"I'm pretty sure I've seen Nicolas Flamel somewhere," Harry insisted. "But Quidditch training is too intense right now, so please keep looking for clues."
"Aren't we facing a huge conspiracy? Why do you still think of Quidditch first?" Hermione asked helplessly.
"Snape will be the referee next time, and he'll definitely try every excuse to deduct points from Gryffindor!" Harry complained.
"You actually thought of deducting points first! He clearly wants to kill you," Hermione said, shocked. "Why don't you pretend you broke your leg?"
"Why don't you just actually break your leg? I can help," Ron suggested. No one could tell how much of it was a joke.
"I can't do that," Harry said. "We don't have a backup Seeker. If I quit, Gryffindor won't be able to play."
"You don't need to do that," Kevin suggested. "We have Hermione. If Snape wants to curse you again, Hermione can do what she did last time..."
"No, I can't. Don't remind me of what happened last time." Hermione interrupted his suggestion irritably, her cheeks turning red.
"This time it will be safer; we have an Invisibility Cloak."
Just then, Neville Longbottom stumbled into the common room. No one could guess how he'd crawled through the portrait hole, because his legs were glued together. Harry and the others immediately recognized it as the Leg-Locker Curse. He must have hopped up the stairs like a rabbit all the way to Gryffindor Tower.
Everyone laughed, but Hermione didn't. She jumped forward and performed the counter-curse on Neville, whose legs immediately snapped apart. He stood up, trembling.
"What happened?" Hermione led him to a seat near the fire.
"A Slytherin girl," Neville said, his voice shaking, "was walking down the corridor. I had my head down, and suddenly she claimed I touched her inappropriately."
"Then Pansy Parkinson, who is a head taller than me, put me in a headlock and forced me to apologize. Malfoy and the others surrounded me and accused me of offending a lady."
"Go find Professor McGonagall!" Hermione urged Neville. "Tell her about it!"
Neville shook his head, tears welling up. "It was too late. I was too scared to defend myself or explain that I accidentally bumped into her. They made me pay them off, then put a Leg-Locker Curse on me, forcing me to hop away. Now everyone down there thinks I deserved it."
"You can't just admit to something you didn't do, Neville!" Ron said hotly. "Those guys are always so arrogant. We can't just give in to their intimidation and let them get away with it."
"You don't need to tell me I'm too cowardly to be in Gryffindor. Just think about all those people surrounding me, threatening to break my fingers one by one if I didn't confess," Neville choked out.
"This is not your fault at all. I can get justice for you. Think about who was involved." Kevin counted on his fingers. "Malfoy, Pansy, Crabbe, and Goyle. And by the way, what's the name of that Slytherin girl?"
"No need. Besides, I was so frightened I didn't catch her name." Neville looked even more embarrassed. "All I know is that she wasn't wearing her usual robes, and she had the hem of her clothes tucked in really high. What she was wearing... was very different." Neville tried to find the right word to describe it but failed.
Harry reached into his robe pocket, pulled out a Chocolate Frog, and handed it to Neville. Neville looked like he was about to cry again.
"You're worth twelve of Malfoy," Harry said. "The Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn't it? And where's Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin."
Neville unwrapped the Chocolate Frog, pulled out the accompanying card, and his lips twitched, revealing a weak smile.
"Thank you, Harry. I need to be alone for a while. Do you want the card? It's a very rare one—Albus Dumbledore."
After Neville retreated to his dormitory, Harry idly flipped the card over. Suddenly, he gasped, staring at the text.
"I've found Nicolas Flamel!" Harry announced. "Take a look at this card's effect description: 'Pay two Blue Mana to return an Artifact card to your hand and Special Summon Immortal Nicolas Flamel from your deck or hand.'"
"I told you I'd read that name somewhere! The first Dumbledore card I got on the train said: 'Dumbledore's well-known contributions include: defeating the Dark Wizard Grindelwald in 1945, discovering the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel!'"
"If his title is 'Immortal'," Hermione realized, her eyes widening. She dashed up the stairs to the girls' dormitory. Before Harry and Ron could even exchange a confused look, she rushed back down, lugging a massive, ancient book.
She began flipping through the pages rapidly, muttering to herself. "Nicolas Flamel," she read in a theatrical whisper, "is the only known maker of the Sorcerer's Stone! He celebrated his 665th birthday last year and now lives a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (658 years old)."
"You mean Nicolas Flamel created the Sorcerer's Stone? No wonder he can live forever," Kevin said, the pieces falling into place.
"No wonder we couldn't find Nicolas Flamel in Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry," Ron said. "Since he's 665 years old, he can't exactly be considered 'recent', can he?"
"So that three-headed dog must be guarding Flamel's Sorcerer's Stone! I bet Flamel asked Dumbledore to keep it safe for him because they're friends, and he knows someone is after it." Hermione continued her deduction. "It's quite possible Snape wants the Stone." She frowned.
The events during the Quidditch match seemed to have drastically altered her opinion of Snape.
"So the truth about Halloween is likely that Snape released the troll to distract the other professors so he could get closer to the Stone—and possibly kill a few students in the chaos. That way he could frame Professor Quirrell, who almost succeeded in stopping him," Kevin concluded.
"I told you he was evil. Look at those black robes he wears; he looks like an oversized bat. Does he want to use the Stone to turn lead into gold?" Ron asked.
"I doubt it. Judging from the market price of potions, Snape makes more money brewing illicit draughts than he would robbing Gringotts," Hermione retorted. "Besides, we all wear black robes."
"These two shades of black are not the same. Ours is standard school uniform black; his is evil black. Back me up here, Harry."
"So he wants to live forever?" Harry asked.
"Perhaps it's worse. Do you remember that person you mentioned before—the one whose name people are afraid to speak?" Kevin prompted.
"You can just say Voldemort. Don't be afraid."
"Based on my experience with RPGs, if a main villain dies off-screen, he will return within 10 to 15 years, usually stronger than before. This logic applies even if he doesn't get a movie deal."
"But the Sorcerer's Stone cannot bring the dead back to life," Hermione argued.
"You-Know-Who may have already been resurrected, or perhaps he didn't die at all but simply needs the Stone to restore his former power. Snape will offer it to his master in exchange for a high-ranking position in the New World Order," Kevin said in a low voice.
"Imagine if he took over Hogwarts. How would he treat the students here?" Kevin couldn't help but recall the various... questionable public services in certain darker games.
In a way, Snape was already exploiting the system. The Hogwarts professors had developed a rudimentary trading economy based on the detention system. Snape "sold" students to avoid patrolling the corridors or dealing with Peeves. The professors then traded these detentions, primarily in exchange for labor, and sometimes even hard cash (the current exchange rate was three Knuts per student per hour—far below the wizarding minimum wage, if such a thing even existed). Naturally, the students were completely unaware of this underground economy.