Apparating kind of sucked. Like being yanked through a tiny rubber tube, all of the air being forced out of Ed's lungs, and his automail limbs sparked and twitched in protest. He nearly fell over when they finally popped out the other side, stumbling on impact, but his hold on Dumbledore's arm steadied him.
"Shit," he said at last, but he found his footing, straightened up, and looked around.
They were in a field on a steep slope; there was a village behind them, a lake to one side, and a set of gates not far ahead, statues of winged boars decorating each side. Right, Hogwarts. Heh.
There was no mistaking the pride in Dumbledore's smile. "Right this way, Mr. Elric."
Ed grinned despite himself, anticipation sparking in his chest, and without a word he matched Dumbledore's stride, following the road up to the school. He looked over his shoulder to see train tracks veering out of the village and turning around to head back into the distance.
"That's Hogsmeade?" he asked.
"Yes," Dumbledore confirmed. "Perhaps you'll be able to visit during the school year; you'll likely quite enjoy it."
Ed hummed in pleasure, and then frowned as they passed through the gates. His ports were sparking painfully again, his fingers twitching in his pocket. He reached up to check the crystal pendant Dumbledore had given him, but it was still there, and by all appearances was continuing to just be a regular pendant.
"First year students travel to the castle over the lake," Dumbledore told Ed, distracting him from the puzzle. "It's truly the best view of Hogwarts one can possibly find. But of course, it is nothing to miss from any way you choose."
"Yeah, weirdly, I don't think there's a way to make a castle look humble," Ed muttered distractedly, ignoring the gates as they swung shut. His thigh was twitching too, and after a few more steps he actually stopped, leaning down to rub it with a frown.
"Is something the matter?" Dumbledore asked, stopping to turn and look at him.
"I don't know, it just feels-"
Ed's left leg gave out under him, and he collapsed in a clatter of metal, swearing violently. He hit the ground with bruising force, and only one arm responded when he pushed himself upright, wincing.
"Mr. Elric!" Dumbledore exclaimed, already kneeling down with clear concern. Ed swore at the ground and banged his fist uselessly on his automail knee.
"Stupid fucking piece of shit fake-ass goddamn..." It refused to so much as twitch. The painful sparks had stopped. The blood drained from Ed's face, and he looked up at Dumbledore, eyes wide. "Does magic interfere with electronics?"
"Why, yes," Dumbledore said, puzzled. "What does that- oh."
Yeah, oh. How fucking humiliating.
"For fuck's sake," Ed snarled, and hit his thigh again.
Dumbledore lifted his wand, and a moment later, a large bird made of clouds burst from the end and shot toward the castle – no, not the castle. Somewhere on the grounds. Ed squinted up at Dumbledore.
"The groundskeeper is of a size to be helpful to us in this situation," Dumbledore explained, looking apologetic. "I apologize, it did not occur to me that you might have... hm, vital electrical devices."
"Whatever," Ed mumbled sullenly. His right arm was a dangling deadweight, and he had to squirm to get off his automail leg and into a more comfortable position on the ground. "Goddammit." Hitting his leg wasn't helping, but he did it again anyway. He'd been excited about this trip.
"I would not blame you if you chose to back out now," Dumbledore said quietly, "but you will at least need to be taken back outside the wards before I am able to bring you home."
Ed cursed under his breath, but another slow idea was already forming.
"Are wizards too cool for wheelchairs?" he asked suddenly. Dumbledore quirked his eyebrows up.
"Ah- no. They are still in some occasional use. Are you planning on staying?"
He sounded hopeful. Ed took this to mean he was very desperate for help.
"Don't get ahead of yourself," Ed said dismissively, not looking at him. "But I'll go inside and have a look at the thing. We'll talk about it. Whatever."
Dumbledore exhaled. "Thank you, Mr. Elric." Ed shrugged.
A few minutes later, Ed looked up to see a man jogging toward them, and he only seemed to get more ridiculously big the closer he came. Ed gave Dumbledore an incredulous look, earning only a serene smile in return, before the man came to a halt, towering over them.
"Came as quick as I could," the man said gruffly, and looked down at Ed. "You're a mite small, aren't you?"
