Author's Note: Welcome back, folks! Hope you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: WolfishMoon doesn't own Harry Potter or Fullmetal Alchemist, respectively the properties of J.K. Rowling and Hiromu Arakawa. She never claims otherwise and makes NO MONEY from the online publication of this free-to-read fanwork.

Chapter 19

Beginnings

"He's a muggle!" Draco shouted across the Great Hall. Damn subtlety, he couldn't stay silent and calculating when a muggle was supposed to teach him Alchemy. He'd known Dumbledore had a screw loose but to not even check to make sure his teaching staff were wizards!?

"Indeed," said the headmaster. Indeed? Indeed?

"You knew?" Draco was standing, and somewhere in him his inner serpent was admonishing him for being so very Gryffindor. Well. There was time to be embarrassed later.

"Of course. I must wonder how you knew, Mr. Malfoy. But no matter. Professor Elric has demonstrated that alchemy has no need of magic to function, and he is therefore fully qualified for the position."

'Professor Elric' for his part was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chair, looking utterly unconcerned. "So, I don't haff your magic bullshit," he said. "I can transmute circles around your best."

"Prove it," Draco said. Draco had seen proof, of course, but there was a part of him that was terrified of the consequences. A talented muggle? His muggle ally not being talented? He did not know which thought was worse, and he didn't want to examine it.

In different ways and for different reasons, either answer was disastrous.

"I don't need to prove myself to you," he said. "I am provessor here, and zat should be proov enough vor anyone."

Draco nodded, slowly. He couldn't even fall back on the old favorite: My father will hear of this! No. Lucius Malfoy was in prison and no one cared one whit about anything he had to say. Right. The other go to favorite, then, would be: Afraid, are you? But that too was inapplicable in the situation. Edward Elric clearly fell under the category of 'Suicidally Gryffindor.'

"The simple truth," Dumbledore cut in. Elric the Elder flinched at the word, it was plain to see, but Dumbledore either did not notice or he continued undeterred. "Is that there is not any wizard in Great Britain even capable of teaching the subject."

Alchemy was largely a forgotten art. Draco had known that, but somehow he could not conceive that a foreign muggle was the most qualified person in Britain. Suddenly, Draco felt the eyes of the entire hall on him. Theodore Nott in particular was looking at him like he'd lost his mind. Slowly, slowly, Draco sat back down. Clearly, there was not a fight here that he could win.

So instead, Draco burned, trapped in the moment where he had declared himself to be capable of besting the muggle's abilities with access to a proper teacher.

Oops.

By the time the feast was over, and Alphonse was being led to Ravenclaw tower with the first years, it had been hours since he and Ed had been separated on the train. Alphonse had become accustomed to being without his brother in the day - the Order of the Phoenix held him in the Burrow as a sort of collateral while Ed went to the muggle high school with Hermione. At night, though, Alphonse had not been without his brother since they'd landed in Berlin.

The boy and girl that led Alphonse and the first years up the steps looked to be roughly Ed's age (was that roughly Al's age too? Ed had always been so protective that Al forgot sometimes that Ed was only a year older than him). The boy officiously took the lead, and the girl seemed more amused by it than offended. Instead of fighting her cohort for the lead, she lingered and let the line of eleven-year-olds plus Al pass her by. She caught Al at the end though. "I know that you can't do much of anything about it, but she's in your year," she said. "And you seem to be hitting it off. Luna gets bullied. Watch out for her if you can and watch out for yourself too if people try to retaliate."

Al looked at the girl who'd pulled him aside. "I don't sink she's all zat strange," he said.

She smiled, flipped a sheaf of dark black hair over her shoulder. "Then I hope the two of you become friends. I'm Padma Patil, by the way, and that's Anthony Goldstein. If ever you need anything, you'll come to us first."

"Thank you," Al said. "I will. To all three."

"Good." With that, Padma shepherded him back into line, up the flights of stairs, finally coming to a stop before a portrait. The portrait smiled at them. "First years!" she said. "Welcome!"

Alphonse flinched, looked at the floor. He had read about the portraits, of course. But it still hurt to look at them, a deep pain that gathered alike to dread in the pit of his stomach. He was not sure why they'd had to stop at one until she said a riddle. "I suppose I'll start you with the classic," she said. "What has four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three in the evening?"

