A/N: I promise I'm not dead! Life hit and I spent a lot of time wrapping up the timeline for this fic (because let's face it, JK Terfling's timelines are a mess!) and I'm still nitpicking it. As an apology, please enjoy a longer chapter! Fingers crossed we'll be smoother sailing from here on out.
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[Present]
It was at breakfast that McGonagall managed to corner him.
Reluctantly starving, Edward blearily made his way down to the great hall at his usual early hour. After the events of last night, he wasn't too enthused about the risk of socializing, tempted to hole up in his room, sore and cold and exhausted, until he was forced to go to class and fulfill the demands of his damned contract with Albus. Unfortunately, his overactive metabolism said otherwise, and wizards, the social creatures that they were, had seemingly never heard of the concept of room service.
To add insult to injury, when he finally limped his way into the great hall, a couple small clusters of students looked up from their tables to stare at him, and eating patiently at the head table sat professors Quirrell and McGonagall, the latter watching him carefully with a single raised brow.
Edward cursed generously in his mind as he made his way up to the teacher's table, chin held high.
"Professor Elric," Minerva greeted coolly.
"Good m-morning, P-Professor Elric, Quirrell stuttered with a nervous smile and a small wave.
Edward sat in a chair nearby, resigned to his fate as he reached for a plate stacked with toast.
"Perhaps you would like some tea in my office after breakfast?" McGonagall proposed. It wasn't a question.
"Sure," Waving his hand passively in acknowledgement, Edward spread butter on his bread a little too harshly, his automail giving what he hoped looked more like a nervous spasm than a mechanical failure. It was disappointing really, how much technology had progressed beyond what he remembered from Amestris, except in the realm of disability accommodations. As broken as his limbs were, they still far surpassed the best "modern" medicine had to offer. The wizards were faring better, bearing the ability to completely regrow limbs like a lizard under close supervision, but he wouldn't dare relive the pointless agony he'd experienced when it had once been attempted on him. He swore he'd heard Truth laughing in his ears as the magic had failed. The resulting panic and disturbing fizzing from the Stone hadn't helped.
It had been a stupid moment of selfishness.
Chowing through his overly-hearty breakfast, Edward stole quiet glances at Minerva and Quirrell. Minerva seemed to be waiting for him, merely taking dainty sips of something that smelled like pumpkin spice. Quirrell kept his head down as he ate while reading out of some book, taking glances at students anytime they came through the doors, as if he was looking out for someone. Edward pretended to pay him no mind.
When his plate emptied, Minerva set down her cup.
"You mentioned tea?" Edward proffered politely before she could turn to him.
"Come with me."
Minerva led him through the long hallways, heels clapping ominously on the floor. Edward understood why some of the students were terrified of her; she had a flair for the dramatics just like he had when he'd been her age. He chuffed humorously under his breath and she gave him a wordless singularly raised eyebrow.
"Sit," she commanded when they reached her office, casually shooting sparks into the fireplace where a kettle hung waiting and procuring a tray of biscuits from nowhere that she set upon the desk. "Earl grey or breakfast?"
"Breakfast, please." Edward placed himself in the cushioned chair that sat opposite her desk. It was lumpy, but he was thankful for the squish that was more comfortable than the hard wood of the great hall's thrones. He watched Minerva putz around her office with an air of dramatized stiffness, gracefully accepting the drink that she offered him in a teacup gilded lightly with silver trim.
They sat and sipped for a few moments in silence until McGonagall finally spoke.
"I hear you decided to teach your students using… unconventional methods." she pried.
"Everything about alchemy is unconventional to you wizards," Edward responded, humored. He continued to sip his tea. Minerva's face soured.
"You attacked a student in your class."
"Ah, I see the issue. Correction!" Edward held up a finger, wagging it with an amused smirk, "I asked a student to attack me. I merely 'defended' myself as a demonstration. Besides, nobody was hurt. Is there a problem?"
"You are intimidating and putting students in danger on their first day!" the witch emphasized unhappily.
