The rumors spread like wildfire.

"I heard that Professor Elric dragged the spy to Headmaster Dumbledore's office in the middle of the night."

"I heard that he slit their throat and didn't tell Dumbledore until this morning."

"Forget Professor Elric, did you hear who the spy was?"

All things considered, Ed was pretty pleased with himself. He always did enjoy arriving with a splash, and what better way to make people sit up and pay attention than to sabotage a murderer before the students had gone to bed for the first time?

He was glad that he didn't have a class the next day, though. Hearing his confessions had taken up half the night, listening to him explain in precise and thorough detail exactly what his plan, motivation, and preparation had been – that Veritaserum shit was scary. Dumbledore had looked grim and coldly furious throughout the entire thing, but not once had he looked surprised.

"Then it is true," Dumbledore had said quietly. "Voldemort will attempt to return this very year."

Then he'd disappeared back into his office with Minerva, Alastor, and Severus; Ed suspected that none of them had gotten to sleep at all that night, and Alastor's class had been canceled for the first week.

For his part, Ed spent the time diving back into his studies on magic.

"Albus tells me you're an alchemy specialist."

Startled, Ed glanced up at the door. Moody was coming in through the doorway, clunking with every other step. Ed watched his gait. Still a subtle limp, but nothing like the imposter had walked with; the prosthetic carried Alastor forward as easily as the natural leg.

When he met Alastor's eyes, the man was smirking.

"Good caution," he grunted, and sat down on top of one of the desks. "What's the real reason Albus called you in?"

Ed tilted his head warily. "Did you ask Dumbledore?"

Alastor barked a laugh. "I certainly did. I want to hear what you'll tell me."

Ed shrugged. "He wanted something examined. I'm a biological alchemist, which is a pretty rare specialty anyway, and the runework seems to fall under my field."

"Little more than I got out of him, but not by much," Alastor said approvingly, and swigged from his hip flask. "How much combat experience are you bringing to the table, laddie? I'm having a hard time telling, with that substitute of yours." He nodded at Ed's leg.

Ed's mind flashed to what Dumbledore had said, about suspecting Voldemort's return. Yeah. Made sense that Alastor would want to suss out his allies. "I was a combat alchemist back home for about four years. Switched to research after that, but I'm still technically on call, so I've gone on missions since then."

Alastor grunted inscrutably. "Amestrian, aren't you? I've heard stories about them."

"That was a little before my time, but yeah," Ed agreed. "The reputation's well-earned." That would happen when your government was secretly evil.

Alastor's gaze lingered on him. It was moderately more alarming with his glass eye in, darting back and forth and around. "You lose your limbs in the field, boy?"

Ed went cold, and he clenched his jaw before he replied. "No."

The universe took them as punishment for my arrogance, he didn't say.

"Dumbledore didn't tell me a lot of details about this guy's last rise," Ed said instead, refusing to entertain that subject any further. "But you were right in the thick of it, weren't you?"

"Start to finish," Alastor said with clear pride.

"What can you tell me about him?"

Alastor barked out a mirthless laugh. "What do you need to know?"

Ed considered, shoved a bookmark into the tome in front of him, and shut it. Then he looked up at Alastor. "What's his endgame? You don't need a cult to be a murderous bastard."

The wicked, bloodthirsty grin was an alarming response to that, but there was no mistaking the bitter hatred in Alastor's eyes. "Last time, he was aiming to take down the Ministry. You get power over the law, and you can start pushing Muggleborns out of the Wizarding World. Blood purity bastard."

Ed nodded slowly, ran his fingers back and forth across the old leather cover. "Uh huh. How much of the Ministry does he have already? Do we know?"

Alastor didn't answer right away, and Ed met his eyes in question. Alastor was studying him speculatively. "Does Albus know you're up on your politics, boy?"

Ed shrugged. "It's not my area," he said dismissively. "But my commanding officer is an ambitious bastard, and Amestris... had some issues during my last year of combat duty. It is that deep-rooted, then? There's already people in place?"

"Yep," Alastor agreed. "Hard to say exactly how many. Plenty of people claimed to have been under Imperius, and for some of them that's probably true. Lucius? I don't believe Lucius Malfoy for a damned second."

Ed took note of the name. "Anyone he's likely to reach out to once he knows the first plan fell through?"

"I like the way you think, boy," Alastor said. "He probably won't risk anyone in key positions, but we don't know how desperate he is. If he has the resources, he might break someone out of Azkaban. If not, there's plenty of Death Eaters that live off family money alone."

Ed hummed and decided that the political life of the Wizarding World was not his problem, thank God. "Anything I should watch out for? Remember that I'm not from around here."

Another bloodthirsty grin. "His mark is a skull with a snake running out of its mouth. You'll see it in the sky or on someone's arm. And his followers tend to call him 'the Dark Lord.'" Pause. "Albus'll tell you to say his name – claims that it's more dangerous to fear the name than anything. Me, I don't like to risk it. During the last war, he had his name cursed so he'd know when and where anyone said it. Busts right through most protective wards."

