In apology for leaving you so long without a chapter, I bring you 5200 words - a good 2000 more words than normal and 12 full pages on Word xD I hope you enjoy them!

(And sorry that I couldn't post this closer to Valentine's Day in rl xD;;)

Disclaimer~

Chapter Nine - Valentine's Day

"Valentine's what?" Ed echoed with an incredulous look on his face.

Ron gaped at him. "You're telling me you've never heard of Valentine's Day? It's a major event of the year!"

Ed raised an eyebrow. "No, I haven't. What happens on Valentine's Day?"

Ron shook his head in disbelief, before launching into a full-blown explanation. "Girls give the boys they like presents or love letters. The boys give presents too sometimes, but only if they're sappy wimps."

"So basically it's a confession day?" Ed asked disinterestedly. The book he'd found an hour ago, 'The Passage of Time', was proving to be very informative, and he deemed it far more important than some fancy-shmancy celebration.

"I guess so," Ron said with a grin, before it faded into a grimace. "I didn't get anything last year. Or the year before."

"Or the year before that," Harry cut in helpfully.

Ron scowled at him. "Shut up, Harry."

Ed, ignoring the banter, asked, "Why wasn't anyone talking about this before today? If it's such a big occasion and all."

"Because all the girls talk about it between themselves, talking about who they're gonna give presents to and stuff. Boys don't talk about it much."

"Right," Ed said distantly as he pressed yet another neon page marker onto the edge of the page, this time with a black cross on it.

"Hey," Ron said, as if offended, "are you even listening?"

"Lovey-dovey celebration. Got it."

Ron huffed in annoyance, stomping back to his homework beckoning him on the table. "None of the girls will give you presents if you act like that."

Ed squinted at some hand-written notes in the margin and said, without looking up, "Does it look like I give a shit?"

Harry grinned as Ron's face flushed - out of annoyance or embarrassment, Ed couldn't tell. But it still tugged an amused smirk out of him all the same.

"Hurry up, you three, or we're all going to be late for breakfast!" Hermione's chirpy voice called over from the doorway as she held it open for them.

"Yeah, yeah," the three chorused as they dragged themselves towards the Great Hall.

"... What the fuck is this?" Ed deadpanned as he arrived to his usual spot at the Gryffindor table.

Ron gaped almost longingly at Ed's table, while Harry stared, completely awe-struck, at the sight in front of them.

"Those, I believe," Hermione said sensibly as she sat down opposite the towering pile, "are Valentine's presents."

The pile of letters, chocolate, flowers and various magical goods reached Ed's chin as he stood dumbly in front of it. Apparently, he'd been far more popular than he'd thought. "This is... all for me?"

Hermione shrugged, pulling out Hogwarts, a History from her bag. "I don't know. Why don't you check?" she said disinterestedly.

Ed blinked himself out of his stupor, reaching forward to grab a letter from the top of the rather unstable-looking stack. He just had enough time to glance at the addressee - him, of course - before the thing opened its mouth (if that's what it could be called) and began to sing some sort of sappy love song to him. Ed barely retrained a screech, immediately dropping the offending paper as if it had burned him. He even checked his fingertips to check. Nope, still there.

Luckily for him, the singing letter had ceased its song as soon as he let go of it. Ed prodded it with his boot, checking if he could pick it up with something else to throw it in the fire with.

"They only sing when the person they're intended for is holding them," Hermione said, rolling her eyes in exasperation as if it was common knowledge. Then her eyes flicked up from the book for a moment, a vaguely interested expression on her face. "Hey, are you going to read that letter? Or can I practice a high-level flame spell on it?"

Ed shrugged, stepping back. "Feel free."

Hermione smiled, before pulling her wand out of her robe and doing some complicated-looking swishes with it. The poor letter immediately burst into green flames before the ash dissipated entirely, leaving only a steadily smoking ring of black on the charred floorboards.

Ed's eyes lit up as the circle reminded him of something he'd been meaning to do for a good few months but hadn't got round to trying out yet.

With a progressively evil grin, alerting Harry and Ron into a state of wariness, he separated the gifts into four piles - ordinary letters, edible items, flowers and everything else. He carefully pushed the pile in front of Ron, who was now sitting next to him happily eating breakfast. Ron's eyes widened in delight. "Can I have them?"

Ed nodded. "Yeah. I don't have much of a sweet tooth."

