Thunk.

Ed looked up in awe. The tower of papers was teetering uncertainly far above his head. The top even passed above Al's helmet, and that was nothing to scoff at.

He turned to look incredulously at Dumbledore. How the fucking hell had the old man managed to carry all that? It would have taken at least three trips even for him, and that white bearded old fool was waaaay past his prime; no way he did it all by himself. Ed shook his head. Damn, he wished he'd been paying attention when Dumbledore had walked up; no doubt he'd used some of that wonky magic stuff.

Yes, Magic. Edward had decided that no matter how ridiculous the concept was, it was different enough that it didn't deserve to just be called "that weird alchemy" and since he was far too lazy to come up with a specific name for the stuff, "magic" it was. Heck, Al had been calling the stuff "magic" from the very first day they'd landed in this god-forsaken castle. And anyway, there were enough books on the subject for it to hold some truth to it. After all, one didn't exactly pull a library on a fake subject out of thin air. Obviously a very large group of people believed in it, and considering what he'd seen and read so far Ed was beginning to think it might be a better idea to stop trying to figure out all the theory behind the subject and focus more on how they were going to use it. Or rather, how they were going to convince someone else to use it, because according to Dumbledore they didn't have an ounce of magic in either one of their bodies.

After cleaning up the great hall, he and Al had been introduced to the library. Ohdearlord was that place great. If only the libraries at central had the same wealth of knowledge they'd uncovered there. Sure, a few were worthless, like that one "Magical Me" book. Useless piece of crap, the entire book was full of that Gilderoy Lockheart person waxing on about how great he was.

But the rest of the library was chock full of stuff he'd never even dreamed of. He and Al had spent nearly a week in there, Ed only eating when the house-elves managed to tear his attention away from a book long enough to shove something down his throat. They still hadn't even made their way through more than a quarter of the books in the place. A dreamy look passed over Ed's face as he fantasized about finding a simple spell to replace AL's body in one of the books, using only frog legs or bat wings.

Hah. Who was he kidding? Even if something as ridiculous as that existed, They would need the entire year to get through the entire library, and he wasn't even counting the "Restricted section". He'd tried to use his alchemy to get past the complex spells woven around the area, but he'd made very little headway and he was a little hesitant to plunge right in like he wanted to. This magic was unpredictable and he had no idea what kind of rebound it might spur.

"Ahem."

Someone was clearing their throat. Oh yeah…Dumbledore. He was the one who'd finally dragged the two brothers out of the library, with the help of McGonagall and some well placed comments about how not sleeping stunted growth. And so here they were. Having breakfast in the great hall. Well, he was; Al was just pretending to eat.

Like always.

Ed felt a wave of depression sweep over him and he looked down, swallowing hard.

'Yeah. Like always.'

"AHEM," Dumbledore cleared his throat again and Ed blearily looked up, finally registering that he was supposed to respond.

"Huh?"

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, before turning to address Alphonse. "I believe your brother needs some time to restart that wonderful brain of his," he remarked dryly. Alphonse bit back a chuckle as he glanced over at the slightly vacant expression his brother's face. The blonde was now staring at the plate of scrambled Eggs sitting in front of him as though it held the secrets to the universe. He blinked sleepily before rubbing at his eyes and turning to look balefully at Dumbledore.

"Yeah, yeah. We got the point old man. Sleep more. Will do." He yawned as he started to sway, before plunging face-first into his eggs with a dull thunk. Alphonse winced.

"Brother?"

A loud snoring emitted from the plate. Al shook his head ruefully. He kept on forgetting that just because he didn't get tired didn't mean everyone else could suddenly go without sleep. Especially his brother. Ed usually needed a lot of sleep, and when he got sucked into a book he tended to forget to do just about everything except breathe. Al pressed a hand to his hard metal forehead, willing himself to remember that Ed was more fragile than him. The only problem was that he was just as bad as Ed was around books.

"-and I thought that now would be a good time to give you Flamel's notes."

Al snapped out of his thoughts just in time to catch the last half of the sentence.

"Flamel's notes?" the suit of armor asked, looking up with blazing eyes at the stack of papers still balanced precariously on the table.

"Yes indeed my dear boy, although I do warn you, a good portion of them are in a code for which I have no key."

"HAH." Ed was apparently still hanging on to consciousness despite the fact that he had not raised his head from the plate of eggs. "We got this old man. Code is a piece of cake…" His mumbling slowly trailed off as he slipped back into unconsciousness, his head lolling to the side. Unfortunately For Ed, the motion knocked over a pitcher of milk; milk that happened to splash all over him.

"What the FUCK-" Edward jumped out of his seat, shaking his arms in a frantic attempt to keep the nastiest substance known to man from seeping into his clothing.

Alphonse turned to Dumbledore. "I think he's awake now, headmaster." He announced, sounding entirely too amused for Edward's taste.

"Indeed." The old man replied, a smile quirking the edges of his mouth. Edward scowled at the both of them.

"There any place I can go to get this damn stuff out of my clothes?" he asked, eyeing the headmaster distastefully.

