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note. It's important to note that by the time Luna comes back, it's the evening. I might not convey this well, but Draco is alone with Coelfrid ALL DAY. There's nothing to do, and I didn't want to write about 12 different silences because there is literally nothing else to do.

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2.

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where do we begin. to get clean again. can we get clean again?

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He awoke in the morning cold and angry. Loony was nowhere to be found, nor was the vegetable (Draco really needed another name, and silently resolved to refer to the man as Cucumber until something better came along), leaving Draco alone with the other one.

Suddenly annoyed, Draco turned to the man and demanded, "You there, Muggle, what is it you're called?"

The man's eyes widened comically, his mouth opening and closing rapidly as though he couldn't quite be sure what he was hearing was correct. "Coelfrid," he finally said.

Draco immediately decided it was a terrible name, but kindly kept such thoughts to himself. "Coelfrid," he ended up repeating. For lack of anything else to do, he ended up informing the Muggle casually, "Draco Malfoy."

Coelfrid didn't say anything after that, and Draco was content to stare off into the distance and wonder where the hell Luna swanned off too. Abruptly, Draco remembered Coelfrid's existence and turned to him. "You, Coelfrid, where did Lovegood go?"

At the man's confused look, Draco huffed and elaborated, "Luna—the girl. The one who kidnapped you."

His face brightened in understanding, or perhaps he genuinely liked Loony—Draco wouldn't presume to understand the inner workings of a Muggle brain. "She took Eadhelm to Llyne. She wanted to bring him to a healer."

"Llyne," began Draco, eager to get information. "That's the village there?"

The man shook his head. "No, that is Yarrin. It has no healer. The nearest town is Llyne."

Draco nodded in understanding. "How many people are there in Yarrin?"

Coelfrid clammed up suddenly, pursing his lips as he eyeballed Draco in suspicion. The wizard rolled his eyes, brushing ogg his pants as he stood. "Oh for the love of Merlin—I'm hardly about to lower myself to stealing from Muggles."

The Muggle bristled indignantly. "What is that word? Muggle."

Critically, Draco looked at the man and told him smartly, "It's what you are."

Coelfrid had the gall to scoff. "Is it?" he mocked, clearly feeling brave for some deluded reason. Draco was menacing, dammit.

Determined to one up him, Draco said slowly, as though speaking to a mentally impaired child in a language they weren't completely familiar with, "Yes."

The man looked at Draco intently, like he was trying to figure something out. Finally, he said, "You aren't particularly scary."

"What's that supposed to mean?" demanded Draco, righteously offended.

"Little girl like you, can't even do magic like the other one—she your sister?" Coelfrid was obviously toying with him, probably hoping to manipulate Draco into releasing him. Despite himself, despite the fact that Coelfrid was a Muggle, Draco found he almost liked him.

Draco rolled his eyes, and said baldly, "A few things to set straight: first, I'm not a girl, second, if you think for a moment that Loony is better at magic then me then you have clearly suffered an injury, and third, you aren't as smart as you seem to believe yourself to be if you think Loony and I are siblings."

"Oh, my mistake," corrected Coelfrid, leaning back with a smug grin. "I was under the impression you'd yet to flower—what with the lack of—"

A rock hit the side of his head, Draco hadn't moved an inch. Coelfrid stared furiously at him, and demanded hotly, "Did you just throw a rock at my head?"

"No," replied the wizard simply.

The dark haired man gaped, and nearly shouted, "You did! You threw a rock at me!"

"I didn't throw it," insisted Draco.

"I suppose you'll try to convince me rocks have the ability to fly now," retorted Coelfrid sarcastically, eyes blazing.

Draco sniffed primly, crossing his arms under his breasts. He sniffed, "I said I didn't throw it. Not that it wasn't me."

Coelfrid sputtered. Draco smiled coyly, amusement bubbling somewhere in his gut. "You're alright for a Muggle," admitted Draco, like it was painful to say. Perhaps it was.

"Now I know it's an insult," quipped Coelfrid.

