Hey everyone. Sorry for the long delay, but college is keeping me continuously busy and I don't get a summer vacation. With all the homework I get, updates will unfortunately be few and far between.

However, I would like to thank everyone for all of their wonderful reviews. I'm glad you're enjoying things so far. Hopefully I'm not confusing you all too much with the plot. I have the tendency to overcomplicate things. To answer one particular question about pairings: truthfully, I didn't really have any pairings in mind for the story; slash or het (which would make this gen, right?), but feel free to make any suggestions. My crazy mind might just come up with something to add to the overall plot.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter.

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Chapter Three

Narcissa Malfoy was worried. Her husband had gone off on a raid to Azkaban earlier that night to help the Dark Lord free many of his loyal followers. She hadn't been expecting him back for quite a while and had resigned herself to a night spent alone in her room with a bottle of wine, fruitlessly attempting to drink away her fears for his safety. Draco was acting similarly. He had shut himself up in his room not too long ago, just as he did every night this summer when Lucius went out on a dangerous mission, and Narcissa didn't expect to see either of them until sometime the next morning. Hopefully they'd be able to have breakfast together.

However, the night did not progress as it usually did and she had only been halfway through her first glass of wine when one of the house elves informed her of her husband's return and that he was requesting her presence. Walking briskly, she met up with him in the hallway leading away from the mansion's personal apparition point; an apparition point that could be locked or unlocked by only a Malfoy or the Dark Lord himself. Slung over his shoulder was a young boy and for a moment, Narcissa feared that it was Draco, that he had snuck out and followed Lucius to the raid and had gotten hurt, but then she saw that the hair was much too long and more golden in color than Draco's platinum blond. Releasing a small sigh of relief, she followed after her husband.

He led her to one of their many guest rooms, one that actually wasn't too far from Draco's room. Striding into the room, Lucius lay the boy out on the bed, frowning as he did so. Narcissa approached the bed for a closer look, wondering who the boy was and just why did her husband bring him to their home.

"The Dark Lord wants you to heal him," Lucius said, speaking for the first time.

It wasn't much of an explanation at all and Narcissa turned to her husband, waiting for him to elaborate. It seemed to her husband, however, that as long as the sentence contained the words 'the Dark Lord wants,' than that was enough of a reason for him and was all that needed to be known. He turned on his heal to leave.

"Lucius," she protested, not about to let her husband brush her off like one of the Dark Lord's weaker minions.

"The Dark Lord said he'd be stopping by sometime later to check up on how the boy's healing," Lucius said, cutting off anything she had been about to say. "I'm not sure how soon 'later' is," he said quietly, the underlying words standing out loud and clear to her.

'You better get to healing. We don't want to make him mad, now do we?'

"Yes, of course," she said, her eyes traveling from her husband to the boy.

"I have other matters to attend to," Lucius said. "I'll be back when I can."

Then he left her on her own to take care of the boy that the Dark Lord had some strange interest in. As she removed the shackles that bound his wrists apart and cleaned him up as best as she could with several cleaning charms, she wondered if it had something to do with the tattoos decorating his body.

Her lips pursed as she stared distastefully at the rags he wore. With a quick flick of her wand, she mended and cleaned those too. They still didn't look suitable for any human to be wearing, but it would have to do until something better was found. At the moment though, his clothing was the least of her concern. The boy could hardly be called a picture of health. He was far too skinny and looked as if he hadn't seen the light of day in years. Starving vampires looked healthier than he did. The dark circles under his eyes suggested inadequate sleep and his labored breathing was something to be concerned about.

Looking down at the boy, Narcissa was reminded of a time when Draco was still very young and glowed with an innocence only a child could have. There had been several incidents during this time when Draco had found a sick or injured animal out on the Manor's grounds and brought it inside to her to try and save it. It was never anything dangerous. Mostly just birds, rabbits, and that one instance with a snake. Narcissa also remembered how most of those animals never made it through the night. With all the knowledge witches and wizards had in medical magic, some things just couldn't be saved.

In this case however, failure wasn't an option. The Dark Lord wanted to keep the boy alive and Narcissa shuddered to think of the consequences that would befall her family if the blond perished under her watch. With that in mind, she set about the arduous task of healing all that ailed her latest patient.

Or at least she tried. A few hours later found her unsuccessful in her attempts. She had tried every healing spell that she knew, but nothing seemed to work on the boy. She could barely even get a reading on his health with what should have been a fairly simple diagnosis spell. It was as if something was blocking the spell or interfering with it. The only thing she could make out from the spell was that he was malnourished (something that she could clearly see with her own two eyes) and that he was getting increasingly weaker as time passed. Narcissa couldn't understand it. If she had been able to clean the dirt and grime off of the boy with magic, then why couldn't she heal him with magic?

