Ok, last chapter of this fic! I realize that you all probably thought I'd given up, which admittedly is partly right, and because of that I apologize ahead of time if this seems rushed, choppy, or otherwise unsatisfactory, but honestly it's about the best I can do. And with this, my longest fan fiction, my first real chapter fic, and the fic that started it all, comes to a close after three long, eventful years. Enjoy, chapter 33 of Quest for Home: Newton's Third Law
Disclaimer: If I owned FMA, it would have never been finished. Too much work. Also, there would probably be more slashiness.
CHAPTER 33: NEWTON'S THIRD LAW
This was it, this would be the deciding battle. There were only two Horcruxes remaining: one trapped in Edward Elric's leg, and one in Envy himself, and that was where the problem was.
"Let's face it. We don't know what will happen if we kill Voldemort with one of the Horcruxes remaining. He could do what he did last time and simply vanish somewhere to regain his strength. If we lose him now, we won't have a second chance at this for decades. We need to destroy the last Horcrux before we battle with him," Hermione reasoned, not for the first time. The group had been debating the subject for hours now and it was high time they reached a decision. But not without one more loud complaint from Ed.
"But I need that leg! It helps me move! Without it I won't be able to use hand-to-hand!"
"—and that's why we have you stick with backing us up alchemically during the battle," Harry pointed out.
"Yeah. Because it'll be much easier sneaking into a secure building with one of you levitating me into a corner." Ed snarled his words with so much sarcasm a deaf man could have picked up on it.
"Fine. Compromise. You can help with the battle using your hand-to-hand techniques as long as you don't hesitate to destroy your left leg the moment you see us holding the upper hand, or if we are in position to kill him. If you do, then—" Hermione trailed off, dangling the obvious ending of that sentence for someone else to finish.
"Yeah, yeah. Save the ominous tone for someone who needs it. I know what's at stake here for you guys. I swear that if you are in a position that you can win, I'll use that sword of yours to break the leg. But for me to do that, you'll have to trust me with the sword for the battle. There will be no way of giving it to me discreetly when you need to. Besides, I don't think any of you have any real skill with a sword, am I right? I find it even less likely that you can use physical combat skills while using magic as well. I'm more experienced with mixing alchemy and physical attacks then you."
"Alright, so we're agreed," Harry stated, enlarging Gryffindor's sword and holding it out to Ed to take. "We go in together. We'll try to beat him with magic, you jump in only as backup when we need it, and you destroy the Horcrux in your leg the moment we hold the odds. Got that?"
Ed took the sword and nodded.
"Good. Now we have to find Voldemort. He probably won't have gone too far… with Nagini dead, he'll be more angry than afraid. He'll want us dead. Soon. My guess is that if he doesn't send Death Eaters to bring us to him, he'll make certain we can find him and that we can't turn our backs. Ideas?"
"Diagon Alley." Ron spoke with conviction. " 's the perfect place. It's just crowded enough that it'll be hard to fight him without having to worry about hitting someone who isn't involved, and at the same time there will be enough dark wizards in the area for him to call on if he needs backup. It'll be hard for people like us who don't want to hurt people, and easy for people like them who couldn't care less. He'll be in Diagon Alley."
"Good assessment, Ron. I think you're right. Fastest way there from here aside from Apparating is by trolley. There's a stop not five minutes from here if we hurry. We can be at the Leaky Cauldron in less than an hour. Let's go." Harry walked briskly out the door of the abandoned storage facility they'd been resting in and headed towards the trolley stop they'd seen on their way there before. Assuming the trolley was actually on time, they'd have seven minutes to get there. If it wasn't and they missed it, it'd be another half hour wait. That was time they might not have. Hermione was the first to follow him out, then Ron, and last of all Ed, carrying the re-enlarged sword of Gryffindor.
They made the trolley with only one minute to spare and quickly discovered the white-elephant effect the sword educed. Everyone seemed to notice, but no one felt inclined to speak up about it. In a less serious situation, it would have probably made the lot of them laugh, but at the moment all any of them could see it as was a small blessing.
Thanks to a detection charm that Hermione had muttered as they got on, they were alerted to five Death Eaters coming at them during the ride and managed to subtly dispose of all of them without attracting any more of a reaction from the rest of the passengers then they'd already gotten, and arrived at the Leaky Caldron with only a Squib having caught on to them(Hermione had noticed her because she clung tightly to several wizarding protection amulets that seemed to have been added as purse bangles every time one of their wands peaked out of a sleeve).
