FicWad

AN: la la la fandom hell la la la so going there la la

***


Edward Elric had a plan.

It was not, to be honest, his most brilliant of plans. In fact, there were so many weak points in it that a not particularly strong wind could knock it over and scatter it in the neighbor's yard with ease. But he had set out before to do some crazy shit in his life and succeeded so why not go for it? He could pull it off and reap the benefits. He knew he could, provided he could get inside.

Which was the biggest (damned if he was going to say tallest) hurdle to jump over.

He spent days reading, studying, plotting but always ended up hitting the hurdle face first. It was beginning to grate on his nerves.

Slumped over a scratched up table in an old bar, Ed read and reread scrawling black lines. To find an excuse, a loophole, a /way in/. And time and again his only answer was a firm 'Access Denied'.

"AGH!" Flopping backwards in his seat, the alchemist tugged on his hair. "This is getting me nowhere fast," he growled at the ceiling.

A shadow fell over him.

"Mr. Elric, I presume?" Half-moon glasses, long grey hair, a pointy hat. The man broke no stereotypes.

Ed sat up straight and peered at the man through narrowed eyes, wary and ready to upend the table in a second's notice. "What's it to ya?"

"May I sit?" The old man didn't wait for a reply, already taking a place on one of the beat-up wood chairs. He folded his hands neatly on the table. "I have a proposition for you. One that will, I feel, benefit you in the end."

"Yeah?" The blonde looked bored, tapping one finger on the table's surface, but didn't look away. "Sorry, but I'm not interested."

"I find that hard to believe, Mr. Elric, when presented with so much evidence to the contrary," the old man said kindly and his eyes twinkled somehow as they look over the books scattered on the table.

/Twinkled/.

Ed shook his head but waved for the man to continue. Which he did.

"My name, as you likely already guessed, is Albus Dumbledore. I believe you've read about me."

"You...you're the one that made a..."

Dumbledore cut him off. "I did indeed, my dear boy, with the help of one Nicholas Flamel." Ed stiffened, picturing the flamel that stood out on his back. "But you knew that already."

"So why are you here?"

"As I said. To offer you a proposition."

*

He wasn't sure how he got himself into these messes.

Okay, so maybe he did know. Usually it involved his slight obsession with the Philosopher's Stone and getting everything back to normal, back to the way it should be. Sometimes it involved his running forward without hesitation. Occasionally it was his temper that got the better of him. But he had even more resources now, an entire library to wander through- albeit on guard. Some of those books were almost homicidal, as he had unwittingly found out- filled to the brink with information he couldn't find anywhere else.

Hogwarts, he had found, had a lot of things that couldn't be found anywhere else.

Including a professor that was shorter than he was. It allowed Ed to feel rather...well, smug.

Granted, there was also a giant of a man whose kneecaps the alchemist could easily bite off but /still/. One took what one could in some matters.

And in return for this- equivalent exchange, of course, always that- he was given a job. A job he knew nothing about but hell if you would admit that. He had had to post-pone his mission objective to read up on the subject a bit and it seemed easy enough to teach...

Now Ed sat at his desk, peering around at the mass of faces that in turn watched him with some eager and some doubtful expressions. He couldn't move too much, as he was perched precariously on several heavy textbooks for added height, but he figured he looked all the more intimidating for it.

He waved at them all and smiled. "How's it going?"

The tension mostly broke.

"So, I supposed to be teaching you about Dark Arts, right?"

"Defense against," a bushy-haired girl informed him.

"Heh, Defense against then," Ed scratched the back of his head, idly picking up a book and scanning the first page before dropping it back onto the desk. "I guess ducking and covering doesn't help with this stuff, huh?"

A white-haired boy up front was smirking at him in a very Mustang way. Ed twitched. "I heard you didn't know anything. I heard you were a Muggle." The smirk widened, apparently because the boy was proud of how good his hearing was, and Ed twitched a bit more.

All he had to do was clap his hands...change that quill the boy was holding a bit...nothing too serious.

No, Ed, he told himself. Wait until after you have some new information.

"I also heard," the boy continued, "that you're after the Philosopher's Stone for some reason."

Several people gasped, some murmured, most looked confused.

Ed was in danger of tipping over into an ungraceful sprawl, teeth clenched and automail hand making the desk's corner splinter.

The bushy-haired girl and her friends exchanged quick glances, the alchemist noted.

"Is that so?" Ed said, soft and dangerous. The classes quieted immediately. Mini-Mustang's smirk faltered when the blonde clapped his hands together and planted them on the desk.

And stopped.

Ed grinned at the anxious faces. "Saaa...rumors are everywhere, aren't they? Why don't you guys just write me an essay about what you've studied so far?"

Within a minute the students had settled themselves down. There was a period of silence, interrupted only by the scratching of quills and turning of pages, before the white-haired kid (his age, true, but he was the professor here) spoke again.

"Potter there was the one to find the stone in our first year."

The books, damn them, decided that they wouldn't stand for his sudden movement and toppled over along with the rest of Ed's resolve.

*

Potter turned out to be a tall black-haired boy. His scar made him special, it seemed, and Ed vaguely wondered how damn special his scars would make him to these people before deciding he honestly didn't care. This kid had gotten his hands on a Philospher's Stone.

With ease, it sounded like, and for no reason other than to play hero and for a second Ed hated Potter, but that passed too.

Didn't stop him from cornering the boy and demanding the whole story.

"Why do you want it?" Harry demanded, giving no answer to Ed's questions.

"To fix something." Ed glared at some point on the stonewall, hands curling into fists. "To fix a mistake that shouldn't have been made."

Harry's jaw tightened as he stared at the blonde. "You can't have it. No one can. Dumbledore told me-"

"I need it," Ed stated, growled almost, tiredly.

The other boy just stared back stubbornly.

Cloth shredded as it met jagged stone in a fast, hard punch and Harry only saw a glint of steel before the eldest Elric turned and stalked down the hallway.


"You could have fuckin mentioned something," Ed snarled.

"Ah. And what would you have had me mention?" Dumbledore asked, hands clasped behind his back and looking to all the world as if he were engaged in a conversation about the weather.

"The fact that the Stone was here. Is here, for all I know, and that some kids-"

"Those 'kids', as you say, stopped a Dark Lord from gaining power."

"Sorry, old man, but that's bullshit. You could have done the same thing, probably faster, without getting them involved." Ed half-smiled, grim and thoughtful. "And that has nothing to do with anything."

"On the contrary, Mr. Elric, I believe it does." The voice was suddenly sterner, more serious. Demanding attention and respect. "They did not desire the Stone and gained much for it." There was a pointed look directed at the alchemist, gone quickly but not fast enough.

And suddenly one automail hand was fisted in purple robes, tugging the old wizard forward and down until Ed could look him straight in the eyes. "You're playing games, old man, and trying to teach me a lesson I don't need to hear," Ed spat and pushed away, metal fingers clenched in a raised fist.

Dumbledore stared back at him calmly, eyes lacking in mirth and filled instead with...what? Disappointment? Regret? /Pity/?

Ed took another step back and took a deep breath before grinning. "Looks like you wasted my time, old man, and I wasted yours. Now I'll have to listen to that bastard colonel gloat..."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Gold eyes glanced at him. "Don't worry about it. I have to listen him all the time anyway, for one thing or another. Later." Tucking his hands into his pockets, Ed turned and started walking.

"I do not believe it was a waste of my time. Not entirely."

A quick flash of a grin and the echoing of footsteps was his only reply.