These were very strange times. I brought several creatures back to life, but the elixir was not potent enough to keep them breathing for more than a few minutes. I became convinced that, were I to imbue a larger stone with the same liquid, the extracted potion would be amplified enough to save a human from the grips of death. I inspected the character of the stone and discovered markings that were not made from the natural breaking of rock, and conceived that it could have been severed from a larger stone by magical means.

As I watched my love withering, my mind could not be dissuaded from a deep faith in the transformative power of weeping stones, and in the likelihood that another could be found and used to rescue Perenelle from the curse of the Black Death.

With very little time, I needed to find where the myth of the weeping stone had originated. I began by forging a license to access the restricted scrolls at the Wizard Library of Alexandria. Once there, I found an enchanted map covered in symbols of the Orient, leading to a waterfall in the city of Chongzuo.

Hidden behind this waterfall was a misty cave of shimmering crystals, jutting sharply from the rock, and dripping to clear pools at my feet. Just as I had learned in my experiments, the stones needed a cool and moist temperature to weep. Too nervous to summon a cutting spell, I approached the largest stone and broke it off by hand. It sliced my skin in a wide gash, but the pain meant nothing to me. I was holding a master potion amulet, half-covered in craggy, gray rock.

I rushed to bring it outside and created a warm and dry environment using a spell I had learned at Beauxbatons, knowing that the only way to place a potion into the stone was through the opposing atmosphere. I brought out a vial of the resurrection potion and poured it into my palm, while gently gripping the mythical stone. It soaked up the potion like a sponge and brightened to a violent blue. Then, moments through the transformation, the stone changed. What was once a clear crystal, now became glossy and blood red. Something was wrong. It looked different than the Resurrection Stone. And then I realized, after securing it inside my satchel, that my hand had gone pale. The weeping stone had extracted a fair amount of blood from the cut on my palm.

When I returned to France, Perenelle was racked with fear and close to dying. I left for the shed behind her house and hurried to recreate the atmosphere from the caves. I was stunned to discover that, instead of leaking water, the stone was weeping a dark red elixir. Trembling, I collected it in a vial for Perenelle to drink but tumbled away from the shed when I noticed that there were spots of gold embedded into her father's iron work table. I glanced down at the vial to find that some of the elixir had dripped out when I placed the stopper.

For at least a minute, I forgot how to breathe. Whatever it was that I had created, it had the power to transfigure iron into gold. I was spellbound.