Bah, I kept putting this off, partially because real life is busy, partially because it feels like I wanted to add something to this chapter, but could never remember precisely what while writing. Also, Fanfiction's new changes are somewhat disorienting. I need a beta, seriously, anything to motivate me to stop procrastinating and write.

Review-Responses newly relocated to the bottom.

Chapter Twelve - Alchemy

One who accepts and understands the flow of power, and constructs using that knowledge... is called an alchemist.

~Izumi Curtis

Alchemy, as Harry was rapidly discovering, wasn't like some hobby that one could just shove aside, only to bring out to impress people or relieve boredom. It was, instead, a vast, figure-and-fact filled topic that proved more strenuous than just about anything else in life. But most of all, it was addictive; the rush of power flowing through your body, the finality in the sound of a clap, the thrill in seeing your creation take form before your eyes; the bending of nature to your own will, they were all things he understood, longed for even.

So it was quite unfortunate that he hadn't been able to experience any of those yet.

Instead, his vision was just starting to blur from the obscurely small text printed in an equally obscure 1879-paperback book. And really, he couldn't see how learning about the qualities of wheat, yeast and other components of bread had much to do with alchemy. But Ed had decreed that it was necessary and Al, as he often did, completely agreed with his brother. From that point on, he hadn't had much choice about the matter; there wasn't any other way that he could learn alchemy after all.

Any yet- sitting here, watching them sitting outside transmuting the earth (in such a location that he could see everything) was pure torture.

Today, they had forgone the white chalk, content to use trace lines in the soil with a stick, as they made various structures; miniature castes and collapsing ruins, bakery shops and large, sprawling homes the size of large doll houses. They looked as if they were figurines; details etched into the surface and shapes bent all over, moulded to the will of the maker. But the strands of earth were never terribly fine or thin, not like the real thing. It was always the slightest details off, a tower that appeared to thin to support a too-large roof, cracks running in illogical patterns, signs with letters that alternated between embossed and carved and flat roof instead of tiles.

Still, it looked fun, exciting, new, fresh.

Nothing like being cooped up in a stuffy room-office hybrid while being tormented by the sight of others doing what you so wanted to do; practising an art that you felt like you would never be able to learn. Harry dropped his gaze back to the book.

It is important to note that grass and wheat are very similar; as plants their basic cell structure is the same, replete with chloroplasts and cell walls. Therefore bread, which is created from wheat and yeast, may also be synthesized from other plants with similar characteristics to wheat and, or yeast. Therefore, by extension grass may be converted into wheat.

Wheat is an ingredient of bread, after undergoing chemical change under heat and with the presence of yeast. Yeast, a fungus oft found in consumables...

Understandably, most of the words sailed over his six-year-old head. The words that he did recognise and understand, few and far in between, were tiny fragments of the puzzle of a foreign concept he hadn't ever faced before. In short, the book meant nothing to him.

It is also important to note that, while Alchemy is capable of modifying atomic structures and forcing substances to undergo both chemical and physical changes of state, the Law of Conservation of Matter must be upheld, alongside other rules which forbid a dramatic change of substance. That is, while elements may be interchanged freely, the starting matter and finishing compound must share similar characteristics. For instance, a metal may not be transmuted to a non-metal; alchemizations such as Sodium to Sulfur are impossible at this stage. Possibly advancements and breakthroughs may provide insight in these alchemizations and permit alchemists to transmute one element to another. As transmutations where metals such as Lithium (Li) are converted to others such as Barium (Ba) are possible, and have been successfully performed and recorded, it is generally assumed that the electronic configuration of atoms is most important to take into account when transmuting...

Harry shut the book and gave a resigned glance back at the window where Ed and Al continued to create their fairy-tale structures in a pool of warm, golden sunlight. This was utterly ridiculous. He looked back at the book dubiously, tentatively opening it to a randomly selected page.

Interestingly enough, in living matter, the alleles of the genomes of the starting matter directly affect the state of the resultant. Life cannot be modified through alchemical means. Modifying life is direct intervention of an organism's living protoplasm, or the alterations of the Deoxyribonucleic Acid, otherwise known as DNA. This has been recognized by the Board of Alchemists, and taken into account with the third rule for all alchemists; Don't make Humans. Although this rule specifies humans, it may be extended to all forms of life present today, and further encompasses the modification of life and direct intervention in the genetic structure and coding of living organisms.

