If anyone that knew Edward Elric had witnessed his first day at Hogwarts, they would have wondered when Alphonse had grown to resemble Edward so closely. He sat quietly, observing. The lessons themselves were immaterial, simply information to be assimilated. It wasn't as if he had a practical interest in magic anymore.

Instead of practicing the lessons with the rest of the class, he sat and watched the students and the professors. He noticed the glares and calculating glances sent his way, particularly noting those that happened when they thought he wasn't paying attention. He wanted to know if they looked at him that way because of Umbridge's little announcement or because he was an Ambassador or some other reason, but there was no way to find out.

There was an undercurrent of tension with some of the students though. Most were happy and healthy in a way he hadn't experienced in years, but there were a few that carried themselves more tightly, their faces more shadowed. He knew enough of this world to know what Harry Potter looked like, enough to know why the boy would carry himself like that. He had some interest in finding out if the boy's claims were accurate, but the boy himself was unlikely to be a good source of information. Mustang would probably be able to find out more than Ed, the Ministry far more likely to have information on the topic than a school. Besides, whether or not a madman had returned from hiding was of no issue to Ed. A terrorist didn't affect whether or not Amestris would declare war, so whether or not the terrorist was even a threat didn't matter.

Unfortunately, he also noticed the amorous looks sent his way from students with too many hormones and too little sense. He'd always pretended to be a bit more ignorant of that sort of thing than he actually was, as it was surprisingly effective in deterring pursuers; he only hoped it would work here too.

He stayed behind in the few lessons he attended, chatting with the professors in the gaps they had between their classes. They looked at him with his blond hair, golden eyes and sincere curiosity, and they saw a child, so they told him of the past. They saw a child too young to have been through their wars, not considering that his own country had had its own wars, and he had been through those.

McGonagall told him of how Dumbledore's mere presence had kept the last war away from Hogwarts, how it had once kept a war from England in its entirety. She told him that Hogsmeade had once been a proper town, before everything, but that it now primarily served as a shopping area for students.

Flitwick told him of the dueling circuit and how much more dangerous it had once been before the Ministry implemented safety regulations. He told him of the difficulties of dueling against unknown, new spells and of how rare that was now. He told him of how few magical advancements had been made in the last century, because every ounce of skill went into the wars and not all of it had come back.

Ed drew his own conclusions.

Draco Malfoy approached him at the end of the day, catching him right before he enters the Great Hall. He could almost feel the number of eyes on him multiplying. Malfoy was well-known then.

"Elric," he said, smiling at him. Ed raised an eyebrow, taking the boy in before thinking that Mustang's comment of too blonde applied to the son as well as the father. The boy's fake smiling needed work too.

"Malfoy," he returned, perhaps a touch too cold. Malfoy's smile dimmed for a moment.

"I haven't seen you speaking to anyone today. I'll introduce you to-"

"No, thank you. It's best you don't," Edward cut him off, and Malfoy's eyes flashed dangerously. Ed didn't want to know these people though. Amestris would be at war with them soon, and war was difficult enough without knowing that you had friends across the battlefield.

Of course, Malfoy couldn't know that. "Thanks for the offer," he said, trying to come up with a viable excuse. "I'm not the most sociable person though. This has been a bit overwhelming." He could pretend to be shy, right? He nodded to himself and then headed off, leaving Malfoy giving his back a slightly confused look.

As soon as he sat down, Umbridge had something to say to him. He wished she wouldn't. "The Malfoy child is quite well-behaved. It's quite nice of him to take you under his wing."

He was starting to miss Amestris. No one bothered him with this sort of trivial stuff there, and, if they did, no one was surprised if they ended up transmuted into a wall. Not that he had done that in a while.

"He seems…" Harmless would be an odd word to use, right? "... nice. Wants to introduce me to some students."

Umbridge smiled at him, an indulgent thing that irritated him. "The Malfoys are an old, proper family. You should take advantage of his generosity."

