The object of the ancient metaphysical philosophers was the discovery of the essence or substratum of matter and mind. ... Notwithstanding the attempts of the master-minds of antiquity to discover the essence of the human mind, we are obliged, like the illustrious philosopher, to declare, that all we know for a certainty is our own ignorance. The essence of the mind, like the philosopher's stone, remains yet undiscovered.
— Forbes Winslow.

The most famous of the names given to the transmuting substance—the Philosopher's Stone—is first heard of in the twelfth century. The word "Stone" must not be taken in its strict sense, but rather as equivalent to the more abstract term "substratum" — the something which underlies and supports.
— John Edward Mercer.

For every disease is healed by this precious and divine water. The eyes of the blind see, the ears of the deaf hear, the dumb speak clearly.
— Ostanes.

According to legend, Noah was commanded to hang up the true and genuine philosopher's stone in the ark, to give light to every living creature therein.
— E.C. Brewer.

I conceive your story of the Turner not improbable, but rather, that the Perpetual motion will be one of the Philosophers stones, of this, or the very next adjoining age, as also that Linea visibilis, by which, friends (distant 100 miles or more) may converse, in a minute, or (as nuntius Inanimatus proposes) what one friend delivers at London, at 12: shall be known at Bristol (by the other) before 12:...
— Cheney Culpeper, letter to Samuel Hartlib, 15 March 1648.

Ascend with the greatest sagacity from the earth to heaven, and then descend again to earth, and unite together the power of things inferior and superior; thus you will possess the light of the whole world, and all obscurity will fly away from you. This thing has more fortitude than fortitude itself, because it will overcome every subtle thing and penetrate every solid thing. By it the world was formed.
— Hermes Trismegistus.

#

Westward Ho! (4: House Call).

A five minute drive ended in a street tree-lined to the point that its name was blocked by a branch, and in short order the Mockingbird was parked in front of a house of white with red shutters, two storeys with a possible third tucked in under the high roof, and a metal Ω over the front door's lintel.

"Horseshoe for luck?" said the Tutor.

"The emblem of a secret society I started," said Flamel, pushing the unlocked door open into into a small foyer. "Of which you are now a member since I've told you. In you go."

In he went. Upstairs a weedy wizard wireless was nattering about a statue escaped from its pedestal in Hyde Park (again) and some characters missing from portraits in the Huntington Library in America, while in the sitting room a set of Klipsch Heresy speakers carried a plummy BBC 3 announcer doing BBC 3 announcer things.

(Quick scan foyer: closed doorway to the left, staircase wall straight ahead with stairs descending into sitting room to the right. Bookcase against wall, a couple of small pictures hanging over bookcase: Hermes stewarding a brigade of souls over Lethe Bridge, and a semiprofessional watercolour of three newly hatched wingèd pixies peeking out of their shells.)

"Who are the other members?" asked the Tutor, leaning in for a closer look at the pixie chicks.

"It's just you, now," said Flamel. "I dropped out years ago. —That's one of Pear's," he added, noting the Tutor's interest. "Pixies don't come from eggs. She says they do in Texas. Who am I to argue?"

A woman's voice came from upstairs: "Nick, are you talking toot again?"

"Yes, dear," called Flamel.

"I don't suppose you remembered to pick up that brown sherry I asked for?"

"Yes and no," said the doctor. "I remembered, but I haven't been yet." He raised his voice slightly. "I've brought Harry Potter 'round to have a look at the Philosopher's Stone."

There was a stifled exclamation of the oh-dear-we-haven't-hoovered type.

"Has the post come?" said Flamel. "Never mind, I'll go look."

The Tutor followed Nicolas Flamel through the sitting room and into the living room, both of which were perfectly well hoovered.

(Quick scan sitting room: bookcase-backed sofa in middle of room, facing telly and stereo set, all at right angle to curtained front window; small table in front of sofa. BBC 3 announcer: "Bruckner's Ninth Symphony was of course actually his eleventh, provided one counts both the Student Symphony in F and the 'Nullte', which latter work he declared void when its prospective conductor could not find the melody in the first movement...")

"Ah, music, sweet music," said Flamel. "Music everywhere. Have you an affinity for it, Harry?"

("...however, as I now perceive that our LP has a crack in it, we will not actually be hearing Bruckner's Ninth Symphony at this time...instead I will be reading a few news items of little interest...")

"Um: no," reported the Tutor, on account of Harry Potter couldn't carry a tune in a paper sack.