Picking up his wand, he attempted to conjure something to eat. He succeeded in producing a rather small apple. Pleased, he took a bite before finally telling the Muggle, "It's a person without magic."

"And that's bad," inferred the man. Draco had to admit, if nothing else, Coelfrid was quick on the uptake.

"Muggles hunted us for centuries," Draco felt the need to explain. "Our worlds should never mingle."

Coelfrid looked away. "Is that why you hate us?"

Draco bit back his knee-jerk reaction of claiming he didn't, but that didn't feel true, exactly. He didn't hate Muggles. He only…

The wizard said nothing. Coelfrid continued his questions, "Have you ever met a Muggle before me?"

Draco had. A few times. Once, when he was only a child. He'd gone into the Muggle world with his mother, to a park. A little girl had called him a freak when he made a flower bloom for her. He didn't know why she'd taken him in the first place, but the little girl with pretty brown eyes and curly blonde hair had called him a freak and Draco Malfoy had never wanted to go back.

The second time he was older, it was just before his first year. He was in Diagon Alley with his father, who'd left him to wander while he stepped inside Gringotts for a few moments. He was eyeballing a broom on sale when a Muggle woman had run into him, she was entirely out of her element, her son looking just as lost. She had looked so out of depth, so confused and nervous, Draco had politely asked if they needed directions. He ended up leading them to Gringotts as his father exited.

The scolding he received that night had seemed so simple then. Don't speak to Muggles. They are beneath you. They can't even read the signs right.

"Yes," said Draco after a long pause, appetite gone. He held the rest of it out to Coelfrid, who eagerly took it. Sometime before Luna had left that morning, she'd taken the time to tie him up instead of leaving him completely paralysed.

"Did Loony forget to feed you?" questioned Draco in bemusement. It seemed rather unlike her, what with her being a real humanitarian and all.

Coelfrid shrugged. "She was leaving when I woke, she told me where she was going and then left. Didn't exactly stick around to chat."

Draco nodded his understanding, ready to fall into silence and go back to ignoring the Muggle.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

Draco scoffed. "As though you've got a penny to spare."

He leaned forward, smiling flirtatiously, "I'd always have a penny for a pretty girl. What's got you frowning over there?"

The wizard sighed, not even wanting to unwrap the fact that a Muggle he'd helped kidnap was flirting with him. "I was only thinking of what my father would say if he saw me like this."

Coelfrid nodded sagely. "Mine would say, 'Your breath could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon.'"

Draco snorted a laugh, but caved. He'd blame it, if anyone had asked then, on the exhaustion from sleeping outside, the isolation he felt in the wrong time, and the weariness he felt on being a girl. "He'd be humiliated. He'd tell me I'm an embarrassment to the Malfoys. He'd tell me I was a traitor to a dead Dark Lord for speaking with you, for letting Luna speak to me. He'd be infuriated that I broke my wand, and I loathe to imagine what he'd say about my appearance."

After a long silence, Coelfrid said quietly, "It's okay to doubt what you've been taught to believe, Draco."

They didn't say anything after that, but Draco did shift positions so he could see what he was doing with the tape holding his wand together. By the time the sun was high in the sky, Draco had managed to better adhere the wand together with mud, the tape, a little magic, and dumb luck. He certainly wouldn't be a wandmaker anytime soon, but the fix allowed him to conjure out a better lunch for the two of them.

They eat quietly, Draco mulling over Coelfrid's words from earlier. For the twelve hours he'd been in the past, things had gone dramatically different then he ever expected them too. Perhaps the most shocking of all was the glaringly obvious fact that he quite liked Coelfrid—more then he liked Luna, at any rate.

Sure, the man was sarcastic and pried too much, but they had a good banter.

Speaking of which, "You've got a little," Draco gesture on his own face.

Coelfrid made no move to wipe the sauce from his face, looking vacantly at Draco. "What are you staring at?"

"You're a witch."

"Yes," confirmed Draco uncertainly, not sure what he was getting at. "Wizard, technically."

"How does that work?" Coelfrid scowled, scratching his chin. The sauce remained on his face. Draco elected to point that out instead of answering the question.

