Magic That Cannot Be

MABalas

Posted: 08/14/2017

Chapter: 2/7

Harry's magic was becoming sentient.

He was completely convinced of this, even if his careful inquiries on the possibility were shot down by Professor Flitwick and Professor McGonagall as impossible. Magic required study and precision. Accidental magic was the closest they could come to the possibility and it was based on emotion-volatile and unreliable.

Certainly not sentient.

Harry had asked the Headmaster once if it was possible for magic to have a mind of its own.

Dumbledore had smiled and charmingly changed the subject.

That was the moment Harry knew the Headmaster had the answer-and he would never share it with Harry.

Hermione figured out Harry's not-really-secret secret in first year. Harry should have known better-Hermione was too clever-but Harry hadn't given her enough credit. She was more than a know-it-all.

When the troll had her trapped in the restroom while Harry clung to its neck and Ron fumbled with a spell, the Primitive part of his Gift reared up.

Magic and Gift manifested together, only a second, the golden glow of his magic responding to the blatant threat by sparking between his fingers while the Gift focused itself through his magic. Together they arrowed the fear and tension and worry and adrenaline straight through the troll's thick skull.

As quick as it came his magic and Gift sucked back into his shields, scurrying back into place to lay in wait again.

The troll froze, stunned and confused. It gave Ron the time he needed to cast the levitation spell.

But Hermione saw that spark, that second of impossibility as the troll reeled from the psychic attack. She had seen Gifted at work before and she knew the signs then.

Hermione was curious by nature, and Harry was an anomaly. Witches and Wizards could not, after all, be Gifted. That 'could not' always seemed to be the catalyst of 'would be' in Harry's life.

Hermione became his confidante and sounding board through the years as Harry explored his magic and Gift and Hermione stayed by his side through all of the fame, rejection, and trials. Harry would come to think of her as his sister in all but blood.

The lack of Gifted in Hogwarts was actually a relief from the dozens of Sentinels that were always battering at his shields in school in London. Harry felt like he could finally think in classes-when he wasn't being ripped apart by the infighting of his magic and Gift or left haunted in the light of day by his nightmares.

That lack of Gifted was also how Harry found Fred and George before he ever met Ron; Fred and George were Gifted.

Harry was not stupid for all that he had little skill for book learning. He was much better with practical applications. And Harry was Gifted and a Guide-a strong Guide. He knew another Gifted from across Scotland, and he certainly knew a Sentinel if only to stay far away from them. And Fred and George had the Gift-in a fashion.

Harry took the time to study what little they had on the Gifted as well as magical twins in the Hogwarts library.

Hermione had been so proud to see him taking on a research project and being active in his education.

As much as Witches and Wizards denied Muggles' intelligence and skill, they couldn't ignore the Gifted. Even if the Gift didn't work with magic (as far as the studies knew) the potential still ran in the blood. Harry found out there was even a department for it, the Department of Gifted Enforcement or the DoGE.

They were about as creative in naming it as the ICG.

Gifted were too prone to detecting the natural fluctuations of magic even if they couldn't outright see or use it, and the natural shields and psychic nature of Gifted made obliviation difficult if not impossible. The DoGE was there to keep Wizarding society secret and safe.

Fred and George knew what Harry was because they shared a spark of the Gift. As Active Sentinels even they knew a Guide when they saw one not three feet away sitting across from them on the train.

Harry found his new research project fascinating. Magical twins were so rare because they were pre-disposed to be Gifted. It usually killed one or the other of the two within a year of birth as with other Gifted magicals, and when one twin was lost the other quickly followed. The few twins who made it through were a perfect balance, an exact match in every way that allowed the Gift to flow cleanly between the two. Single Gifted wizarding infants never survived more than two or three years if they were lucky and were particularly weak in magic.

Harry carefully ignored the pang of uneasiness when he read those words.

