"If you're not really here then I don't want to be either"

Black & Gold – Sam Sparro.

In a small, secluded part of his mind that was completely removed from what was going on Harry mused that he had never screamed so much in his entire life. He couldn't stop screaming, he literally couldn't stop, his mouth just wasn't listening to his brains commands of "Shut the bloody hell up!" and it continued to yell uselessly.

His throat was raw and his lungs burned and he just couldn't stop the loud, agonized sound that forced it's way past his lips and into the endless mass of shapes and colours and sounds and scents and sensations that were quickly driving him mad. His head hurt. A lot. It felt a little bit like his head was a computer that was being forced to download too many things at once and was quickly reaching melting point.

Everything from his own memories to the cure for cancer was being shoved repeatedly into his mind and Harry felt like he was going to explode from the sheer amount of knowledge being force fed into his brain. He couldn't think properly around all the information and he wanted to instinctively clamp his hands around his ears and cry.

Except, he couldn't because he didn't have hands anymore. He didn't have eyes either or ears or a nose or a mouth (he wondered how he was able scream without a mouth but his brain hurt enough as it was so he didn't dwell on it). He didn't have his head or his body. He had nothing but his consciousness and that was swiftly being immersed in the growing tide of knowledge that threatened to overwhelm his sense of self.

At first the dark hands had held him in place while he was dragged backwards through a swirling mass of technicolor memories. (It had hurt then too but not as bad as it did now). Harry had squirmed and struggled and strained against the shadow limbs and he'd managed to extract one of his arms just as a shining white figure appeared in the distance.

Harry'd always believed in the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel' lark so he'd determinedly reached out towards the figure with his free hand and yelled out for help. For a moment it had seemed as though he was to be saved from the crushing well of information but as he'd gratefully grasped onto the creatures hand a pain like no other lanced through his entire being.

It was exactly like when he'd first been dragged through the glowing circle and he'd been broken down bit by bit. Except, this time all the broken pieces that made up him were being transferred to the white figure until the creature was grinning sadisticly down at him while wearing his face. After that he'd been tossed aside to drift in the mire of knowledge that lapped menacingly at the sides of his consciousness.

Harry had no idea how long he floated there, intangible and insensible, as he fought fruitlessly to retain his sense of self and not loose himself to the overwhelming tide that surged and frothed just outside his awareness.

After a time the sensations dulled and it became easier and easier to keep himself to himself and not let his mind slip away into the tenacious lull of the unknown. Harry focused on keeping his thoughts together and slowly the tugging stopped and he was left floating alone.

Now that he was finally allowed some peace Harry decided that it would be a good time to swear and grumble and curse the world as he knew it for dealing him such a shitty hand in life. He speculated that he must have kicked some serious puppies in a past life for this one to be so unbelievably crappy. Every time he thought 'Finally, I'll be able to have a normal life with a white picket fence and a pretty wife and wonderful Gryfindorish kids and live happily ever after' something came along and tore the pretty picture to unidentifiable shreds.

He'd defeated a Dark Lord for crying out loud (Admittedly with much help from his friends, teachers, magical minions and, on occasion, his enemies) didn't that mean that he was due some good luck? Couldn't he go one fricken year without something bad happening to him? He didn't want to be whiny or anything but, for the record, he'd never asked to be born.

He continued on this line for a while before he eventually grew tired of ranting to empty space and piped down with an irritated sigh. It was kind of peaceful here. He was just one out of a million swirling, twisting entities and it was a wonderfully humbling feeling. He was used to feeling the pressure of the world on his shoulders and the anonymity was comforting in a strange way. It was still as scary as hell though.

He was just a tiny speck of dust in this strange place, he was so small he wasn't even worth counting. All around him was spots and slices of everything. Before, when he'd said he saw the cure for Cancer he hadn't been kidding. Various cures and potions zipped round him and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, so did ideas for killing and torture that made Harry wince and cringe away.

