A/N: Thanks for the reviews and support, everyone! And again, this story is set in an alternate timeline for both FMA and HP. Just so you don't forget :)

Umm...sorry if I ended up sending anyone more than one reply. I can't keep track, since I use the PM system of replying (which means that I can't reply if you've blocked PMs).


Immiscibility
by . NyghthawK .

Chapter Twelve: Educational Decree Number Twenty-Three

Harry was unfortunate enough to be within the vicinity of an irritated Edward Elric the next morning, as he headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast after handing in his Potions work. He hadn't noticed the blonde at first despite the obnoxious red coat and telltale hairstyle, but soon found himself in the vicinity of the obvious killing aura excluded from the thin frame.

He turned around to see why the guy was so furious, and found the professor glaring a hole through something in the wall. Harry shifted closer for a better look.

Educational Decree Number Twenty-Three

All staff members will not be permitted to perform any form of activity during a lesson that does not pertain to the contents of the lesson during the period of time in which the lesson is taught.

Signed: Dolores Jane Umbridge, Overseer for the Ministry of Magic
Approved by Pius Thicknesse, Minister for Magic

Elric growled, muttering a string of profanities under his breath and something that sounded suspiciously like he was responsible for the creation of this Educational Decree. Snarling a few times, he punched the wall and it gave a little shudder.

That was when Harry chose to run – he really didn't want to think what the professor could do to him if even the magically-reinforced walls of Hogwarts couldn't handle his strength.

"Oh...Potter, was it?"

Harry froze, turning around excruciatingly slowly. Professor Elric stood there looking as if he'd just been out on a leisurely stroll. "Yes?"

"How's your homework going?"

"Uh...good?" Not really – he could only draw a perfect circle about one in every twelve.

Professor Elric smiled. "That's good to know. You've got until next week to get the transmutation circle practiced if you still want that prize."

He moved away almost too cheerfully, the only remaining indication of his annoyance in how tense his hands were held. Staring at his back for a few moments, Harry shook his head once he remembered his friends waiting for him and walked the rest of the way to the Great Hall.

Ron greeted him by taking a plate of hash browns, forking one for himself and pushing the rest in his best friend's direction. "Z'heyra good."

Taking it without thinking, he sat down just when Hermione started berating Ron for his manners. After Harry pushed some of the hash browns onto his own plate without thinking, returned the rest to their normal place and then reached for some toast, she turned to him. "How was Slughorn?"

"He was alright. But he did seem disappointed that his star student was starting to lose his skills." Harry replied.

"The Half-Blood Prince thing's behind us, then?" Hermione asked. "You've started trying to do things on your own?"

"Ohw, shtuff a sochk in it, 'ermyonie," Ron complained, chewing for a little more and then swallowing. "Harry's learnt his lesson, so can we move onto brighter things? I mean, no one could have guessed that Snape would be the one to kill Dumbledore anyway..."

He trailed off, leaving the three of them in relative silence for a few moments as they attempted to think of something to say. Hermione brightened though, reaching into her bag and pulling out a small blackboard, one of the many from the alchemy classroom.

"Watch this."

She pressed the chalk to the board, concentrating as she drew the circle and the square within it to create the basic transmutation circle.

Ron stared at her. "How'd you do that?"

"Practice, Ronald. Lots and lots of practice. And," she beamed, "I showed it to Professor Elric last night and he said I could have the reward!"

"What's the reward?" Harry asked.

"He's agreed to give me a special half-hour lesson on any topic I want, except for the forbidden arts of rules two and three!"

"That's really...generous of him." And it was, considering how impatient the professor always seemed to be. Despite it only being half an hour, if yesterday had been any example then Elric had a fast and ruthless teaching style. Half an hour was plenty of time for him.

"It is, isn't it? Oh, there are so many things I want to know about alchemy like how the Sorceror's Stone ties into everything – it's such a dead art, yet we've got such a skilled practitioner here to teach it at the school!" Somehow sensing that both Ron and Harry had tuned her out in favour for their breakfasts, she stopped and packed up her supplies. "I'll see if he can make some time now, and I suggest you two use the half hour after eating to return to the common room and practice your circles instead on playing Quidditch."

"Buht iht's such a ghud dahy outshide!" Ron complained.

Hermione's glare silenced him. "Swallow. It's only thirty minutes, Ronald. You've still got the rest of the day to do your homework and then play Quidditch."