"And?" Edward leaned forward, gently tapping his fingertips together, "Professor McGonagall, alchemy is dangerous. For the students to not understand their consequences may be fatal. I know I am not the only class that uses practical lessons. Hell, you even have a duelling club, do you not? On which lesson would you expect me to begin demonstrating the dangers? Two? Three? Ten? The only thing that changes is their awareness of what they are handling. If you actually asked me, I could say that they are in less 'danger' when told up front." Leaning back in his chair and sighing dramatically, he added, "Besides, that was a very controlled situation. I would hardly call it life threatening. I daresay that it was even very nice of me."
"Nice? And for the record, Elric, active duelling has not been practiced here for at least forty years due to student injury." Minerva seemed to have controlled her mask of calm, merely pointing an eyebrow at him and sipping from her teacup with a pinky lightly out. The picture of quaint.
"I see," Edward hmmed, "Well… my teacher taught me by throwing knives at my head. With that in consideration, I think you would have to rate my demonstration as on more fair grounds." McGonagall's eyes narrowed, searching his forehead as if he had any scars to show for it. Unfortunately for her, any scars he'd had to show from Amestris had faded long, long ago. He didn't even remember if he'd ever gotten any on his face to begin with. The Stone wouldn't allow his skin to be anything but pristine.
"Who was your teacher?" Minerva kept her cool.
"No-one you need be concerned about." Edward kept his face painfully straight. In truth, and something he was loath to admit to even himself, for a time, he hadn't even remembered Izumi curtis' name. It had simply been swallowed by time, and it wasn't the only name he had forgotten. The sick irony of it all was that the very people he was forgetting were all very likely still with him in his chest. The sharp price he had to pay. Unlike Hohenheim, he couldn't communicate with them individually.
In a mad fervor, one night long ago, he had written down every single name he could remember on a piece of paper. But by then, to his mistake and deep chagrin, it had already been too late to remember some in full. Others he hadn't been able to recall at all.
And then there was the faces.
He had screamed, when he'd realized- cried when he had been unable to recall the faces. What color were Winry's eyes? Did Fuery have a beard? Was Breda's hair black or brown? Winry's parents were… were…
Some of these things- precious, precious few- had been answered by Erised. Others were lost forever. Being a crack shot at drawing, Edward had furiously sworn to remember at least the names on the page. It was all he could do.
"All you need to know is that Albus Dumbledore trusts me, and that I am older than I seem. I know what I am doing."
"Yes… he does trust you, and because of that, I have no doubt of what you speak… but perhaps I shall speak more directly to the point. He has not answered me this; how old are you? Who are you? You do not strike me as just the simple alchemist both of you are playing it out to be." McGonagall, with well-practiced casualness, gracefully poured herself another cuppa, giving a tiny sniff as she leaned back with her steaming mug. Her piercing eyes never left Edward as she did so.
"Ahh…" Edward studied her. Was he detecting… concern? Confusion? Irritation? …Jealousy? "As nosey as he is, Albus is always very good at keeping secrets," Edward replied with a grim, sardonic smile. "I'm afraid he may have picked up some of that from me."
"You've known him for a long while, then?"
"...Something like that. You could say. In truth, I believe he is more invested in me, than I am to him. If it eases your fears, you could call this situation as both of us simply… doing each other a final favor. I do not trust him with the stone, he does not trust me to stick around. My teaching contract is simply extra insurance. But hear me this," Edward leaned much closer, voice dropping an octave and finger prodding the table in emphasis, "I have no intention of harming any students in this facility. I am here to do what I can to protect them from the worst at least until the stone is safely secured elsewhere. You needn't fear my company nor presence."
"You will not throw knives at our students, then?" Minerva quipped, her shoulders relaxing a little, though the odd look never left her face. Edward laughed.
"No! No. I do not think the little fledgelings would be able to handle such a method! I am not my teacher. And while I hold similar values, I also bear no interest in trying to speed teach my art. Some things… need not be passed on." Perhaps the entire class, he thought to himself amidst the grumblings from his Stone.
