Top: measured orbital rotation of a chosen magnetic flux fragment around another in 6-hour intervals (see Fig. 12). The black curve represents the orbit angles smoothed with a three-point moving average. Middle: full-disc integrated GOES soft X-ray lightcurve. Bottom: the evolution of magnetic flux in NOAA AR 11585, made using the radial magnetic field component, B_r, of the HMI SHARP data series and smoothed with a 24-hour moving average. The vertical dashed line indicates the time of the CME onset on 8 October 2012, and the thin, light-blue vertical bars show the timings of confined flares associated with flux rope formation described in Sect. 4.3.1.