...again, what.

Willow is not bummed out by this. At all. Nope. She is very glad her friends get to go and be special and have fun with all the other special kids. Really.

"My mum used to go to the Slug Club when she was in school and she says it's not that interesting, literally just dinner with different food."

"So... what exactly is the point?"

Willow is not sulking. She really isn't! She's just really busy with whatever-it-is she's doing right now. Very focused. Yes.

"I'm gonna guess Slughorn thinks he can predict who's going to be important for some value of important after school and he wants to ingratiate us? I'm not sure why he thinks he can predict that."

"Surely he knows you two are going to take over the world, it's gotta be obvious by now."

"I'm... pretty sure Miranda and I are not the first twelve-year-olds to say they're going to take over the world."

"I don't turn twelve until week after next."

"The first twelve—and almost-twelve-year-olds, then."

"It's more likely the interest in alchemy that caught his attention."

"And here I was thinking it was my looks and your charming personality."

Willow giggles a little.

That was entirely the intended consequence!

"We can talk you two up there, if you like," Miranda offers.

"Pass."

Indeed.

Alchemy: arrives. They are provided oysters and other materials.

Although Slughorn has warned them that some of the materials are red herrings, they have been provided with a variety including stinging nettles, sand, ragweed, some sort of mucus with a smudge on the label where it might describe the source, corn starch, and unicorn tail hair.

Miranda is writing out her own ideas and does not wish to cheat!

They will be doing things after Slughorn has made sure none of their ideas are total disasters. They have five more minutes left in the first section of the class period.

Well, if you're going to be wrong, better be wrong spectacularly and in front of a lot of people. He raises his hand as well.

"How do you propose to wrap sand and corn starch in nettles and ragweed?" asks Slughorn.

"Oh, the idea was putting the particulates on the leaves and making a little envelope with them."

Yay for not setting eyebrows on fire! He chooses to remove the sand and the ragweed, and proceeds. He has practised being careful and delicate while becoming good at Potions so it's not too difficult to do the thing with the leaves.

Well he's not dissatisfied at all with his pearl—he always thought spherical pearls looked so boring anyway—but he's a tad envious of Miranda's gold one.

She's pleased with it. "What do you think you'll put in your essay?"

"I have nnnno clue," he says. And then, as usual when he starts with that, he follows with: "Actually, I think the most obvious thing might be that the shape of the leaf envelope might have influenced stuff. Maybe if I'd made a neat little sphere of mucus around sand and corn starch it'd have been better."

"Ooh, I like it. I'm going to look up where gold pearls come from to see if that gives me ideas, I don't have a clue."

Sadde actually might know something related to this! "If I'm not mistaken gold pearls are usually a kind of cultured pearl?"

"Are they? But the oyster would still have to make them gold, even if they were started on purpose."

"Yeah but I mean, cultured pearls are kinda different than wild pearls, though I don't remember how exactly. I can show you the book where I read about this, I haven't returned it to the library yet."

"Okay, thanks!"

"You're welcome!"

"That was a really fun class. It was almost like doing art."

"Except for the part where I am less than inept at anything remotely artistic, yeah!"

"You know what's really interesting is he never told us which things were red herrings but I don't think he was lying that some of them were supposed to be? It makes me wonder if you can do alchemy with completely random stuff once you know what you're doing."

"Yeah, and that actually explains a lot of why people haven't been able to replicate the Stone or even make the Panacea."

"It does?"

"Yeah! I mean, we had to find the 'right metaphor,'" air quotes. "For something relatively simple like Transfiguration there are many possible metaphors but stuff that magic has trouble with like life and death finding the right metaphor that will convince it something-or-other should exist can be pretty hard and there wouldn't be a specified way to do it. Especially because to make a Panacea or a Stone we don't have an obvious target like an oyster to stimulate."

"Ooh, yeah, that's true. That makes me more optimistic, though, because it means that just like we all got different ways to make pearls there might be some legitimate way to make either one that nobody's stumbled on before."

"Yeah, me too! ...you know, it occurs to me that maybe we should get some poetry books, especially relating to death."

"I'm not sure if that will help me, but it's worth a try if you do."

"Well I'm pretty sure I can't generate literally all possible life—and death-related metaphors on my own, so having a nice supply from people naturally inclined to... metaphorise... or something, should help!"

"You don't need all of them, you need the right ones."

"Yeah but I don't know which those are!"

