Title: Harry Potter and the Secret of Human Alchemy
Summary: His soul transmuted to another body Edward Elric lives on in this world as Nicholas Flamel and there's something Harry needs to know. With Dumbledore out of the way Harry is about to learn exactly how he got that scar. PostHBP PostShambala HPAlchemy
Rating: T
Status: 4 chapters written, 3 chapters posted
Review count: 9
Past the Point of insanity: Thanks a million :D
Serenity Moon2: Do you know any other good FMA x HP x-overs then?
lady sakura cosmos: You should pretty much understand FMA by the end of this chapter :) Anyway, you don't really need to understand FMA to understand this fic. It's in the HP section for a reason lol. If there is anything that is confusing just PM me kay? I promise to reply
Ookami Kage: Like father like son...newayz...Ed's more connected to Lily and we will find out exactly why next chapter.
Pairings: ...
Notes: For those that are not familiar with FMA, this chapter should cover all you need to know. Be warned containes SPOILERS for the end of the FMA series and the Conquerer of Shambala movie. Also contains HBP spoilers but if your reading in the HP section and haven't read that by now then well...not my fault.
-----
"The name I was given when I was born was Edward Elric, I had a brother, Alphonse Elric. We grew up in a world similar to this, but instead of magic and science we had what you could call a combination of the two. Alchemy, the science founded on reason that made you feel like you were doing magic. Understanding how a substance is made, breaking it down and reforming it as something else. Our father left when we were young and it was from his books that we first began to experiment with alchemy. Our mom died, we were young and impulsive, we thought there was nothing more we could loose. We attempted something called human alchemy, alchemy on human souls, we tried to resurrect our mother using all the ingredients of the average adult human body."
Harry looked at him like he was mad, this sounded nothing like the alchemy he knew of and he was talking like he was from some other world. This man was mad, "So what exactly are those ingredients?"
Nicholas reached into his coat which he still hadn't taken off and pulled out a brown, leather bound book, "You really want to know…alright…
Water, 35 litres
Carbon, 20 kilograms
Ammonia, 4 litres
Lime, 1.5 kilograms
Phosphorus, 800 grams
Salt, 250 grams
Salt Peter, 100 grams
Sulphur, 80 grams
Flourine, 7.5
Iron, 5
Silicon, 3 grams
And trace amounts of 15 other elements
…down to the last specs of protein in your eyelashes."
"Where did you learn that?" Harry asked warily, this was beginning to sound creepy.
"From one of my father's books on alchemy. We failed though, there had never been a successful attempt because there was something that science hasn't been able to grasp, the soul. One doesn't need to believe in a God to recognise the presence of a soul. Alchemy in that world relied on the use of drawings called transmutations circles and something I've come to know as 'The Gate'. I don't fully understand it and I don't think I ever will but I do understand that in order to perform alchemy you needed more than the components, you needed the energy and the energy came from beyond the gate, it came from this world. The energy generated by human souls."
"You don't mean that in order for your alchemy to work you needn't people here to die do you?" Harry was looking at Nicholas like he was insane.
"Smart boy, you're mother got that part too," Harry looked slightly sick. "We drew the circle, got all the ingredients, everything was perfect but in order to gain life you need to loose it, death is the high cost of living. We summoned the gate and it took my brother and my left leg. In order to get him back a placed a form of transmutation circle called a blood seal on a suit of arm and sacrificed my right arm to bind my brother's soul to the armour. The iron in my blood responded to the metal in the armour and the blood we shared making it work."
"That's sick."
"What we created wasn't human, it was something called a homunculus, parts of it had human form but the thing is that the same basic components can make different things. Like carbon and hydrogen, dependant on amounts you can make methane, ethane, ethane, a multitude of different hydrocarbons. Take the components for a human being and you can make different things. Human hands weren't meant to craft flesh in my world."
"The human genome project," Harry trailed off.
"Yes human cloning, cloning from an actually, cell…it's not the same as being built from scratch, the cells they used are already formed, they use surrogate mothers in cloning or laboratory conditions. Mothers can do what centuries of research cannot and that is…create human life."
"Like me," Harry said quietly.