"I'll think about it," he said before giving his food his complete attention. He wondered what made one family more old and proper than another, but he supposed it was something he probably didn't care to understand. Her encouragement just made him want to get further from Malfoy. If she approved of him, then they were probably on the same side politically, which made making contacts in other Hogwarts houses paramount. Both Malfoy and Umbridge had already publicly shown him favor, so he would have to act quickly if he didn't want to end up with just them on his side. The mission's objective may be completely false, but he still needed a sense of the environment in order to make any sort of accurate judgement of the school and the population as a whole.

He sighed. Mustang had better visit soon. The man was so much better at this than he was.

By the end of the week, he had discovered the library. He rationalized going through their newspaper archive as a perfectly legitimate information gathering technique, but he knew that Lewis could probably do it more efficiently at The Daily Prophet, as that seemed to be the only newspaper with any sort of respectability.

Really, he was avoiding socializing with the students. He had forgotten how young people near his age could seem, and it was disconcerting to have them try to chat with him after he watched their class. Most of his conversation had been focused on alchemy or politics for years now, and he wasn't entirely sure what he could talk about with these kids. He had little interest in sports and any sort of gossip would just leave him wondering who they had been talking about in the first place. He couldn't discuss class work with them because he had none, and he was actively avoiding using magic anyway. He knew more about the theories of magic than they did, but that wasn't exact helpful when someone just wanted to make small talk.

On top of avoiding the other students in general, Ed was avoiding Malfoy in particular. Ed would say the boy seemed to have it in his head that they were friends, but it was obvious that there was something else going on, probably connected to the boy's father, and Edward wanted no part in whatever it was.

It was with a sense of relief that he read the letter at breakfast informing him that Mustang would be making an appearance in a few days.

He kept the letter in his pocket, touching it every time a student decided that today was the day that Edward Elric wanted to discuss the possibility of the Kenmare Kestrals beating the Falmouth Falcons. He discovered that a blank stare would send whoever it was scurrying away as Ed tried to remember which sport either of the two teams played. Football? Quidditch? It was called something ridiculous, but everything in English sounded somewhat ridiculous to Ed.

Perhaps it wasn't the best way to go about building connections, but the library was much less stressful than talking to anyone.

Of course, then people started talking to him in the library.

First, Malfoy found him, but the boy didn't seem to have the patience to wait around for Ed to finish reading, so he usually walked with Ed from dinner at the end of the day and said his goodbyes at the doors to the library.

A girl with a red tie (Gryffindor? Hufflepuff?) seemed to find him a slightly unwelcome companion but was quick enough to share a table with him, possibly because one of them was usually in the library, so they never lost the table if they shared. She peered over at the papers he was reading on occasion, obviously curious, but she was mercifully silent much of the time.

The other people in the library made it a habit to ask him if he knew where certain books were. He would have loved to tell them he had no idea, but he had made it a point to memorize the organizational system of the library and was usually able to point them in the right direction. According to one of the younger boys to ask him, he was less intimidating than the actual librarian. To him, Madame Pince had been gruff but kind, somewhat reminding him of a much less deadly version of Hawkeye. He supposed that a librarian was much less intimidating after you had seen a battlefield.

"Have you been in here this entire time?" Mustang hissed at him, in a voice that was barely quieter than talking normally.

Ed stared at him. The man was brilliant, but he sometimes forgot how stupid he could get. "Yes," Ed said, deadpan in Amestranian. "I have been here this entire time. This chair is my bed, and my food is brought to me. All the classes I'm attending are taught right here."

Mustang looked unamused. "Stop being a smartass and go make friends." Later, months down the line when a girl kicked him in the jaw, Mustang would regret he had said anything. For now, he thought the advice was sound.

"You're not actually a guardian who dropped me off at a school in another country, you know. I can handle this myself," Ed replied, ignoring the times he had wished Mustang was there to make the situation simpler, if only because the bastard would tell Edward when he could ignore someone's machinations and when he couldn't.

