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Hey brother!

Ben, what in the name of Merlin's pants

is the deal with Dumbledore and Nicholas Flammell.

Because if you just sort of gloss over it,

I feel like you can get to the end of the first book,

sort of assuming that the two were just old chums

who worked on and created the philosopher stone together.

After all, on his chocolate frog card, one of the things

Dumbledore is specifically known for

is his work in alchemy with his partner Nicholas Flammel, and the thing Nicholas

Flammel is famous for is making the philosopher stone. In fact, I think you can argue the entire point of

alchemy was to ever create the stone.

Here's the definition. The medieval forerunner of chemistry, based on the supposed

transformation of matter, it was concerned particularly with attempts to convert base metals into of the stone to be able to do. The problem is that of course by the end of the first book we learned that

Nicholas Famel is already well over 600 years old meaning he would have created the stone

centuries before he ever even met Albus Dumbledore.

You don't look a day over 375.

And since the stone itself is sort of the end-all-be-all

goal of alchemy, what on earth could Flammel and Dumbledore have done together some

five hundred years later that Flammel couldn't have just done himself?

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