Contrary to popular belief, Nicholas Flamel is not a sagely old man living in the mountains isolated from civilization just so he can toil away at his alchemic studies with his wife Perenelle.

No, Nicholas Flamel lives in a rural French city in a non-descript muggle house in a muggle neighbourhood beside muggle neighbours who do not even realize a house exists right beside them.

It's in this house that Nicholas spends the majority of his time studying his alchemic profession trying to make more academic advances when a knock on the door catches his ear.

Nicholas pauses his research and takes a moment to catch himself. If people needed to contact him there were many channels to do so: owls from trusted sources, his personal mailbox located in a separate workplace, or hunting down Perenelle and having her pass on the message for a personal meeting. The last time someone managed to find out where he lived and knock on the door of his residence was over two hundred years ago when he still lived in a cabin in the middle of the woods in the middle of nowhere, and they were just travelers wondering if they could stay the night.

Point being, nobody really knocked on his door anymore.

So when Nicholas opened the door and found a red-haired girl dressed in scuffed traveler's robes he had to check that he still was not living in the 17th century.

"Salut?"

"Uh, hi Mr. Flamel" and he notes the faint British accent.

"How can I help you Miss?"

She looks at him nervously and then a minor crease of tension is seen as she tightens her eyes.

"It's Iris Potter." And she pauses, whilst Nicholas's eyebrows rise up in recognition to the name.

"Ah, the Girl-Who-Lived."

"More like the Girl-Who-Doesn't-Stay-Dead" he hears her mumble under her breath.

"Well what can I do for you Miss Potter?"

Nicholas notes how Iris scrunches into herself even more and how her head lowers towards her feet.

"I came to apologize about breaking your Philosopher's stone." He hears her say in a quiet voice.

He chuckles in a grandfatherly way.

"Don't worry about that Miss Potter."

Also contrary to what the few in the know thought they knew, Nicholas did not give Albus the actual Philosopher's stone during Iris's first year as bait. Even if he did, the Philosopher's stone is indestructible due to the nature that it was made so Albus would not have been able to destroy it. But nobody really knew much about the Stone in the first place, mainly because he was the only person to have it in possession. So when he demonstrated that he could turn metals into gold, and he was well over the age of three hundred years old, people believed that the Stone was genuine and nobody questioned the authenticity.

This also meant that the attempts for the Stone were numerous as well as the attempts on his and his wife's life. Nicholas figured that by having Dumbledore leak that he destroyed the Stone this would give him a hundred years or so of relative peace before people became suspicious again and he'll have to come up with a different excuse.

Iris looked up to Nicholas with wide eyes.

"No really, I feel awful about it. I mean, I never did send a letter because it didn't feel sincere enough but Dumbledore did say you were okay with it.

But since my Dad told me since we were going to be here for a while I thought I should apologize since I was going to be around here much more often."

Nicholas starts to look at Iris more closely at the mention of 'being around more often' and her 'Dad.' Someone he heard was very much dead.

"Where… is your Dad?"

"Oh! He said he was going to collect some favours so he pointed to me where you lived and told me to have fun. Said something about you having a heart attack if he showed up for no reason. He also told me to give you this too."

Iris reaches into her pockets and takes out a bright, red, rock.

"This doubles as my apology by the way."

Nicholas pales considerably and with trembling hands takes the rock from her.

"Where did you get this?" he asks in a mute, quiet voice.

"My Dad made it." Iris says oblivious to the terror she just inflicted onto Nicholas.

In his hand is an identical Philosopher's stone to the one he has hidden away in the basement.

For the greatest secret that Nicholas Flamel held was that he did not create the Philosopher's Stone and neither did his wife.

Nicholas received the Philosopher's stone from Death himself.

Nicholas led Iris into her house and served her tea and refreshments.

"What exactly are you here for Iris." And Iris could hear the shift in his tone.

"So uh, my Dad has been training me the last few months, and I brought up my Hogwarts education and my Dad decidedly said that he couldn't teach me potions so he brought me here.

He never explicitly told me 'Hey Iris, go get Flamel to teach you potions' but I think it was heavily implied. He also said I should 'socialize with my peers more because being isolated socially is not good for a young girl in her formative years' but I'm not sure if that means I should socialize with you or form my own gang in France or something."

"You do realize that I'm six hundred years older than you though?"

"Yeah but to be honest I think my Dad has trouble differentiating between years and eons. I think he figures that since we're both alive that's good enough."

Nicholas mutters some choice words under his breath.

"Well, I consider myself more an alchemist but I'm more than knowledgeable enough to teach third-year potions.

We'll get started tomorrow I'll have to prepare some materials and ingredients."

Nicholas lets the conversation sit there, but Iris makes no motion to move.

"Do you have any place to stay Iris?"

"Not really. My Dad kind of just drops me off in a location and picks me up whenever I finish. I don't really know what constitutes as 'finished' in this case."

"And you don't have any way to contact him?"

Iris momentarily thinks about killing herself because maybe her Dad is in another realm just waiting while she finishes.

"Kind… of? Not really in a way that I want to test."

"Better get you a room sorted too then."