(Living room scan: large bay window ahead facing into an enclosed greenhouse patio where strange small trees grew; to right of window, fireplace with a small golden fire smouldering. Mounted above the fireplace, a small trophy shelf or rather semicircular balcony with brass pipe railing, with a doorlike flap behind it that exited left to the chimney outside. Clock on wall at right.)

"How do you know?" said Nicolas Flamel.

("...the missing Lady Cynthia Fitzmelton has been found at a discotheque in Ibiza, although she has subsequently issued a press release denying this...")

"...What do you mean?"

"I mean: the closest thing you've ever had to something to play with was probably a comb and a bit of tissue paper. What about all those potential concert-grade pianists who never even heard of a piano? Misborn. Wrong time, wrong place. In the absence of an orchestra, the kind of mind suited to being a conductor can't take its natural course."

The Tutor produced an I-have-no-idea-what-you're-on-about expression.

"Sorry, I'm philosophising," said Flamel, looking at the small balcony and then over to the clock. "It's a habit."

{ What on earth is that? } said Harry, who'd latching onto one of the odder fruit trees in the patio outside. { Is he growing pumpkin squids? }

"That," said Flamel once the Tutor had passed on the question, "is Citrus medica digitata— Buddha's hand. When it's ripe Pear likes to hang the fruit to smell the place up a bit. Although they do rather look like they'll attack you in the night."

There was a splud from outside — "Ah, the post!" said Flamel — and then the flaps behind the railing moved, and a raven hopped through them towing a small sack.

"Good morning, dark chooser of the slain," said Flamel. "You're late. You've spent a frivolous and dissipated night carousing, I suppose."

"Waaugh," said the raven, who was a deep-and-perfect black with a sheen of pinkish blue.

"This is Bruce," explained Flamel.

"G'day, Bruce," said the Tutor.

"Waauugh," said the raven, disapprovingly.

Flamel said, "He started out as Sherrinford but frankly he doesn't deserve it." He took the sack from the raven, who snapped at him. "Watch yourself! I knew you when you were new. Pink tube with a beak that never shut."

"Waauugh," said the raven, unfazed.

"Waaugh," said Nicolas Flamel, dropping the mail sack onto a small table, knocking Volume 9 of An Encyclopædia Of Medicaments In 13 Volumes onto the floor. "He can talk, but does he?"

"Never yet," said the raven.

"You can give him a cracker if you like," said Flamel, indicating a dish on the fireplace mantel. The Tutor did.

"Tauugh," said the raven.

"Does he like jelly beans?"

"Maybe if they're mouse-flavoured."

"This is his lucky day," said the Tutor, and tossed Bruce one of the beans he set aside for Hedwig. The raven snapped it out of the air. "But why a raven instead of an owl?"

"Magical obliquity. Owls can't find me, but ravens get everywhere." Flamel's face took on an innocent expression. "Very sharp birds, ravens. Some people call them feathered apes."

"Waaurrgh," said Bruce, and gave Flamel the beady eyeball.

"Well they do!" said Flamel, with a return volley of innocence-wounded. "Don't chide me."

Grievously offended, the raven stalked back outside.

"—The other advantage to a raven," said Flamel, turning to sorting his post, "is you can carry him around with you in London with no trouble. A phoenix on your shoulder gets attention, but a raven, you just carry a script and everyone thinks you're an actor.

"Advert, advert...do you want a Samakkhi Chumnum coupon? Here, have it — ooh, letter from Horace Slughorn, haven't had one from him in a while..."

Flamel separated out the Daily Prophet and current numbers of The Fiery Lancet ("Vampirism & Werewolfery: Insights & Treatments") and New Wizard ("Special Focus—Anastatic Magic: New Breakthroughs In Old Tosh?") and set them in a magazine rack next to the table, put the advertisements in a box next to the fireplace, and put a rubber band around the correspondence.

"Ana-static," said the Tutor, being Harryishly impressed at the number of syllables.

"The inverse approach," said Nicolas Flamel. "Reimplementing lumos as a prohibition of darkness rather than a mandate of light. If it works out they should be able to weasel around the exceptions to Gamp's Law, but it's always ten years away."

The Tutor said, "And I met a vampire and a werewolf on the Knight Bus. How does that work, anyway? Can you really just get bitten and start turning into a wolf? Is it like rabies? What if you're bitten by a mad pony?"

"Strictly? It's what we call a mimetomemetic infection, blood magic, nothing to do with viruses or germs. You don't really become a wolf as such, you just get overwhelmed by the idea of being one. The rest is...somaticised hallucination, imagination made physical. And it reflects your state of mind. Some people turn into horrifically distorted, incoherent balls of...well, various previously repressed emotions; some treat it as a trivial matter of personal style that saves on doing laundry at the expense of additional hoovering. Takes it into the realm of psychoanalysis, really... As to a mad pony, why not? For that matter, why?"

