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There are new teachers at Hogwarts.
Now, ever since Harry has started at Hogwarts, there has not been a year that there hasn’t been at least one new teacher at the head table.
There have never been this many though.
Professor Grubly-Plank subbing in for Hagrid is not unexpected, but also not welcome. It makes Harry worry for his friend, and he has enough on his plate without having to wonder if Hagrid is still alive.
Umbridge teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts though? The only way this could be worse is if Lucius Malfoy or Voldemort himself took the position.
Then there’s-
“And lastly,” Dumbledore says with a gesture at the blond man sitting between Sprout and Umbridge. “We are proud to welcome Professor Edward Elric for Alchemy in our midst! It is a pleasure to be able to offer it again-,” Umbridge interrupts him, and everyone throws her bewildered and offended looks, save for Elric.
He just raises an eyebrow and rests his head on his left hand, watching her with a blank expression as she goes into a speech so dull and boring she could give Binns a run for his ghostly money. When she’s done and sits back down, Dumbledore finishes his own speech.
Across the Great Hall, Elric’s golden eyes meet Harry’s for a split second and send shivers down his spine before the new teacher turns to strike up a conversation with Umbridge, looking perfectly polite and engaged.
His scar itches, and he’s uneasy at the implications.
When Harry is halfway to the Gryffindor dorm after his first detention with Umbridge he walks right into Elric and almost falls onto his butt. The new professor catches him by the arms and for just a moment Harry feels a deep existential dread lance through him.
The feeling vanishes as quickly as it came, and when he meets Elric’s worried eyes there is no itching in his scar, only pain on the back of his hand where thin rivulets of blood ooze from the words cut into his skin.
“Are you alright, Potter?”
“Yes, I’m fine, Professor,” he replies on autopilot, grabbing his right hand with his left to make sure Elric doesn’t see the wound. “Just getting back from detention, sir.”
Elric frowns, his golden eyes almost glowing in the flickering torch light of the hallway. His gaze drifts to his hands. “You had detention with Dolores, correct?”
Harry swallows back a curse. “Yes, sir.”
“I see,” something flickers over his impassive face, then a grin forms and he claps his shoulder once. “Better get to bed, now.”
“R-right,” Harry isn’t sure what to make of it when Elric walks past him and into the direction of the DADA corridor. Elric seemed to have a cordial, if not amicable, relationship with the ugly toad, so he isn’t sure what to expect.
Then there’s the weird feelings he gets around Elric. The itching scar, the dread, the fear-
He hopes this encounter hasn’t made things even worse.
When Harry gets to detention the next evening the black blood quill is mysteriously absent, and replaced with an ordinary hawk feather one.
Umbridge, for her part, looks like she wants to throw a Cruciatus curse at his face.
Maybe Elric wasn’t such a bad guy, after all.
Harry’s next extra-curricular run-in with the strange Alchemy professor is that Saturday when he climbs the stairs to the owlery to send Sirius a letter. Elric is trying to coax one of the school owls down from the nesting holes and looks like he’s a few seconds away from conjuring a crossbow and going for a hunt.
“Uh, Professor Elric? Can I help you?”
The blond man turns around, the hand not holding onto his letter running through his hair in frustration and knocking several strands loose. Calling him blond is perhaps a disservice to just how much like gold the color is, just as striking as his eyes. “Oh, Potter, fancy running into you again.” So he wasn’t the only one who thought it was weird. “I’m just trying to get one of these stupid birds to take my book order to Flourish and Blotts, but they are more stubborn than my wife.”
Harry blinks. “You’re married?” He blurts the question out before he can help himself, and to his surprise Elric laughs.
“Yeah, can’t believe it myself some days, actually,” he smiles, his eyes warmer than he remembers seeing them before.
They stare at each other for a few moments before Harry remembers the original topic of conversation. “I… could have my owl take your order? She has to deliver a letter first, so it could take a bit but…”
“That’d be great, thanks!” Elric looks genuinely relieved, and Harry suddenly feels bad for being so suspicious of the man before. His scar had been weird for months now, maybe it was just a coincidence that it happened around him. He startles when the man thrusts his letter into his hands, face open. For the first time he wonders how old he is. “If you ever need help with something don’t hesitate to ask, alright?”
“Thank you, sir.”
“No, thank you,” he says and then he’s gone in a flurry of golden hair and the scent of machine oil.
