Hey all. Here I am again. I thank all those who took the time to review. I appreciate it. But I would ask that those who do that the time to review put a tad more effort into it. While getting reviews is good, if they all basically say 'good, more', then it's almost pointless to review at all. I'd like a bit of comment on the story, what's good about it, what could be done better... How am I supposed to improve my writing if nobody tells me what I need to look after? I'm also gonna reveal the crossover in this chapter. Oh, and be sure to read the note at the end of the chapter too. On that note, on to the next chapter

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A Different Path

Chapter 6

After his friends had left, Harry took a long, hot and best of all, relaxing shower. Dressed in a tank top and slacks, he wandered through his room to the table, absentmindedly drying his hair. Having a couple of hours before noon and thus lunch, he decided to work a bit more on his project. He'd spent a lot of time in the normal world while he was away, and learned a great deal from the non-magical people. It was truly amazing what they could accomplish, especially without magic to aid them. One thing he learned a lot about, was computers and the surrounding possibilities. The internet and email looked particularly interesting compared to the wizarding equivalent of giant libraries and owl post. Understanding the need for faster means of communicating, he'd decided to create a magical counterpart to emails. Learning as much as he could about how email and the transporting of it worked, he had a firm basis to build from. He'd been working on his magical mail version for about 5 months now, and he was confident it was near ready. Or ready enough to run a test very soon.

Calling on another piece of magic he'd learned to use, he opened his subspace pocket to retrieve his project. Two triangular pyramids, electric blue in color, appeared from seemingly nowhere. The sides were flat and a bit darker blue and if you looked a bit closer to them, you could see symbols written all over them. The symbols, called glyphs, looked like a mix of runes, japanese kanji and celtic script. The pyramids hovered for a moment, before floating down to the table. The project was nearly done. He only needed one more thing before he could test it. He was close, he knew he was. Notes were brought from subspace too, and soon Harry was immersed in the workings of his project.

Being immersed as he was, he didn't notice time passing as it did. He also didn't noticed when Ginny entered his room. Ginny had a free period now, and decided to see how Harry was. Making sure she wasn't followed, she'd made her way to his room and entered it as quietly as she could. Whatever she had been expecting, it was not what she found.

She found Harry standing at his table, strange blue pyramid objects sitting before him on it. That in itself wouldn't have been shocking, but what was shocking was his right arm. She couldn't contain a gasp when she saw it. Where there should have been a normal arm, there was an arm, made completely out of metal. His hand, underarm, elbow, upper arm and from what she could see visible from the top, a part of the shoulder, all of it was metal. A somewhat shiny gray metal arm, as if armored.

Harry heard the gasp and whirled around instantly. When he saw Ginny standing there with her hands before her mouth, obviously looking at his arm, he snatched the towel that still hung around his neck and magically wrapped it around his arm as fast as he could. The effort was too late of course, Ginny having already seen it. No longer seeing it, she looked up to meet his eyes, which were filled with shock and surprise.

"H...Harry?"

"Ginny? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in class!" Harry exclaimed. He hadn't wanted his condition to come out this way. Ginny apparently got her wits together and answered his question.

"I've got a free period." She swallowed stronger than normal, and asked the question that was shooting through her mind. "Harry, what happened to your arm?"

Now, Harry was no fool. He knew he'd have to tell his friends about what had happened to him at some point. He'd only hoped it could have been on his terms and not nearly so soon. But he knew Ginny had seen his arm and also knew it would be better if he were truthful to her about it. He sighed deeply before he spoke again.

"You'd better take a seat, Ginny. This won't be easy to hear." He gestured to one of the seats he'd conjured earlier that day. He didn't take a seat, instead he started pacing, keeping his towel wrapped around the arm. Ginny took a seat, looking at Harry with questioning eyes. He was thankful that he couldn't see fear or anything similar in her eyes. He walked to her and dropped on his knees before her.

"Ginny, what I'm about to tell you, you've got to keep to yourself. I would have preferred to keep this to myself a bit longer, so that I could've told you about this on my own terms and when everyone was here so I wouldn't have to repeat myself. But you've stumbled across it now, and it wouldn't be fair if I didn't tell you about it. Just bear with me, ok?" Ginny just nodded, not making a sound. Harry didn't move from his spot either. He did, however, drop his gaze from her face to his towel-wrapped arm.

"I suppose the beginning of it all would be the accident." He sighed again, then shook his head to clear it, and continued. "The car of the Dursleys was hit by a truck, a bigger version of a car, used to transport lots of things all at once. It was a fuel truck. Both the car and the truck went off the road. The car tumbled violently and got pretty banged up. The glass on my side broke, and..." Here Harry had to swallow. The memories were far from pleasant.

"A shard of glass stabbed right through my shoulder." Ignoring Ginny's gasp, he continued. "It went all the way through, even through the bone. The Dursleys were still alive, but I can't remember what condition they were in, it's all pretty vague. I remember that I got out of the car, and was in a lot of pain. My arm was useless, I don't even know how I managed to get out of the car. I remember seeing the fuel tank from the truck burning and exploding. Then everything went black for a while. When I woke up, I was lying in a bed in a house I'd never seen before."

