"One is tempted," he says with a trace of irony, "to say that that's why they call it the philosopher's stone. I couldn't say for certain. I believe you're on the right track, except that rather than its being a free pass to heaven it would change a person into someone worthy of grace. Possibly with other effects. As you say, it's an ideal, so one can't know. But, as I said, the very act of seeking it (in the proper way, that is, through attempting to create it rather than stealing it) is considered to give the seeker some of that grace, at least."
"The headmaster said he destroyed it..." He trails off, brows drawing together. There's something... a red powder, something withered and black, the hopeless staving off of despair, fury and love crowding together into a moment of bright, fierce bile... tarot and broken spectacles, the world cracked to the core, a puppet of dust, flailing violently, cut strings lashing in a cold wind. He shakes himself. "It's gone, at any rate," he finishes, mostly to himself.
Missing a few crucial pieces of subtext in that speech to the sudden cold chill of fearing that the book really talks, like a certain dead diary, he says, "It won't help you learn potions, but it's certainly... of great worth. My suspicion is that the need of yours it answers is less a matter of brewing than of addressing those concerns you mentioned about aftereffects." He nearly gestures to the back of his head, but doesn't bother. Q will understand him.