A witch's or wizard's magical core was intertwined with the Gift. Both the magic and Gift competed for the mental and physical resources, each trying to grow with the infant. The clash of the two left the baby too weak to live, one or the other becoming dominant and inadvertently cutting off an integral part of the physiology. Magic and the Gift were innate to the body, and both were needed to survive. It was similar to a Gifted who went too far into a zone to be called back or a witch or wizard who exhausted their magic to the point of fatality. The Wizarding world was working to understand the phenomenon to this day.

That spark of a perfectly shared Gift made Fred and George see the world differently. They saw Harry for what he was, not who they wanted him to be. And the twins being the twins, they kept Harry's secret to themselves.

Keen eyes hidden behind the jokes and pranks watched Harry and effortlessly intervened when he was overwhelmed with the emotion of a castle full of teenage hormones.

Fred or George or both would show him rooms hidden in rooms, forgotten paths between the halls to avoid the crowds, and passageways outside the castle to reach the open grounds or the Forbidden Forest or Hogsmeade.

They never asked for anything in return. They never once touched Harry's shields though Harry could feel them observing. The never commented on why the shields were so strong. They simply gave, and never asked for more.

They were the first Sentinels, so diluted as to barely be Active, to ever respect Harry's boundaries.

The years passed both slowly and far too quickly.

There were too many secrets and too much "protecting him from himself" in the mix and not enough truth and honest care. Not from the adults who were supposed to protect him. Hermione and the twins and Neville were great. Ron had his highs and lows.

Then there was Luna.

Luna who everyone thought was barmy.

Luna who walked up to Harry in a strangely empty hallway one winter day.

Luna who said, like someone commenting on the weather, "I can finally see the construct, Harry. I've been sliding off of it like wet glass every year. I thought it was magic at first, and then I saw the silk. Very tricky of you. My compliments on the intricacy. Brilliantly done."

She wandered off again and Harry could only stare bemusedly at her back. He muttered a delayed, "Thanks?" at the ends of her blonde hair around the corner as students seemed to filter in from nowhere once more.

Harry put the odd conversation, if you could call it that, out of his mind until a few months later.

Harry was exhausted.

He felt like he had gone on an overnight bender then fought a dragon-again-and lost. He hadn't slept for over 36 hours.

His Gift and magic were pulling at his mind and core relentlessly. One moment he thought he would split in two and the next the forces came together with a crack, like a rubber band pulled too tight and snapping back into place. His shields were in flux and the emotion and signature of every living soul in the castle and forest beat against him in the relentless rush and ebb of an ocean tide. He could barely keep his head above it all to breathe.

He didn't remember walking into the Great Hall for breakfast. He stared through the plate of food someone set in front of him. Sound washed over him in a low rumble, his mind too caught up to process any words.

Luna was suddenly sitting next to Harry. He only knew because she waved her hand in his face until he blinked at her in a daze.

"Seeing the world with more than one eye can make it very distorted, Harry. Truths are skewed and lies seem truth. It's hard to get the distance and colors and depths right squinting with one eye closed." She made herself a plate and took a prim bite of toast and eggs as she closed one eye and stared at Harry through the other. "Yes, closing one eye, shutting it away while you let the other work can make the seeing eye too strong and make the closed eye very jealous, you know," she punctuated the words with her fork so close to Harry's face he went cross-eyed looking at it. "The construct is beautiful but it's not shared. It will come knocking at the walls one day and you won't like the way it plays. Balance, Harry."

She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, smiled airily at everyone who was staring at her in utter confusion, and drifted away out of the hall.

Harry stared after her, too. He wasn't confused. His brain was finally kicking over as her words sank in. His open mouth and wide eyes were from horrified understanding.

"Harry?" Hermione asked softly.

He shut his mouth and shook his head. He forced a few bites of food down out of practicality. He'd need the energy soon.

Harry skipped his morning classes to seclude himself in the boys' dorm. He crafted the strongest charms and wards for privacy and silence he could. He sat on his bed and used the soft sounds of his own breath and heartbeat to slip into a deeper and deeper meditation as his ISGE teachings had shown him.

Harry had gotten out of the habit of meditation with magic study to fill his days. Another lapse he needed to correct.

