Ten minutes after Ed was in Transfiguration class, he decided it was a colossal waste of time to try 'spells' with a useless 'wand', and stuffed it back into his back pocket. He then took out two sheets of blank paper from his notebook, and drew the first of his equations on them. These, he placed on either side of his table. He picked up his reality-entrenched snail, and placed it in the center of one array.
With a bright wide smile aimed at Hermione, Ron, and Harry, Ed activated the array with a touch. Blue lightning cracked from the paper, dancing across the circle, and Ed heard many gasps in the room. Ed raised his gloved hand slightly away from the outer containment circle on the paper and watched the snail as the equation took its course. He frowned...
"Mr Elric, Whatever are you doing?" Professor McGonagall snapped.
Ed heard numerous snickers in the class, as if a certain group were just waiting for this very confrontation. He glanced at her as he chucked the piece of now mollusk!gut covered paper into the rubbish, fully expecting to get another detention from yet another teacher.
"Only vorking vith vhat I know." Ed said in irritation.
"Explain to me this instant why you are not following my explicit instructions that I gave the class yesterday?"
Ed reached into his back pocket and withdrew the 'wand'..little more than a fancily carved piece of ivory...that he had received as a substitute for a real wand, and handed it to her. He remained silent, and in spite of himself, stood at parade rest at his end of the table as he watched the stern woman.
She pointed the 'wand' upwards, tip towards the ceiling. Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
"I see.." She said. "when did he say yours would be ready for you?"
"A year."
She then glanced down and really looked closely at his work on the sheet of paper across from him with a slight smile ghosting on her face. She peered at him at length and he saw her face was once again its usual stern self.
"How.. safe.. is this, Mr. Elric?"
Ed snorted.
"As safe as dhat vone on your vall. If dhe odhers keep clear of my table, dhe risk is only to myself, and only if I calculate vrongly."
Professor Mcgonagall's eyebrows lowered slightly.
"Cal-culate... wrongly?" She said as if tasting the words.
Ed tilted his head.
"I check my vork much more carefully now dhan vhen I was a child."
She frowned, and Ed calmly met her gaze. He watched as her eyes softened..just a little.
"Very well. As a precaution, do move this..exercise.. to the back area. Carry on there. "
Ed nodded and took up his papers, relieved to be allowed to continue on with his work.
Once there, Ed settled on the floor cross-legged. He tore out another sheet of paper from his notebook, and proceeded to easily draw out a circle on it. He then got to work on the equation within, tweaking the amplifying runes, letting the music of Alchemy guide him along in brief spurts.
By the end of Transfiguration class, all the equations he had carefully calculated from the day before for the 'vanishing' snail ended up with new and ever more disgusting ways to destroy the creature within one circle's boundaries, instead of transporting it within the boundaries of another.
Overall, he felt it a good use of his time.
Ed had another chance to visit the library during lunch, and continued on from where he remembered he left off, as the pile of books had been cleared by the librarian. He had another small pile of his discards at his feet by the time she wondered by. He looked up in time for her to give him a rather hard look and a frown. She looked like she wanted to give him something of a stern lecture, but, by then, he had to be off to his next class. He smiled widely and waved at her as he walked off.
The Care of Magical Creatures class bored him greatly. Ed began toying with arrays that could reverse the chimera process in his notebook.
'Riiiight..there's no way I'd ever try these on a living being...' He thought as he developed the equations, careful to encode them as he went. He was about to turn back to the 'vanishing snail' task, when he suddenly felt a tickle in his chest.
"Diffindo..!" he heard, and the voice was in a loud whisper.
He looked up just in time to see Malfoy abruptly lift and deftly twirl his wand in his fingers.
Ed narrowed his eyes, then flicked them around. Sure enough, his two biggest cronies loomed just behind him, close enough to cast shadows. And others surrounded the table, looking at him in a decidedly unfriendly way. He closed his notebook with his left, and weaved his gloved fingers together before his chin; his golden gaze locked onto Malfoy's.
"Nice arm." Malfoy said with a sneer. Several of the cronies snickered.
