[HPforGrownups] Dumbledore's addition to the P/S or S/S

[GulPlum]

No: HPFGUIDX 48456

At 12:22 17/12/02 -0800, A Painter wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Forgive me if this has been covered, but it bothers me. In Book 1 HP & the 
>S/S the description on the back of Dumbledore's trading cards 
>says  something along the lines of "...his work with Flamel on the 
>scorcer's stone". So we know that Dumbledore did something pretty 
>major  with the stone in order for it to  be mentioned on the card. But what?

Not quite. The card talks of Dumbledore's "work on *alchemy* [my emphasis] 
with his partner, Nicolas Flamel". Whilst the search for the Philosopher's 
Stone is a significant element of alchemy, it's hardly all there is to the 
subject. There is absolutely no reason to assume that Dumbledore had any 
input into the creation of the Stone itself.

>Voldemort wants the stone to become whole/immortal. But we don't hear a 
>whole lot about anything else the stone can be used for.

Canon explains that "The stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It 
also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal." 
General tradition adds also an ability to heal the ill or infirm. In other 
words, there's not a lot more to the Stone than the first book makes clear, 
nor does it have any other uses.

> From the Lexicon, I gathered that Dumbledore is about 175 years old and 
> in book I Flamel is 600 years old (I've heard 700, too, but thats not the 
> issue)

Whilst there is no actual information about Dumbledore's age in the books, 
the book Hermione consults in PS/SS says that Flamel "celebrated his 665th 
birthday last year"; admittedly we know nothing about the book's age, so 
the only thing we can say is that Flamel is *at least* 665 at that stage 
(incidentally, and this is news to some people, Flamel was a real 
historical character - as was his wife Pernelle; whilst his precise birth 
date is unknown, he was born around 1330-1135, so he'd have been 665 a few 
years ago - Hermione's book was therefore either quite new or magically 
updated itself).

>So Flamel was using the stone to become immortal long before Dumbledore 
>was even born. So what else did Dumbledore and Flamel do to or with the 
>stone to warrant putting on the card. IMHO, the cardmaker, like baseball 
>cards and such, would want to put one of Dumbledore's bigger 
>accomplishments on the back. So what was this great work that was done?

As stated above, Dumbledore's work with Flamel was on *alchemy*, not 
necessarily the Stone itself. Furthermore, assuming Dumbledore's 
achievements are listed in order of priority (as you suspect), his work 
with Flamel is only the third listed, after defeating Grindelwald, 
and  discovering the 12 uses of dragon blood. (Of course, both of these 
achievements have thus far not had any relevance to the books' plots, but 
there is major speculation that they will have in one of the books to come.)

>Has the stone been totally distroyed and we'll never hear of it again. Or 
>is it lurking somewhere and will come to light in later books and show us 
>what exactly Dumbledore did with the stone?

The Stone was Flamel's, not Dumbledore's to destroy. Whilst he assures 
Harry that it "has been destroyed", there is of course space for 
speculation that it actually wasn't. My own feelings are that it was.

>Silence (who is quite possibly beating a dead horse)

There are no dead horses around here. Only lots of ghost horses which 
frequently come up for some extra flogging. :-)

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, who thinks that use of the term "Sorcerer's Stone" 
other than as the American title of the first HP book should be banned from 
this list. :-)