"Oh, no need my dear boy, no need at all!" And with that Dumbledore pulled out his stick, (or "wand" as the magic folk liked to call it, as though they had walked straight out of a fairy tale) and gracefully waved it in a few complicated movements in front of Edward. He felt the hair on the back of his neck go up, and an uncomfortable dryness flitted over his skin.

Ew Ew Ew Ew! GOD that felt weird.

"What the hell did you just do?" Ed yelped, arms held away from his body as though he was afraid he'd explode if he moved.

Dumbledore smiled winningly at him "Just a simple cleansing charm, nothing to worry about!"

THAT SHIT RIGHT THERE. That was the kind of stuff that lead him to believe that this damn "magic" was something all together different from alchemy. The old man hadn't even touched him, and yet he'd felt the effects of the "spell" all over his body. Edward had read all about cleansing charms. He knew the theory, and he knew what they did. Cleaned dirt or undesirable substances from a person or object.

However, there were some things the books hadn't been so clear about. The text-books claimed that casting a spell was all about "intent". That you had to picture what you wanted the spell to do in your mind, and if you did the wand movements correctly with the right pronunciation the damn thing would do whatever you wanted it to do.

To do something of a similar sort with alchemy, you'd have to know all the components that made up the dirt or "undesirable material", and you'd have to figure out where on earth the stuff was going to go. That meant knowing what made up every single speck of dirt on the person or object.

If someone fell in a pit of mud he'd probably be able to get all the mud off of them if he tried hard enough, but if they'd had dirt already on them from some unidentified source there was no way he'd be able to get that off of them as well. A person had all sorts of grease and lint and bits of dust and dead skin cells on them every second of every day. Even if he knew what made up all of it on every different person there was no way he'd be able to remove enough dead skin cells to make someone "clean" without the possibility of removing too much and accidentally stripping off skin in places where it was already thin. And anyway, that sort of stuff was way too close to human transmutation for his comfort. Heck, to top it all off, it would even take multiple transmutations to take care of the different little bits of lint and dust if they were spaced too far apart on the body.

In other words, it would be a pain in the ass. A really, really, big pain in the ass. And old Dumbles had done just that with a wave of his wand. This stuff…well, it wasn't alchemy.

As far as Edward could tell, with alchemy, the only way to fix Al would be to use a philosopher's stone. They were noticeably out of those at the moment. This "magic" on the other hand, seemed to be so different from alchemy that a philosophers stone might not be necessary at all.

With the way it seemed to be focused more on intent than precision, The issues they'd run into with "what equals a soul" and the like might be resolved with very little effort.

And that was the only reason he was even thinking about staying for as long as Dumbledore had suggested. It wasn't really for Flamel's notes anymore. They needed to see people performing magic (despite the knowledge they'd gained from the library, the magical population seemed to be habitually vague on how exactly magic worked), and they needed to figure out on how big of a scale it could actually be used.

And that meant hanging around the school kids. Joy.

Seeing as he had established the fact that the "Magic School" was not some cleverly constructed plot to brainwash kids into thinking they could do something impossible (since magic could very well do many impossible things), he was willing to leave it alone. For now. If he caught any scent of manipulation or shit like that, this place was going down. (He was still planning on interrogating a few of the students no matter what.)

Edward shivered and stiffly shook out his arms before folding them over his chest. "…Thanks." He gritted the word out between his teeth, his cold tone making it very obvious that he wasn't particularly thankful at all. Dumbledore merely smiled and shook his head.

"No thanks needed my boy! Now, as much as it pains me to suggest this, seeing how tired the two of you seem to be, I'm gong to have to advise you get right on decoding these if you plan to be done before the school year starts."

Edward brushed his too-dry hair (Thank you cleansing charm) out of his eyes and smirked. "No issues with that, pops, though I do have to warn you. We'll probably be done with these long before then."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" he asked, a contemplative look on his face. "Well then. Perhaps you ought to use the time left over to get to know a few of the professors here. I'm sure you have many questions. They might be able to answer them." He smiled and swept away, leaving the two boys behind with the towering pile of notes.

Ed took a deep breath and ran a hand through his bangs. "Well Al? You ready to start decoding all this stuff?" There might be a chance that with magic they wouldn't need a philosopher's stone, but considering how wily magic seemed, he sure as hell wasn't going to disregard any options.

"You got it, Brother," Al announced, voice strong.

Ed looked up at his younger brother. Al's oddly determined tone of voice had caught him off guard, and he couldn't help but grin a little at the hope he could see flashing in those red eyes.

Ed decided right then and there that he didn't really give a shit about how many laws magic broke. If it helped him fix Al, then it could do whatever it wanted to.

.

Not as long as the last chapter, but longer that previous ones. Hmm. Mainly an informative chapter on how Ed's been thinking. I'll most likely skip to the beginning of the year by next chapter or the one after that.

Does this stuff make sense to any off you? Or do I need to clarify? Are you getting a clear overall picture of how stuff is going to work? TELL ME. I beg of thee. ;A;

AS ALWAYS if you see mistakes please tell me.

HEY, anyone know if the people who have me on story alert get alerts when I edit already existing chapters?

~Freedomtoaster