Huh, machine oil?
Weird.
Umbridge inspects Alchemy during Harry’s period, and he wonders how it will go. On one hand Elric seems to be about the only member of staff besides Filch who doesn’t hate her guts, or at least is incredibly good at hiding it if he does. But on the other hand he’d evidently realized that she had tortured Harry during detention and put a stop to it, however the fuck he did that. Even McGonagall couldn’t reign the toad in, how Elric did it was beyond him, really.
Then there were the things he’d heard about him through the grapevine or seen firsthand, like him pretending not to see anything when Fred and George pulled their pranks. He was incredibly fair in his classes and had the nasty habit of pairing up people who very clearly hated each other, and Harry wasn’t sure if he did that to foster cordiality or if it just amused him to watch them simmer in their anger.
(Harry is regularly paired up with Malfoy and hates every minute of it. At least Malfoy was proud and studious enough not to jeopardize their grade.
It could be worse. Hermione gets Goyle and Ron gets Parkinson)
Elric is also both demanding and absolutely chaotic. Normally he sits or stands ramrod straight, face impassive and seemingly ready to go into battle at a moment’s notice. He seemed like a mix between a well-adjusted Moody and Sirius, which is the strangest mental image he’s come up with in a while. But the moment he starts talking about alchemy and gets really into it he becomes a whole other person. During lessons Elric seems like a lighter Lupin, and his classes are equally as fun and interesting as his had been.
So, really, this inspection could go any possible way and he has no idea if that scares or excites him.
Umbridge is the last person to enter the classroom, Elric already on his knees and drawing an array on the chalkboard floor like he was an artist kissed by his muse. Ron had once joked that he looks more like a seer when he gets like that than Trelawney, and Harry silently agrees. Elric gets weird when he performs alchemy.
“Oh,” Elric looks up at her from where he’s drawing a series of complicated runes into the array that even Hermione only knows a quarter of. “Right, inspection today. Completely forgot.” Forgot? Harry could have sworn he saw him get the notice at breakfast this morning. “Just lemme finish this array for today’s demonstration so I can give these kids something to do.”
Umbridge blinks like he’d slapped her and then goes to scribble something onto her clipboard. She purses her lips with a pinched expression, and Harry wonders what she noted down. “Very well, carry on.”
As Elric finishes the array she steps closer to inspect it, looking terribly confused. To be completely fair none of them actually understood any of the transmutation circles until after the lessons were done, but it still amused him that she looked lost. In the meantime Elric has gone over to the cupboard in the corner and is now returning with an assortment of various odds and ends. “Please step back.”
She blinks as he carelessly dumps the things in the middle of the circle but doesn’t step away. “Professor, what is this?”
Elric gives her a weird look. “Alchemy?”
“I don’t understand,” she shakes her head, waving at the mess at their feet. “Isn’t alchemy about making gold and Philosopher’s Stones? What does this have to do with anything?”
“Oh shit,” Ron whispers beside him, looking gleeful.
Elric, who had looked terribly annoyed at the mention of gold, becomes stone-faced at the words Philosopher’s Stones. “Don’t presume to explain my own subject to me, Dolores,” his voice is hard, and suddenly he looks nothing like the frazzled alchemist they had come to know. “And if you don’t want to find yourself on my bad side, never mention those cursed objects to me again, are we clear?”
A visible shiver runs through Umbridge, her face coloring in indignation. “Show me some respect-,”
“I show respect to those I deem worthy of it, Dolores,” he cuts her off, voice cold. “Now step back and let me get on with the lesson.”
She doesn’t, and he merely scoffs before crouching and touching the tips of his gloved fingers to the outside of the chalk circle.
The now familiar and expected blue lightning arcs across the floor and throws the stupid toad onto her butt.
There are scattered snickers from the students, but for once she ignores it.
Because in the center of the circle is an impossibly intricate cabinet made of carved, polished wood and stained glass and golden handles.
“I warned you,” Elric says dryly, offering her a hand to help her up. “For the record? Making gold is laughably easy and hardly worth the hype.”
Umbridge shivers again, and Harry can’t help a vindictive smirk.
“You don’t know how to let things lie, do you, Potter?”
Harry’s blood runs cold at the voice, and next to him Ron and Hermione squeak out in surprise. He turns to where Elric’s voice had come from and gulps. “Pardon?”
