Disclaimer: TERFs suck, Morimoto is a queen, and I make no money from any of this.

Chapter 42

Flamel's Solution to Life, the Universe(s), and Everything

"I think you have a message," said Hermione, pointing at the butterfly patronus as it fluttered across the room to land on Professor Elric's hand.

"What zee fuck," said Professor Elric.

Had he so much as seen a patronus before? Hermione wasn't sure, and she was about to ask, except the patronus chose that moment to speak. "I received your letter about your tiara problem," said a voice that Hermione didn't recognize.

"Fucking Flamel," said Professor Elric. "Can't send coded letters like a normal person."

What, thought Hermione.

"At the current time in Scotland, I should hope that you're alone, but I shall couch this in safe terms all the same. The array we discussed when we met - I have not had the occasion to try it in this context, but I suspect one could use it to consolidate fragments of a whole from a single piece. Do with that information what you will, I will try to trust your judgment."

As the message progressed, Hermione could plainly see Professor Elric's face falling slack in realization and shock, but she was stuck on the part where he'd said Flamel. "That can't be Nicholas Flamel," said Hermione. "Was that Nicholas Flamel? I thought he was supposed to be dead! He destroyed the Philosopher's Stone after my first year at Hogwarts!"

Professor Elric didn't so much as look at her, staring instead at the butterfly patronus on his hand as it fizzled bright and silver out of existence. "I hate magic," he said. "I hate it, I hate it, I hate it."

Hermione blinked at him. Finally, he looked at her. "Zee diadem," he said. "It's really gone?"

"It's really gone," Hermione confirmed. "Why?"

"Because I know what I needed to do wis it, now."

Consolidate fragments of a whole from a single piece, the supposed Nicholas Flamel had said. But what array had they discussed? She supposed that it might make sense for Alchemists to know each other, but why was Flamel largely reported to have passed on if he was still alive?

Was he really Nicholas Flamel? Or was he a different alchemist using the name to establish his reputation? Would Professor Elric even have the tools to evaluate the claim as not only a muggle, but apparently someone from an entirely different universe?

"I can see you thinking," said Professor Elric, shaking out the hand the patronus had sat upon. "I don't know how famous your Flamel was or wasn't but I met him while he was visiting zee Headmaster in zee Hospital Wing." His face wrinkled with distaste.

That probably settled it, then. "If anyone would know the real Flamel from a fake, it would be Professor Dumbledore," said Hermione. "But why would he fake his death?"

"I need to look into his claim," he said, clearly unwilling to either answer or speculate. "Go get some sleep."

"I won't let you get rid of me," said Hermione. "If you're not even seventeen, I don't think it's legal for you to be a professor here, not really. I don't have to listen to you."

Professor Elric ignored her, went to the small kitchenette in the corner of the room. He pulled a vial from a cabinet. "Here's a pepper-up potion for zee morning," he said. "I don't want to know how many hours it's been since you slept, wis zee time shenanigans."

"I could help!" said Hermione, displeased by how close her voice was to wailing.

"And we'll let you," said Professor Elric, which brought her up short.

"Really?" she said.

"When I actually know zat zis idea might work," Professor Elric said. "And when we have anozer horcrux to use it on. And also not wis zee array itself. Definitely not. Anyway, right now zee only sing I can do wis zis information is fuck around wis zee math."

She didn't think he really meant the, and whose fault is that anyway? that she swore she could hear. But she felt it as clearly as if he said it outright. "Right," she said. "I'll go. But if you don't start sharing your information - which you promised you would do, which you criticized the headmaster for not doing - we'll still end up tripping over decisions and needs we don't know about. I'll be here for a real debrief whenever you want to give us one. I hope it's soon."

Hermione flounced from the room then, but she did pause to accept the pepper-up potion. Even she wasn't quite sure how many hours it had been since she had slept, what with her little trip through time. She still had the basilisk fang she'd meant to give him, she realized, but supposed he wouldn't be needing one after all.

Alphonse was asleep when there was a solid thump on his chest. He woke abruptly, flailing wildly before he realized what had happened - an owl was trying to give him a letter, and looked very put upon for being flung halfway across the room.

"Sorry," said Alphonse, but the owl looked skeptical. "You can come back, I'm awake now."

The owl hooted discontentedly and Al resigned himself to actually rising to see the letter. He slipped out of bed and made his way to the owl perch by the window. The owl stuck out her leg. "Sank you," said Alphonse, offering a treat from a nearby stash.

