At its core, the Philosopher's Stone was an abnormal mass of condensed magical energy.
That was the conclusion Leonard reached after spending half a day studying it in the Room of Requirement.
It was astonishing, because magic was supposed to be unbound and fluid. Even when a wizard used magic, it relied on maintaining that flow to form a spell.
Yet the Philosopher's Stone shattered that rule. Under Magical Sight and under ordinary vision, it looked exactly the same.
Magical energy, compressed to an extreme, took on a tangible form the naked eye could see. That was the Philosopher's Stone.
It wasn't affected by energy changes in the material world. Whether burned in fire or boiled in water, its surface temperature didn't change at all.
Its hardness wasn't particularly impressive, though. With a file, Leonard could scrape off a little powder.
But the powder couldn't hold a solid shape. Once it was separated from the main body of the Philosopher's Stone, it sublimated almost immediately, returning to pure magical energy.
While that happened, Leonard noticed faint, hard-to-describe shifts in the surrounding environment. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his instincts told him that this was an unusually favorable moment for casting spells or doing any sort of magical work.
Even Ancient Sprouts would stretch out their branches at that time, sending Leonard a soothing, comfortable feeling.
So Leonard's preliminary judgment was that the Philosopher's Stone could aid a wizard's spellcasting, accelerate plant growth, and might even have some effect on speeding up animal growth as well.
But all of that clearly consumed the Philosopher's Stone itself, which felt wasteful.
To evaluate it further, Leonard began brewing potions.
He held the Philosopher's Stone in his hand and used ordinary ingredients to make an Invigoration Draught.
With Leonard's skill in potions, something like this took almost no effort. Ingredient combinations, stirring order, timing, all of it came to him naturally.
But he soon sensed something off. Holding the Philosopher's Stone should have influenced the brewing process in some way, yet everything felt… too smooth.
The instant a thought formed in his mind, his hands moved, carrying it out with perfect accuracy, as if his body was a step ahead of him.
All the while, the Philosopher's Stone gave off a faint, intermittent glow.
Leonard realized that the act of brewing had activated the Stone's ability.
A little over ten minutes later, the Invigoration Draught was finished. Leonard looked down at the potion in the vial, and his expression turned odd.
The brewing had gone flawlessly, but the potion inside was blood-red.
That was obviously wrong. An Invigoration Draught was supposed to be a vivid, lively green, not this ominous red.
"Did it fail? Or is this what the Philosopher's Stone does?" Leonard stared at the abnormal potion, hesitating with the vial in hand, unsure whether drinking it was a good idea.
He opened his Magical Sight and examined the potion's magical flow.
And he froze.
The pattern was completely different from a normal potion. In fact, it didn't look like a potion's magic at all.
A typical potion's magical flow resembled a whirlpool, spiraling in steady currents. This "Invigoration Draught," however, spread outward like countless tentacles reaching in every direction.
At the center of those tentacles was a point that seemed almost solid, and that point looked nearly identical to the Philosopher's Stone itself.
The thing felt wrong just from looking at it. In the end, Leonard didn't drink it. He set it aside and started brewing a second potion.
This time, he made an Elixir to Induce Euphoria, a potion that brought happiness.
But it wasn't something you could use to treat depression. Once the effect faded, the emotional crash could overwhelm someone already fragile, sending them spiraling into ruin.
Leonard continued holding the Philosopher's Stone as he worked, and it lit up again during the process.
This time the feeling was unmistakable: his movements became even smoother, as if every step was being guided.
Compared with an Invigoration Draught, an Elixir to Induce Euphoria was more difficult to brew, which made the change all the more obvious.
It confirmed that the Philosopher's Stone really did assist with potion-making. The only problem was that the results were bizarre.
Half an hour later, Leonard stared at the finished vial of crimson liquid, lost in thought.
An Elixir to Induce Euphoria should have been golden. This color clearly didn't match its usual characteristics…
Although the potion's color and texture were identical to the earlier "Invigoration Draught," its magical behavior was different.
The "Invigoration Draught" had that Philosopher's Stone-like core, with tentacle-like currents spreading outward. This Elixir to Induce Euphoria, on the other hand, radiated like a tiny sun, sending out beam-like streams of magic.
But its core was still the same, that same Philosopher's Stone-like point.
"Hm… good." Leonard exhaled, eyeing the two vials on the table. "For a moment I thought everything brewed with the Philosopher's Stone would turn into an Elixir of Immortality."
When he'd first seen how wildly different the potions looked, he'd genuinely wondered if using the Philosopher's Stone meant every brew would become an immortality potion.
That was why he'd tried a second one.
The magical pattern of the Elixir to Induce Euphoria dispelled that suspicion. It seemed that not every potion became an Elixir of Immortality. Instead, each potion gained its own distinct magical properties under the Philosopher's Stone's influence.
The question was what those properties actually did.
"I need someone to test them," Leonard muttered, staring at the two vials with a conflicted look.
Until he knew what these Philosopher's Stone-enhanced potions really did, or what risks they carried, he had no intention of drinking them himself.
Who knew what kind of abnormal reaction they might cause? Especially that Invigoration Draught. The way its magic moved made it look like swallowing something with tentacles.
Leonard certainly wasn't going to feed this to his own people, let alone his pets. If he was going to test it, he needed someone whose death wouldn't matter, and whose disappearance wouldn't cause trouble.
What kind of person fit that description best?
"Tch. If I'd known, I shouldn't have killed all those pure-blood wizards. Keeping two around for potion testing would've been perfect." Leonard sighed.
But there was nothing to be done. Who could have predicted the Philosopher's Stone would behave this absurdly with potions, to the point that he needed a test subject?
He'd have to find someone suitable on short notice.
So who?
Leonard immediately thought of someone who was freeloading in someone else's home, and who, in theory, was already dead.
Peter Pettigrew.
No one could have been more perfect for this.