"But this is a school of magic," Hermione replied. "A-a-and…"
"And?"
"There's just one small problem…"
"And what might that be?" Richard asked.
"Flamel's book is encrypted in the form of engravings, and according to the studies written by other wizards about the book, not a single magician in the last three hundred years has managed to decipher the Mutus Liber."
"Now that's more like it!" Richard sighed in relief, gradually returning his face to its usual brick-like expression. "For a moment there, I thought any curious schoolchild could simply make themselves a Philosopher's Stone. But it turns out the book's encrypted so thoroughly that you couldn't crack it even with an army of wizards behind you."
"And still, Richie, why do you need this information?" Hermione asked curiously. "Do you really want to create a Philosopher's Stone?"
"It would certainly be nice, though I haven't much hope of it. Hermione, I'm trying to gather every scrap of useful information possible regarding the greatest achievements of wizardkind. I'm truly grateful for your help. I simply never have enough time for everything myself."
Hermione looked immensely pleased with herself. She enjoyed receiving praise.
"I brought copies of every book on the Philosopher's Stone and alchemy that wasn't enchanted. There are more than a hundred volumes."
"Thorough work," Richard said respectfully. "Let's sit somewhere in the sun, and you can pass the books over to me."
"Richie, do you think the Mutus Liber can actually be deciphered?"
"Logic suggests that it can."
Richard picked up the small book filled with engravings and began carefully studying the illustrations. Hermione leaned closer as well, staring intently at the pages of Flamel's work.
The first engraving depicted two angels upon a staircase leading into the heavens. At the foot of the stairs lay a man. Above, in the corners of the image, hung the moon and stars, while the entire page was entwined with the stem of a rose covered in thorns and leaves, with blossoms blooming in the lower corners. Across the first page was written: Mutus liber in quo tamen.
"Richie, do you understand anything?" Hermione asked, hope shining plainly in the look she directed at him.
"Hmm…" Richie, unconsciously imitating a habit borrowed from his father, thoughtfully brushed the back of his hand across his chin. "One mustn't forget that alchemy is the science of transformation and perfection… Which means the book likely describes not only the stages of creating the Philosopher's Stone, but also the stages of the alchemist's own self-perfection."
"Yes, the wizarding researchers wrote something along those lines," Hermione replied.
The boy continued flipping through the book.
"Notice this, Hermione," Richard said after examining all the engravings. "The pages of this little book illustrate the symbolic actions of the alchemist while simultaneously revealing the techniques behind alchemical procedures. We can see drying, evaporation, and distillation; heating over open flame and a kind of temperature regulation; decanting and filtration; calcination and dissolution; the use of scales, a blowpipe, and so on."
"I noticed that many of the symbols resemble the work of a chemist as well," Hermione said proudly. "Maybe these are all sequential stages in the creation of the Philosopher's Stone?"
"Quite possibly," the young Grosvenor agreed. "But most likely, one would also need to reproduce and compensate for all the nuances hidden throughout the book — nuances we still haven't managed to decipher. Take this engraving, for example: the alchemist sleeps with his head resting upon a stone, and within the stone is a hollow cavity from which a stream flows down towards his feet. Meanwhile, the moon in the sky is in its final quarter. That could mean, for instance, that the wizard must somehow remain in close contact with the stone for three weeks."
"Or perhaps not," Granger countred. "Maybe it means a certain procedure has to begin during the fourth lunar quarter."
"Possibly," Richard agreed. "Now look at the staircase to heaven and the two angels blowing into church trumpets. One angel is larger, the other smaller. I believe the angels symbolically represent success. Since there are two of them, that suggests there are two methods of creating the Philosopher's Stone: a swift path and a lengthy one. And judging by the emphasis placed upon the larger angel, this book describes the long path of the Great Work, whilst the shorter route remained secret — locked away inside Nicolas Flamel's own mind."
"And here I thought they were simply angels," Hermione muttered with a frown. "How do you even see something like that in the drawings?"
"Hermione, in this book every illustration carries meaning. It's a cipher where every tiny detail matters. In any case, our minds still aren't sufficient to crack it."
Ours, human minds, Richard silently amended to himself. But an AI specifically designed for decryption might manage to break the code hidden within these engravings. I would only need to feed it an enormous knowledge base about everything imaginable — especially magic.
"Richie, something else bothers me," Hermione said. "The appearance of the Philosopher's Stone differs depending on the source. In the Mutus Liber, it looks like a boulder, but in the book written by the medieval alchemist Jacques Tollet — who supposedly met Flamel and saw the Stone himself — it's depicted as a small blood-red gem with sharp edges."
"Perhaps that was merely a fragment chipped off the main Philosopher's Stone," Richard suggested. "That would make perfect sense and fit neatly into my theory."
"What theory?" Hermione asked with unmistakable curiosity.
"Nicolas Flamel possesses many such fragments of the Philosopher's Stone," Richard replied, "but he presents things to the public as though there is only a single Stone."
(End of Chapter)
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