And apparently, if the randomly opened page was any indication, the language only got more complicated from there.

Harry wasn't regretting his decision to learn alchemy per say, but he was wishing that he'd thought about it just a little (lot) more. A few more hours more.

Possibly longer.

He flipped through the book again, this time to the very back where there was a conveniently located appendix and, upon a whim, looked for the Deoxyribonucleic Acid that the book had mentioned before, mostly because it was quite possibly the longest word he had ever seen- even if he hadn't understood it at all.

The thing about searching through appendixes rather than a dictionary though, was that only a very limited list of words was defined. And that the definitions themselves were written in scientific terms and rather complicated. The definition for the deoxyribonucleic acid spanned three paragraphs in that obscenely small, splotchy black text, blurred at places and fainter at others, as if someone had written in pencil then erased it. Some parts of the text were crossed out altogether, the mysterious annotator apparently disagreeing with the author.

He didn't understand a word.

The book hit the table with a loud thump.

The slight wind filtering through the open window called again, almost tauntingly, as the sun's light was diminished by a drifting cloud, a large fluffy white mass that allowed for a moment of undisturbed cool.

For all their magic's and spells, wizards had never truly been able to control the environment around them; only alter details, but never the whole. Today, in the sweltering summer heat, Draco was feeling the evidence of that fact quite strongly.

Neither the large cup of iced lemonade (complete with mini parasol umbrella and lemon slice) that was being served by Dobby nor the large tub of vanilla and wildberry flavoured ice cream (strangely cool and unmelting, even under the unforgiving rays of the sun), could compensate for being cooped indoors on a day best suited for swimming (the Malfoys owned a summer mansion in the Bahamas, replete with private beach). Even the makeshift pool that his parents could transfigure from the large garden maze would have sufficed.

But instead he was studying while his father scoured the land (but mainly newspaper firms) for news of Harry Potter.

Harry had mysteriously disappeared some time ago, vanished from everyone without the slightest hint of how to contact him. It had thrown his parent's plans into disarray, and even Dumbledore seemed perturbed, despite his formerly ardent support of the Rockbells. The whole situation reeked of something gone unexpectedly, horribly wrong with no way to fix the issue in sight. In fact, the issue itself was not even apparent; no-one knew or had heard even the slightest news of where the Rockbells had vanished to, or if they were, in fact, still alive and free.

While no muggle police force would be able to subdue wizards, a kidnapping by Dark Wizards, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's few remaining (but still highly dangerous) followers, was a possibility.

Of course, none of these thoughts occurred to Draco, reclining comfortably on a padded chair. Instead thoughts about how very decidedly uncomfortable the weather was- and where had Harry gone; he'd had fun playing with a new-found friend that didn't approach due to the prestige imbued in his family name, filled his mind as he tiled his head backwards to view his room from an upside-down perspective.

At that moment, Harry, whose head was in a similar position and likewise empty of thoughts concerning his mysterious disappearance from Wizarding Britain, though his thoughts were not nearly quite so trivial as those in Draco's head, was feeling equally frustrated. The sun was setting, a lovely hazy rose colour that bloomed through the sky. And he hadn't made any further progress through the book. It was a whole day, a half weekend, gone; wasted.

On that stupid rag of stabled yellowing paper that was called a book.

And while he wasn't considering giving up on Alchemy, putting it off until they actually covered some of these topics in class seemed like a stroke of genius- a brilliant plan thought up in a moment of inspiration. And yet- he paused, halfway through throwing the book gently down, or as gently as one could throw a book that they detested, remembering his words to Saiph.

(("I'll definitely learn Alchemy from them!" Harry boasted, proud because it was the first thing that he'd ever really had to boast about, never mind that it wasn't about a belonging, because this was a that no-one else, for all that the Elric brothers were idolised, had taken or been offered. It was uniquely his alone; not even Winry had deigned to study the art that the two were so keen on.))