He looked at Ginny, seeing the horrified expression on her pale face. It was obvious that she hadn't expected a tale like this. He steeled himself to tell the rest.

"The rest I only know from hearing it told to me. An elder woman was in the room when I woke up. She explained to me that I'd been brought there by a man she couldn't describe. When I'd arrived, my arm had been ripped off, and I had several nasty cuts on the rest of my body. The man had requested I be fit with an automail, which is what they call the kind of limb like my arm is now. It's a fully functional, mechanical replacement for a lost limb."

At this point, he dropped the towel, once again revealing the metal arm.

"I won't explain how it works, that wouldn't help anyway. She told me that I would need some time to get used to having a mechanical limb instead of a real one. I hadn't really heard much from the normal world in some time, so I didn't question the existence of an invention like this. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I'd lost my arm and gotten a metal one instead. I passed out then. After I woke up again, I was introduced to the woman's granddaughter, Winry. She, like her grandmother, was an automail mechanic. She was the one who explained most of it to me in an effort to make me more comfortable with it. She didn't seem to understand why I wouldn't want an automail. But then again, she still had all her limbs, so she couldn't possibly know what it felt like." Harry gave a wry little smile at the memory of the blond haired teen mechanic. She loved automail, having grown up around them and seeing the happiness people felt when they had a functional limb again, but couldn't possibly understand what it was like to actually have one.

"It was only a couple of days later that I learned that I wasn't even on this world anymore." Again, Ginny gasped, this time in disbelief, but Harry simply continued talking. "The world was completely different from what I knew of it. Technology was way behind on some areas, yet so advanced on others. Anyway, I spent the next three months being rightfully depressed about Sirius, the loss of my arm, the fact that I wasn't even on my home world any more... The last two weeks I'd begun getting better, mostly thanks to Winry. It was a bit later that the same man who'd dropped me off came again, but if you don't mind, I'd like to save that part of the story until I can tell all of you at once. Agreed? " Harry finished his tale.

Ginny nodded. She would need some time to process all of what Harry had just told her. She needed something to take her mind of it for a while. She looked around in the room, trying to find something to talk about while Harry stood up and walked to where he'd dropped the coat he'd worn earlier that day on his little 'rescue' mission. Incidentally, he provided Ginny with the distraction she was looking for as she caught a glimpse of his upper left arm.

"Harry?" She asked, in a tone just a tad too sweet for Harry's tastes. He turned to look at her.

"Yes?"

"Is that a tattoo on your arm?" She asked in the same sweet tone. Harry's eyes dropped to the aforementioned arm and tattoo present there. He grinned, happy that it wasn't something embarrassing she asked. He walked back to her, allowing her to see it in greater detail.

"Yep. You like it?" He asked her, after she'd looked at it. Tattooed in his upper left arm was a black panther, who looked like it was moving when Harry rippled his muscles slightly. Ginny took a couple of moments to admire the detail of the tattoo, and, though she'd never admit it, his muscled arm and shoulder too.

"It's gorgeous." She whispered. Obviously, she was impressed.

"Yeah, I like it too. It's my animagus form, but for obvious reasons I can't transform at the moment." He said while moving his mechanical arm around.

"You've got an animagus form?" She looked up from the tattoo to his eyes, that looked so much more intense without the glasses to hide them.

"Sure. Every witch or wizard can become an animagus, it's just that most of them are too lazy to go through the process, which is pretty demanding. And muggleborn have spent the first 11 years of their life in the normal world, so the idea to take an animal form is usually somewhat scary to them. It's actually possible to learn to become an metamorphmagus too, but that's even harder. But once you manage to become one, all your kids will have the ability from birth. Kids with parents who're animagi usually have a bit of an easier time to learn it, but it's not that much different. Metamorphing is a whole lot harder, so those born with the ability have it easier." Harry'd stood up again, intent on putting on his jacket so he wouldn't be caught unawares again. Once was enough. "I've got another tattoo somewhere, but you'll have to undress me to find that one." He said with a laugh as he reached for his jacket.

But, like with most things in Harry's life, things weren't that simple. The moment Harry picked up his jacket, it lost it's texture and became an amorphous blob. Said blob then crawled all over Harry's arm, moving onto his torso and other arm until it had covered his entire upper body, leaving only his hands and everything above his neck visible. Then it gained form, specifically a V-neck sweater, and changed color to ivory white, contrasting with his dark slacks.

Is it any wonder Ginny was looking the proceedings with a slack jaw?

Sighing, Harry turned to look at Ginny again. "I supposed I'd best explain this too?" Ginny could only nod, jaw still hanging open slightly. Harry walked back, tugging on his glove while walking, and sat himself down in another of the seats. Reaching over, he gently closed her mouth, making her blush slightly.