Ed flicked his eyes to the right and down. The sleeves of both his robe and his sweater beneath were just gone...no..they looked like they were pinned just under his metal elbow on the table; His entire metal arm was exposed up to the port in his shoulder. He looked back.
"Cooler dhan skin." Ed said smoothly. Balanced equation shining in his mind, he shifted his right leg so that he straddled the bench, and placed his metal palm flat to the table.
"What's the.."
"Slitheryns?"
"Got to be Malfoy!"
"'Ione?"
"What you reckon he's.."
Warming energy circulated through him, and from the corner of his eye, he saw the two big goons unfold their arms from across their chests. He showed no reaction to the towering figures behind him, choosing to let them assume he didn't know they were there that close to his back.
"H-hey..where's..?" Ron said.
The insect-human chimeras on the table ran away in terror in all directions, jumping to the ground and running off to the underbrush of the trees. At the same time, the first of the hammy hands of the goons began its descent towards Ed's defenseless back.
Ed went into motion.
He caught the descending hand with his left and shifted his grip ever so slightly so that he had only the thumb in just the right spot and applied the pressure he needed. The goon immediately hissed and staggered, and Ed stood up, still gripping the thumb, noting all around him towered over him by at least a foot.
Ed lowered his brows slightly in annoyance.
Ed turned to face the goon and took a single step, one that took him both away from the bench and between the two goons. His right hand came up, mostly to steady the goon's chest. Smoothly, he ducked, heaved with his back and living shoulder, and at a certain calculated point, released the thumb before he managed to break or dislocate any bones.
The goon crashed to the table, stunned-- weight enough to crack the wood--landing on his back at the same time Ed easily pivoted and had both hands on goon number two. Wand hand wrist gripped in his left, Ed squeezed at a pressure point and made the wand fall from the limp grasp. Then, he the simply shifted his weight with another step and tossed the goon to the ground at his feet, using the captured arm like a lever.
"...Ed..?"
Ed held onto the thumb, and straddled over the goon, forcing him to turn to his back. He moved the capture thumb upwards, and glanced down at the goons face. By the grimmace of pain he saw, he knew he had the goon's full attention. He then looked to Draco Malfoy's shocked face, who was standing on the other side of the benchlike wooden table.
"T-ten points from Griffindor!" Malfoy called out loudly. "F-fighting!!"
Ed snorted in disgust, stepped to the side and released his grip on the goon's arm. It fell nearly limply to the ground.
"...all right you lot, back off." Ed knew the voice as Professor Grubbly-Plank.
By the time she managed to push her way through the crowd of onlookers, goon number one shook his head and struggled to sit up; Goon number two was barely pushing himself up from the dirt. Ed had his notebook back in his hand, taken from where he had placed it on the table, as she looked over the situation with wide blinking eyes.
"What happened..?"
"He..he just..attacked them..!" Malfoy said, pointing at Ed.
Goon number one slipped just then to land with hard bang! on the bench, and Ed glanced longingly to the scraps of cloth that fell beneath the table. He did not fail to see "The Look" was on the Professor's face when she saw his entire metal arm, an expression somewhere between horror and pity.
"Nodhing... vreally important." Ed said, and looked away. He shook out his free hand to disperse the energy still flowing his his body, and he glanced around to the crowd surrounding him, picking out the few people he did know. Neville's face also had "The Look", even though he already knew about his arm. As did quite a few others. Ed swallowed and looked back at the Professor.
"I..may I go?" Ed said.
"No..You..and these two..owe me an explanation."
"Fine." Ed snapped. "Dhis is between me and dhem. "
"Young man...!" Grubby-plank's voice barked.
"Ed..?" Harry's voice. "..Wasn't this..um.. just a demonstration of..uh... "
It didn't help that Harry was just one more face in the crowd filled with faces that had "The Look". Ed shot his scowl in Harry's direction, at under which Harry stopped speaking.
"Harry.." Ed growled. "....stay out of dhis." Ed looked back in time to see the Professor fold her arms and frown.
"I see... Detentions ARE in order, then. Crabbe, Goyle..I'll see you tonight. Be ready for LOADS of walking...It'll do you both good. Elric..See me after class. I understand you have a week's worth of detentions already so..."
:::
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