoping to communicate some sense of his true intent across the vast and starless gulfs that separate the minds of different species. He knows what he's got to ask; no use orbiting around it.

“Tell me about magic,” he says. “I want to see more of it. I want to understand what you can do with it, what you suspect others can do with it, what people choose to do with it, how far it can reach. I know that I'm an outsider. I know that magical knowledge is at the root of your identity and one of your most precious and closely-guarded secrets on this planet. I’m asking because I want to understand the situation—the danger—we’re in.”

Buzz has found Hermione Granger's one weakness: an earnest request for an explanation of an interesting subject.

"Magic is amazing. Oh wow, where to start--wizarding children generally start doing magic by accident around age five or so, usually when they feel strong emotions, then they get wands at eleven and go to school and learn to control it. Everyone gets a wand that works for them; using someone else's makes everything harder and less reliable. Hogwarts offers classes in Charms, Defense, Herbology, Potions, Transfiguration, Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, and Divination, plus some classes that don't involve doing spells directly but are useful context. Some of those are easier to explain than others without getting into the theory side--Transfiguration is the study of changing the nonmagical properties of objects, or to put it another way changing one object into another. Charms is for effects like levitating things or cleaning them or giving objects or people temporary magical properties. Potions is about creating substances, usually liquids, that have magical effects when touched or consumed. Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures are about safely handling and caring for magical plants and animals respectively.  Defense is things like shielding yourself or stunning or disarming opponents, or protecting yourself from dark creatures. Runes is focused on semi-permanently enchanting objects by inscribing magically resonant patterns on them. Arithmancy is mathematics as applied to magic, it's how new spells and item enchantments are designed. Divination is about predicting the future but it's like magic as a whole, you basically have to be born with the talent for it to get anywhere. . . . I feel like I'm forgetting something."

"Brooms, 'Mione. Everyone learns to fly on a broom at eleven."

"Right, yes, flying," she says, turning slightly pink. "And next year we'll learn how to apparate--that's disappearing from one place and appearing instantaneously in another."

Buzz is surprised—and rather touched—that these sorcerers would share their tribe’s privileged secret arts with a traveler from another world. With a practiced ear, he attempts to absorb the impromptu lecture as a whole—not snagging on the details, but trying to perceive the general structure, the crucial elements, the surprise.

“I’m grateful.” he says, looking thoughtful. “I have a few questions that I expect are more basic than you’re used to thinking about. They may even sound funny or nonsensical, which is just fine. Answer whatever you feel comfortable with.”

“First, how far and how fast can your magic go—can your will affect things that are farther away than you can see, for example? Second, what is the greatest scale of destruction you can imagine a single determined person being capable of with magic as an aid—can your magic be used to kill? Third, how much overlap is there between the magical expertise or magical tools different people have available? Do you think other people know different magic than you do? Do you know of any other magical devices besides wands, brooms, and Hogwarts? Fourth, what happens to a person's wand when they die?”

"Someone could apparate or portkey farther than they can see, but not affect things that far away without going there first. They could drop an object or cast a spell and then apparate away, maybe. People in different countries learn different ways of doing things but it's mostly the same things? Flying carpets instead of brooms, different runic alphabets, that sort of thing. There are more kinds of magical device than I could possibly list, but Hogwarts is one of the greatest in the world. Dead wizards and witches are usually buried with their wands, but sometimes they're passed on to descendants-using a relative's wand doesn't work as well as a new wand but usually better than a stranger's."

"And--Magic can be used to kill, yes. I think if someone tried very hard and was very clever they could kill a lot of people at once. Fewer than the worst muggle weapons but still a lot. And there are certain magical creatures that are even more dangerous, but too stupid to be more dangerous than a dark wizard on their own and nearly impossible to control."

". . . Are you wrong about dark wizards or am I wrong about muggle weapons?"

"Second thing."

Well, that’s one relief—this unearthed technology hasn’t surpassed the weapons they’ve managed to develop on their own. In fact, it sounds like they mostly use it for holograms, shields, antigravity, and teleportation—and Buzz, for one, won’t be giving them any more ideas. Just think of how Hermione reshaped a scrap of paper at a molecular level, with no apparent effort!

