Death's Alchemist Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Chapter 4

The flood of morning light pouring through the tall windows of Peverell Manor forced Harry’s eyes open. For several seconds, he remained where he was, disoriented, his neck stiff from sleeping at an awkward angle in the old chair beside the fireplace. He winced as he straightened, rolling one shoulder before rubbing at the knot that had formed beneath the base of his skull. The chair had apparently been designed for sitting upright and dignified conversation, not collapsing into exhausted sleep sometime after midnight. Harry made a mental note to repair the cushions if he was going to be spending much time in it, then immediately disliked the implication of the thought.

His eyes drifted across the room.

The chalkboard stood exactly where he had left it.

Hundreds of equations, calculations, fragments of reconstructed notes, and half-finished ideas covered both sides of the slate, but one mark dominated everything surrounding it. Dumbledore had sharpened the rune before leaving, stripping away Harry’s hurried chalk lines until the symbol stood cleanly among the surrounding equations.

Time.

Harry stared at it for several seconds before releasing a slow breath.

Yesterday had happened.

Dumbledore was alive. The Potters were alive. Henry Potter was alive. Harry was thirty-four years in the past, and somewhere impossibly far ahead of him existed a world in which Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Molly, Arthur, George, and everyone else he loved were wondering what had happened to him.

Harry pushed himself to his feet.

He shook both arms loose, stretched his aching back, and rolled his neck until something popped unpleasantly near his shoulder. He had no idea how long he had slept. Judging by the height of the sun, probably not enough. It didn't matter. Sleep would not move him thirty-four years forward, and lying around Peverell Manor feeling sorry for himself certainly would not either.

He had work to do.

Harry crossed immediately toward the chalkboard.

The previous night, after his emotions had finally exhausted themselves, he had scavenged the manor for every journal he remembered discovering during his first months living there. They now rested across the floor and an old side table in uneven stacks, dusty leather bindings belonging to generations of Peverells who had apparently believed organization was beneath them. It represented perhaps ten percent of what Harry knew existed inside the enormous house. Some journals would be hidden behind false walls, others packed inside trunks, and several would not be discovered until Harry remembered the exact sequence of spells required to open compartments that had remained sealed for centuries.

It was frustrating.

It was also a beginning.

Harry crouched beside the nearest stack and lifted the first journal carefully into his hands. The leather was less brittle than he remembered. That realization gave him pause. Thirty-four years had vanished from the book as surely as they had from everything else. Pages Harry remembered yellowed nearly beyond recognition were still relatively intact. Ink that had faded beneath his fingers in 2003 was darker now, some of the diagrams easier to distinguish than they had ever been during his original research.

Harry stared at the page.

For the first time since arriving, the past had given something back.

“Useful,” he murmured.

He carried the journal toward the chalkboard and opened it beside several others. Harry knew he could not simply recreate the final equation and expect Dumbledore to understand what he had seen. The work on the board represented the conclusion of nearly five years of obsessive study, experimentation, mistranslation, correction, and occasional blind luck. Dumbledore might be brilliant enough to recognize individual principles almost immediately, but if Harry wanted the man to truly understand what had happened, he needed to reconstruct the path that had led him there.

The beginning.

The failures.

The first transmutations.

The connections Harry had missed for months before eventually seeing them.

He needed Dumbledore to understand the Hallows the way Harry had come to understand them, not as three legendary artifacts pulled from a children's story, but as the surviving pieces of a much larger alchemical body of work.

Perhaps more importantly, Harry needed a baseline.

If they were going to find the mistake—or discover that there had never been one—they needed to know exactly when Harry’s work had diverged from established alchemical theory. He had spent years learning alone, building his understanding from the journals of dead men who had written as though their readers already possessed knowledge Harry had never been formally taught. There had undoubtedly been gaps in his education. Assumptions he had made without realizing they were assumptions. Principles Harry understood in practice but had never known how to name.

Yesterday, Dumbledore had looked at one problem Harry spent six months untangling and understood it within seconds.

That was what Harry needed.

Not someone to repeat the journals back to him.

Someone who could look at the path Harry had taken and tell him where the ground beneath his feet stopped being solid.

Harry conjured a fresh piece of chalk.

At the top of an empty section of the board, he wrote a single word.

BEGINNING.

Then he opened the oldest journal he had found and started again.

