Silvano Alfieri was an impossibly tall faun.
He was handsome; long-limbed, graceful, and polished to the hoof. Harry knew little about fauns and the way they aged, but enough to guess that his having the appearance of a middle-aged man likely meant he was in fact centuries old.
When he spotted Blaise upon their entrance into the healer's wing of the palace, his expression cleared and he bowed, though not before sending a curious glance at Harry.
"My prince," he said in English, surprising Harry. "And this must be Harry Potter, the apprentice healer."
"Healer Alfieri," replied Blaise. "It is good to see you."
Harry nodded after a beat. He didn't expect to be acknowledged.
"It has been too long," tsked the healer. "Those check-ups should be happening more frequently."
"So you've said," shrugged the Mezzogiornese prince. "But you also mentioned that it wouldn't impact my health if they didn't."
The healer sighed. "It did not hurt you, I suppose. It doesn't mean that it isn't better to err on the side of caution."
"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise," said Blaise primly, prompting a snort from Harry. They exchanged a grin.
The faun shook their heads at their antics, before opting to change the subject. He turned to Harry.
"My prince mentioned you had an interest in the mechanics of core corruption." The British wizard glanced at his best friend, who hadn't said a thing about telling the healer anything before then. Blaise inspected his nails, his expression innocent. Harry sighed, then nodded. Healer Alfieri hummed. "I asked for the details of the case to the relevant unit at St Mungo's so I would know what to search for, both to fulfil the request and for the archives of the research department. Dreadful affair, what happened to that child," he lamented, shaking his head.
"... yes, Ginny, er. It's difficult on her and her family, especially because it was only her first year," said Harry, lowering his eyes.
He resisted the urge to pick at his fingernails at the thought of Fred and George's worry, of Ginny's resignation to her fate. He didn't know what he would do if practising magic became an inaccessible path to him.
"Well, I hope you will find some solace in the material my assistants have compiled. Let's get down to business, shall we? You have some unpleasant hours ahead of you, my prince. The purging potion is... rough on the stomach. I have prepared a private room for this."
"Thank you, Alfieri," said Blaise. "Would you mind showing Harry the Alchemy room in the meantime?"
The healer bobbed his head before tapping a gleaming hoof against the tile beneath his feet.
"Outsiders are not normally allowed in, but I am the Head of the Research Department of Alchemy. I suppose I can make an exception for the prince's friend, if he will consent to swearing a Secrecy Vow."
"I do. Consent, I mean."
"Beautiful." The faun took a sharp intake of breath and raised a hand. A beat after, a staff jumped into his hand. His magic swirled green around his clawed fingertips as he did so, and Harry blinked rapidly, trying to comprehend what just happened. The staff was carved with Latin script and adorned with flowers. It glowed faintly for a while before settling back to its presumably usual brown colour. "Shall we, then?"
Harry Potter was a strange creature.
Silvano had rarely seen magic so potent and restless coming from such a young magical child. It ebbed and flowed around his core, swirled around his head and sparked at his fingers at each unconscious twitch of his body. If he had been anyone else, he would have needed shades to spare his magic-sensitive eyes. But Silvano was the Head Alchemist of the Caladrius palace and Mezzogiorno's lead researcher in organic transmutation. He had long since made sure that his eyes could withstand any and all magical output so as not to impede his work.
The faun asked him a few questions about his healing apprenticeship, and the boy spoke about the variety of lessons he was given from different masters, one being his school's mediwitch, the other a renowned potions master – who hadn't read Severus Snape's essays on liquid curses and their antidotes? –, and the last being the portrait of one of the greatest healers in history.
The boy seemed both perfectly suited and utterly unsuited to healing; while he had the knowledge, talent, magical ability and empathy to make a good healer, his magic lacked the temperance one usually expected of masters of the craft, and Silvano doubted this boy would ever recite the Oath of Asclepius and mean it. His research interest in core corruption was proof of it; Harry Potter didn't so much want to become part of a healing institution and rather sought to use the field to correct wrongs done to those he cared about. It was a means to an end. He would wager his staff that the boy had already broken the spirit of the Oath multiple times even before he was made to swear it, and intended to break it several times more.
Silvano didn't know his background, but one would have to be blind not to realise Potter must have been prompted in this path of magical learning by a desire to save someone in particular rather than to build a career helping others. Interest in healing didn't come at eleven as anything but a distant goal for those who did not have a stake in the matter.