"Blood carries ideas?" said the Tutor.

"It's a sort of cellular haunting," said Flamel, bending down to pick up the book he'd knocked to the floor. "Human blood carries powerful intent, hence its use in contracts — if it fades, into the courts you go." He flipped through the pages and shook out a bookmark. "Various other animals have interesting properties. Unicorn blood — phoenix — dragon blood could be quite useful to me as a healer if only we could get the idea of donation over to the animals, get the curse off using the stuff."

"I thought dragon's blood was mostly oven cleaner..."

"It is. But you've heard that saying about it being better to burn out than fade away? Dragon's blood lets you burn the candle not just at both ends but all the way through at once. If staying alive at all costs now is more important than being alive next year..."

Something rustled from one end of the room to the other, down behind the baseboard.

"Rats in the walls?" said the Tutor.

"Mice," said Flamel.

"You don't have a cat?"

"I don't need a cat, I have mice," said Flamel, giving him a sidelong glance. "I'm a wizard, I don't have problems, I have opportunities." He carried the book off through an open doorway opposite the couch. While he was gone the Tutor sneaked a peek at the Fiery Lancet, and got in a quick learning experience about about bats feeding on unicorns.

"One of the facets of a long life," said Nicolas Flamel in a philosophical voice from the other room, "is you have to fill it with something. I talk to people. I hang around in hotel lobbies. I take buses at random. Once I sat next to a muggle who had squirrels." He came back and leaned against the side of the doorway. "He used to throw peanuts to squirrels in the park, but then they invaded his house. He couldn't afford to solve the problem with squirrel-proof siding, so he was reduced to poisoning them, and that didn't really work because there are always more squirrels, and they kept coming back, generation after generation, gnawing at the timbers year after year, until he ended up dreaming about smashing them with sledgehammers, and he hated himself for it, and he hated them, and he hated everything, and basically just wanted to burn the world.

"Me, I'm a wizard. I'm doing a bit of minor plumbing and see mice under the bathtub and I say, ooh, aren't you sweet, and I just formalise the arrangement. Installed plastic tubes behind the walls many generations of mice ago, plus bespoke water and food supplies and so on. Pear wasn't very enthusiastic about it at first, but I said, it's this or model trains.

"So now I hear a scrabble behind the wall in the bedroom of a night and I even know who it is by the running pattern and I think oh, it's Mr Poofles and I smile quietly and go back to sleep. Come to notice it, there he is now. Hello, Mr Poofles!"

There was a black-spotted white mouse poking its head out of a small flap in the baseboard. It stared up at them for a moment and then ducked back inside.

A voice from upstairs said "Mr Poofles?" in the tone of someone who had apparently just learned something new about her husband after six hundred years.

Flamel stuck his tongue out at the ceiling, and then added in the direction of Harry "I used to call them all Raffles, but then I got to know them better."

{ Raffles? } said Harry.

"Raffles?" echoed the Tutor.

"After the extraordinary gentleman thief. Mouse meaning thief in Sanskrit, you see...

"I may be wandering toward some sort of point here, quite keen to find out what it is..." He looked up at the ceiling and waited. "Nope, nothing. Oh, reminds me, where did you find me in the Anglo-Atlantic Cyclopædia Of Magic?"

"The article on Divination."

Flamel drew a peculiar wand and pointed it into the other room. "Accio volume D of the Anglo-American Cyclopædia of Magic," he said. A slim black volume flew across the room and he caught it thuddingly. He gave the Tutor a significant look. "Never accio an encyclopædia except volume-first," he said, setting the book down on the coffee table. "Voice of experience."

"Gotcha," said the Tutor.

{ I'd like to learn that, } said Harry. The Tutor dutifully echoed it.

"I could probably teach you if you like," said Flamel, turning pages. "Divination—why on earth would I be in that entry?" He arrived at the appropriate entry, then traced through the text with his finger. "Under crystals and stones? Nothing about it here," he said after a few moments.

"Well, it was there in the library's copy," said the Tutor. "Although the library's is one volume in tiny type. It might be a different edition. I actually have a photocopy," he said, opening his manilla envelope.

(The difference between the Hogwarts library copier and the ordinary kind was that at Hogwarts, the copier was 1, any passing seventh-year Hufflepuff, and 2, reliable.)

"Hum," said Flamel, examining the tiny print. "I see...