After many more failed attempts at helping the blond, Narcissa found herself sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling both irritated and concerned as she stared down at him. She was concerned, not for the mysterious boy, but for her family and the possibility that her being unable to heal the blond would reflect negatively on them all in the Dark Lord's eyes. She was also irritated with the situation in general; with the boy that refused to heal, with the Dark Lord for giving her such an impossible task, and with Lucius for dumping this burden in her home and brushing her off quickly afterwards.

There was nothing left that she could do. She didn't have the right potions on hand to help with the malnourishment (at this point, she wasn't even sure if potions would work), and she didn't know what other potions to give him because she couldn't get a clear reading as to what was wrong with him. She would just have to wait for the Dark Lord and see what his reaction is. Her only hope was that Draco would stay in his room when the serpentine man showed up.

Narcissa found herself pacing the guest room early into the morning when the Dark Lord showed up. She hadn't even attempted to sleep, knowing that her mind would be far too restless with worry to let her. It was still dark out when he seemed to emerge from the shadows and glide into the guestroom.

"How is he?" the Dark Lord hissed as he swept over to the bed.

"My Lord," Narcissa said, lowering her head submissively at the sight of his frown. "I apologize, but I was unable to heal him. Aside from my cleaning spells, none of my magic worked on him."

His frown deepened as his eyes slid over to her. For a long while he didn't speak, simply staring at her, and Narcissa feared the worst. However, before he came to whatever decision he had been thinking about, Lucius rushed into the room with a folder filled with papers.

"My Lord," he said, sounding out of breath. "Forgive me for interrupting, but I thought it important that you know. According to the Ministry's file on the boy, he is immune to magic."

'At least partly immune,' Narcissa thought, holding in a sigh of relief; thankful that she couldn't be held at fault for being unable to heal the boy and hoping that the Dark Lord saw it that way too. Her husband may seem cold to her at times, but he truly did love her and after reading about the boy's immunity to magic, he had probably realized the danger she had been in with the impossible task of healing a boy that couldn't be healed. At least not with magic.

"Lucius," The Dark Lord hissed, still frowning. "I never gave you permission to look through those files."

Narcissa's relief vanished.

"Yes, my Lord, I apologize," Lucius said, ducking his head. "To find the file, I had to figure out just which Azkaban prisoner I was looking for. Delores Umbridge pointed me in the right direction. She had been one of the ones present during the boy's trial and she pointed out that interesting fact to me when I asked about him. I, of course, obliviated her after my inquiry, and I only looked into the file to confirm that fact for myself. I promise I read nothing else."

The Dark Lord's frown disappeared, his face expressionless, and another silence fell over the room. Neither Malfoy dared to breath. Finally, he spoke.

"Leave, both of you," he ordered.

Both husband and wife hurried out of the room without looking back, being sure to close the door behind themselves. Voldemort cast a silencing charm on the room after they left, but it was simply a precaution as he was sure that nobody present in the Malfoy Manor would dare to cross him by eavesdropping. With the Ministry's file in hand, Voldemort turned back to the boy laying on the bed and studied him curiously. An immunity to magic, if such a rumor was true, would definitely be beneficial to him.

Flipping open the boy's file, Voldemort scanned through the information. There wasn't a lot there. The Ministry clearly had no idea what they were dealing with. The boy was listed as an unknown dark creature that spoke an alien language that none of their translators could figure out. He was described as being able to perform dark magic simply by clapping. However, just what sort of dark magic he could do wasn't explained. All that it said was that he had injured an Auror in this way. The immunity was also mentioned in the file, as were several spells that did, for whatever reason, work on him.

Little facts, like his name and age weren't mentioned, but there were some interesting tidbits of information, such as the fact that, according to the Ministry, he had murdered Nicholas Flamel. Based on the description of the crime scene, Voldemort couldn't be sure if the boy did or did not kill Flamel, but one thing that he was certain of was that Flamel was the boy's creator. Homunculi were alchemy-made, after all, and who better to pull off such a feat than the world's most powerful alchemist? Voldemort couldn't help but feel amused by the fact that Flamel, a goody-goody just like Dumbledore, had performed the biggest alchemy taboo there was; human transmutation.

There was just one problem with the gift that had fallen into his grasp. Homunculi were known to be powerful creatures, practically invincible. So then why was this one wasting away right before his eyes? He couldn't figure it out. He'd have to do more research on the subject to try and fill in the blanks, and he'd have to do it quickly. If healing spells weren't working on the boy, then Voldemort was sure that he didn't have too much time left.

'But how had he survived in Azkaban like this?' Voldemort wondered to himself. 'He had been in there for several months.'

