A/N: And the last chapter for now. Thank you everyone who decided to follow this story before despite it's terribleness!

Halloween
Phase 2.

Ed peeked out the door before taking a cautious step outside. Instead of only a few people wandering about to watch him setting up the decorating, there were many – all wearing cloaks.

Starting Halloween a bit early, then? he thought, watching them. Strangely enough, most were adults instead of kids, and many were sporting point hats. Maybe there was a witch fetish this Halloween?

He didn't know if that was common around here. After all, last year he'd been too busy stopping the invasion of his world to worry about people in pointy hats.

He shrugged and started putting up the decorations. There was no reason to stand and gawk in the doorway after all. There was work to do, and he was planning on doing the best job he could.

Unfortunately, there was little to decorate the small house they were renting in the suburbs. The mail box? What could he put on it? Maybe some grass?

Ed found himself uncomfortably out of ideas. If he had alchemy, he could make the place look as spooky as possible in a jiffy, but as it was...

He'd just have to improvise a little.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

An hour later, Al found him covered in dirt and surrounded by odd figurines. Ed had taken some paint from inside and swabbed it onto the dirt to make the various ghouls and zombies and fake graves more realistic and less... dirt-like. For a job done without alchemy, he decided, it was pretty well done.

Al had a different opinion on the matter.

"Brother!" he exclaimed when he saw the wreckage of the lawn, eyes widened. "How are you planning on cleaning this up?" Ed gave him a goofy grin.

"I haven't really thought about it."

He earned a wack from Al's none-too-gentle hand.

"Ow!" He pouted, holding his left shoulder as if it were mortally wounded. "What was that for?"

"For not thinking," the younger brother replied easily.

Ed stuck his tongue at him.

He earned another wack.

"And I thought Winry was the mean one..." he muttered. Al gave him some kind of evil smirk, and Ed raised his hands in mock surrender.

"All right, all right! I'll figure out a way to clean it up! But for now –" He grinned cheekily. "– You can't say it's not the spookiest house on the block." Al laughed.

"That's true." He took a seat on the ground next to Ed. "But the grass won't be growing back anytime soon." He gave Ed a playful push, which he promptly returned. Soon, they were both sprawled on the ground, laughing.

It was nice not to have to worry about anything, to be so carefree again. Maybe Al and him would finally just be able to rest, together like this, just like they had before...

"Why do you think there are so many owls out today?" Al's voice startled him from his thoughts.

"Hmm? Owls?" But now that Al had mentioned it, he could see them nearly everywhere, flying over nearly every building. Even on their own house, there were a few perched on the rooftop. "I don't know, Al. It is a little strange." He grinned. "Maybe it's just a part of the Halloween decor." But Al still had a thoughtful expression on his face.

"No... I don't think that's it." Slowly, he got up from the ground. "And the whole outfit thing is a bit strange. Could it be the Golden Dawn again?" Ed frowned and stood up next to his little brother.

"It could be. Halloween supposedly amplifies magic, so it makes sense that some members might want to try again." He groaned and reached out a hand to rub sore back muscles. "Al, I'm too old for this. I'm already nineteen!"

"You're not that old, Brother." But a smile could be heard in his voice.

"Yeah, yeah. Well, let's get to it, all right? You never know quite when old age'll catch up to me."

Al laughed and watched as Ed spryly jumped onto the street from the elevated landscape of the lawn.

"Do you think someone as old as you could do that so easily?" Ed heard him say.

"Shut up, Al," he grumbled, and another laugh came from behind.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

It had been almost too easy. They had picked a person in a cloak, followed him, and here they were, standing in front of a pub labeled so clearly "The Leaky Cauldron."

Was it the right place? Could something so innocuous harbor something that could be so devastating? A pub for those who wanted to take over the world?
Of course. Worse criminals have hidden in less likely places. Ed should know. He brought down many of those himself.

But what was in the pub was neither what they had been expecting or dreading. Not even close to their wildest of possibilities.