It was as admirable as it was deeply foolish, but such was a way of youth, especially the wixen kind.
To be fair, he really doubted that a healer by vocation would have gotten along as well as this boy did with the palace's youngest prince. And it wasn't to say that the boy wouldn't adopt a healer's mindset later in his life, and properly follow the tenets of the Oath, namely that one could do no harm onto others, one must never refuse to provide healing and one must always protect the secrets of a patient unless in pursuit of more adequate treatment. It was a radical Oath, yet a rewarding one for those who found sense in it. The young apprentice very well could learn to appreciate its meaning.
If Prince Blaise was an influence on him, however, Silvano doubted he would be so. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing; he could still make a competent healer if not a professional Oath-abiding one, and would find success in healing research if not as an employee of a healing institution, where he would never be trusted with a patient if he did not swear the healer's Oath. No, Harry Potter was either destined to give up his ambition once he realised his magic rebelled against the principles of it, or become the kind of pioneer his ancestor Peregrine had been and revolutionise healing magic as they knew it without ever taking a shift at a magical hospital.
Who was Silvano to judge, really, when a third of his department was composed of people like this boy? And although the faun had taken the aforementioned Oath, there was a reason why he himself had discarded the traditional path to delve into alchemical healing. The healing wing of the palace would often be idle if it were not for the fact that it was almost entirely composed of researchers who did not suit the rigidity of the hospital of Mispoli.
He kept his musings to himself and showed the boy around the room he conducted most of his experiments in. Alchemical procedure rooms were often described as an unholy mix between ritual rooms and potions laboratories; cluttered with candles, brimstone, and ingredients alike. Silvano was quite proud of his this room, however. He had diverted the energy flow of the palace wing to converge into his alchemical circle, and the gold veins of the ley lines glowed with unfathomable power. On the side of the room grew a cutting of an Yggdrasil imported from Norway, who had already started to bear small fruits, one of whom would have to be fed to the young prince during and after the harrowing ritual he would endure. It had taken weeks to prepare, but the usually cluttered space was perfectly ordered to start the alchemy procedure, from the equations meticulously written with his own raw magic to the ingredients prepared and conditioned to perform the equivalent exchange.
As Silvano was a researcher sponsored by the principality before being a healer, young Prince Blaise was his only patient and the family had only requested gender affirming alchemy a few months before the boy started studying at Hogwarts. They had reviewed multiple options before that, worried about doing permanent modifications to the boy's body before his core had fully matured, and Silvano had conceded that further research had to be done before attempting it. He had brewed Prince Blaise the hormonal stasis draught and set to work.
The theory of gender affirming alchemy was very new; theorised by an Indian witch only fifty years prior, it had taken some time to reach the international scene. Silvano had himself only performed the transmutation a dozen times. Less permanent magics like transfigurations or potions that needed to be reapplied regularly were usually favoured, both because they were more cost-effective and did not require the services of an exceptional healer. But Prince Blaise was Mezzogiornese royalty; he would have the best services one could offer. So he reached out to the now retired Indian alchemist and interrogated her on the possible effects the ritual could have on immature magical cores, and the backlash a – unlikely, but one was never too cautious – hypothetical reversal of the procedure could create. She portkeyed to Mezzogiorno the next day, and they spent several months testing things out.
He explained all of this to young Harry Potter as he showed him around, and the boy hummed at the right moments and asked appropriate questions. It was obvious he knew very little of alchemy and would likely not delve much further into the field, but he was very interested in the theory behind organic transmutation and the way it vastly differed from the more well-known inorganic enterprises.
"Is the Philosopher's stone considered inorganic transmutation? Since by granting people immortality, it is proven to have effects on the organic systems," asked the boy.
Silvano stopped short and chuckled.
"Good catch, Mr Potter. To answer your question, it is both. I cannot presume to know what Professor Flamel has done to create such thing – though I have my ideas, as any decent alchemist I have studied the matter quite extensively – but he managed to give organic properties to the unliving. And even beyond that, he made his working compatible enough with the human body to grant himself a magical attribute he did not have before, that of longevity."
The boy's eyes sharpened.
"Not immortality."
"No, Professor Flamel can still die, after all, only not of age. And the alchemical procedure must be repeated," – which made it a flawed working, in Silvano's opinions. Who had heard of alchemy that faded with time? Could Professor Flamel not bother to improve his design after six centuries? Although, considering what the faun suspected must have been exchanged to grant a human such longevity, maybe it was for the best that it stayed that way – "so the circumstances are different from what we understand as immortality."
