Hermione Granger and the Philosopher
(Description: Hermione visits the inventor of the Philosopher's Stone)
(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with HARRY POTTER. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)
(Author's note: this story is set during the summer between THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE and THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS)
"Hello, little girl," said the butler. Butlers were not very prevalent in 1990s England, but Hermione was not surprised to find one here.
"Hello, sir. I'd like to speak with Mr. Flamel. My name is Hermione Granger."
"Mr. Flamel is not receiving visitors."
"But it's important that I talk with him."
"Mr. Flamel is in mourning for his wife. He –"
"Who's that, Hudson?" called a voice inside the house. "Did she say her name was Hermione? Let her in."
"Very good, sir. Your pardon, miss." The butler bowed slightly.
"It's OK, sir. I understand." Hermione respected following the rules, even if she had learnt in the past year that it was sometimes necessary to break them.
She knew that Nicholas Flamel was 665 years old, and didn't know exactly what to expect – the effects of old age, times 6? What she saw when she entered the sitting room was an old man, though no more ancient-looking than Dumbledore, and beardless in this case. He was wearing robes like a wizard. He was sitting in an armchair, surrounded by a bizarre array of knickknacks from various centuries. She saw a metal helmet that might have adorned a medieval knight, sitting on a table next to an old-fashioned gramophone. Paintings from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Academic, and Romantic periods. Maybe his personal souvenirs from the periods he had lived through.
"Albus Dumbledore told me about how you and your gentleman friends prevented He Who Must Not Be Named from stealing the Philosopher's Stone. So you deserve a favour from me. What do you seek?"
Hermione had to suppress a giggle at hearing Harry and Ron described as her "gentleman friends". Though it was hard to come up with a one-word description for what she felt about them. Not boyfriends. Brothers, maybe? Hermione had been an only child. "I want to learn some of your history."
"Very well, with one proviso. I shall not tell you how to make the Philosopher's Stone. Recent events have convinced me that the secret is better left hidden."
"Yes, I agree." Part of her, the drive to learn, wished she could have found out but knew it was for the best.
"I was born in Paris in 1327, in a Wizard family. Back then we lived among Muggles, and didn't form a tight subculture of our own. The local priest was also a wizard, though he didn't advertise the fact."
"Weren't you lot in danger of being discovered?"
"Not really. Nowadays people talk about "medieval witch-hunts", but they've got the wrong era. The worst witch-hunts were in the 1600s, long after I was born. It wasn't much of a problem when I was growing up."
"The priest gave me some lessons in alchemy," Flamel continued. "Later a local Muggle girl, Prenelle, got interested as well. Sometimes when the priest was busy I'd teach her what I'd learnt. It was very rare in those days for a woman to seek knowledge, and I was impressed."
"I was 23 when the Black Death hit. The priest died, Nell fell very sick. I tried to nurse her to health and caught the disease as well. Somehow we both survived, and we did two things immediately. We got married, and we vowed to make a pilgrimage to a shrine in Spain. That's what people back then often did on recovering from a serious illness."
"Yeah. Canterbury Tales."
"While staying at an inn in Spain, I heard a fellow guest, a Jewish convert to Christianity, talk about alchemy, and we befriended him. Eventually he confided a secret: he had been forced to convert, and still practiced his true religion in secret. He had a book, written in Hebrew, about the Cabbala and other esoteric subjects. He was afraid that if authorities found it they would use it as proof of apostasy, yet he couldn't bear simply to cast it out or destroy it. He gave it to us, after we promised to keep the book safe as long as it lasted."
"Nell and I took the book back to Paris and learned Hebrew from another priest so that we could read it. We realized that, combined with alchemical knowledge the priest had taught us, we could create the Philosopher's Stone. At that time the Black Death was still raging and people were dying like flies – history books say a quarter of Europe's population died within a couple of years. We thought the Stone, by granting life, could cure the plague."
"I presume it didn't work," guessed Hermione. "I mean, there's no historical record of it."
