After I left the old man's office I returned to the Ravenclaw dormitory. Once there I focused all my attention on pouring over maps to find a good spot to put down my Fayth. I had so far narrowed it down to a few small rocky islands that I could burrow into to hide my Fayth. The best part is that these places were inconsequential to anyone not hunting puffins. The trick with all of these however was that I'd need to put up a ward to mask the massive magical signal the Fayth was no doubt going to be putting off.-
Once I made my choice on location I began to look over ward schemes to see if any already available ones would work. I really had to pat myself on the back for getting the [linguist] skill a while back as it translated over to runes so I was quite good at using the various runes and merely needed to translate the wards sentences to figure out exactly what they did and how. Most wards were designed to protect what was inside them which was fine but not exactly what I was after. -
It took me two days to find three ward schemes that partially did what I wanted. Then another day to deconstruct them to isolate those parts and then use arithmancy to create a new ward scheme that fully fused those aspects. It was a thing of beauty if I did say so myself as the ward didn't offer any overt protections at all. What it did do was mix a sort of "notice me not" charm with a magical absorption and negation matrix. This meant the Fayth could spew out as much magical energy as it wanted since the ward would just eat it on contact and use it to strengthen itself.-
Once I had that finished I officially didn't have anything pressing to take care of and chose to be lazy for the first time all year. The exam results came out and naturally I got O's across the board. Hermione came in a close second however with O's in every subject except potions were she got an E. And oh did coming in second place rankle her something fierce! She was muttering about it for the next two days as she buried herself in books in a vain attempt to patch up a deficiency that frankly didn't actually exist.-
It was on the final day of school that a huge commotion was made by the golden trio as they ran into Flammel who had come to get me.
"Having fun I take it?" I asked as I manifested nearby.
"Ah, Alex! I was just talking with your fellows here since they had protected my stone. Monsieur's Potter and Weasley were recounting the tale to me in fact." Flammel said with a smile as he faced me.
""You know Nicolas Flammel!?"" the trio exclaimed at the same time.
I chuckled "I met him when I was traveling over seas during winter break. He is here to get me for the summer if I am not mistaken." I said casually.
"Quite so. Albus has told me so much about you since our last meeting. I was on my way to see that strange bird he spoke of when I ran into these three. Monsieur Potter's scar gave him away and I couldn't help myself." the thin frail old man said with a good natured grin.
"Makes sense. I take it you've already retrieved the fake stone?" I asked leaving the trio to all widen their eyes at once.
"It was fake?" Harry asked with a horrified expression.
"Well kinda? It was a philosophers stone, but it was a failed one. Still highly valuable of course but it couldn't create gold or the elixir of life." I said with a shrug.
Flammel looked intrigued at this "How'd you know? Without having seen the real stone for yourself you shouldn't have been able to tell the difference." he asked curiously.
"Through my unique perception of course. The energy of that stone was far too little to possibly be the real thing." I answered with a half truth.
"Energy amount?" he muttered and produced the red stone from his robes and stared at it for a moment. "Goodness me, it looks like you are right. In all other regards this failure seems the real thing but close scrutiny of it's energy would give it away immediately." he said eventually.
"So there was no danger this whole time!?" Ron exclaimed in horror.
"Beyond the danger the person the trap was intended to catch had? No." I said with a shrug.
"Did you know this whole time?" Hermione asked me with a conflicted expression.
"You'll need to be a bit more specific." I said calmly.
"Did you know that the stone was fake and that there was no danger?" she asked.
"No and yes, respectively. Quirelmort wouldn't dare make any really dangerous moves while Dumbledore was at school. They were rather pushy about trying to corrupt me with dark arts but I'm not stupid and lead them by the nose the whole time. As for the stone how could I possibly know without ever seeing the thing in person? It was only when Harry handed it over to Dumbledore that I picked up on it's wrongness." I explained casually.