Chapter 26: The Clue to the Philosopher's Stone (Patreon)

Slam!

A hardcover tome a good three inches thick snapped shut, kicking up a small puff of dust.

Hermione had rumpled her bangs into a mess, and a few streaks of dark red ink smudged her fingertips.

She slumped over the edge of the table, her voice thick with frustration. "Nothing! Not one thing anywhere! I've gone through every modern directory and recent journal, and there's no wizard called 'Nicolas Flamel' at all!"

"I told you Hagrid must have let something slip and was just making it up."

Ron had his whole face pressed against the cold wooden table, and he groaned weakly. "We've been rotting in this dump of a library for three weeks. Even Filch's cat can't be bothered to hiss at me anymore. Maybe Flamel is just some chicken farmer who lived next door to Hagrid back home."

"Hagrid's face went white, Ron."

Harry sat beside them, idly peeling the wrapper off a Chocolate Frog. He took off his round glasses and rubbed his bloodshot eyes, his brow knotted. "His voice was shaking. There's no way he made it up."

Hermione let out an irritated breath.

She massaged her throbbing temples, her gaze drifting aimlessly around the hall until it landed on a single long table by the window, not far away.

Raven was sitting there.

The gray light of the afternoon rested on his shoulder. He propped his chin on one hand and slowly turned the pages of a small parchment booklet with the other, looking so composed that he seemed not to belong in this stuffy library at all.

Hermione stared at him for a few seconds. Then she bit her lip, snatched up her parchment notebook and stood.

"Hermione, where are you going?" Harry asked, startled.

"To ask someone who actually understands books."

The little witch strode off down the aisle between the shelves. Harry and Ron scrambled to grab their snacks and hurry after her.

"Capet, sorry to interrupt."

Hermione stopped in front of his table. She was always eager to outdo the Slytherins in class, but standing before Raven now, her tone held a trace of the stiffness of a student asking a teacher for help. "May I ask you an academic question?"

Raven raised his eyes and glanced at the densely written parchment in her hand. The corner of his mouth curved, barely. "If you're going to ask who Nicolas Flamel is, you can pull out the chairs and sit down."

"How do you know we're looking for him?!"

Behind her, Ron flinched so hard he nearly dropped half a Chocolate Frog. His eyes went round as saucers.

"Three weekends in a row, you've cleared out every biography of notable wizards from the past two hundred years, and every volume you picked started with the letter 'F.'"

Raven closed his booklet, his tone calm. "The way Madam Pince was looking at you just now, you might have been three thieves out to steal parchment. I can't think what else would make you dig through those dusty books like that, other than searching for a person."

Hermione pulled out a chair and sat. Her face flushed a little, embarrassed, but the determination in her eyes hadn't dimmed at all. "Since you figured that out so quickly... could you find him in the private libraries of the pure-blood families? Was he some dark wizard the Ministry of Magic secretly struck from the records?"

"No." Raven shook his head.

"Then why can't he be found in any modern book?"

Her voice rose, quick and urgent. "How can someone connected to Dumbledore have left behind not even a name?"

Raven leaned back in his chair and tapped the edge of the table lightly. "Granger, what do you think is the ultimate goal of alchemy?"

Hermione blinked. Out of pure top-student reflex, she blurted, "The Philosopher's Stone! It turns any metal into pure gold, and it can make the Elixir of Life!"

"Since you can recite 'Elixir of Life,'" Raven said, studying her with a look that was pointedly instructive, "why are you flipping through Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century?"

The long table fell silent at once.

Hermione froze as if someone had pressed pause. Her big eyes widened and her lips parted, and the spring in her mind that had been jammed for three weeks lurched into motion.

The Elixir of Life... if a person truly had unlimited lifespan...

"He... he's still alive?!"

Hermione gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes full of shock. "He isn't from modern times at all. He's been alive for hundreds of years?!"

"Hang on, hundreds of years?!"