It surprised none of them to find the usually populated bar deserted when they arrived, with the exception, of course, of a handful of Death Eaters. The first five were put down quickly, but after Ron received a glancing blow from a fire spell, Ed used alchemy to entrap the remaining opponents in some of the concrete from the building—just enough to bind their arms, but not enough that the structural integrity of the building was endangered. It bought enough time for the trio to stun the enemy and then rush forward towards the secret wall in the back of the pub that became the doorway to Diagon Alley.
"At least we know we're in the right place!" Ed commented as they ran, only missing a beat at the surprise of having a wall fold in on itself to expose the bustle of the wizarding marketplace. Unfortunately, it was not the normal sort of shopping bustle, but more of the 'don't get yourself killed' kind of bustle. It was indeed the right place. And in the middle of it all was…
"Hey! Shrimp and friends! There you are! I was starting to wonder what was taking you so long!" It was strange, to say the least, to hear Envy's familiar flirtatious sneer coming from the hideous, snake-like man who had fired off wordless spells randomly into the writhing crowd.
It didn't take long to notice the Death Eaters spilling out of the alleyways to help cause more chaos, black cloaks made more ominous by the skull masks they wore and the Dark Mark that glowed menacingly in the grey sky. The crowd grew even more frenzied.
"We have to do something to get rid of all these people!" Harry yelled, trying to be heard over the roar of screams and spells and fear.
"…I've got an idea!" Ed said, clapping his hands.
The trio had just enough time to register the words before all the Death Eaters, Voldemort, and the trio were elevated on platforms that rose from the ground and then fanned out to form a sort of second-story to the plaza below them. "I might have missed a few. Ron! Help me search below!"
Ron nodded and joined Ed beneath the newly formed fighting platform. A quick count resulted in 24 Death Eaters and one psychotic dark lord/homunculi. The odds were more than against them, but the alternative was locking more Death Eaters in with the civilians, and the Hero-complex issue made that further behind than the option of pushing the Boy-Who-Lived off a cliff.
Harry quickly dodged a Crucio that came from somewhere off to his left, sending an undirected banishing charm in that general direction, and knocking three or four of the cloaked figures off their feet for a moment while Hermione cast an Avis charm, conjuring two dozen birds from thin air, which she then spelled to attack the Death Eaters. In the eight seconds it took for this transaction to play out, Envy managed to punch a hole through the concrete flooring and escape down to the lower level, far too quickly for either Harry or Hermione to do anything about it.
"Damn it! He's got away! ED! RON! VOLDEMORT'S FOUND A WAY DOWN!!" he shouted, hoping his warning had arrived in time for one or both of them to do anything about it. He heard no response and hoped that it was simply because they were too busy fighting to say anything. It was too difficult to pinpoint the sound of a duel or fist fight from this distance with all the noise.
"Don't worry, Harry, I'm sure they're …Immobulus! Damn, missed him… Petrificus totalus! Just fine." And one more Death Eater was down, and another smoldering curse mark scored the floor just next to Hermione's right leg.
"I hope you're right, Hermione!" Harry replied, conjuring more attack birds to replace the few that had been killed by the Death Eaters. It was a slow method, but effective. The birds would attack the faces of the Death Eaters and throw off their aim, as well as occasionally blind one. It was a bit gruesome, but it was effective. Three had fallen blind already, one immobilized, and two knocked unconscious. That left 18 more Death Eaters, and they were getting better at deflecting the physical attacks of the birds by simply setting fire to them—the flaming birds falling on top of them were apparently less trouble then the non-flaming ones that could strike to wound.
Harry took a moment to recall one of the circles Ed had taught them and drew out a quick circle on the cement with a charred bird leg, activating it not even a second before he was struck by a stunning spell from one of his attackers. Five more were encased in a brick blob that he had intended to be a fist like Ed's transmutations. It wasn't pretty, but it was effective. Thirteen more to go. Hermione undid the curse and Harry was back on his feet just as a killing curse hit the spot he'd been in a moment before.
