Apparating out when the DEs come calling

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 39503

As I understand it, a lot of wizards and witches _can't_ Apparate...it's
apparently a fairly high-risk way of getting from Point A to Point B.  I
remember Percy pointedly Apparating here and there in GoF _just to show that
he could do it._  Kind of like a kid with his first driver's licence, or so
it seems to me.  I don't think we've ever seen the Weasley parents
Apparating, and AFAIR even Dumbledore doesn't do it much.

Even if I know _how_ to Apparate, doing so when I've got a bunch of
Seriously Evil Wizards pounding through my front door, lusting for my
chitlins, might be more than I could handle.  I have the impression that to
avoid Splinching, wizards and witches have to concentrate pretty hard on
getting their Apparition _just_ right.  For that matter, we might hear in a
future book about people who tried Apparating out to get away from Lord V.
and his merry men, only to end up Splinching themselves in various nasty
ways, much to the amusement of Lord V.  And that isn't bringing up the
probabilty that the DEs have some way to prevent their would-be victims from
just Apparating out---an Anti-Apparition Field of some sort is one
possibility.

Unlike Apparition, (and the Floo), Portkeys seem to be fairly idiot-proof.
If I were a wizard in the HPiverse and seriously worried about DEs coming to
pay me a little visit (picky picky picky...just because I was instrumental
in throwing a bunch of them to the Dementors, they get all whiny and can't
take a joke) I might have a Portkey prepared to take me somewhere that I
know for sure is safe...Hogwarts, the Aurors' HQ, the Ministry of Magic.  So
when I see the DEs breaking down my door, I raise my wand and scream "Accio
(Portkey)!" and I'm outta there before they can stop me, and as far as we
know, they wouldn't know how to follow unless they had identical Portkeys.