"Does anyone know?" Padma asked, gesturing at Alphonse to keep quiet. He hadn't heard this riddle before, but he guessed that it was a common one to this universe, because even the officious Anthony Goldstein wore an indulgent smile as he watched the eleven-year-olds ponder the question.

These children were not eleven like Al had been eleven and he was torn between finding them utterly endearing and being unspeakably jealous. That's not kind, Al he thought to himself. It's a good thing that these kids get to have a real childhood. A good thing.

One child was hopping up and down in excitement. "I know this one!"

"Have you heard it before or have you figured it out?" Anthony asked.

She pouted. "I've heard it before."

"What about you?" Padma said to a child with a particularly thoughtful look on her face.

"I don't know," she said. "But I think. Maybe. If 'day' is metaphorical. Is it a person? A baby crawling, an adult walking, an elder with a crutch?"

The portrait was delighted. "Correct!" she said in a whimsical, sing song voice that seemed to be ripped straight from Luna. "Welcome to Ravenclaw!"

The portrait swung inwards to reveal the house common room. Alphonse would have to interact with it every day. Oh. He made an effort to go in at the very last. When even Padma shrugged and went before him, he turned to the portrait. "Vat is it like?"

"I can think," the portrait said. "If that's what you're asking. I thought I would be little more than a memory, when I commissioned this portrait to be painted. But I can think, surely enough."

"I'm sorry," Alphonse said, blinking away tears in the corner of his eyes. "I am so sorry."

"Don't be. Hogwarts is the best place in the world to be, for a painting. There is almost as much ground to cover within our collective backgrounds as the school and forest combined."

Alphonse nodded, trying not to cry. "I'll try," he said and stepped through the portrait hole.

Anthony was pacing in an anxious circle beyond the portrait hole. "Alphonse!" he said. "I already showed the first years their dorm. Let me show you the fifth-year accommodations."

"Thanks," Al said, careful of his th, and let himself be led up an additional five flights of stairs.

"Seventh years are at the very top of the tower, and it goes down by year after that. As a fifth year, your bunk will be in the room third from the top."

That would be one way to bulk up his legs - perhaps even to the point of one-upping Brother! Al may have always won their fights, but by bulk strength alone Ed was the better fighter. Ed was more creative, fended better against their enemies.

Brother would never throw a fight on purpose, but Al wondered sometimes if Ed subconsciously went easy on him. It was the only thing that explained how Al even managed to win even the fight over Winry's hand all those years ago.

He was pulled from his rose-tinted memory by Anthony poking his shoulder. "Are you alright Al? We're here."

Sure enough, just off this last flight of stairs was a door labeled with a list of names. Alphonse Elric. That was him. Al tentatively pushed the door open, thanked Anthony, and stepped inside. "Hi."

"Hey," said one of the boys. "I think you're by the window."

"Right," Al said. Sure enough, the trunk that he'd bought in Diagon Alley was resting at the foot of the bed by the window. "Vell. I'm Alphonse Elric. Vat's your name?"

"Gerald," he said. "But my friends call me Gerry."

"Call me Al, zen."

"Hogwarts hasn't had a transfer or late start since 1542," Gerry said, putting aside the book that had been open on his lap. "And it was a Gryffindor that time. Can't believe Ravenclaw, class of 1999 got so lucky!"

Al twitched nervously. Lucky. Right. "I'm glad to be here!" There was a shaky false cheer to his voice that he could not quite make genuine. He knew that at this moment Ed was probably being shown his classroom and his office and his own bedroom, but there was a small and irrational part of Al that asked Wo ist Bruder? Woher?

"Vee haff early start tomorrow," Al said, English suddenly almost impossible. "I sink I schould get ready vor bed."

"Huh?"

Whoops. "I need sleep," Al said, trying again and brandishing the pajamas he'd pulled from his trunk. "Vor class tomorrow. Can vee talk more in zee morning?"

"You're right," said Gerry, picking his book back up. "I'm just trying to make the most of my last night of freedom. After tomorrow, all of my personal reading time will go down the drain. I'll draw my curtains so the light doesn't bother you."

"Sank you," Al said. "Enjoy your book!"

Once the curtains were drawn, they blocked sound so completely that they must have been bespelled. Alphonse, who still had trouble sleeping, was not sure if that was a good thing. At least no one would hear it if he woke up screaming.