"I'm not doubting you. I'm just saying that I know you well enough to know that you could stand to know more people here," Mustang said in Amestranian as well, laying an arm across the back of Edward's chair, both of them ignoring the girl with the red tie's startled look. "You're not exactly the most approachable person sometimes, especially when you're settled into reading."

"Being approachable isn't the issue. It's stopping people from approaching with stupid questions," Ed grumbled, already knowing he was going to lose this argument, and a fond smile pulled across Mustang's lips.

"Of course people want to approach the handsome, quiet loner. You can't bank on that forever though. Besides, not everyone is a genius, Edward."

Ed narrowed his eyes even as the beginnings of a blush began to form. "Quite complimentary today."

Mustang smirked, leaning in. "Well, someone has to compliment you. You blush so nicely."

Even as he felt the blush bloom across his cheeks, he heard the giggles behind the shelves and the whispers of the girls. The words cute and shy featured heavily, and Ed glared at Mustang. "You're an asshole," he told Mustang, but he was reluctantly thankful. If he was considered shy by the student body, he still had some time to make connections. He wondered how Mustang had picked up on his strategy so quickly.

"Maybe, but I know how to make people like me," he said, and his smirk seemed to increase in intensity.

"So, you're a manipulative asshole."

"Pretty much," Mustang said, his tone so frank that Ed laughed. "You should laugh more often. You're getting old before your time."

"Bastard," Ed responded, a smile still tugging at his lips as he turned back to the papers laid out in front of him. "I'll try to be more social."

Mustang spent the night somewhere in the castle; Ed honestly wasn't sure where, as Mustang had been escorted away by Professor McGonagall a few minutes before curfew, who made a pointed comment about the time as she walked away. He intended to find out before Mustang left, because it unnerved him not knowing where his backup was. He knew nothing was likely to happen in the school, but he also knew how unlikely his entire life had been.

In the morning, Mustang took breakfast at the Head Table before he left, taking Ed's usual spot next to Umbridge as Ed headed into the crowd of students, searching for the girl with the red tie from the library. Hufflepuff or Gryffindor, she was probably not aligned with Malfoy or Umbridge in the grand scheme of things.

He found her sitting near Harry Potter and wanted to reconsider his plan, but she was really the only person who he somewhat regularly interacted with outside of Draco Malfoy.

The second he sat down, the redhead on her right loudly asked, "Do you just attract foreign guys?"

"What?" Ed asked, even as she smacked the redhead's arm.

"Ignore him. You're Edward, right?" she asked, her tone sure. He supposed she had been paying attention during his introduction.

"Yes," was apparently all the response she required.

"I'm Hermione," she said, and all he could think was that he was never going to get the hang of English names. Her two companions introduced themselves, both unsubtle in their reluctance. Ron Weasley and Harry Potter. Ed didn't particularly care. He didn't want to become friends with the local celebrity.

"What have you been studying?" he asked her directly, not bothering to introduce himself to people who already knew who he was. That was only fun when they knew exactly who the Fullmetal Alchemist was.

She brightened, smiling at him. "Oh, I've been studying ahead for our classes. It's OWLs year, so I thought I should be prepared for those." She continued on, babbling about how studying was key to understanding and how important the OWLs were and how certain classes were certainly going to be more difficult soon. He was lost in that first sentence, trying to remember exactly what OWLs were. They seemed to be tests of some kind, but this was a school, so they had to have that sort of thing a lot. What made the OWLs special? "Actually," she paused. "Are you taking the OWLs?"

"No, I'm not actually a student, so this government can't make me take them," he said, shrugging.

"Do you have something like them in… Amestris, was it?" she asked, and she seemed genuinely interested.

Big tests in Amestris. He supposed the state alchemist exam might count, but he couldn't say anything about that. His yearly evaluations might count too… "I guess. I had private tutors, and there's very few national tests that someone my age might be taking. Nothing required. Most who have any sort of specialties find private tutors."

"You have a specialty then?" she asked.

He smiled tightly at her. "I'm regarded as talented for my age, according to my guardian." Talented for any age, really, but the girl was already curious enough. "Magic isn't really something that's well taught in my country though."

