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

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Chapter 6

April 2007

Thorfinn knew that Freya didn't fly. He'd been staying in her cave off and on for months and not once had he ever seen her in the air. So when he was on his way back to the cave after another hunting trip, he was shocked to see her flying circles over the trees. What had changed that suddenly she was flying?

That coupled with the fact that the books seemed to be moved in ways that were above Freya's dexterity convinced him that someone else was hanging about. But who in the world would be coming to hang out at a dragon cave? He assumed it was a wizard, since dragons probably scared off other types of magical creatures. And as afraid and ignorant as the villagers were, he was certain that no Muggle was spending time there.

Maybe it was someone dangerous. Maybe that's what Freya was flying. Someone had scared her into flying. He began running up the path toward the cave, suddenly afraid that something was very wrong.

He was surprised when he made it to the top, huffing and puffing, to find everything appeared to be completely normal. Thorfinn pulled out his wand and set down his pack, checking the entire cave and finding nothing. He didn't even find a magical signature that didn't belong to him.

When Freya landed on the ledge a while later, he hurried over to her.

"Hey, girl, are you alright?" he looked her over to see if she was injured at all, but didn't find anything. "Why were you flying? Is everything okay?" Freya looked at him with one huge yellow eye and gave a single nod.

He was used to her quirks after all these months. "Alright, okay. Has someone else been hanging around the cave?"

She ignored him and shuffled inside, shooting a fireball at the lighting ledge above the books and then curling up in her nest.

Thorfinn frowned into the gathering darkness. Something still didn't feel right. Even if he couldn't find another magical signature around, he was sure that he wasn't the only person who had been here.

Suddenly, he didn't care how dangerous they might be. He was a berserker for Merlin's sake. There wasn't much in the world that was more dangerous than he was. And Freya was sweet, but he had no doubt that she could take care of herself if she needed to.

Still, even if he and Freya could take care of themselves, he didn't want to be surprised by someone in the middle of the night. Things could end badly if he were to go into a rage around Freya. For him, Freya, or anyone else in the vicinity. It was better to be safe than sorry. And the only way to do that was to find out who it was that was also hanging about.

Traps would be the most efficient way. Decided, he offered Freya what he had brought back from his hunting and settled in for the evening. He'd begin setting the traps tomorrow.

"What the fuck?" Thorfinn cursed to himself when he saw the third trap he had laid had been bungled by Freya. Clearly, he wasn't hiding them well enough if she kept running into them.

He sighed as he cleared the residual magic in the air and moved further off-trail, into the wet patches of snow lingering in the shade of the trees. The problem was that if the stranger had been using the trails, he still needed to leave a tendril of magic leading back to the trail to lure them to the trap. It would be much easier if he could just leave the traps in obvious places. But Freya kept destroying them.

"Freya kept destroying them," he muttered out loud, thinking. Freya wasn't a dumb dragon. Not that Thorfinn knew a lot of dragons, but he felt for sure that even for dragons, she was quite clever.

"Freya was destroying them on purpose," he growled to himself as he turned to glare up at the cave.

No wonder she hadn't answered him when he asked if someone else was hanging about. Thorfinn knew it was ridiculous, but he felt a little betrayed. Stupid, because this was a dragon, but there it was.

With a slash of his wand, he took down the rest of the trap he had been setting and stomped back up toward the cave. He had some questions for a dragon.

Freya, in her usual way, was completely silent on the issue. When he wouldn't let it go, she lumbered away down the trail. When he followed her, she took to wing.

"Stubborn thing," he muttered to himself making his way back up to the cave. There wasn't anything he could do. If Freya wasn't talking, then he would just have to wait for whoever it was to show up. Instead of hunting every week or so, he would just have to set a different sort of trap for smaller animals to sustain him for a bit and let Freya fend for herself.

Served her right with the way she was acting.

Two weeks later, his jaw dropped when a whistling Weasley waltzed up to the cave. It was Charlie Weasley, to be precise, someone Thorfinn went to school with. They weren't mates, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, some might even call them rivals. Both in the same year and played for their houses Quidditch teams. In both quidditch and dueling club, Charlie was always unique in his willingness to play the opponents' game. Sure, he'd play fair when the other wizard played fair, but he'd surprised Thorfinn more than once with his willingness to play dirty. More than that, though, he was patient. He played the long game.

It was a frustrating trait for someone like Thorfinn. Patience wasn't exactly common among underage berserkers.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Thorfinn asked, stepping out of the shadows of the cave and into Weasley's path. Freya was thankfully gone for a hunt. Thorfinn wasn't sure he was going to be able to keep his rage bottled up, but at least he didn't have Freya to worry about. Weasley, he knew, could handle his own.

If he expected Weasley to be surprised, he was sorely mistaken. He regarded Thorfinn coolly for a moment, subtly dropping his wand from his arm holster to his hand.

"Could ask you the same thing." He cocked his head to the side. "Aren't you on the run?"

"It certainly explains a lot," Thorfinn replied, gesturing to Weasley. "I was trying to figure out who was fucking with Freya. And who got her to fly."

Weasley smirked and rubbed the back of his head. "Yeah, I'd been working on getting her to fly for weeks. Had to scare her into it finally. Is that what you call her? Freya? She's gorgeous, isn't she? I've been calling her Longmu, for the Chinese woman who was defied after raising five infant dragons."