Kind of a surprise that they bury their wands, though: burying the dead is fairly common in grav-bound species, including with sentimental or powerful objects, but Buzz had assumed that their high-powered heirlooms would be too rare and costly to give up, and too important for their noble lie. (In retrospect, this was a little foolish: with enough books, a society could maintain the illusion that literacy requires noble blood without depending on physical hand-me-downs; why shouldn't these giants do the same with magical skill?)

Notably, this does raise the possibility that he could recover an armload of decommissioned wands from some burial site. While he expects there's a taboo, the difference between grave robbing and respectable archaeology is often a matter of timing. Buzz files the idea away for later consideration.

One more danger to understand then. “And mind wiping? How does it work? Is there a way to detect whether it’s been done?”

"It can do either a span of time up to the moment of obliviation, generally not extending back further than a few minutes, or all the memories of a particular subject--or, in a few rather horrible cases, all of someone's memories entirely."

(Sympathetic glance at Ron.)

"In generally causes a minute of disorientation, and can be done to an unconscious subject, but careful introspection will be enough to detect it in most cases unless the caster is very skilled and implants false memories to cover the gaps."

So the price of failure is his mind — to forget, and be forgotten, in the ruins of a strange land, never to complete another mission. If it would mean abandoning my duty as a ranger, Buzz thinks to himself, it’d be better to be destroyed outright!

It's a sobering prospect. No use dreading it, though. After all, I still live—and I know who I am. I’m Buzz Lightyear of Star Command!

“Well, I definitely haven’t lost all my memories, but I am experiencing some retroamnesia. Based on your report, there's a chance this may be more than just the aftereffects of an emergency landing. It may be that I discovered something…some secret knowledge, perhaps…that my enemies did not want known. I wonder whether I've been on this world for longer than I realize. Perhaps far longer. Captured and mind-wiped, but not destroyed, if this is your planet’s custom.”

I should get my bearings, Buzz realizes. I need to confirm where and when I am.

A quick poke at his suit's astrolocator — unresponsive. Yeah, figures. Presumably if the suit could do deuterium beacon orientation, its subspace radio would also work. It'll have to be manual fallback, then.

“Say—you talk familiarly about the existence of other planets, even if you haven't contacted them. Does this mean your people have pierced the veil of clouds that surrounds this world? I don’t expect I’ll be going anywhere soon, but I’d like some idea of where I am, and a star chart might help.”

She has a star chart! A whole sheaf of them, actually, neatly labeled and cross-indexed. She can even shrink them down to a reasonable size for Buzz to hold.

Harry, meanwhile, has been glancing at something in his bag every thirty seconds, and now he looks up. "This is our best window for getting out of here without getting caught. You can probably stay here as long as you want, but we need to get to bed before curfew." Not strictly true, but he doesn't want Lightyear to know about the cloak.

A curfew—on what grounds? Military raids? Storms? Political unrest? Those civic details are driven from his mind as his eyes dart across the topmost star sheet.

Alien diagram conventions, but they’re readable! Buzz thumbs through the neatly indexed stack, feeling grateful once again he’s been trained to recognize the sky from a long list of alliance homeworlds throughout the sector—a primitive skill, but dead useful if you end up displaced in some extraordinary fashion. Which, all things considered, he frequently is.

There. A full hemisphere drawing of the stars. Buzz unfocuses his brain slightly to let the patterns leap out. He surveys the carefully penned dots, rotating the sheet incrementally to see what features jump out.

None do. The star patterns are, in fact, utterly unrecognizable. No Analetheuma IV, no Great Adze, no Hverbeest—no familiar constellations of any culture or any kind across the entire sky. He shouldn't be surprised, really. The stars are different wherever you go. If the chart is depicting an ancient sky or he's even a little far away from a well-known planet, he wouldn't be able to recognize a thing. But it's still a blow, somehow.

Fact is, he has no idea where he is, or how long he’s been here. And now he can’t even be sure he hasn’t been warped clean out of known space and time. With zero bearings to speak of, he finds that the prospect of an endless loop of capture and mind-wipe has really started to make him itch. If he’s ever going to return home, he needs to get to the bottom of his mysterious predicament. Fortunately, he's pretty sure now where he can get some real answers.

“Of course; go where you’re called. Thanks to you, I’ve got some basic intel and these star charts. I’ll have to study them carefully. This shelter will be excellent temporary accommodation in the meantime.”

True enough, but he doesn’t intend to stay long. It’s time he arrange a chat with the local commandant.