Yikes. "Noted. Anything else?"

"Yeah," Alastor said. "You should come to my first class. I'll be showing the students the old fuck's favorite curses."

The introductory alchemy session turned out to be so popular that Ed couldn't even use his classroom for it. He ended up on a podium in what amounted to a lecture hall, looking up at the crowded room that featured nearly a hundred and fifty students, which was pretty impressive since he understood that Hogwarts itself only had about four hundred total.

"First thing you need to know is that this isn't gonna be a class," Ed said, leaning back on the wall with his hand in his pocket. Most of the students were chatting, but a decent number looked attentive, particularly the ones toward the front. "I'm gonna be calling it a class, because I'm teaching it, but it's not. You won't get homework, I'm not taking attendance, and any grades are gonna be ornamental at best. If you want to learn alchemy, show up. That's it."

So far, so good. A bushy-haired girl in front looked disappointed, and so did a few clusters of obvious friends, but most of the students looked pleased.

"Second thing," Ed continued, "is that there's a difference between an alchemist, and someone who can do alchemy. I'm an alchemist, so for me, it's as much a philosophy as a science. If I was teaching you how to be an alchemist, I'd drop the lot of you into the Forbidden Forest and make you solve a riddle." He paused, judging their reactions. Some of them looked entirely too interested in the idea. "I'm not doing that. If you want to get into that level of commitment, it's something you have to seek out on your own. I'm gonna be teaching you how to do alchemy on a practical level."

Now was the fun part. From what Dumbledore had said, most of these people had never seen alchemy before. A rare treat for Ed.

With a fresh stick of chalk, Ed turned to the wall and started drawing, continuing to speak as he did. "Alchemy uses circle matrices to transmute matter. In simple terms, you draw a diagram of what you want the circle to do, and you use that diagram to alter the shape or composition of physical materials." He glanced up to see a raised hand. "Hey, what's your name?"

"Hermione Granger, sir," Hermione said clearly, eyes intent and focused on him. "I've read previously that the goal of alchemy was to create the philosopher's stone, so that you can become immortal and transform lead into gold."

"Those are the oldest forms of alchemy, yeah," Ed confirmed. "And the symbolic power of both of those still has pretty heavy influence. I'll touch a little on both of them at some point. But alchemy as a whole is much more expansive."

Hermione's eyes sparkled, and Ed had to grin. Yeah, he knew her type. Alchemy was full of her type.

"An alchemy circle has three main components," Ed continued, and tapped on the outline he'd just finished with one knuckle. "The circle itself is the foundation of everything. Without the circle, there's no alchemy." He added a few lines. "The second is the matrix, which shapes the transmutation." The runes. "And the last component is the runes, which do all of the detail work that results in the final product."

He glanced up again and had to hide his smile this time. A little more than half the class looked bored to death, which was what he'd both expected and wanted. Nothing better to describe alchemy than to start them off dozing.

Ed set the chalk down and pressed his hand against the circle.

"All of these together," he said, "let you complete the transmutation."

He pushed his will into the circle, and it flickered dramatically to life, blue bolts of energy dancing up and around the oversized matrix. Within seconds, a large crater melted into the stone wall, and the rock face was reshaped into a large lion, snarling mid-leap as it sprang from the circle. A few students screamed.

Ed smirked, took his hand off the circle, and left it there as he turned away, the lion suspended as if halfway out of the wall.

"Any questions?" he asked, unabashedly cocky, and over a dozen hands went up. He had everyone's attention now. He pointed at one. "Name?"

"Colin Creevey," the student said breathlessly. "When will we be able to do that?"

Ed made a so-so motion with his hand. "It'll depend on your imagination and how much you practice. The transmutation itself is actually pretty easy, stone to stone, so that'll be one of the first things you learn. But it's difficult to make such a complicated shape, so your first attempt would probably look more like this."

He touched the circle again, and in a crackle of energy, all of the lion's detail melted away, leaving a stone blob that looked like it had been roughly hewn into a catlike form. He pointed at another.

"Ginny Weasley. What happened to your arm?" she asked. Well, they'd made it ten minutes.

"Alchemy backlash," Ed said without missing a beat, and turned away to draw another diagram. The universe took them for my arrogance. "Like I said, stone to stone transmutations are about as basic as alchemy gets, but everything follows one guiding principle: equivalent exchange. What goes into the transmutation has to be equal to what comes out. At the most basic level, you have same-material transmutations, where all that has be balanced is the mass. Right above those are compound transmutations, which require knowledge of chemistry to balance – I understand you don't learn that here, which is part of why I'm teaching you specific useful circles instead of alchemy as a whole."

"Does this mean question time is over?" a student asked plaintively. Ed snorted.

"No, I'm explaining what I was doing that cost me my arm and leg," he corrected. "I don't want any of you worrying about that happening in class, 'cause it's not gonna." He sectioned off the two bottom rows of the triangle he'd drawn, labeled 'same material' and 'compound material.' "Above compound material, you have biological transmutations, which are trickier than inanimate ones because then you start to involve large amounts of energy. You can't heal someone alchemically unless you have an energy source on hand, because that's what your cells need to change in that manner."