Harry wasn’t sure how long he had worked before a knock sounded from the front of the manor, followed almost immediately by the happy trill of a phoenix. He looked up from the journal spread across his lap, momentarily disoriented by how quickly the morning had disappeared. With a flick of his wand, the locks shifted and the front door swung inward. Dumbledore stood on the other side with Fawkes perched behind him on the stone railing and a large covered platter balanced between both hands. “Good morning, Harry. I suspect you neglected dinner last night, so I thought I might bring breakfast.”

Harry’s stomach growled almost immediately at the mention of food. He glanced toward the empty space where his workbench had once stood and managed a tired smile. “My tea wasn’t where I’d left it. Thank you, Professor.”

Dumbledore gave him a confused look, clearly sensing there was some meaning behind the joke that escaped him, but wisely decided not to ask. Instead, he carried the platter toward one of the old tables Harry had dragged into the sitting room during the night and cleaned its surface with a casual flick of his wand before setting the food down. Fruit, warm breads, several kinds of meat, jam, butter, and what appeared to be an unreasonable number of pastries filled the tray. Harry crossed the room almost immediately, temporarily forgetting whatever manners remained in the wake of his hunger. Dumbledore said nothing about the enthusiasm with which Harry attacked the food. Instead, the older wizard wandered toward the chalkboard and began examining the work Harry had completed since his departure. Harry noticed his attention drifting occasionally toward the journals scattered across the room as well, the scholarly curiosity impossible to hide whenever Dumbledore spotted a title or unfamiliar symbol scratched into an old binding.

Rather than asking questions immediately, Dumbledore eventually walked toward the chair he had cautiously tested the previous afternoon and lowered himself into it. He moved somewhat more confidently this time, apparently trusting the integrity of the aging wood after surviving one day without the furniture collapsing beneath him. Harry almost smiled at the sight before returning to breakfast. Several quiet minutes passed while Harry practically inhaled his food and Dumbledore studied the room around him. It was only when Harry finally began slowing down that the older wizard spoke, pointing toward an equation near the top of the chalkboard. “I understand the logic in the work here, but I confess I do not entirely understand your objective. How did you arrive at these particular formulas? I have never seen this sequence written quite this way.”

The scholarly interest in Dumbledore’s voice immediately drew Harry away from the remains of his breakfast. He set down the croissant in his hand, adjusted his glasses, and moved closer to inspect the equation Dumbledore had indicated. To Harry, it was a fairly simple transmutation—at least compared to most of the work surrounding it. He had been experimenting with the heating element of his furnace in an attempt to strengthen an energy rune without overwhelming the material carrying it. “I found the original principle in one of the journals. It’s supposed to help fuse magic at an exponential rate, allowing higher-powered experiments without requiring an unholy amount of raw magic to be forced into the structure.” Harry traced several sections of the equation with his finger. “The journals said it was safer than simply overloading the transmutation and risking magical backlash.” He paused, then glanced toward the scorch marks still staining his robes from yesterday. “Which apparently makes what I did somewhat ironic.”

“Fascinating,” Dumbledore murmured, rising from the chair. His eyes moved across the formula again before settling upon Harry. “This is extremely advanced alchemy, which makes the outcome of yesterday’s experiment considerably more bizarre. Your work suggests an understanding far beyond what I would expect from someone who claims never to have received formal instruction.” He considered the board for another moment before gesturing toward an empty section of the room. “May I create another? I would rather not corrupt your current work while testing a theory.”

“Of course.”

Dumbledore drew the Elder Wand, and Harry watched as he made a square-like motion through the air followed by a sharp diagonal cross. Wood flowed outward from nothing, forming legs, frame, and slate with such effortless precision that within seconds an identical chalkboard stood beside Harry’s own. Harry swallowed almost instinctively. It was easy, especially after years of remembering Dumbledore primarily as his headmaster and mentor, to forget that he was standing beside one of the most powerful wizards alive. Even mundane magic looked different in his hands. Harry chose not to comment and instead watched as Dumbledore conjured a piece of chalk and neatly wrote an equation across the new board. It was considerably shorter than most of Harry’s work, but the simplicity did nothing to help him understand it.

When Dumbledore finished, he stepped aside. “Can you tell me what this experiment accomplishes?”

Harry blinked several times before moving closer. He took the chalk he had been using earlier and pointed toward the first collection of symbols. “This looks like some kind of water element.” His hand shifted toward the final section. “And that appears to involve heat.” Harry frowned as he studied the middle of the equation. “I’m guessing here, but it looks like you’re trying to create something that warms water instantaneously.”

Dumbledore smiled.

“Fascinating.”

Harry gave him an unimpressed look. “You’ve said that several times this morning.”

