A Song of Water and Fire

Creating a Sorcerer's Stone was an agonizingly long process, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione were running out of time. They needed to have the stone completed before the night that Quirrell, along with the dark lord who shared his body, went after the stone himself. Dumbledore's enchantment he placed upon the mirror had kept Voldemort at bay for a while, but none of them wanted to find out if he would have found a way around it, had he been given the chance.

The 'negrido' step in the stone making process had done the trick, turning their ingredients into black ash. According to Hermione, the next step was the 'albedo' step, also known as the whitening. To successfully pass through this phase, their newly- cleansed ingredients had to undergo a ritual known as a unity of opposites. This meant that they had to be exposed to opposing forces or energies simultaneously.

"Do you really think this will work?" Ron asked. He, Harry, and Hermione were once again in the Room of Requirement, ready to begin the next phase.

"We practiced this," Hermione reminded him.

"It's a good thing we had a few weeks to work this out, actually. That took a lot of practice," Harry said.

"And out of all that practice, we only actually got it to work a couple of times," Ron pointed out.

"Well what do you expect? Fire and water don't mix well, that's why they're opposites. At least we've proven that we are capable of doing this," said Hermione.

It turned out that even with magic, it was really difficult to get water to burn. After many failed practice attempts, Harry finally suggested that perhaps there were some other opposites they could try to unify. Ron suggested that perhaps Hermione could sit in the cauldron and let somebody boss her around for a change. Hermione was unamused, but explained that magic this complicated truly needed deep, elemental polar opposites to be unified, so they were stuck with the fire and water.

As they'd practiced, Harry produced a stream of water from the tip of his wand and dampened their blackened ingredients. Ron and Hermione then got into position, readying themselves to cast the fire charm. The fire charm had to be very powerful to set fire to something as opposite to fire as water, so this unity of opposites would require two of them supplying the fire, while only one worked on the water.

"Incendio!" Ron and Hermione exclaimed in unison, and fire leaped out of their wands and into the cauldron. A cloud of steam formed as the fire made contact with the stream of water, but the flames would not become self-sustaining. After a few seconds, the three of them put down their wands and took a few deep breaths to prepare themselves for another try.

"Everyone ready?" Harry asked after a few moments. Ron and Hermione nodded, and Harry started up his stream of water once again. Hermione nodded to Ron, and the two of them put everything they had into their fire charms. The cloud of steam was larger than before, but still there were no self-sustaining flames.

Several more times they tried with no luck, and the three of them became discouraged.

"I knew it would be next to impossible for us to actually make a functioning stone," Hermione admitted, "but I didn't expect that all we would be able to accomplish was a bunch of warm, wet, ash."

"We need a more powerful flame," Harry said. "I'll bet Dumbledore could do it no problem."

"I don't know about getting Dumbledore too involved in this. Who knows what that could do to the timeline?" Hermione pointed out.

"I'll bet a dragon could do it," Ron said suddenly. Harry and Hermione stared at him perplexedly.

"I'm sure, but where are we going to get a dra-" Hermione stopped mid-sentence, catching on to Ron's plan. She knew exactly where they could get a dragon.

The next day, they found themselves in the library, waiting for their dear friend Hagrid. It was in this very spot, on this very day, that they had run into him and told him all about how they had found out about the stone, and had scored an invite to his hut that evening so they could discuss matters. And while doing so, they found out about their friend's deep secret.

"Remember when all I had to worry about was studying for my final exams?" Hermione said longingly as she pretended to read through one of her first year textbooks that she practically knew by heart. It had certainly been a simpler time. Even Ron was feeling nostalgic over his old homework assignments, which he'd absolutely hated doing at the time.

"Hey, Ron! Working on that History of Magic essay?" Hannah asked as she slid into the empty chair beside Ron's and eyed his open textbook. Harry jumped slightly at the sound of her voice. She seemed to come out of nowhere.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged glances. They had to get rid of Hannah before Hagrid walked by. There was no way they could talk about the stone in front of her. Especially because there was no telling when she was suddenly going to be possessed by Taylor again.

Ron knew that he was going to get an earful from Hermione about this later. She had warned him so many times about how he needed to take care of this little crush Hannah seemed to have formed on him, because it kept messing up the timeline, and they wanted to keep their distance from her anyway because they never knew if Taylor was secretly watching them through her eyes. This all made sense, but Ron was never really good with such things. He had no idea what to say to Hannah to get her to leave him alone.

"Er… Yeah, exactly, History of Magic. I really wish I could chat, but I just have so much homework to get through…" Ron said, hoping she would take the hint. But taking hints did not seem to be a talent of Hannah's.

"Well it would go a lot faster if your book was open to the right chapter!" Hannah replied with a giggle. She flipped Ron's book to the correct page.

"Yeah, thanks I guess…" muttered Ron, who had only been pretending to study and didn't actually care which pages he was supposed to be reading.

"You know what would make this go faster? I can share my notes with you! I'm a pretty good note-taker."

"Actually, I don't know…"

"That would be really helpful, Hannah, thank you," Harry cut in. "Do you think you could go and get them? Right now?"

"Oh, yeah sure…" replied Hannah, who looked like she was just noticing Harry for the first time.