A Crucio hit Hermione, who had thrown up a shield thinking it had been a stun. Her choked scream made the brief moment between her being hit and Harry firing a sectumsempra at the man who had done it longer than the moment it took for Harry to realize what he'd done as the stricken Death Eater spurted blood from a series of long, deep cuts across his torso. Harry cringed, but re-fired the spell at a group of three that had been standing nearby. As much as he detested the thought of killing, the thought of what the consequences could be if he didn't seemed, at the moment, worse. He was angry, and scared. And this needed to be over now so he could help Ron and Ed, but there were still another eight Death Eaters and Hermione was struggling to stand back up. He needed things that could take down multiple people at once and keep them from getting back up again anytime soon.
Ten minutes, four attack spells, three counter attacks, and one desperately called for hard punch later, the last of the Death Eaters was grounded by an immobulous spell cast by Hermione, who was leaning back against a pillar she'd transmuted for herself. "I'll be fine here by myself, Harry. Go to Ron and Ed."
"Are you sure, Hermione?" Harry asked. He knew she was, but he still had to ask.
"Harry, everyone else here is either unconscious, immobilized, or dead. I don't think they'll pose much of a problem for me. In this state I'd only slow you down. Now go! They'll need you down there!" To illustrate her point she transmuted steps down to the plaza below for him. He started to say something else, but one last glare from her that said, in no uncertain terms, that if he didn't go away now she'd curse him down was all the push he needed to heed her words. He ran down the steep steps without a backwards glance and alighted onto the plaza once more.
The scene was not the one he had been preparing himself for. There were no crowds of innocent people, no dead people, in fact, the only people there were Ron, Ed, Voldemort, and five Death Eaters whom Ron was disposing of without too much effort as Ed alternatively dodged spells and assaulted Voldemort with a flurry of punches and kicks. Not half an hour ago there had been at least 150 people crowding the streets. Now there were practically none. But he realized that this was not the time to ask questions.
"Ed! Now!" he shouted, just as Ed swung the sword at the homunculi's arm—the swing was dodged, though barely, by the intended target before it buried itself into Ed's left leg with a earsplitting clang. The leg shot out from under him, pieces shattering out from the gap in the cloth caused by the sword, and Ed lost his balance and fell, transmuting a hole underneath him as he fell. An insult about clumsiness induced by wielding a sword longer than the individual using it was cut short by a scream of rage that was very certainly Voldemort. The last two Death Eaters were caught off guard just long enough for Ron to use the Incarscerous spell and bind them with ropes and knock away their wands.
The moment of truth. Could he kill Voldemort?
Harry actually laughed aloud at the question. He just killed four of his followers for hurting Hermione and for keeping him from this very same battle. If he could kill them, he could kill Voldemort—killer of his parents, tormenter of thousands, murderer of countless muggles whose family could never explain the sudden deaths, and he, Harry, was the one destined to kill him. So yes, he could. He could kill a killer. A cruel smile smeared his face for the briefest of moments before… "Goodbye, Voldemort. Sectumsempra!" The power behind the words forced the cuts deeper then he'd ever thought possible, and in moments Voldemort was dead.
It was over. Seven years had all been leading up to this, and now it was over, and Harry felt precious little remorse for this last life he'd taken. The other Death Eaters he felt a pang of guilt for—they probably had families, and for all he knew they only joined Voldemort to protect them. Those deaths would probably continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. But Voldemort? Tom Riddle had died long ago. Harry had merely killed the remaining shell. There was to be no regret for it.
This left but one issue. "Can someone help me out of this hole?" Ed's voice issued from the small crater he had transmuted for himself during the battle. Ron obligingly helped pull him out and set him down on a nearby stair case. "Now what?"
"Now we stick to our end of the deal and help figure out a way to get you back to your world. Do you have any ideas how to do that?" Harry asked.
"Perhaps. If I remember correctly you said that your godfather—Sirius, was it?—was swallowed up by a… a curtained portal of sorts? And that you heard whispering from behind it?" Ed inquired.
"…yes…." Harry responded, trepidation apparent in his voice.
"If my theory is correct, then it is actually a permanently opened portal called The Gate—the thing that made me come here—and if I go through it I should go back to Amestris."
"And if you're wrong?" Hermione said, asking the question that Ed had implied.
"Then I'm stuck forever in a swirling, timeless, probably tormenting void."
