"Why else would he be six hundred instead of just dying at, I dunno, one fifty like other magical people do? Or eighty like muggles do?"

"Okay, say you're Nicolas Flamel," he says. "You're seventy years old, sitting in your alchemical laboratory in fifteenth-century France, and you just discovered the Philosopher's Stone. You weren't in it for the money - he's not that rich. You weren't even really in it for the immortality. You just wanted to see if you could. And now you've got the single most sought-after magical object in the world. You've heard the quest for immortality might be fundamentally wrong, and you don't know if it's true - how would you tell? So you try it, carefully, and at least if there's something wrong with it you're only exposing yourself and your wife - maybe you shouldn't have brought her along, but you couldn't stand to lose her, and you're honestly not sure if that's the evil unnatural rejection of death talking - and people just will not stop trying to steal your bloody rock, and it's always the worst ones who get the farthest, and you're really starting to think there might be something to the whole 'evil unnatural rejection of death' thing because no matter how hard you try to have a simple normal happy life it's just not happening, but you don't know when to stop..."

"People wouldn't try to steal the bloody rock if he just made more of these bloody rocks and distributed them to other people! Or published the recipe or something. And it's not his call to just—like, he gets the choice of whether he dies or not and he keeps it to himself? That's like, hey, I'm the only person on Earth who has this thing that makes you incredibly smart and have a better memory and not need to go to the toilet anymore but I'm not giving it to anyone!"

"No, from your perspective it's like that. From his perspective - well, the perspective of my imaginary Nicolas Flamel that I made up to convince you he's got a more sympathetic viewpoint than you think - it's like hey you're the only person on Earth who has the recipe for the most addictive drug imaginable, and lots of people think it gives you unimaginable happiness with no side effects, and they're going to be really hard to convince otherwise, but you have reason to think that what it actually does is make you so obsessed with it you'd do anything for another hit and then destroy your ability to enjoy things - and you've been on it for six hundred years and you sure don't feel very happy -"

He frowns and doesn't immediately reply.

He unfolds and re-folds his wings. "I'm not saying he's right. I think he's wrong. But perspective's a thing."

"Okay. Anyway, what do we do?"

"First of all, what happened to your face?"

"Crabbe happened to my face."

He shrugs uncomfortably. "It was 'cause of the game."

"—it's not your fault!"

"Isn't it?"

"Of course not! Whatever I did or didn't do was my choice, I'd like to at least take credit for that!"

"- all right."

"Thank you. I don't think it's anything to worry about, apparently magical people are way more physically resistant than muggles."

Victor looks like he maybe disagrees on the subject of whether it is anything to worry about.

"And besides it won't actually help if I tell a teacher, Snape would probably say I tripped and fell or something and I want to get them to like me."

"...all right."

"And that's not important, immortality rock is important—why does it even make gold, like, why are the things related—anyway. Should we assume the Hogwarts staff is aware of it?"

"I think so, yes."

"Is everyone on board with this whole dying thing?"

"People don't always - realize they can change things. Even when it might seem obvious."

"I guess. So we have a crazy person who may or may not be Voldemort's fo—sorry, You-Know-Who's follower—"