A/N: Many thanks to brownlark42 for beta'ing this story!

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Chapter 4

December 2006

It was three months later and Thorfinn still hadn't moved on. It was a little lonely, living in a cave with nothing but a dragon for company, but he found he didn't mind as much as he thought he might. For one, there was plenty to read, though most of it wasn't in English and it was primarily cookbooks. He wasn't the most voracious of readers, but with not much else to do, it helped to pass the time.

More often than not, he found himself talking to Freya.

"I don't even remember it to be completely honest with you," he told her one night as he tried to recall the evening that had him on the run. "If the Ministry had me classified properly, they wouldn't be coming after me the way they are." He was sure of that. Somehow the British Ministry didn't know that he was a berserker, and he couldn't figure out why.

He was sure his parents would have registered him as such, wouldn't they? Berserkers weren't completely unheard of, even in this day and age. When he realized what he was during his Hogwarts days, he'd gone to look it up in the library and found out that the Ministry had two classified berserkers. He had assumed he was one of the two, but now he realized he must be an unclassified third.

Due to privacy laws, the Ministry didn't list who the Berserkers were and Thorfinn felt relieved at that. The last thing he needed was a target on his back. He already attracted too much attention with being the biggest person in almost any room. The number of pub fights he could have participated in if he let his instincts rule him was incalculable. People always wanted to see the big guy fight.

Freya huffed at him and he turned toward her seeing that she had pushed a book in his direction. It lay open flat and she had one claw delicately pointed at the page. Thorfinn looked at it, pushing his long sandy hair out of his face and squinting at the text. It was in Romanian. Which he couldn't read. He looked back up at Freya and pushed the book a little closer.

He shrugged. "Sorry, girl. I don't know what it says."

Freya did that a lot. She would open books and point to pages. He didn't think dragons could read. Or if they could, he'd never heard of it. How would they learn? He shook his head. He was sure that Freya couldn't read, but maybe she wanted him to read to her.

"Got any books in English?" he asked. He had read through the few he had found, mostly cookbooks, which weren't that interesting, but some of them had exposition at the beginning of them.

Freya cocked her head at him and turned back to the pile of books. She turned in her nest, curling up, and Thorfinn smiled. For not being able to talk, Freya wasn't a terrible companion at all.

"Well, I need to go out and forage," Thorfinn told her. "I'll be gone a couple of days probably."

He was terrified of his berserker instincts coming out anywhere near Freya. He didn't want to hurt her. But also he was no match for her in his berserker state, so he especially didn't want to accidentally attack her and get killed in the process.

She huffed again and he picked his way across the cave, careful not to step on any books. When he got near her, he scratched her behind the ears. "I'll be back, I promise. I can take care of myself. I just don't want to go into a berserker rage near you."

She slow-blinked at him.

With one last scratch behind the ear, Thorfinn left the cave and began his hike. He had decided months ago that hiking at least half a day away from the cave would be safe. Usually, he liked to hike for a whole day, make camp, and then go look for food. The issue was hunting. He tried to go for bigger creatures, like wild boars or deer, which were relatively easy for him to take down, even when he didn't go into a berserker rage. He brought all the meat back to the cave and shared it with Freya. He knew she went out to hunt on her own, but he liked sharing with her. She would char the meat perfectly before taking down most of it, leaving him just enough for a couple of meals.

Hunting was also good for him because he had found that regularly going into a berserker rage seemed to keep it under some sort of control. There wasn't much written on berserkers that he had found, but it seemed the rage would come over him during battle or a fight, or if blood was shed. This was why when he was hunting he often found himself in a rage, killing everything in sight, including plant life if that was all that was around. The last time he was out hunting he had even taken down a wolf, which normally would have been beyond his capabilities. They were quite a bit faster than he, even in a rage.

He picked a direction at random and began walking. This time heading due south. A new layer of powered snow covered the earth, making his hike almost silent. Part of him felt that it might be time to move on from Freya, but whenever he started thinking about it seriously, he felt an overwhelming pressure on his chest. He didn't want to leave her. Despite not talking back, Thorfinn realized he had come to think of her as a friend.

He knew that dragons could become familiars, although it was quite rare and something that definitely happened more often in the past than it did now. Was that the bond he had formed with Freya? He had never had a familiar before, so he wasn't sure.

Since it was winter, he told himself he had to at least stay until the weather turned nicer. Besides, he usually only moved on when the authorities were closing in. Here, he was almost entirely off the grid, except for the one or two times he snuck down to the village for a drink in the pub. That was what he missed most. A nice ale at the end of a long day.

Toward evening, when the sun was dipping beneath the horizon, Thorfinn started making camp. He had an old wizarding tent he had picked up in the wizarding district of Bratislava. It wasn't much. It had only one room with a lumpy bed that was just big enough for him, but it served him well, especially since he had been living with Freya. After a long day of hiking, he didn't even notice the lumps in the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

He spent the next day hunting, not holding back his berserker rage while he stalked through the forest. It was starting to smell like more snow. He wanted to be back to the cave before any kind of snowstorm came. He definitely didn't want Freya to worry about him.