"Well, maybe you'll find something good in poetry books. I'll probably just look it up in other places that are actually clear about what they're doing so I don't accidentally think a metaphor for rebirth is a metaphor for death or something."

"Well those sound like complementary strategies to me! In a, you know, yours-is-totally-better way."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome!" Let it never be said that Sadde didn't recognise good ideas when he saw them. Heck, he copied those shamelessly.

There are Slytherins here. They're slightly overrepresented. Astoria's there but not Cole, and some he hasn't talked to as much because for whatever reason they didn't want to bother with him.

Some of the Slytherins are more open to being talked to under this circumstance, where Sadde has been filtered for value by a third party and there's no advantage in the here and now to be gained from exerting force of any kind on him.

Miranda does not mention it. She brings up her mum seldom and her dad never.

Unless he is choosing to ask Slughorn at this very dinner party over the raspberry lemon ices, he will not learn the answer immediately.

Tempting! But no, he can be patient. For now: raspberry lemon ices!

"...phoenixes. The undead, although I wouldn't wanna go too near that one, same with unicorn blood. Change, or maybe learning, if you don't want to just be like a portrait or a ghost... memory... accumulation..."

"Phoenixes, good one. Any other particularly long-lived species? There are non-magical immortal species like some jellyfish too. Do dragons die of old age?"

"It takes them a long time, but yeah, eventually, dragons die of old age. Unicorns do a different sort of thing that isn't exactly dying but I wouldn't want to build it in, they fade away. Phoenixes are the most robustly immortal; they can't even be killed."

"Yeah, true. Actually that makes it really obvious as a metaphor and ingredient source. We should secure a way to get lots of phoenix feathers. Is there any particular reason for our Stone to produce gold?"

"Seems unnecessary. We can always just sell Elixir if we need cash. But maybe that's just how it turns out. Gold itself might be a metaphor for incorruptibility?"

"Hmm yeah, there's stuff about how turning base metals to gold is also a metaphor for making things perfect. Perfection, that's a related concept. Diamonds? Silver?"

"Silver tarnishes. Diamonds might be good because they happen from a common element and they're just arranged in a really useful way..."

"Yeah. Any other animals or plants related to immortality? Symbols, symbols are good, too. Isn't the Egyptian Ankh related to that?"

"Maybe? I don't know. We could ask the Runes professor and Sprout."

"Yes, good ideas. Okay, next up, disease. Penicillin, water, bacteria, viruses, cold? Because people get sick a lot in winter?"

"Maybe we could sift the white blood cells out of some blood. Rubbing alcohol or peroxide? Vitamins?"

"All good. That mask thing people sometimes wear. Er... what else?"

"The masks prevent transmission, they're not about cure or even prevention for the person wearing them... if we go that way soap, I guess, something to represent quarantine? Ingredients for medicinal potions..."

"The potions themselves, too. Things relating to curing? Change as well, renovation, a lot of the things related to death... We don't have much information on the general structure of alchemical products and metaphors and stuff."

"Yeah, we might have to wait until we've had more than one alchemy lesson before we go make long-lost alchemical things."

"Probably," he concedes. "But having lots of general ideas can help while we learn technique. Anything related to elixirs? Production of stuff?"

"...Production of stuff?"

"Well, the Stone technically produces the Elixir of Life, so I think there could be a part of the metaphor dedicated to the process."

"Okay... I can't think of anything that makes stuff from scratch, though. How does the Stone produce Elixir, does it... exude it, or turn something into it?"

"I... have no idea. Supposedly it only transmutes other metals to gold, but I don't think the books ever said where the Elixir actually came from. Not the ones I read anyway."

"I mean, it might be considered not to bear mentioning if you just drop it in a bucket of water and have a bucket of Elixir?"

"I dunno though, it sounds weird that they'd mention turning base metals to gold but not water to Elixir. Maybe it can transform any liquid?"

"That would be interesting... The Stone was supposedly destroyed eventually, I wonder how that was done."

"Well, was it ever said to be indestructible? Maybe someone stomped on it really hard."

"I guess, but if it's a stone why wouldn't the pieces work?"

"...really really hard?" He shrugs. "I dunno, the guy's dead. Why would anyone do that though..."

"I don't know!"

"Seriously, did they get bored or something? Is that even possible? There's so much to do!"

"If they were going to get bored I'd think they'd take less than six hundred years to do it!"

He shrugs. "Yeah I dunno." He shakes his head. "Anyway. Any more concepts related to production of things? Or, maybe, to transformation, since the Elixir might be transformed and gold definitely is. Butterflies? Or maybe just their cocoon? Actually I think lots of insects do stuff like that, and tadpoles as well..."