"Witches are girls, and wizards are boys," Draco said, purposefully being obtuse once Coelfrid had removed the sauce and repeated the question.

He stared.

"What're you looking at me like that for?" inquired a weary wizard.

Coelfrid squinted, tapping Draco's leg with his foot. Draco scowled and wiped the dirt off. "You aren't a boy."

"Yes, I am," insisted Draco. "I was born with a cock and everything. This," he gestured at his chest. "Is a very recent and hopefully temporary development. It was a prank."

"And this is an easy thing to fix?" questioned a suddenly uncertain Coelfrid. Draco didn't blame him, the whole thing was rather confusing, and it didn't help that he had no frame of reference of having seen Draco's masculine self.

"It's certainly not common, but yes. It's a simple potion," replied Draco casually, almost happy to be talking about something nowhere near as heavy as his relationship with his father.

"Why don't you make it yourself?" asked Coelfrid, logically.

Draco's cheeks burned against his will. "I don't know how," he admitted.

"You said it was simple," accused Coelfrid.

"It is," said Draco. "For a potion master."

"These potions are just laying around in your time?"

"Well, no." replied Draco. "They are actually quite difficult to get ahold of—expensive too."

"You said it was an easy fix," said Coelfrid triumphantly. Abruptly, Draco realised he'd been had. Coelfrid was messing with him. He'd never really fallen for something like this, at least not since he was newly sorted into Slytherin. When he was eleven.

Draco was fourteen, now, thanks, and had a much better control over his—

—holy Merlin. Rather unexpectedly, it occurred to Draco that he was suffering through puberty. As a girl. His eye twitched as he accepted if he stayed like this long enough he would probably have a period as well.

"What's wrong now then?" mused Coelfrid.

"I'm a girl," Draco burst out. "An actual girl—most people exposed to the potion accidentally are able to reverse it quickly. They never spend more then a day as the wrong sex—I have boobs."

He felt, rather suddenly, that it was very important to stress the fact that his penis was gone, his hair was long, and he had boobs.

Coelfrid appeared vaguely concerned. "I can see that."

Draco suddenly felt very overwhelmed. Bringing his knees up to his chest he said, "I don't want to be a girl."

"It's alright," reassured Coelfrid awkwardly, looking at Draco like he was a strange sort of bird.

"No, it's not," insisted Draco. "The more time I spend like this the worse it'll be."

"What'll happen?"

That was just it, Draco hadn't the foggiest. He settled on looking pointedly at Coelfrid, like it meant something and he should automatically know. "Can't you be stupid somewhere else?"

Coelfrid mocked looked at the sun and quipped blithely, "Not until noon."

Draco squinted in his direction, mostly because of the angle of the sun. "Are you flirting with me?"

"Not sure," Coelfrid grinned. "Is it working?"

"I'm a boy."

"Yes," he agreed casually. "A very pretty one. That's currently a girl and not a boy at all."

"You've all the charm of a dead slug," grossed Draco unhappily, slouching against the bolder.

"So you admit I'm charming?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "I'm leaving if you keep this nonsense up. I'm hardly required to remain here."

"Yet here you remain."

"Only for your company," retorted Draco dryly.

The Muggle might have said something if Loony hadn't chosen that moment to burst through the trees with the Cucumber and yet another person in tow.

"Oh for the love of Merlin," shouted Draco, fully enraged and slightly embarrassed. "Who've you kidnapped now?"

"Run!" was all Luna yelled, dashing past wildly, undoing Coelfrid's binds wordlessly. "Run!"

It was, inevitably, the shouts in the distance that spurred Draco into action. Taking off in a sprint behind Luna, his long hair coming loose from the strip of fabric he'd tied around it to keep it from his face. His wand laid forgotten in the clearing they'd slept in, and by the time he realised the noise from the men chasing them was too close for him to return for it anyway.

A broken wand wasn't worth it, as upsetting as loosing it more finally was, Draco wouldn't risk his life for a replaceable item. They ran, splitting off as the cries of the villagers echoed through the trees, and Draco understood why they were running.

