Gifted, Guide, Primitive (Special, Precious, Freak)
MABalas
Posted: 08/14/2017
Chapter: 1/7
Blanket warning for the fic: implied or outright references to death, child abuse, manipulation, kidnapping, murder, PTSD, psychological disorders, and other possibly triggering things. I am not a medical professional and I write only for my own entertainment. No pairings of any variety in this prequel (implied possible slash/het pairings if you REALLY squint, though?).
DUE TO REVIEWS, HERE IS A FUTURE WARNING THAT THIS SERIES WILL BE HARRY/RIDDICK, LOKI/TONY, STEVE/BUCKY, AND WHOEVER THE HELL ELSE I WANT TO PAIR. SLASH. YAOI. BOYXBOY. MANXMAN. TWO MALES TOGETHER FOR SEXY TIMES (along with some het pairings like Bruce/Darcy, Nat/Clint, and others as well, but those are socially acceptable so I don't have to warn for them like this).
Sigh.
Please read at your own caution. No slash in this fic but the overarching series is a main slash pairing. If you don't like that then don't even start this one.
This is self-edited and all mistakes are my own. If you notice any typos please let me know; most of my writing is done in Google Docs on my mobile.
I own nothing you recognize. :)
Harry Potter was Gifted. He knew he was Gifted when he was three.
The feeling started out small. A separate sense of being angry and annoyed at nothing. An episode here, a patch there.
Harry pictured it as a mosquito bite on his brain he couldn't reach to itch and wouldn't go away.
Then the Gift came fully online as he grew closer to four. The mosquito bite became a poison ivy itch that spread from his brain to inside his skin. It blistered and oozed into his muscles and bones.
Aunt Petunia added more chores. More nights without supper. But Harry couldn't stop the fidgeting and itching and scratching at his head and arms and chest and legs. Every waking moment it was hundreds and thousands of ants crawling inside his mind and body, spitting acid as they went.
Uncle Vernon took the belt to him more than once because he itched at his skin until he had raw, red welts on his arms and neck and back the neighbors asked questions about. Then Uncle Vernon started the lies and he became the unstable orphan, his aunt and uncle's charity case.
Those same concerned neighbors looked at him with pity and revulsion.
Harry didn't care. He could only feel the itch.
Harry knew he was different from other Gifted at five. He snuck into Dudley's room one weekend when his relatives were out on holiday without him (them being gone was holiday enough for Harry). He used his cousin's computer to read up on the itch.
It was called the Gifted Itch. Nothing surprising to Harry. What Harry did find surprising was how strong his itch was. For most the itch was erratic, active only in times of high stress or emotion.
For Harry the itch never stopped.
That itch meant Harry was strong. It was the Guide itch to find a Sentinel, a Run to wrap around his mind and settle as shields against a world of emotion. It was the Sentinel itch to center their senses on a Guide, to join a Run and protect their claimed territory-a throwback from a history of nomadic tribes.
The itch was the push to bond. An Initiate Bond would settle the itch but not the chest deep ache was for the full bond. A Platonic or Partnered Bond.
The chest deep ache was for the full bond.
The International Center for the Gifted frowned on the full bond, romantic or not. It made the Run less productive for the ICG. But the Center couldn't prevent it if the Sentinel and Guide were compatible; a true match could slide into a full bond subconsciously.
A Platonic or Partnered Sentinel and Guide were much more discerning in who joined the Run. An incompatible Sentinel was not welcome where they would have been tolerated in an Initiate Bond.
Settled by the knowledge of what was happening to him but still slightly confused by some of the ICG's stated facts, Harry wondered what a Sentinel bond would feel like. Harry knew he was a Guide, it was a fact to him as clear as he knew grass to be green.
Guides were rare, growing rarer, and Sentinels were at an all-time high. Harry would be wanted by someone.
Days passed, the Dursley's returned, and the itch never stopped burning and blistering.
His chest never stopped aching.
Harry drew Sentinels without meaning to do it. Neighborhood children, teenagers, and some adult neighbors would come knocking at the door simply to say hello or ask who might be inside. Normal people who had never bothered to visit before and who never blatantly displayed their Gift-but the fact they were all Sentinels was glaring to Harry.
Aunt Petunia would never let Harry see them. She would wave them off with platitudes or outright lies. Anything to pretend to be normal.
She would be in a fit afterwards. Harry would have to scrub all of the floors by hand and polish all of the wood in the house and dust every nook and cranny.
Harry knew Aunt Petunia knew what he was.
Keeping him away from the maybe-Sentinels was worse than making him sweat and bleed pulling thorns and weeds outside, she thought. Anything to make Harry more miserable, to isolate him further. Breaking one of the top three Center rules-never keep a Gifted from other Gifted, as well as never interfere in a bond and never come between a Run-was nothing if it fed into Harry's misery.