"I appreciate your insights. In future, please try to keep any fighting out of your classroom, at least for the first and second years. What goes around, comes around, yes?"
"I hear." Edward placated patiently, "And thank you for the tea. But I will not cease to show students the potential dangers of what they are handling. They deserve to know what kind of power they are playing with, for the safety of themselves and others. Would you teach apparition or the art of animagi without due warning? However, you can do me a favor." Edward mentioned as he stood from his chair, preparing to end the conversation.
"And what is that?"
"If you see any student, I don't care what year, trying to perform alchemy without my presence, stop them and let me know, yeah? And whatever you do, don't try to counter the alchemy with magic while it is active. Actually, I should let all of the teachers know that." he mused.
"What would that do?"
"Nothing good happens when you mix that kind of science with magic. Which is something the students will be learning very quickly, if they get that far."
"I see." McGonagall paused, speaking up again only when Edward had his hand on the door handle, "Why is Albus asking you to teach, if alchemy is so dangerous?"
"I expect," Edward replied with a soft, pursed-lip smile, "that it is simply the whims of a long-lost dream. Good day, Professor McGonagall."
Harry Potter didn't quite know what to expect with wizarding school. Between the ghosts, Peeves, the castle's confusing moving hallways and stairs, and the strange and unusual classes, he was still feeling overwhelmed on the second day. Fortunately, his new wizardly friend Ron wasn't too much better off.
"I swear," Ron groused as Harry helped him pull his leg out of the hidden collapsing stair for the second time that day, "did they not think about student safety when they made this place?" he frowned, mourning the new splinter in his ankle.
"Maybe it wasn't built for students? Like a reused building?" Harry guessed unhelpfully.
"Then why would it be a school now? Wouldn't they like, un-curse the place first?" Ron pointed out as they continued to their next class.
"It makes sense that they would I guess," Harry shrugged, not knowing much about un-cursing, and glanced down at his paper schedule. Their next class was Alchemy, something Harry was looking forward to as he'd met Professor Elric before. It was one of the only things he had more knowledge of than the rest of the students. Not to mention that this was the first year that the class was being taught, meaning everyone in the whole school was on the same level.
Ron was not looking forward to alchemy. "I don't see why they are adding this class anyway. Percy said that the Professor attacked a student in the first class! What if we're told to duel the teacher or something? He looked real mean."
"He's not so bad," Harry defended for the umpteenth time. "I think he's more… sickly?" he thought back, remembering that the professor had spent most of their time together limping and cursing and, he suspected after the bank, about to faint.
"Yeah, but, what if it's a ploy? Percy said he attacked-"
"Didn't your other brothers say that they had to fight a troll to get sorted?"
"Well, yeah, but Percy's not a liar like them. He's the family favorite."
"Oh." Said Harry, suddenly feeling a lot more nervous as they joined the growing collection of students nearing the alchemy classroom. If they had to fight, well… he supposed he had some experience with Dudley and his gang, but it always ended up with him on the ground and his glasses broken (again). No, he was not good at fighting, just running away.
The classroom itself looked unimposing, when they all entered. Nothing hung on the walls and the chalkboard at the head was wiped clean. Each desk had a stack of papers and a pencil laid neatly atop, to Harry's relief. He was still figuring out how to write with a quill. His (admittedly vague) notes from History of Magic had big ink splotches all over them already. He and Ron picked seats at the very back of class.
It was only after everyone had been seated that the Professor came out of the back room and planted himself in front of his desk, staring down the whole room. Harry was immediately intimidated by his narrowed golden eyes, much in a similar way as he had been for McGonagall's staredown in her transfiguration class the day before. Was this just a normal wizard thing?
"Right," Professor Elric glared at them, crossing his arms. "Is everyone here?" his sharply golden eyes scanned the entire room, seeming to linger longer than necessary on each student. The silence intensified. Upon no objection, he nodded. "Good. Then let's begin. Welcome to Intro to Alchemy. I am Professor Elric, and if you have any stupid questions, please point them out the window because I am about to explain everything from square one."