Elric rolls his eyes and steps away from the wall he’d been leaning against, walking towards them. “Are you three really this stupid and reckless, or are you just pretending to be?”
“Excuse me!” Hermione yelps in anger before quickly slapping her hands over her mouth and coloring, embarrassed. Elric raises an eyebrow.
“It’s a genuine question, because founding a secret student organization is already dumb enough with Dolores trying her best to get at you specifically, but being this obvious about it is really the icing on the cake.”
“How did you even find out about Dumbledore’s Army?” Ron asks, and at the name Elric actually facepalms with a low groan.
“Really? I mean… really? Truth, you kids are so, ugh! Okay, you are obviously too stupid for your own goods, so!” He claps his hands, leveling them with a stern glare. “I’ll make sure you don’t kill yourself with stupid.”
Harry and his friends exchange confused looks. “What?”
“You obviously need adult supervision because you’d probably manage to kill yourself with a plushie.”
“That’s unfair,” Ron complains remarkably childishly, and Elric merely rolls his eyes again.
“I get to supervise you idiots or I march you straight to Albus, your call.”
They are quiet for a long moment before Hermione finally finds her voice, quiet though as it is. “Okay.”
“Good, first order of business? Change of name, cos this? This is embarrassing.”
Harry wasn’t sure what he’d expected from having Elric be their responsible adult, but certainly not their group getting legitimized as Alchemy tutoring, nor Elric being anything but a responsible adult.
He’s watching them, for the most part, leaning against a wall with his arms crossed and eyes trained on their every move.
Then, out of the blue, he steps into the room and shouts. “Are you fucking with me?” Dead silence spreads over the Room of Requirement, all eyes on their teacher. “In what universe will your enemies just stand around and wait for you to wave around your silly little sticks and mutter your silly little words? Have you ever heard about dodging? Or exercise? You are hopeless.”
“What do you mean?” Fred asks, genuinely curious, and Elric just snorts and makes a come here gesture with his hands, not taking out his wand.
Come to think of it, Harry had never seen him use one.
“Come at me.”
Fred blinks, taken aback. “What?”
“Come on, attack me. Anything goes.”
“Uh,” Fred looks around, unsure, then shrugs. “Stupify!”
Elric dodges the spell with ease, and then the next they know Fred is on his back and his wand is in Elric’s hand. “That’s what I’m talking about.” He bends down and picks Fred up by the scruff of his sweater, lifting him up like he weighs nothing and putting him back on his feet, returning his wand. “Now, let’s whip you miscreants into shape.”
Harry has to revise his opinion of the man.
Edward Elric is worse than he thought.
Much worse.
“Is there something you can do about our Quidditch ban?”
Elric stops leafing through the thick tome he was reading to look up at Harry, unimpressed. “I’m sorry?”
“Is there anything you can do to get Fred, George and me back onto the Quidditch team?”
Elric sighs and shuts his book, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Listen, I get this game is important to you guys, but is it really worth it?”
“Of course!”
His professor groans. “Look, Potter-, Harry,” he presses his palms together and levels him with a look Harry can’t quite place. “I doubt Dolores will be teaching at this school beyond this year, given the track record and her general incompetence,” he almost chokes on his own spit at the casual dismissal of her. “And she doesn’t actually have the ability to ban you guys from Quidditch outside of school. So, sure, I can try and talk her out of it, I’ll probably manage it, too, but it would just make her even angrier. Or, you sit down and take it until next year when she’s inevitably replaced and you can go back to being on the team. You could probably use the free time, to be honest.”
When he puts it like that…
“I’d still like my broom back, flying helps me relax.”
Elric sighs, put upon. “I’ll see about it.”
The next day Umbridge returns their brooms with a sour face, muttering about it being a sign of goodwill and reiterating their ban from Quidditch.
Harry looks over at the head table and meets Elric’s gaze, who just rolls his eyes before going back to buttering his toast.
The day the interview with the Quibbler is published Elric storms up to Harry at lunch, waving the magazine around. “Are you daft?”
“What?”
“Are you daft, Potter?” He throws the magazine onto the table, uncaring when it lands on Ron’s mashed potatoes. “Antagonizing Umbridge and the Ministry like this is stupid, reckless and doesn’t do anything besides make your life harder. Do you have any common sense at all?”
Hermione glares at him. “People deserve to know the truth!”