Ed caught Malfoy in the hallway after the Welcome Feast, smuggled him behind a tapestry and transmuted them past the wall behind. "Are you fucking stupid?"

Malfoy's glare was defiant, clearly masking deep seated embarrassment. Ed snorted, and the glare turned offended. "At least I'm not a muggle," he spat. Ed hated that word.

"I could kick your ass so easy iv I vanted to," Ed said. "Makes no difference."

"Giving in to violent muggle tendencies, are you?"

Fucking brat. "Zee system zat has a one-hit-kill curse is less violent? Are you serious?"

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "At least you've done some research."

Ed rolled his eyes. "If you go srough your life assuming people you deem inferior are univormly stupid enough not to investigate zee enemy, you are going to be dead by zee time you're twenty-five."

"Shut up," Draco said.

"Oh, like you haff any place to talk about keeping your mouth shut! You realize zat I vill haff to talk to zee crazy Old Man about zis right? He vill want answers about zee shit you said tonight!"

"Well," Malfoy said, paused. His expression contorted in the dim light let through by the air vents Ed had left to their pocket in the wall. He nodded after a moment, said, "Dumbledore would be happy about it, wouldn't he?"

"Do you want to involve zee Old Man in zee plan? Because I vas pretty sure you didn't vant to involve zee Old Man in zee plan. I didn't vant to involve zee Old Man in zee plan."

Again, pain flashed across Malfoy's face. "Well, I may have lost us that chance tonight. But we can adapt."

Ed supposed that was true. They could adapt.

"Vee need to do zis soon, or it vill be too late."

Malfoy met Ed's eyes, and Ed was startled by the determination there. "I know," he said. "We will."

For once, Ed believed him.

With a clap, the wall they'd hidden inside of peeled open, depositing them behind the tapestry. Ed sent Draco out, followed after five minutes.

Tomorrow would be the first day of classes and Ed still had no idea where his classroom was. Or his bed.

Somehow, Dumbledore refrained from accosting him before he found said bed. Ed did not sleep well that first night. Without Al being solid flesh and bone just a few feet away it was harder to dispel the nightmares of a lifeless suit of armor with a worn-out seal.

Ed gave up at four in the morning in favor of reviewing his lesson plans. The little wizards weren't going to be getting into the meat of any of their subjects today, so the plan was mostly introductory. Did Hogwarts have printers? Shit.

Ed spent two hours hastily sketching out a hundred periodic tables before it was time to go to breakfast. He carefully rolled the fingers on his left hand - definitely some cramping there. But it was a good pain. It was better than being impaled, at any rate.

"Did you sleep well?" Stern said, when Ed joined her at the table and began loading up his plate of food.

Ed scowled. "I started writing out periodic tables at vour in zee morning. You tell me."

"Ask for help, next time," she said, raising her eyebrows.

"I don't zink you vant to be up at vour in zee morning helping me hand write scientific concepts."

She raised an eyebrow. "No. But if you'd brought one to breakfast I could have made copies with magic."

Ed swore, not sure if it was targeted at himself for not thinking of it or if it was targeted at magic for making up these crazy shortcuts.

Ed pretended that a printer wasn't a similar shortcut, and that he couldn't have made those copies alchemically, if he'd wanted to. Teacher wouldn't have approved. Ed didn't go through his life basing his decisions on whether Teacher would approve or not, but in his more lucid moments he could admit that her opinions had more of an effect on him than he pretended.

He remembered what happened when he ignored her advice.

Ed was distracted from his thoughts when Dumbledore joined them at the table. "Edward!" He said. "Would you mind coming to my office after dinner to discuss your first day of classes?"

Ed scowled at him - there was no way in hell they were going to be talking about his first day of classes, he was sure. "Yeah, alright Old Man."

Dumbledore gave him a serene look. "I wish you the best of luck today." For one moment, there was nothing Ed wanted more than to slap that serene look off his face.

Instead, Ed thanked him. If this was what being an adult was like, Ed wanted no damn part of it.

He ate his breakfast as quickly as possible and fled to his classroom instead. "I'fe got shit to set up," he said.

Ed had hoped that his first class of the day would be the fifth years with Alphonse, but no such luck. It was the sixth years, rowdy and angry and yelling at each other the moment they were assembled.

"Studying under a Muggle, Malfoy? What would Daddy say?" Harry said the instant he stepped in the room and saw Draco already in the front row.