Thorfinn had to admit, Freya was gorgeous. "Freya suits her much better than Longmu," he insisted.

Weasley frowned and shrugged, then stepped forward into the cave proper. "Out hunting?"

Thorfinn nodded warily. He didn't like that it was a Weasley, but at least it wasn't an Auror. He hadn't seen hide or hair of the Aurors since stumbling across Freya's cave all those months ago.

"Listen, I just need a place to hide out," Thorfinn admitted, scratching his beard. "I'm not trying to get anyone into any trouble."

Weasley assessed him again with his cool blue eyes and Thorfinn resisted the urge to stand up straighter. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the shorter man. Weasley may not reach Thorfinn's height, but he had muscles to match his own.

"Well, lucky for you, I don't work for the Ministry, do I?" Weasley said after a long moment. He hunkered down at the front of the cave. "Don't mind if I wait for Freya, do you?"

Thorfinn suppressed a sigh of relief and smirked. "So you admit it's a better name."

Weasley shrugged and picked at his nails, pointedly ignoring Thorfinn. But if Weasley had already adopted the name, Thorfinn knew he agreed.

They sat tensely at a short distance, pretending to ignore each other. Thorfinn continued skinning a catch of rabbits while Weasley looked through some of the books Freya had collected.

"Laughed myself silly seeing this hoard for the first time," Weasley commented. Thorfinn snorted in response.

"Never knew dragons hoarded books," he said.

"They don't," Charlie replied. "It's damned odd, that's for sure."

"Well, you haven't met every dragon in the world have you? Freya may be a bit odd, but she's sweet as can be," Thorfinn said, feeling like he needed to stand up for her. She had somehow become his friend over the months and he hated to hear someone talk badly about her.

"Easy," Weasley said. "It's unheard of, but you're right, the world is full of strange things." Thorfinn's hackles lowered. He didn't exactly like how easy it was for Weasley to calm him down, but he couldn't say he was upset about it.

Hours later, when Freya was back from hunting, Thorfinn could see her eyebrows raise as she took in the sight of the two of them.

"Hey, girl," Weasley greeted her with a smile and a small scratch under her chin. She allowed it, and then shuffled past them both to her nest. She had gained some weight over the months with Thorfinn feeding her bears every few weeks and Charlie getting her to fly, and they both had to squeeze along the walls of the cave to allow her to pass.

"Just wanted to check in on you," Weasley said. Thorfinn kept silent as he brined his rabbits for jerky. Weasley spoke with Freya for a few minutes while Thorfinn ignored them. Weasley was going to be a problem, but he still hadn't puzzled out how big of a problem.

After a few minutes, Weasley bid his farewells and disappeared with a crack. Freya sneezed at the rebounding magic and Thorfinn had to duck below the fireball that went shooting out of the cave.

Once Weasley was gone, Freya began digging through her hoard. She seemed intent on finding something, so Thorfinn let her go. She got like this sometimes. Usually just before she shoved a book under his nose, wanting to tell him something that he could never figure out. She always chose books written in Romanian or other languages Thorfinn didn't know. He wished he knew a translating spell, but he had never been very studious, preferring Quidditch to homework.

Once the rabbits were dried out, he began casting stasis charms on the jerky and wrapping them in a length of cloth for storage. He had just finished that task when a dragon claw shoved a book across the floor at him. It didn't look like a cookbook.

On Becoming Animagus, the title read.

"Why are you showing me this?" Thorfinn asked, flipping through the book. He hadn't known she kept any books like this. "You want me to become an Animagus? I'm not sure I have the talent for that."

The dragon shook her great, red head and pointed her front claw at herself.

A wave of understanding came over Thorfinn all at once and it almost knocked him to his bum. The book dropped to the ground with a thud.

"Are you human?" he asked, half afraid of the answer.

Freya nodded, huffing out a stream of smoke as if to say finally.

"Stuck in your Animagus form?" Thorfinn confirmed feeling faint. Had he been living with a human this whole time? It almost broke his brain to contemplate.

Freya nodded again.

"For how long?" He was feeling breathless. He was a fugitive, on the run from one Ministry, and probably every other Ministry in Europe and now there were two humans who knew who he was and where he had been hiding out.

Suddenly, the idea that Weasley also knew made him want to throw up. He was going to have to leave Freya. Leave the relative comfort and peace he had found here in the Romanian mountains. He felt like his heart was breaking.

She held up her front left paw, and three of the toes on her front right paw. Seven. Seven toes she was holding up.

"Seven months?" Thorfinn asked. This time he did sit down on his bum, rather ungracefully as he puzzled it out.

"No, I've been here almost a year. Not seven months. Seven years?"

Freya nodded once more.

"Shite," Thorfinn muttered. "Why didn't you show me this before?"

Freya just looked at the ground, drawing in a long breath through her nose and letting it back out. All Thorfinn's plans on running went up in smoke. He couldn't leave her like this. He wouldn't leave her like this. She certainly didn't deserve it. He was going to have to wait until Weasley came back.

"Fuck," he muttered. Who knew how long it would be before Weasley wandered back this way. Thorfinn had no idea who Charlie worked for or where he went when he wasn't with Freya. He had no way of contacting him. He just had to hope that Weasley was a man of his word and when he did come back, it wasn't with a squadron of Aurors.