Author's Note: Prepare the ion cannons. A Lungs has been spotted in the area, and he's about to write. WE MUST STOP HIM. Or something. Yeah. Whatever.
I have a treat for all of you in this chapter - a little bit of a battle!
I think all of you have misinterpreted Flamel's actions at the end of the last chapter. Dumbledore doesn't realize that Voldemort's under his nose - he's just sacrificing some of his safety to draw him out, when really, Voldemort knows about it already. There are very many entities who would love to have the Stone and some of them are probably capable of breaking into banks and stuff. These entities would probably not be as brazen as to break into Hogwarts.
Guys you should all go read my new fic or something. There's not much love for it.
Also, please review! I do love them very much, and most of you know I respond to every single one of them, with extra info and spoilers and magical theory in the way that I do.
Kaleidoscope
He cracked the book open with a sort of reverence that he had for very few things, for his name was Harry Potter and he was born to be irreverent.
So when he paid his respects, the target was probably deserving.
Translitera by Nicholas Flamel, known to the world as the Sorceror's Alphabet. Considered the Holy Grail of latter-day alchemy, each copy was copied tediously by hand from teacher to student and Dumbledore had given Harry his own copy to recreate.
His eyes spun the world into a tapestry of red and he began to read the text, full of Dumbledore's nearly clairvoyant comments in both parentheses and the margins.
The old man sat across from him, watching him copy silently.
"I, too, was a boy of eleven years when I had my first apprenticeship, Harry. Not alchemy, but history. The greatest name in my day was Bathilda Bagshot, still living to this day. She taught me that the truest work is that in which you examined every angle. Perhaps it is intuitive to me nowadays, but that advice was the best I had received to that point in my life."
Harry nodded, as his mind pieced together the equations which he could understand easily and pushed at the ones which were more difficult.
"Is it still too difficult?" Dumbledore queried, after an hour passed in a flash and Harry had copied another ten pages.
Harry shook his head in the negative. That was a lie, but he would work at it until Alchemy was as easily spoken a language to him as English.
So he turned back to the first page and began reading Dumbledore's spindly handwriting again.
To understand the whispers of Alchemy, the student must learn that even if such magicks are beyond his reckoning, the student must first simulate then traverse the fractals which govern this universe to infinite iterations.
Sky High
It was something really silly when it started and Harry regretted it almost immediately.
"Up!"
The chorus of voices rang across the field as the group of children stared a selection of rickety brooms down.
Harry's flew into his hand and he caught it deftly. He looked at the object with a mild sort of surprise. Next to him, Neville grunted as the broom poked him in the soft underneath his shoulder. Daphne's broom rolled over and jumped halfheartedly, then lay still. Mostly everyone had received nonfunctional reactions and Madame Hooch, their instructor for the day, rolled her eyes.
"You have to put some feeling into it!" she shouted, her voice somewhat hoarse already. "Up!" she shouted again. "Your broom is not a toy. It is among the most powerful and difficult enchantments prepared by wizardkind to ensure that even children could command them!"
After several moments, the majority of the students managed to get their brooms into their hands and they mounted the broomsticks.
"Now on the count of three, kick off of the ground. One! Two-"
Instantly, Neville shot off into the distance.
"Shit! Shit! Shit!" he screamed.
Harry and Daphne both let go of their brooms and raised their wands, aiming at the rapidly disappearing blob in the sky.
"Arresto Momentum!" they shouted.
They both missed.
"Shit!" Harry echoed. Daphne, who had clamped her broom between her legs, rocketed off the ground to save Neville, but she wasn't very good with her broom either and ended up spiraling haphazardly.
"God damn it, Potter!" Malfoy screamed, his face white with some sort of fear that Harry had never seen before. "Get off your ass!" He too, took to the air.
Harry shook his head in disbelief, scooped his broom off the floor and followed.
It was like discovering magic all over again. The broom's controlling was so easy and natural to him. He and Malfoy surged past Daphne, who seemed to be safe at the moment and they cut through the air with a hiss.
They appeared on both sides of Neville and Harry kicked Neville's broom handle upwards, all of them missing a stone gargoyle by a hair.
"What are you-" Neville shouted, then gulped as Draco grabbed onto his broom handle and steered it in the direction of the ground. Harry chose to follow the pair, flying right beneath Neville's feet as to catch the boy if he fell.
They made it onto the ground safely and Daphne touched the ground several seconds after them.
Hooch was speechless, so she ended the lesson there and marched off, probably to inform Professor Dumbledore of her speechlessness.
"Why'd you do it?" Harry asked, genuinely curious. Draco Malfoy seemed like the type to jeer when Neville crashed.
Draco clamped his jaw shut and turned to walk away, but Daphne grabbed him by the elbow. "Why'd you follow us up?"
Draco stopped moving, then opened his mouth and closed it again. Of course, it was only too easy to confess to a pretty girl. "He would have died. Can't let him die."
And then Daphne wished that she had thought before she stopped him, because now she felt terrible. Neville, however, pushed past her.
"Draco. Friends." He bowed.
Draco Malfoy bowed back and Daphne believed that she had witnessed a change in fate.
Rise and Shine
Harry woke up before light in the morning lounging on a stuffy armchair with an aching back. There were three other students who were as diligent as he in the pursuits of magic still present. Draco was still awake and still studying Charms Which I Have Known and Loved by Tiberius Black. Daphne, possessing the same discipline, was still going through her copy of A Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. Neville had long fallen asleep - albeit in a more comfortable position than Harry had. An unidentified textbook functioned as the other boy's pillow.
