Chapter 1 – This-is-how-it-all-started
Cold. Everything was so cold. Sharp frost biting cruelly into every inch of him. No, but also like fire. But cold. Burning but cold. Cold fire.
And it hurt. Everything hurt.
His skin prickled with the piercing chill, his skin, paler than it had ever been, chalk white but with a green tinge and glistening sickly in perspiration. His dark hair was sticking to his forehead, eyes watering in pain and his body felt like lead.
Pain. So much pain.
His head was pounding, hurting like hell, as if it was about to explode. Like his brain hadn't gotten any rest, sore with exhaustion, clouding his senses with the pain, letting that be the only thing he could focus on.
KA-THUMP. KA-THUMP. KA-THUMP. His head felt like it was pounding along to the rhythm of his heart.
He couldn't sleep, stuck in the threshold between dreams and reality. His mind was muddled and confused, flickering images at an abnormally fast pace, it was making it hard to tell the difference between what was real and what was not.
Voices. He could make out voices in the room, even through the pain-filled fog that was his mind.
"Is there anything we can do, Albus?" He heard his mother's voice, filled with so much worry and agitation. There was a note to her voice, telling him that she was doing all she could not to cry.
He was going to die. He knew it. Every fiber in his being screaming it out from the frosty burning the influenza had induced.
"I'm afraid there is nothing more we can do, Perenelle." answered a foreign voice.
The ill youth opened his eyes, eyes burning and watering with his effort. The whites of his eyes red, clashing with the obsidian blue of his irises. He gnawed his teeth in pain, using all whatever left of his strength he had to keep his eyes open.
His mother was crying, waterfalls of tears falling from her pale blue eyes, dripping down her rosy cheeks as she sobbed. She looked a mess.
His father however was not the same. He was crying also. But he wasn't miserable and sorrowful – no, he was furious. Anger radiated off the man in red hot waves, but he was gentle as he held his wife to him. His hand, slow and with much care as he combed it through his wife's blue-black tresses, trying to soothe her.
"We have to save him, Nicholas." the mother weeped through all her tears, clutching desperately to her husband, pleading, begging for the life of their only son.
Her husband's expression became tormented, internally debating something with himself. A part of him wanted to do what she wanted so badly, but the only way would be too dangerous and risky.
"Please, Nicholas!" the mother shrieked in anguish.
The sick young man on the bed had never seen his mother act this way. Vulnerable, fragile, miserable, hurting, frenzied and looking like she might collapse from it all. She was always so strong and brave, never like this.
A new burning formed in his chest, unlike the frozen burning of the rest of his body, it ached for his mother, trying to reach out to her and try to comfort her...but couldn't.
He wanted to console her so badly. Hold her in his arms, tell her everything was going to be all right. But he couldn't. He couldn't move his body, he couldn't speak as his throat was sore, and his mind was becoming less coherent by the second.
"Albus." His father said to a tall, long-bearded, aged wizard.
The old wizard had a grave expression, blue eyes staring solemnly. "Nicholas, my dear friend, you know that the stone has to be destroyed."
"Yes, I know that Albus." the father replied austerely. "Nellie and I do not mind dying, we have lived for so long, we've had all the time and more in this world... but our son? He has just turned seventeen! He has barely been long on this earth, barely ever fully lived! Can you bear to have it on your conscience the death of my son?"
The aged wizard became emotionless. "And can you bare the consequences of your actions that will come if you do this?"
There was silence. Tension filled the room, the two wizards trying to stare each other down into submission.
"Yes," the father answered, not breaking eye contact. "I'd give up everything for my son."
The old wizard turned to the adolescent on the bed, eyes contemplative, before turning back to the father. "Do what you must then." The father nodded, eyes glistening with gratitude.
Everything was becoming darker, vision blurring, black spots appearing. If possible, the adolescent's head seemed to throb and hurt even more. He would have groaned if he had his voice.
The father was sitting on the bed now, staring into the eyes of the young man's- no, boy's, not yet a man. His hand rose to wipe away the sweat on his son's forehead and brush away the wet locks of blue-black. His hand traveled down to the boy's quivering jaw, steadying it . The thumb rubbed soothingly on the feverish pale skin before the hand retreated..
The youth couldn't remember much of what happened next, just blurs and murmurs. And a flash of something shiny and red.
However, he could never forget how his father had looked at him with so much love, a sad smile on his face. "I love you, son." And Adam Flamel succumbed to the darkness that awaited him.
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In alchemy the term chrysopoeia means transmutation into gold (from the Greek khrusōn, gold, and poiēin, to make), although it is also symbolically used to indicate the philosopher's stone as the completion of the Great Work..
Nicolas Flamel's story is alluded to in J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone, in which he is something of a MacGuffin; though he is the clue to the whole mystery of the book, he never actually makes an appearance. He was friends with Albus Dumbledore and is said to have lived for hundreds of years until the Philosopher's stone was destroyed following the events of the book. He was 666 years old.