“The truth is worthless if you can’t back it up with facts,” Elric shoots her down, rolling his eyes. “You are being discredited by the Ministry, and you think people will believe you when they hear it from an interview with a disgraced gossip columnist in a conspiracy magazine? Give me a break.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do, twiddle our thumbs?” Ron has fished the magazine out of his dish and thrown it to the floor.
Elric pinches his nose and mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like a death threat. “You are all hopeless, holy shit.” And with that he turns around and walks over to the head table, muttering something about needing a drink.
“What a prick,” Ron grouses, staring after him angrily.
Harry is inclined to agree.
The first time Harry sees Elric’s wand is during one of the… tutoring sessions, when he’s teaching everyone how to conjure a Patronus. The entire room is cast in an eerie silvery light from the various bursts of mist and stray corporeal Patronuses, and when Elric steps up to him the shimmer makes him look like one of the Veela from the Quidditch World Cup.
He’s holding a long wand made of pale wood, no carvings to be seen, and yet it sends shivers down his spine. “Uh, what wood is that, Professor?”
Elric raises an eyebrow at him. “Yew, why?”
“Just curious,” his mouth has turned bone dry. Had he been right to be suspicious of Elric? The itching scar, the dread, and now the same wand wood as Voldemort? Maybe-
“Anyways,” Elric says, stretching the second a out. “Could you teach me that spell, too? Seems handy.”
“O-oh? Sure, I guess. You need to really focus on a happy memory for it to work, not just anything but something that is strong and resilient.”
Elric hums, frowning a little before taking a few steps away and muttering to himself, flicking the wand with little effect.
Soon enough his attention is needed elsewhere, and while he still has the nagging feeling that perhaps there is more to Elric than he’d thought, he tries to instead focus on helping his friends and classmates. It’s almost at the end of the session when a startled shout echoes from across the room. When Harry looks he sees a giant silver lioness erupt from the tip of a pale wand, casting an eerie light onto golden eyes.
Harry suppresses a sigh. Just when he thinks he’s starting to figure the man out he throws him a curveball.
Elric asks him to stay after class and Harry just wants to scream.
“What’s going on?” The man is as blunt as ever, and Harry isn’t sure if he should be grateful for it. “You look like death warmed over.”
“I didn’t sleep well,” he grits out and hopes he will let it go. He doesn’t.
“Bullshit,” Elric deadpans, and it is a testament to how shitty he feels that he doesn’t even react to the expletive. “It’s fine if you don’t wanna talk about it, but you are obviously not fine. You didn’t even snap at Malfoy today.”
Harry bites his lip, unsure what to do. He’s pretty sure he isn’t supposed to talk about his dreams and the now-canceled occlumency lessons with Snape, but he’s also sick and tired of constantly doing what he’s told and then being kept in the dark.
It’s all such bullshit.
“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” he says anyways, even if he is starting to not give a shit about it all.
“Okay,” Elric says, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. “But do you want to talk about it?”
He blinks. When was the last time someone actually asked him about what he wants or thinks? “Yes.”
“Okay,” Elric repeats and then leads him over to the door that opens up to what Harry assumes is his office and living quarters. He gestures him to a soft-looking armchair by the fireplace, which ignites on its own. Elric walks off for a moment and then returns with a plate of cookies and two glasses of water. “If you’d like something else I can have the house elves bring it.”
“It’s fine,” Harry mutters. He hadn’t really expected to be served anything at all, and the kind gesture is so at odds with what he expects from the man that he feels even more unmoored than he already did.
“So,” Elric starts, sitting down in the free armchair and looking at him with a blank face. “Whenever you’re ready.”
This is so weird. Not just an adult in his life asking him what he wants and giving him space, but willing to wait for him to open up and be patient?
Harry’s throat burns and the breath he takes in hurts. “I… have been having dreams, about Voldemort.”
Elric doesn’t flinch at the name, just nods. “Okay. That’s understandable.”
“It’s just,” he bites his lip. “They aren’t normal dreams? It’s like… I’m in his head? Once I was his snake and attacked Mr Weasley, and it turned out that the snake really had attacked him?”
His teacher stiffens. “Like a mental link?”
Harry nods. “So, Professor Dumbledore had Professor Snape teach me occlumency, the art of magically blocking my mind from others.”