Ron grinned broadly. "Thanks, mate!" He quickly abandoned the balanced breakfast on his plate, somehow managing to vanish it without setting something on fire, and replaced it with as many chocolate as he could fit on the small silver platter.

Ed then offered the magical items to Harry and Hermione, who both refused them. With some annoyance, he persuaded Hermione to conjure him up a large square of cardboard - he despised not being able to use alchemy in public - and scrawled on it, 'FREE, TAKE WHAT YOU LIKE'. He leant the cardboard up against a nearby wall of the Great Hall, ignoring the blatant stares he was receiving, and began to pile the mysterious objects up on the ground underneath the makeshift sign.

Satisfied with his handiwork, he strolled back to his seat, vaulting over the table to reach his seat on the opposite side.

Ron emitted a high-pitched squeak as one of Ed's legs flew over his chocolate breakfast, hurriedly catching a few as Ed's boot accidentally kicked them off the top of the enormous pile.

Ed settled back down onto the bench and continued to stack endless amounts of food on his plate as if he hadn't just done something rather stare-worthy in the middle of a crowded breakfast hall. He glanced around, noticing the odd looks he was on the receiving end of, and questioned around a mouthful of red something that made him look rather like a vampire, "What?"

Harry smiled in disbelief, shaking his head and returning his attention to his food. He wasn't sure if he'd ever understand this boy.

"What are you going to do with the letters and flowers?" Ron asked, eyeing the two considerably smaller piles now surrounding Ed and his cherished breakfast.

Ed let a devilish smirk slip onto his face, though he said nothing, further scaring Ron to the point where he physically shuffled down the bench a few inches, much to Harry and Ed's amusement.

"Yikes!" the poor Gryffindor girl screeched as she was greeted by a burning mass of blue flames.

The flames were immediately extinguished in a puff of foul-smelling smoke. "Sorry, didn't realise you were there," Ed said blandly, not looking up from the next envelope he was placing on the fireproof mat.

The girl opened and closed her mouth a few times, deemed speechless by the spontaneously combusting letters and the five vases stuffed full of furiously blooming flowers now decorating the mantelpiece. She eyed what must've been the leftover flowers that hadn't been able to fit into a vase, still tied together in a pretty bouquet carelessly cast onto the floor. "I-is that a new spell?"

Ed's mouth twisted into a smirk, as if grinning at a private joke. "I suppose."

"Oh. Well, I guess I'll leave you to it," she spurted quickly, before practically flying up the staircase to the girls' dormitories, too fast to notice the toothy grin on Ed's face as his clapped his hands again, opened his palms to the letters and began to laugh manically as they erupted into blue flame yet again. He'd only managed to set the wooden desk underneath them alight seven times before he'd got the hang of it - even now, a good thirty-or-so letters later, he was still missing, making mistakes, misjudging distances and the amount of flames he'd need - but he was getting there.

Only once he'd begun to lose count of the letters he'd exploded did he grudgingly begin to respect the precision and accuracy in the Bastard Colonel's flame alchemy.

"Is that your alchemy again?"

The sudden voice made Ed flinch, sending the flames past the letters and straight into the roaring fireplace, which responded by sparking angrily at him. Ed snapped his head around from his place on the red sofa. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

Hermione shot him a disapproving frown as she seated herself beside him and opened a four-inch-thick tome so dusty Ed was forced to shield his nose with an automail palm. "You should be more aware of your surroundings when you're concentrating. That way you won't mess up if something comes up, and it won't interrupt your concentration."

Ed scowled. The last thing he needed was someone three years younger than him giving him alchemy advice. He would have said so to her face if a sensible, Al-like part of him didn't agree with her. It was small, granted, but it was stubborn enough to clamp Ed's mouth shut as he turned back to his flame alchemy with a sullen face.

He'd barely clapped his hands when there was yet another interruption - this one far less knowledgeable. "Blimey, that's a lot of flowers!"

Ed rolled his golden eyes in exasperation. "Yes, Ron, well done. You officially have the power of sight," he remarked sarcastically.

Ron stuck his tongue out at Ed as he wormed into his line of vision. "They're all yours, right?"

Ed nodded, grimacing. "Unfortunately."

Ron's eyes bulged, a look of classic disbelief etched into his face so dramatically Ed wondered if it would be permanent. "Unfortunately? Ed, any boy would kill to get that much stuff from girls."