"Like all of us Harry. But still, in my world we weren't devoid of technology we had something called auto mail, artificial mechanical limbs that could be attached to the very nerves in your body and responded to the brain like they were flesh and bone. Very strong and from then on I had an auto mail arm and leg. My brother and I went looking for the philosopher's stone, we searched for it and we finally found it…but at a terrible price. You see Harry, in order to create the stone in my world you needed a sacrifice of human lives and also, the death of many on this side of the gate too to provide the energy."
"Like in a war…"
"I'm impressed, not even you mother got that part," Nicholas smiled sadly, "My brother was transmuted into the philosophers stone by an Ishbalan named Scar, the people of Ishbal were known for red eyes and brown skin. A woman named Dante kidnapped my brother. She knew my father and both were over a hundred years old. They had created a philosophers stone and used it to transmute there souls again and again into new bodies. But their souls were ebbing away each time they did it but Dante refused to believe it. She needed more of the stone so she was going to use my brother. I was killed trying to save him but he sacrificed himself to bring me back."
"But…"
"Ssh Harry, let me finish. When I died I found myself on this side of the gate in the body of the Edward of this world. I met my father again here, his body and soul had been transferred to this side, we were in London when it was being bombed. On the other side of the gate Alphonse used himself as a sacrifice to bring me back. I woke to find my soul in my body with Rose looking over me. Rose was a woman we had met along the way, she had previously been devoted to the sun God Leto, she lived in a desert country that had been saved by a prophet Cornello. He was using alchemy and making people believe he could work miracles, bring them back to life, he was creating an army that wasn't afraid to die, they believed he could resurrect them."
"But if you ended up back there then how come you're here?" Harry asked.
"We'd come all this way, Al and I, I couldn't have him gone now, I sacrificed myself, gave my body and soul to the gate in return and he was returned to that world. But he was in the body of a ten year old and all the memories of our journey after our failed transmutation of our mother were gone. Then the whole fiasco of Shambala happened."
"Shambala, I've heard of that name, Professor Binns mentioned it in my first year History of Magic class. It was a mythical island of idealism, peace and prosperity with an army with holy powers. The Nazi's tried to access it to try and help Hitler take power in Germany," Harry said. "Wait, idealism, it was all based on a fantasy, like Atlantis, though it is possible both existed to the magical community they weren't like the muggle myths. There utopias were based on the human image of heaven, don't tell me they thought you're world was Shambala."
"Just like your mother," Nicholas chuckled, "Yes, my father had unwittingly helped them to study our way of alchemy, they tried to use a grand arcana array to open The Gate and let them through. This all started because of a Uranium bomb that came through the gate by accident. They figured that my world was stocked full of weapons that they could use but all they wanted was power, to gain without sacrifice."
"But that still doesn't explain how you got here," Harry said.
"When I transmuted my body in exchange for Al's, rather than just my soul being thrown through the gate and travelling to London to the corresponding body, my body and soul went through. I fell from the gate at the place in this world that was equivalent to where I had gone through in my world. They used me to open the gate. I went through, I saw my brother, I saw the Winry I had known," tears were forming in his eyes, "and Mustang."
"A car?" Harry raised an eyebrow.
Nicholas chuckled, "No, Roy Mustang, demoted from Colonel for an assassination attempt on the Fuhrer King Bradley. We had a state governed by the military power, closer to communism than a democratic government. Al told me that after the civil conflict in Lior, that's where Rose was from, after the death of Bradley and the uncovering of Lab 5 that the military's rule was scarped in favour of a government."
"What was Lab 5?" Harry asked.
"A research facility placed next to a prison and the place where I had my chance to create the stone. You remember I mentioned Red Water?" Harry nodded, "that was discovered by one Dc Marco and it was the unrefined form of the stone but potent none the less. I thought that maybe refining it was all I needed but I was wrong. Dante's minions had placed convicts from the prison next door in the room above. If I had commenced the transmutation I would have gained the stone, but at the cost of killing the prisoners. You remember I mentioned Scar and his race?"
"Red eyes, dark skin," Harry nodded.
"Very good, they lived in Ishbal and worshipped their God, to them Alchemy was heresy. The corruption in the military went all the way up to the Fuhrer Bradley and his secretary; they were both working for Dante, there was a war in Ishbal, nearly the entire race was wiped out and all in an attempt to create the stone. They tried to do the same with Lior but Scar reversed it on them, he sacrificed the soldiers that set foot in Lior."