What he found in his mindscape made him curse. Not out of surprise, but confirmation.

Luna had been right. His Gift had come knocking, and it wasn't playing nice.

His magic had originally intertwined with his Guide shields as a second defense, a fall back to bolster them when Harry was too exhausted from fighting mentally against the Sentinels to keep them out by will alone. The magic was meant to be interwoven with the shields; the shields were supposed to be stronger with the Gift and magic together-and they had been, for a time.

But when his Gift fell to the wayside as Harry studied and worked with his magic, the magic that was once a protector of the walls had become a warden. The fortress around his Gift became a prison.

His Gift had been under siege by his magic for years and Harry had no idea until Luna informed him over breakfast.

Where Harry thought the magic had learned to meld with the Gift they were only clashing. Harry was caught in the middle of two innate forces in his mind and body. He had to find a way to balance them both.

Harry had no idea how long he spent inside his own mind, slowly unweaving over a decade of work. Layer after layer he had to unstick and unwind the silk, pry out the magic, and deconstruct the labyrinth brick by brick.

He had to make it a partnership-not a prison.

When Harry had finally stripped his shields to his core there was little left to reuse. He also noticed an odd corner of his mind, separated from the rest, a chink in his core that was carefully blanked by his Gift and wrapped in even more shields. They were haphazard and fresh, as if his Gift had to constantly work to keep that part wrapped, but he didn't have enough time or energy to worry about it right now. He had learned enough from the ISGE to know a shield in his shields was generally mental trauma of some kind-Harry had enough triggers from his childhood he didn't need to go unwrapping whatever lay behind that one. He had to construct his outer shields once more.

He started slowly, crafting a stable foundation. He carefully fed magic into each of the layers. The Gift no longer crafted webs out of desperation. The lines it laid were steel and stone, one after the other, strong, stable, and enduring. Harry's stubbornness, pride, cleverness, temper, and temperance, everything he had learned himself and been taught by his friends, was poured into those shields.

When he came back to the outside world the dorm was dark. He dropped his wards and had to sit a moment to adjust to the sudden sound of the evening common room downstairs and the wash of emotion against his new shields.

Harry needed to train his Gift as much as he trained his magic. The Gift was energy without an outlet. That was why there was always the pull on his mind until he felt like he was splitting in two as the Gift strained to be free. Harry could understand the need for freedom, trapped by his relatives, his Primitive Gift, and a magical prophecy; caged by his freakish or famous status in either the Muggle or Wizarding world.

He finally laid back in bed, exhausted by a day well spent and damn whatever McGonagall wanted to say about his missed classes. Harry wasn't sure how much longer he could have lasted before either his mind or body broke. He no longer had the pressure of the caged Gift battering inside. It was a constant pain he hadn't even realized was there these last few years until it was gone.

He fell asleep satisfied by the happy hum in his mind of a true shield.

He forgot about (a lie; he ignored, repressed, denied) that carefully blank chink in his core.

Some days later Luna wandered by him on the way to class. She had been reading an open book but paused in the middle of the busy hallway right in front of Harry. Students spilled around them in a river of muttered words and rude gestures.

She stared into Harry's eyes for a few seconds before smiling brilliantly.

"A partnership is much healthier. You'll find the colors much more interesting as well."

And that was that.

Luna knew he was an impossible magical Gifted Guide.

She had given him what was probably the most important advice of his life.

The book she was reading was upside down; she fingered the cork and radish on her necklace absentmindedly as she continued past Harry to class.

Harry couldn't wipe the smile off of his face for the rest of the day, even through Potions.

Things changed for Harry's Gift and magic after that.

He began training his Gift each night as he studied magic by day. He explored his new shields and learned to see the colors, as Luna called them. As with most of what Luna said, it seemed ridiculous but had a certain wise truth to it in context.

What Luna called colors Harry realized were actually auras. He could recognize them from the basic Gifted education in school. Harry had been using a form of aura reading for years, using his Guide senses to assess someone's character at a superficial level.