"...that I cannot read type this small." He tucked it into the larger volume and snapped the book shut on it. "But why not? I used to call it the sorcerer's stone, you know. As in sortilege. The lot-caster's stone. I am He Who Wins The Lottery, The True Master of Oops. —Pear! I'm about to tell the story, are you coming down or not? What are you still doing up there, I've only got Harry Potter in the living room!"

"I'm on deadline! I'm typing as fast as I can!"

Flamel looked down at the Tutor and said, very quietly, "Ten fingers, ten words per minute."

"I heard that!"

"No you didn't!" called Flamel.

"I guessed right!"

Flamel snorted. "The two hearts that beat as one. Well, I suppose I could teach you accio while we wait."

"Okay!" said the Tutor with Harryish brightness.

"Well, the wand move's simple enough — " Flamel ran through it slowly — "but it's a little tricky—" he tapped his wand on his head — "on the inside. What if you were to point your wand up and do accio sun?"

"Sounds dangerous," said the Tutor.

"It doesn't work. Personally I tried it thinking I'd be dragged into the sky because relative masses, but no, nothing. You can't accio things you don't conceptualise correctly, you can't accio things that you can't fundamentally have. Consensus, I think we agreed to call it. Who'd respect your right to own the sun? Who'd believe you if you claimed it? The moon, mountains, same thing. Once you get down to things like bridges it gets a bit iffy — you might be able to vandalise a bridge if you were puissant enough." He looked around at the largely empty room, and settled on the fireplace. "If you want a challenge, try accio smoke. Smoke, it's like the sun but it's a little different, see if you can imagine your way into possession of smoke."

The Tutor freed up the casting arm and the mouth.

Harry waved the motion a few times, and made a few corrections to the shape, and then waved it a few more times, and then waved it again —

"Accio smoke, " said Harry.

Nothing happened, and then happened again the second time.

Harry paused, twirling the wand between his fingers. There was a long pause, and then he said, "Oh. —Accio smoke!"

#

Total success was not in fact such a wonderful thing on the whole, and they had to rather quickly fall back into the other room, and Flamel had to toss off a couple of evanescos — the second for the ash all over the floor — and then a few more charms on account of the smell and the (surprisingly not immediately obvious) fact that the carpet was on fire, as were the drapes.

All the drapes.

"Not bad," coughed Flamel, after the last reparo. "Wasn't expecting you to succeed, really, not without advice — how'd you manage it?"

"I thought about filtered cigarettes."

"Never smoke, my boy, never smoke," said Flamel. "At least not until you've learnt to forestall the drawbacks. Right, well, let's go see the Philosopher's Stone, I could use a drink..."

"Wait," said the Tutor and Harry together, "what?"

"To the kitchen!" said Nicolas Flamel.

#

Something nice was happening in the oven, but it wasn't quite done yet.

Nicolas Flamel opened his white refrigerator door, which was covered with cat magnets, flipped open the butter tray, and took out the Philosopher's Stone.

"But if that's the Philosopher's Stone, what was in Gringotts?" said the Tutor, with actual surprise.

"I think I know," said Flamel. "Tell you in a minute. Think fast!"

He tossed it at the Tutor, and thank goodness for quidditchy reflexes or it'd have gone under the washing machine never to be seen again.

"Hold it up to the light," said Nicolas Flamel. "Look into it."

The Tutor held the Philosopher's Stone up to the light of one of the kitchen's frosted-glass bulbs and brought it nearer the eye...

(...a prism-effect, a flash of pink static, a drowsiness, then a moment of heightened perception...)

{ It's the King's Ruby, } said Harry.

It was like a monochromatic kaleidoscope. Harry Potter's hands were enormously steady but even the slightest shift changed the internal scene. Particulate flecks of light and dark slid without moving in a stream of abstract images like distant roiling clouds seen through a telescope.

He could see faces (but you could always see faces) and flower-like structures and trees that were clearly full size trees very far away, and once a shape like a leaping tiger, and it was hard to tear himself away...

"It's an interesting gem," said Flamel, after a while. "You'll note it's never the same colour. Even if you lock it down in a vise the images still change subtly, nearly thirty times a second. So far as I can tell, it's a crystal of no known element, with a nonperiodic crystalline structure that has no natural resonance frequency. Infrangible, unshearable, unvanishable, indestructible. Diamond dissolves in molten iron, this doesn't."

"You tried it?"

"...Not intentionally."

"That is really pretty," he said, and handed it back with reluctance.

"I'd make you a copy, but it don't cop," said Flamel. "But I can make you a cup." He took a small paper cup from a dispenser on the side of the refrigerator and put it on the top of the sideboard, and then put the Stone into a garlic press that had been hanging from a hook on the wall. "Give it a squeeze."

