Disclaimer: I don´t own anything all rights go to J.K Rowling.

Chapter 12: Nicolas Flamel

AN: So here is another chapter, don´t know when I will have time to post another one but I hope you´ll like this

When the train arrived at the Hogsmeade station Jen and Hermione left their trunks at the train, as they would be taken up to the castle separately and made their way up to the castle where they were just in time for dinner.

Hermione and Jen had just sat down on the Gryffindor table when Harry and Ron ran up and sat down beside them.

"We got to talk to you," Harry said. "I found something during the holiday, but I can´t tell you what it is here."

All four looked around at the crowded Hall before starting to shovel the food into their mouths.

As soon as Harry had said that he had found something Jen had been sure he had found something about Flamel and she was sure Hermione was thinking the same.

When they had emptied their plates all four stood up and hurried out of the Great Hall and up to the Gryffindor common room which for once was empty as everyone was at dinner.

"Have you found out something about Flamel?" Hermione asked as soon as they had sat down in the armchairs in front of the fire.

"No, we haven´t," Harry said and both Jen and Hermione´s faces fell as they heard the disappointing words.

"Have you even been looking for him at all?" Jen asked.

"Of course, we have," Ron said irritably.

"But don´t mind that now," Harry said and then proceeded to tell them about what had happened during the holiday with the Mirror of Erised.

"You walked around the school three nights in a row!" Hermione said when Harry had finished speaking. "And you sneaked into the Restricted Section in the library! What if Filch had caught you?!"

"He didn´t," Harry said. "And I only sneaked into the Restricted Section because I wanted to search for Flamel."

"The Invisibility Cloak," Jen said, before Hermione cold say anything more, as she was more interested in where the cloak had come from then Harry sneaking around at night. "Who gave it to you? I´ve heard they´re really rare and expensive so it couldn´t have been just anyone that could´ve given it to you."

"I don´t know who gave it to me," Harry said. "There was no name on the note but there stood that it had belonged to my father and that whoever gave it to me had kept it safe."

"Maybe it was a family heirloom?" Hermione said, for the moment forgetting her annoyance over that Harry had been out of bed and roaming the castle at night. "I´ve read that many of the old wizard families have powerful magical heirlooms that have been inherited through generations and the Potter family is definitely one of the old families so it´s highly possible that the Cloak is one of those heirlooms."

"How do you even know that?" Ron asked.

"I found a book about it in the library," Hermione said. "It was quite interesting. Did you know, Ron, that your family was also mentioned in it?"

"We might be one of the old wizard families but we definitely don´t have any powerful heirlooms," Ron said, his mood hastily worsening as it always did when his family and money came up.

"What about you, have you found anything about Flamel?" Harry said as he noticed his friend's darkening mood.

Both girls shook their heads and told Harry and Ron that they hadn´t found anything.

They sat quiet for a couple of minutes before the portrait hole opened and the first students started to come back up from dinner and heading up to the dormitories.

They soon decided that it was time to go to bed as the lessons started the next day, so Jen and Hermione said goodbye to Harry and Ron before heading up to the girl's dormitories.

((&))

When the term started, they were soon as busy with schoolwork as they had been before Christmas and had gone back to skimming through books for ten minutes during their breaks, in search of Flamel.

Jen felt that it was a waste of time as she had lost all hope of ever finding Flamel´s name somewhere and she could see that the others shared her opinion even though Harry insisted that he had read the name somewhere.

Jen thought that he could very well have read it in one of the books in the library but as it was so big and they had so little time to search, it wasn't very likely that they would ever find the right book anytime soon.

Harry had even less time to search then the others because Quidditch practise had started again. Oliver Wood, the captain of the Gryffindor team, was working the team harder than ever and they had practise nearly every night. Not even the endless rain seemed to make Wood less motivated even though the rest of the team were tired of being continuously soaked and muddy.

The evening Quidditch practises made Hermione anxious over Harry´s schoolwork and whenever he didn´t have Quidditch practise or they weren´t skimming through books in the library she helped him with his homework.

One particularly rainy – and muddy – day Jen had never been more relieved that she wasn´t a part of the Quidditch team as they were currently out on the muddy Quidditch field in the lithe drizzle for a practise session.

Jen was sitting, warm and dry, in the Gryffindor common room watching Ron and Hermione playing chess. Chess was the only thing Jen had ever seen Hermione being bad at and thought it was very amusing to see Hermione lose at something. Not that Jen was very good at chess either as she had played against Ron before Hermione and lost quiet spectacularly.

It was Ron´s turn when Harry suddenly burst through the portrait hole and made his way towards them. Jen thought he looked terrible with his hair wet and muddy but what really caught her attention was the worried and scared expression on Harry´s face.

"Don´t speak to me for a moment," Ron said when Harry sat down between him and Jen. "I need to concen-" he caught sight of Harry´s face. "What´s the matter with you? You look terrible."