Ed shrugged. "I'm not any boy."

Ron snorted. "That's obvious." He narrowed his eyes before leaning closer from his place on a nearby armchair. "The only reason a boy wouldn't want so many presents is if he already has his eye on someone..." Ron trailed off, letting the unsubtle hint smack Ed in the face, leaving a bright red smear on his cheeks.

Ed's head swirled up to face Ron, his mouth clamped shut into an outraged line and his gold orbs round and shocked, before he attempted to turn his attention back to the alchemy that was now failing miserably under his distracted control. "I-I don't..."

Even Hermione, who thought Ron's obsession over girls was immature and idiotic, raised a disbelieving eyebrow in Ed's direction before she returned to the precious written word. Ron might be a moron, but if there was one thing he was skilled at it was being able to tell who liked who.

"Uh-huh. 'Course not."

Ed was growing more flustered by the minute. "I-I don't like any girl!"

"So you're gay. Not surprising, really, with that hair-"

"No!"

Ron grinned. "Then there must be someone. There are millions of girls in this school." At Hermione's exasperated frown in his direction, Ron corrected, "Okay, thousands. But surely at least one of them caught your eye. I mean, you could have practically any of them with that face, mate."

If it was possible, Ed grew an even brighter shade of beetroot red. "There isn't. Really," he mumbled, not making eye contact.

Ron's grin grew feral, like a cat who had the cream right where he wanted it. "And that's why you deliberately left a bunch of flowers out of the vases? Because you weren't planning to give them to anybody?"

Ed made an odd choked noise as the purple letter currently burning began to fizz, shooting out rainbow sparks like an over-energetic sparkler.

Thankfully, before Ed could be subjected to any more grilling, his saviour appeared. "What's going on?"

"Hey, Harry." Ron waved him over. "We were just asking Ed who he could like so much that he's burning all his love letters without even reading them."

Harry gave Ron a 'don't-you-have-anything-better-to-do' look before tapping Ed lightly on his left shoulder. "Come on, or you'll be late for Arithmancy."

Ed was eternally grateful for the kind occurrence of class, and practically shot out of the common room like a rocket, Harry and co. in tow.

"Class." Professor Vector clapped twice, signalling for the class to be quiet. "Get out your textbooks and turn to page seventy-two. Today, we are going to be studying the effect of arithmetical confusion when working with range of different..."

Ed had just begun to tune out the teacher's ramblings, instead sapping knowledge directly from the book in front of him, when a red sack rather like the ones he'd used to feed the thestrals landed on his book, blocking the second half of the sentence he was currently reading. He blinked, turning to his left and coming face-to-face with Luna's inquisitive azure eyes. He pointed at the pouch and cocked his head slightly to the side, his brows knitted in confusion.

Luna smiled secretively, as if partaking in some private joke, before nodding towards the bag and mouthing, "Open it."

Ed shot her a wary look before carefully tugging the drawstrings and squinting at the shimmering piece of paper tucked inside. He pulled it out, hissing when a blindingly shiny powder spilt onto his textbook. He quickly scooped it back in, before unfolding the note, also covered in a film of the strange substance. It read, in an uneven, swirly hand, 'To stop the shrumps reading your mind.'

Ed shot the paper a deadpan stare before his lips twisted into an amused, if not slightly exasperated, smirk of defeat. He turned to face Luna in the next desk over, who was still gazing at him expectantly. He shot her a small smile and mouthed back, "Thank you."

Her own smile broadened in response, and she quickly turned back to her textbook, attempting to catch up with the lost minutes of the lesson.

Ed did the same, though the multitude of thoughts and unvoiced questioned swirling around and around in his head made it rather impossible to concentrate. He couldn't help wondering whether Luna had deliberately waited until today - this special day - to give him the powder, or whether Luna had just happened to remember to present it to him today. It would be just the sort of thing Luna would do... However, Ed was surprised and a little confused to find a small burst of colourful something in his chest and smiled giddily to himself when he considered the option that perhaps the date and the gift wasn't a coincidence.

"What's your next class?" Ron asked to no one in particular as the four - Ed, Harry, Hermione and he - wandered down the corridor after lunch.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Care of Magical Creatures, with you."

"Ancient Runes," Hermione answered, before a bright smile lit up her face. "We're finally putting that new set of runes we memorised into practise today."