Giving up, Ron groaned and turned to his food again. When she turned to Harry, he quickly nodded to show his agreement to avoid encountering her wrath. That expression on her face was the one where she would even take their brooms and hide them somewhere for the rest of the week just to make them comply.

Ron turned to Harry when she left, a resigned look on his face. "Sometimes, I swear she just wants to deprive us of the good stuff."

"It's for our own good though, right?" Harry answered and knew he was trying to convince himself.

"Yeah."

"Wait, did she say she was going to go now?"

"...Yeah."

Harry blanched. "Now might not be the best time to see him."


Immaturely, Ed kicked the wall of his room with his automail leg. That Umbridge! He had no doubt as to why the new 'Educational Decree' had been put up and approved; it was to prevent him from teaching the way he was teaching.

Umbridge had obviously picked him as her target at some point, probably due to his blatant hatred of the 'magical arts'. And she was purposefully doing it to infuriate him!

The traitorous part of him said it was probably his fault anyway, but he shut it up; he was pissed at the intent, not the actual decree or anything. He had free will to decide what he wanted, didn't he?

Ed growled. Normally when he got so annoyed, Al would be nearby to calm him down with a few words and a spar. But Al wasn't – it was his own bloody damn fault that he decided to investigate into the assassins' plans and then end up on this side of the Gate, where he'd have to wait at least a year before he could go anywhere.

He hated himself. He hated this 'Hogwarts', and how ridiculously 'magical' it was – every time he walked around it the memories of all his rebounds would resurface, his stupid mistakes from before.

Transmuting himself a proper spear, he shrugged off his coat and his jacket, moving to the extended section of the room that had been cleaned out. With the polearm, he started the forms he'd learnt from Xing after another false lead on recovering Al's memories. Stupid Ling and his stupid, stuck-up attitude. At least the prince'd been good for something.

Rhythmically, he twirled and spun the spear and tried to let out as much anger as he could. He lacked the years of training the Xingese masters had regarding the forms but he made up for it in his strength, modifying them to his own style of fighting. Taking at least an hour each day at Hogwarts to practice and distract his mind, there was no doubting the increase in his abilities as he focused on efficiency rather than their perfection and skill.

Swallow's flight. River stream. Three element step dance. Lotus meeting sky.

Ed barely blinked as he completed the forty-eighth form, the tip of his spear almost meeting his door. The reason for his stopping was obvious – someone had knocked, requesting his presence.

They knocked again and Ed quickly put aside the spear, pulling his jacket and gloves on to hide his automail. He winced as the sweat clung to the leather and made a mental note to transmute himself one of those loose Xingese robe-like long sleeved shirts in the meantime.

"Coming, coming!"

He opened the door and found himself looking towards the Granger girl and raised an eyebrow. "Yes? Are you here for that lesson?"

She nodded, and then flushed in embarrassment as she took in his sweat-soaked appearance. Ed shrugged and opened the door wider to let her in, brushing aside the parts of his fringe that clung far too close for comfort.

"So, take a seat and—"

"I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you or anything," Granger apologised, but Ed brushed it off as he started his cool down routine.

"Don't worry, I can multitask." Well, he had wanted a distraction and did need to get this lesson over and done with. They'd seemed like such good ideas at the time – rewarding people for putting actual effort into his class and giving more knowledge to the students who were actually interested in the art.

Alongside the Granger girl, the other Parkinson girl from Slytherin had also been to see him after completing the coursework as well, catching onto geometric shapes surprisingly quickly. She'd turned up the night before and started to ask questions about what DNA actually was, before they'd moved onto plants and their lack of as many different chromosomes – something more of the Tringham brothers' forte – and then onto carbon and what it was and its uses in general.

"A-alright," she said and he knew she was staring without having to look. "You said that alchemy could create gold, right?"

"Not create," he corrected. "Transmute. Alchemy changes one object into another so long as they share the same base components. And yes, but I'm not going to tell you how."

She nodded. "That's fine, I didn't want to know." She paused for a bit and pursed her lips consideringly, watching him walk across the empty section of his rooms and do some flips and cartwheels – although they weren't exactly cool down material at the end of an exercise, he needed to check his flexibility. Plus, they were fun.

"And?"

"Um, well...is there any way to create immortality using alchemy?"