Still, even memories of the most unshakeable resolve and determination can only take one so far, by the time Edward- Harry still called him that, unused to nicknames and the familiarity and closeness they symbolised, came in to check up on him, Alphonse apparently gone to help their mother with preparing dinner, Harry had counted thrice that he had felt a nearly overbearing urge to tear the book up into tiny fragments, then burn those fragments until they were invisible little pieces of ash, scattered irrevocably forever. And then maybe transmute those pieces back into a book so that no-one would ever know.

Pale hands, lightly calloused but somehow still tender, took the book from his grasp. Edward's face, when he looked up, was mischievous, almost devilish in what was still somehow a friendly way.

"Only five pages in?"

Okay, so that really was a tad pathetic. It had, after all, probably been more than five hours. Granted, a large portion of that time had been spent napping or devising new ways in which to destroy the book (ways that'd he'd never be able to carry out), but he admittedly had more or less given up after the first hour or so.

"It's stated complicatedly, but the idea's really simple." The old boy spoke, dragging a chair across well-worn wood floorboards, until it was beside Harry's. "Like this," he pointed at the paragraphs discussing and pointing out the similarities between the components of bread and other grasses, "basically says that you don't need to turn grass into wheat in order to make bread. So, it's like you can transmute things into other similar things, only that in this case you can skip a step by not turning it into wheat."

He took the book, flipping through casually with the air of one experienced. "There's more about that here," he opened to a page nearly halfway through, then flipped back to five pages in; the position where Harry had read up to. "This is like the Law of Conservation of Matter, you can't turn short wheat into tall wheat."*

It was five hours of study compacted into less than a minute. Which really, essentially, meant that he'd wasted his whole day when he could've simply asked Edward.

The older boy grinned at him mischievously, "Did you have fun reading at least?"

*Note: I'm not sure if it was called the 'Law of Conservation of Matter' in FMA, it's the conservation of mass in real life, but might not be in the anime-verse. ( I swear I've heard 'Conservation of Matter' somewhere)

Next Chapter: How are the Dursley's getting along without their resident serving boy? With dishes piling up, coffee unmade and several not-so-well disguised death-threats from concerned (and highly agitated) wizards of course!

A/N: This is ridiculous; I spent hours studying science and couldn't spell DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) after it, then I spend about seconds typing up 'What does DNA stand for' in Google, type it into this fanfic and suddenly I know how to spell it? Life makes no sense sometimes- but I think I'll just write another fanfic for my Yearly Exam study.

Also, having your web-browser's spellcheck language being set to American English, while your word-processors is set to Australian-English is really annoying -.-

Jostanos - Thank you, as always for reviewing (reviews are inspirational and motivation :D)

Yoruko Rhapsodos - Yes, Dumbledore's plan goes terribly, terribly awry (but then, it wouldn't be a proper story if things all went to plan) Since they're just kids now, there's nothing but friendship right now. Later it moves on into slight Winry-Ed over friendship and... automail. Also, Harry has a slight-not-really-crush-but-still-want-to-be-close-relationship with Winry, she is the first proper 'friend' he has after all. (Although her befriendment of him was mostly motivated by her parent's concerns). To Harry, Saiph is special because she chooses to spend her time with him, listening and talking to him when she could clearly be elsewhere, though he doesn't like her in that way. Kids are so cute :) [Also, to give any other character would be kinda spoiler-ish]

KohakuTheOtaku (it rhymes!.. I think, I mean the 'aku' sound.. at least..) - Yes, I have a friend who's obsessed with Doctor Who (really David Tenant, but he was the Doctor for a while). I think it kinda shows (that and Harry's naivete) in that chapter.

Bah, I need to get LJ. Also, currently writing a Code Geass ficlet with a super-long (for me) prologue. I love the essence of Code Geass; double lives, the political scheming, mecha (Guren SEITEN Eight Elements! :D), anti-hero, best-friends-turned-enemy, emotional turmoil (especially with the best friends), rebellion-in-action. Seriously, once you get past the layer of fanservice, it's awesome. Oh, oh! And the 'Empire' Trope! Britannia is so cruel and ruthless, its awesome in a way. Amazing single-mindedness there.