"How can you say something like that so calmly?" Ron asked in a horrified tone.
"Because I'm reasonably sure that I'm right. And if I'm not, it's still worth the risk." Ed had gone over the consequences almost ever since he found out about that aspect of Harry's past. A life without Roy he could cope with. A life without Winry or his brother, he could not. If he didn't take this chance now, there was a high likelihood he'd try something even more dangerous later on. The potential cost was worth the potential gain. And if he'd talked his way out of The Gate before, he could do it again. Probably. "Anyway, the theory is fairly solid. It's unlikely that anyone could create a void that was simply a void but could still produce effects like wind or voices. Also, there is a chance that with my going in and returning, you might be able to get your godfather back, so long as a suitable price is paid—I can think of nothing more appropriate in this situation than the body of the one you know as Voldemort. A homunculus combined with a powerful human wizard—the potential power stored in that body ought to be enough for the transaction."
At the suggestion the trio raised eyebrows. The offer was certainly interesting, but was such a thing really possible? They'd all since accepted Sirius' death—even Harry. What would it be like to have a dead man amongst them once more? Wonderful, of course, but… The very idea that he might not be dead was a concept too large to take in at once…
"You might remember that I said it was in the Ministry of Magic? In the Department of Mysteries? I'm not sure we could even get you that far, let alone with the corpse of Voldemort," Harry pointed out.
"Even for The-Boy-Who-Saved-The-World-From-He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named? That should get you somewhere, surely?" Even though he said it himself, Ed knew from personal experience that governments had never opened themselves up to heroes. But perhaps this world was different? If it wasn't, he didn't know if he could ask them to help him drag a body into the most prestigious government building in the British part of the wizarding world. The action itself would fulfill equivalent exchange, but the aftermath of the action might not. Being in debt to someone from an alternate dimension was something he'd rather avoid having guilt about.
"It…. I might be able to arrange it," Harry ventured.
"Really?" Ed asked, not bothering to disguise his surprise at the response.
Harry responded in a similarly surprised manner. "You mean you didn't really think that…?"
"Nope! But if you think it will, that's good enough for me!" The group stood in silent astonishment. "What?"
"You really are something of an anomaly, aren't you, Ed?" Hermione said, shaking her head.
Ed shrugged. "I figured that should be obvious by now. So how far away are we from the Ministry, anyway?"
"…not far," Hermione said, shaking off her shock and momentary befuddlement to answer Ed's question. "about three or four blocks."
"Good!" Ed exclaimed, the clap of his hands sounding loudly around the silent, abandoned street before a large crevasse was opened up in the middle of the road, revealing the makeshift hiding place Ed had herded them all into shortly after creating the elevated fighting platform. The astonished-looking witches and wizards had just begun stumbling back out into the daylight when Ed transmuted a pair of crutches from the stone next to him and pulled himself up with them.
"Let's not waste time! Someone carry that body for me?" Ed asked, whacking the head of the now-deceased Envy a few times with his crutch for good measure. Ron flinched back, Hermione looked up at the sky in what could have been either exasperation, amusement, or relief, and Harry contented himself with shrugging his shoulders and levitating the body, walking towards the ministry in hopes that by doing so he could subtly remind Ed that he needed Harry for directions. The blond took the hint and quickly turned around as if he'd been intending to head west the entire time and was not just about to walk in a south-eastern direction. The other two followed behind shortly.
It was a short walk to the ministry and a shorter one to the Department of Mysteries. There was just something about the Golden Trio plus a hitherto unknown blond-haired, golden-eyed, one-legged boy with a metal arm, and the floating corpse of the most feared wizard on the planet that caused people to gawk at them as they walked by. A few of the more bold officials tried to look upset and stern, but most of them simply looked flustered and confused, and the ones who didn't were trying to attack them with more spells, either to stop them from getting to the Department of Mysteries or because they were Voldemort supporters – or possibly just being controlled by them. Either way, this opposition was lazily swept aside by the group by either a counter spell or jinx, or, failing that, the occasional alchemical binding from Ed. Someone would break them free later, he reasoned with himself. And if not, well, they'd been asking for it. He wasn't in the mood to put up with any unnecessary fighting. He just wanted to get home to Winry and Alphonse.
