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alethiophile comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong
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Is there a particular reason to expect, the Stone having been introduced at all, that its powers would be changed? That seems somewhat less acceptable a change than simply leaving the Stone out altogether.
I'm guessing that the working Philosopher's Stone does exist, but it is quite magically difficult to create, and many wizards have Dumbledore's attitude towards death. This would explain why more people do not use it. In canon, Flamel is noted as being historically significant for being one of the people to have successfully created the Philosopher's Stone. (Of course, in canon, it states that Dumbledore worked with Flamel on 'alchemy', presumably meaning the creation of the Stone. Does this conflict with Dumbledore's attitude towards death in MoR, or would Dumbledore have worked on the Stone without intention to use it for another reason?)
There's a lot more to alchemy than the Stone, which Flamel must have had for some centuries before Dumbledore's birth. So Flamel is a great alchemist, from which flow two consequences: Flamel made a Stone several centuries ago; more recently, Flamel worked with another talented alchemist, Dumbledore, probably on something else (since Flamel already had a Stone and Dumbledore wouldn't want one).
Flamel worked with Dumbledore to discover the 12 uses of dragon's blood, I believe, and was 666 when he died.
Now that's just strange - why would there be only 12 uses of dragon's blood?
From canon, I get the impression that no uses of dragon blood were known before Dumbledore's time; else there's not much scandal in Rita Skeeter's accusation that Dumbledore didn't discover all of them. So no uses known, Dumbledore publishes twelve uses, and then the rest of the world assumes that there is nothing further to learn.
Imagine MoR!Harry's exasperation on learning about this incredible complacence and lack of curiosity! He'll probably think of five more uses immediately when he hears about the first twelve (then worry afterwards about his Dark Side, since every one of them is a method of killing).
When I read that I imagined that there something like 12 major magics with dragon's blood and that there was some underlying theory that made there be exactly 12 of them.