"Yeah, that would be really great. Then we could spend the afternoon studying together," Ron said, catching on. Hermione scowled, but said nothing. She knew Hagrid would be coming by any moment, and the important thing was to get Hannah to walk away as soon as possible.

Hannah beamed at the suggestion and leaped up from the table to go and retrieve her notes. She did this just in time, as Hagrid came into view mere seconds later.

"Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?" Ron called out to him. Hagrid wandered a bit closer to his little first year friends but kept his distance, and he was clearly hiding something behind his back. He looked nervous, and rightly so. He had a huge secret he was covering up.

"Jus' lookin'," Hagrid claimed, although Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew full well what his true purpose was for being in the library. "An' what're you lot up ter? Yer not still lookin' fer Nicolas Flamel are ya?"

"Actually, we found out who he was ages ago," Ron announced. He saw the look on Hagrid's face when he said this, and knew that his friend still felt terrible about accidentally blabbing to them about Dumbledore's friend a few months back. It almost made him not want to continue, but this was important. Not just for the sake of the timeline, but for the sake of their own Sorcerer's Stone. "And that's not all. We also know what Fluffy's guarding. It's the Sorcerer's-"

"Shh!" Hagrid exclaimed in a panic. Harry had almost forgotten how flustered Hagrid had gotten whenever they tried to talk to him about Nicolas Flamel and his legendary stone. "Yeh can' be talkin' abou' that here! Look, stop by me hut later. I'm not sayin' I'll tell yeh anything, mind, but we can' be talkin' abou' this stuff out in the open."

"Alright, we'll see you later, then," Harry said. Hagrid wandered off.

"I did feel really bad about doing that," Ron admitted once Hagrid was out of earshot. "Why was I always the one to torture Hagrid when we were first years?"

"He'll be fine as long as we can manage to keep the Sorcerer's Stone out of Voldemort's clutches like we did last time," Hermione pointed out.

"Can we stop fake studying yet?" Harry asked. He had grown tired of staring blankly at his Transfiguration textbook. And with that, the three of them packed up their things and left the library.

A minute later, Hannah returned with her notes in hand, staring dejectedly at the empty table.

Later that afternoon, Harry knocked on the door of Hagrid's hut. All of the curtains were drawn shut, which was unusual for his outdoor-loving friend who enjoyed the natural sunlight. This had puzzled Harry and his two friends the first time they had come to have this conversation, but this time around they knew Hagrid's secret.

"Who is it?" Hagrid called out, clearly being careful to not let in the wrong company.

"It's us, Hagrid," Ron replied. Hagrid opened the door and ushered the three of them in quickly.

Although the weather was rather warm, Hagrid had a full fire blazing in his fireplace, making the small hut feel something similar to an oven. Harry thought they had better get this over with before he was cooked alive.

"So, Hagrid," Harry began, "We were hoping you could tell us what is guarding the Sorcorer's Stone. Apart from Fluffy, of course." As usual, the whole conversation seemed to make Hagrid uncomfortable. It was difficult to tell if the sweat forming on his brow was from nerves or the crackling fire.

"O' course I can't," Hagrid said, right on cue. "Number one, I don' know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn' tell yeh if I could. The Sorcorer's Stone's here for good reason. It was almost stolen from Gringotts-I s'ppose yeh've worked that out an' all? Beats me how yeh even know abou' Fluffy."

"Come on, Hagrid," Hermione pleaded, now taking her turn to speak. "Even if you don't want to tell us, I know you know. You know everything that happens at Hogwarts. Mostly we just wanted to know who Dumbledore has trusted with the guarding, apart from you." Just as they'd known it would, Hermione's flattery worked.

"Well, I don' s'pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that… let's see… he borrowed Fluffy from me… then some o' the teachers did enchantments… Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick, Professor McGonagall, Professor Quirrell…" Harry winced slightly at Quirrell's name, but Hagrid was too busy thinking to notice. "An' Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hang on, I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape."

"Snape?" Harry repeated in his most pretendingly shocked voice.

"Yeah-yer not still on abou' that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the stone, he's not about ter steal it."

"And nobody else knows how to get past Fluffy? Only you? Not any of the other teachers?"

"Not a soul knows except me an' Dumbledore."

"Good. Hagrid, do you think we could open a window or something? I'm boiling."

"Can' Harry, sorry." And with that, Hagrid glanced over to the fireplace, where something very illegal was set in the middle of the flames.

"Hagrid, what is that?" Harry asked, despite the fact that he was very aware that it was a big, black dragon's egg.

"Ah, that's… er…"

"Where did you get that, Hagrid? It must have cost a fortune!" Ron exclaimed.

"Won it las' night, in a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest."

"But what will you do with it once it's hatched?" Hermione asked. It was still a great question, one their hairy friend clearly had not thought through.

"I've been doin' some readin,'" Hagrid explained as he showed them the book he had snuck out of the library earlier. "It says ter keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on 'em see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An' see here-how ter recognize diff'rent eggs-what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them." It was clear that Hagrid was quite pleased, and it was no wonder. Harry knew that Hagrid had wanted a dragon his whole life. But there was no possible way he could raise a dragon in secret from his tiny hut.

"Your house is made of wood, Hagrid. This is a bad idea," Hermione pointed it out. It was still true, even if she was mostly just saying it as part of their script, but Hagrid was too pleased with his egg to take any notice.