Ed bit down the rant that wanted to bubble up. "I don't want to hear that from a man the size of a goddamn mountain," he snapped. The man laughed.
"I'll grant you that. Name's Rubeus Hagrid, I'm the groundskeeper here at Hogwarts." He looked at Dumbledore. "Whatcha need me for, Headmaster?"
"Our newest professor had some difficulty with the wards," Dumbledore explained. "It seems that he has a prosthetic leg that I hadn't noticed, which happens to operate using electricity. Entering the wards, unfortunately, seems to have quite disposed of it."
Ed squinted up at him. "A leg and an arm," he corrected, smacking his shoulder with an open palm. "Useless fucking junk."
"Ah!" Dumbledore said. "Your friend's work is quite impressive, for me to not notice either device. Mr. Elric, would you be amenable to allowing Hagrid to carry you into the castle?"
Ed eyed Hagrid warily. "This is only happening once," he warned him with a scowl.
"I never pick someone up without permission," Hagrid said seriously, and then hoisted Ed into the air. Ed didn't quite fit into the crook of his arm, but he sure came pretty close. Ed scowled at the ground, holding onto Hagrid's coat with his good hand.
Some of his ire fell away as they traveled across the grounds, and he tilted his head back to take in the castle, a sense of wonder falling over him. It was enormous and elegant, so old that Ed could all but feel it in the air. There was a lake down the slope of the field, so vast that Ed couldn't see the other side, and a forest with an ominous air about it. There was something that looked like a stadium, and greenhouses just visible around the corner before the castle covered them up.
"Hogwarts is a truly astonishing place, isn't it?" Dumbledore said quietly, giving Ed a soft smile. Ed nodded without thinking, twisting around to watch skeletal winged horses weave through some of the nearer trees of the forest before they passed by.
Hogwarts had massive wooden double doors, and Dumbledore opened them with a wave of his wand, allowing them to pass through.
The inside was, if anything, even more impressive than the outside. The ancient stone walls were covered in portraits, and they stood like dozens of windows into faraway places, with painted people chatting quietly amongst themselves or doing farmwork or making paintings of their own. A few of them waved. If Ed had had a hand free, he might have waved back without thinking.
And the stairwells – Ed looked up and it felt like there were hundreds of them, some seeming to lead to nowhere, crisscrossing past each other as far up as he could see. Also, no ramps.
"How the hell can anyone get around this place in a wheelchair?" he asked.
"It doesn't come up often," Dumbledore admitted, "but they can be enchanted to take stairs as if they were ramps. I'll see to it that you can meet with Professor Flitwick, our Charms teacher. He should be able to enchant one to your specifications."
"Nice," Ed said appreciatively.
Dumbledore led them up a few of these staircases, and Ed kept track of them without thinking, mentally tracing their path up.
"So you're Professor Elric, aren't you?" Hagrid asked Ed suddenly, making him start.
"Yeah," Ed said, looking over his shoulder to the floors below. "I'm supposed to teach a small class this year. Uh. That was before we knew my prosthetics would crap out though. We'll see."
"Mighty young for a professor," Hagrid commented, and before Ed could bristle, "You must be something pretty special."
Ed relaxed. Maybe it was a little ridiculous that this still stroked his ego at twenty years old, but hell, he'd take what he could get. "Youngest State Alchemist in Amestrian history. My brother Al is just as good, though."
"He's also here as a favor to me," Dumbledore added unexpectedly, "in his capacity as an expert rather than a teacher."
"I thought that was a secret," Ed frowned.
"I would trust Professor Hagrid with my life," Dumbledore said solemnly. Hagrid wiggled a little in obvious joy, making Ed bounce.
"You can count on me!" he said earnestly. "Won't say a word."
Dumbledore stopped them in front of a gargoyle statue. "Peppermint jelly beans," he said clearly, and the gargoyle grunted and took a few grudging steps to one side, letting them through. To Ed, Dumbledore said, "Several rooms in the castle are protected by passwords or other means. The kitchen, for example, requires tickling a painting of a pear."