“I expect I shall say it several more.”

Harry crossed his arms.

Dumbledore chuckled softly before gesturing toward the equation. “You have taught yourself to run before anyone ever taught you how to walk.”

Harry frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I do not believe you quite appreciate how advanced your understanding of alchemy has become.” Dumbledore tapped the formula he had written. “My teacher gave me this particular exercise during my first month of formal instruction. It does exactly what you proposed, with one additional condition. The transmutation only functions at night.”

Harry looked back toward the equation, immediately searching for whatever symbol he had missed.

“That condition serves no practical purpose,” Dumbledore continued. “It was included deliberately by my teacher as a test. Could I identify the components? Could I infer their interactions? Could I recognize an unnecessary restriction within an otherwise functional equation?” His eyes moved toward Harry’s board. “I presented the same problem to you, and you correctly identified nearly the entire purpose despite never having been taught the language in which it was written.”

Harry stared at the formula another moment. “So where is the night condition?”

Dumbledore pointed toward a symbol buried near the center.

Harry groaned. “I thought that was regulating the temperature.”

“Understandably. Used within several later forms, it can.”

Harry looked sharply toward him.

Dumbledore smiled again. “And there lies the problem.”

He crossed toward Harry’s board and gestured toward the far more complicated sequence Harry had reconstructed earlier. “This, by comparison, is work I would have expected to encounter only toward the end of my own mastery. There are portions of it I understand immediately, others I can infer, and several I will need considerable time to study. The fact that you managed to produce functional experiments using techniques of this complexity is extraordinary.” Dumbledore looked genuinely impressed now, but the admiration was tempered by concern. “What is equally extraordinary is that you accomplished it while apparently skipping much of the foundational theory that should have preceded it.”

Harry shrugged. “Like I told you last night, I never had a teacher. Just journals written by dead men.”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said thoughtfully. “And dead men are notoriously poor at answering questions.”

Harry snorted.

Dumbledore returned to the board. “Your ancestors appear to have written for other alchemists, Harry. They assume knowledge you were never given. Definitions. Terminology. Foundational equations. Why certain symbols change meaning depending upon their relationship to another. You have compensated remarkably well, but compensation is not the same as understanding.”

Harry’s amusement faded slightly.

“You learned what you needed whenever a problem demanded it,” Dumbledore continued. “You encountered an advanced equation, discovered three principles necessary to understand it, taught yourself those three principles, and moved forward. Then the next journal required something entirely different, so you learned that instead.” His finger traced several disconnected sections across Harry’s board. “Your education has become extraordinarily deep in certain places and almost nonexistent in others.”

Harry stared at the board, suddenly seeing his own work differently. “So you think one of those gaps caused the accident.”

“I think it is possible.” Dumbledore paused before adding, “I also think it would be irresponsible to assume that is the answer merely because it is convenient.”

Harry nodded reluctantly.

Dumbledore gestured toward the equation Harry had reconstructed from the final experiment. “Nothing here suggests incompetence. Quite the opposite. If anything, that concerns me more. I would be considerably more comfortable if I could simply point toward an obvious error and say, ‘There. That is what went wrong.’”

“But you can’t.”

“No.”

Harry looked toward the rune Dumbledore had sharpened the night before.

Time.

“So what do we do?”

“We begin where you never had the opportunity to begin.”

Harry glanced toward him.

“With the basics.”

Harry groaned dramatically.

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “I assure you humility is an admirable quality in an apprentice.”

“I didn’t say I was your apprentice.”

“No,” Dumbledore agreed pleasantly. “But you did spend most of yesterday explaining why you desperately require a teacher.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Dumbledore smiled in victory.

“Fine,” Harry muttered. “The basics.”

“Excellent.”

For the next hour, the two moved between the chalkboards. Dumbledore began identifying gaps Harry had never realized existed, starting with terminology so elementary Harry occasionally found himself embarrassed that he had managed years of experimentation without understanding it. Yet every simple principle connected almost immediately to something Harry already knew. Concepts that had taken him weeks to infer suddenly gained names. Equations he had memorized through repetition finally acquired logic. Dumbledore would explain the foundation of a principle, and Harry would immediately point toward some absurdly complicated application of it hidden inside a Peverell journal. More than once, Dumbledore stopped mid-lesson to study something Harry showed him, and the direction of instruction briefly reversed.