Her eyes flashed with excitement as she said, "I could tutor you, if you wanted."

He was loathe to accept, but tutoring in a subject he didn't need was close enough to a new friend if you weren't paying attention. Mustang would probably see through him in a second, but he had given it a shot. "Thank you."

For the rest of the meal, she quizzed him on what he did know about magic. The fundamentals he had recently studied came easily enough, but some of the more difficult theories she mentioned were half remembered. They garnered a few odd stares, which he had assumed were for going over such basic things in the middle of breakfast until he heard one of the other students, looking to be older than Hermione but younger than Ed, say to one of his red-tied fellows, "That's too advanced to be on NEWTs, right?"

Right! NEWTs and OWLs were tests for graduation and advanced classes.

Wait… Damn, so much for not attracting attention.

Hermione was much more eager to studying with him at some point once he was excusing himself from the table, and some students flagged him down in the halls afterward, asking if he was willing to tutor. His quiet time reading newspapers in the library was more regularly interrupted by Hermione or other students sitting down beside him, asking him whispered questions. It seemed everyone had determined him a safe resource to use, as the ties of the students who sat down next to him were a variety of colors.

The questions though… He supposed that was exactly the type of information he was supposed to be collecting. How well would these students and adults be able to defend themselves if push came to shove?

The questions themselves were basic things often, things he had taught himself. The material they were learning wasn't making them dangerous opponents.

Ed would be the first to admit he cared too much about the people in the situations the military thrust him into, and these people were starting to make themselves likeable. There were shy kids with Hufflepuff ties (the yellow ones, apparently) who got more animated as he chatted with them and the kids who sat at his table just to work on their homework and the ones who got loud enough that the librarian glared at them until they settled down. They were different than the people of Amestris but not so different overall.

Except they were going to be his enemy soon enough.

Edward decided to start attending more classes. At least no one would talk to him in those.

He had almost forgotten about exactly why Umbridge was at the school besides to lord over everyone at the dining table when she started attending classes as well.

"Edward," Umbridge said as soon as he entered the classroom, her voice suspiciously warm. He was pretty sure she didn't like him still, but he was still in her territory. He could play nice.

"Ma'am." He nodded at her. Was there a reason for stopping him?

"I'll be monitoring this class, seeing how well the professor teaches. You'd help me, right?" There was something sweet in her voice, but her eyes were sharp.

He was suddenly aware of the students filing into the classroom behind him. Not all of them could be ignoring their conversation, but they all thought that Umbridge was his superior anyway. He could be patient. Information was more important than pride right now.

"Of course," he told her, unable to keep all the bite from his voice. She seemed to take it as offense that he would do anything else, as her answering smile was smug. It didn't seem to occur to her that it chafed to listen to her at all.

He sat in the classroom and wished that he hadn't come at all.

The short professor in the front took note of Umbridge's presence with a short look and then flickered his gaze over to Ed. Ed wanted to tell him that he didn't care about their power plays here, that his focus was on something much bigger than this, but it didn't matter. For now, everyone was going to look at him and see Umbridge working through him. He was just going to have to work harder in his spare time to make sure people knew that wasn't true.

He sat in the corridor alone, watching the people pass in front of him. Everyone from Gryffindor who wanted to go to the Great Hall had to pass through here, and he had been waiting for her to come to dinner for half an hour already, ignoring the odd looks some of the kids gave him as he simply stood there.. He caught a glimpse of the girl he was looking for and called out, "Hermione!"

If anyone was opposed to Umbridge, it was this girl and her friends. He had heard about all the detentions the Potter kid had managed already, which was odd if they wanted to discredit him. It made Ed suspect that the terrorist may actually be back. You didn't pay so much attention to one kid crying out for attention unless there was something else going on.

It didn't matter. That wasn't his problem right now.

She turned, a hesitant smile coming to her lips when she spotted him.

"Want to study together?" he asked as he fell into step beside her. "The classes I've been attending are a bit too focused on the practical aspect of magic for my liking."