Elric snorts. “Severus? Really?” He leans forward and picks up one of the cookies, taking a thoughtful bite. “Why didn’t Albus do it?”
“He hasn’t even looked at me in months,” Harry can’t help the bitterness in his voice, and the disbelieving look on Elric’s face is more vindicating than he thought it would be. “But, yeah, the lessons were about as helpful as getting hit in the head by a bludger.”
He hums. “That’s not all, is it?”
“No,” Harry admits. Elric is surprisingly easy to talk to, and he decides to pick up a cookie as well. “Last night he… left for a moment, and I got curious. He had removed some of his memories, probably so I wouldn’t see them by accident? And, well…”
“You looked at them,” his voice is even, free of accusation or reprimand. “Let me guess: Severus caught you in the act and ended the lessons.”
“Yep,” he pops the p and takes a large bite from the cookie. They are surprisingly good. “But what’s been bothering me is the memory itself, to be honest.” Elric leans back in his armchair and waits for him to continue, giving him time to sort his thoughts. “My father… was a bully.”
“Ah,” his teacher nods to himself. “And you have trouble reconciling that with the way people talk about him, I assume?” Harry just shrugs. “I admit I can’t really relate. I hated my father for most of my life. But… you gotta see it like that, Harry. So your dad was a dick in high school, big whoop. I dunno if you’ve noticed, but teenagers are all varying degrees of assholes. But he grew up and got married and had you, and he died to protect you. Assholes don’t tend to do that.
“He can be both, you know? He can be a teenage bully and a good adult. People change, they grow up. They might get worse, or they might get better. No one is a saint, Harry, we all have skeletons in our closets, though admittedly some are worse than others. It’s okay to want to see your father as a good person, Truth knows my brother and I have very different opinions of our father. Don’t let this one thing get to you too much.”
“I dunno how to do that.”
“And that’s okay, too.”
They are quiet for a moment before Harry sighs. “Thank you, Professor.”
“It’s no problem,” Elric hesitates. “If you ever have one of those dreams and don’t know what to do, you can always come to me, okay?”
“Okay.”
Harry doesn’t know where he got the wherewithal to actually go to Elric after his dream about Sirius, but he does. The professor is in his office apparently busy grading their exams when he knocks at his door, frantic and barely able to see straight.
“Harry?” Elric frowns at him but still ushers him in. “What’s going on? Aren’t you supposed to be-,”
“He’s got Sirius!” Harry doesn’t think twice about cutting him off, nor about revealing the fact that he’s close with a supposed mass murderer. There is no one else he can go to, is there? “Voldemort! He-, he’s torturing my godfather in the Ministry of Magic.”
“Harry,” Elric’s voice is stern and his hands on his shoulders are grounding despite the dread filling him to the brim. “Do you even hear yourself? Do you really think that Voldemort and Sirius Black, two of the most wanted men in Wizarding Britain right now, would be in the middle of the Ministry in broad daylight?”
“But I saw it!”
“Has it occured to you,” his teacher says with unending patience. “That Voldemort wanted you to see that? That this is a trap?”
Harry shakes his head. “Sirius he… he’s the only one I have left.”
“Where is he?”
“Huh?”
“Where does he live?”
“I can’t-, the Fidelius-,”
“Harry,” Elric squeezes his shoulders. “I’m not going to get him arrested or anything, okay? I will just go and check if he’s home and make sure he’s not actually getting tortured. I promise.”
“I really can’t,” Harry hates this so much. “The Fidelius protects it. I can’t say the address to people not within its reach, only Dumbledore can.”
Elric mutters a truly exquisite litany of curses. “And I assume you don’t know where Albus is?” Harry shakes his head again. “Who else is under the Fidelius? Anyone I can reach out to who can then check up on Sirius?”
Harry draws a blank for a long moment. “The Weasleys, at the Burrow.”
His teacher gives him a sharp nod, ushering him towards the office door. “You go and try to act normal,” he starts, grabbing for his coat as they leave. “I will go to the admin office and get their proper address. I will find out what’s going on, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”
He bites his tongue, because he doesn’t want to lie.
It all, predictably, goes to shit, yet somehow it’s not as bad as it could be.
Bellatrix shoots a stunning hex at Sirius, but a giant wall emerges out of nowhere to block it and bursts into smithereens, and it’s all the distraction he and Sirius need to retaliate against her.
