Quick note: This chapter is brought to you by cloud 9, on which Linn is currently residing.

The Foundation of Truth

Bard Linn

Chapter 7: Interrogation

Ed's workroom wasn't large enough to hold everyone comfortably so they moved to an old potions classroom. A few flicks of Dumbledore's wand created several chairs around a large table. Harry, Ron and Hermione took one side. Ed sat across from them with the Slytherins on his right. Dumbledore and McGonagall took the final side. "Mr. Potter?"

Harry closed his eyes and quickly arranged his thought. (Another side effect of studying with Ed. He had learned to present things so they were understandable.) "Earlier today I was heading down to meet Ed at his work room. He said he had discovered something to allow him to make some progress. Halfway down Malfoy attacked me-"

"No I didn't," Malfoy sneered.

"Mr. Malfoy please be quiet. Continue Mr. Potter."

"Eventually Snape"

"Professor Snape."

"Professor Snape found us and was going to punish me for starting the fight when you showed up."

"I was not in the dungeons earlier today."

"It looked just like you Headmaster," Snape spoke up. Malfoy nodded in agreement.

"I was a little nervous. Something about it felt off to me so I cast the Legilimens spell." Harry shuddered. That thing wasn't human. Even his experiences in Voldemort's mind last year had been better. "Ed had mentioned Envy to me; I recognized his mind. I managed to get a message off to Hermione then ran with Professor Snape and Malfoy."

"The Avada Kedavra spell did not kill that …thing," Snape put in.

"So that's what you used. I wondered," Ed murmured. All eyes turned to him. "I've found evidence that Envy been attacked but I didn't know how." He wondered if enough Avada Kedavra spells would seal a Homunculus. Maybe, but to cast that many would probably kill the caster as well considering some of the side effects of that blasted thing.

Dumbledore's eyes turned sharp. "Explain."

Ed fiddled with his wand for several moments. "Most of you know I come from another world, one parallel to this one accessible only by a Gate. In that world I don't know of anyone who uses magic. We do have a science that resembles transfiguration however. It even shares its name with one of your branches of magic: alchemy. I've studied alchemy since I was four. Unlike magic Alchemy follows a ridged set of rules. You can only create something with the equal amount of mass as the original materials. This is the concept known as Equivalent Exchange."

"There are many who seek to find away around this rule. Most seek out our world's version of the Philosopher's stone. For…personal reasons my brother and I also sought the stone." Ed was not going to tell them the entire story. They hadn't earned it, nor did they need to hear it. "We discovered that the stone's primary ingredients are living human beings."

"That's why you were so upset last week!" Hermione spoke up.

Ed nodded. "A complete Philosopher's Stone requires thousand of human lives." He fished a shard out of his pocket and it on the table. "This is an incomplete piece of a Stone. Homunculi need them to survive. It makes them more or less immortal."

"Homunculi?" Snape frowned.

"Artificial humans created through transfigurations gone wrong," Ed explained. No, let's not tell them they are the results of trying to resurrect someone thank you very much. "If you kill them they draw on the Stones inside of them for energy and repair their bodies. They aren't true humans; they have no soul. Without the Stones they can be destroyed, which is what the seal on the floor was for."

"What I don't understand is how your preformed Alchemy. You said that's impossible to do here," Harry frowned.

Ed smiled. "Alchemy has three main stages. Knowledge: once you understand what an object is made of you know what you can do with it. Destruction: you break the bonds between atoms and then reconstruction: where you reassemble them to your liking. The information to perform all of these tasks is contained in an array. The more complex of an array, the more ridged the transmutation it performs. For example, some simple arrays can do things like create toys or form walls but require guidance from the caster. This array is so complex it can only have one result: the sealing of a homunculus."

"However," Ed continued sounding just like a professor dealing with a favorite topic, "all of this requires power. That's what's missing in this world. The power source I would usually use." He held up the shard again. "These are pieces of a Philosopher's Stone. The Stone doesn't actually allow you to violate the principal of Equivalent Exchange. It's not an amplifier either. It's just a battery that allows you to perform Human Alchemy which naturally takes so much power that it kills the Alchemist. I used the Stones to power the transmutations."

He got several confused faces. "Battery?"

"Muggle term," Hermione explained. "Like a reservoir of power."

"If the stone is a power reservoir, and you can use them to perform your 'alchemy'…" Snape began.

"Then alchemy runs off death energy as well," Ed finished. He pretended not to see everyone go for their wands. "A while back – so far back it was before Hogwarts was founded – a group of wizards created the links between our worlds via the Gate. Through this gate they sent the 'natural' death energy, the kind that comes when people die of sickness, old age, injury or accidents. What they did forced Dark Wizards to collect death energy in person for their spells." Ed paused reconsidering his words. "Well, if not in person then through their followers provided they can force their minions to absorb the energy and then siphon it off at a later date." Harry had discovered earlier this year that this was one of the functions of the Dark Mark. "Which, by the way, is very bad for your mental and physical health. Now the real question is why did I have Harry activate the array?"