Vikings.

Luna had broken off with the Cucumber and the other girl who'd run back with her, Coelfrid had taken the lead in front of Draco. They were getting some distance, and Draco allowed himself hope they'd escape—

—and then his foot caught on a tree root, and he crashed to the ground, pain shooting up his ankle as he cried out in pain. Coelfrid hesitated a moment, and Draco saw him scream in frustration as he turned around to help him up.

Coelfrid grabbed Draco's arm, half carrying him and half dragging him through the woods. Draco's ankle screamed in pain, and it became very apparent that if they remained at this pace both of them could be captured.

"Get off!" he shouted suddenly, wrenching himself away from the man. Coelfrid's grip faltered, and for the second time in minutes, Draco fell to the ground.

"What are you doing?" hissed Coelfrid angrily. "Don't be a fool, they will kill you."

"You can't save me!" shrieked Draco. "Run! Let me do this!"

Coelfrid looked at her like he'd never seen her before. Draco's eyes rolled over his face, and he thought maybe he was seeing him for the first time too. Coelfrid's eyes were blue, but not the grey storm blue of Luna and Draco's eyes—his eyes were the blue of a river, deep and dark and lovely, framed by dark lashes, and it felt as though he'd been struck by lightning as he suffered the cold realisation that he wanted Coelfrid to live.

"Why are you doing this?" the voices were getting closer, if he didn't leave now he wouldn't make it.

Draco Malfoy swallowed, and said in reference to his earlier words, "If I must start somewhere, right here and now is the best place imaginable."

Coelfrid ran.

The wizard pushed himself to a stand, his hurt ankle screaming in pain. He leaned against a tree to compensate, and made it a point to go as far from the direction Coelfrid had gone. Draco didn't think he'd ever be a good person—not the way Loony was or Potty tried to be, but he could stall and give Coelfrid a fighting chance.

He was stumbled to a second tree when they finally caught up to him. Draco turned, and looked at them. Somehow, in the moments Luna had flown through the clearing like a hurricane and Coelfrid insisting they'd kill her, Draco had imagined the Vikings to look like something from a bad dream, monsters from a nightmare.

He knew what they saw, a thin, pale girl with an injured ankle and mud down her front. His cloak has long since been forgotten, and the cotton of his shirt was stained with dirty water and grass, the pants he wore remained largely intact, but both items were too big for him and he'd ignored Luna's offers to help resize them, determined to do it himself. He knew when they looked at him they saw a little girl who was terribly lost and afraid.

The first man said something, his tone was mocking, but that was all it took for Luna's charm to work. "You will let me go," ordered Draco in the language the first man spoke, confidence present in his girlish voice he didn't feel.

"You speak Norse?" they all looked at her as though she was a particularly strange creature.

Draco sneered, summoning every ounce of aristocratic 'I'm-better-than-you' snobbery he could. "What, like it's hard?" he taunted.

This, in retrospective, was the wrong move, and resulted in Draco slung over the shoulder of one of the men. He thrashed around angrily, yelling and hitting the man's back.

"Release me this instant!" he shouted loudly, managing a solid whack to the man's stomach with his foot. Pain radiated up his foot, the injured one, as the viking holding her grunted in pain. Draco viciously thought it was worth it, even as he stopped struggling and allowed the men to carry him back to camp.

He hoped, silently, that Coelfrid had managed to escape.

.

He was carried back to the village if Yarrin, his eyes lingering on the hill where he'd slept, where his wand rested along with his best chance of escape. He'd since give up fighting, and had settled on glowering at everyone that so much as looked in his general direction. Fairly quickly, he was dragged into a large building and stood in front of a man. Draco immediately got the impression that this was their leader, and this entire thing was Draco's chance to explain why he could speak Norse.

The man stared. Draco stared back, and distantly wished he knew Legilimency. Or, perhaps at the very least, had his wand. Broken or not, it would be rather valuable as Draco's limited wandless abilities were entered more on feelings of rage and extreme annoyance, and the only emotion he was currently capable of summoning was, terribly, worry.

