AN: YAY finally a proper chapter. Thank you everyone for reviewing and helping me with that awful writer's block, it's still not completely gone but I'm very proud with myself in finally getting this chapter written. Hopefully everything makes sense. I tried to make Ed's interrogation scene as in character as possible but it was really difficult.

Hope you like it!

Ed slept little that night, every time he closed his eyes he remembered. He continued in a cycle of anger and depression until he finally passed out a hew hours before dawn. He slept until he was woken up by another nightmare that left him shaking in a silent scream. An hour and 17 minutes later, the magically unlocked door swung open and Sirius' head poked in. "The Order wants you downstairs." He said to a patiently waiting Ed. The Alchemist nodded once and turned to pick up his red travelers cloak folded neatly on his bed, then followed Sirius out the door.

You've been watching too many Muggle movies Mad-Eye" Ed quipped as he sat in the wooden chair placed in the middle of a spotlight from a single lamp in the dark room. His interrogator remained silent as he circled around the chair until, he gruffly said, "Now we're going to ask you a few questions, and you're going to answer them quickly and truthfully. Right?"

Ed nodded his affirmation.

Mad-Eye started.

Ed didn't plan on telling his interrogators anything. Nowhere in his orders did it state he would have to tell his life story to untrustworthy strangers, no that was Al's job. Ed fondly remembered Al patiently telling Rose about their mother, or when he—NO! Ed wouldn't allow himself to think about his little brother now. He was in an interrogation, and he had to stay focused.

In the seconds it took Moody to form his first question, Ed had already fabricated answers that would both satisfy their curiosity and still match with the information he had already shared. They didn't call him a genius for nothing.

"Edward—" Moody started but was interrupted by Ed who once again reminded everyone that he wanted to be called ED not Edward.

"Edward, tell us everything about Alchemy" Moody continued ignoring Ed's name preference.

"Wow big question, do you want me to share the entire thousand year history of Alchemy or is that too vague? It might take a while but if that's what you want…" Ed's sarcastic remark trailed off and ended in a smirk.

Moody glared harder, "Start with how it works." He growled.

Ed sighed and started his well-rehearsed answer "Alright, Alchemy is the science of altering matter using natural energy. It has three components, Comprehension, or understanding the elemental structure of the material, Deconstruction, the use of energy to break the object into its base elements and reconstruction, the use of energy to reform the materials into a different object." Ed stopped and noticed the confused looks from his 'audience'. He forgot how hard it was to explain alchemy to people who didn't grow up with it, hearing the stories and if they were lucky, experiencing the science themselves when a traveling alchemist passed through.

Ed sighed again and wearily started to rise from his chair, "Want a demonstration?" he offered.

Moody looked like Ed was making a threat and Ed noticed the slight twitch of Mad-eye's hand. The others however (mostly Tonks and Sirius) looked on in curiosity. Sirius actually bounced out of his shadowy corner towards Ed, pushing past Mad-Eye and stared at Ed wide eyed with excitement. "What are you going to do?" He chocked out gleefully, "Can you turn metal into gold?"

Ed chuckled, "No nothing like that." He paused, "well I can, but it's illegal, economic issues and all that."

Sirius looked put out, but he smiled again and asked, "Well what can you do," He sneaked a look at the Aurors in the room, "legally I mean."

Ed smirked, this he could do, forget Mustang's stupid assignment about protecting someone. Ed might be used to protecting Al but Al could take care of himself also, and so soon after loosing Al he didn't want a pseudo brother to watch over and a bunch of personal questions in a barely lit room. But now he didn't have to worry about that, all he needed to do now was clap his hands, focus on the stone floor and channel the energy. Comprehend. Deconstruct. Reconstruct.

"Watch."

The lone clap echoed around the silent room, blue light filled the room a second later. The inhabitants of the room were impressed, bordering on shock as the flat stone floor morphed into an impressive if not slightly small statue of Major Armstrong in his classic Armstrong family pose. Ed could almost hear Armstrong's booming voice; "the secret has been passed down the Armstrong family for generations!"

