The first few weeks of classes went by without much trouble. Ed worked until he found a class rhythm that seemed to work well for most of the kids. Plenty of them stopped coming after a few sessions, as he'd expected, but more stayed than he'd thought would, and a few were starting to stand out in Ed's memory.
Luna, for example, remained tragically horrible at alchemy, but attended every lesson without fail. Hermione, who every teacher in the school assured him was the brightest student at Hogwarts, stayed late for every lesson she attended. The Weasley twins had started transmuting divots and bumps into the floor, so Ed had to watch his footing when he walked, but it was impressive enough that he let it slide. Cedric Diggory was reasonably good, and would probably pick things up a lot faster if he didn't spend so much time helping the other kids keep up.
Toward the end of September, Ed woke up to the third rainy day in a row, and knew immediately that he couldn't stand another full damn day of Hogwarts' long hallways and endless staircases on his achy manual; the extra muscular control needed to control it was especially taxing when his stump was sore. He'd have to either hide in his office for the day or use his wheelchair. Resigned, he dropped into it, tested the foot pedal, and then slipped the prosthetic back off, stowing it against the back of the wheelchair. Then he elbowed the door open and headed out.
One thing he definitely hadn't missed about using a wheelchair: the burning self-consciousness as people glanced sideways at him, more confused and disoriented by the change than Ed himself was. Defensive justifications itched on the tip of his tongue, but frankly, it wasn't any of their fucking business, and he kept his mouth defiantly shut.
"Oh, dear," Pomona said, nearly as soon as he was up at the teacher's table. (The enchanted wheelchair did indeed take stairs like they were ramps, and it was cool.) "Is something the matter, Edward?"
"Not really," Ed dismissed without looking at her, grabbing a muffin and some bacon to munch on. When she didn't look away, he sighed, swallowed, and said, "It's really none of your business, Pomona. Don't fuss."
Pomona blushed. "Oh, of course, I'm sorry. Pumpkin juice?"
Other than that, Ed was able to pretty much go about his day as normal. He had the school day to himself, with all of the students in class, and that left him free to work on his actual assignment. He spent most of it in the library, tearing voraciously through books; he'd memorized all of the magical runes just fine, but he was still working on what the books referred to as NEWT-level arithmancy – which, from the way it was discussed, was still schoolkid stuff, not even professional work.
He flipped to the back of the book he was reading now and started reading recommended titles aloud, letting the enchanted quill scribble them out onto a scroll of parchment. Ed glanced over to double-check that it looked right – weirdly, it was even in his handwriting – and couldn't stop himself from smiling when he saw that it did.
"Dobby," Ed said clearly, and waited for the crack of Dobby's arrival before pushing the paper toward him. "Can you grab these books for me? Thanks."
Dobby took the paper, looked at it, and then snapped his fingers, and Ed laughed in surprise when a few short stacks filled the table on Ed's left side, where he kept the as-yet-unread books. Dobby didn't even look to the table or the shelves for the task, instead examining Ed with concern.
"Is Mr. Professor feeling unwell?" Dobby asked, forehead crinkling under his badge-speckled hat. "Should Dobby get something from the hospital wing?"
Ed opened his mouth to refuse, and then actually paused, pushing himself back from his work, and considered himself with a frown. Even without the weight of his automail arm, his shoulder was still painfully sore. His thigh was still protesting the last couple of days. And the extended absence of his automail was making his missing hand cramp painfully, convinced that it was clenched.
"A painkiller would be great," he admitted grudgingly. Dobby snapped again and disappeared, and returned only a moment later with a small vial. Ed managed a smile, accepting it carefully. "Thanks. This would be a lot harder without your help."
Dobby beamed at him, ears wiggling. "Dobby is happy to be of help!"
Ed downed the potion, which kicked in a lot faster than any painkiller he'd ever taken before; less than thirty seconds after he'd swallowed, the ache receded to a faint buzz. He didn't even feel sleepy or disoriented – it was as if he'd woken up without any pain at all. He hummed in appreciation.
"Mr. Professor?" Ed glanced over questioningly. Dobby was shuffling self-consciously. "Why does Professor Sir ask for help from naughty nasty Dobby?"
Ed frowned at Dobby, and he flinched. "Don't talk about yourself in the third person if you're just going to fill it with rude adjectives," he said. "And to be honest, I'd rather not need help at all, but unfortunately I'm not living that kind of life. Since I don't really have much choice, it's easier to accept help from someone when I know they're getting something for their time. That made you the best choice."
Dobby still looked uncertain. "Dobby isn't a good house elf."
"Yeah?" Ed said dubiously. "Well, you're a good assistant, which is what I actually need anyway."