Speaking quietly so that no one else would hear, Harry told the other three about Snape´s sudden, sinister desire to be a Quidditch referee.

"Don´t play," Hermione said at once.

"Say you´re ill," Ron said.

"Really get ill," Jen said.

"Pretend to break your leg," Hermione suggested.

"Really break your leg," Ron said.

"Get a detention," Jen said. "Then you aren´t allowed to play."

"I can´t," Harry said. "There isn´t a reserve Seeker. If I back out Gryffindor can´t play at all."

Hermione opened her mouth to say something but was interrupted as just at that moment Neville toppled into the common room. Jen was amazed at how he had managed to get all the way up to the Gryffindor Tower and even more at how he had climbed through the portrait hole, as he normally needed help, because his legs was locked in what Jen recognised as a Leg-Locker Curse. Jen realised that he must have had to bunny hop all the way up to the Gryffindor Tower and she felt sincerely bad for him especially as everyone in the common room except herself and Hermione fell about laughing.

Instead of laughing Hermione leapt up and performed the counter-curse. Neville´s legs sprang apart and Jen, who had stood up right after Hermione, helped him to his feet, where he stood trembling.

"What happened?" Jen asked him as she and Hermione were leading him over to sit with Harry and Ron.

"Malfoy," Neville said shakily. "I met him outside the library. He said he´d been looking for someone to practise that on."

"Go to Professor McGonagall!" Hermione urged Neville. "Report him!"

Neville shook his head.

"I don't want more trouble," he mumbled.

"You´ve got to stand up to him, Neville," Ron said. "He´s used to walking all over people, but that´s no reason to lie down in front of him and make it easier."

"There´s no need to tell me I´m not brave enough to be in Gryffindor, Malfoy´s already done that," Neville choked.

Harry pulled out a Chocolate Frog from a pocket in his robes and gave it to Neville, who looked like he might cry.

"You're worth twelve of Malfoy," Harry said. "The Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn´t it? And where's Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin."

"And you are brave enough to be in Gryffindor," Jen said firmly. "You just haven´t got the chance to prove it jet. As my grandmother used to say `There´s more than one type of courage´ you just haven´t found yours jet."

Neville´s lips twitched in a weak smile as he unwrapped the Frog.

"Thanks Harry... and Jen... I think I´ll go to bed... D´you want the card, Harry, you collect them don´t you?"

Jen looked after Neville as he walked up the stairs towards the boy´s dormitories, hoping that he would be okay.

"Dumbledore again," Harry said, and Jen looked back towards him. "He was the first one I ever-"

He suddenly gasped and stared at the card as if it suddenly had turned to gold before looking up at Jen, Ron and Hermione.

"I´ve found him!" he whispered. "I´ve found Flamel! I told you I´d read the name somewhere – listen to this: `Professor Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the Dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon´s blood and his work on alchemy with his partner Nicholas Flamel´!"

Hermione jumped to her feet. Jen hadn´t seen her this excited since they had gotten back the marks for their very first piece of homework.

"Stay there!" she said before she sprinted up the stairs to the girl´s dormitories.

Harry and Ron exchanged mystified looks before turning their questioning eyes to Jen, but Jen was as mystified over Hermione's actions as the two boys. A second later Hermione came dashing back down the stairs, an enormous old book in her arms.

"I never thought to look in here!" she whispered excitedly. "I got this out of the library weeks ago for a bit of light reading."

"Light?" Ron said, but Jen elbowed him in the side glaring at him and Hermione told him to be quiet until she´d looked something up, while she frantically flicked through the pages, muttering to herself.

At last she found what she was looking for.

"I knew it! I knew it!" she said excitedly.

"Are we allowed to speak jet?" Ron said grumpily and Jen once again elbowed him in the side while glaring at him, but Hermione ignored him.

"Nicolas Flamel," Hermione whispered dramatically, "is the only known maker of the Philosopher´s Stone!"

This didn´t have quiet the effect she´d expected.

"The what?" Harry and Ron said.

"It´s a stone you make gold with, right?" Jen said remembering a muggle fiction book she had once read where the Philosopher´s Stone had been mentioned.

"Oh, honestly, don´t you two read? And Jen have you really never read more about it? Look – read that there."

She pushed the book towards them, and Harry, Jen and Ron read:

The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Philosopher´s stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The Stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal. There have been many reports of the Philosopher's Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belong to Mr Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera-lover. Mr Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight).

"See?" Hermione said when, Harry, Jen and Ron had finished. "The Cerberus must be guarding Flamel´s Philosopher´s Stone! I bet he asked Dumbledore to keep it safe for him, because they´re friends and he knew someone was after it. That´s why he wanted the Stone out of Gringotts!"

"A stone that makes gold and stops you ever dying!" Harry said. "No wonder Snape´s after it! Anyone would want it."

