Hagrid cooks them both dinner that night, and most nights over the next month, though every so often he takes them both out to a wizarding restaurant in Diagon Alley, somewhere he likes or somewhere that caught her eye. August passes in relative peace, with smiles and sightseeing.
"Tomorrow's the big day," Hagrid says, the evening of 31 August after they've eaten. "Feeling okay?"
Hermione opens her chocolate frog, and startles a little when it darts away from her and makes a valiant leap clear out of the train window.
"Well, it's interesting," she says, a little primly, "but it seems like more trouble than it's worth if it just tastes like ordinary chocolate."
Grin! "The cards are interesting! Though I'm not sure they'd be worth having to deal with the frogs either once you started getting repeats..."
She skims the back of her card, then holds it out to Harriet. "Do you want to see?"
"NICHOLAS FLAMEL," reads the little pentagonal card, "1330-1507," with a little picture of a squat bushy-bearded man framed under the label.
As she looks at the picture, it makes eye contact with her and blinks.
“One of the most celebrated alchemists in wizarding history, Nicholas Flamel is the first and only known wizard to have successfully created the Philosopher’s Stone, used to create that cornerstone of modern magical medicine, the Elixir of Life. Flamel created nine Philosopher’s Stones in his life, and donated them to magical hospitals in every part of the world. One such stone has remained in Britain even to this day.”
"It is! Muggles have myths about the Philosopher's Stone, but they say the Elixir of Life is supposed to make you immortal, I wonder how they got that mixed up..."
"Maybe like a game of telephone? Live longer and healthier gets turned into forever..."
"Maybe! I think there were myths about it before Nicholas Flamel made one, but maybe wizards knew what it was supposed to do? And muggles were disconnected enough from the wizard world to get the garbled version, or to garble it themselves."
"Or it could've been Nicholas Flamel was inspired by the stories... I heard about that happening with science fiction and engineers."
"That could be," she says pensively. "I think the stories would've had to come from some sort of real magic, still, since science fiction comes from real science... but there could've been stories that inspired both the muggle myths and the real Stone, you're right."
"That's true," she says thoughtfully. "But isn't it more likely to inspire real engineers the closer it is to real science?"
She turns back to the pile of candies. "Have you tried Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans? They're much better than nonmagical jelly beans, they taste just like a bite of the real thing and they're not limited to just fruit flavors."
Grin. "They're on the cart, we should each have a box." She looks through her share of the candy haul for hers.
She does too! Maybe savory jelly beans will taste better than sugary ones...
Jelly bean?
Steak and kidney pudding! It tastes and feels exactly like the bean transformed into a bite of steak and kidney pudding once she put it in her mouth.
Hermione finds her box, and pulls out a jelly bean, and inspects it; and retrieves a pencil and a neatly folded piece of paper from... a pocket inside the sleeve of her robes? Maybe that's where wizards put their pockets... and unfolds the paper and jots down a little note. She pops the jelly bean into her mouth, and chews thoughtfully, and swallows, and jots down another note.
Paper and pencil is smart!
She reports her finding, and then hums thoughtfully. "The texture's even there, too, it doesn't feel like a jelly bean..."
"I know, it's remarkable," she says. "Technically it's supposed to be a surprise every time but I like knowing what it's going to taste like, so I've been taking notes. Usually the colors and the flavors match up the same way."
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