"I see." Harry Potter paused. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter, since the stone is destroyed."
"I beg your pardon?"
The boy blinked, before rubbing the back of his beck sheepishly. "Ah, I wasn't supposed to say that. I don't suppose you'd consent to a Secrecy Vow?"
Silvano agreed to it, well aware of the consequences it would have if such a thing were to spread. The young apprentice then explained a truly ridiculous series of events involving a three-headed dog and a resurrecting Dark Lord, which concluded with an assurance from Albus Dumbledore of all people that Professor Flamel had accepted the destruction of his lifework and had resigned himself to his last years of mortality.
"He's not dead yet, is he? The Headmaster told Neville he and his wife needed to get their affairs in order. Plus, it would have made the news."
"Ah, child, what long-lived beings understand to be a short time is very different than what you would conceptualise. Besides, I very much doubt the stone your Headmaster hid in the castle is the only one Professor Flamel has created. Do not expect his obituary to be written for a long while yet."
Harry Potter nodded, his brows furrowed in thought.
Silvano was about to ask him what bothered him about this situation when his watch warmed around his wrist. He glanced at it.
"Prince Blaise must be done purging the potion. I will check on him now and see if he is ready to proceed. It should be conducted in about three hours. I know he wished for you to be present for the procedure, but your magical core is uniquely… vivacious, and could possibly disrupt the alchemical exchange by diverting the energy flow in the room." The boy nodded, disappointed but unsurprised. He must have known it was unlikely in the first place. Healing procedures rarely were the kinds of magical undertakings that allowed for tag-alongs. "As such, I will charm the wall transparent and let you bear witness to the procedure from the other side of it, with my apprentices. Of course, you will still be beholden to the Secrecy Vow you have sworn."
"I understand."
The alchemical procedure started like any ritual.
Sat on a rug littered with cushions a little ways away from Healer Alfieri's apprentices, Harry observed intently as the golden circle the alchemist had painstakingly laid out sank in on itself, the bright veins taking on a wine red hue. Blaise levitated into the air along with the ingredients the healer would be transmuting to alter his form.
The fruit of an immature Yggdrasil. A jar of dragon blood. A kitsune ball, surrendered willingly. The shed skin of a lamia. Hecatolite and amber. Various plants he couldn't remember the name of. Pensieve memories of Blaise's male ancestors.
Most of these were priceless ingredients, with equal intents of alteration and permanence, transmutation and stabilisation. All the best for the beloved youngest prince of Mezzogiorno.
Harry approved.
And as these ingredients were transmuted and reduced to their barest forms, coalescing in the air around Blaise before forcing their way under his skin, the apprentice healer was mesmerised. He leaned forward and watched with clinical fascination as his best friend was reshaped into his desired form. If his hand trembled in worry, he would attribute it to his young age, and the many ways his care for his friend wore at his composure. He trusted Healer Alfieri, who was a really competent healer and was also very aware of what would happen to him should he harm the youngest prince of Mezzogiorno. But although Harry was now more familiar with emergency healing than planned procedures – due to the ridiculousness of Slytherin's dueling practices – he was well aware that things could still go wrong despite the expert's preparedness.
But nothing went wrong; after a seemingly interminable transmutation, during which the alchemical circle glowed in various colours and the ley lines were thoroughly abused, Blaise was deposited back on the ground, and Healer Alfieri ceased feeding his magic into the construct to check on his patient.
The apprentices, who had taken frantic notes while their master was at work, clapped with fervour and whispered between themselves.
Harry stood up and stumbled his way to the alchemical room's door on the other side. He had to wait a few minutes until it opened.
"Principe Blaise sta bene – ahem, that is, he is fine, do not worry, Mister Potter. He will awaken soon. If you could pass me the potions tray next to the door…?"
"Er, of course, yes." Harry took the aforementioned tray and stepped in. He hurried over and knelt to his friend's side. The healer, seeing how anxious he was, took pity on him and started instructing him on the order of ingestion of the three drinkable potions as he took care of the topical salves. They worked in relative silence, only stopping Blaise's eyes fluttered open.
"Circe, I feel like I've been trampled by an Erumpent," muttered the young prince with a much hoarser voice than he'd had before, both a sign of his exhaustion and of the procedure's effectiveness. "So, Harry, how tall am I now?"
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