Ron and Harry shared a hopeless look before glancing at Ed. "What about you?" Harry asked.

Ed blinked, before turning to look at the two. "Huh?" he asked intelligently.

Ron shot him an odd look. "What's your next class?"

"Oh, it's-" he began automatically, before Ed cut himself off. A smirk morphed his previously thoughtful expression into one of joy. "I have the afternoon free."

Ron's eyes widened and he whined, "Lucky! How come?"

"Oh, Dumbledore said something about 'having more time to...'" he realised he couldn't mention his research, so he said, "'... conduct my own research.'"

Ron raised an eyebrow. "'Your own research'?"

Ed nodded. "I didn't come here just to take classes, you know," he answered mysteriously before spotting a large tree with a rather nice-looking patch of shade underneath it a long way away form the building. "Ooh, gotta go. Bye!" He sprinted off before anyone could reply, leaving three confused magicians in his wake.

Ed collapsed under the large tree - upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a weeping willow - with a large sigh of relief. He was finally way from prying eyes, somewhere where he was alone - somewhere he could be himself. He could be Edward Elric, the Fullmetal Alchemist, Hero of the People, because there was no one around to question him and beg for answers.

Talking about begging for answers, Ed thought gruffly, I haven't been doing that much research lately, and I think Mustang's getting impatient. With a resounding sigh, he rummaged around in his shoulder bag dumped gracelessly beside him and tugged free a battered book entangled in string. He checked the title to make sure he hadn't pulled out a textbook - 'The Art of Time Travel' - and opened it on the first page.

He skimmed the first few pages, eyes automatically ignoring the author's seemingly endless blather about writing a book to 'educate the common wizard'. Come on, where's the good stuff?

He finally began to see more useful information appear more frequently, and he slowed his reading down to a normal pace. His mind, so accustomed to research, automatically made a concise list of potentially useful facts in his head as he read. Usually with time turners - multiple tests - three centuries of work - successful spell but-

Ed blinked, re-reading the sentence more carefully. Sometime last century a man who would only give his name as Van Hohenheim - Ed resisted the urge to scream and throw the book in a burning ditch somewhere near the North Pole, wherever that was - successfully created a spell to travel through time, though he was never seen again after the experiment and is assumed to have died in the attempt.

Ed screwed his face up. His father - the bastard - hadn't died, that was for sure; otherwise Ed wouldn't be alive reading this paragraph today. However, it seemed like it had been a failed experiment, sending Hohenheim somewhere else in time, leaving him unable to return to the time he had performed the spell. The spell worked, but it was unable to be controlled and was therefore practically useless.

Ed sighed, before skipping ahead a few paragraphs looking for something more relevant and less annoying. Why was Hohenheim even in this world anyway?

He sat underneath the tree for another twenty minutes scanning page after page, littering his brain with worthless notes on failed attempt after failed attempt at creating a spell to harness the fabric of time.

His eyes brightened with an unnatural interest, however, when he came upon the paragraph he was looking for, somewhere about eighty pages in. He whispered it aloud, as if afraid he was misreading the glittering gem of information. "'Roughly thirty years ago, a project was launched named 'Project SpaceTime'. It looked into possible ways to travel through time, as well as through the spatial rift into different worlds. Though their studies on space travel were inconclusive, their studies on time travel revealed that it is physically impossible to create a spell to travel through time without possessing a time turner. The time turner has a complex assortment of atomic bonds within it, lending a scientific help to the magic it uses to transport individuals around the world, and those bonds, fused with magic, cannot be reproduced by any spell.'"

Ed sat, frozen, underneath the willow tree until he began to feel a burning in his hest, and he realised he'd been holding his breath. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, he felt his senses come back to him, and he could feel the beautiful grin melt onto his face in euphoria. There was nothing he liked better than solving a difficult puzzle with a black-and-white, uncomplicated answer. That, he supposed, was the reason he loved Maths.

He threw his arms up above his head, relishing the moment when he could celebrate with no one around, and he yelled something loud and incoherent - it didn't matter what, so long as it released the bubbles of energy and ecstasy now fizzing in the core of his very being like a soda can after it's been shaken. He jumped to his feet and whirled around, not caring when he felt so dizzy he couldn't stand up anymore and collapsed to the ground, or when his stomach felt so riled up he swore he was going to throw up. He simply lay in the dappled light, feeling the cool, damp grass beneath his cheek and bare arm and the sliver of stomach showing under his vest that he'd untucked in the last of the summer warmth earlier that morning.

