Finding Life's Second Truth
By: FlameXFullmetal
Disclaimer: I do not own Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood or Harry Potter. They belong to their respective creators and I make absolutely NO money off of this work of pure fanfiction.
A/N: I want to thank everyone for reading and reviewing, it means a lot to me! Well here is the second chapter.
**********Deals and Confrontations*********
"Ow, what hit me?"
"That would have been a half-ton of debris and you have a lot of explaining to do Fullmetal."
"Oh, hi bastard. Is this about your stolen gloves?"
"No it is not. WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING SETTING OFF AN EXPLOSION LITERALLY ABOVE YOUR HEAD?!" Roy could be heard throughout the hospital and Edward had to flinch at the sheer volume that came with it.
"Oops." Was his intelligent reply. Gawking at him, Roy watched as the boy removed the wires and cords attached to him and proceeded to get dressed.
"Where are you going?"
"I have a lot to do and literally no time to do it. By the way, how would you like to save the world with me again?" Edward looked right into his superior's eyes and couldn't help but laugh at the look of disbelief that flashed through them.
"What the hell do you mean?"
"Do you remember when I transmuted Al back and I said that I owed the Gate a favor?"
"Yes.." Roy didn't like the direction that the conversation was taking.
"Well in three days time the gate will be coming to collect me and a team of people of my choosing in order to cash in that favor. Basically, I have to go to another world and save their asses." Edward replied. Then he looked at Roy in the eyes with a dead serious expression. "Have you seen my boots?"
"Your boots? You are more concerned with where your boots are then the fact that YOU WERE DEAD AT THE SCENE WHEN THE BACK-UP TEAM ARRIVED?!" Edward shrugged.
"Yeah, I guess so." He grinned then jumped for joy as Roy pointed towards his boots and headed for them. Slipping those on, he turned once again to the shocked Fuhrer.
"So will you help me or not?"
"I don't have a choice, Fullmetal If I don't, you'll get yourself killed. AGAIN." He stressed the last part in a half yell then held his head. "How do you get yourself in these messes Fullmetal?"
"I'm lucky. Now come on, I think that I'll ask Teacher, Hawkeye, and Al and see who else wants to come." Edward reached the door and went to open it when the doctor walked in and gawked at the energetic blond.
"What are you doing out of bed?"
"Getting ready to save the world. I'm fine, so can I go?" The doctor's expression mirrored Roy's and he could only stand there as Edward walked past him and down the hall. By the time the doctor had snapped out of his stupor, Edward was out of the hospital and Edward's chart had a note from the Fuhrer authorizing his release. Sighing in frustration, he turned and went to check on the other patients in the ICU.
"Roy hurry, I have to call Teacher and hope that Al is not trying to adopt the local cat shelter. Oh, and find Hawkeye at the firing range….." Edward trailed off, making a list of things to do while, internally Roy was grimacing at the amount of paperwork that this escapade was going to cause. Grabbing the hyper boy's wrists, Roy pulled him to a dead stop.
"You call and talk to Izumi and Al. I will go talk to Hawkeye. That will make things faster right?"
"Good point. Ok." Darting off to the nearest pay phone, Edward didn't notice the look that passed Roy's face.
"Dear god, he listened to me and accepted my suggestion. The world is ending." Roy had no idea how true that statement held.
**********Surrey********
Harry was not having a good day. He had woke up late, burned the Dursley's breakfast, and somehow gotten himself locked out of the house for the whole day. Shrugging to himself, he headed towards the library in hopes that the librarian would pick up where she left off with her tutoring. Since he had started Hogwarts, his relatives had stopped his muggle education and he had decided that since he was already behind due to absences and his wizarding education, he should catch up. That was why he went to the library every chance that he got in the summertime. The librarian had insisted on helping Harry when he had asked her for help on a math problem for his potions homework two years ago. Every so often she would test him and make sure that he was improving. And if he tested at a certain level then she would enter him for the exams at the local school's designed for summer school participants. So far, he was only one grade behind in his math and history and a grade ahead everywhere else. Entering the library, he caught sight of the girl and gave a big smile. Sitting at his usual table, he waited for her to come over.
The librarian was having a hard time trying to explain to a child why they could not check out anymore books when he entered. Harry was a mystery to the woman as he seemed to have a difficult home life coupled with an even more complicated school life. He had insisted when he had first asked her for help that he was where he should be for his school level, but when she had tested him, he was far behind. That was when he confessed that the private boarding school he had been going to had a different curriculum and taught different subjects. When asked where he went before the boarding school he had replied that he had been enrolled in the local public school and that since he lived with his aunt and uncle, he had to be careful with how well he did. It took her a week to get the reason why out of him and she had a bad feeling that she had just barely scratched the surface. To be honest, who punished a child for doing well in school?