Ed cut a line between the top two sections of the triangle, and then glanced up at the students. In contrast to the last time he'd fallen into lecture mode, now they looked entranced. A lot of them were taking frantic notes, which made Ed feel some kind of way.

"And finally, you have metaphysical transmutations," Ed said, labeling the last two sections. "That's your philosopher's stone, your creating new life, your bringing back the dead- when you start to involve life itself in your transmutations, that's where you can lose a limb or your eyesight or even internal organs. Don't do that. It's not worth it." He looked back up at the students. "We're only going to be doing direct and compound transmutations, and only simple ones at that. Even getting into biological alchemy would require a foundational knowledge of chemistry that, frankly, none of you have. Yeah? Hermione, right?"

"Right," Hermione said, eyes bright. "If the philosopher's stone is part of the alchemy we won't be touching on, why did you say we'd be learning about it later?"

"Because I never shut the fuck up about alchemy, and I want to talk about it," Ed admitted bluntly, grinning when a few of the students laughed. "We won't be attempting metaphysical or biological transmutations, but I'll probably do a lesson or two about why they're so dangerous – I'll announce 'em ahead of time so you can skip if you're not interested. Or make sure to come. Whichever." He shrugged, and then pointed at another student.

"Cedric Diggory," the student provided without being asked. "What's chemistry?"

Oh boy.

"Hands up, who here knows what chemistry is?" Ed asked. About a third of the students put up their hands. "Huh. Well, chemistry is a science. I guess you could call it arithmancy for physical materials. The simplest way to explain it is probably the water cycle, and maybe a couple of the compounds you can make out of water-"

Poor kids looked completely baffled as he walked them through the physics of water. That would happen when you didn't teach basic science as part of a curriculum. Ed decided that a whole lot of time in this class would probably be devoted to explaining the relevant chemistry as thoroughly as possible.

"Daphne Greengrass," the student said when Ed nodded to her. "Why wouldn't you just do transfiguration instead?"

That was a good question. Ed didn't have an answer for it, and wouldn't until he had more time to research transfiguration. He shrugged instead.

"Why would you take a boat across the lake when you can swim?" he asked rhetorically. "There's a lot of ways to do the same thing. I learned alchemy 'cause my house was full of old alchemy books while I was growing up, and my brother and I read them for fun. I'll tell you one thing though. You don't need a wand to do alchemy. Anything that can make a line, you can make a circle with." Oh, he'd caught someone's interest with that. He pointed. "Name?"

"Harry Potter," the student said, and then ducked his head and didn't ask his question.

"Alright, Harry, what were you about to ask?" Ed prompted, raising an eyebrow. The kid peeked out from under messy hair, and then relaxed.

"What do you mean, anything?" he asked tentatively. "I mean- in an emergency, what could you use?"

"Good question," Ed said, pleased – God, he felt like Izumi. "I've drawn circles with my own blood before. I know a guy who cut one into his hand in a tight spot. Lots of people that had gloves made with transmutation circles on them. You?"

"Draco Malfoy," the student said, leaning back in his seat. "Why would a Muggle education be necessary for such a time-honored magical practice as alchemy?"

His voice was dripping with disdain, and Ed had to repress the urge to roll his eyes.

"Probably because we're all living in the same world, whether you like it or not," Ed said dryly. "Chemistry isn't a standard part of a wizard's education, but that doesn't mean it doesn't apply to you. Only difference is that alchemy is deeply rooted in chemistry, and most other forms of magic aren't." He picked out another student. "Name?"

Overall, Ed thought the first class went pretty well. He got through explaining most of the foundational aspects of alchemy, took a lot of questions, and as far as he could tell, he stirred up a lot of interest. Probably only a dozen or so would stay around for more than a month or two, but given how complicated alchemy was, even that would be impressive.

He did end up having to improvise a schedule, because he wanted to use the classroom that he and Dobby had set up, not this damn lecture hall. So he laid out a rough schedule of A, B, and C days so that no one would have to crowd into the same lesson, and no one would be taking duplicates by accident either.

Hermione stayed behind even once her friends had left, fiddling with her robes, and he raised an eyebrow and beckoned her over. She trotted over confidently, her bag swinging with the weight of too many books.

"Would we be able to learn more alchemy if we knew more chemistry, sir?" she asked without preamble, almost vibrating at the prospect. "I haven't been keeping up with the Muggle curriculum, but I could ask my parents to send me books. I'm a very quick learner!"

"Sure," Ed said without hesitation, giving her a small grin. "I mean, we still couldn't really get into biological alchemy, 'cause frankly that's almost all theoretical. But if you really knew your stuff, I could teach you how to design a circle instead of just how to use specific ones."

Hermione beamed. "I'll write my parents right away!" she promised. "Are you sure you couldn't teach me about biological alchemy? I like theoretical material too!"

Ed had to laugh. "We'll see how well you grasp the earlier concepts," he said. "But if you get to the point where we can talk about my research, I'll get you some alkahestry books too."