"Yay," he muttered to himself, before snickering. "That bastard Colonel's gonna be so surprised when he finds out I've completed half my mission so soon." He smirked into the grass, breathing in its earthy scent for another minute before he reluctantly dragged himself to all fours. He isn't, however, if I don't actually tell him.

Ed crawled over to his leather shoulder bag, lying open against the base of the trunk etched with aged whorls. He scrabbled around inside it, looking for some of the paper he'd shoved in there this morning and the fountain pen he'd brought with him - he smirked when he remembered it was actually the Colonel's and he'd pinched it off his desk a few months ago - grinning to himself when said items were found. He twisted around, slouching with his back against the trunk, uncapped the pen and began to write.

It didn't take long to write the report - he was just summarising the long-winded explanation in the book, after all. He tacked a cheeky 'So there, bastard' on the end, before signing the initials 'FMA' and capped the pen with the cap that he held between his teeth. He tucked the scrap of horribly old-fashioned parchment away in his bag, along with his superior's favourite pen, before sighing in gleeful contentment as, for the first time in a long while, he allowed himself to sit and close his eyes and just be.

He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been asleep, but the sun was still fairly high in the sky - though that said nothing in September - his neck was painfully stiff and his left arm had cramped beside him. He closed half-lidded eyes against the blaring sunlight and shifted to sit up straighter against the tree, grunting as his automail felt far heavier than normal. He reluctantly opened one eye, and the sight that greeted him caused the other eye to join it as he stared, frozen in shock, at the girl leaning against his right shoulder as if it was a fluffy pillow.

Ed couldn't get his thoughts straight - they zoomed around in his head in the place where his brain should be, colliding and merging and reproducing before he could even hope to grasp what they were in the first place. There were only three things Ed could manage to scold his head into working out: 'I fell asleep under a willow tree', 'Surely my automail isn't that comfortable' and 'Luna's fallen asleep on my shoulder'.

He decided that the first two thoughts weren't of much importance, and instead focused on the third. "Luna?" he whispered hesitantly, not sure whether waking her up was a good idea.

"Hello."

Ed stifled a gasp as Luna opened one eye, blinking up at him, and smiled briefly before shutting it again. "Y-you're awake?"

She giggled, her eyelids still gently closed, "I was the entire time."

Ed blinked at that, his brain finally beginning to whir again. "How long have you been here?"

"Not long. Long enough to wonder whether you'd accidentally drunk a sleeping potion."

Ed grinned sheepishly. "What time is it?"

"After class," Luna replied dreamily. "Harry said you'd run over here just after lunch. You've spent the whole afternoon here."

"Mm." Ed nodded minutely, though Luna couldn't see it. "How were lessons?"

Luna made a noncommittal humming noise before muttering airily, "Normal, I suppose. Though I was called out in the middle of Potions to help coach a first year onto a broomstick. Apparently he'd had a bad experience with them in the past and refused to touch one." She giggled dreamily. "Professor Snape's face was very funny."

Ed couldn't resist the smirk that wormed its way onto his face. "I bet it was. Damn, I wish I could've been there." He paused a moment in consideration before asking, "Why did they choose you?"

"Hm?"

Ed shifted so his legs were bent, his knees tucked under his chin. "Why did they choose you, specifically, to help to kid out with his broomstick?"

Luna smiled. "They said it was because I was good at flying. And because I'm not as scary as some other fifth years."

Ed chuckled lowly, the sound vibrating deep in his chest. "Imagine them sending that son of a bitch Malfoy."

Luna giggled lightly. "I think that would have made it worse."

"You're probably right."

Speech ceased for a few minutes as both parties relished the lull of activity. A sunny afternoon on the grass could do that to you, as Ed had experienced many times in his early years.

Ed's eyelids had just begun to droop when a thought suddenly occurred to him, sending his lurching forward, temporarily forgetting the girl leaning on his shoulder. "Shit!"

Luna pushed herself up from where she'd fallen behind Ed and rubbed at her eyes dazedly while she asked, rather calmly, "What?"