"And no wonder we couldn´t find Flamel in that Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry," Ron said. "He´s not exactly recent if he´s six hundred and sixty-five, is he?"

"No," Jen said. "And it´s no wonder that we didn´t find Flamel in Famous Wizards and their discoveries from the ninetieth and twentieth century's either as he made his most important discovery about six hundred years ago."

((&))

The next morning in Defence Against the Dark Arts Jen was copying down different ways of treating werewolf bites, while trying to block out Harry and Ron´s discussion about what they´d do with a Philosopher´s Stone if they had one.

It wasn´t until Ron mentioned that he would buy his own Quidditch team that Jen remembered that Snape would referee the coming Quidditch match. Jen looked up from her notes and looked at the others and saw that they had gotten the same thought as her.

"I´m going to play," Harry told Ron, Jen and Hermione. "If I don´t, all the Slytherins will think I´m just too scared to face Snape. I´ll show them... it´ll really wipe the smiles off their faces if we win."

"Just as long we´re not wiping you off the pitch," Hermione said, and Jen nodded solemnly.

((&))

The closer they got to the match the more nervous and worried Jen became. She could also see that Harry became more nervous the closer they got to the match, especially as he seemed to be running into Snape wherever he went, and Snape had become even more horrible to him in class.

One day Jen was playing chess with Ron in the common room, Jen was losing, when Hermione dumped a large book on the table which caused a couple of pieces to fall over.

"What did you do that for?" Ron asked irritably while Jen picked up her now angrily screaming king from the floor.

"Sorry," Hermione said but not looking sorry at all as she sat down and started to flick through the big book. "Well I´ve been thinking about ways to stop Snape if he tries to do anything at the Quidditch match. Then I remembered what Malfoy did to Neville and got the idea that we could use the Leg-Locker Curse at Snape if he tried something and we could also learn the full Body-Bind to be sure."

Both Jen and Ron stared at Hermione, their chess game forgotten, before their faces split into two big smiles.

"That's bloody brilliant, Hermione," Ron said, and Jen nodded in agreement.

Hermione blushed a bit at the praise before she stopped flicking through the pages and read at a page before saying, "Here it is the full Body-Bind and the Leg-Locker Curse. Now we only need somewhere to practise."

"We can practise in an unused classroom," Jen said excitedly. "Come on!"

The rest of the days leading up to the match Jen, Ron and Hermione whenever they had time went off to unused classrooms to practise the Leg-Locker Curse and the full Body-Bind. Hermione had mastered the spells nearly at once, but Jen and Ron had taken a little longer.

When Jen finally had managed the Leg-Locker Curse about a week before the match she started to practise the full Body-Bind, which she managed for the first time the day before the match. Ron, though, hadn´t gotten the hang of the full Body-Bind by the day of the match but he had gotten very good at the Leg-Locker Curse.

((&))

When Jen, Ron and Hermione wished good luck to Harry outside the changing rooms the next afternoon, Jen were wondering if she were ever going to see Harry alive again. By the expressions on Hermione and Ron's faces they were wondering the same thing.

Jen, Hermione and Ron made their way up into the stands where they found a place to sit next to Neville, who couldn´t understand why they looked so grim and worried, or why they had brought their wands to the match.

"Now, don´t forget, it´s Locomotor Mortis," Hermione muttered as Ron slipped his wand up his sleeve.

"I know," Ron snapped. "Don´t nag."

"And Jen," Hermione muttered. "Don´t forget Petrificus Totalus."

"Right," Jen said nodding while she tried to ignore the worry over Harry and the feeling that she might not be able to cast the spell if she needed to.

Snape stood in the Quidditch field while the two teams walked out on the field, Hufflepuff in yellow and Gryffindor in red.

"I´ve never seen Snape look so mean," Ron said to Jen and Hermione. Jen nodded in agreement as she could see Snape´s face twisted in anger. "Look – they´re off. Ouch!"

Jen tore her eyes from the game for a second to see what had hurt Ron. It was Malfoy and he had apparently poked Ron in the head.

"Oh, sorry, Weasley, didn´t see you there."

Malfoy grinned broadly at Crabbe and Goyle and Jen turned back to the match intent on ignoring them.

"Wonder how long Potter´s going to stay on his broom this time? Anyone want a bet? What about you, Weasley?"

Ron didn´t answer; Snape had just awarded Hufflepuff a penalty because George Weasley had hit a Bludger at him. Jen was sitting and holding her hands tightly together in her lap as her eyes trained on Harry as he circled the game looking for the Snitch.

"You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team?" Malfoy said a few minutes later, so loudly Jen couldn´t avoid hearing what he was saying, as Snape awarded Hufflepuff another penalty for no reason at all. "It´s people they feel sorry for. See, there´s Potter, who´s got no parents, then there´s the Weasleys, who´ve got no money – you should be on the team, Longbottom, you´ve got no brains."