The Tutor obediently gave the press a firm squeeze — the word piezoecstaticelectricity neologized in his mind — and though the stone remained solid it produced a stream of sunlight in liquid form.

"Drink up," said Flamel, once the cup was full. "It won't do you any harm."

The Tutor tried it.

"Huh," he said.

Flamel leaned up against the sink. "What do you think?"

"Ginger butterbeer," he said. "Only better."

"To us, on the other hand," said Flamel, waving a hand vaguely ceilingward, "it tastes exactly like pure melted gold." He opened the refrigerator door to return the stone to its place. "The liquid form is the elixir vitae. It solidifies into the panacæa, faster if you put it in the fridge." He pulled out a rectangular block in waxed paper. "Much, much better than butter. One stick of this stuff and you're cured of whatever ails you. It melts into oil of wisdom, which goes extremely well on a salad. And all forms make you essentially impervious to death. I fell out of an aeroplane once, no harm done. A bit like felix felicis, if you've heard of that. Have you got any spare change?"

"I spent it on the bus," said the Tutor, wondering if he was going to be charged.

"Well, no matter — hang on." Flamel turned to the kitchen cabinets and rummaged in a drawer. "Here we go," he said, and turned and presented the Tutor with an ancient Edward VI thruppenny bit, London mint. "Drop it in."

The Tutor dropped it in and watched carefully as nothing happened.

"It works from the inside out," said Flamel, just as the coin changed.

"Philosopher's gold," specified Flamel. "The purest gold, rather purer than the normal kind."

The Tutor fished it out and held it up to the light. "Huh," he said.

It was pure gold — in the same sense as pure water. It made gold look like mud. It did everything that would cause the human mind to think this must be valuable — but what normal gold did through reflection, this gold did through a subtle internal light that did not cast shadows. It was fluorescent, translucent, and he was surprised to find that it didn't actually glow in the dark when he cupped it in his hands and put an eye to them.

"Thrupenny bit useless, pardon the pun — unspendable in the muggle world, and since there's no limit to how much of it you can make, the wizard world don't want it either."

The Tutor almost wondered why it didn't have any effect on the metals in the human body, but the answer magic barged in front the question.

"Hidden in Gringotts," said Flamel. "Hidden at Hogwarts — as though I would try to keep it from anyone."

"I'm sorry?"

"Not as sorry as me. Muggles have this thought pattern that goes, this is what I would do if I were so-and-so. And then they're left wondering why so-and-so, and in this case I am the old so-and-so, does no such thing. Because they don't think like the other person.

"Muggle-thinkers, like Voldemort, say to themselves, Why is Flamel hiding? And they answer themselves, to keep his treasure from other people. Because that's what they would do. On the contrary. The ultimate bezoar? It would cure poor Tom Riddle of his madness with a single dose! I'd hunt him down and force it down his throat.

"You saw my office. I've got a whole cabinet full of medicaments. Why? I've got this! The everlasting light, the panacea for all diseases, the glorious Phoenix, the most precious of treasures, the chief good of Nature, the universal triune Stone. Throw away your tablets, mixtures, ointments and potions: this is it. The solution.

"Unfortunately, it's only our solution. All the useful functions work only for myself and Pear — me because I made the Stone, Pear because we are the two loving hearts that beat as one. And that's about the size of it. Poor bloody muggles. All they really want is a bit of grease for their bread, and I'd give it to them, but no, they have to find their own."

#

Pear was still not done upstairs.

"Another minute!" she said when Flamel called up at her. "I'm sending it now, but it's only 1200 bits per second, Nicolas!"

In the kitchen, something went ding.

"Ooh," said Nicolas Flamel, his mood abruptly improved. "They're done! Go have a seat in the sitting room, Harry. I'd have you go live in the living room, but you've probably got other plans."

#

The Tutor went and had a seat. While waiting he flipped through the Daily Prophet.

Armando Dippet, the former headmaster of Hogwarts, was in it again. Early last September he'd been in with a picture, ancient wizard posing with his new Nimbus 2000 racing broom giving a jaunty-thumbs up, over a whimsical article titled NO ONE CAN STOP HIM FLYING! / 350 Years Young! In late September and mid-October he'd turned up again in less whimsical broom-crash coverage, and now the picture was in again above a rather distressed editorial titled 350 Years Old: CAN NO ONE STOP HIM FLYING?

350, thought the Tutor. Say, Harry — if wizarding years convert to muggle at four to one, and Dumbledore is 110, how old is Dumbledore really?

But before Harry could answer, Nicholas Flamel came in bearing a tray of hot, date-filled triangularish baked goodies.

#

"Scone?" he said.