Ed began to rummage frantically through his bag, pulling out every item that looked vaguely like a scrap of yellowed paper. He mumbled irritable half-formed sentences to Luna as he did so. "Stupid - Why didn't I do it earlier? - Shit, stupid letter - Stupid fucking Mustang - Bloody 'do it by tomorrow' - Gah, where is it?" He fumbled around with a piece of paper that turned out to be his earlier conversation with Hermione, screwing his face up in annoyance when he chucked it back into the seemingly endless bag.

"What are you looking for?" Luna asked, distantly calm in stark contrast to Ed and his short-tempered search.

"Letter," he mumbled absently, before tearing out said piece of parchment and holding up with a triumphant, "Ha!"

Luna tilted her head to the side in slight confusion. "A letter?"

Ed nodded. "I just remembered that I have to send it today - he expects a letter every day, and I haven't sent him one in a couple of days, so he'll get really mad if he doesn't get this today."

Luna nodded. "I can show you where the Owlery is if you'd like. Since you always seem to be lost somewhere when we meet."

Ed chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck with a flesh hand as he replied gratefully, "Thanks. Much appreciated. I hate those damn corridors so much."

Luna giggled, before beginning to rise to her feet. She felt a tug on her robe, however, and looked down at a still-sitting Ed with a hint of confusion.

"We'll go in a minute. I don't think I can be bothered to get up right now."

Luna blinked down at him owlishly for a moment, before smiling and settling back down beside him.

Ed let his head fall back, grunting as it hit the solid trunk behind him.

Luna gazed at him for a moment, as if searching for answers to a question simply by reading his expression. Ed, noticing her eyes on him, lazily rolled his head to the side and murmured softly, "What?"

"I was just wondering who the letters were for."

Ed's eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"You've been writing lots of letters lately. You're often writing them at breakfast and lunch, and you were writing one during DADA the other day, and the one a moment ago..."

Ed smiled slightly. "They're for different people. Some are for my brother and his... fiancée-" he hesitated slightly on the word, unable to imagine Winry as something as posh-sounding as a 'fiancée', "-and some are for my..." Ed stopped. How much could he tell her?

"Your what?"

Screw it. "My boss."

Luna raised her eyebrows, though more in interest than surprise. "Why would your boss want lots of letters?"

"'Cause when I came here, he wanted me to do a little research. The library back home isn't very big, see, and Hogwarts' is. So I'm researching stuff for him," he explained, before adding, "Lazy bastard," under his breath.

Luna nodded. "Is that why you've been reading about time travel a lot?"

Ed smirked. "Yeah."

"What's he like?" Luna asked, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"My boss?"

Luna nodded.

Ed sighed irritably, slouching further back against the tree and extending his legs as a scowl bloomed on his young face. "He's a bastard. He's greedy and makes everyone do everything for him, and he always makes me do stupid stuff when I could be doing something more productive, and he never listens and he makes fun of me and I hate him."

Luna giggled.

He turned his head to face her, scowl still in place as he snapped, "What?"

That only served to increase Luna's giggles, until she fell sideways in a fit of laughter onto Ed's almost horizontal chest, her body still shaking in dreamy mirth.

Ed suddenly became very grateful that she couldn't see his face from that angle, as something suspiciously warm flooded his face, and Ed felt his cheeks grow pink. "I-it's not that funny..."

Luna nodded, and only after the laughter had died down into a broad smile did she reply. "You... like him more than you say, I think."

Ed's eyes grew wide, and would have crossed his arms if Luna wasn't currently in the way. "How did you reach that conclusion?"
Ed couldn't clearly see Luna's face, but he saw her cheek move from behind in what he assumed must be a smile. "Have you heard of Shakespeare, Ed? 'The lady doth protest too much, methinks.'"

"I'm not a lady!"

Luna giggled. "You're missing the point."

Ed let out a gruff sigh, grumbling something about not liking Mustang. He may not have heard of this 'Shakespeare' person, but he had an idea of what the quote meant. And it definitely wasn't true. Even though Mustang had practically raised him since he was twelve and had achieved a level of skill in alchemy that Ed was only beginning to grasp the idea of, he still had absolutely no respect for the man. None at all. And the next time Ed saw the man, he'd make sure Mustang knew it.

On the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, a prying pair of stone-grey eyes chuckled at the happy sight underneath the willow tree before retreating back towards the awaiting castle.

O.o Dun dun duuuuuuun!