That's when his eyes caught another interesting bit of information in the boy's file. It was only listed as a theory by Ministry officials; they had no solid proof to back it up, but it was suggested that the boy was cursed in some way or casting a curse himself. Apparently the other prisoners in the cells surrounding the boy deteriorated in health much more quickly than was normal. Many of the prisoners complained of lethargy and weakness, and for a while their complaints were ignored because weakness was to be expected in Azkaban of all places. However, when the prisoners started dieing, prisoners that could still be considered young and therefore able to withstand the effects of Azkaban, an investigation was carried out on the matter. Only one thing had been discovered in the investigation and that was that the prisoners that had been complaining of weakness had been unable to perform even the simplest of spells. They had the magical capacity of a squib, and with no magic on their side, they were much more vulnerable to the effects of dementors which would explain some of the prisoners early demise. Of course, their magic eventually returned once they were moved to a cell further away from the boy.

"I wonder..." Voldemort murmured, setting the file down on the bed.

With a curious glint in his eyes, he laid a pale hand down on the boy's shoulder and waited. Nothing happened. He didn't feel any different than how he usually felt. Narrowing his eyes in concentration, he squeezed the boy's shoulder as he forced a small amount of raw magic to trickle into the blond's body. It wasn't a trick most wizard's knew how to do as you had to have complete control over the magic in your own body. Still, nothing seemed to happen, and just as Voldemort was beginning to wonder if he was wrong in his own theory or maybe the so-called 'curse' only happened gradually over time, he felt it. It was sudden, the feeling as if some thing had lashed out and latched onto his magic, consuming it greedily like a starving animal that had only just noticed that there was food nearby.

Voldemort quickly pulled his hand away and the feeling soon dissipated. Flexing his hand by his side, he noticed that the boy seemed to be breathing a bit easier than before.

'He's feeding off of our magical energy,' Voldemort realized. 'And he's dieing because he's not getting enough.'

With this realization, Voldemort frowned, because there was something he was forgetting, something important about the creature before him. Grabbing the file off the bed, Voldemort turned on his heel and left the room. On his way down the hall to the apparition point, he met up with Lucius and hissed out a few quick orders.

"I'll need you and your wife to keep the boy stable while I'm gone, Lucius. Take turns casting spells on him frequently throughout each day until I return, but nothing dangerous. We wouldn't want to risk damaging him if one of those spells happened to work, now would we?" Voldemort said. "Do you understand?"

"Yes, my Lord," Lucius said.

"Contact me if there are any changes with his health," Voldemort said before leaving Lucius in the hall as he continued on to the apparition point.

He had some research to do.

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Draco Malfoy stood crouched before the door of an empty guest room that, over time, had become more of a storage place for things that his family no longer wanted, but had no desire to give up. Knickknacks, old quidditch supplies and other things of the sort were stacked up on shelves and on top of dressers. The door that he was currently hiding behind lead out into the main hall and was only open just enough for him to peer through with one eye. In his line of sight was another door that belonged to the guest room that had become the source of much curiosity and frustration for him over the past few days.

He hadn't been home for the summer for very long before his father was rushing out of the Manor every couple of nights to go on raids or special missions for the Dark Lord. During the last raid though, something had changed; something that kept both of his parents on edge and something that kept his father home a lot more (not that Draco was complaining. He may not have the best father/son relationship with his dad, but it was still nice to have him home more often even if 'family time' meant awkward silences and stiff conversations).

They wouldn't talk about it no matter how many times he brought it up, so he didn't know too much about the subject. Draco did know two things for sure though, and that was that the raid happened at Azkaban (if the Daily Prophet and his Aunt Bella's sudden reappearance were anything to go by) and there was something in the guest room that had to do with whatever it was that the Dark Lord currently had his parents involved in. He knew this because he would see his parents emerging from the guest room multiple times throughout the day.

He also knew this because they both forbid him from entering the room. Him! Draco Malfoy! Forbidden from entering a room in his own house. The mere notion of it was ridiculous. His mother said that she didn't want him getting involved; his father said that there was nothing of interest in the room for him. Well, he would be the judge of what did and did not interest him, thank you very much. He did not spend a year at school obeying their rules (to an extent) just to come home for the summer and have more rules to follow.

Which was why he was currently hiding one room down from the mysterious guest room, waiting impatiently for his mother to leave for lunch. He'd have just enough time to sneak in after she left and check out whatever it was that was in the room before he'd be expected to join them down in the dining room for lunch. After what felt like an unbearably long wait, his mother finally left the room, closing the door behind her. Draco waited until he could no longer hear her footsteps before he made his move.

Creeping out of his hiding place, he snuck the short distance down the hall to the guest room, constantly looking around himself and keeping his ears open to make sure that there was no one coming. He reached the door to the guest room without incident and opened it just enough to peak inside and make sure that there were no house elves that might tell his parents. Seeing that the room was clear, he slipped inside and closed the door behind him with a quiet click.

