Top: measured orbital motion of chosen magnetic flux fragments in 6-hour intervals. The colours correspond to different choices of fragments (see Fig. 8). 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 11504, made using the radial magnetic field component, B_r, of the HMI SHARP data series and smoothed with a 24-hour moving average. Vertical dashed lines indicate the times of the CME onsets on 10, 13, and 14 June 2012, and the thin, light-blue vertical bars show the timings of confined flares associated with flux rope formation described in Sect. 4.2.1.