Draco sniffed. "I don't see how it's any of your business." Sitting next to him was not the pretty girl from the train, but an entirely different pretty girl and one of the boys from the train. They both shot death glares at Potter, who did not even seem to notice them.

"Potter?" Ed said. "You're taking my class?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Ron refused, so Hermione wrote my name in without telling me."

"You may enjoy it, Harry," Hermione said, shifting her massive floof of hair over one shoulder.

"Come vor a few days," Ed said. "Drop zee class iv it isn't for you. And that goes to all ov you."

There was a ripple of murmurs. Ed rolled his eyes. "I von't lie to you. Alchemy is not easy. Iv you vant to learn enough even vor simple transmutations you must study thoroughly. It vould not be fair iv I didn't give you an out."

Granger looked like she was on cloud nine as she took her seat. Masochist, Ed thought. But then, Hermione was not the only person who looked invigorated by the promised challenge. The group in blue and bronze looked pleased, the group in yellow and black looked determined, and the group in green and silver, well. They were smirking.

Those smirks wouldn't last very long, Ed was sure. In fact, they mostly faded when he passed out his handwritten periodic tables.

"You'll need to memorize zese," he said. "Name, symbol, atomic number, molar veight. Everysing."

The Malfoy brat was taking it in stride, but the boy and girl on either side of him looked utterly confused. "What is this?" the girl asked.

"Periodic Table of Elements," Ed said. "Everysing in zee universe is made up of zese base substances. Including us. You see, to successfully vork any transmutation zee alchemist has to understand vat zey are changing."

"That sounds suspiciously like muggle science," said the boy on Draco's other side.

"It is," Ed said. "I am not vizard. Alchemy can be learned by anyone, but it is vat inspired your transfiguration and zerefore it is at least historically important to you veirdos."

The boy decided to quit while he was ahead. Good. Ed wrote two phrases on the blackboard. One was the Law of Conservation and the other was Teacher's adage. "One ov zese is a universally acknowledged concept of Alchemy. Zee ozer is one zat my Teacher values, and zat I also value."

"Zee virst I will explain today. Zee ozer, you vill haff to vigure out on your own before I can teach you shit. I'll cover only zee chemistry and physics to alchemy until you all can answer me zat truth. And zen we can start learning zee runes and circles you vill need to draw."

There was immediate outrage from the class, and Ed almost wanted to murder them all. Instead, he plotted his revenge in the form of homework.

Run three miles before Friday. The outrage was even worse, but this time Ed just laughed at their pain. "Oh, come on you vlabby babies. You don't even haff to run it all at once!"

They settled, but it was a long time before Ed could even get into the very introductory lesson he'd planned for the day. Good thing he'd budgeted in extra time for chaos.

By the time the fifth-year class rolled around, and Alphonse shuffled into the room with the blonde girl from the train, decked in blue and bronze, Ed was ready to collapse.

"You little shits are lucky," he said to the fifth years. "You have my baby brozer in zis class - he's a hell ov a lot more patient zan I am so you can use him as resource."

Al waved awkwardly at the rest of the room. "Please do," he said. "And iv any ov you vant to help me vis magic, I vould be grateful."

With Al's help, lesson number whatever went much more smoothly than the others. Well, it probably helped that the volatile Potter-Malfoy duo wasn't in attendance. And Ginny, who might have been fiery enough to to start a fight over something looked like her brain was broken after five minutes.

Which, Ed decided, was probably fair. He always forgot that most children didn't start studying advanced mathematics at three.

"Listen," Ginny finally said. "I want to learn alchemy, but what the fuck even is this?"

Ed laughed. "Keep studying and coming to class. It vill make sense eventually."

"Sure," she said, flipping a sheaf to hide her face. The curse of red hair, there, is that it didn't do anything to make her less visible.

"If anyone needs help," said Alphonse. "I can host a veekly study sessions. It might help get you all caught up on zee math."

Ginny shot him a grateful look, and Ed realized that these wizards may actually be worse at science than his summer school kids. Perhaps even worse than Mister Needed-to-write-a-slang-dictionary-to-pass. Ed felt a small piece of his soul shrivel up and die.

But at least Ginny was thrilled to hear about the three-mile homework.

When the class ended, Al lingered in the classroom. Ed ruffled his hair. "How was your first day of classes?" He said in Amestrian.