"Why have you brought this woman to me?" the man asked, observing the group with a bored look on his face.

"She speaks our language," was all the Viking who'd grabbed him said. The man looked intrigued, but didn't say anything. The room fell into a silence that left Draco shifting nervously.

"What are you going to do with me?" Draco finally broke the silence, doing his best to sound posh, even in the rough language.

The man leaned forward in interest. "How do you know our tongue?"

"I believe I asked first," sneered Draco, suddenly desperate to convince this man that Draco was every bit as important as he'd grown up thinking. "Is it not polite to answer a lady's question?"

The man let out a huff of a laugh, it might've been something else entirely, but the slight turn of his lips led Draco to the belief that the Muggle leader found him amusing.

"It depends," he replied vaguely, leering at the Wizard's new lithe form. Draco felt he hated being in the wrong body in an entirely different manner.

He swallowed, jutting out his chin as he answered the earlier question, "It was not my intention to learn."

"You were a slave," assumed the man, loosing interest almost immediately.

Draco puffed out his chest, and declared boldly, "No. I am not, nor have I ever been a slave."

The Muggle frowned at him. "You did not say how you learned our language."

It wasn't a question. Draco felt like he couldn't swallow. His eyes danced around the room, and rather abruptly, he realised it was a Church. The pews had been pushed to the side, and the chair the man was sitting in was probably the most expensive thing in the small town that had been ransacked. Draco strongly suspected they'd brought it with them, which felt absurd and ridiculous in a way that nearly cause him to laugh.

Settling on the lie that might allow him to live, Draco steeled himself and said firmly, "My mother."

The room's atmosphere shifted abruptly. "What is it you are called?"

He had decided, sometime during the 30 second span in which he created the insane lie he was now telling, that the best thing he could do for himself was to invent a new name completely.

"Dreki," he decided impulsively, wondering vaguely how much he'd come to regret it. "Dreki Påskliljadóttir."

He needed desperately to blend in, to convince them he was one of them. The best way to do that, with his pale skin and hair, was to speak their language and have a name they might recognise.

"Where does your mother hail from?"

Without thinking, Draco said the first place he could think of that was in Scandinavia. "Helsinki."

The Muggle's eyes narrowed into a glare. He studied Draco for a few moments, before nodding his head and waving his hand.

"Give her to Pridbjørn," he said carelessly. Draco's eyes widened as he immediately began fighting against the men that had grabbed her arms.

"What?" he shouted indignantly. "You can't do this! I'm not a slave!"

"You are now," laughed the Muggle as Draco was taken from the Church.

He screamed and hollered the whole way down the street. At one point, he managed a solid kick to the nuts of one of them men dragging him through the streets. His ankle shrieked in pain, but Draco had managed a brief escape and temporarily touched grass before he was snatched by his arm again and quite literally dragged along the dirt road.

Against his better judgement, his mind wandered to all of the horrible things he knew of Vikings. All the things they did, why the Wizarding World had avoided the shores and preferred to stay inland. Worse, perhaps, because Draco was a girl now. A tiny, thin little witch who didn't have a wand and too much magical control to rely on accidents. Even if Luna came for him, she was a year younger then Draco—they hadn't even had a proper DADA professor since their first year—Lupin was all right he supposed, but they could hardly manage to protect themselves with some basic theory and some spells against Bogarts.

Well. Luna's Obliviation spell was a curse all on it's own, but they could hardly go through an entire crew of Vikings individually—they would hardly wait in line for their turn to become a vegetable.

They dragged her to a woman who wrapped her ankle—it was broken, the bruising was too dark and it ached too much to be anything else. They would be able to do little for him, and Draco was distantly aware of the reality that if he and Luna never did manage to find their way back, Draco would never regain full use of that ankle.

Still, wrapped and give a stick to balance himself on was rather helpful, and as the woman began asking him what he was capable of doing, Draco wondered if perhaps he'd misheard, and this was Pridbjørn.

