The next morning, Sunset once more teleported into the Headmaster's office to find Professor Dumbledore waiting for her. "Ah, good morning Miss Shimmer. Good, now we can get started. Fawkes."

The phoenix gently lifted off his perch near the wall, gliding over to Dumbledore who had gotten up and moved to stand beside Sunset. With a flash of flame they found themselves in a chamber deep beneath the castle. On a table in the center of the room, lay a small, irregularly shaped red rock. Sunset walked up to it, intrigued. "Hmm. So this is the famous Philosopher's Stone. Interesting. So, how do you plan to hide it?" Her gaze turned to a mirror placed near the rear wall of the room. "I take it that has something to do with it?"

"Indeed. That is the Mirror Erised. I thought of it when Princess Celestia said the trap needed Quirinus to remain in place for some window of time."

Sunset walked up to the tall mirror, studying it carefully. "Hmm, Erised ... Desire. Subtle."

Dumbledore chuckled. "Quite. But it is a powerful magical artifact, as intriguing as it is insidious. The mirror shows those who stand before it no more and no less than their heart's deepest desire. Wizards have wasted their lives away staring into it, wondering if what it showed was a reality, or merely a possibility."

"Magic makes many things easier. After a while, a wizard's ability to solve problems through logic alone can start to deteriorate. Part of the reason I usually avoid the simplest, most magical solution to a given problem."

"I guess that would explain a few things. Anyway, exactly how were you planning to use the mirror to protect the stone."

Dumbledore smiled. It was clear that a lot of thought had gone into his plan. "With a spell tied into the enchantments on the mirror. The basic idea is that the ability to retrieve the stone should be based on intent. Specifically, on a desire to have the stone, but not to use it. Or, likewise, not to give it on to someone who would use it."

"So, Quirrell, wanting to obtain the stone and give it to Voldemort who would then use it could not retrieve it?"

"I see. And you, wanting to retrieve the stone and give it to Mr. Flamel who would then use it could?"

Dumbledore's smile faltered. "That could pose a problem. I may have grown too focused on protecting the stone and overlooked an actual need to retrieve it."

"Well, that shouldn't be too hard to fix, should it? Just make sure that the safeguard against retrieving the stone to pass it on includes an exception for passing it on to the rightful owner."

"And of course a clear definition of who that rightful owner is. We couldn't allow it to be based off of the perceptions of the subject. Yes, that should work. I have already cast the spells on the mirror, but recent events led me to wait for a second pair of eyes to take a look at my efforts first, just in case you would spot such an oversight. I should be able to make the modifications easily. Give me just a minute."

Watching the headmaster work was a highly enjoyable experience, Sunset found. He guided his magic with an experienced precision and practiced grace she had only ever seen in Princess Celestia before. His custom tailored spell upon the mirror was no less genius, she suspected, though she couldn't see it properly, so well was it hidden within the enchantments that were on the ancient looking glass anyway. Had she not known that it was there and what it was meant to do, she would never have even found it. Despite her experience on the subject, enchanted mirrors were a bit of a staple for any magician, after all.

"There, that should do it. Now I simply need to place the stone inside and it will be safe. How long exactly would the trap take to function?"

Sunset rubbed her chin, thinking back to her conversation on the topic with the princess. "About half a minute to lock onto the fragment, then about ten seconds for a subtle charge that should be more or less undetectable over the ambient field. Then about a second of rapid charge to build up enough power and once it has that, the activation is more or less instantaneous. So about forty odd seconds all-in-all."

"Good, good. This should easily distract him and keep him in place for longer than that."

"Then the stone would become inaccessible until it is restored. The stone isn't stored within the mirror, only in a sub-dimension accessed through it."

Dumbledore nodded with a gentle smile. "That was indeed my inspiration, yes." After a moment of silence his expression becomes more serious and he looks to the door. "Now, shall we go over the remaining defenses?"

"Good. Fawkes." The firebird took nary a second to flame into place atop Dumbledore's outstretched arm. Reaching his other arm into one of the pockets that had to be hidden all over his robes, the headmaster pulled out a folded piece of parchment, holding it out to the bird. "Take this to Severus, then bring him to us, my friend."

With a gentle trill, the phoenix took the note in his beak, lifted off from Dumbledore's arm and vanished in another flare of flames.

Sunset followed the old man out the door and through a small room and an archway into a somewhat larger circular room, featureless save for the archways on opposite ends, one of which they had just entered through, and a long, narrow table in the center, holding seven bottles, not one of them matching the next, and a slip of paper with a note.

The moment she had passed over the threshold, black flames sealed off the door to the stone behind her while purple flames flared up to cover the other archway. A few seconds later, a third flare of flames, golden this time, heralded Fawkes' return, accompanied by Professor Snape.

"Yes Severus. It is. Miss Shimmer? Would you like an explanation or would you prefer to try and figure out the trial on your own?"

"Very well." Both professors leaned against the wall of the room to wait while she picked up the sheet of parchment and began to read.

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,
One among us seven, will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,

Two among our number hold only nettle wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line,
Choose unless you wish to stay here forevermore,
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:

First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine's left side:

Second, different are those who stand at either end,
But if you would move onwards, neither is your friend;

Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;

Fourth, the second left and the second on the right
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.