Harry's face contorted in anger and disgust, "What does this have to do with me?"
"You'll see. Now where were we before we deviated…ah yes, Shambala, Al opened the gate by transmuting two of Dante's remaining followers, he never told me how or why but the gate was opened. Alphonse Heidrich wanted to build rockets, he knew I refused to be connected to this world but he wanted to be remembered. Instead of himself going to Shambala he put me in his rocket and sent me through, when I got back he had been shot. Anyway, I went through but those people came after me, came after Shambala. I saw Al, we fought to get those people that didn't belong in our world back through the gate. I thought I had left him in that world but he had sneaked back."
"Why did you come back, why didn't you stay in your world?" Harry asked.
"Because I needed to destroy the opening in this world, I destroyed it, after that Al and I went looking for the Uranium bomb and a way home. Along the way we met Nicholas Flamel, he'd heard of the rumours of the two boys from Shambala and he found us. That's when we learned about magic and the form of alchemy that existed in this world. Based more around potions and the mixing of ingredients with catalysts to speed up reactions."
"But you're Nicholas Flamel," Harry said suddenly.
"I told you Harry, Edward Elric was the name I was born with. I'm surprised, you're mother had already figured it out by now."
"Figured what out?"
"The Flamel we met was close to 500 and had already created the philosophers stone, a stone that here provides the elixir of life. We studied this new form of alchemy under him, you see Harry, you don't need magic to perform alchemy or potions. We continued our search for the Uranium bomb and recovered it. We brought it too Flamel who knew more about this world that we could hope to, we hadn't been here long. He told us to dispose of it, he brewed a potion to dissolve it without setting it off because as you may know, Uranium is radio-active and would have killed millions. However, something went wrong. Flamel was dead and I was dieing, the elixir keeps you living but I wouldn't heal in time and I would bleed to death so Al did the only thing he could think to do."
"He resorted to your form of Alchemy, he use the power of the stone to save you somehow," Harry said quietly.
"He transmuted my soul from my body to that of Flamel and so I came upon this form but the strain was too great. I was a talented alchemist but Al's ability to detach his soul was what gave him the connection to the gate. I lost him that day."
"I'm sorry," Harry said, he couldn't think of anything else to say, this was all too much to take in. "But why should this matter to me?"
"It shouldn't, but you needed to know in order to understand. Your mother was a talented witch, she had a flare for some of the less practised arts and she took an interest in alchemy. Dumbledore watched her interest grow through her school years and recommended her to me."
"You never told me how you and Dumbledore met," Harry interrupted.
"That's because I don't know, Flamel already knew Albus, he was the greatest mind of his century, it didn't take him long to notice the change. Flamel's wife noticed it, she became like my sister, she's gone now. Anyway, when your mother was 16, the age you are now, on the cusp of her final year of NEWTs. She was my apprentice and we discovered something together. I remembered an alchemist I had known and hated, dubbed the Crimson Alchemist he meddled with the sulphur in the human body to turn a human into a walking bomb yet he wasn't taken by the gate. Your mother and I experimented with create human limbs, not souls and we finally found it. She discovered the formula, the method, everything was perfect but she herself couldn't brew the potion she needed and I have no skills in that area."
"Please don't tell me she went to Snape," Harry groaned.
"You know her better than I'd expect. She begged him to brew it, she had to know but when Albus found out, he stopped it immediately, he tried to obliviate them both but Snape retained his memory. Lily couldn't remember what she had discovered so I hid her notes from herself and Dumbledore, kept them safe and awaited you. Snape finished the potion in private and sent it to me."
"What does this potion do exactly?" Harry asked.
"When combined with some remains of the body you wish to re-create it will create the perfect likeness with a working mind and body but it will be a soulless vessel."
"But did it work?" Harry asked, his eyes bright and his hands gripping the armrests of the chair he had placed himself in a little too tightly.
"Yes."
-----
This one is longer than the last update. I tried to keep breaking up Ed's story with intermissions from Harry. I hate reading overly long paragraphs don't you?
Anyway, thanks for all the reviews so far...keep them coming. I'm only posting this for the feedback you see so no feedback means posting this really isn't worth my time. So take that all you biatches who say 'you should write for your own enjoyment'. I think for my enjoyment I write for your feedback!