Dobby didn't seem to know what to say to that, so Ed turned away, shifting uncomfortably, and got started on the books that Dobby had brought him. In only another minute, he forgot all about the conversation, absorbed in the study of transfiguration arithmancy – which turned out to be the matter manipulation stuff he'd been searching for.
That took him until the late afternoon, when he had to put the books away for the evening – or rather, ask Dobby to put them back, which the elf did with another snap of his fingers – and head to his classroom.
Rather than letting up, the rain was pounding against the windows harder than ever, and Ed was certainly feeling it. The heavy protest of his ports wore on him, and by the time he reached his classroom, he was particularly irritable, not looking forward to the non-alchemy-related questions he knew were coming.
"Dobby can get Mr. Professor another Solacium Draught if he needs," Dobby offered cheerfully, tagging along only a few steps behind Ed at a light jog. Ed snorted, rubbing his knuckles on his cheek.
"Is it that obvious?" he asked wryly. "Yeah, I'd like that, thanks. Does it rain like this all the time?" Dobby nodded. "Shit. Alright, I'll have to talk to Madame Pomfrey about keeping some around too."
"What is it that is hurting Mr. Professor?" Dobby asked innocently.
Ed frowned at him, confused, but after a moment it occurred to him that not everyone grew up next door to automail engineers. "It's not a big deal, Dobby. My stumps ache in the rain." Dobby looked blank. "Uh." Ed tapped the end of his thigh, and Dobby's eyes widened in comprehension. "Something about the change in barometric pressure during storms makes the scarring hurt. It's pretty common."
"Can Dobby help?" Dobby asked earnestly. Despite himself, Ed was rapidly growing fond of the strange-looking little guy.
"It's not a big deal," Ed repeated. "I've been living with it for damn near ten years now. I'll ask you if I need anything, alright?"
Dobby nodded so hard that his ears flopped around his head, which made Ed laugh, and he was in a somewhat better mood when he pushed open the door, glancing across the classroom to see who'd come today.
There was Luna, of course, in her usual place in the very front row with her rainbow of inkwells, and the Weasley twins at the back – some of the other teachers had been very alarmed to hear that they were attending almost religiously. Given what he'd learned about them so far, that was probably fair, but if the worst they were going to get up to was some playful mischief, then they weren't exactly breaking any records with their misuse of alchemy. Cedric wasn't here today, but Cho was, somehow, already taking notes – or maybe she was writing something else.
Manipulating the movements of his wheelchair with the helpful foot pedal, Ed headed to the front of the class and angled himself toward the blackboard even as he turned his attention to the students.
"We waiting on anyone?" he asked them. He received a few hums and mumbles in the negative, most of the students blatantly staring significantly lower than his face. He ignored this. "Alright, I figured we'd work on some more complex compounds today – it's good preparation for working on compound transmutations..."
He introduced a couple of them this time, since some of the brighter kids were beginning to get the hang of chemistry. (In fact, Hermione was well on her way to making good on her promise to catch up on it, and Ed was already considering offering to tutor her – it would be a shame to stunt her progress.) Dobby ferried blocks of oak around the room, squealing as he received a few absent murmurs of gratitude, and Ed gave the kids time to start their calculations before he went straight toward Luna.
"I haven't even had time to pick my colors yet, Professor," Luna protested mildly.
"I mean, I can come back in ten minutes if it's stressing you out," Ed said, belying his words by leaning over to examine the empty page. "But I thought it'd help me understand what you're struggling with if I watched you get started."
"Oh, you don't have to," Luna said. "I'm used to learning things on my own."
Ed shrugged. "Humor me. It can't hurt."
It wasn't that Luna wasn't making any progress at all. She'd memorized every rune that Ed had presented to the class so far, and most of the periodic table on the wall as well. But her mind just didn't seem to lend itself to logic very well. Still, it was clear that she wanted to learn.
She copied down the reference points dutifully, the molecular structure of oak and the base matrix for organics, and then she started in on the circle. Ed immediately had to repress the urge to correct her, instead watching her form the circle with all of the right runes and no structure whatsoever.
Luna looked up at him when she was done, blinking placidly, and Ed cleared his throat, leaning over as if to look at the circle again.
"You're good with picking the runes," he said after a moment, "but maybe it would help if I went over how to structure a circle again. They're all out of order."
For the first time, Ed caught a flicker of genuine dismay and disappointment on Luna's face, though it was gone a second later.
"Okay," she said. "I'll try again."
Ed studied her, concerned, but he was interrupted before he could approach the topic further.
"Oh, shit," he heard from behind him, and he frowned and looked over his shoulder, then scowled and hauled himself up to lean over the back, propping his stump onto the seat. Several of the students yelped in surprise.
One of the twins had their fingers locked tightly around their wand, and the other was trying to pry it open. Ed gathered that they'd tried to mess with his stowed leg, and it had retaliated as Filius had intended.