"Morning," Harry muttered, rubbing his eyes. Of course, Harry knew better than to even ask Dumbledore to let the copy of Translitera out of his office, but Harry did have around thirty five pages of copied notes from sitting in Dumbledore's office once every week or so.
Draco looked up and nodded at him. Daphne made a grunting noise which he had never heard come out of a girl before, let alone an eleven year old girl.
"How long before we can have breakfast?" Harry asked the pair of them.
"Three," they both chimed out in unison. Harry nodded and went back to his studying. He mulled over the happy dream which he had in the past two hours or so.
"Wake me up for breakfast, Harry." Daphne shifted, put her book down and closed her eyes.
Harry and Draco stared at one another for a while.
"What makes you tick, Potter?"
Harry contemplated the question, unsure of how to answer.
"For the longest time, it was the pride I had in my family. Then, my father died and now, my energy comes from not wanting to die. From wanting to keep my mother alive."
"And other people too, right?" Harry asked. Neville had insisted that Draco be let into their group of friends. Over the course of a month, Harry and Daphne had both come to appreciate the more quiet and more quietly vindictive version of Draco Malfoy.
Draco nodded.
"How about revenge? On whoever killed your father?" Harry frowned, trying to read the emotions on Draco's face without the help of his heritage and the red-and-black strands. They were rapidly moving into a more taboo topic.
"Whoever did it, I'm going to duel. I promised on his grave. Whether or not Dumbledore tells me who did it. Maybe he had a good reason to do it. I'm older than I was - I know my father wasn't the nicest man. But this is my honor. This is what Professor Dumbledore calls my integrity."
Harry thought that Draco misunderstood what Dumbledore meant by integrity, but he made no show of the emotion.
Daphne cracked her eyelids open and looked from one to the other. Neville let out yet another light snore.
"So answer my question now, Potter."
Harry nodded. "I want to know why. I want to know why Voldemort targeted me. I want to know why he killed my parents. But more than that, I want to know."
Draco understood.
"I could have been sorted differently," Harry said, smiling. "I've always wanted to know. But I've always wanted to know better a little more."
"You're very profound, and really very loud," Daphne said, goodnaturedly.
Harry smiled and went back to reading his notes to keep himself from disturbing the girl further. There would be time to talk at breakfast.
"Wake me up too, Harry," Draco said.
We Must Go On
Harry made the journey to Dumbledore's office after eating breakfast with the few people who were up at seven in the morning on a Saturday. Surprisingly, only Daphne had procrastinated on her actual schoolwork and so Neville and Draco had to help her through it as soon as possible before they enjoyed the day on the lake outside.
Harry had learned long ago that not many people were called to Dumbledore's office - only the most promising of the students. He wasn't too surprised that his friends were in the office once in a while, as well as a handful of Ravenclaw students and one Hermione Granger from Gryffindor.
None of them had the bad luck of being in the room when Albus Dumbledore was being attacked by assassins.
"Licorice Sticks!" Harry called out, walking up the spiral staircase. Dumbledore was, indeed, slowly consuming a licorice stick and grading papers.
"I'm currently lightening Professor McGonagall's workload, Harry. These are NEWT theses which some seventh years have written up as drafts. Would you like to get to work?"
It was perhaps a blessing that Dumbledore kept Translitera locked away in a highly warded closet, because during the time which Harry moved to the seat and Dumbledore moved to unlock the closet, the windows in room exploded into a shower of glass.
Harry's eyes flashed red and black almost involuntarily as Dumbledore drew his wand faster than Harry could comprehend and transfigured the glass into water.
With another wave of his wand, the water gathered in front of him and the temperature rose to boiling.
"He's to your right, Professor!" Harry shouted, realizing that there were strands of magic twisting around something.
Apparently, Dumbledore could see the man as well, because he instantly drenched the intruder with the boiling hot water, eliciting a long scream.
Harry parried a nasty looking off-blue curse which was slated to make contact with Dumbledore's back, which had come from the spiral staircase.
"Get down," Dumbledore whispered, just loud enough for Harry to hear.
Harry dove under a table full of possibly irreplaceable instruments and there was a loud bang and yet another scream as another assailant was incapacitated.
Harry felt the wand against his back too late.
"Surrender your wand and no one has to die, Dumbledore!" someone shouted, in a clearly Mediterranean accent.
"Oh dear," Dumbledore said, sounding completely unworried. Dumbledore put his wand on the table. "It appears as though I shouldn't have been quite so enthusiastic about ordering my own assassination."
"We're here for the Elder Wand, Sorceror," the man grunted, his eyes darting between his partners, one of which was still writhing on the ground and the other who was slumped on the stairs.
"Well, it's on my desk," Dumbledore said, his hands unmoving.
Harry turned and looked into the now visible man's eyes. "You want it so bad that you're going to lunge for it immediately," Harry said, twisting strands which he recognized to be desire.
The man jumped at the desk, but Dumbledore was clearly quicker, summoning a wall of iron with a wave of his hand.
The man slammed headfirst into the thick sheet of metal and dropped to the ground, moaning.
"Excellent, Harry. Now, will you please leave the room. I do not torture people, but that makes interrogation no less unpleasant. I expect you back after lunchtime."