The owl took the treat but did not stay for Al to read it, which he decided was fair. Eve, at least, was stalking into the dorm, looking energized by some late-night adventure. Alphonse gave her a pat on the head and checked the time. "Good morning," he said, because early morning it was, although the pitch of the night sky outside tried to lure him into believing otherwise.

Mrau, said Eve, and Al thought that was sensible. He sat back down on his mattress and unfurled his letter. Eve leaped up to join him, settling next to his leg and peering at the parchment. Alphonse peered at it too, a stone suddenly landing in his stomach.

Good news and bad news, get to my quarters as fast as you can

Ed

Alphonse spared a moment to give Eve a kiss on her soft head, before changing as swiftly and silently as he could.

"Al?" said the sleepy voice of his roommate, Gerry. "Curfew can't be over? Where are you going?"

Oh shoot. He made a gentle shushing noise. "Go back to sleep, Gerry. I'm just going to visit my brother."

He thought that excuse might be wearing a little thin - he'd used it a bit too often, coming back from research with Luna at all hours recently - but Gerry was still more asleep than he was awake, and at the sound of Alphonse's assuring tone, muttered something toneless and indecipherable before tucking his nose deeper into his blankets.

Al's pulse steadied, but it wasn't Gerry's curiosity that had spiked it in the first place. He tucked the letter deeper into the pocket of his robes and made his way across his dorm in socked feet, down the stairs, through the common-room, and out the portrait hole.

"I won't be giving you an easy riddle when you get back," the portrait called after, voice thick with disapproval..

"I wouldn't expect any less!" said Alphonse. "Just don't tell on me!"

He would willingly trust that portrait with his life, he rather thought. It had never tattled about his after curfew adventures before. It was not above grumbling at him as he walked away, though. There was honestly something comforting about it, and that carried him all the way to his brother's door.

Said door was unlocked, and Alphonse was able to slide right into the room. Ed was seated at his little round wooden table, looking like he'd experienced several existential crises at once.

"What happened?" asked Alphonse in Amestrian, locking the door behind him and casting several silencing spells.

Ed sat up, pushed his hair - which had fallen half out of its braid - out of his face. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"

Alphonse sat down in the chair across from him. "Bad news," he said. "Let's get it over with."

"Ginny found the diadem and destroyed it with Harry and Hermione," Ed said. "It's gone. They got their hands on a basilisk fang and then there were some time shenanigans involved. I don't even know."

"Wow," said Al, sitting back in his chair. "That's." The implications hit him. "That was our key to getting home. And we're not going to get that lucky twice!"

"Yup," said Ed. "And the good news almost makes it worse."

"How?"

"I know what we needed to do with it now. Flamel decided to send a glowy messenger butterfly."

"A patronus?" asked Alphonse. He'd seen a few of them, and had read about them being used in this context, but he hadn't actually seen one send a message before.

"Yeah," said Ed, waving a hand. "Think so. Spoke in his voice and everything." He shuddered. "Creepy as fuck, honestly."

"Brother," said Al.

"As fuck," said Ed. "I mean it."

"What did he say, Ed?" said Alphonse, even though he had a sinking feeling that he already knew.

"All we had to do," said Ed, hands going back to his hair, face tilting back to the ceiling, "was modify the philosopher's stone array, calling all the pieces back together."

Alphonse did not say fuck. He exhaled slowly through his nose, inhaled, opened his mind to the dragon's pulse. His brother's chi was obviously aggravated, but it helped steady him all the same. "At least we know what to do for next time," he said, when the impulse to swear or possibly kick the table faded.

"Yup," said Ed. "I'm trying to focus on that."

"Thanks for calling me down," said Al.

"I almost let you sleep," said Ed. "But then I looked at the time and realized that we only have a few hours before breakfast anyway, so there wasn't much difference."

Alphonse looked at his watch. It was nearly 5:30. In summer, the sun would have already been on the horizon. "I forget how late into Fall October is," he said, looking out the nearby window that should, by all logic, be looking on an interior room but wasn't.

"Me too," said Ed. "But I think seasonal light shifts in Scotland might be more dramatic than they were in Amestris - Amestris is so temperate."

"It is," said Al. "That was nice. I'm a little afraid for Scottish winter."

Ed rubbed absently at his automail knee. "Me too, Al, me too."

