This is Saturday's chapter. I'll write another one for tomorrow's scheduled chapter. I really need to get my writing schedule back under control.
(Word Count: 1,455)
Over the course of the next week, Harry had fallen into a routine. In the mornings, Harry would experiment with the Philosopher's Stone, and in the evenings he would experiment with Alchemy or reading through books on dark curses and their counter-curses. He still hadn't found mention of the noxious cloud curse.
On the third day, Harry ended up just asking Dumbledore about it. Sometimes the simplest solution was the best.
"Oh? You want to know the counter-curse? Yes, I do happen to know it. It's an old Egyptian curse, over 1,000 years old. You won't find mention of it in any of the books in our library," Dumbledore explained. "However, the counter-curse is in ancient Hieratic. It would make forming your intent properly rather difficult."
"That's okay, Professor. I'm fluent in Hieratic," Harry said.
That surprised Dumbledore. "Truly? How remarkable. Then it should be no problem to teach you."
He went through the wand movements—Yes, a wand was used for the spell, despite it originating from Egypt—and the incantation.
Once he had the spell down, Harry decided it was time to get rid of the enchantments on the stone. Because Dumbledore was in the room with him, he couldn't just trigger the curse without telling him, so he explained his plan.
Dumbledore frowned. "Harry, do you think this is wise? The stone is not ours."
"It's going to be destroyed anyway, right? I want to try to chip off a piece and see if I can dissolve it back into a solution. I can't do that without removing the unbreaking charm," Harry said confidently.
Dumbledore stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Hmm… I suppose so. Very well then, Flamel did say you were free to try anything. However, I fear the both of us may have underestimated your abilities," he said, and pulled out his own wand to prepare the counter-curse.
Harry pulled out his own wand. "Finite Incantatem."
The first two layers of charms dispelled and immediately the curse was released. The Stone burst in a surprisingly faint cloud, but it filled the entire room. Harry could feel the effects immediately. His eyes and lungs started burning, he became dizzy and extraordinarily nauseous.
He focused his will and vanished the cloud, and cast the counter-curse. The symptoms disappeared.
With a few more "Finites" the rest of the enchantments were removed, leaving the stone unprotected. Without those protections, Harry tried to cast the gouging charm, Defodio, a spell mostly used for stone carving or etching things into hard surfaces. He wanted to break off a piece, but when the spell impacted the Philosopher's Stone, the spell couldn't handle it and burst, sending the stone flying away. It ricocheted off the wall and Dumbledore had to duck as it flew past him. It landed on the floor with no damage at all.
Harry tried several more spells with a similar result. Nothing he did could so much as scratch the bloody thing.
"Well, it appears even without the charms, it is quite durable," Dumbledore chuckled.
Harry sighed. 'So much for the easy way. Why bother with the unbreakable charm if it was already unbreakable?'
The next few days of the week were spent with him trying to use the stone in various alchemical rituals as a power source, catalyst, or as a source of different natures to infuse into other things. The idea was to see what sort of rituals it worked with and which rituals it failed at in order to infer some of the natural qualities of the stone.
However, there was a problem.
The stone worked flawlessly for every alchemical process he could think of. It was no wonder none of the other alchemists could figure anything out about it. If it could only fail for at least one of the rituals, it could tell him something. But it was simply the perfect alchemical catalyst.
Having the stone on hand, he played around with some of the limitations of alchemy. He used the stone as a catalyst to aid in transmuting lead into gold. He now had several bars of pure gold. That was all Dumbledore would allow before he put a stop to it. 100% pure gold. Not a single atom of impurity. Not that no impurities were anything special. Wizards can just vanish any impurities from a gold bar.
The really special bit came from the magical natures this transmuted gold carried. While normal gold was already a great material to use for enchanting, this transmuted gold had these natures boosted. It was the same with any other transmuted metal, but there was only one known source of transmuted gold, making these bars extraordinarily valuable.
Still, no matter how much money he could get, there was no way Harry would ever sell these bars of gold. He would keep them to make things with. He stowed the bars into his trunk.
With this new knowledge of alchemy, Harry guessed that Goblin Silver wasn't actually mined from the ground somewhere. It must be some sort of alchemical alloy. Though he supposed it was a bit obvious now that he thought about it.
After creating the gold, Harry was stumped on what to do next. He had learned nothing about the stone itself. He didn't know how to destroy it.
Towards the end of the week, on the second to last day, Harry had stopped caring for appearances and used several curses to try and chip off a piece. The same reaction. However, things changed when he tried—purely out of desperation—the blood-boiling curse. It didn't damage the stone at all, but it began glowing brightly. The curse took hold. It was the first and only clue he had gotten since he started.
Even Dumbledore looked on eagerly, entirely forgetting about him using dark curses.
Curious, he cast the spell again, but this time holding the spell and dumping as much power as he could muster into it. The stone glowed white-hot, brighter than the sun. Harry could feel the heat coming off the stone even from across the room.
Hoping to melt the thing down into slag, Harry kept the spell up as long as he could, but then the nearby papers in the office started smoldering and Dumbledore called it off before anything caught on fire.
When the stone cooled down, Harry then attempted more alchemical rituals to see if the stone was still functioning. There was no quest completion notice, so he figured it would, but better to have confirmation for himself.
No change.
Still, it was a clue on how to destroy it.
After he left Dumbledore's office that day, Harry returned to one of the dark alchemy books. Using that as a reference, Harry put together a new alchemy ritual based around transmuting blood.
Only this time, instead of using the stone as a catalyst, it would be the target.
The next morning, Harry set out the dark ritual. As he drew out the dark sigils, Dumbledore frowned, his eyes grew cold.
"Harry. How did you come across this?" He demanded calmly. "These sigils are extraordinarily dark."
"The Black Library has a lot of books on this stuff. Don't worry, Professor. I have no intention of delving too far into the dark arts. I'm mainly interested in the counter-curses."
"As mature as you are, Harry, you are still only eleven years old. It is rather concerning that someone so young is reading things like that. You must not be swayed by the power the dark arts promise you," Dumbledore said sternly. He thought to himself, 'I'll have to speak to Arcturus about what sorts of things he allows Harry to read at home.'
Nonetheless, Harry finished setting up the ritual, placing the stone on one of the focus points, and a vial of blood on the other. The idea was to make it seem like an accident. That perhaps he had accidentally placed the stone and the blood on the wrong sections, so instead of transmuting the vial of blood, it transmuted the stone.
Harry ran a hand through his messy hair nervously. Whether this worked or not, it was the last chance he had to complete Death's Quest. It was the last day of school. In just an hour, he would be boarding the train home.
He channeled the magic into it to activate it. At first there was no reaction. Then the stone gradually lost its blood red color. It faded into a perfectly clear crystal. By the end, it looked like a lump of glass.
[Death Quest: Philosopher's Stone
You've rendered the stone inert. Well done. I didn't think you could actually do it in your first year.
Reward: 1 Vial of the Elixir of Life.]