Work Text:
Harry was angry. This was a new, uncomfortable feeling for him. He was used to feeling sad, or lonely, or ashamed, or annoyed. His cousin bullied him every day; it was normal, and his Aunt and Uncle seemed to think it was okay, so it didn't seem to be anything to get angry about. But today was different. Dudley had gathered Piers and Malcolm to play Harry Hunting like normal. Harry had expected to spend the afternoon running around, so that when they caught him Dudley would be too tired to do more than slap him half-heartedly. Sometimes, if he ran fast enough, they would get bored and leave him alone altogether.
But this time Dudley had gone too far. They had been making models in class, little flowers and suns and animals. Miss Henley had taken them home and baked them, and then they had painted them. Miss Henley had said that his bird was beautiful. He had named her Birdy, and she was going to sit on his shelf and be his best friend. Dudley had seen Birdy and told Harry to give her to him. He was embarrassed by his own deformed blob, and being embarrassed made him angry. Harry had made something better than him. That was breaking one of the Rules – never do better than Dudley. When Harry had refused to relinquish his treasure, Dudley had struck. He had punched Harry in the stomach and grabbed Birdy from him while he was trying not to vomit. Piers held him back and made him watch as Dudley stamped Birdy into little pieces on the ground. When Birdy was nothing but chalky shards, they let him go and told him to run, grinning in anticipation.
Harry didn't want to run. Dudley had crossed a line. He wasn't going to cry about it like a little girl; he never cried any more. Instead, he struck. He punched Dudley in the face. Dudley fell over, looking stunned. Before any of his friends to react, Harry was on top of his cousin. He bit and scratched, clawing at his cousin's eyes, sinking his teeth into his hand. He fought with a wild recklessness and an animalistic ferocity that terrified Piers and Malcolm. Malcolm broke first, breaking the first rule and running for a teacher. Dudley was screaming and crying, telling his friends to 'get the freak off me, make him stop!'
It took two teachers to pry Harry from Dudley. Dudley was sent to the nurse's office, while Harry was sent home. The teachers had expected to see angry tears, a face screwed up in rage. They had all secretly been expecting Harry to snap and fight back for a while now. Most of them had been hoping for it. They hadn't expected to see an icy calm glare and bard teeth. Harry didn't look like a distressed child finally fighting back against a bully. He seemed feral and wild, almost inhuman. The teachers were glad to have him off school property.
Petunia was furious. She had been called to the school to collect her nephew. Her sweet Duddykins was in tears. The poor boy had no idea that some friendly roughhousing would make his cousin attack him. She had told Dudley not to include the boy in his games, but her son was so friendly, wanting to make the brat feel included. She would have to put her foot down now, and tell the teachers to keep them apart. She wouldn't have the boy being a danger to her precious baby.
She pushed the boy into the backseat of the car, not bothering to check whether he put his seatbelt on. She didn't care if he went flying through the windscreen. He was just like a rabid dog, biting the hand that fed him. His sullen glare made his face even less attractive, and those unnatural green eyes seemed almost demonic. Petunia shuddered and drove faster. The sooner she could get the boy in his cupboard and away from decent people, the better.
Harry was thoughtful. He had been pushed into his cupboard as soon as he got home, Aunt Petunia not even stopping to scold him as she locked the door behind him. He knew that he would go without dinner, but that seemed a small price to pay. He went without food for much smaller things than attacking Dudley. Once he'd missed dinner every night for a week because he'd accidently dug up Aunt Petunia's favourite rose bush. It was a strange thought, but once it had hit him, it was stuck. There was nothing else they could do to him! He didn't have any toys or sweets or TV to take away like Dudley did. There weren't any more chores they could give him that he didn't already do. They wouldn't hit him. He had heard them talking about how only lower class hooligans with no control over their children used corporal punishment. Hitting him wouldn't be normal.
So there were no real downsides to fighting back. What about the good things? Dudley was scared of him. He had been crying and wailing and begging him to stop. As long as he was scared, Dudley wouldn't hurt him. If he did try to bully Harry, he would fight back. A mean voice in the back of his head hoped he would. The power he had, the rush of winning, of being stronger, was wonderful. He wasn't weak anymore. He wasn't helpless.
With his newfound resolve a comforting warmth inside him, Harry closed his eyes and listened to the TV in the living room. Aunt Petunia was watching a nature documentary. Mrs Clapham had been telling her about how she never watched trashy reality shows, only educational programs, and Aunt Petunia could never be less sophisticated than her neighbour. Harry listened to the soothing voice talk about the food chain. Predators and prey, carnivores and herbivores. He grinned. He was the predator now, not Dudley. Bullies would be his prey.
It only took a few weeks for Dudley to stop bullying Harry. He discovered that it simply wasn't worth it. Harry would fight back viciously, and Harry Hunting was no fun if he was the one hurt at the end of it. Harry, for his part, learned to respond violently to the smallest provocation. If he let Dudley get away with shoving him, or stealing his lunch, Dudley was more likely to gain the confidence to gang up with his friends to attack him again. Being sent to the head teacher's office, or made to stand in a corner, seemed like a small price to pay for being left alone. It wasn't like he cared about what the teachers though anyway. If they wanted his respect, they should have offered him protection when he needed it.