Ed shook his head to rid himself of the voice and smiled at the memories. He straightened and stood back to appraise his work, nodding with satisfaction.

"It's a little small, there's not much space in the room. I had to focus on the details instead." He mused. Indeed the statue, so small compared to its model's size was decorated in formed muscles and even had tiny sparkles around its head.

"He's a colleague of mine. " Ed nodded to the military uniform pants the stone Armstrong wore.

"Interesting people in the military…"Sirius trailed off, unsure about what to say.

Ed smirked. "Thought you might like it Black."

"And where did you learn Alchemy?" Remus asked. Ed lost count but he thought this was at least the 10th useless question he answered in the last 20 minutes.

"My brother and I taught ourselves the basics from our father's books, but after Mom died we studied under a private teacher."

"Your mother died?" Molly couldn't imagine how her children would cope without her.

" A disease passed through our town." Ed looked down caught in the memory of learning his mother would never get better, "It was incurable."

"But what was that thing your boggart turned into? It said you were its son. Was that your mother?" Molly asked again.

"No" Ed said clearly "that wasn't my mother. It was simply a nightmare left from my childhood, after seeing my mother wasting away and not being able to do anything to help." Essentially this was the truth; he just didn't say that the nightmare was once real and tangible.

Judging by the approving nods traveling through the room, the adults believed his answers so far but Ed knew it would only get harder.

"Where was your father? You said you learned alchemy from his books so was he an alchemist also?" Arthur wondered

"That bastard is nothing." Ed barely kept the snarl out of his voice, "He left when I was young, he didn't even come back when Mom was sick"

Again pity, always pity.

"And the mistake you mentioned? How did you have to return your bodies to normal?" once again Remus asked all the hard questions

"It was a car accident, my fault," here Ed looked down and he didn't fake the guilt that remained permanently on his face as he thought about all the times his stupidity hurt Al.

"And the bodies?" Moody prompted

"Al was left with a mangled arm and a few scars. I joined the military because it had access to all the new technology, and I hoped it would be able to help AL" The half-truths came faster now from his mouth as Ed expertly twisted his life into only what he wanted the others to know.

"The military" Tonks repeated as if remembering something, "Is that why you act as if your 40 not 16?"

"You did say something about other mass murderers the first day we met." Sirius

"Probably" Ed said in response to Tonks' question, then he turned to Sirius, "Soon after joining, I had the misfortune of crossing paths with Barry the Chopper a insane serial killer that found pleasure in chopping humans into little bits. He kidnapped a friend of mine, and I went after him."

Ed's watered down story seemed to placate the adults and he continued answering more menial questions about alchemy and his time in the military. He tried to tell the truth most of the time, that's what makes a lie believable after all, an element of truth, mostly he just left out anything about Human Transformation, the Homunculus and the Philosopher's stone.

The room was silent for a minute and Ed thought they had finally run out of questions, but then he heard,

"What was that Gate your boggart turned into?" Lupin's innocent question immediately caused Ed's heart to quicken and his eyes widened.

"It's nothing." He hoped they forgot about that.

"It doesn't seem like nothing." Sirius moved closer and peered at him in a twinish manner.

"I don't want to talk about it!" Ed tried to contain his anger, another breakdown wouldn't make them trust him but he wouldn't, couldn't talk about the Gate without admitting to everything else.

"Now look here boy-" Moody started menacingly but he was interrupted by the door behind Ed opening and the Leader of the Light, Dumbledore himself walked in.

"I think that's enough for today Alastor don't you?" Dumbledore's twinkling eyes and slight smile looked welcoming but left no room for arguments.

Mad-Eye Moody moved out of the way allowing Ed to get up and walk out the door, nodding to Dumbledore respectfully on the way out.