Jen was just going to tell Malfoy to shut up when Harry made a sudden turn and she forgot all about Malfoy as she stared nervously at Harry, her nerves even more tens then they were a second ago.

Suddenly Harry got into a spectacular dive and Jen gasped loudly while jumping to her feet wringing her hands together in anxiety.

"Ron!" Jen and Hermione said at the same time. "Harry -!"

"What? Where?"

Harry streaked towards the ground like a bullet and Jen could barely breath as she realised that he must have seen the Snitch.

"Come on, Harry!" Jen and Hermione screamed together and leaping up on their seats while holding hands in excitement as Harry sped straight at Snape.

Jen could see Snape turn in the air just in time to see Harry wish past him like a scarlet streak, missing him by inches – next second Jen saw Harry pull out of the dive, his hand raised in triumph, the Snitch clasped in his hand.

The stands erupted in cheers, it had to be a record, Jen couldn´t remember to ever have read that the Snitch had ever been caught so quickly in any Quidditch book she had ever read.

Jen jumped up and down at her seat cheering before turning to Hermione and hugging her.

"Ron! Ron! Where are you? The game´s over! Harry´s won! We´ve won! Gryffindor are in the lead!" Hermione shrieked before letting go of Jen and hugging Parvati Patil in the row in front.

Jen turned to hug Ron but he wasn´t there and she confusedly looked around and saw that he was rolling around under her seat and hitting Malfoy while Neville, Crabbe and Goyle were a whirlwind of fists and grunts.

"Petrificus Totalus!" Jen cried and aimed her wand at Malfoy, whose arms snapped to his sides and his legs sprang together.

Jen said the spell two times more aiming her wand at Crabbe and Goyle with the same result.

"That was bloody brilliant!" Ron said grinning happily through a heavy nosebleed.

Neville was worse off than Ron as he was out cold and when Jen and Ron had gotten Hermione's attention all three helped drag him down to the pitch, while leaving Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle frozen in the stands. When they had gotten down to the pitch, they sat Neville off the side against a wall before running up and cheering for Harry, who were carried upon the celebrating Gryffindors shoulders.

As the Gryffindor team got into the changing room the crowd of cheering Gryffindors started to walk up to the castle and back to their common room where they were going to continue the feast.

Ron, Hermione and Jen, though, went back to Neville and started to half lifting and half dragging him up to the Hospital Wing, Ron still with a heavy nosebleed.

When they came up to the Hospital Wing Madam Pomfrey, the matron, put Neville on a bed and said that he would be alright and fixed Ron´s nosebleed with a flick of her wand, she didn´t ask what had happened.

Jen, Hermione and Ron walked up to the common room where the Gryffindors were in full swing celebrating their victory. A minute after Jen, Ron and Hermione had walked into the common room Fred and George climbed through the portrait hole with their arms full of cakes and stuff from the kitchen.

Everyone from the Gryffindor team was there except Harry and Jen asked George if he knew where he was.

"No," George said. "He was still in the changing room when we left."

Jen walked back to Hermione and Ron and said that no one knows where Harry was.

"He might be on his way up here," Hermione said. "Come on, we got to search for him."

They climbed out of the common room and searched for Harry. It didn´t take long to find him, wearing a thoughtful expression.

"Harry, where have you been?" Hermione squeaked.

"Harry!" Jen cried. "We´ve been looking for you! They´re throwing a party in the common room and you are the only one that´s missing!"

"We won! You won! We won!" Ron shouted, thumping Harry on the back. "And I gave Malfoy a black eye and Jen froze Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle and Neville tried to take on Crabbe and Goyle single-handed! He´s still out cold but Madam Pomfrey says he´ll be all right – talk about showing Slytherin! Everyone´s waiting for you in the common room and Fred and George stole some cakes and stuff from the kitchens."

"Never mind that now," Harry said breathlessly. "Let´s find an empty classroom, you wait ´til you hear this..."

Jen followed Harry worriedly, wondering what he had to tell them, while he searched for an empty classroom. He soon found one and made sure Peeves wasn´t inside before closing the door behind them, then he told them about what he had heard Quirrell and Snape say in the forest.

"So, we were right, it is the Philosophers Stone, and Snape´s trying to force Quirrell to help him get it. He asked if he knew how to get past Fluffy – and he said something about Quirrell´s `hocus-pocus´ – I reckon there are other things guarding the stone apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments, probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-dark Arts spell which Snape needs to break through –"

"So, you mean the Stone´s only safe as long as Quirrell stands up to Snape?" Hermione said in alarm.

"It´ll be gone by next Tuesday," Ron said.

"Who knows, maybe Quirrell´s braver than we think," Jen said but her voice didn´t hold much hope.