"Fred, George," Ed said sharply, making both of them look up. "It should be obvious even to you shitheads, but I'm not going to tolerate any interference with my fucking leg. Meet me here after dinner for detention."
The threat was unfamiliar in his mouth, but no one else seemed to find it odd. The twins were snickering, and the finger-locked one sheepishly presented his hand to Ed. Ed snorted.
"Yeah, you can wait until you get another professor to take that off you."
"That's cold, Ed," the other twin chuckled, but neither of them seemed all that bothered. Ed sighed, sinking back down in his chair as his bad mood returned with a vengeance.
"Sorry, professor," Luna said apologetically. "I think they've got wrackspurts in their ears."
Ed snorted. "Yeah? That cause bad behavior?" Luna nodded earnestly. "Well, they're still not getting away with it scot-free. If nothing else, I can try and teach 'em why that was a shitty thing to do."
"That's a good idea," Luna said. "It'll help drive the wrackspurts out. They're not naturally prone to them, really."
Ed made a mental note to ask someone about wrackspurts.
No matter how hard he tried, Ed couldn't bring himself to summon up much more than a heavy resignation that bordered on disdain. The two boys in front of him were the picture of innocence, kicking each other under the table to make the other break their straight face, and finally, Ed snorted.
"You know, Minerva warned me to look out for you," he said conversationally, earning a grin from both of them. "I can see why, too. Honestly, the two of you sound like pretty funny kids. Your joke shop's gonna take off in no time."
"Not if we keep getting put in detention, it isn't," one of them muttered to the other, but his eyes were glittering. Ed scoffed.
"Don't tell me you bother showing up to most of them," he said dismissively. "You were curious." Neither of them denied it. "I'm not gonna make you write lines or anything, 'cause that's stupid. And I get why you did it, anyway, 'cause I definitely look funny hopping around on one leg, yelling at people."
One of them squinted at him. "Does... that mean we're free to go?" he asked, slow and vaguely dubious. Ed snorted again and leaned back on the desk, folding his leg in front of him. His prosthetic was on the desk beside him, unused, and his chair at the base of the desk, well within arm's reach. His ports throbbed faintly.
"Not exactly," he said. "Still got a couple things to do, 'cause I didn't actually give you detention for show. I want both of you to tell me what you think you did today."
"Well, we went to class-"
"Skip all that," Ed interrupted, waving his hand, amused despite himself. "Skip to my class. In fact, skip to the leg thing. What do you think you did?"
One of them raised an eyebrow, and the other one smirked, confusion peeking through. "Well, I think that we-"
"-saw a teacher's beloved doohickey-"
"-and decided it would be fun-"
"-to prove why you don't leave such things unguarded." The Weasley twin winked.
"Although I guess it wasn't unguarded, so touché for this round, Professor," the first tacked on.
Ed rolled his eyes. "You know, I kinda thought you'd say something like that," he said, and he reached up to pull the odd wizard robes off his shoulders, letting them fall to the desk in a heap. That left him sitting on top of it in just his regular clothes, the black tank top, right strap threatening to fall down over his port, and his leather pants, left leg cut off for convenience.
Neither boy reacted too blatantly; pranksters always had the best poker faces. But one of them flinched just a little, and the other gained some strain around his eyes, gaze lingering on the stump of Ed's leg.
"I really don't think you meant anything by it," he clarified, after giving them a moment to process. "So I'm gonna ask you to do one thing, and then you're free to go. The both of you go to that corner-" He jerked his head to the back corner of the classroom, furthest from the door. "-and you get on the ground and crawl to the door. You get to use one arm and one leg. Doesn't matter which ones. Understood?"
Now they looked uncomfortable. Good.
"Yes, Professor," they mumbled in unison.
To their credit, while they exaggerated the movements a little, apparently unable to suppress their natural inclination to theatrics, they really did the damn thing. One twin let his right arm drag so that it squished under his hip with nearly every caterpillar shift, and the other had to pause a couple of times to free his limp leg; Ed hadn't cleared the chairs away for this, obviously. Giggles and playful groans slowly shifted into grunts of effort as Ed watched them cross the floor. A couple times, one of them slipped, bumping their knee or hip or elbow harshly on the ground.
One twin got there almost a minute before the other, and gave them a hand up seemingly without thinking about it. They both had some color in their cheeks, and they weren't looking at him.
They didn't dart right out the door either.
"You get it?" Ed prompted calmly.
"Yes, Professor," they chorused, and then looked at each other.
"...Sorry," one added, swift and shamefaced, and only then did they both dart out the door. Ed relaxed.
"Dumb kids," he muttered, and pushed himself over to drop down into his wheelchair.