There was no cut, but his skin was unmistakably red and inflamed. He narrowed his eyes, and pushed up his sweater sleeve past the bandage that
covered the array scar on his forearm. The red mark reached fully that far. He looked at the woman, only to see she was smiling sweetly at him.
"Yes?" She said.
"Dis is joke, vright?" Ed said.
"No..this is your just punishment for defying.."
Ed stood up....
.
.
.
.
.
Toad woman leaned back in her chair behind the desk, smiling wider than ever."Then I'll be happy to send for your expul.."
"No. You will not." Ed said carefully, 'w's finally sounding right to his ears. "I will tell you why. Better yet..." He snorted then picked the quill back up with his left, and held the quill over the parchment.
"..I will be showing you." Ed scribbled a quick array in the parchment that appeared nearly immediately on his forearm. "Blood is dhe last ting you vant to be punishing somevone like me with, you half-wit third rate..."
He let the energy flow, not needing to clap for an array carved into his very flesh. Blue lightning arched and flashed wildly from his arm and danced across the walls and the floor. Then, in a blink of an eye, the equation completed itself. From the walls around her desk several spikes stretched. From beneath Umbridge's feet, several more spikes likewise stretched upwards...
Ed looked down at his stinging arm and saw that the scribbled array was now gone.
He raised his head and saw her beady dark eyes were wide with panic, surprise, and pain. She was quite painfully impaled through her arms, legs and several non-vital areas of her torso. Blood dribbled to the floor in a gory mess of a puddle beneath her. She would be dead in moments if he did nothing..and nothing was exactly what he was planning to do for her. Equivalent trade for the..
"You may be panicked now, but I am doing you a favor. I find it stupid dhat you are not knowing dhis simple fact since you are such a..in a position of such authority... at a school dhat is supposed to be teaching such things. Any fool knows blood. Strengthens. Vreactions."
.
.
.
.
.
The the scar on his forearm tingled as if energy flowed through it, and he shook it out by instinct before the design was activated. Within moments he realised the familiar sensation had snapped him back to his senses, his bloody fantasy only just that.
'Thankfully...' Ed thought. 'That was too close...'
He was still standing before the toad woman's desk, and she was still very much whole, looking at him with beady eyes. He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, and reluctantly, with a sigh, sat back down into the chair.
'No reason to let her know just what I'm capable of.' He thought. 'She does report to that Ministry. Last thing I want is to be shipped off to
some sort of lab to be disected or something. Besides, I won't be doing him any favors that way...he'd still be stuck here doing lines for her.'
"Good.." Toady's sugary voice said. "Our control over our temper is improving as well. Your lines are waiting.."
Ed held up a hand.
"Hear me out first." Ed said, and he folded his arms. "I live in vreal vorld, Professor Umbridge. You must as vell, since you are vorking for de
Ministry. It is said dhat in dis vorld, vone can not gain someting vithout first giving up someting of equal value."
The toad woman leaned back into her chair, and laughed her little girly laugh.
"What can a..mudblo...hem hem, a child..can possibly offer that would be of any value at all?"
"Dhat depends entirely on vhat one values." Ed said carefully, and rubbed his chin with his left hand.
He snorted, then removed the bandage from his arm, hissing as the tape pulled out hair. He looked at the mess that was the array scar, scabbed
over a little worse than it was in his mental image. The pattern was there and still as clear as ever, and to his critical eye, it looked like
he had managed to carve it deep into his flesh with something like a razor blade. Over and over and over again. That was not the case, but it
didn't matter; What did matter was the fact that it certainly LOOKED like it hurt. A lot. Though he really barely noticed it at all.
Ed glanced up and saw that pink toady's eyes watching his revealed mucked-up scar with a hungry sort of look, and resisted the urge to wrinkle
his nose in disgust. Instead he casually tossed the bandage to the rubbish bin from where he was.
"Mr. Elric, come over here. Please." she said in her honeyed voice.
"What vill you give me if I do?" Ed said.
"Must everything be a negotiation with you?" She said in exasperation. "As a ministry approved educational expert, I have the duty..to look
after the well-being of my charges..."
"I suppose dhat's technically true. Ve ARE having quite the educational experience vith dhese..." Ed said, and flicked the quill between two
fingers of his gloved right hand.
"That is enough." She said in a clipped tone, and she leaned forward. "Turn about. Now. Off you go."
He slapped both hands to his thighs with an exaggerated sigh, and turned, but not before he glanced over at Harry's hunched over form across the
room. Location of the quill in mind, he picked up his own and began writing. When the tiny array he fashioned from one of the letters appeared,
carved in blood, on the back of his hand, he immediately activated it before it could fade.
The telltale blue flash of the reaction was barely noticable to his eyes; it went off quite literally in front of his nose, and he knew his body
shielded the flash from pink toady's view altogether. The sharp nib of his own quill deconstructed --telling him he had guessed its composition
rightly-- and he smiled his true smile in satifaction at the small, surprised gasp he heard from Harry's side of the room.
The only real problem was this: both of their quills were quickly replaced by the pink toad.
Ed leaned his chin into his right gloved hand, doing the mindless, repetitive task. He kept his mind engaged, trying to analyse the composition
of the quill in his living hand, barely even feeling the pain of the words as they carved themselves ever deeper into his flesh. -- It wasn't
made of wood and he hadn't gotten far enough along to deconstruct the thing at all, much less change it to something less cruel.
They wrote and wrote and wrote.
Ed stopped his analysis when he noticed Harry's soft hissing, and glaced back quickly to see him wincing badly and often as he wrote. He
activated tiny array after tiny array to deconstruct his nib for him. It was some relief from the torture, if only for a few moments before the
pink toad swooped down and replaced the quill. Her beady eyes narrowed as she looked at Harry each time, something that made Ed feel a twinge of
guilt. Then she would look at the wand sticking prominently out of Harry's backback, and she would go back to her desk.
Ed made sure he glanced away before she so much as twitched a neck muscle in his direction.
Long past sunset she told them to stop. She first walked up beside Harry's desk.
"Hand."
Harry showed her his right hand, and she took it in her stubby, ring covered fingers. After a bit, she made a little "tsk tsk." noise, and let it go. She then went to his own desk.
"Hand."
Ed curled his upper lip and glared at her. Then folded his arms across his chest.
"Seems I haven't made much of an impression on you, yet, Mr. Elric." She said, returning his gaze with an icy one of her own. The effect was
ruined considerably by the beadiness of her eyes. "Well. There's still tomorrow."
Ed snorted.
"You may go, now. Both of you."
Ed's stomach growled loudly as soon as they were out the door.
:::
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