Harry thought he didn't have a knack for the skill that most Guides reported to be effortless. It was another aspect of his Primitive status, supposedly. He hadn't thought too much of it at the time and the ISGE never bothered to look into what should have been a basic skill; they simply marked him defective.

Harry hated himself at that moment as much as he hated the Center worker that had let him slide through the cracks of the system.

The auras were like having a new world revealed, one hidden right under his nose and wordlessly mocking him his entire life. It was discovering magic all over again, at a universal level. It transcended the lines of Muggle and Magical, human or plant or animal. It wasn't something on a physical plane-this was someone at their core, all of the moment's that had shaped their life to this point, their best and worst selves laid out in a kaleidoscope of color across their skin. This was an animal at its simplest-hunger, thirst, shelter, and life. This was a tree's breath, a flower tipping itself into the sun, the hush of rain on the ground.

Harry was mesmerized.

His entire life, every relationship, became a pale imitation of this truth. The reality of the spectrum of the colors a human could be was breathtaking. Personality, morality, the truth of a spoken word or twitch of a muscle, they all became an open book to Harry.

It was overwhelming, most days. Invaluable others.

Mostly it was terrifying, crushing, and heartbreaking. Harry could read the corruption in the Ministry, see Voldemort's influence on Pureblood families, the fear in Muggle-born as the war progressed, the duplicity in friends, and teachers, and everyday people he passed who knew the name Harry Potter and put up their front, good or bad. People he had thought of as friends had ulterior motives of fame, power, or money. People he had never trusted became a balm, their honesty to his face a rare treat (hatred was a truth all its own).

He had been so relieved when Hermione was lightness and truth and determination and a thirst for knowledge at any cost. There were drawbacks to those, of course, but Harry had seen both sides. Ron was not so deep, an easy boat to rock and Harry slid farther from his side when the haze of jealously was always hounding his shadow.

Snape and Dumbledore were the worst. Harry had to sit down with Hermione and check the research they had kept on auras four times before he could accept how wrongly he had judged them both. All that was dark was not evil and all that was light was not good. Emotion was not single-layered and the choices life offered weren't always easy to endure.

There were so many shades of gray most days Harry wanted to scream with it.

It wasn't a pretty picture, the auras Harry learned to read, but they were the honest truth and Harry drank them in like a dying man in a desert. He had known but not really, not until then. There was little honesty in Harry's life.

Not all Gryffindors were brave, not all Ravenclaws were honest, not all Hufflepuffs were true, and not all Slytherins were evil. Harry learned not to trust words or even actions-some of the Slytherins played pieces too many steps ahead for Harry to keep track.

Only auras were honest.

As his skill with his Gift grew it no longer fought his magic until he was insensate with the pain of the pull. Harry would get migraines occasionally, but not like before when every bit of light and sound and life bit into his brain like a pickaxe, broken glass and grit against his shields.

On the other hand, Harry's dreams grew worse as his skill with his Gift grew.

Harry carefully did not think of the chink locked away inside.

The night he saw Sirius in the Department of Mysteries he didn't think. It wasn't the first time he had seen a friend in danger, but Sirius was family. The only family he had a chance to know and he hadn't had enough time.

It was a trap. He should have known it was a trap, should have sensed it, but he had rushed foolishly into saving someone once again. His saving people thing that went tits up and ass sideways.

He watched Bellatrix's spell send Sirius through the Veil.

There was a frozen moment as Harry's mind stalled. A moment Sirius was there before his aura winked out of Harry's senses. Guide senses that said a body was there and breathing and alive and then was gone.

Dead.

Someone yelled, broken and hoarse. It took him a moment to realize it was his own voice.

Harry's Gift snapped to life. His magic fed it.

Gold sparked from his hands and arms and power crackled through his hair in a sudden upwind of power that rushed out from Harry's body.

He turned his eyes on Bellatrix.

He saw the moment she understood Harry was more.

She ran.

Harry didn't move physically-he pushed.