The rest of the summer was fairly uneventful, excluding the day of Harry's trial, also the day their Hogwarts letters arrived. Hermione was proud and, while she wouldn't admit it to anyone, kinda surprised Ron was made a Perfect. She could tell that while Harry was glad he wasn't expelled from Hogwarts, he was jealous of Ron and didn't understand how he wasn't made Prefect instead. Hermione thought it was good for Ron to have some recognition, he was always living in the Golden Boy's shadow. Harry also needed to learn that he wouldn't be receiving any special treatment from anyone even Dumbledore this year, as the entire Wizarding population thought he was an attention-seeking liar. It was harsh but Harry was never prepared, she tried to help him but the headstrong Gryffindor didn't always listen. She suspected that Dumbledore was avoiding Harry also. For what reason Hermione couldn't fathom but he had apparently Apparated right into the meetings (he could do this because Dumbledore can do anything) and left right as they finished. The trio didn't even know he was there until the next day. Ed on the other hand was becoming more integrated into the Weasley way of life. He stopped going to Order meetings, and the twins suspected the only reason he was privy to any information at all was that the first meetings were about Ed himself. The twins and Ed got along really well, sometimes. Fred and George made two important discoveries about their guest,

When he felt like it, he could come up with intricate and genius pranks that rivaled the twins'.

He was self-conscious about his height. VERY self-conscious.

The twins often entertained themselves by muttering the words small, tiny or shrimp, while Ed was in the room and then stepping back and watching as Ed exploded. Indeed Ed's temper seemed to grow everyday, Hermione suspected he was just normally humorously short tempered. Although some of the mystery surrounding their guest disappeared as he opened up and shared more about his younger brother and his travels, Hermione noticed some weird things about the newest addition to their group. He often woke up earlier than even Mrs. Weasley and Hermione suspected he spent that time exercising because once or twice when she woke up early to sneak a slightly dark book out of the library, she saw him returning from outside sweating lightly and wearing only sweatpants and a light cotton long sleeved T-shirt. Also, he studied a lot (and that was saying something coming from Hermione). Even though he couldn't do magic and most books in the Black library were on magical history and theory (mostly dark) not curses and jinxes, Herm still found it suspicious that in his short time at Grimmauld place Ed managed to read over half the Library. And it was huge. Hermione herself was only able to read a handful of the thick, if not sometimes dry, old texts.

When the wizard children finally left Grimmauld place to shop for school supplies in Diagon Alley without Ed, they were asked what they thought about him.

The children currently residing in number 12 Grimmauld Place decided that all in all, they thought Ed was an okay sort of fellow, a bit strange, and shame abut him being a squib and all.

3:27am September 1st Somewhere in London

A flash of light lit up the dark London alley. A family of rats froze as they gazed into the white of an eye that appeared on the side of the building. Inside the eye a green dragon twisted and flew forward. Another flash of light blinded the scavengers, and when their sight returned a young man stood in front of the wall where the eye once lay. The rats followed the strange man with messy green hair and slitted purple eyes, so unlike anything they had ever seen, as he walked on bare feet to a half broken window and checked his reflection. Pale hands reached up to fix the palm tree styled hair. Satisfied with his appearance he swirled around and posed with a smirk on his face. His expression darkened and the rats fled. The man paid them no attention as they scurried out of the alley, instead he ran his hands over his body, his smirk growing darker and wider, "Back to normal. Good." His evil whisper followed the terrified creatures out of the alley, it flew on the breeze across town and sneaked into the open window of a certain alchemist's bedroom. Golden eyes opened and the alchemist whispered one word, a word full of fear, anger and hatred.

"Envy."

Author's note: OOOOOOoooooooo Look who just arrived in London from the gate, wonder what kind of late night shenanigans he's going to get up to. Maybe something with Voldie? Hmm who knows? I sure don't, and you know what that means. Yes that's right it's up to YOU the readers to decide what happens next.

Okay not really, but if you review with ideas and encouragement, there's a high probability I will use your ideas since I have none of my own.

So don't forget to relinquish all copyright claims on your ideas before reviewing.

I'd like to finish this long awaited chapter to thank Mon Esprit Libre, demonicclover666,PhoenixGirl513,Dashita Tichou, the Mysterious 'Guest' and the wonderful Nekogami Bastet. Your ideas really helped me write this chapter.