It took only about twenty minutes to reach the department—it would have been less, but what with the… distractions of occasional attacks and getting lost once or twice, it was the best they could do. Once they reached the spinning doors that kept them from knowing which door was which, Harry recapped how they had found the door they needed the last time around, and Ed scoffed at the waste of time and deconstructed all the doors, not bothering to reconstruct them into anything. Sure, the doors were impervious to all magical attacks, but no one had really accounted for an alchemist, who in their world only worked at producing Stones, coming in and dismantling the thing. Two minutes later they were standing in the large room, staring directly at the large arch that sucked all attention to it as if to do anything other than stare would be a sort of blasphemy.
The group stood huddled about six feet away from the gently wafting curtains. The quiet whispers seemed to beckon to them all—just a piece of fabric between the world of the known and the unknown. It'd be so easy to just reach out and pull it open… so easy to—
"Don't touch it, Ed! It'll suck you in just like it did Sirius!" Hermione warned. Ed glanced back at her. He was now a scarce foot away from the marble-like stone that housed what he was sure was The Gate.
"What? Oh! I know that! I was just curious… I didn't think it was even possible to sustain a Gate like this… Then again, every time I've seen it before I was standing right in front of it and, well, kind of lacking a functional body. Makes it kind of hard to walk around it. It's just so curious… What I'd give to look at the research for this! The old man mentioned some of it in the Journal—I thought it was impossible, but here it is! And yet… The calculations in the journal can't have possibly been enough to construct a gate as functional as this, even with a Stone…"
"Ed?" Hermione asked—it was less of a question and more of a reminder that they were all there and that they were most certainly not supposed to be.
"Oh. Right. Well then. Uhhh… It's been fun? I don't really know what to say. I've never really been one for goodbyes. I usually just kind of… Go." He shrugged. "If it means anything, I do hope that things improve for you guys and your world here. Take care of each other and try not to get yourselves killed or enlisted. And… uhhh… I'll take that now," he said, snatching the floating body of Voldemort/Envy, which promptly fell to the ground, and made his hobbling way towards the Gate once again.
"Wait! Ed!" Harry shouted. Ed turned around, head tilted slightly to the side, eyebrow raised. "Take care of yourself. No more dying. And, uh… I hope you're right."
Ed just smirked and lifted a crutch in what could have been called a wave if one had a very loose hold on vocabulary, and stepped through the thick curtains, the body he tugged disappearing shortly after, but not before the trio glimpsed a blinding sort of white light and what they would later pass over as a figment of their imagination and the light, but damned if it didn't look like the dark black silhouette of a child staring out at them.
"Hello again, Edward Elric," said the figure.
"Cut the crap. We both know the deal. You've been holding a man known as Sirius Black here, and I highly doubt you returned anything for it, am I right?" There was a silence that somehow managed to give off the impression of awkward shifting. "I thought so. So here's the deal. Put back what you took, take this thing from me, put me back in Risembool AT THE RIGHT TIME and we'll try not to see each other again. Got it?"
"We are The Gate. There is only Equal Exchange here. You propose that we return the man and yourself for only one dead body?" asked an all-consuming consciousness that almost, but not quite, emanated from the dark childish shadow-figure that stood before him.
"No. what I am proposing is that you put back the man you took—a one –for-one exchange, and then return me in exchange for this body which, as I'm sure you already know because you're a know-it-all bastard—"
"We are a consciousness. We cannot be a bastard, as we have not been fathered," corrected the self-conscious sounding presence.
"Yeah. Whatever. As I was saying, you return me in exchange for this body which was the product of a powerful homunculus from my world joining with one of the most powerful wizards of Earth—a combination of two separate kinds of beings from two separate worlds solidifying all their knowledge and ambitions into one being. I know you're interested in that."
There was a thoughtful silence. "Yes."
"Good. Then get on with it."
"We cannot. The body is enough to ensure your passage, but the man cannot simply be returned. A price must be paid for the effort to bring him back. Transfer of matter is one thing, but the energy it takes to do so is another. Another price must be paid."
Ed glared at the figure in front of him, which seemed quite pleased with itself. "You enjoy this, don't you?"
"We are not human, we do not know joy."
"Fuck you."