"You're partly right. We WERE able to create the Philosopher's Stone, but the ingredients were exceedingly rare. To save millions of people we would have to mass-produce it, as Muggles say nowadays, and that was impossible. Nell and I were able to use it on ourselves. It was selfish, but we told ourselves that by living longer, we would have more ability to seek knowledge and materials, and might solve the problem."
"I don't blame you," reassured Hermione, thinking that she might have done the same. "You didn't gain immortality at the expense of other people, and you had a good reason to prolong your lives."
"Nell and I have lived through all the succeeding centuries. Whenever people got too suspicious, we would fake our deaths and move somewhere else. It was easy to do in an era where there was little central record-keeping."
"I wish I could tell you all the adventures we've had, but there's not enough time," Flamel went on. "I will tell you of a few encounters that I consider important."
"I met an old man who told me that he had escaped death by a different method. He wouldn't tell me how. The important thing was, he told me that he had lived his life to the fullest, and was ready to die. When Death came, the old man would go with him, he said."
"There was another man whom I met several times, and who never seemed to age. Apparently he didn't live through the years, he JUMPED among them somehow. He called himself The Doctor—"
"Doctor who?" asked Hermione
"He never said who. There was another man, an expert on Arithmancy. He said that 666 was an evil number, and that disasters would happen if I lived until my 666th year. He was right, wasn't he? I am now 665. The only way I could live to be 666 is to leave the Philosopher's Stone in existence, and if I had done that, He Who Must Not Be Named would have used it to make himself immortal. No, I told Albus Dumbledore to destroy the Stone."
"He told us. But that means that you will die!"
"I am ready to die. My friend with the other spell was correct. 665 years is more than enough. Nell has already gone before me. I have stayed alive to satisfy a final prophecy, then I will follow her. Being with Nell is far more important than staying in the world."
Hermione was crying, although she tried to hide it.
"Don't be distressed, my girl. As that wise Muggle Shakespeare once said: 'Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.' My parting advice to you is this: Enjoy life, but don't seek an immortality that is empty. Otherwise you could end up like He Who Must Not Be Named."
Hermione wasn't sure just what she had been seeking in this visit, but she thought she had found it. She bowed her head to the philosopher and let the butler show her out.
She was about half a block down the street, about to rejoin her parents, when she had a disturbing thought.
Flamel had never explained what became of the magic book. The one thing he had said was that he had promised to preserve it.
If the book still existed, and somebody stole it, they could make another Philosopher's Stone. Then all of their efforts this past year to keep the Stone out of evildoers' hands might be worthless. She had to know whether that was a danger.
She doubled back to the Flamel house. When she reached the door, it was ajar. That was strange, quite unlike the efficient butler. She pushed it open and walked in.
Mr. Hudson was kneeling and weeping a few feet inside. The door to the sitting room was closed.
"I, um, need to talk to Mr. Flamel again. An urgent question," Hermione said.
The butler looked at her sadly. "That is impossible. The Master is dead."
"W-What? But he said he had to stay alive, to fulfill a prophecy!"
"The prophecy was that an innocent girl would come to him seeking wisdom. It was fulfilled during the past hour. So the Master released his grip upon life."
Hermione was bewildered. She was brainy, but simply lacked the experience to handle a situation like this. "May I see the body?"
"It would not be advisable, for somebody as young as you."
Hermione stared at the door of the sitting room, forgetting her worries about the book.
Ripeness had been all.
THE END
(Author's note: this story has 3 sources: the DEEP SPACE 9 story THE VISITOR, Rowling's HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE, and Wikipedia's biographical entry on Nicholas Flamel. Wikipedia's birthdate for Flamel differs from the HARRY chronology by 3 years; I went with Rowling's date. Two of the minor characters are from classic British TV shows. The butler Mr. Hudson is from the 70s series UPSTAIRS AND DOWNSTAIRS, and the time-travelling doctor is DOCTOR WHO)
(Author's note: The mysterious old man Flamel met was the surviving brother from THE TALE OF THE THREE BROTHERS. I was deliberately vague, to explain why Hermione does not "remember" this story when she hears it again in the DEATHLY HALLOWS. )