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// Chapter 10:  The Philosopher's Stone RW 
// Story: The Girl who Didn't Just Live 
// by computerneek 
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Professor Dumbledore took a long, slow breath.
Things were going…  not nearly as well as they were supposed to.
Some months ago, a Special Report had made its way to his desk from the Student Instructor Program Management Team, sent directly to his office rather than at breakfast.  The report had detailed every trap and challenge he had protecting the Philosopher’s Stone…  and how each had been rather casually bypassed- bypassed, not overcome or defeated- by a pair of unidentified but ‘rather skilled’ first-year students.
They knew that singing wouldn’t calm a Cerberus…  but apparently whistling would.  For the drop to the Devil’s Snare, they simply descended with borrowed school brooms, and flew over the top of the deadly plant.  Professor Flitwick’s room full of flying keys had been solved by a simple summoning charm, not on the key but on the door handle from five feet away, which overwhelmed the simple spring-loaded lock (which was supposed to overwhelm to let people out without the key, though not in) and caused the door to fly open.  The spring to close the door again had been rendered useless by the presence of the other student’s hands to hold it open while they floated through on their broomsticks.
Broomsticks that they used to just fly over the top of Professor McGonagall’s giant chess set, without ever setting foot in the room…  which meant the pieces never tried to block them from cheating, and so didn’t bother them at all.
After that had been the troll…  but apparently, four months trapped alone in a locked room was enough to kill even a troll, so it was just a smelly corpse to fly over.  After that, rather than solving Professor Snape’s riddle (which they had apparently solved in their heads while flying overtop), they had flown straight through the flame-free doorway, having never set foot in the room to trigger the trap.  They had then come across his own protection…  and while their method of bypass for that- his spell was supposed to mean that only one that wanted to find it, not to use it, would get it- hadn’t been described, he’d found the Stone lying on the floor in front of the Mirror of Erised when he’d come charging down after reading the report, testing the bypasses himself.
They had been entirely correct.
So the Stone had been moved to a filing cabinet in the corner of his office under cover of one of the most powerful notice-me-not charms he’d ever cast, and he’d followed the Report’s recommendation of putting the cabinet under the Fidelius Charm after storage, such that only he could breach it, but he also had easy access.
Shortly after that, he’d noticed a sudden drop in Hagrid’s gamekeeping performance…  but that had only lasted a couple of weeks.  Three days after he caught back up again, Hagrid had nervously come to his office in person to explain what had happened.
Apparently, he’d played a game of cards and won a dragon egg, then spent those two weeks caring for it before it got carted off to the Romanian dragon reserve, where his good friend Ronald Weasley’s brother Charlie would take care of it for him.  In that regard, Ron had apparently been immensely helpful, both in helping take care of the dragon- a Norwegian Ridgeback he’d called Norbert- and in serving as a liaison to his brother in Romania, and his brother’s friends that had done the transportation.
The reason he had come to tell the story was that, not too long after Norbert had been sent down, Ron had apparently been down to report that Charlie had determined that Norbert was actually a female dragon…  and asked, in depth, about how he’d gotten the egg.
The danger had been in the conversation over the cards…  and the copious amount of alcohol the man he’d won the egg from had fed him.  Hagrid hadn’t remembered it very well at all, but he had remembered revealing Fluffy’s musical secret to them.
He’d acted like it was a serious problem, even though that hiding place had since been converted entirely into a red herring (with a troll-like magical projection of his own design instead of a real troll), and had thanked Hagrid for the information.
If nothing else, it helped him narrow down the culprit…  or at least, he’d thought it would.  Hagrid had remembered so few details of the man that he hadn’t been able to get anywhere on that.
Somewhere around the same time, he’d noticed a sudden lack of reports- from his various sources- pertaining to a certain Malfoy heir outside of classes.  However, when he’d looked into it, even the excessively efficient Student Instructor Program had been hard-pressed to turn up a copy of his course schedule.  He was still waiting on that.
In other news, a girl by the name of Silversong had started drawing the attention of her housemates, quickly giving the Weasley twins a run for the position of Chief Hogwarts Prankster, an award the Student Instructor Program had come up with but had yet to actually grant, as the three pranksters entered into a War of the Pranks with each other.
It was really quite amazing, as Silversong simultaneously wore a badge, declaring her first as a Student Instructor for Potions, and later as a Lead Student Instructor for Potions for First-Year Gryffindors…  and according to the response when he’d written to Starlight to request some information, she had been awarded the Lead Student Instructor position as a reward for being one of their best Student Instructors school-wide.
Everything had seemed to go smoothly after that…  until the very end of the year.  He’d gotten a sudden summons from the Ministry- and when he’d gone to investigate it, he’d found himself turning back halfway to spring the trap on Voldemort.
When he had arrived in the final chamber on his broom, it had been to find Professor Quirrell arguing with the mirror about the Stone…. And seeking the counsel of Lord Voldemort for how to proceed.  In an effort to protect the Dark mirror from destruction, he’d had a brief but decisive duel with Professor Quirrell…  and managed to apply a tracer spell to the phantom that had burst from the back of the man’s head.
At least now he understood why the Student Instructor Program had basically taken over the entire Defense Against the Dark Arts subject, holding classes for upper-year students all the way up through the seventh year and completely disregarding Professor Quirrell’s lessons in the process.
And now, all that was left was the end-of-term feast…  and to send the students home for the summer.
And, of course, to find a new Defense teacher, and to see if being able to track Voldemort would finally let him formulate a plan that might actually hold together under the Student Instructor Program’s terminal competence.

And perhaps find Harry Potter, or figure out who Ginny’s friend was, or…  any number of things he hadn’t been able to do all year.