Bright colours, so strong and pure that they would have burned his eyes had he had any, brushed past him like ribbons and wonderful, strange ideas drifted through him. It would be all too easy to loose himself in this, already he could feel his mind slipping slyly away and he willed it back with an annoyed grumble.

It was difficult, impossible really, to not be affected by the things around him. Personalities and thoughts that were not his own were pressing on his mind, crawling through what was left of his being and leaving him feeling incredibly molested. He wasn't sure what he was anymore.

Before, back at the White Plane (The nickname sucked but he didn't know what else to call it and the place had been pretty white) he'd remade his body from memory but now he didn't have a body to remake. Harry didn't know what was left of him now. Was it his soul that was stranded in this weird place?

He knew that it was probably not going to work but it was worth a try. The glimmers and outlines of the various things surrounding him was giving the emerald eyed youth an idea. They all had form even though they... didn't exist. It hurt his head to think about but he got the feeling that everything in this twisted dimension was here in a detached sort of way. The things existed outside but they had form inside.

So, theoretically, he should be able to have a form too,. Even if his true body was elsewhere he could still, hypothetically of course, create a new one in here. He could will a body into being just like he willed his mind/soul to stay intact. It would be hard, even now he was having trouble keeping himself together, and it would take great concentration but he knew he could do it.

Harry decided to start of nice an simple an focused on bringing his hand back. Nothing happened. He grumbled a little and decided to go even smaller and then succeeded in bringing the nail from his little finger into being. The tiny pink nail floated eerily right where his smallest finger would be and Harry decided to use it as a starting point.

From that small nail he painstakingly imagined his finger back to life and from that finger he drew out the next one and the next one until he had four fingers and one thumb floating merrily on front of him. The thrill of success was dampened by the almost overpowering wave of weariness that washed over his consciousness.

Harry was exhausted. It took so much more work than he had expected to keep this up. He had to focus intensely on each of the fingers to stop them fading back into nothingness and the mental strain was painful. It seemed that he could only hold the fingers in place for a few seconds before either his concentration slipped and he lost the digits or his awareness slipped and he started to loose himself.

Harry mentally frowned before decided that it was possible to create a body within the Plane but he didn't have the mental stamina to keep it up. He'd simply have to practice and practice until he could keep all his limbs and torso and head in place without loosing his mind.

That was something that would take time but he supposed that the end result would be worth it. Meanwhile there was plenty of stuff to take his mind of things. Things like how he was going to get out of here and back home to where his friends were waiting. It wasn't something he wanted to think about. He didn't want to think about how he was going to miss Ron and Hermione's wedding if he didn't get out of here soon. He didn't want think about how they were taking the news of his disappearance.

Harry knew that if he was the one left behind and they had gone missing he'd be beside himself with worry. His friends were his world and he fretted anxiously over how he was going to manage to get out of this mess. He still didn't know what had happened to him so figuring out how to get out of the sticky mess he was in was proving to be more than a little difficult. The dark wizards had been muttering something about a Philosophers stone and Alchemy and the creepy little ghost had referred to him as an Alchemist so perhaps that had something to do with it.

He was still screwed of course because all he knew about alchemy could be written on the back of a postage stamp. A really, really small postage stamp. In fact the only words that came to mind when someone mentioned Alchemy was Nicholas Flamel, Eternal Life, Gold and Voldemort on account of the snaky bastard trying to steal the stone in his first year.

Perhaps if he wracked his memories for answers he might recall a fragment of a page or a line of a spell that would somehow wish him out of here but it was too dangerous to just let his mind wander in case he never got it back again.

At least for now.

What he really needed was some patience so that he could train himself to keep his mind in check but Harry had never been particularly good at the waiting game. He wasn't exactly in Gryffindor, house of the brash and the brave, for his outstanding ability to wait until the danger had passed and it was safe to act. He'd leave that cowering shit to Malfoy thank you very much.

