Next morning Harry woke up at 10 and strolled downstairs in his pyjamas. Everyone was already sitting in front of the tree, Harry rushed over to join them. Harry had finished unwrapping his presents and had started on a box of chocolate frogs, he was reading the card when he realised that this was where he had read the name before. He jumped up from the sofa and ran upstairs to write to Ron and Hermione, shouts of "Harry, are you okay?" followed him up the stairs but he ignored them. He found Hedwig and hastily scribbled two notes explaining what he had discovered. As soon as he sent Hedwig off he ran back downstairs. James was stood up heading to the door. "What was that about Harry?" asked James, Harry realised what he'd just done. "Sorry everyone, it's just at school Hagrid let slip about a man called Nicholas Flamel, when we were asking about a three headed dog which was guarding a trap door. I remembered that I'd read the name somewhere before but we couldn't find him anywhere. When I saw the chocolate frog card I read his name so I went to send a letter to Ron and Hermione." He said all this quite quickly. "What's that about a three headed dog?" asked Sirius so Harry told them about that adventure. The rest of the holidays passed in a blur of snowball fights and pranks.
When James and Lily dropped Harry off at platform 9 and 3 quarters they hugged him goodbye. Harry jumped on to the train and was joined by Ron and Hermione. "I got this book out of the library for a bit of extra reading" Hermione said, she flipped through the pages until she got to the pages she was looking for. "Ah ha here it is, Nicholas Flamel is the only known maker of the philosopher's stone!"
"What does a philosopher's stone so?" asked Ron
"It can turn any metal into solid gold and make the drinker immortal"
"Wicked!" said Ron
"I'll bet that, this is what's Fluffy is guarding"
"We have to talk to Hagrid, we are the only ones who know that Snape's after it" Hermione looked disapproving. Ron rolled his eyes.
"Hermione, I told you what we saw on Halloween. If he wasn't after the stone then why else would he go up there?" Hermione looked like she was going to say something else but was interrupted by Ron "Harry, fancy a game of exploding snap?" Ron tried to teach Hermione how to play wizards chess. She kept losing but Harry and Ron thought it was good for her to be bad at something.