No one would ever know, she thought. Harry was a freak, after all.
The more Sentinels of all genders and ages-Latent, Active, and Classed-that Harry drew, the angrier Aunt Petunia was with Harry each summer.
But Aunt Petunia couldn't know it was worse for Harry. She was actually doing him a kindness, keeping the Sentinels physically separated from him.
Harry had wondered what Sentinels would be like; he found out they clung and poked and pulled at his mind. They dug mental fingers into his growing shields and tried to pry their way between the cracks. If they could get in it would be that much harder for Harry to get them out. Anything if they could form the Initiate Bond.
The Latent had no idea they were even reaching. They were like constant weights dragging him steadily down.
Harry learned to shrug them off.
The Active and Classed Sentinels were worse. They latched on greedily, prying at every layer of his shields until Harry was exhausted fighting to keep them out.
Barely able to physically stand some days, Harry never let them in.
When they couldn't get past Harry's shields when he was exhausted they would try to coax him. They would offer a balm for the itch-a mental nudge of their own strength. A silent offer of a place to nestle into and rest if Harry would only let them in. Somewhere he didn't have to fight anymore.
Harry didn't know what it meant to not fight every day.
When the coaxing didn't work they would coerce him-or try. The more they postured and threatened the more agitated Harry's Gift grew. Irritable became aggressive and each Sentinel left Harry's shields psychically dazed or even partially zoned.
None of these Sentinels were right. They all dug into his mind like salted sand, rubbing into the open, raw blisters of his Gift.
Life became an endless blur of physical labor and mental attacks. Harry's strength of will against Sentinel's mental fingers pulling at his mind and his body trudging through the work.
Harry learned to protect himself; he learned not to trust any Sentinel and he learned how to build his own shields higher, stronger, and better. Day after day he learned to stand where before he would bend.
His Gift never stopped. It wrapped more shields around his mind-better shields. It was layer after layer spun daily like a possessed spider. Translucent, deceptively beautiful, but strong as steel and a sticky trap.
His shields stopped keeping Sentinels out. His Gift beckoned them in, a spider to the flies. No one expected a Guide who fought back.
Sentinels blundered in and his Gift wrapped them tight in silk to sink fangs into their mind for the effort. Then his Gift would cut the intruder free with the mental wound to prove Harry wasn't worth the work.
Harry learned young to always be wary of a Sentinel's then Harry learned the Sentinels had better be wary of him.
Sentinels never did learn to be wary of a Guide's.
The night of his sixth birthday Harry began to dream. Dark, terrifying things he couldn't remember in the morning-only the stink of fear and his racing heart. Harry's Gift was furious after the dreams, like a swarm of bees whose home had been shaken and the culprit gone before they could react.
The Gift's anger leached out and made Dudley meaner and Aunt Petunia sharper and Uncle Vernon harsher.
Harry's Gift grew and the dreams came more often and the Gift turned more and more frenzied every night afterwards. As if there were an enemy to attack that it missed time and time again.
So unlike a normal Guide to be so bloodthirsty. So unlike Harry's Gift to miss any prey it had in its sight.
But Harry never said a word about the dreams. Never said a word about the zoned Sentinels, and they never said a word about a Guide that would attack instead of heal. Their pride wouldn't allow it.
Harry never said a word. According to the Center no one comes online until they're seven.
The golden glow came shortly after the dreams started. It was at the heels of one very bad night, at the end of a nightmare Harry could vaguely recall.
There had been a man that was no longer a man who called Harry's name with a hate even stronger than his aunt and uncle and cousin combined.
The glow was different from his Gift; similar but separate. It rushed into his mind and poured over the buzzing, stinging Gift like warm honey. It soothed the edges and helped the Gift push away the hate of the man, the lingering fear and nausea of the dream.
The glow hated the dreams as much as the Gift, but that was one of the only things they agreed on. Most days Harry felt like a rope between two tugging dogs, pulled taught and fraying between the glow's ebb and flow and the Gift's itch and burn.
The pain of being pulled apart from the inside out was worse than the Sentinels pulling from the outside trying to get in. Harry had a way to fight the outside attacks-there was no trap to set or place to hide when the enemy was his own Gift and glow.
The glow did help soothe the Gift's itch, but it was a raging river forging pathways through his body. The Gift was the ever-present buzz and sting of bees in his mind. Nothing touched the endless ache for something Harry couldn't put in words. It was an innate sense of something far away and barely attainable and far too vulnerable.
When Sentinels pushed and poked the glow soothed the affronted Gift. The glow had its own criteria, too, whatever it may be, and none of these Sentinels were right for it either. The only other thing the Gift and glow agreed on.