For a moment, Sunset remained still, using some of the magic used for arithmancy to check through the possibilities, before settling on her answer. She pointed at the smallest of the bottles, more of a vial, really. "Forward." Then she moved her hand to a much larger bottle at the far end of the row. "Backward." She turned to the two Professors, smiling. "Correct?"

After a second, Snape hesitantly nodded. "Correct. How did you manage to solve it so fast?"

Snape looked at her with some consternation. "I see. Most wizards are terrible when matters of logic are concerned. I hadn't considered the possibility of using magic to solve the logic problem."

"I am more or less inversing the idea of arithmancy for this. Wizards rarely have to solve complex math problems, so I doubt he would think of it. Without that, it would probably stall him for a while. Now let's see here."

She drew her wand, pointing it at the bottles for a few moments. "Shielded against magical scans, very good, He shouldn't be able to simply bypass the riddle." She then turned to the flames on either side of the room. "Oh my, there's quite a bit of power behind those. Hmm, I wonder ..."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then a golden flame appeared in her other hand. It quickly spread until she was fully engulfed in flames. She took a deep breath, clearly relishing the sensation of the magical fire that was her talent. Then she tentatively reached a hand out and held it into the black flames.

The black fire tinted gold whenever it came close to her and failed to harm her. After a moment's hesitation, she stepped through the black flames to the door leading to the room that held the stone, then back. After repeating the same process with the purple fire, she returned and extinguished her fire. Finally she turned to the two men who had been silently watching, an eyebrow raised on each.

"Well, I can get past the fire, but that is my special talent, He almost certainly won't be able to do that. Other than that, I don't think He'll be able to bypass the fire. Unless ... hmm. I have to ask. He is keyed into the new teleportation wards, correct?"

"Good. So he won't be bypassing it that way either then. In that case I don't see a problem with this trial."

Dumbledore nodded, satisfied, while Snape allowed a modicum of pride to show on his face. "Very well," The headmaster turned back to the bird that had taken a seat on his shoulder. "If you would take Severus back to his office, please."

Fawkes stretched out a wing and touched a primary onto the professor's shoulder. In a flash of golden fire, Snape was gone.

Dumbledore drew his wand again and waved in a gentle, circular motion. The flames died down. "Don't worry, these flames were of my creation, only I can deactivate them while someone is in the room. Now, the next room was previously Quirinus' own contribution to the stone's defense. Given the change in circumstance, I figured it was no longer adequate, so I removed it and asked Professor Sinistra for help in replacing it. Allow me to show you."

Stepping past the archway that was previously blocked off by the purple fire, they progressed through a door into a most peculiar room.

Actually, Sunset wasn't completely sure the descriptor 'room' was entirely adequate. They seemed to be standing on a loosely spherical rock in a star-filled void. Several more were floating in the distance in all directions. The door was not attached to any wall, merely a frame standing around on it's lonesome. The room they had just left clearly wasn't behind it.

Then the door fell closed and disappeared. Walking along the rock carefully, she noted that gravity always seemed to point her towards it, rather than towards where she had first thought 'down' to be. Yes, she concluded, this definitely had the touch of the astronomy professor. Speaking of.

Sunset just managed to catch Dumbledore holding another slip of parchment out to the phoenix before the latter disappeared, taking it with him. Figuring that it would take a moment for him to return with the professor, she continued to walk across the likeness of an asteroid, albeit a greatly down-scaled version.

On the opposite side of where they had first entered, she found another door. Opening it, she found it to lead back out into the castle and assumed that it was meant to be the regular entry to this trial. Not far from the door, she found a table that held several large sheets of parchment, each of them containing a star chart with a few of the stars labeled with symbols. It took a moment before she realized this to be another riddle or puzzle of sorts, but, this time, not one of logic, but of spatial reasoning.

Each of the star charts had five stars labeled with a unique symbol. There were six in total. Each of the maps was missing one symbol. After another moment and turning the cards a few times, she realized that the stars were actually the 'asteroids' in the 'room' they were in.

Each of the maps was actually circular and displayed everything around focused on the 'sun' that seemed to be in the center of the large cloud of floating rocks. Then she noted that each of the maps had the missing one of the six symbols marked in its corner and, another moment later, she realized that one of those symbols was also on the table beneath all the charts.

She was just about to try figuring out what to do about all of this when she heard two sets of footsteps approaching.

She turned to see Dumbledore had followed her, now accompanied by Professor Sinistra. "Ah, good morning Miss Shimmer, enjoying my little trial?"

"Good morning, Professor Sinistra. I'm still working out the details. I suspect that the answer has to do with those other, marked 'asteroids', for lack of a better word, but I'm still working out the details."

"Well we couldn't fit full scale asteroids in here. And the gravity spells were tricky enough."

Sunset, using her still active aura sight charm, took a closer look at the array of spells keeping the complex gravity patterns around the miniature asteroid field intact. "Hmm, yeah, I can see why. Equestrian gravity spells are a lot more flexible. These seem quite a bit more powerful though. I'll bring that up with Professor Flitwick."

Dumbledore stroked his beard with an amused smile. "I suspect he will be delighted."

Sinistra turned to him with a raised eyebrow. "You suspect? I thought that was certain."

"I suppose you have a point. I should probably warn him. He will probably want to acquire Rolanda's expertise for that. I seem to recall that being a specialty of hers."

A Phoenix Beyond the Veil - The Philospher's Stone

by gerandakis

60 - Vault