Standing at the threshold of the room, his eyes scanned his surroundings for anything out of the ordinary. Something like battle plans, or a caldron filled with a new, special potion, or a dark magical object of some sort. However, to his great shock and disappointment, there was nothing. The room looked like any other guest room in the Manor.

"That was anti-climatic," Draco murmured to himself with a frown.

It didn't make sense. There had to be something worth while in the room. Why else would his parents be spending so much time in the room as well as put up an effort to keep him out?

That's when he heard the breathing. It was so faint that he almost didn't catch it, and for a second he thought that he had been caught, that someone had entered the room without him realizing it. A quick glance around not only proved otherwise, but he also spotted a lump among the bed sheets. Raising an intrigued eyebrow, he slowly walked around to the side of the bed. The person appeared to be sleeping, if the even rise and fall of the bed sheets was anything to go by, and so Draco moved as quietly as he could. He wasn't about to go waking up someone who could be directly connected to the job the Dark Lord had given his parents that was making them so stressed.

As he reached the side of the bed, he was shocked and disappointed once again, for laying in the bed was... a boy. Just a boy with long blonde hair who looked to be around Draco's age, though he couldn't be quite sure. Draco didn't really know what he had been expecting; maybe some old, grizzly looking wizard or even someone a bit more like his Aunt Bella, but he definitely hadn't been expecting some plain-looking kid.

'Well, maybe plain isn't exactly the right word,' Draco thought to himself as he knelt down to get a closer look at the red markings on the boy's hand that wove around his wrist and disappeared up under the long sleeves of the robes he wore. 'One of my old robes,' Draco noted as he lightly prodded the red mark, his eyes darting up to the boy's face to check for any reaction. The boy seemed unaffected and continued to sleep.

Most magical tattoos moved and Draco wondered for a moment if the one the boy had was muggle made. Sighing, he pulled his hand away and stood up straight.

"Father was right," he muttered quietly to himself. "Nothing of interest for me in here. How boring."

Draco turned to leave, but just as he did, an iron grip suddenly latched onto his wrist. Though he would never admit it, his heart leaped into his throat, and he cursed himself for not having his wand on hand. He attempted to school his startled expression into something more composed as he turned to face the boy whose grip only tightened around his wrist.

'What?' he was about to ask, but then froze when he finally locked eyes with the boy. Twin golden orbs stared back at him like a werewolf's or some other dark creature he's read about in the past. The boy only continued to stare though, and once Draco got over the shock of the blond's eye color, he noticed just how glazed over and unfocused those eyes were. He wondered for a moment if the blonde even noticed that he was standing there. Before he could wonder further though, golden eyes slid shut and the boy's hand fell limply back onto the bed.

'Weird,' Draco thought, taking a step back from the bed. 'Too weird for my tastes.'

As Draco fled from the room, he decided that he didn't care who the boy was and what his connection was with the Dark Lord; and he didn't care to know just what his parents had been doing these past couple of days and how the boy was involved. This was one matter that he would leave well enough alone. When he entered the dining room several minutes later, he greeted his parents as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

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"Red stones," Voldemort realized. "Of course."

Thanks to some old alchemy tomes he had obtained back in his youth when he had been interested in the subject, he had been able to do a bit more in-depth research on homunculi and refresh his memory on a subject he hadn't read about for many years. The very important fact that he had been forgetting about his latest asset is that homunculi are incomplete when they are first created and need to consume a good amount of red stones to gain strength and assume their final form. Now, if the description in the book was anything to go by, then the homunculus that he found was, appearance-wise, perfectly complete. However, even though he looked complete, his deteriorating health spoke otherwise.

There was just one problem with this realization and that was that Voldemort had no way of obtaining any red stones. As for making some, he couldn't perform alchemy himself and the process of making red stones took much more time than he had. Fortunately, based on the Ministry's report and what he had found out earlier at the Malfoy Manor, the boy could get the energy he needed in other ways than through red stones. So, keeping in mind the fact that red stones grew more powerful when infused with human souls, Voldemort came up with an alternative solution for his problem.

Deep within one of the wizarding world's most darkest forests was a carnivorous plant that fed off of human souls, much like a dementor's kiss. It was an extremely hardy plant that not only survived through the Ministry's many attempts at destroying it, but it also lived off of only one soul every couple of years due to the muggle repelling charms put in place by the Ministry. If Voldemort were to provide the plant with a more regulated diet, he was sure that it would supply him with the perfect potion ingredient for an energy and power boosting potion, and he had just the potions master in mind to make it.

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End of chapter three! Hopefully you're all still liking it. I dont really know how accurate the red stone thing is because theres really not a lot of information out there about it and a lot of that information is vague an unhelpful, so I just wrote what sounded right to me.

I'll update when I can. Review please and tell me what you think!