There were days the tug and rush and buzz and sting of his Gift and glow made Harry too nauseous and dizzy to move from bed. He would lay in his closet and watch the glow play between his fingers like golden fireflies while his Gift flitted from person to person outside, seeking a shelter that would never come, stinging anyone that dared try to cage it down.
Harry liked the glow on those days, calm inside his body while his Gift was distracted. Harry could feel the glow eddy through his bones, as timeless as the earth.
The glow was as natural as the Gift, like breathing air or dreaming of a home away from the Dursleys.
It simply felt right.
Harry Potter was finally seven, and Harry was Gifted.
You could be non-Gifted or stay Latent or be a late bloomer, but seven was the earliest. Everyone said so.
Harry was weak, barely C Class, but he was Classed. He was a Guide, something precious and special. That's what the Center worker told him.
The local Center came in and reviewed each student. Those who came online were marked Active and Classed if their Gift was strong enough. They were all required to be registered with the ICG.
There were mandatory classes for the Gifted. If not for the International Standards for Gifted Education enacted by the ICG, his Uncle Vernon would have never allowed it. But Harry was seven and Classed and registered. Even his uncle couldn't ignore that.
The ISGE teacher was a Guide with a respectable three Sentinel Run. He was excited to have found Harry. For a few weeks Harry even felt special being one of only two Guides found in the school.
Then the ISGE found out Harry was Primitive. Which meant Harry went into the ICG registry as Primitive.
A Sentinel pushed too hard at Harry's shields in class and Harry's Gift pushed back as it always had, digging stingers and fangs into the Sentinel.
The girl was knocked out and had to be professionally Guided back to consciousness.
Harry wasn't special now. Harry was dangerous. A true freak once more.
Harry didn't say anything to the ISGE's angry questions. All of them worded as if it was Harry's fault. The Sentinel had no blame. As if Harry felt nothing when they curled fingers into his shields and pulled. As if it wasn't an insult a seven year old D Class Sentinel thought she could force her way into a bond when others much older and stronger had tried and failed.
Harry watched all of the Sentinels warily from across the room for the rest of the day. His Gift still buzzed against his shields defensively. The glow wanted to spark between his fingers and in his hair like a visible statement of warning across his skin.
I am here. I am not weak. I will not let you in.
The ISGE finally gave up trying to make Harry talk.
It was another check for his freak status. What Guide wouldn't talk? But they didn't understand it took all of Harry's willpower to keep the glow and Gift inside.
Harry wanted to let go. He wanted to finish what his Gift started with the Sentinel-make her live the constant attack and violation Harry endured every day. Harry wanted to let the Gift and glow out, wanted so badly to show them how strong he was.
Harry would never be caged by them.
Some days Harry wanted to claw through the layers of skin and muscle and bone to scratch at his brain and heart and lungs as if that could soothe the psychic ooze and itch of his Gift.
Some days he wanted to let out the glow in an endless torrent of gold to relieve the pressure as it etched through muscle and veins and nerves.
Some days the Sentinels tried to pull Harry in, thinking they were being clever. They tried simply because they could, so they could say they were the one to bond the Primitive. Those days Harry wanted to smash his head in a door to make the push and pull and itch and burn and clawing, prying mental fingers stop.
Harry would never let them in. He would never let any Sentinel in that felt like grit and glass and thorns and salt and wrong.
But Harry never said that out loud. Harry knew that wasn't healthy.
Guides didn't go feral like Sentinels if they weren't bonded.
Guides went crazy.
Harry was 10.
Harry was barely a C Class Gifted.
Harry was a Primitive Guide. A throwback in genetics that made Harry's Gift a weapon instead of a balm.
No Sentinel wanted to chance a Primitive Guide. It was too dangerous and the bond too volatile to properly ground the Sentinel. Who wanted a Guide that could inflict as much or more damage than the Sentinel themselves?
A weak Guide? Barely Class C? No one wanted to chance that.
But Harry wasn't weak. The same way Harry knew the glow was different from the Gift, Harry knew the Gift had learned to hide.
All of the Sentinels pressing and pulling to try to force a bond. All of the nightmares growing more vivid each night and cutting into Harry's sanity. All of the whispered words and cold remarks because Harry was a broken Guide. They only made the mad spider scurry harder; they made the threads gossamer steel.
The Gift spun its web and the glow trickled between every layer, filling in the cracks and creating something like a labyrinth more complex every layer deeper towards Harry's core self.
Harry wasn't weak.
The Gift and the glow simply got tired of the poking.
Harry received his Hogwarts letter at 11.
He had a name for the glow and an escape from the Dursleys.
Magic.