Her smile faltered. "So, you don't think we should be practicing magic either?"

"What? No, feel free to practice, the spells you're learning aren't that dangerous. I just prefer to know the theory before I attempt to do anything with magic." Mainly because when he had used magic, it had been to give Alphonse back a body, and he had had to know everything perfectly before he tried it out. He hadn't been willing to chance anything when Alphonse would be the one suffering for his ignorance, not again. "It's important to know what you're doing before you do it, if only so others don't suffer for your mistakes."

She gave him an odd look. "That's… a little dark, honestly."

He shrugged. "It's just how I see it. The spells you learn here aren't dangerous enough that you can't practice them without knowing everything about them, but there are some spells that are."

She laughed a little, her smile becoming bemused. "You're talking like you have some personal experience. What sort of spells are you talking about?"

He sighed. He had forgotten how curious these people could be. People in Amestris generally left an alchemist's secrets alone, but these people didn't care about that. "Don't worry about it. You'll know if you ever come across the sort of things I'm talking about."

She seemed displeased with that answer, but she still agreed to study with him during the weekend, so it didn't really matter. Whether or not they actually became friends wasn't the point; the point was that other people saw him as her friend. The appearance of the thing was often more important than the thing itself.

She wasn't displeased with him as they studied on the weekend. She seemed to laugh so easily that he wondered if perhaps he was growing old before his time, just like Mustang had said. They studied things that he was only passingly familiar with, mainly focusing on magical creatures. He had forgotten what it was like to learn for the sake of learning. She extracted a promise from him to drop in on the next Care of Magical Creatures lesson she had.

"You seem a little intimidating," she said as they packed up, "but I think you're nicer than you let on."

"You don't know me that well," he said.

"Yet," she said cheerily before smiling at him and walking away, waving at him over her shoulder. She was weighed down by the almost obsessive amounts of books that she insisted on carrying, but she had a very bouncy step that told of a cheerful disposition.

It was disconcerting.

The one time that Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger came to him at the same time reminded him of how precarious his position actually was.

Draco had escorted him to the library doors, as was his habit, and Hermione had appeared a few minutes before she normally did, causing the two to catch sight of one another and begin glaring. He hadn't realized that there was actual tension between the two that went beyond the normal animosity that seemed to spring up whenever a Gryffindor and a Slytherin were in the same area. This seemed a bit more personal.

"Granger," Draco spat.

"Malfoy," she said, venom in her tone.

Draco then proceeded to ignore Hermione, turning his body to make it obvious to everyone present thathe wasn't dealing with her. "Why have you let her hang around you recently?"

Ed sighed, even as Hermione glared at Draco. "I study with her."

"She's a mudblood," Draco hissed at him, as if the word was supposed to mean something. He didn't even seem to like saying the word much, a certain reluctance in his tone. Either way, Hermione didn't seem to notice that, her offense clouded her otherwise clear judgement.

"I don't even know what that is," Ed said shortly, and Draco himself seemed offended by that.

Hermione jumped on it, a gleam in her eye. "It's an insult for those born to Muggle parents, like me."

"Muggles are the ones who can't use magic, right?" he clarified. It was confusing to remember all the terms these people had for things that didn't exist in Amestris. Hermione nodded. "A lot of people in Amestris don't use magic, you're sure your parents can't?"

Draco and Hermione both seemed a bit baffled by the question. "Of course they can't, they would know if they could," she responded, overlapping with Draco's response of, "Why wouldn't they use magic if they can?"

Ed shrugged and turned back to the library doors. "Magic isn't always the most effective solution," he said as he pushed them open.

Hermione followed him in, whispering at him about how could he stand to be around that prat, missing how Draco seemed to deflate as they walked away. From the small glance Ed took back, the boy just seemed a bit lost.

He had forgotten that the people whose loyalties he was trying to balance between were teenagers who had grudges and friends within their own ranks. They wouldn't take lightly an outsider trying to befriend both sides of whatever conflict was brewing here.