"That's fucking weird," Ed informed him, and Dumbledore chuckled.
The gargoyle turned out to be guarding an absolutely horrible spiral staircase.
"Yeah, no, I'm not climbing this thing with a wheelchair," Ed said. "Do you know how hard it is to make those turn like this?"
"Ah," Dumbledore frowned. "No, I'm afraid I've never thought of it. Hm."
Ed shrugged.
"Thank you, Hagrid," Dumbledore said, as he was finally setting Ed down in a chair in front of Dumbledore's desk. "Would you mind terribly waiting nearby? We'll likely need your services again before the evening is done."
"Ugh," Ed muttered.
"Course," Hagrid said cheerfully, and turned away to plod back down the stairs. Dumbledore waited until the sounds of his footsteps had faded away before he spoke again.
"Mr. Elric," he said, and all at once the levity was gone. "Are you prepared now to examine the object in question?"
Ed pressed his lips together and nodded, letting his focus narrow down to the room.
Dumbledore leaned down, and Ed heard a drawer open and then close. A moment later, Dumbledore set the object on his desk. A little leather-bound book, with a hole ripped through the middle, like it had been run through with a poker. It was wavy, like it had been soaked and air-dried, and stained red.
Ed frowned, but without a word, he pulled it toward him and tilted it up. He glanced over the front, and then the back. He flipped through the pages.
Stop!
How dare you!
STOP
I'LL KILL YOU
I'LL KILL YOU
YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME THIS WAY
I AM
As if someone had written on the first page of the diary in a frenzy. He flipped all the way through the book to the very back page, and then closed it, put it down, and looked at Dumbledore.
"There's no circle," he said, giving Dumbledore a questioning look.
"Circen revelio," Dumbledore murmured, tapping the book with the tip of his wand. Ed perked up, eyes wide, as a soft beam of light spilled out of it, and an alchemy circle appeared above, written into the air in gold lines.
Ed let his attention lock onto the circle, a new and strange thing he'd never seen before, and with the gentlest nudge, he opened up his mind and let the knowledge of the Gate spill out.
That was the main reason that he had come to Hogwarts, rather than Izumi or Al. It was true that both of them were busy, but honestly, either of their work could have been temporarily put on hold to stop a genocidal madman. Sig was more than capable of hiring help if need be, and Al's work didn't have a time limit or anything.
But it was Ed who had the easiest time accessing the memory of the Gate. Al had seen the most, and Izumi had had time to sit with her knowledge, but Ed could reach in and pluck out what he wanted without getting lost. That was the sort of insight they were likely to need if they were going to work with such a foreign branch of alchemy.
"I've never seen that circuit used as a base before," he murmured, leaning against the desk. "A life for a life... It has a lot of runes I don't recognize, not even from my father's work. Unique to magic, probably. It's something that deals with human souls, but there's no corresponding output, it's not processing them alchemically. But it is holding something, or it was. The circle is inactive. Broken, I think. It has- it's got a weird number of output runes, it has to be pulling from-"
Pain shot through Ed's head, and he hissed, looking sharply away from the circle.
"...That's all I've got for now," he said after a moment, eyes on the wall. He felt out of breath, like he'd just run a mile with his dead-weight automail. "I'll definitely need to do some research into magical runes and symbols, maybe some of the laws of magic, see what I'm working with. It's a complicated circle, but nothing I can't untangle given time." He looked back at Dumbledore, who looked exhausted. His eyes narrowed. "You know what it is?"
"I have... terrible suspicions," Dumbledore said softly. "But in truth, Mr. Elric, I'm afraid that the presence of soul magic does not narrow it down nearly so much as I would like. I fear the worst, but at this moment, all I know for certain is that it is an item of great power and darkness. Will you be willing to take on this task, Mr. Elric?"
Ed looked at the diary again. It looked like such an innocuous object – or at least, it had before he'd seen its circle. No transmutation that used the circle for a Philosopher's Stone as a base could be anything but terrible.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll do it. I'll need a wheelchair and a leg though."
"I'll send Madame Pomfrey to fetch them immediately," Dumbledore said, with no small amount of relief.