"We do not know—"
"Just shut up. Fine. How about this. You can take my wand and my ability to do a wizard's magic, but you leave my alchemy and everything else alone, got that?" A small part of him couldn't help but be tiredly amused by the fact that arriving at the gate had become commonplace enough that he could barter with a formless consciousness and hardly even blink.
"It is a fair trade," it replied, slightly disappointed sounding, as if it wished it could have taken more from him.
The doors before him opened and he was enveloped by black arms that pulled him in. "You better not screw me over this time, you bastard." He caught a whiff of annoyance as the doors closed, and a brief image of a long haired, wiry looking man standing in his place staring back at him in wonder. Then there was darkness.
The three seconds it took for Ed to enter the arch and for Sirius to step bewilderingly back out had seemed, as clichédas it sounded, like an eternity. Although the sight of him did not guarantee that Ed had made it through alright himself, it improved the odds than if nothing had happened at all. And, atop all of that, Sirius was back! Back from what they had all thought to be death, and yet…
Words simply were not enough at that moment, and because of that no one tried to say anything—words would have made it all seem almost trivial. Harry and Sirius hugged each other for the first time in far too long.
When the group burst triumphantly through the doorway to no. 13 Grimmauld place, Remus peeked his head out from the kitchen to see what all the commotion was.
At the sight of Sirius, he dropped the spoon and pan he'd been holding, not caring about the tomato sauce that sloshed all over the tile and on his pants as he rushed forward and tackled his best friend down to the floor, only avoiding giving either of them a concussion by wrapping his arms around Sirius' head an instant before the landing. He was grinning like a madman and crying like a child. Sirius was back! Sirius Black, the last other Marauder, was back! And there was no way he was going to disappear again. There would be a feast that night, and there would be much to talk about.
Ed tumbled out of the Gate and came to a halt lying flat on his back, staring up at a bright, almost cloudlessly blue sky, sun glaring in his eyes and grass prickling at the back of his neck. With a groan he shielded his eyes and slowly sat up. You'd think with infinite knowledge The Gate would be able to at least let him out on his feet. He had a feeling it had done that on purpose. He rubbed at his backside and looked around him.
This was the hill that used to run behind his house… that meant he was only about a ten, fifteen minute walk away from Winry's house. He noticed that the Gate had taken his stone crutches as well and glared behind him, as if there would be anything there to glare at aside from crops and empty fields before transmuting himself a new pair and hobbling off down the dirt path he'd been so familiar with as a child.
He stood in front of the large wooden door labeled "Rockbell Automail" for a good two minutes before knocking tentatively at the door, almost hoping no one would answer and he'd have to catch a train to Central. Be it fortunate or unfortunate, Winry's voice shouted "BE RIGHT THERE!" and there was the sound of pounding footsteps as someone ran down the stairs and skidded to a halt on the other side of the door.
Another moment and the door opened slowly (she'd gotten down the polite welcome of guests, even though the etiquette of getting to the door was still sketchy at best). She started to smile and extend a hand to welcome the customer before…
"YOU!! You! You! You IDIOT!!!!" And there was the wrench in his face. Again. Just about the welcome he'd been expecting.
"Good to see you too, Winry."
"Oh, God! I thought I'd never see you again!" She exclaimed shakily, trying only momentarily to keep the tears out of her eyes. She started crying. He got hit with another wrench. And then there was another voice coming from somewhere inside the house. It was a voice Ed had died several times to hear, and it was so worth it.
"Winry? What's wrong? Who's there?" And Alphonse Elric came walking around the corner and stopped in his tracks as he saw the blond who lay on the ground, propping himself up with one arm, a pair of crutches strewn on either side of him where they'd landed when Winry's first wrench had floored him.
"Hey, Al. Miss me?" Ed said with a worried sort of grin.
"You idiot!" Al choked, smiling down at his brother.
"I love you guys too," Ed said. Winry smiled through her tears and flung herself on him, kissing him squarely on the lips.
Yup. It had all been worth it.
A/N: For anyone who was wondering, Newton's Third Law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I almost named it Reactions, but Newton's Third Law is more nerdy. XP
Thank you all so much for sticking with me until the end. It means a lot to me. I hope that you will continue reading my stories even now that Quest for Home has ended.
On a less tender sounding, but equally heartfelt note, DONE, YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH-FIC! HA! TAKE THAT! –gloats over finally finishing it—