Hermione seemed to have realized she was being tuned out, as she huffed and spread her work out in such a manner that he had to sit directly across from her at the table to have any room for himself. Ed thought about complaining, and then realized that it was a bit weird to be complaining about someone else's temper when he had only recently gotten control of his own. He went to get a few books and then shoved at her work a little to make some space, and she rolled her eyes but allowed it.

He settled in to read about history and genealogies.

It wasn't long before he received another notice that Mustang was coming to visit. When the man arrived, Ed was waiting at the front doors, and Mustang was greeted with a complaint in Amstranian. "Two visits in two weeks? You're not actually an overprotective guardian, are you?"

"Almost three weeks," Mustang said absently, his eyes roaming over Ed, as if Ed would somehow have gotten injured in this school. Ed ignored that he was doing the same thing himself. "The Ministry here gives me a headache."

Ed blinked. For Mustang, that was rather blunt. He had been planning on hanging around the library today, but Mustang didn't really enjoy that sort of environment unless he was plotting something. Mustang certainly seemed to enjoy plotting, but he couldn't really do much of that in this country. "I was planning on doing some exercise today. Will your headache make it too difficult to keep up?" Ed teased, and Mustang's eyes lit up.

Mustang liked plotting because he liked to be challenged, and Ed was in excellent physical condition. He had needed to start doing some exercise anyway. He had mainly kept in shape through sparing with Al and the ridiculous things he needed to do while on missions, but he didn't get to do either of those anytime soon.

"My headache has miraculously disappeared. Odd, seeing as you've certainly given me plenty of headaches in the past." Mustang smirked at him.

"Bastard. Running or sparring?"

"Running then sparring." Mustang's eyes glimmered at him, a challenge in his look. So, he thought Ed couldn't do both? Well, Ed had only offered the option of one because Mustang wasn't the sort to run around as much as Ed, so he thought the man might have been tired after one.

"Change and then meet me back here," Ed said, and Mustang raised an eyebrow at the order, but he took his suitcase and went to his room to change. Ed followed suit. He arrived back first, having changed into his usual outfit from Amestris. His outfit drew some looks from those he passed, but he supposed that any outfit that wasn't some form of robes would draw attention in this school though. Still, it was sweats and a long-sleeve shirt along with his ever present gloves.

They received some odd looks when people saw them running around the castle, neither letting the other man get ahead of him. They received alarmed looks when they began sparring on the grass, even if some of them turned envious as they saw the acrobatics that Ed effortlessly went into and the surprising speed at which Mustang moved. Mustang wouldn't beat Ed in a hand to hand fight, but most people couldn't. The fact that the man could even make Ed break out the acrobatics was a sign that he was more dangerous than Ed had thought though.

The most important thing though was that when they called an end to the spar and Ed collapsed unceremoniously to the ground with Mustang sitting beside him, Mustang was smiling.

Ed wasn't sure when making Mustang smile became something he would expend an entire day's worth of effort on, but he wasn't going to examine it too closely. He just lay on the ground and smiled himself.

"Have you made any friends since last time I was here?" Mustang asked. Ed opened his eyes to look at the man, who had tilted his head toward the sun.

"Maybe," Ed said, even as he continued looking at Mustang. "There's a girl I study with, and the kid of that too blond man from the Ministry seems determined to follow me around."

The smile slipped from Mustang's face. "Lucius Malfoy. The man's a bit of a pest. I thought he would be less troublesome than he is for how transparent he is, but it's almost like these people can't see a flashing sign, let alone a snake in the grass."

Ed found himself frowning now and sat up. "I've noticed that. They seem to trust so easily. I thought it was because I was in a school, surrounded by children."

"It could be that they're not letting any of us near the people with actual power," Mustang said, but his tone was doubtful. Ed understood that. If their delegation couldn't find out any secrets within the weeks they had already been here, then it either didn't exist or was so well hidden that they might never find it at all. People didn't take well to being so carefully hidden away.

Ed didn't respond. Hermione was making her way over. "That's the girl I study with."