Silence reigned for a few seconds then Harry's eyes widened in understanding. "Voldemort! You drained Voldemort's power through me!" Hermione looked slightly put out Harry had figured it out first. Ron hid a smile. The witch always wanted to know everything but Harry had more experience with how Ed thought.

"Exactly. Everything that we've found shows he uses death energy rather frequently. He would have to considering his current …condition. I could have activate it with a shard and then allow the rest to be absorbed into the array. That's what we've done before because it takes a lot of energy to seal a Homunculus. It would kill someone normally."

Ed grinned. "Now we not only got rid of Envy," he declared with a very vicious grin silently chanting 'finally you damm bastard!' "But drained Voldemort and his followers. Depending on how many raids they've gone on lately the worst they'll be." There was another outcome, one he wasn't going to announce in present company. 'I have a pile of shards which will allow me to use Alchemy which means I can get to the gate.'

"This Envy worries me. Do you know why he was here and how he survived several decades? Did he travel through time as well?" Dumbledore asked the blond alchemist.

"From what I saw in his mind Envy had heard about Sn-Professor Snape and wanted to see if he could made more shards for him," Harry put in. From Envy's point of view this would make perfect sense. After all, Snape was a rather famous potions master, someone who could probably recreate such a thing or something similar with magic. Also, he was connected with Voldemort which generally meant a lack of moral problems with killing. "He didn't seem to have any allies yet though he was considering offering his services to Voldemort."

"As for living though the decades…" Edward looked thoughtful. Dante said that Envy had been her child by Hohenheim. They had been together around four hundred years ago their time. "Its possible Envy was as much as four hundred years old before he crossed over. I don't know how often they require stones though I believe they need more after a death or extreme use of their abilities. Provided he didn't shape shift too much he could probably survive."

"The stones require human lives in abundance," Hermione thought aloud. "And Envy was connected to the magical world if he heard about Professor Snape. What if he worked with Grindelwald?"

"That would fit in very well," Dumbledore acknowledged the witch's statement. "It's not well known but Grindelwald worked with Hitler in what is called by the Muggles as World War II. He helped set up the concentration camps as collection points of negative energy." Again he focused on Edward. "Are there more of these creatures?"

"No other ones passed through the gate to my knowledge," Ed replied. "In fact, there shouldn't be anymore left at all provided the Colonel got rid of King Bradley." Gluttony and Wrath hadn't looked well the last time he saw them.

"Colonel?" Hermione blinked. "As in military?"

"My commanding officer.

Mass stare minus Harry who bent his head to cover his smile. "You were in the army?" That was Ron.

"Yeah. All state alchemists are given the rank of major, the silver watch and a second name. Technically I've been in the military since I was twelve though I tended to cause more problems for them than anything else."

"Which is why Envy called you 'Fullmetal shorty,'" Harry put in. "And you can obviously see why he has that for his second name."

"How'd you get that?" Ron asked.

Hermione glared at him. "Ron!" One did not ask about physical injures.

"I'm not short!" Ed snapped at Harry. "And you shouldn't be talking anyway."

"You're three years older than I am," Harry pointed out.

"Just what we need. Another trouble maker," Snape sneered.

Ed felt like slapping the man to see if the expression fell off. Honestly, it was worse than Mustang's smirk. At least he actually changed expressions! "Not for much longer," he countered the dark haired man's statement. "In a little over a month I'll be gone for good."

Yay! Thats done. By the way, Envy explainations brought to you vita Lucathia Rykatu who raised the questions.

Special thanks to:

Ketsu:4 responses! Thank you! Yes, I don't think many people take into effect the time difference. Harry's just as an important character as Ed though, since this in more FMA than HP it focuses on Ed. Research? Um, I looked up the begining/end date for World Wars and spellings for a lot HP terms. We need a patch or something to download...gah.

Die Kikyo Die: (yes! Die you little...ahem.) Hopefully you're alright now. Iwanted to confuse some people with the last chapter. Glad you like it and hope you continue to!

MommyRogers: Thank you! The best? (blushes) I'm trying for daily updates. We'll see how things go.

OoO!!!: Here you go!

Lucathia Rykatu: I told a non FMA fan that scene in Chapter 4 and she even found it funny.I know what you mean about laughing since I've had that problem too. As for the Philosopher's Stone, why would he bother? In HP world it only creates the Elixer of Life for immortality and turns things to gold, neither of which interest Ed. Thank you! I'm not overly fond of mass discriptions myself, or forever long chapters with huge paragraphs. As for knowing where this is going, any long fics I have a rought draft handwritten before I start typing. I expand and polish it while typing then wait several hours and edit. So as long as I type it, it'll get done. I'm a big crossover fan too. Right now a FMA/detective conan/kaito kid one is lurking in my brain and an FMA/OMG one. Wait till I finish some more pure FMA first so they can get their timelines straight.