There were a few more minutes of pointedly low stakes small talk (Alphonse would hardly remember it once it was done) before Ed made coffee in his corner kitchenette. Al brought some biscuits down from a cabinet, arranged them neatly on a blue-edged plate. They no longer had a horcrux to reference, but they had replaced a research specimen with better mathematical direction, and that was enough to make a start.

Armed with caffeine and sugar, they spread papers out on Ed's little round wooden table and began to write out everything they could remember about the philosopher's stone array, carefully transcribing good copies into their personal notebooks and dumping the drafts in the hearth fire.

They couldn't be sure until they had another horcrux in front of them, but Alphonse was suddenly feeling optimistic.

Hermione managed to scurry back to her own dorm and settle herself into bed before her roommates showed the slightest signs of waking. Her hopes about her absence having gone unnoticed were dashed, however, upon waking after a scant few hours of sleep.

"Where did you go last night?" said Lavender, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. "Parvati says that sticking my nose in your business is probably a good way to get myself killed, but that's just her Ravenclaw sister talking. Too much caution. I happen to think that not sticking my nose into your business is a good way to lose house points. Or possibly replace you as Gryffindor prefect if you get yourself caught, but. Well. I'm not a Slytherin either."

Hermione and Lavender had always operated under an uneasy truce more than friendship, but she'd thought things had improved recently. Hermione couldn't help but feel caught off guard. "I didn't go anywhere. What are you talking about?"

"Try again," said Lavender. "It was especially bold given how you and Ron came in with your tails tucked between your legs after getting caught by McGonagall."

So that's what this was about. Right. Hermione had hoped they were past that. "It's not like that, Lavender," said Hermione. "And even if it was, I don't think it would be any of your business."

Lavender didn't seem to like that answer very much, but Hermione pushed past her anyway. She had slept later than she'd meant to, and breakfast was already half-done. She didn't need to be squabbling with her roommate over her best friend. She needed toast and marmalade and tea. And maybe also that pepper-up potion that was still in the pocket of her robe.

Lavender followed her down the steps, whether in an attempt to continue the argument or simply because she wanted some breakfast too, Hermione couldn't be sure. She tried not to think about it.

It had become custom, without Hermione realizing it, for her to scan both the staff and Ravenclaw tables for attendance. Every morning, she wasn't really aware she was doing it until she had seen what she was looking for. Today, she made note of the Headmaster's now-usual absence, glanced around for the Elric brothers. She wasn't entirely surprised to find that they weren't there.

She slid into her seat between Harry and Ron and the Gryffindor table, watched pointedly as Lavender took hers beside Parvati down at the other end, and cast Muffliato. She still didn't approve of that book, but Harry had gotten more cautious about spell testing since he'd found it, and she'd run out of energy to complain about things that worked.

"We made a mistake," said Hermione.

"What mistake?" said Ron. "Are you talking about what Harry and my baby sister got up to last night without us?"

Hermione winced. "About that. I might have used the time turner to get ahead of them."

She could plainly see that Ron felt annoyed with her for leaving him out, but all he said was a resigned-but-fond, "As you do."

Hermione shot him a look, and she hoped he caught the apology there. But really, it had made more sense for her to go by herself, especially after they'd already been caught once. "I don't know how many details I should share," she said. "Professor Elric told me all this in confidence."

"Merlin, 'Mione," said Ron. "He knows telling one of us is as good as telling the three of us. He's said so. Repeatedly."

That was a fair point. How comfortable Professor Elric was about it in practice, though, Hermione wasn't sure. "He and Alphonse need a horcrux. It goes beyond just wanting to solve the problem alchemically due to preference," she said, deciding to edit out the part about another world. Edit out the parts that seemed personal. "They think that with alchemy, they can use one to somehow gather the rest. That's the research they were doing, and they'd just received a tip from another researcher about how they might go about it." She knew she was fudging the details, but it was the only way to make the story fit without saying the parts she wasn't ready to say.

Harry visibly deflated. "You mean if we hadn't destroyed the diadem, it could have been over?" he said.

"Yes," said Hermione. "I've already scolded them for not giving us more details. We wouldn't have destroyed it if they'd just told us what they were planning. But I still feel bad."

"I don't know whether to be angry at them or at myself," said Harry.

"It was Ginny's idea," said Ron, then looked like he regretted it immediately.