Harry and Ron left Professor Elric's class with relief, minds whirring at the information they had received.
"And I thought Professor McGonagall was strict," Ron complained as they trudged to lunch, "Why is he even teaching if he just wants to kick everyone out of class? Professor Elric is crazy!"
"You could just leave the class, you know." a bushy-haired girl- Hermione, Harry remembered, spoke up. "He only wants to kick out those who don't want to learn. What else would you go to school for?"
Ron made a scrunched face. "That's none of your business, is it?" He shot back at her. She huffed, lifting her chin in the air and stalking away. "Oh, good. She left."
Harry was glad nobody broke out into a fight. He relaxed some. "It was a little crazy. None of the other teachers have threatened to kick us out. At least he didn't make us fight him." Professor Elric had seemed moody as usual, but in better spirits than he had been when they had visited Gringotts. He hadn't given Harry any weird looks or attention during class (the first teacher so far), which had made Harry feel much less uncomfortable in his class. He still wasn't used to the celebrity attention. Between that and the fact that his class seemed to be based more in science, which Harry was familiar with, left him with a strange hope about fitting in. It had at least left him able to help Ron by whispering facts in his ear rather than the other way around for once.
"Yeah. But he taught us how to throw a punch. What's that supposed to mean?" Ron speculated, mimicking the motion that Professor Elric had suddenly drilled them into in the middle of explaining the danger of relying only on wands. Harry shrugged. "I guess it was memorable. And he didn't assign homework aside from that!"
"Unlike Professor Binns." Harry agreed mournfully. "If there was any class I wish I could get kicked out of…"
Ron snorted. "That would be the one. No contest. I'd rather eat my foot!"
On Friday, Edward found himself trumping down the stairs to the great hall in some relief; the rain had let up leaving his sore ports feeling better, and it was the last day of teaching before the weekend. Nobody had died yet, although he had received a daring letter of love from some fourth year student that he had effectively removed from class and subsequently threatened termination from his classroom over with every successive class, then displayed outside of his classroom with an obnoxious "NO. :)" written on it.
This had caused many giggles from students when seen, but Edward's goal seemed to have been achieved as he hadn't received any more unwarranted love confessions for his new wall of shame.
Settling in his seat next to Severus, he unrolled his Daily Prophet prepared to read it over bacon and eggs with his usual disinterest as early bird students slowly filtered into the hall. Instead, today's headline caught his eye.
GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST
"Oh boy," Edward shook his head, "So much for their un-stealable claims. Hang on…" He frowned when the article mentioned the attempted thievery date. "This…"
"Edward?" Snape asked as he stood abruptly from his chair, the remains of his breakfast forgotten. The potions professor craned his neck to try and read the article but Edward, on a mission, rolled up the paper and immediately marched away out of the hall.
He was so preoccupied he nearly crashed into a first year on his way out. "Oh my god, sorry, Professor!" she squeaked with wide eyes, almost dropping her stack of books. Edward waved her off, continuing on his way.
Footsteps echoed behind him, and Edward would have rolled his eyes at Severus following him but the sudden panic choking his throat kept him preoccupied. Only checking to see if anyone else was following, Edward broke out into a run once he reached the first empty hallway, thankful not for the first time that not many were about this early in the morning.
'Find it, it must be there!' his Stone was shouting. As fast as he could unseen by students, he reached the lonely room where Erised sat. Only mildly relieved by the still-locked door, Edward burst into the room and ripped the gray sheet off of the keeper of the Stone.
"Alphonse?" Edward panicked at the briefly empty glass. One blink later, he gasped as the familiar figure of his brother appeared. Edward pressed his hand against the glass, searching for the tearing, raw feeling of the philosopher's stone still inside, breathing a sigh of relief as the horrifying feeling ripped through him.
