A/N A few quick things to explain. I will not issue content warnings with each chapter. So these are the warnings for all chapters now: kidnapping, possessive behaviour, period typical violence and attitudes to marriage/women, dubcon to some extent, and smut
The characterisation of Thorfinn in this is based off of the characterisation within Canimal's work, along with within Kittenshift17's, and Freya Ishtar's to a certain extent. This is written with their express consent. Please go and check their work out, if you haven't already, because they are all amazing!
This AU is based from my own knowledge and research of Viking and Anglo-Saxon Culture and not from the TV Show Vikings. Any context specific vocabulary about the period will be explained within either the end or beginning author's note depending on their importance to the chapter. Northumbria is referring to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom which spread from parts of modern day southern Scotland to Midlands (Merica at this time).
The story is set in the mid-to-late 8th century and before the establishment of wizarding schools and so will take some creative liberty with that.
A language barrier will exist to some extent and this will be present through the use of italics to denote Old Norse and regular form to denote Old English.
{Hermione}
Darkness had only just fallen over the settlement at the edge of the Humber. The moon cast it's light through the pillar of smoke rising from the centre of the settlement, warming the faces of those standing there. The church crackled into existence in the firelight, glowing slightly as the wood sparked. The houses stood, framing the fire; as the girl scurried from the shadow of the furthest house from the fire.
She walked from the glow, as far as she could, until she had reached the edge of the river. Where she had so often walked to, simply to avoid her world and the drama of the settlement. She had found that standing at the riverside, in darkness, when everyone was asleep, was the only time she could really relax, let her guard down. She slipped her boots off, walking to the water's edge and hiking her skirt to place her feet into the river water. She would gasp at the cool temperature but enjoy the soothing nature of it, for it allowed all of the pain that blistered over her feet to escape and in that the pains that she felt elsewhere.
She bent down, turning the stones over with her hand before taking one from the pebble covered shore. Her thumb ran over the smooth surface of the pebble before she threw it out onto the river. It skipped out over the water's surface, once, twice, three-times. Plop. She repeated it again. Again. Again. On the fifth time she paused, holding the stone in her hand and slowly focusing on it.
This was the real reason that she would come out to the riverside. To do the one thing that they would hurt her for within the town, not matter what her parents would say, no matter who her parents were – or their position within the Witan. In fact, they would probably the first to harm her for it. It made her a witch.
She sighed, and flung the stone out so the it would skip against the surface once again. Expecting to hear the same 'one, two, three, plop' she had heard for the other four times that evening. Instead she heard the sound on the stone skimming off of the edge of a wooden hull. She froze, hearing a series of shouts obviously about the noise.
The silhouette of the boat was only just visible in the moonlight, but she could just about make out the wooden shape of the longboat. She frowned. They would eventually come ashore and here was the point at which they would easily be able to the settlement above. She had to move, but no matter how she would make it up the shoreline they would be able to hear her as she disrupted the way that the stones lay out. She felt her fear echo and buzz around her. She needed to move.
The shouts from the ship were getting louder and louder as she stood there, time passing. She needed to move. She needed to move, to get home and into her bed. She began to scamper up the shoreline, moving as quickly as she could through the pebbles as they pulled back from her feet.
The darkness flooded around her, the shouts increased as a single scream pierced the air – coming from the direction of the settlement, though the brunette girl was not really sure from where. Her bare feet met the mud at the edge of the riverbank, where it led into the forest, and she moved to break into a run. Only she couldn't. She couldn't move.
It wasn't that she didn't want to move. It wasn't that she wasn't compelling her feet to move, to carry her through the trees and back to relative safety. It was that something had frozen her in place, and that she couldn't move at all.
"Found you, Princess." She heard muttered in the language of the Vikings, before a hand was waved across her face and she fell into the darkness. Two arms reached out and lifted her up, and she felt nothing more as she fell into the darkness.
[Thorfinn]
~1 Hour Earlier~
The longboat cut through the river towards the settlement. On every trip they had made over the sea before, they had seen this settlement. And on every trip he had been told another fact about the place by his men, each telling him of the King's brother living there, or the daughter who in one of the younger crew member's opinion was rather plain. But since the blonde boy mentioned her every time they passed the settlement, he doubted that.
His closest blood brother, Dolohov, had argued with him about perusing this settlement. But he had thought that the Jarl would prefer more of a hoard than less – and due to the size of the settlement he was sure that there would be plenty of treasure. Not that was all that he cared about with this settlement. A blow to the King would be enough for him to avoid angering his blood brothers that had settled along the Northumbrian border. He was falling out of favour with the jarl so anyway to avoid that was preferable. And he wanted to see this girl, this princess.
They had taken the settlement rather quickly at dusk, just after the sun had fallen. And then he searched for her. When he found no sign of her, and her parents having no clue where she was, he ordered the men to bring their ship downstream, so that they could have better access to the town when the girl eventually returned. One of the young boys had said that she had often gone down to the river when she was angered at her parents – he assumed she was there and would eventually return.
"You don't deserve her." One of the men, who he had assumed was her father, spat. He was stood apart from the others, clad in blue linen and had the more ornate sword compared to the men around him. Thorfinn let out a low chuckle, grinning at the man's discomfort.
"No?" He laughed, reaching for the hilt of his sword – shaped out to be a bear with slithers of gold decorated through its fur. "If she is as plain and wild as my men would have me believe, I think I do." He grinned when the man shied away, recognising the tone in his captor's voice.
"Please, she is my only daughter." He pleaded, and Thorfinn raised his eyebrow at him. Why would the man plead for his daughter? Unless he planned to marry her elsewhere?
"Then you should want me to take her," He grinned, leaning back against one of the wooden walls of the huts. "Because then I would never want to harm your family again." And he would leave the settlement mostly unburnt, not including the bits that he had already set on fire when they had arrived – mainly the church.
"We need her."
"Why would you need her?"
"She is a healer."
"Healer?" He raised an eyebrow, grinning as he motioned to the young woman three deep in who had been taken from the healer's hut. "You have a healer." He stepped around the group to the man. "Unless, it's something you do not want to say out loud, because your people would not want to hear it." His voice was slow, carving around every syllable carefully.
The man nodded slowly and Thorfinn broke out into a smile. He reached for the wooden hilt of his blade, feeling the core running through the magic within it. He stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder and forcing him to look at him. He felt the fire glint in his eyes. "Find her."
"No!" A scream filled the air as the man lashed out to grab at him, forced back moments later, his eyes wide in shock.
"And burn this place." Thorfinn turned on the spot, growling out his words, before he walked back towards where he had told his men to move the boat to; to the stone bay at the edge of the settlement.
As he approached the bay he saw her, attempting to scramble away from where she had seen his ship. He grinned looking over her form as she made her way up the bay. She was young, yes, and her hair was wild. But as he approached he noticed that she could not or had not seen him.
He grinned at the thought. If she had no idea he was there then this made everything easier. She was walking straight towards him. He grinned and as she moved just to the river bank, where the embankment met the forest edge, and sent a quick spell to freeze her there, his hand resting against the hilt of his blade. Before she could fall, he was at her side – lifting her body into his arms as he murmured "Found you, Princess." He cast another quick spell so that she passed out in his arms.
She was relatively light in his arms, stably asleep and unaware as she was lifted onto the ship. The air was warm from the embers of the fire, just visible from where he was stood on the deck. The boat was still mostly empty, the men still at the top of the ridge within the village as others rested at the edge of the embankment.
He looked towards the girl at the back of the longboat, where he had left her propped up against the wooden side. He sighed again. This didn't feel like it would be an easy journey back to his home.