"Voldemort wouldn't have used the stone to gain power," Hermione replied. "He'd been... it's... complicated." But then, Lara had trusted her with the idea of a Deathless Prophet who could perform miracles, so Hermione should probably give her the benefit of the doubt, Muggle or no.

Taking a deep breath, she explained, "Voldemort had found a way to gain a sort of immortality by creating what's known as a Horcrux. Traditionally, a Horcrux is made when a person has committed murder, thus splitting his soul in two; half of that soul lives on in his body, but the other half can be hidden inside an inanimate object, to be kept safely away until it can acquire a body of its own once the primary soul dies. Voldemort... made seven Horcruxes."

That bit of background information had been the hard part, and Hermione quickly waves through the rest, considering that, like Lara, she'd never exactly been overly thrilled with the concept of immortality in human beings. "His primary body had been killed, but Voldemort lived on, his soul split so many times that he wasn't even recognizable as human. If he'd drunk the Elixir from the Philosopher's Stone, he not only would have acquired a proper body of his own, but he could have returned to full power, and even with a mangled soul he would have been impossible to kill."

That was why Flamel had agreed to destroy it, though it cost him and his wife their immortality. Even after all these years, Hermione couldn't help feeling a little sad about that.

"Immortality always comes with a price, no matter how you go about achieving it."