THIS CAN’T BE TRUE.. The Harry Potter Website Says DUMBLEDORE Created the Philosopher’s Stone?!

0:00Who invented the Philosopher's Stone? Any diehard Harry Potter fan knows the answer immediately, because it's... Filtch. Just kidding. The Philosopher referred to in this context is of course Nicolae Flamel. Flamel is the legendary alchemist whose greatest achievement was the creation of the Philosopher's Stone, the object capable of turning metal into gold and producing the elixir of life. In Harry Potter lore that's the entire reason Nicola and his wife Perra Nell were able to live for hundreds of years. At least that's what we've always been told. But according to the official Harry Potter website, Nicolae Flamel did not create the Philosopher's Stone alone. Apparently he had help from Albus Dumbledore. I've been covering Harry Potter content for a long time, and let me tell you this is completely new. I was running a script on Flamel's origins recently when I encountered this little tidbit of info, and I'm not sure if it's something that's recently been edited, or if this has always been published on the Harry Potter site in plain sight.

1:02But whatever the truth, this fact would present a little bit of a problem, because Dumbledore wouldn't even be born until more than 500 years after Flamel. Again, this is published on harryposser.com. So naturally I've got to get to the bottom of this, which switetay will be taking a closer look at exactly what the official Harry Potter website is claiming here. Let me start off by saying that the wording on the site is pretty unambiguous. On the official encyclopedia page for the Philosopher's Stone, it reads, The Philosopher's Stone was legendary, with the power not only to turn metals into gold, but also to produce the elixir of life, giving its drinker immortality. The only wizard ever to successfully create the Stone was alchemist Nicholas Flamel, with help from Albus Dumbledore. Flamel and his wife subsequently lived for hundreds of years. With help from Albus Dumbledore. And that's not the only place this idea appears. On Dumbledore's own official character page, it states that he helped develop the Philosopher's Stone with his friend, Nicholas Flamel.

2:02The Stones encyclopedia entry even lists both Nicholas Flamel and Albus Dumbledore under owners' makers. So this isn't just one awkwardly worded sentence tucked away on an obscure page. The current official material very deliberately associates Dumbledore with the Stone's development. But there's an obvious issue here. The Nicholas Flamel of the Harry Potter universe was born in 1326. For the time Harry arrived at Hogwarts in 1991, Flamel was already 665 years old, while his wife Perra Nell was 658. And we are specifically told that the reason the pair had managed to survive for all of those centuries was the elixir of life, produced by the Philosopher's Stone. Dumbledore, meanwhile, was born within 5 centuries after Flamel in 1881, which means that unless Nicholas Flamel lived for over 500 years before ever obtaining the Philosopher's Stone, something for which we have absolutely no explanation, he must have created it long before Albus Dumbledore came along.

3:03And these facts simply cannot be reconciled with the wording on the website. If Flamel needed the elixir of life to survive for centuries, and the elixir could only be produced using the Philosopher's Stone, then the Stone necessarily had to exist centuries before Dumbledore was even born, otherwise how exactly was Flamel still alive by the time the two of them eventually met. And this isn't just an assumption based on Flamel's age. Older Harry Potter material has always presented the Stone as fundamentally his creation. Even the official Harry Potter website itself still does this in other places. Flamel's character page describes him as the wizard who famously created the Philosopher's Stone, with no mention whatsoever of Dumbledore helping him to do it. Another official article describes Flamel as the only known maker of the Stone, and Rowling's own writing on Flamel says that after learning of alchemy, he supposedly made it his life's work to produce the Philosopher's Stone. Now there is an established connection between Dumbledore and Flamel, and this is probably where some of this confusion has come from.

4:04Going all the way back to the very first Harry Potter book, Dumbledore's chocolate frog card lists his work with Nicola Flamel as one of his major accomplishments. Harry reads that Dumbledore is particularly famous for defeating Grindelwald, discovering the 12 uses of Dragon's Blood and his work on alchemy with his partner Nicola Flamel. But notice the wording here, his work on alchemy with Nicola Flamel. It never says that Dumbledore helped Flamel invent the Philosopher's Stone. Those are two very different claims. Dumbledore was arguably the greatest alchemist of his age, and Dumbledore was one of the most brilliant magical minds of his own. So there's nothing unusual about the idea that the two eventually began collaborating. In fact, given how prominently their partnership appears on Dumbledore's chocolate frog card, whatever they worked on together was evidently important enough to become one of Dumbledore's defining achievements. But that work on alchemy could have meant almost anything. Dumbledore may have helped Flamel study the Stone, refine its properties, improve the process behind the elixir of life, or explore entirely different areas of alchemy altogether.

5:05There are plenty of ways to interpret the idea that Dumbledore worked with Nicola Flamel without requiring him to somehow travel back 500 years and help create an object Flamel had already been using for centuries. That brings me back to the wording on Dumbledore's current encyclopedia page, because interestingly, it doesn't actually say that Dumbledore created the Philosopher's Stone, it says he helped develop it. In the form of the sake of Harry Potter lore, I'm hoping that distinction might hold our answer. If Flamel had already successfully produced a functioning Philosopher's Stone centuries earlier, then I suppose there's no reason Dumbledore couldn't later have helped and develop it further. Develop doesn't necessarily mean invent from scratch. You can certainly develop something that already exists. And if that's what the website means, then that's fine. But I do wonder what Dumbledore could have possibly contributed to an object that had already existed for centuries. Flamel creates the original stone centuries before Dumbledore's birth, and uses it to produce the extra life and survives into the 19th century. And yes, at some point he meets the extraordinarily talented young Dumbledore, the two begin working