In the bluntest way possible, it was magic. Not the kind of card tricks that a street performer could do, but real, live magic. Floating objects. Pointy witch hats. People stepping out from a fire, unharmed.

In other words, it was something that came straight from a fairy tale.

He felt Al grip his arm.

"Brother." His voice was tight. "Were we – were we wrong? Could the Golden Dawn actually do magic?"

"I don't think it's the Golden Dawn, Al." Ed could faintly hear his own words past his racing mind. "This is too big for that."

And it was true. Other signs hadn't up either. The hats? Even the few members would have laughed if they had seen them. After all, the majority of them weren't bad, and Ed was even on good terms with several of them (like Hughes). If they really could have performed magic, wouldn't he know by now?

Or... the other possibility was that this was alchemy. Was it possible that this side of the Gate developed some sort of mutated form of it? We had thought the split between the worlds occurred at the triumph of physics over alchemy, but what if we were wrong? What if it ran so much deeper than that... A mutation of alchemy itself? A different set of laws that the universe worked under, rather than the Equivalent Exchange Ed had sought after for so long?

The thought shocked him. Equivalent Exchange... How could it be false? And yet, after all he had been through, all Al had been, how could it be true?

"Brother." A hand tugged on his sleeve. "We can't just stand here, staring like this."

Al's voice returned him to the present. It reminded him that there was something here they needed to learn, and to do that, they needed to act.

"Yeah." His voice escaped him like water past a burst dam. It betrayed the anxiety that he was feeling. Was that what it was? Anxiety?

In any case, when he sat down on the stool next to the bar counter, the nerves calmed down. He had done this before.

"Got a drink?" he asked the bartender with a grin. The balding old man looked at him suspiciously, then at Al.

"How old are you kids?" Ed's eyes widened as he realized what the man had thought he meant.

"Nothing alcoholic!" he protested, then added more sullenly, "And I'm not a kid." The bartender raised an eyebrow, but left, presumable to get drinks for us. He returned a moment later with two cups filled to the brim.

"Butterbeer," he said, as if that explained everything.

Ed looked at his cup cautiously. It was bubbly... Didn't that mean it was alcoholic? He didn't know enough about drinks to be certain.

Al had no such reservations. He brought the cup to his lips and took a sip, and immediately, his eyes widened with pleasure.

"It's good!" he exclaimed. And as Ed watched, a large grin formed on the bartender's face.

"Never had butterbeer before?" Al shook his head. "It's really a treat. My name's Tom."

"Alphonse. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"And you." The grin died a little as he turned to Ed. "What's your name, friend?" Ed noticed the change in title, and he couldn't say it didn't please him at all.

"Edward." He held out his left hand, and after a moment's hesitation, the man took it.

"So, Edward, Alphonse. What brings you here?" The man leaned his hand on the counter and spoke conversationally.

"Just looking for a drink," Ed replied smoothly. "To celebrate the occasion, you know." The man nodded, and Ed got the feeling that "the occasion" meant a lit more to Tom than it did to him. What was he missing?

"Yeah, we get a lot of business on this day," Tom said, but his eyes were looking past them. "Well, I can't stop to chat any longer. I have to go."

"See you around." Ed waved him off, but then turned to Al. "What do you think?" His little brother took a few moments, contemplating the conversation.

"I think there's something else going on here that we don't know about." Then there was a sly grin on his face, and Ed grew worried. "And... I think you should drink that." He pointedly brought the cup to his own face. Ed mimicked him, wondering what was so important about the drink.

Then he tasted his first sip, and knew.

The "butterbeer" sent a warm, comfortable feeling tingling all the way down to his toes, making even his automail ports seem to weigh less heavily on the rest of his flesh body. And the taste too. Despite the warmth, it was still fresh, like the smell of the evergreen tree we had always decorated as kids together. It had a nostalgic quality, and somehow, that made it even better.

"I have to give him one thing," Ed said, looking after Tom, who was now merrily greeting a regular over on the other side of the bar. "He really knows how to make a drink."

Al grinned.

"I told you so."