"I think it'd be best to start with introductions. Ginny, meet Morph. Morph, meet Ginny." Seeing the confused look on the pretty redhead's face, he grinned. "Alright, so you've met Morph. Morph is a unique being, as far as I know. It's independent, but it's origins are somewhat... strange, even for the magical world. You see, before the accident, I had the metamorph ability. Meaning one of my parents, most likely my dad, was a metamorph too, although nobody seems to know it. It's possible that my dad didn't even know, cause not everyone with the ability finds out. Anyway, because of my arm, I can't use that ability anymore and it was extracted from my magic. We're not sure why, but for some reason, it gained physical form when it was extracted and it's been with me ever since. It can shape shift into anything it wants, though mostly it takes the shape of a piece of clothing that I wear."

"So, you can't use the metamorph ability anymore?" Ginny asked, intrigued by the strange life form.

"Not all of it was extracted, because that would have created an instability in my magical core and at the time, that couldn't be allowed. But what I can use is very minimal. Changing the color of my tan or my eyes I can do. I can change my hair color too, and even the length of it. Well, I can grow or shorten it a couple of inches, but that's it. It's all very minimal, compared to what a full metamorph like Tonks can do. For instance, I can't hold the changes while I'm asleep. Except for the tan for some reason, that doesn't change unless I want it too... Someone like Tonks could hold the changes for days on end, even while sleeping. I could compare myself to someone trying to learn how to be a metamorph and who's in the first stages of the learning process. It's too dangerous for me to be allowed more than that."

"How so?" Ginny asked, finding the subject fascinating. She was learning things she never heard of, and she was born in a magical family!

"Well, the automail is anchored to my skeletal structure. While the organic part of my body would have no problem shifting in shapes, the metal wouldn't make the shift with it and I could seriously injure myself like that. It's also the reason I can't transform to my animal form for now. Shifting right now would change my entire physical structure so much, that the anchors on my skeleton would be ripped loose, not to mention the tearing of flesh. Given the fact that the shoulder part is pretty large, the wound could very well be lethal. So you see why I can't change more than I can right now."

Ginny nodded, having grown a bit pale at the descriptions. "So you can't change to your animagus form? Ever?"

"Not now I can't, but I've been working on building another arm. I got the plans for it and I'm combining magic with the arm as I'm making it. Instead of steel, like my arm is now, I've gotten my hands on a fair amount of Mithril, a metal magical on its own. I'm nearly done with it, I've got all the pieces, but there's still a bit of work to do on the magical part of the thing and it needs to be assembled too. I think I'd best leave that to the experts though."

"You'll have to go back to where you got your original arm then." She stated.

Harry nodded. "Yeah. It's not something I'm really looking forward to. The process of attaching the nerves to the arm is really painful. But if I ever want to have a chance to use my animagus abilities freely, then I don't have a choice. Oh well, once it's done, it's done."

Not really knowing what to say, Ginny looked around the room again. And noticed the twin blue pyramids on the table. Not recognizing what they could be, and fairly sure Harry wouldn't let dangerous things just lie around, she stood up and walked over to the table to get a better look. She looked over the pyramids closely, noticing the strange symbols on their sides, but not recognizing any of them. Looking up, she saw Harry had joined her at the table, wearing a proud, yet mischievous smile on his face.

"Harry, what are these?" She asked, pointing at the as of yet unidentified pyramids. If anything, Harry's smile got bigger and the pride was shown more clearly on his face.

"Those, my dear Ginny, are Nexi." He could see that that didn't mean anything at all to the pretty redhead, so he had to elaborate. "They're the hart of a project I've been working on. An adaptation of a muggle system to the magical world. If it works, then it'll change life as wizards and witches know it."

Ginny sighed. Harry, it seemed, was acting far too chipper about this and she still had no idea what the things were. "Ok, fine." She sighed. "How will these things change the world?"

"Simple. If they work like I intend them too, they'll allow people to send mail to someone, who will get that mail moments later, no matter where he or she is in the world." He really enjoyed the stunned look on Ginny's face. Shaking herself, she managed a reply.

"B...but...that's impossible! You can't send mail from one end of the world to the other end in only moments, everyone knows that!" She exclaimed.

"Really? Muggles do it all the time. It's a quite common system known as email. They've been using it for a little over 2 decades. I'm trying to create a magical equivalent for that system. And I do believe I'm ready for a first complete test of the system." Ginny was alternating between looking at him and looking at the two pyramids on the table.

"Wanna help me test it?" He asked.

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Ok, that's it for this chapter. As promised, I've revealed the crossover. For the non-anime fans among you, it's a crossover with an anime called "FullMetal Alchemist". Also, some of you might recognize the mmail system from Jeconais' story "This Means War!". The idea is his and I've gotten his permission to use the system. But seeing as I need to 'bring the system to life' compared to Jeconais having the system up at almost the same time muggles began to use it, my system will come with a bit of explanation. But that's for next chapter. Review!