Staring at his hands in his lap, the dirt under his fingernails made him feel dirty and unwashed, he asked, "What is your name?"

The woman frowned at him. "Sunnifa," she said shortly.

"It's nice to meet you," said Draco finally, offering a watery sort of smile, feeling more like a girl then he ever had before.

Sunnifa gave him a dress. The fabric was rough, coarse material, with large stitching and a generally unflattering shape—and Draco had perhaps never been more thankful for a gift before. He wore it gratefully, shoeless, with his too long hair loose. Sunnifa observed him studiously for a few moments, before asking audaciously, "Are you a woman?"

"Pardon?" asked a bewildered Draco.

"Have you bled?"

"No," answered Draco uncertainly.

Sunnifa nodded shortly, before she told him, "You'll be helping Pridbjørn. He won't touch a child."

At Draco's vacant look, she rolled her eyes and told him slowly, "He won't touch you."

Oh.

Oh.

Stupidly, Draco blinked. He hadn't even realised that was a possibility.

Well, he had, but more in a distant way. Like it wouldn't happen to him even if it happened to someone near him. Draco nodded instead of saying anything, allowing Sunnifa to push him back outside where he was to be taken to Pridbjørn.

Draco was afraid of what he'd find.

.

As it turned out, Pridbjørn Svenson was exactly as Draco had imagined. The man was lewd, eyeing the lumps on his chest and saying Draco's new name with a lecherous grin. Draco, personally, was disgusted—but Sunnifa had assured him that his new master wouldn't touch a child. It was much different then Coelfrid's careless flirtations.

He assumed said Muggle had managed to escape—he hadn't seen him, and Coelfrid was rather bold for a captive after all. Vikings or not, Draco imagined that if he could stare down two desperate witches and walk away unscathed he'd likely manage the same with Muggles.

Pridbjørn was a blacksmith, apparently. Or at least Draco assumed he was, based on the fact that he'd taken up a residence in the smithy and was in the process of getting a fire going when Draco was dragged in and given to him. As a gift.

"Watch out for this one, Dreki's a fighter."

Oh Merlin, blanched Draco. He'd already blocked his poor attempt at lying his way out of slavery, and the reminder was completely uncalled for. Draco cleared his throat, "You may call me Dr—"

His new master's hand collided with the side of his face, and he grumbled, "Shut up."

Affronted, Draco did. Not because Pridbjørn had said too, but because he was offended enough not to be bothered dignifying these filthy Muggles with a response. Slowly, as he leaned against the wall and tuned out the obscene conversation between the Vikings, his gaze drifted towards the window, towards the hill, and he found himself rather hopeful despite the circumstance.

Of course, hope was a dangerous thing, perhaps.

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Bonus

As it turned out, Coelfrid had managed to get away—at least from what Draco could see. The arrival back to the village of Yarrin proved that it had been ransacked rather intensely by the Viking invaders. Several houses burned, and Draco's eyes wandered to the hill, to the clearing he knew was there where his wand lay forgotten. He knew if he had any chance of getting out of this situation, providing Luna didn't return for him, something which he earnestly doubted would happen, it was with the wand.

The men who'd brought him back had him bound, and oddly enough brought him to a man. Draco strongly suspected he'd led the raid, and was also fairly certain they'd brought them together because of Draco's inexplicable ability to speak their language.

The man studied her silently, and after a few long moments asked, "Where are you from?"

Draco spat at him, and hissed, "I do not answer to filth such as you."

It was a little dramatic, sure, but Draco felt that probably the best way to survive this was to establish himself as a person of interest. He needed to convince them he was worth keeping alive. That he was a god.

The man's eyes narrowed slightly.

"And who do you answer too? The Christian God? Are you a holy woman?" he mocked.

Draco outright laughed. Most of the older families held little beliefs, and the ones that did were more pagan values, though he distinctly remembered the Blacks worshipped Old Gods. "My people do not believe such things."

The man quirked an eyebrow, as if to say, 'And who are your people?'

The wizards lip quirked, and the cup the viking had set in front of him slide across the table to Draco. "You may call me Freyja."