So basically... he was screwed. Harry groaned and wished he had hands to bury his head in.

[-]

"Yes!" Harry exclaimed as he ogled his two arms in unrestrained glee. He'd had them floating for just over two hours now and he could still barely feel the mental strain. They were just arms but it was still wonderful to keep them both afloat without feeling his mind slip away into nothing. It was proof that he could do this. That it wasn't impossible.

Now to try his legs...

[-]

Harry groaned as he let his body disappear slowly, starting with his torso and finishing with his toes. He still hadn't managed to recreate his head, mainly because he couldn't quite remember what his face looked like. It was ridiculous (and a little bit scary) to know that he couldn't recall the same shape or structure of his own face anymore.

He can't have been in this place that long but his memory was turning foggy and he'd already had to rely on the whizzing pictures and twisting images of other people that drifted past to reconstruct his legs and torso.

His face was precious. It sounded silly. The rest of him could be made up of mismatched parts for all he cared but his face was different. It was his father face and his mothers eyes. In a way it was one of his last remaining links to them. How was he supposed remember the exact shade and shape of his mothers eyes? Or the angles and planes that made up his fathers face? How could he recall the effortless way his hair would simply stick up in a casual I-Just-Got-Out-Of-Bed disarray?

It was useless and Harry wanted to sob with the unfairness of it all. After everything he'd done and everything he'd been through he still couldn't protect the one thing that was purely his. Even his identity had been taken from him.

What more did he have to give?

[-]

He stared warily into the makeshift mirror and a face stared back at him. It wasn't his face but it was close enough. His eyes were perhaps a shade too bright and his hair a shade to dark. His chin was too pointy and his cheekbones too sharp but it was the closest he'd managed to get to his original face in a very, very long time so Harry was content with it for now.

For a body created from hazy memories and flashing images Harry felt that it had turned out pretty well. It was, again, not like his original but it was so similar that he ignore the little inconsistencies. Trivial things like the shape of his hands, the muscle on his arms and the length of his legs (and other appendages) were carefully overlooked in favour of the bigger picture.

Harry shuddered lightly at the use of the two words that he had grown to hate during his youth. The 'Bigger Picture' and the 'Greater Good' were forever linked in his mind as two of the scariest phrases in the entire world. It basically meant sacrificing everything you held dear in order to save a sheep majority that hated your guts.

He preened in front of the conjured mirror. (It wasn't really conjured but Harry had to come up with some sort of name for what he was able to do. What else was he supposed to call it? The spontaneous power of imagination? La-ame.) He hadn't quite gotten around to bringing up clothes yet but the thought of stitches and creases in fabric on top of the already gut wrenchingly complex body he'd just finished creating was enough to make him want to cry.

Still, he mused with a grin as he turned around and glanced into the mirror over his shoulder. He looked good.

[-]

A/N: Thanks for reading! =3

Whew! This was originally a lot longer but I decided to cut what I had written in half in the interests of getting a chapter out quicker and not killing you all with the sheer length of it. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and I know it probably wasn't what a lot of your were expecting.

I decided on Harry's toll after hearing Father from FMA:B explain why he thought everyone had their individual tolls. Alphonse had his body taken away because he wanted to feel the warmth of his mothers embrace, the ability to stand on his own two feet was taken from Edward, [!possible spoilers ahead!] Izumi lost the ability to have children after trying to revive her baby and Mustang, who had a great vision for the future, had his sight taken away.

In line with that I decided that since Harry's friends mean everything in the world to him and the fact that all he ever wanted was a normal life I was going to have his toll as his body and his home world so that he would never see his friends again. It's a bit cruel but Harry will be kind of disembodied for pretty much all of this fic but he wont be completely helpless.

If you enjoyed it then please review and let me know how you felt. And, heck, if you didn't enjoy it then still review and let me know why you thought it sucked. Criticism is always welcome though if your going to flame then at least make it witty!

I will reply to every review so don't think they go unappreciated!

-Softie.