Ron was stunned too, scratching the back of his head with a blank look. "Then where are we supposed to look up some ancient old monster? We can't exactly go through a thousand years of old newspapers!"

Harry turned to Raven, equally lost. "Raven, if he's not in any book, where else can we find out about him?"

Raven didn't answer directly.

He tilted his gaze slightly and reached a slender finger toward the middle of the table, tapping twice on the back of the star-marked card Harry had tossed down.

"Sometimes people will spend dozens of Galleons on thick tomes to look up so-called secrets," Raven said evenly, "and overlook what's stuffed into a box of common sweets that cost a couple of pence apiece."

Harry stood stunned. Almost without thinking, he snatched up the Chocolate Frog card, which he'd only glanced at on the front.

The front showed Dumbledore's face, with its half-moon spectacles and long silver beard. Harry flipped the card over, his eyes racing over the small gold letters on the back as he read aloud:

"...Albus Dumbledore, currently Headmaster of Hogwarts. Famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and for his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel..."

Harry's voice caught in his throat.

"Nicolas Flamel!"

Harry's head shot up, his eyes alarmingly bright. "It's Flamel! Dumbledore's partner!"

"Keep it down! Madam Pince's feather duster is going to come flying at us!" Ron dropped his voice and lunged across the table, though his excitement was every bit as great as Harry's. "He's real! There really is a Nicolas Flamel!"

Hermione snatched the card and fixed her eyes on that line, words tumbling out like a volley of shots. "I remember now! I read a passing mention in some magazine once!

"Nicolas Flamel is the only known maker of a Philosopher's Stone!

"He celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday just last year, and he lives in Devon with his wife, Perenelle!"

The air seemed to freeze for a moment.

"So..."

Ron swallowed, sucking in a small breath, the flesh of his face twitching. "That giant three-headed dog in the right-hand corridor on the fourth floor... the trapdoor under its paws... there's a stone hidden down there that turns scrap metal into gold and lets people live forever?!"

"No wonder Hagrid wouldn't say another word that day," Harry murmured, his fists clenching in excitement.

The gloom drained from all three faces, replaced by the thrill and shiver of cracking a great mystery.

They turned as one to look at Raven across the table. Beyond the shock, there was something new in their eyes, the admiration reserved for a scholar of unfathomable depth.

The puzzle that had plagued them for nearly a month had been taken apart, just like that, in a few casual words from this Slytherin boy.

"Raven... you're unreal," Ron sighed, completely sincere.

Raven calmly tucked his parchment booklet into his bag and stood, looking down at the three of them, red-faced with excitement.

"Knowing what it is doesn't mean the problem is solved."

He straightened the collar of his robes, and his voice dropped, ringing unusually clear in the hushed reading room.

"While your heads are clear, you might think about one more question: why would Dumbledore store a priceless treasure that every dark wizard would go mad to seize in a school full of eleven-year-olds?"

The grins on Harry and Ron, who had been eagerly fiddling with the card, froze at once.

Hermione's breath caught too, and a strange chill crept up her spine.

Raven didn't linger. With one hand in his pocket, he turned and headed for the library doors.

The instant he stepped through the heavy oak doorway, the System's notification sounded calmly in the depths of his mind, perfectly timed:

[Ding. You have successfully guided core plot characters to unlock the key fulcrum 'Nicolas Flamel and the Mystery of the Philosopher's Stone.']

[The trio's blind trust in the school's arrangements has been broken early. Caution and skepticism have been instilled, and their understanding of the main storyline has been deeply deflected.]

[Causality Reversal Points +160.]

[Total Reversal Points remaining: 1,360.]

Listening to the crisp chime in his ear, Raven felt the corners of his lips lift in a faint curve.

At the long table, the three of them looked at one another.

The card lay quietly in the sunlight on the table. But under the shadow of that cold question, the once-dazzling words "eternal life" suddenly gave off a chilling sense of danger.