"She's cute," Mustang said, his tone carefully neutral even as he straightened his appearance. Ed spared him a confused glance.

"Is she?" Ed looked her over as she approached. He supposed she was attractive to some, but he was more interested in people who could hold their own. Hermione had never struck him as that, but that could be because no one in this country had struck him as that. "Never really noticed. She reminds me of Sciezka."

"Hello Edward." She smiled politely at Mustang, probably waiting for him to be introduced.

"This is Roy Mustang, my guardian," Ed said. It felt awkward to acknowledge the man as that instead of his superior officer, but telling Hermione that the man was his superior officer would make Ed's life more difficult.

"Hello Mr. Mustang," she said.

Mustang smiled at her, a thing that was as charming as it was false. "You must be Hermione. I've heard so much about you." Ed refrained from giving him a dry look. Mustang hadn't even known the girl's name ten minutes ago.

"Thank you, sir. I just wanted to ask Edward if he knew anything about the theory behind Transubstantial Transfiguration. I was reading Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration, and it mentioned that some people consider all Transfiguration to be Transubstantial Transfiguration, but it didn't go into why. I would usually ask McGonagall, but we don't have her until Tuesday."

Ed blinked at her for a moment, vaguely amused by the topic. He didn't think the witch realized how ironic it was that she would come to the alchemist asking why some people thought all Transfiguration was part of alchemy.

"Well, I agree with those people, but it's a little more complicated than you'd think." Ed looked at Mustang, who had been the one to speak.

Hermione's gaze turned cold. "And you think I can't understand it?"

Mustang smiled at her. "I think most wizards and witches have an issue understanding the topic. It's common knowledge in Amestris, but magic is mostly theoretical there." In a sense, he wasn't lying. Magic was mostly theoretical because everyone was aware it was a subset of alchemy that had undesirable indirect costs.

"He's not wrong," Ed said, directing her ire to himself. "You need a certain distance from your craft to really think of it. Transubstantial Transfiguration is just exchanging one substance for another. That's really what magic as a whole does, if you think about it."

"There are plenty of spells that you can cast that don't exchange one thing for another," she said. "Even in Transfiguration, there are Conjuring Spells and Vanishing Spells."

Ed looked up at her for a long moment and thought about asking her if she had ever considered what she gave up for each spell, for each tiny miracle. He thought about asking her if she had considered costs that she couldn't see. He thought about it, and then he said with a smile, "I think I'm misunderstanding you. My English isn't perfect yet."

He had heard of those who tried to argue about the fundamentals of magic with those who practiced it, and he had no desire to alienate himself from them all so early in the year.

When Mustang had retired to his rooms later in the day, Hermione caught up with him again. "Your guardian is kind of rude," she said, and Ed laughed.

"Mustang is the nicer one of the two of us." At least Mustang had started trying to explain to the witch what she was giving up.

"You're nice, Edward!" she said, indignant on his behalf, as if he had just insulted himself.

"Thank you," he said, not bothering to explain that that wasn't quite what he meant. Hermione was nice, but she was also stubborn. He supposed he wouldn't react well to someone telling him that alchemy was a subset of magic, but then there was evidence the other way, so he didn't really know. "Mustang is better than you give him credit for," he added, not sure why this girl's negative opinion of Mustang bothered him.

"Maybe," she said, and that was probably the best he would get for now, so he left it be and allowed her to redirect the conversation to her Charms assignment. He would bring it up again when she was ready.

It was only a few more days before someone brought it up. Surprisingly, it wasn't Draco or Hermione, but the ginger that Hermione spent time with. "Why don't you ever use magic?" he asked as Ed sat in their class. Hermione had asked him to sit in on their Charms class, saying that the professor was teaching something that would be on the OWLs. Ever since she had learned that he technically had no certification in magic, she had been bothering him about taking the OWLs before he left. Informing her that Amestris didn't have equivalent qualifications didn't matter.