'Save it!' his chest still panicked and Edward struggled to catch his breath as his confused body's adrenaline tried to settle against the riot that was his Stone. He sighed and slumped his forehead against the mirror.
"Brother?" Alphonse's confused voice spoke out.
"Alphonse?" A nasally voice wheezed behind him. Shit. Swallowing a mouthful of expletives, Edward turned around to face Snape, mentally kicking himself for forgetting about him. "Who is that? What is this about?" The man had his hands on his knees, whipped from chasing him up three flights of stairs. Barely keeping himself from snapping none of your business!, Edward peeled himself off of the cold mirror and double checked the hallway outside before shutting the door and making sure the silencing spell was active.
"Why did you follow me?" Edward bit harshly.
"Am I not allowed to be concerned for a colleague when they burst off in a panic?" Snape growled back. Behind the annoyance, there was something strange in the look he gave Ed.
"Here." Edward tossed the Prophet to him. "A break-in to Gringotts, the day Hagrid and I were picking up Flamel's stone? A just-emptied emptied vault? You can't tell me it was a coincidence! That means someone knew where the Stone was being kept, and may know where it is now! It's not safe here!"
Severus read the article slowly, eyebrows furrowing. Finally, he looked up at Edward with a sigh of defeat. "You are likely right, and this should be brought to Dumbledore. I… also have some news that might be best to share under this revelation, that you may not like to hear."
"What?"
With a thick veil of calm, Severus hesitantly pushed up the sleeve of his right arm. Edward frowned deeply when he saw the dark snake and skull that lay there.
"A death eater…?" Edward's frown turned darker.
"During the war, I was a highly successful spy for Albus Dumbledore," Snape explained as Edward's hands creeped closer together. "Due to my immense skill in occlumency and pretentious nature, I was able to fool He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named whilst gathering intel from his ranks. Nobody suspected me. I thought I recognized Quirrell's voice from somewhere, and performed an… experiment. And I was right. Death eaters can always find out who each other are if they try." the man explained with a slightly sadistic grin. "I'll admit, it was fun to give him a scare."
"Why did you not tell me this earlier?" Edward seethed.
"Relax. I had my suspicions, but only confirmed so recently. It is also not every day one hands out such deep secrets." Snape sniffed, raising a thick eyebrow at him. "You must understand the weight of the trust I am placing in you right now."
"Yeah." Edward grumbled, still not relaxing but a little appeased.
"I have little doubt that Quirrell is working with You-Know-Who and trying to find the philosopher's stone, but while we can both guarantee that while he knows it is somewhere in this castle, I can assure you that he is unaware of precisely where. And something is certainly more off with him than just this. I have been tailing him at night when I can."
"You know… thank you." Edward thanked genuinely, surprised. Severus sniffed pretentiously. "I don't know why I didn't do that myself sooner."
'Because you were with Them.'
"...I suppose I should share something in return. Equivalent exchange." Edward chewed his lip nervously.
'No, no no no!'
"You probably already guessed, but that mirror has something to do with the stone. I will not tell you how it works, but try not to look at your reflection. It's quite addictive." Edward tried to cover up his shaky nerves by stalking over to cover the frame once more. "We must keep Quirrell away from this room at all costs."
"I see," Snape crossed his arms contemplatively. "I had wondered why I caught you in this hallway that one night."
"And you were following Quirrell." Edward shot back. "Which means he got close to this room. Damnit, Albus!" Edwar stomped his foot in frustration, his prosthetic banging a little harder than it should have against the stone floor, causing a dangerous creak. "Quirrell is also designing his own part for the protection. I bet he's going to try to sabotage. And we have an information leak. Who put Flamel's stone in the vault? How was the vault number leaked? Albus said it was only he and Nicholas… damnit! Nicholas is not known for his subtlety."
"Would that not mean the Stone is more secure now? Since it is out of his hands?"
"Not if Albus let him know. Ugh! Come if you want," Edward snatched the newspaper off the floor, "Professor Dumbledore and I are going to have a long chat."