He pushed the pain and helpless fury and loss into Bellatrix as he had done clumsily to the troll in first year, as he had instinctively done to attacking Sentinels over the years.

This wasn't clumsy. This was intent.

Intent was everything in magic and to Harry's Primitive Gift.

Bellatrix fell to the ground with a scream not unlike someone under the Cruciatus.

Harry didn't look away. He didn't shy from what he was doing. He dropped his shields further and let his Gift swarm.

His world focused on Bellatrix.

He fed the emotion into her like a poison. He let it burn through her mind as she writhed and screamed and babbled.

Harry had no sense of time. Minutes or hours he poured his loss and fury into the woman. It wasn't until Hermione stepped in front of him, broke his line of sight to Bellatrix, and shouted pleas for him to stop that he came back to himself.

He stared at his friend's pale face and scared eyes. Scared of him.

But Harry had seen Bellatrix's mind and he knew she wouldn't stop. He had only left her more mad than before.

"I have to finish this."

Calm. Flat. Controlled.

Hermione was terrified as Harry pushed her gently to the side.

He walked over to Bellatrix's panting body. The woman rolled over to look up at Harry as he looked down at her. Her nose was bleeding from the mental strain.

He felt nothing when he looked at her.

"Ickle Harrykins," she giggled. "Harrykins has a secret secret secret." She cackled to herself as blood slid down her cheeks and tears leaked. "You're warped and twisted. Like a roach you live when you need to die. You enjoy the power. Use it for yourself now that Siriu-"

Harry had intent. She had no right to say his name.

He ripped through her occlumency shields like tissue paper.

He was a failure at legilimency. It wasn't for lack of skill.

Magic, legilimency, was a pale imitation of a Guide's power, after all. A Primitive Guide was a weapon. Harry was a weapon with a purpose.

He cut through her mind like a lobotomist. He excised everything that made the twisted creature what she was.

It only took seconds.

His Gift registered the shock, horror, and disgust filling the silent room. At some point the Death Eaters had fled. Only those of the Light were left to watch their Savior murder a woman in cold blood.

Harry was empty. All of the fury and pain had been spent on Lestrange.

He sat down right there on the floor next to her body and stared at her slack face.

Her eyes that had sparkled with mad glee at the murder and war and pain were vacant. A body and a heartbeat. That was all that was left.

Guilt was for those who regretted.

Harry pulled his knees up to hug them to his chest. There was a growing hole in his heart the emotion kept dripping out, leaving him empty and barren. He pressed his knees tight to it.

It kept leaking around the edges.

He did not blink as he met Bellatrix's empty eyes.

Not Bellatrix any more.

He had seen the truth of her soul, the black oil slick of her aura. Her choices, her crimes, and her perversions had been his to view and judge. She had been too far gone into the black to ever come back from that edge. She hadn't even wanted to try.

She'd reveled in the misery and torture she'd caused others.

Harry couldn't explain that innate knowledge to anyone but another Guide. He couldn't explain that to a room of witches and wizards who wouldn't ever understand. They wouldn't even meet his eyes.

Harry stared at her body and regretted nothing at all.

Destroying a mind was easy. The choice had been easy.

Deciding between what was good and what was right was not easy. Doing what was right wasn't always what was good.

The nightmares after that choice were not easy.

Life was never easy.

It was Hermione who figured it out, of course. Hermione who was equal parts fascinated and concerned for Harry as she observed his Gift and magic over the years.

The battle for power between the Gift and his magic was absolute. There was no exception. Harry shouldn't be sane, even if he had taken the steps to rebuild his shields and provide an outlet for his Gift.

Harry confided in Hermione some weeks after Sirius' loss.

Harry wasn't sane. Or was it insanity if you knew your sanity was slipping? Semantics.

Harry told Hermione of the growing paranoia, the darkness and blood and chaos for the sake of the screams that haunted his every moment of sleep. The headaches, the foreign emotion that snuck in until he was nothing but a black hole of depression or a tightly corked bottle of rage.