Eventually, their attention wandered back toward the equation that had started everything. Harry had been using several of Dumbledore’s explanations to correct the terminology surrounding his original calculations, though, frustratingly, nothing about the experiment itself seemed to change. The equations still worked. The three sources of magic still converged upon the rune representing time, and every correction Dumbledore offered seemed to make Harry’s work more coherent rather than exposing the catastrophic mistake he desperately wanted to find. Harry erased one symbol and replaced it with another before realizing Dumbledore had stopped looking at the board entirely.

Instead, the older wizard was staring at the wand resting in his hand. Harry followed his gaze. The Elder Wand. Neither man spoke for several seconds. Harry slowly lowered his chalk, already understanding the problem that seemed to have captured Dumbledore’s attention.

“That's bothering you too?”

Dumbledore continued staring at the wand. “Immensely.”

Despite himself, Harry laughed. It was not particularly funny, but after everything that had happened over the previous day, absurdity had begun to feel considerably easier than panic. Dumbledore turned the Elder Wand slowly between his fingers, examining the ancient wood as though it had somehow personally offended him. “You are absolutely certain this was one of the three artifacts involved in your experiment?”

Harry gave him a look. “I’m certain.”

“This wand.”

“That wand.”

“The precise object I am presently holding.”

“Yes, Professor.”

Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he looked back toward Harry’s reconstruction of the Hallows. “Yet you did not arrive here carrying another Elder Wand.”

“No.”

“Nor did you discover one inside the manor when you awoke.”

“No.”

“Then, unless we intend to entertain the deeply unpleasant possibility that there are presently two identical Elder Wands somewhere in Britain, we must assume the artifact involved in your experiment remains this one.”

Harry stared at the wand. The thought had bothered him since realizing the Hallows had vanished, but hearing Dumbledore state the problem aloud made the implications considerably worse. “At a different point in its history.”

“Precisely.”

Harry stepped closer to the board, looking between his drawing of the Elder Wand and the real artifact sitting comfortably in Dumbledore’s hand. “So from the wand’s perspective, the experiment hasn’t happened yet.”

“Correct.”

“From mine, it already has.”

“Also correct.”

Harry rubbed both hands across his face. “I hate time travel.”

Dumbledore’s mouth twitched. “I am rapidly developing a similar opinion.”

Harry studied the equation again, his attention moving toward the three branches representing each of the Hallows. The Elder Wand was not the only problem. Somewhere in 1969, the Resurrection Stone already existed. His Cloak already existed. All three artifacts Harry had used thirty-four years in the future were presently moving through their own histories toward that eventual moment.

“Could that explain why I came here?” Harry asked. “The Hallows already existed in this time. Maybe the reaction followed them backward.”

Dumbledore considered the possibility seriously. “Perhaps. The fact that all three objects have existed somewhere in this world for a millennium, though, cannot be ignored. If your equation attempted to create a conjunction between them across time, then why would it not have encountered their earlier or later states?”

“And why did it drag me with it?”

“Or,” Dumbledore said carefully, “you may have been the object being moved all along, and the other Hallows remain in your home…in the future.”

Harry’s expression hardened.

Dumbledore pointed toward the rune at the center of the equation. “We have assumed that you controlled the reaction because you constructed it, but I am increasingly uncomfortable with that assumption. You provided the structure and the magical conditions, certainly, but once the Hallows began responding independently, we have no evidence that the reaction remained under your control.”

Harry stared at the point on the board where the three lines converged.

“So even if we rebuilt the entire experiment exactly…”

“We have no idea what it would do.”

“Or where it would send me.”

“No.”

Harry exhaled heavily through his nose. “Brilliant.”

For several moments, neither man said anything. Dumbledore finally lowered the Elder Wand, though his attention remained upon it with considerably more suspicion than before. Harry could not help wondering whether he had just permanently changed the way Dumbledore looked at the artifact he had carried for more than twenty years.

Eventually, Dumbledore glanced back toward the other chalkboard. “For what little comfort it may provide, I believe this has confirmed one thing.”

Harry looked toward him.

“Attempting to recreate your final experiment would be extraordinarily foolish.”

“I had already gathered that.”

“I wished to make certain.”

Harry gave him a flat look. “You’re learning me quickly.”

Dumbledore smiled. “You make certain tendencies rather easy to identify.”

Harry shook his head and reached for another journal.

By late morning, however, they encountered another problem.

Peverell Manor simply did not contain everything they needed.

Harry spread three journals across the table while Dumbledore searched through a fourth. Several references pointed toward texts Harry remembered having eventually acquired from private collections, Hogwarts, and Hermione’s endless searches through obscure magical libraries. Some would not enter Harry’s possession for years. Others might already exist, but he had no idea where they were in 1969.