Al smiled. "I'm only half way through, brother. But it's good!"

"How does the workload seem?"

"Honestly, I think it might be a lighter workload than Hermione had me on over the summer."

Ed laughed. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

"It's weird, sleeping in a dorm," Al said. "I mean we slept in some pretty weird places back home, but dorms are a new level."

"We slept on park benches," Ed said flatly.

"I know," Al said, and Ed realized the subtext. At least on park benches, they were together, and Al's sleepless armor could watch him.

Ed understood absolutely. The separation anxiety had gotten to him too. Ed put a hand on Al's shoulder. "We'll get used to it," he said. "Even if we'd stayed home and I'd gone with my initial plan, we'd have grown up eventually."

Al nodded. "I know," he said. "But at least back home everyone knew the story."

Ed snorted. "It was a very open secret by the end of things, wasn't it?" The fact that they'd technically tried to hide their human transmutation was laughable in hindsight.

"We were never good at following orders," Al agreed, mirth shimmering in his eyes. Even after a year, seeing real emotion in his brother's eyes was a thrill. The armor had been surprisingly expressive, but it wasn't a human face.

"You should get to your next class," Ed said. "Last stop before dinner."

Al nodded vigorously. "It's transfiguration, and I think I'm terrified of Professor McGonagall."

"She's a lot like Teacher. That alone makes me glad I can't be a student here."

Al lightly swatted his arm, picked up his back, moved to the door. "Good luck in your last class of the day, brother!"

Then, he was gone. The last class of the day was miserable, and dinner was worse.

Up in Dumbledore's office, Ed punched the only wall that wasn't covered in bizarre trinkets. Only the delicate knuckles of his newly flesh arm stopped him from doing any real damage. Sure, the plaster crumbled minutely under his fist, but this wasn't the steel arm of the Fullmetal Alchemist. The wall didn't come down around his head.

"Are you alright Mr. Elric?"

Ed sighed, whirled from the wall, and sat abruptly in the chair across from Dumbledore's desk. "Yeah," he said. "It vas a long day."

Dumbledore gave him an assessing look. "Well, I brought you in to talk about young Mr. Malfoy's outburst, but perhaps we should talk about your mental health."

"No," Ed said. "Vee can talk about Malfoy. I sink vee may vant your help, anyway."

"We?"

"Malfoy, Alphonse, and I. Vee are staging a jailbreak."

Dumbledore blinked. "What?"

There were very few things, Ed was sure, that could render Albus Dumbledore speechless. But this did it. It took a moment of floundering before he offered a coherent response. "I'm afraid you've been duped. The child has been ordered to kill me by Tom."

"I know about zee orders from zee Moldy Bastard. I'm hoping to kill him before Malfoy has to act on zem. But who zee hell is Tom?"

Dumbledore gaped at him, and Ed never got a real answer to the Tom thing. "Severus says that he seems very devoted to the cause."

"Zee Moldy Man is using his mozer as collateral. Of course he's devoted to zee cause. But he'd rather get out ov it, so we're breaking in, getting out Ollivander and his mozer and vat ever ozer prisoners zey've managed to take, and vee're getting zee fuck out ov zere. If I get to kill zee Mold in zee process? All zee better."

"It must be a trap, young man," Dumbledore said. "The Malfoys have been practitioners of the Dark Arts for centuries."

Ed shrugged. "You can be into illegal shit vizout vanting Moldy people in power. Besides. Al bonded us in an Unbreakable Vow, so he can't do shit."

And that was when Dumbledore kicked him out of the office. "Get out. I need to think," he said. "You've thrown years of planning into chaos."

"It's vat I do best, according to everyone I'fe ever vorked viz!" Ed said with forced glee. He didn't miss the fact that the hand that closed the door on him was black and gnarled.

"All right," he said to the air in Amestrian. "I think that went well!"

Word Count: 4,200

Whoo! A lot happened in this chapter. I don't know if I gave each event the attention it deserved, but I desperately needed to get this chapter off my desktop before November 1st, because of NaNoWriMo.

I know I technically started this fic in November of 2016, but typically November is a no-fanfiction-zone. Just because I like to take the boost to my word counts for my original fiction. The point is, I probably won't post again till December. In light of that, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter.

Thanks for reading! I'll see you in the reviews section!