The lessons with Nicholas were efficient, as is the benefit of having one-on-one tutelage, but even having the famed immortal alchemist teaching the subject could get Iris to overcome her distaste for the topic. So after eight hours of potion every day, Iris spent her remaining time badgering Nicholas and Perenelle, who preferred to be nicknamed Penny.

"So what exactly does the Philosopher's Stone do?"

Nicholas glances up from his sheets of paper that he's working on and sees Iris just mindlessly twirling her hands as she is magically juggling a few orbs of light around her.

He moves back to his work as he tries to formulate the words.

"What I tell everybody about the Stone is that it transmutes certain metals to gold and that it is a key component to the Elixir of Life.

The truth of the matter is that the Stone is essentially the greatest alchemy shortcut there is. By using it in an alchemic reaction it can substitute as any number of reagents and transmute one substance to another. The most useful use has definitely been to soak the Stone in pure distilled water to get the Elixir of Life. The most confusing thing about the process is that the water goes through multiple mutations as the Stone soaks in it so I don't know what to add and where. My study of alchemy is trying to reverse engineer the transmutations and figure out what the reagents are.

The Philosopher's Stone is the answer key to a textbook but they don't show you the steps on how to get to the final answer."

"But I thought you made your own Stone."

Nicholas glances back up and sees that Iris has upgraded from juggling just a few orbs to a dozen.

"Iris, your father gave me the Stone in the first place."

"How did you manage that anyways? He's always going on about the folly of immortality and that any attempt at it is a personal insult to him. To be honest I'm surprised that you're still alive."

Nicholas sighs and sets down his pen as he rubs his forehead.

"I entered a contract with your Dad so to speak. I'd rather not get into the particulars of the contract itself but in essence Penny and I are indentured servants to him until our deaths. A clause in the contract states that any revealing about the process of the Elixir of Life to non-immortal beings is grounds for him to kill us."

Iris stopped her juggling and froze the orbs in midair.

"Wait so he actually comes by and tells you to do stuff?"

Nicholas grimaces.

"Not exactly. The last time I saw him was five hundred years ago and that was during the ceremony. Someone like him doesn't exactly have a solid concept of time."

"You have all the benefits of being his servant without having to do any of the work?"

Nicholas sighs.

"Currently, yes. But as I said five hundred years is nothing in his sense of time. Teaching you is the closest thing to a task I've been indirectly told to do ever since being in his employ."

"Huh, you don't say."

Iris goes back to magically juggling a few dozen magical orbs.

It's a month before Iris starts to crack under the monotony.

The break is greatly appreciated in comparison to what she was doing before.

Fighting dragons, spelunking ancient ruins, fighting evil vampires.

But studying potions and alchemy in comparison to that is just so… dull. Sure her life is not in any danger anymore (not like it ever was) but the lack of action is causing her to develop pseudo-withdrawal symptoms.

That's why when after the day's lesson is over and she heads to her room and finds a black envelope lying on her bed she squeals with delight and grabs Hedwig and starts to run out of the house.

As she is running she yells out to Nicholas and Perenelle, "Bye Nick, bye Penny my Dad is said we're going out for a while!"

And she hears from Penny, "Bye honey, have fun." As she exits the house.

Iris runs down the street and sees her Dad waiting for her and she leaps into a hug.

"Hey Iris."

The only reply he receives is the muffled voice in his chest.

He pats her head and only reassures her, "Missed you too."

They stay like that for moments as they bask in the presence of each other and eventually Iris separates from him.

"I figured a month with Flamel would probably be enough Potions education you'd need for a while."

Iris grumbles in agreement.

"So I figured we'd start back up on training."

He glances down at Iris and then a feral grin appears on his face.

"I think we'll go kill a Dark Lord."

Iris's eyes widen but before she could say anything Death latches onto her shoulder and they disappear.

Hogwarts continues as usual without Iris. Except for the Dementors, who are obviously the most un-Hogwarts element at Hogwarts.

There was the initial shock of surprise and drama when everyone found out that the Girl-Who-Lived has gone missing at the end of second year, but Dumbledore had assured everyone that Iris had been rescued and is alive but because of circumstances she would be absent for the remainder of the year.

Then the next year rolled around and Iris had not returned and the rumours started up again.

"The Dark Lord's followers got her."

"Sirius Black got her."

"She got so terrified she decided to off herself."

"She tried to take her place as the Heir of Slytherin but someone got offended and killed her."

Funnily enough, most of the rumours involved ended with Iris dying. They were somewhat true.

The rumour with Sirius Black ended when reports of him were being spotted around the Gryffindor dorms trying to break in. Everyone chalked it up to him not knowing that Iris has gone missing.

Of course the Weasleys and Hermione knew that Iris was being cared for, but when Dumbledore tried to get more information nothing clear came out of it.

"She's being taken cared for Albus, why does it matter?" Molly said.

"She's going traveling." Hermione told Dumbledore when asked.

"I'm pretty sure she's fine wherever she is." Ron informed.

All attempts were just rehashes of the same answers.

The only consolation that Dumbledore had was that the magical instruments that monitored the current status of Iris (which only had two settings: Alive and Dead) were usually on the Alive setting (they did momentarily dip towards Dead on several occasion which worried him to no end).

And one day when Dumbledore went back into his office there was a non-descript black envelope on his desk that said one thing.

"She'll be back for her fourth year."