"S'not her fault," said Harry, always unwilling to blame others when he could self-flagellate instead.

"This isn't helpful," said Hermione. "It's everyone's fault and it's nobody's fault. We just need to find another horcrux. Soon."

"Dumbledore was supposed to be teaching me about them," said Harry. "Before he was hospitalized. Which means he probably knows more than he wants to admit and was planning to dole out the information slowly."

Hermione couldn't blame him at all for how bitter he looked to say it. "A year ago, I would have told you to stop being so paranoid, but I think you're probably right."

"Even if you're wrong," said Ron. "It can't hurt to ask. It's not like we have any other ideas."

"It took him over a decade to reconstitute the first time," said Hermione, trying to focus on the positive. "We can't trust that it'll take him that long again, but surely we'll find at least one more before he does."

Harry and Ron seemed comforted, but Hermione couldn't help but search the room for the Elric brothers again. As though her thoughts had summoned them, they were walking in through the main door, looking tired but not nearly as upset as she had feared.

They might have all the time in the world before Voldemort managed to reconstitute himself. But she was sure that Alphonse and Professor Elric did not want to wait forever to go home. Edward, Hermione thought. He might be my professor, technically, but he's younger than me. She was torn between wanting to stay in the habit of granting him the respect of the title - a slip up in class would be awkward to say the least - and wanting to honor the fact that he was still a minor by both muggle and wizard standards.

In a better world, they would have been peers. In better worlds?

He's technically still a minor, Hermione thought. Followed by, and only a year older than Alphonse for all that he sometimes acts almost paternal.

"I don't think I want to know," Hermione said aloud, because she did want to know. She wanted to know what on earth they had gotten themselves into that a child only one year older than their sibling would feel so responsible for him.

Maybe it was something you'd have to have siblings to understand. Ron was certainly protective of Ginny, despite having several older brothers to help pick up the slack. But part of her was sure the answer was so bad that she'd regret knowing it if she found it out.

It was then she realized that Harry and Ron were staring at her, and following her gaze to where Professor Edward Elric was sitting down at the staff table.

"There's something you're not telling us," said Harry, turning his suspicious eye on her. She wondered where the eleven year old that would have trusted her implicitly went.

"There is," Hermione admitted. "Professor Elric probably told me more than he meant to last night, he was so frantic at first. The only thing we need to know for planning purposes is that he has a plan to deal with the horcruxes alchemically, and that we need to let him do it. The rest was just about why it matters to him, and I don't know if I feel comfortable sharing that. It felt personal." Did universe hopping count as personal?

She paused, decided that it probably was important information that Harry and Ron should know. But she needed to sit on that information a little longer before sharing it. There was something else she'd rather have the help processing. "He's our age," she said. "He's younger than me."

Harry and Ron gaped at her, gaped up at the staff table. Edward Elric, she noticed, was watching them. The only expression she could pick out on his face was tired. It didn't seem right on his face. She tried to say I'm not telling them everything, I don't even know how I could, with her eyes, but she wasn't sure it got across. She looked back to her friends. "Just know that they have a real reason for being personally invested in all this, more of a reason than wanting to live in a world without him, at least." Ha. A world without him. Hermione supposed that was their reason, in a roundabout sort of way. They wanted to live back in a world where he'd never even existed.

She suspected that Voldemort's state of existence wasn't the sticking point, though. A whole world of people to miss, Hermione thought, mind going guiltily to the book on Obliviation she'd read and reread. With luck, she'd never have to use it.

"I want to know," said Harry. "We're supposed to be a team."

"We are," said Hermione. That felt truer than ever at the realization that Professor Elric wasn't any older than they were. "And I demanded a real debrief for all of us last night, when Alphonse and Professor Elric have had time to rearrange their plans and think things through. I'm not keeping anything from you permanently. I just want to let him tell you himself."

Harry and Ron did not stop their glances from Hermione to Professor Elric to Alphonse and back again. After a moment, Ron let out a rather melodramatic huff. "Don't understand why everyone in Hogwarts has to be keeping five bloody secrets at once," said Ron. "Don't either of you dare start."

Again, Hermione thought of the Obliviation text. "I won't," she said, and wished it didn't taste like a lie.

Word Count: 3630

Date Posted: 3/22/2023

We are three years into this pandemic, y'all. How's everyone processing?

Also, lemme know what you think of this chapter! Can we see how our endgame is shaping? I'd love to hear your guesses.