His response had been that because of differences between his aunt and his mother, there was a bit of 'bad blood' and his relatives despised it when he did better than his cousin in school. So he had to do progressively worse than his cousin, which he said was hard because his cousin was only passing two classes. This had led her to offer private tutoring to keep him caught up and he had admitted that he couldn't come every day and that he only spent three months at home before heading back to school. Things had become chaotic from there when he stopped coming suddenly.
The next year, he had admitted that because of his aunt-through-marriage coming over, he might not be able to go to the study sessions. Finally, last year he had come in excitedly and said that a friend's family was taking him to a World Championship match in his favorite sport and he would be staying with their family until school started afterwards. He had stopped coming the following day. So when he walked in, she felt relieved. Gathering his materials from underneath the counter, she motioned for her assistant to take over and headed over to him. As he looked up to greet her, she could tell that something was wrong.
"Hey Harry, how are you today?"
"Good." Was the short reply. Usually he would be bubbly and describe some kind of elaborate yet vague description of how his school year went before asking what they were going to start on.
"You sure? You sound less than enthusiastic to be here." She asked with concern in her voice.
"Well….something happened at school and I don't know how to deal with it." He answered truthfully.
"Well tell me what happened and I'll try to help."
"The school canceled its normal sports last year and held a tournament instead. Only those in their final year could participate as there was a certain degree of danger involved and at school, those eligible were considered adults." He glanced over at her to discern that she was following him. "They had banned the tournament years before over parent's concerns about the danger and thought that it would be ok to try again. The tournament itself was held between three rival schools and each school got one champion. Somehow however, my name was entered into the tournament drawing and due to the rules of the tournament, anyone who has their name drawn through an automated process was required to participate. I was in my fourth year and after Cedric's name was pulled, we thought that it was over because he was the last to be chosen. Then suddenly, my name popped up and I was told that I had no choice but to participate. So now my 'friend' Ron is pissed at me because I wouldn't tell him how my name got in the drawing and things got really tense between me and my younger classmates even though I didn't know that my name had been entered."
"That seems petty of them don't you think?"
"Yeah."
"So what was the tournament like?"
"We had to complete a series of three tasks, which had riddles attached to them in order to win. The first was to obtain an egg from its really mean guardian. Then we had to decipher the message in the egg before the next task. That could only be done underwater…." He glanced at her face and suppressed the urge to laugh. Her look was priceless. "Then we had to retrieve something valuable to us that was being held underwater at the bottom of a lake. I barely made it out of that one, I couldn't hold my breath any longer." Chuckling slightly he realized just how dumb he had looked when the gillyweed had worn off. "Finally we had to complete a maze that had traps set up for us. If we got stuck in a trap or could no longer complete the maze, we were supposed to use the…. I guess you could call it a flare …. That we were given to signal our need to quit. The other two dropped out due to circumstances and Cedric and I reached the trophy at the end of the maze together. We decided that since we arrived at the same time, we would share the victory."
Here he stopped to ponder how he would tell Liz what had happened without mentioning magic or that someone wanted him to dead.
"However, just as we touched the trophy a lunatic came out of nowhere and managed to kill Cedric before the teachers arrived and he got away. He tried to kill me to but….." he trailed off trying to stop the unbidden tears from falling.
"Oh Harry…it will be ok. They will catch him and eventually the pain will lessen. Granted you won't forget but it won't hurt as much." Liz soothed.
"But that's the thing, I found out later" small lie on his part "That this was the same guy who killed my parents and that was listed as dead. When the authorities were told, they didn't believe me and are telling the public and Cedric's parents that his death was an unfortunate accident from the tournament." Harry bit out angrily. He still couldn't believe that the ministry was covering up Cedric's death. He was just glad that he had decided to subscribe to the daily prophet before leaving in third year.
"Why that is the most irresponsible thing that I have ever heard!" Liz was very good at yelling quietly and at the moment Harry was certain that she was going to break into parseltongue. "I should give them a piece of my mind! Writing off a murder like that! What are they thinking? Were they thinking?"
"They were thinking about their public image and reputation. If they admitted that they made a mistake and that the guy wasn't dead, then they would have to admit that a mass murderer is still on the loose. They don't want to do that since they had spent years telling the public that he was dead and not prowling for more victims." Harry snorted. He had gotten, in his opinion, too good at lying to people. Shaking his head, he smiled warmly at Liz.
"So what are we doing today?" Sometimes routine was the best thing for forgetting one's own worries.
********************T.B.C***********************
A/N: Well what do you think? I will post the next chapter soon when I see where the polling results stand. So far the team that Ed is taking has the following votes:
Ed, Roy, Envy, Al and Hawkeye – 1
If you want a different team let me know or I will go with this one. Ja ne!