“This one references Valerian’s Principles of Material Memory,” Harry said, tapping the page. “I had a copy.”

“Had?”

“In my library.”

Dumbledore looked around the largely empty room.

“Thirty-four years from now,” Harry clarified bitterly.

“Ah.”

Harry turned another page. “And this assumes I know the Carmichael sequence.”

“You do not?”

“I know what it produces.”

Dumbledore stared at him.

Harry sighed. “I’m guessing that’s another walking lesson.”

“A particularly important one.”

“Wonderful.”

Dumbledore closed the journal in his hands and leaned back slightly. “We will not solve this here.”

Harry looked up.

“Not because the manor lacks value,” Dumbledore clarified. “Quite the contrary. I suspect there are discoveries hidden inside this house that could occupy us for decades. However, what you need immediately is not another advanced Peverell journal. You have quite enough of those.”

Harry frowned. “Then what do I need?”

“A library.”

Harry glanced toward the shelves lining the manor walls.

“A useful library,” Dumbledore amended.

Harry gave him a flat look.

“Textbooks,” Dumbledore continued. “Elementary alchemical theory. Arithmantic references. Runic dictionaries. Historical astronomical records. Material studies. Works written by people who believed their reader might occasionally require an explanation.”

“And where exactly are we going to find all of that?”

Dumbledore stared at him.

Harry stared back.

The answer arrived almost immediately.

“No.”

Dumbledore’s smile grew.

Harry pointed toward him. “You were planning this.”

“I assure you, I had not expected to discover quite so many holes in your education.”

“That was unnecessarily insulting.”

“It was entirely accurate.”

Harry shook his head, but something inside his chest had already tightened.

Hogwarts.

Before the experiment, he had stood beside Dumbledore’s tomb and looked across the lake toward the castle. Students had been inside preparing for summer while Harry wondered what the future held for them.

Now the man whose grave he had visited was standing in his living room proposing they walk through those same doors thirty-four years earlier.

Dumbledore seemed to notice the change in his expression.

“You know Hogwarts.”

It was not phrased as a question.

Harry looked down at the journal beneath his hands.

“Yes.”

Dumbledore waited.

Harry offered nothing else.

To his credit, the older wizard did not press.

“The castle possesses one of the largest collections of magical texts in Britain,” Dumbledore continued. “Our alchemical holdings are somewhat scattered, but extensive. The library should provide most of the foundational material you require, and I have several texts in my own collection that may prove useful.”

Harry exhaled slowly.

“And,” Dumbledore added with conspicuous casualness, “there are several individuals there whose expertise may be of considerable assistance.”

Harry glanced toward him.

Dumbledore closed the final journal and stood.

“Filius Flitwick, for one.”

Harry froze.

The name struck differently than the others had.

Dumbledore noticed.

Of course he did.

“Professor Flitwick is exceptionally talented in charms, runic theory, and magical structures,” Dumbledore continued carefully. “Given the nature of the symbol you used, I would value his opinion.”

Harry stared toward the empty place near the table where, thirty-four years from now, Flitwick had stood and studied that very rune.

A small smile appeared despite everything.

“Yes,” Harry said quietly. “I think Filius might be useful.”

Dumbledore’s eyebrows rose at the familiarity.

Harry immediately reached for his traveling cloak.

“Don’t.”

“I said nothing.”

“You were going to.”

“I merely find it interesting that a man you supposedly have never met has already become ‘Filius.’”

Harry pulled the cloak around his shoulders and headed toward the door. “Are we going to Hogwarts or not?”

Dumbledore chuckled behind him. “We are.”

As the two exited Peverell Manor, Harry glanced over his shoulder before drawing his wand and cast a massive non-verbal spell he had learned in the Peverell family journals to power up the defenses of the home. Dumbledore’s eyes widened, and Harry had to admit the magic seemed to radiate off the house, likely for the first time in centuries.

Harry said nothing to this and gestured for Dumbledore to lead the way. Instead of preparing an Apparition, Dumbledore merely offered his arm. “I prefer a more comfortable form of travel when my companion is willing.”

Swallowing hard, Harry remembered watching Fawkes remove Dumbledore from his office once upon a time in a column of fire, but had never traveled that way personally. Trusting the man, but mostly the legendary bird that had taken flight above them, Harry placed his hand on Dumbledore’s arm.

The phoenix immediately swooped down when he made contact, and in a flash of heat and light, Harry felt weightless, and the grounds of Peverell Manor disappeared.