Ed nodded a slight nod, and headed towards the cupboard. He gathered the ingredients and brought them to a desk. He clapped once, reached to the ground. Blue energy arched from his fingers, warming his arms and chasing away the aches that the cold dampness had stirred up. A small bowl rose up from the stone under his hand as his equation ran its course. He placed that on the desk, and put the materials within that.
He then clapped his hands again, then thought against it, and shook his hands out. He glanced up at the board, and narrowed his eyes. He then took out one ingredient, one that looked rather like a scaley turnip, and held it in his left hand.
"Melatonin or Benzodiazepine.." He mumbled...closed his eyes and looked inward at the structure. "Vweird...very like melatonin.." He picked out a small vial--the liquid within was something like a thick syrup. "...cytokines ..hmm..." He replaced the ingredients into the bowl.
He adjusted the equation shining brightly in his mind, and double checked it for balance. Ed then clapped his hands together and placed them on either side of the bowl's rim. He let the energy flow, and blue lighting once again flashed. When the glow faded, a liquid with a delicate, silver vapor was within the bowl. Outside the bowl, sat the offals: bits of ash, plant stems, and a few empty vials, and a piece of moonstone.
Ed smiled his true smile, somewhere between a smirk and a frown, and cleared the offals off the desk. He then carried them to the bin and tossed them in. With an idle rub at his aching right port, he turned about and saw Severus stalking towards the bowl. He also saw Professor McGonagall squatting on the stone floor, peering down at the faint circlular depression carved there over her square glasses. He walked over towards them, and stood again at parade rest.
Severus looked down his hooked nose at the liquid, and frowned. At length, he stood straight and looked at Ed with his cold eyes. He said. "Explain yourself." Ed met and held his gaze with his own.
"From your description earlier today, I knew I had to be crafting a brain chemical. Dhere are many many neurotransmitters in the human brain, but dhere are very few dhat vregulate sleep; Fewer still that can cause a coma if not properly balanced with dhings called hormones. I had choice between chemicals, and choose dhe vone called melatonin since dhat..um..plant dhing..had structure similiar to it. You vwanted it in liquid form, so I also created a bowl to hold it."
Severus narrowed his eyes, and said, "You have a very ..Muggle.. way of looking at things...although I certainly have never heard of any Muggle being remotely capable of doing what you just did."
Ed raised a single eyebrow.
"Dhat's interesting. I thought vwizards do not care to be knowing dhat much of Muggles or dheir vways."
Severus looked away and waved his wand over the bowl. After a few moments of nothing happening, his mouth became grim line, and he waved his wand again; the liquid within vanished. His brows met at the bridge of his nose.
"While I find your potion-making lacking certain... finesse... I can find no flaws in your alchemical reasoning." Severus said as he pocketed his wand. He turned and stalked back to his desk.
Ed watched as Professor McGonagall picked up the bowl and turned it over carefully in her hands. At length, she set it down on the desk, and looked sharply at Ed once more.
"This is bowl not the product of any transfiguration spell that I know."
"No, it is not. Dhe vword does not translate vwell to English." Ed said. "'Transfiguration' is close. But I have also noticed differences. Like..um.."
"Care to demonstrate again by, say, making the bowl vanish?" Professor McGonagall asked.
Ed took up the bowl into his hands, and walked to the shallow circular depression in the stone floor. Balanced equation shining in his mind, he touched his hands together and lowered the bowl to the ground. He let the energy flow, and blue lightning arched from his arms. The bowl melted back into the stone, filling the depression completely.
"It is not dhe same, I know, as you vwould do." Ed said, as he stood back up. "I saw numerous examples of dhese..'vanishing' and 'conjuring' dhings dhis last month...I find dhem.. um.. vwhat is vword.. facinating." Ed silently congratuated himself for deliberately avoiding the 'm' word. The last thing he wanted to do was curl his lip back in disgust in the presence of the very people he needed to learn from.
"I will be sure to take that into consideration, Elric." Professor Mcgonagall said, her mouth in a thin line.
"For the remainder of your detention, I will have you do a task for which you are well suited." Snape said, "Let it serve to remind you to allow your fellow students do their own measuring."
Ed widened his eyes at this, and opened his mouth.
"I did NOT..!" Ed began, then stopped. He palmed his face with his left hand. Then shook his head and groaned.
'I handed each ingredient to him....' he thought.
"Neville. Aaaagh..I did not vrealise I did dhat...Vright. Vhat do I have to do?"
"Gut red salamanders by hand, and prepare the livers..each must be carefully weighed and recorded. You will find a barrel of them waiting for you in the back room." Severus said. "And Mr. Elric, remember to bring your supplies with you the next class session."
Ed scowled, but nodded and walked to the back area.
Ed was late to dinner that night at the Great Hall. Harry, Ron, and Hermione made room for him when they spotted his slumped form walking towards the table. The smell of food seemed to revive him somewhat; his head picked up as he got close to the table's various delicious dishes, and he quickly sat down with an empty plate that he proceeded to eagerly pile food upon.
Harry then noticed the too loud whispers of those sitting around him. Whispers as if the whisperers wished him to overhear. Goading him into yelling out more of what happened that night to Cedric Diggory in the cemetery. His hands were shaking from his pent up anger.
Then. He noticed the shining glint of metal in the candle light. And the goading whispers changing abruptly to a new topic told him that he wasn't the only one around who noticed. It was then that he knew he was no longer the hot topic for the school.
As he watched Ed eating, hurriedly scarfing down biteful after biteful, it was very clear to Harry that Ed had forgotten something that seemed so very important to him the night before. He had forgotten that his white glove was lost in the hall somewhere by Professor McGonagall's office. And that everyone in the school could now see his shining metal hand.
Harry looked to Ron and Hermione, and swallowed.
:::
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