Only one person dies that night.
Dumbledore and Voldemort are engaged in a duell like nothing Harry has ever seen before, and then suddenly they aren’t.
A loud bang resounds in the atrium and all Harry sees is red on polished marble as Voldemort falls forward, unmoving.
Then Professor Elric apparates into their midst and runs over to Voldemort’s still form, turning him over. It’s only then that Harry sees the bleeding whole in the middle of his forehead, eyes dead.
“What the fuck?”
“Language,” Elric says distractedly, making a hand signal towards the upper row of windows running along the ceiling. “Okay, so that’s that. You,” he turns to Harry and snaps his fingers. “Get over here.”
Harry makes to do as he’s told as if on autopilot, but gets stopped by Dumbledore’s firm grip on his arm, wand extended towards Elric. “What is the meaning of this?”
Elric rolls his eyes, remarkably calm with the most powerful wizard of the age threatening him with his wand. “We just took care of your problem.”
“We?”
“Yes, we,” he says, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder. Harry follows it to where a blonde woman is running towards them, followed by a man with black hair. “Anyways, let’s get the rest of this done with so I can go home.”
The newcomers both sigh, and the man pinches the bridge of his nose. “How about you explain yourself for once, Fullmetal?”
“Nah,” he waves him off, then snips at Harry again. “Now, chop chop, let’s get this done with.”
“Get what done with?” Elric and his weird friends - was the woman carrying a rifle? - might have just killed Voldemort, but this was getting much too weird for his liking.
“Make sure that that connection with Voldemort you have is gone. Won’t hurt and will only take a moment, promise.” Elric doesn’t wait for his response and instead begins carefully mapping out the most complicated array Harry had seen to date, nudging Voldemort’s foot out of the way when it blocks him from finishing the outer circle.
Once he’s done he waves at it. “Okay, step in,” he pauses. “Maybe give Albus your wand, don’t want it to break by accident.”
Dumbledore clears his throat. “What exactly-,”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Elric cuts him off, rolling his eyes. “This is an array to sever artificial connections attached to souls and bodies that I’ve been developing since Harry told me about his lucid dreams. It’ll just get rid of whatever is connecting him to this fucker,” he kicks at Voldemort as if to make sure they know who he’s talking about. “Can we continue now? I haven’t seen my wife in a year and I’d like to get this stupid thing done with.”
“I’m surprised it’s taken this long,” the black-haired man says dryly, seemingly unfazed by Elric’s sudden shift in attitude.
“It’s not like Truth was very forthcoming about this job, General Bastard,” Elric rolls his eyes and seems to have reached the end of his rope, walking over to pick Harry up like he’s a sack of potatoes and then drops him in the middle of the circle.
“Uh, is this safe?”
“Eh, define safe,” Elric shrugs and activates the circle before Harry can try to make a run for it.
A weird tingly feeling rushes through him and his scar starts to ache before his vision whites out for the barest moment.
Then it’s over, and he blinks. “Uh…”
“Great!” Elric claps his hands. “I was only seventy percent sure this wasn’t gonna fry you.”
The man he’d called a bastard slaps him upside the head. “Are you crazy?”
“Uh, yes?” Elric rolls his eyes, already starting to erase the array with his boot. “It’s like you don’t even know me.”
“I think General Mustang meant the fact that you just risked the life of a teenager,” the blonde woman says with a blank face and even blanker voice. “Your lack of common sense is well known enough, Edward.”
“Fair enough. But also? I did this in about three months, can’t expect my usual diligence with that kinda time crunch.” He waves at Voldemort again. “Anyways, evil wizard dead, Chosen One saved. Considering Truth hasn’t sucked me into the void yet I will call this a job well done and enjoy the rest of my life with my Gate intact. Now let’s get the fuck home so I can see my wife.”
Harry blinks. “What?”
“Nothing you gotta worry about,” he takes out a silver pocket watch. “Now, I’d like to leave before all the stupid politicians show up. I assume you can deal with that mess?” The question is directed at Dumbledore, who, for the first time since Harry can remember, looks at a loss. “Great! See ya!” And with that he’s grabbed both the two strangers by the arms.
The second before they apparate away he only hears “Fullmetal! No! I hate this bu-,” from the black-haired man.
Harry looks at Dumbledore. “What just happened?”
Unnervingly, the man doesn’t seem to have an answer.