Ed froze. No. She was not asking anything about binding souls or homunculi. "Why do you need to know?"

"It's because...I was wondering about the relation of the Sorceror's Stone to alchemy!"

Stopping his exercises, Ed just watched her reactions and her body language carefully. She honestly seemed to be nervous, but in her eyes he saw the lust for knowledge and the determination to find out more.

"What's his 'Sorceror's Stone'?" He asked, wondering to himself why he gave her a second chance to redeem herself. It was so out of character for him, but her eyes reminded him so much of the innocent Sheska as she asked things that just couldn't be answered.

She jumped at the permission to speak. "The Sorcerer's Stone is a mystical object which can turn lead into gold, and create the life-extending Elixir of Life. I'm wondering how it's related to alchemy, because you say that alchemy can already turn metals into gold so the Stone becomes useless."

"Sounds like a whole load of crap," Ed commented, relieved. "It's probably some 'magic'-based inferior version of alchemy."

"I see. And also, uhm, would it be possible to amplify a person's knowledge of alchemy so much that anything became attainable?"

"No. Alchemy is a skill that is learnt and honed to perfection. There is no way to suddenly learn everything at once—"

Ed broke off, stopping himself against a nearby chair. The Gate. Each time he saw it, it showed him the Truth. He couldn't help it this time – his eyes narrowed dangerously. "Do you have a reason for asking this as well?"

Granger shifted before reaching into her bag and pulling out a book with shaking fingers, flipping to a bookmarked page. "The Sorceror's Stone," she read, "was believed to mystically amplify the user's knowledge of alchemy so much that anything was attainable. The Sorceror's Stone also goes by different names in different parts of the world – the 'Red Stone' in the East and the 'Philosopher's Stone' in the West."

The Philosopher's Stone.

Everything stopped.

No—how could books even suggest the creation of a Philosopher's Stone? How could this side of the Gate know—

Ed heard a snarl and realized seconds later that it belonged to him, and a cracking snap meant the back of the poor seat was disintegrating under his grip.

He pushed it to the side and practically forced his forehead onto his cooler automail arm in an effort to calm down, but found himself moments later resting against the wall with his head in the crook of his elbow and gritting his teeth so hard he could feel it under his eyes. It was strange, but a chip finally seemed to emerge in his wall of denials, spiderwebbing out and allowing the facts he didn't want to accept rushing over him. His pride was easily knocked down by the onslaught – it had no chance.

"A-are you alright?" The Granger girl asked, wrenching him back to the present.

And then he laughed at his own stupidity, laughed at how he skimmed over the most important part of her words. The book said that the 'Philosopher's Stone' was just another term for the Sorceror's Stone, a 'wizard's attempts at replicating alchemy without actually using alchemy at all.

Just because their 'magic' wasn't following the laws on his side of the Gate, it didn't mean that such feats weren't impossible on the other side. It had only been because of his two years with Alfons that he assumed the two sides followed the same rules, only that one was unable to access alchemy, but the Wizarding society had been secret enough anyway that it would have been understandable.

Ed laughed even as the shakes slowly subsided. He was going insane or something, he knew it – cooped up in such an unnatural place for so long without anyone he knew to talk to, added onto how he was separated from his brother for one and a half years before as well, insisting on leaving him behind with Izumi for training whilst he went out to get the memories back alone...

If—no, when he got back, he would make sure to give Al an impossibly large hug before the two of them would explore off somewhere far, far away and get stuck in the worst possible situations. Just like old times, even if his little brother couldn't remember.

But first, he had to get his research on the whole energy this world used done and completed before he tried to open a Gate with Dante's Circle. If his alchemy now worked by using it as fuel, then the variables of its strange Equivalency needed to be dealt with.

With that little resolution set in his mind, he looked up to Granger and smiled weakly, his first true smile since his arrival.

"I...I'm okay. Or I am now. Come on, let's get this done and over with."


A/N: I admit it; the second section was rushed. But all the little things that've been happening now are just little hiccups that happen but I don't want to focus on since other people have already – I'm preparing for the turnabout in about three chapters' time. Delaying it any further would be boring and horrible. But I hope this chapter at least made sense, haha. I'm hoping I can get the next chapter up on schedule as well.

And yay, more Brotherhood/manga references! (I actually like it more, that's why ^^)

Next chapter: As Time Passes By