The following morning, the sun was out, the snow clouds held off for the time being and he ate a bit of leftover dinner before packing up camp and beginning his hunt. All in all, hunting was a lot of boredom, punctuated by periods of extreme action. It was sitting in one spot, waiting, hoping some sort of wildlife would come along.

He took out a few rabbits and chamois, putting a stasis charm on them and stowing them in his pack. Without a stasis charm, the smell of death would keep away all of the other animals.

Finally, a little after midday, a bear began lumbering through the small clearing. He had decided it would be the perfect hunting spot because it was edged with brambles that still had a few enticing dried berries hanging off the branches. He didn't typically hunt bears, but he knew that food options were going to get slimmer as the winter went on. A nice bear would be a nice treat for Freya, especially if they were about to go into long weeks of eating only rabbits and other small prey.

He was getting to the point where he could almost bring on the berserker rage at will, and he planned to do so as soon as he had taken down the bear. If the rage came on him too soon, there wouldn't be enough of the bear left to take back to the cave. He had to take down the bear, stasis it, and strap it to his pack before he let the rage take over. This is where his legendary control came into play.

The bear was a dumb one and fell for the distraction spell Thorfinn had set up. Bears weren't magical but were surprisingly resilient to spells. He had found it was much easier to kill them the Muggle way, or maybe not the Muggle way as he didn't have a firearm. Instead, he jumped on the bear's back and slit its neck. It was quick, efficient, and the scent of blood was almost an aphrodisiac for him. He fell clumsily off the back of the bear and stood quickly, hoping to not drench himself in bear blood. He swayed, smelling the scent and holding back his rage.

Once he was sure the bear was dead—putting a stasis charm on a half-alive bear was a mistake he had learned early on—he packed it up. The moment the bear carcass was safe he sprinted away from his pack and let the berserker inside him loose.

It always felt good to give in to the rage. Just like it felt good to give into normal anger, giving in to this rage let loose all the endorphins. His body was like a whirlwind as he sped through the forest, looking for something, anything that he could reign his havoc on.

All he found were trees and plant life. He was like a whirling dervish as he pulled up trees, blasting the ones that were too big for him to yank up by their roots, and anything else that was in his path. His destruction was absolute and total as the rage coursed through his body. He truly couldn't even begin to remember everything he did while in a rage. His body just did what it was going to do.

With nothing to truly take it out on, the rage always subsided early. He looked around at the devastation he caused. It looked as if a meteorite had landed there were so many downed trees. It saddened him to see what he'd done, but he was thankful that he hadn't come across any animals. He had in the past and animals were often destroyed beyond recognition.

It made Thorfinn feel sick to his stomach when that happened. Trees were easier, they could often be replanted if they weren't too badly damaged. Thorfinn set about righting the ones he could. The ones he couldn't, he cut into firewood and shrank to take back to the cave with him. It was as he was doing this that he realized that he destroyed what appeared to be either a fox or wolf den.

"No," he moaned, "oh, no, no, no, no." He fell to his knees and began digging through the debris, his throat tight, already fighting nausea at the thought of what he might find. He was still compelled to look, always, to find out what he had done. After a few moments, he breathed a sigh of relief. No blood, no fur, nothing to indicate any pups or kits had been in the den when he obliterated it.

And still, he couldn't stop his mind from conjuring images of what could have happened. He saw the cozy litter sleeping, fur still baby-soft, as they nestled together. Maybe one let out a small yip occasionally as it slept. All of them happy, safe, and warm in their den, waiting for the parent to return. Then he could see himself, without any awareness of what he was doing, destroying it all.

He moved from his knees to his bum and put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands as he tried to slow his breathing. The panic that had overwhelmed him for a moment was bitter at the back of his mouth. He hadn't actually killed a litter of innocent animals. It was alright. He was alright. He wasn't a monster. Even if he did monstrous things sometimes. It was his nature, not something he could help.

Hunting for food was one thing. Thorfinn and Freya both had to eat and he took as much care as he could in being humane when he hunted. But there was no humanity when he was in the throes of a berserker rage. It was all beast with the will to live at all costs, and to destroy and annihilate at all costs.

It was a legacy that he hated. He didn't find much use in hating himself, it seemed like a waste of time, but he did hate that he was a berserker. He hated the loss of control that inevitably came with it. He hated that no matter how much he wished he wasn't one, the rage had to come out one way or another.

He allowed himself twenty minutes to feel sorry for his lot in life. When that time was up, he stood and finished his work. By the time he was done, it was too late in the day to head back to the cave, so he moved as far away from the destroyed den as he could and set up his tent for camp. The bear was still under stasis, he skinned a couple of the rabbits and cooked those up for dinner before bedding down for the evening.

Hiking back the next day was an arduous trek, even with casting a featherlight charm on the bear and the firewood. The snow certainly didn't help and it was past nightfall that Thorfinn finally made it back to the cave. Freya wasn't there, so he left the bear outside for her.

He was exhausted after his day of walking, but something seemed different about the cave. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something was off. Maybe the books were stacked in a different order? Or there was a strange smell in the air? He shook his head. He was too tired, too fuzzy-headed to try and sort it out right then. He would bed down for sleep and then see how he felt in the morning.