6:08together, and Dumbledore contributes to some alchemical work. But it doesn't say he created the stone, and it never has. But in this new entry, it specifically says that the only wizard ever to successfully create the stone was Nicola Flamel, with help from Albus Dumbledore. That wording is much harder to explain away. There's also something slightly odd about the sentence that follows it. The page says that Flamel created the stone with Dumbledore's help, and then immediately tells us that Flamel and Paranel subsequently lived for hundreds of years. But if Dumbledore was involved in its original creation, then those hundreds of years couldn't possibly have happened after it. By the time Dumbledore was around to help, Flamel had already been alive for hundreds of years, over five centuries to be precise. The article almost reaches though whoever wrote the entry, combined several accurate pieces of information, without stopping to consider the chronology. And there is of course another possibility here that I think we have to consider, which is that this is simply an editorial mistake. I'm sure all of the encyclopedia pages aren't Rolling's original Harry Potter novels,

7:09but they are supplementary material published on the official Harry Potter website, which is what makes this so confusing. Of course, it's entirely possible that whoever put the entry together saw Dumbledore's famous association with Flamel knew that the two were alchemical partners and just assumed that their collaboration must have involved the creation of the stone. But that would be a rookie mistake. An official site is all over the place as far as facts are concerned. The official philosopher's stone entry says Flamel created it with Dumbledore's help. Dumbledore's page says he helped develop it, but Flamel's page just credits Flamel with creating it. Meanwhile all of the older official material describes Flamel as the only known maker. So even the website doesn't seem entirely consistent with itself. Lastly, there is one more possibility that I like to explore, and let me just say first off that this one's going to be hard to reconcile. And that's what if this isn't a mistake. What if the wording is deliberately pointing towards some piece of Flamel and Dumbledore's history that we simply haven't been given yet?

8:10Despite their partnership being mentioned literally from the first book, Rolling has told us remarkably little about what Dumbledore and Flamel actually did together. We know they became close friends, we know they collaborated in Alchemy, and by the time the first book rolls around, Flamel allowed him to take responsibility for protecting the philosopher's stone when Voldemort began searching for it. But there is an enormous empty space in between. And this is potentially whether it novels plus approach of the new HBO Harry Potter series could be expanding the lore. In case you're unaware, Harry Potter producer David Heyman recently revealed in an interview that the new series is being approached as something closer to the book's plus. Essentially using the novels as the foundation, but taking advantage of the television format to expand certain characters, scenes and events, the books either only touched on briefly or couldn't show because we were following Harry's perspective so closely. Heyman has specifically talked about the series being able to spend more time with characters and story than the films ever could. And some of the early discussion around season 1 has even suggested that we'll see Dumbledore

9:13doing more behind the scenes as the mystery surrounding the stone and Gringot begins to unfold. If the series really is going to use the books as its foundation while also filling in some of the gaps around them, then Flamel and Dumbledore's relationship is exactly the sort of thing they could explore. We know the two work together, I mean the Dumbledore's connection to Flamel was significant enough to be listed on his chocolate frog card as one of his major accomplishments. But we still know almost nothing about what that partnership actually looked like. And Flamel is particularly relevant here because the first Harry Potter book spends plenty of time building him up as a mystery. Harry Ron and Hermione spend weeks trying to figure out who he is after Hagrid accidentally mentions his name. They search the library, Harry even sneaks into the restricted section, and the eventual realization that Flamel is connected to Dumbledore is what leads them to the truth about the philosopher's stone. But despite all that setup, Flamel himself never actually appears in the book. The film trims that investigation down considerably, and once again, Flamel never appears on screen.

10:14Audiences wouldn't actually see Nicola Flamel in the flesh until Fantastic Beasts, the Crimes of Grindelwald, where he's already more than 600 years old. So if the HBO series really doesn't tend to expand material that the films either rushed through or left out altogether, Flamel feels like an obvious candidate. A flashback to Flamel and Dumbledore working together would be one way of doing that, or perhaps we could see Dumbledore discussing his past with Flamel in greater detail. As for how this somehow reconciles the fact that Flamel supposedly lived for nearly 500 years before creating the stone, that I cannot explain. And that's really the problem at the heart of all of this. If the official website is trying to tell us that Dumbledore helped Flamel develop the stone centuries after its original creation, that is, and tap more of its power, then fine, that actually works. But if it genuinely means that Dumbledore helped Flamel create the very first philosopher's stone, then we're still left with the exact same impossible question. How was Flamel alive long enough to ever meet him? There's also the possibility that the philosopher's stone wasn't a single completely finished

11:17creation from day one. Perhaps Flamel had already created a functioning version centuries earlier, enough to produce the elixir and extend his life, while Dumbledore later helped him refine it into the version we know from Harry's first year. There's nothing in canon that confirms this, but it would at least give the word developed some meaning without completely destroying the timeline. Maybe the HBO series eventually gives us an answer, maybe there was an earlier version of the stone, maybe Dumbledore's contribution came much later, and the website is simply using the word created far too loosely. Or maybe none of that is true. And this is just a continuity mistake that somehow made its way onto the official Harry Potter website. Right now, I still think that's the most likely explanation. And that's it for today's video. What do you think? Did Dumbledore play a part in the stone's creation, or is this just an editorial mistake? Let me know down in the comments section below. Until next time, remember, it does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live.