He told her how some nights he didn't sleep for fear of the dreams. How some nights he snuck into the Forbidden Forest just to release the rage. Even the Acromantulas had learned to avoid him on those nights.

He would go days with next to no sleep sometimes, only pausing when his eyes were too heavy to keep open and then no more than an hour or so at a time. The images behind his closed eyes were too much to bear, the emotion leaking in with them too much.

Hermione's face as Harry admitted more and more was hard to read, but her aura was easy, and Harry knew he couldn't lie to himself any longer.

Hermione laid out the truth of it. The truth Harry had always known but never wanted to admit out loud.

His scar was a horcrux.

How else could a touch disintegrate a man unless the connection was there? How else could he see Voldemort's memories, his present actions? How else could the emotions be forced into him? How could the visions be forced? The curse itself should only have killed him, but Harry lived and Voldemort died and the broken soul so thirsty for immortality found its home in Harry's mind.

Harry thought of that blank space in his core. A chink in his soul and a backdoor through his shields.

Hermione figured it out, but Harry didn't tell her all of it.

Harry understood Dumbledore's actions. Why the Headmaster left him with the Dursley's. Why he never checked on Harry, why he forced him to live a Muggle life, why he didn't acknowledge Harry's sentient magic or impossible Gift, and why he never tried to train Harry in the Dark Arts.

Harry wasn't meant to fight. Harry was meant to die.

The irony of it all was the horcrux. The horcrux was all that kept him breathing and as sane as he was.

The Gift and magic cannot coexist. They rip their host apart, each vying for dominance. The magical core cannot grow and the Gift cannot settle. When given a foreign presence, a leech on their host's soul? They have a shared enemy to distract them from ripping each other to pieces.

Harry laughed.

Secure in the Room of Requirement that had conjured them a soundproof, magicproof room, there was nothing for Harry to lose.

No one to see their precious Savior's fraying mind. No one but Hermione to see Harry's careful daily magic slip, the glamour full of misdirection that hid the heavy bags, tired lines, and broken eyes, the scars on his body that were memories from humans and beasts.

The laughter turned hysteric.

Hermione slapped him on the cheek. Hard.

The sound was absorbed by the wards.

Now he knew how Malfoy felt.

The Brightest Witch of her Age leaned forward. She held Harry's hands in her own. She was so young and earnest and full of hope, moth wings beating against Harry's shields, her aura bright with determination.

The unshed tears were caught by the firelight, her hands slightly shaking where they held Harry's own. Gryffindor brave.

"Harry, we'll figure something out. We always do."

Empty words. Harry wanted to laugh again but held it in. They were not children any more, they had never been allowed to be children. They were at war, and not everything in life had a perfect solution; but he didn't have the heart to beat down that fragile hope in the sister who had given so much for him.

He was always a walking corpse in Dumbledore's eyes.

Hermione and Luna and Neville and Fred and George were the only ones who stood by him. Hermione physically the closest, but the others in heart and mind. Ron turned his back on Harry with his jealousy one too many times, as Harry had expected. He had distanced himself enough that Ron's betrayal barely broke flesh.

Now Harry stood alone in the Forbidden Forest to face Voldemort.

Ron had fallen to the fiendfyre. Hermione and Neville were looking for Nagini. Luna and Fred and George were fighting the invading hoards. Remus was dead but Tonks lived.

Harry reached out with his Gift one last time, opened up and wrapped them all for a moment in his shields, a single moment he could call them his own. Only Fred and George would understand that moment of Harry's weakness. Only Fred and George would feel the loss. Harry hoped they could forgive him.

Then Harry let them all go.

Harry had been groomed as a tool. It was time for him to do his job.

Even knowing he was only going to be discarded in the end he was stubborn enough to see this through. Damn the prophecy and damn the greater good. The good was not what he fought for anymore. He fought for the memory of his blood family and the promise of his chosen family.

A promise and a memory had brought better soldiers than him to their end.

AN: The remaining 5 chapters are written and will be posted over the next few days as I have time to run through final edits and get them up here.