Ed looked at him. "Weasley, right?" The redhead looked a little uncomfortable with the form of address, but he nodded. "I've used magic before, and I might use it again, but it's not there for me to use for every whim."

The redhead raised an eyebrow at him. "It's magic. That's exactly what it's there for."

Hermione spoke up while unsubtly kicking Weasley. "Ed has… unconventional views on magic."

During the class, Hermione and Weasley sat together, whispering to each other as if no one could hear them. Of course, if Ed hadn't been listening to their conversation, he probably wouldn't have heard it.

"I think it's like a religion in his country. He's very careful about it when he talks about it, and he doesn't like using magic for little things. They seem to think it's like a system of exchanges that you can't use too often or you'll lose your distance from it. I haven't found anything about it in the library."

"But that makes no sense. It's magic, you don't have to give anything for it."

"I don't know, but that seems to be what they think about it in Amestris. His guardian has a similar mentality." There was a pause, in which Hermione began lifting her wand again. "Practice your charm, Flitwick is looking."

Ed sat back and watched the students jabbing at the air with their wands. They thought it was reverence rather than disdain that colored his words when he spoke of magic. It didn't seem like it occurred to them that anyone could see magic as anything other than good. He knew the good magic could do, but he also knew that it came at a cost. Magic had given Al his body back, and Al had always assumed that the little accidents that befell him in the weeks after had been the cost. Ed hadn't had the heart to tell him that that had been the least of it.

Ed and Al never spoke of the wars Ed had been called to, but Ed was certain Al knew that the war with Creta had been worse than the others for Ed. It couldn't have escaped his attention that it had been mere months since Al had gotten his body back.

Ed knew the costs of magic well enough to be wary of them. He knew the feel of magic when it interfered, when it wanted its price. Al's body had required a lot of magic, and he knew that the little spells these children tossed around were nowhere near as large, but he couldn't help but feel wary when he felt more magic arise. Magic wasn't subtle, calling out its presence when one bothered to look for it. He felt the sparks of it at the ends of the wands around the classroom when he focused, felt the cost being funneled away from the school.

Wizarding Britain didn't seem to realize that it brought about its own misfortune. Ed looked at the children before him, and he cursed his stupid brain and his stupid heart, because they didn't realize what was coming for them, and he couldn't leave them to their fate.

AN: So, still not abandoned, just updating very slowly. My apologies. Someone asked for me to make shorter chapters and shorter update times. Honestly, I have the update schedule I have because real life is busy. I love my life, and I love writing, but one of them can wait for my downtime. Sorry if that seems dismissive, and I love the fact that you love my story enough to want more of it more quickly!

For those who the prologue didn't make much sense to, we're starting to get glimpses of the cost of magic. I'm not sure how much of the different wars that Ed has been in that we're going to get into in this story. Honestly, this was a darker story when I first conceived it, but I can't write angst (I end up breaking my own heart), and fluff feels weird here, so instead, you get whatever this is. Adventure is what the genre says? IDK.

My OCs are going to be sparingly mentioned until the war starts, but we're starting to introduce our main cast of characters from Hogwarts. Hi Hermione, hi Draco! Another will be introduced in the beginning of next chapter, so that'll be fun.

For anyone curious, I'm basing my dates on the HP Lexicon calendar. This chapter ends on October 1st, if you're interested.

How are Hermione and Draco? Do you think the friendship that Hermione and Ed have is believable? Am I being too subtle with Mustang, or did everyone pick up that he's a little jealous? Trying to show other people's feeling when Ed can be kind of dense is a harder task than I thought.

Also, as a warning, seeing as I've now decided: one of the characters will be trans. Their character will not revolve around that, and you probably won't notice until the story points it out. I'll probably address transphobia in the Wizarding World, but I'll warn if a chapter contains that. For now, please be advised that if a trans characters bothers you, this might not be the story for you. Thank you!

This is un-beta'd once more, so my apologies for any mistakes! Feel free to point them out to me.

As always, reviews are appreciated, and favorites and follows as well. Thank you for reading, and happy new year!

Ja ne!
~J. DCF