"We don't want to metamorphose. Well, I don't, anyway. Gold is transformed once you actually have the stone but it's not transformable - not in chemical composition and not easily, anyway."

"Yeah but this would just be the metaphor for the transformation of other metals to gold itself, not for the end product. I mean, I think our metaphor will have to either be pretty detailed or pretty unusual or something; just using something vaguely related to immortality and gold probably won't cut it."

"Fusion," suggests Miranda. "For turning things to gold. Can't be how it was done originally but it might work."

"Oooh, yes, good! How would we metaphor that, though—wait, nevermind, brainstorming time, we'll worry about the 'how' later. What other muggle science things could be related? I mentioned penicillin, but I wonder if there's anything else we could use that's similar. Syringes? For something related to disease?"

"An actual vaccine maybe. Or if you want a symbol of the disease itself to ritually destroy, a petri dish or somebody's removed appendix?"

"I'm not so sure a removed appendix would represent disease, exactly...? But well, let's not discard it. What are muggles' major advances with respect to wixen? Electronics, non-magical medicine, various vehicles, physics..."

"What's this have to do with things?"

"It's our comparative advantage! If there's any way we can create more elaborate or specific metaphors using that stuff I bet that'd help. Wixen are a tiny minority of people, apparently completely isolated from the outside, and alchemists are a tiny minority of wixen, I wouldn't be surprised if very few people ever thought of using muggle stuff there, especially given that muggles only really got noticeably ahead this century."

"Oh. Data, communication, mass production, nonmagical biology, you said medicine, ummmm... weapons, kind of."

"...yeah I think if weapons are used at all it'll be as something to symbolically sacrifice. Do any of those have obvious instances related to all this? Other than weapons and death. Nonmagical biology in general and diseases, I guess, but we've already mentioned that."

"I don't want to know what happens if we symbolically sacrifice physics."

"Well now I totally do. We could create a worm hole!"

"The worst case scenario is very bad!"

"And the best case scenario is only pretty cool, I'm not actually going to try to sacrifice physics. What would that even look like? Burning CERN down? Willow's dad would be out of a job!"

"Well, you were talking about ankhs, you could do one of those little plastic models of an atom."

"But those little plastic models are really really wrong! ...does alchemy depend on our personal subjective position on the metaphor? Like, if I tried something that depended on a metaphor for an atom and was really really sure that that particular metaphor was bad, would it not work for me when it might work for someone else?"

"No idea, we should ask Slughorn."

Good thing Sadde has his notepad with him and has been writing these things down on it! Scribble scribble.

They are notetaking buddies.

"...so, I'm running out of juice. Any obvious ideas I've missed?"

"Mmmm." Miranda closes her eyes. "You know what else can dispense liquid and change things at a touch? Wands."

Blink. "Yes. Yes they can. And I really do not want to burn a wand unless I'm really really sure it'll work."

"I'd want to ask the professor about that too for sure. But not everything has to be set on fire to alchemize, why are you so fixated on setting things on fire? And it wouldn't have to be one of ours, I imagine."

"...think about it. Are you sure you don't know why I'm so fixated on setting things on fire?"

"Because you're a pyromaniac?"

"I object to 'maniac'! I'm more of a pyro-enthusiast. A pyrophiliac, if you will."

"You're a pyromaniac."

He sticks his tongue out at her. "I'll have you know, I've never set anything on fire that wasn't meant to be set on fire!"

"Meant by you and your pyromania?"

"And validated by an objective third party!"

"Like who?"

"Mum! And Professor Slughorn!"

"All right, fine, you're a high-functioning pyromaniac."

He ponders this for a second before shrugging and nodding. "Yeah, I'll take it."

"Aaaanyway! Okay, not setting wands on fire, but they're a very good metaphor things, and oh look we both have two of them isn't that convenient. I wonder if the Stone was in fact a transformed wand."

"I wouldn't want to use my own wand, either one, for alchemy as an ingredient. I'd owl that secondhand shop and get another."

"Yeah, definitely, but if that Mr. Ollivander is anything to go by it's very unusual to consider a wand as a possible ingredient, so I think it's probably worth exploring."

"Maybe Slughorn'll know."

"I think I might be tapped out for now."

"Mm, yeah, same. But I think we got a good starting list, anyway, and hopefully will have more ideas when Slughorn teaches us new things."

"Yeah!"