Aunt Petunia realised too late that she had inadvertently created a menace. She had no real way to keep him in line. He wasn't upset by missing meals or being locked in his cupboard. He did as many chores as it was possible to do anyway, so there was no way to increase his workload. After the third time her precious baby came home crying, she gritted her teeth and tried bargaining with the little monster. She would move him into the second bedroom if he stopped responding violently to verbal taunts. She would give him sweets if she wasn't called into school to deal with him. Slowly, Harry's life began to improve.
The lessons that Harry was learning from this were probably not healthy ones for a child. Knowing that being physically violent meant that you could get your way, and that striking first meant that you were never attacked in the first place, was helpful to him. It kept him safe from Dudley and got him better treatment at home, where good behaviour hadn't. That it was completely opposite to the life lessons the teachers tried to drill into him didn't matter to Harry. The teachers had ignored Dudley when he was abusing him, so as far as he was concerned, they were just as herbivorous as the Dursleys.
At first, Harry hadn't called his victims herbivores. That was because he was only fighting Dudley, and there were so many better insults to choose from. But when Dudley stopped bullying him, Harry found that he missed the rush, the power that came from being able to physically overpower someone. So he targeted other bullies, ones that hadn't been picking on him, but on other students who wouldn't fight back. The first time he had called one of them an herbivore, it had been out of frustration. His mind had gone blank, and he couldn't think of a better insult. But the teacher who had been coming to intervene in the fight had told them how good it was that they were paying attention in class, and that their game seemed like a good way to remember the food chain. She had walked off smiling to herself about how effective her teaching methods were. Harry had realised that calling someone an 'herbivore' was overlooked where calling them other names wasn't. Likewise, 'I'll bite you to death' was a child playing pretend, whereas 'I'll beat you to a bloody pulp' got him sent to the head teacher's office. Again.
Harry became a nightmare. Slowly, his targets changed. He still attacked bullies, but only because it got him in less trouble – he no longer felt any sense of kinship with their pathetic victims. He started to pick fights himself, with other students who enjoyed fighting, with those that seemed srong enough to pose a challenge. Soon, his list of targets expanded to those that invaded his space or insulted him or sneered at him. He attacked children who pretended to want to be his friends, and those who refused to work with him. The teachers had almost stopped trying to discipline him, because it simply didn't work. He had lost what little respect he had for the Dursleys because of their 'herbivorous' attempts to placate him, and any attempt to withdraw his new privileges meant that Dudley was 'bitten to death'. He had learned that rules didn't apply to him, and by the time anyone realised, it was too late to do anything about it.
One day, Harry broke Thomas Sampson's arm. Thomas had put a hand on his shoulder, so Harry had grabbed his wrist and twisted. As Thomas lay there, clutching his arm and sobbing, his twin Maisie came running up to him.
"You're a bully!" She spat at him as she hugged her brother.
Harry stared at her for a moment, shocked. It had been months since anyone had dared to confront him so directly He considered biting her, but decided not to. She seemed less of an herbivore than all of his other prey, and she wasn't physically strong enough to present an interesting challenge. Instead, he just walked away, leaving the playground monitor to come over and calm Thomas down.
He thought about it that night. Was he a bully? He fought people who were weaker than him, but everyone was weaker than him now. He had rules about who he hurt, even if those rules boiled down to 'people who annoy me, touch me or invade my space'. If they didn't like it, he decided, they should get strong enough to fight back, like he did. Strength was the only thing that really mattered in the world, after all.
Hibari Natsu watched the dark-haired boy. She hadn't expected to find such a treasure here. He was completely wild, with no respect for anyone or anything. That would have to change. Still, he was strong, and young enough to be moulded. Clearly his family wasn't capable, so she felt no guilt about taking the duty on herself. Making up her mind, she shot the tranquiliser dart at him, watching as he hit the ground.
Once she had him loaded onto her private plane, she waited for him to wake up. Once he looked alert, she asked his name.
"Harry Potter," he told her. His green eyes were calm and steady. No fear, but no trust.
"That won't do. From now on, your name is Hibari Kyoya." She couldn't have him standing out with such an obviously foreign name, and he would need her last name anyway. She didn't even consider the fact that most children had an extreme emotional attachment to their name, and wouldn't willing discard it.
For his part, Harry had honestly never cared much about his name. He knew that he was a carnivore and a predator. Any other labels that the herbivores wanted to stick to him were irrelevant. He considered his new name for a moment and deemed it acceptable. Short enough to remember and easy to pronounce. The woman was interesting. Blunt and straightforward, not like all the timid little herbivores he was used to. It had been a while since he had met an adult willing to look him in the eye. Maybe this would be interesting. Little Whinging was running out of prey anyway.