A/N - So apparently I've had this done for over a month and forgot about it... Opps... So double update today.
Disclaimer on my homepage, but an exert was taken from Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone. (I refuse to say Sorcerers Stone)
They both shook their heads, "Where's the fire?" asked Nova.
"Hogwarts," he said, "A troll got into the school on Halloween, it was probably just a prank," he turned around in the doorway for a second. "It's gone but we need to get some people started on damage control."
The man ran off again, in search of someone from the Department for the Protection of Magical Creatures.
"I hope everyone is alright..." Nova mumbled.
After Nova and Pierce had gotten back from lunch, Novas Healer friend, Pierce, came up to her. She was still with Kingsley, now they were heading back to their respective departments.
"I finally got it! I have officially collected, every single wizard card ever made!" He jumped for joy, because that's just how he rolls.
"You finally got Circe?"
"Oh, no. I got Dumbledore..."
Nova's eyes widened, "You just got Dumbledore? That's practically the most common one!"
Pierce stared at her for a minute. Then finally mumbled, "Kill joy," under his breath. Kingsley stood in the corner and lamented at the lack of sensible people other then himself in the elevator.
Pierce got off on his floor, then Nova sighed and leaned against the wall. Pierce was great n' all, but he gave her headaches. He had practically been bouncing off the walls once he stopped pretending to be sad. As she leaned against the wall, she noticed something move on the floor, which upon further inspection turned out to be the picture on Pierce's chocolate frog card doing the robot.
Nova bent over and picked it up, "He left his card..." She stared at the picture of Dumbledore and got lost in thought about Hogwarts and the good times back there, things were harder nowadays, you actually had to do work now.
Eventually, she turned over the card and read it, for something to do.
Albus Dumbledore, currently Headmaster of Hogwarts.
Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern
times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his
defeat of the dark wizard Grindewald in 1945,
for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's
blood and his work on alchemy with...
"…his partner, Nicholas Flammel..." Nova read the last part aloud.
"What's that?" asked Kingsley, who apparently had not heard.
Nova re-read the last line, "So, if Dumbledore knows Flammel then..."
"D'you think he would have left the stone with him?"
"After all, how many other friends would a six hundred year old guy who lives in the middle of a forest have?"
"Wait, what if the troll had to do with the Philosophers Stone?"
"Ya think?" There was further conversation, which eventually led to Nova and Kingsley going to visit Dumbledore. After work because they had already skipped part of the morning and their bosses would kick their asses if they left again.
Three hours later, they were standing in front of the statue to Dumbledores office berating themselves for not finding out the password first. "Flammel," "Grindewald," "Transfiguration," "Aberforth," and "Phoenix," were just some of the possibilities they had passed by the statue, only to be ignored.
"Argh," Nova growled, out of frustration and kicked the statue.
It snapped to life, "Now, no need for that, lil missy," Nova's eye twitched.
Oh, she'd show him 'lil missy'. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on if you're the statue or Nova, McGonagull chose that moment to appear. The statue jumped out of the way for the deputy headmistress making her way down the stairs.
What are you two doing here? "I wanted to talk to Dumbledore, she," Kingsley nodded his head toward Nova, "wanted to beat up the statue."
Nova scowled, "Well if it wasn't such a smart ass," she mumbled.
"You can go up and see the headmaster now," McGonagull chuckled. Oh my God, it's a miracle.
The two of them walked up the staircase. Or, they started to, then it started spinning up. Nova almost fell off. They got to the top and knocked on the door, "enter." Dumbledore called from inside.
"Sir, we had some questions," Nova started, as they walked in.
"What about? Someone from the ministry has already been here to deal with the troll and such."
Nova descended into silence, not knowing how to start. So Kingsley did instead, "We guessed that Flammel may have hid the philosophers stone here and that the troll may have been connected."
"We just wanted to make sure the stone is safe, and protected well," Nova picked up.
Dumbledore paused, then decided to trust them, just the barest amount. "I assure you the stone is very well protected," Nova knew it was just because he trusted Kingsley that he told them. Despite that trust, his tone was crisp and looked on his guard. Nova went back into silence.
"So, I should assume you would reject any extra protection from the ministry?"
Dumbledore smiled, "Yes," he was still on his guard, and after a little conversation Nova and Kingsley left, knowing that he wouldn't tell them anything else.
Dumbledore wasn't going to tell them anything else, so they decided to trust him and not to pry in. Or, Nova decided not to pry, Kingsley's all honourable and stuff so it was never an issue for him. They let it go, and trusted the stone would be fine.
They were right, by the end of the year the news was widespread that the stone was going to be destroyed. They even got a letter from Nicolas Flammel, he had sent the letter to the England Ministry of Magic to be delivered to the 'black, bald, auror guy', and the 'unspeakable girl with the weird black and white hair'.
It started as so:
Hello again,
This is Nicolas Flammel, you came to my house in France a year ago asking about the Philosophers stone. For reasons I don't really feel like telling you, the stone will be destroyed. Rest assured, it is gone, no evil overlord or what have you, is going to get it.
That being said, my wife Perenelle and I are going to die soon. I'm trusting you to pass on the other enclosed letters to someone in an appropriate department. You owe me for telling you children anything, try and get them through quickly.
-Nicolas Flammel.
"Well aren't we snarky..." Nova was somewhat lost for words, didn't know what to think of that. They passed on other letters to the highest ranking officials they knew in the respective departments. Nova passed one of the letters on to the Head of the Department of Mysteries, Ms Chambers. By the time she was doing that, she had thought of something odd about her own letter.
"Why didn't he just mail letters directly to the head of departments? He was a really important person, I'm sure they'd do whatever it was he wanted without the extra person asking about it."
Ms Chambers mulled it over. She decided to trust Nova with an extra piece of information. "A while ago Flammel had a falling out with the Minister."
"Fudge?"
"Yeah, it was right after Voldemort fell. The ministry was going broke trying to rebuild the wizarding world and re-establish trust with people. Fudge asked Flammel for the stone so the ministry could get gold, so they'd have more resources, ya know?"
"Oh, I imagine Flammel took that well," Nova scoffed, Flammel was pretty obnoxious and he didn't really strike her as the kind of person to help out Fudge.
"No, he didn't." Ms Chamber sighed. "Fudge was quite persistent for a while. He had to give up eventually but now Flammel is in the Ministers bad books so he needs help getting stuff done from our Ministry."
There were rumours that the stone was being destroyed because Voldemort had tried to steal it, but these things weren't exactly common knowledge, so people who didn't know anyone at Hogwarts had to trust newspapers. The Daily Prophet had an article about it, but it was written by Rita Skeeter, so it was anyones guess how accurate it was. The Quibbler also took a one page break from gnargles to write about Voldemort and the Stone.
But then again, the Quibbler wasn't entirely dependable either. It was hard to find out what was going on. Nova put in a request to go see Sirius, fill him in about what was supposedly happening at Hogwarts. And see if he was still sane. On the few visits Nova had been allowed since he got put in there, he seemed to be keeping his sanity alright.
Though, he was getting more and more sullen looking every time, but years in Azkaban will do that to you. Even visiting was draining.