1
The monsters dragged Sarah to, she presumed, their leader. He was the biggest, anyway, and his fangs and claws were the longest. This is a nightmare, she repeated to herself. I'll wake up any moment.
Their leader got off of his crude wooden throne, walked to her, and sniffed her like a dog would. She wished once again that they hadn't taken her clothes. He grinned, showing off his fangs. "Congratulations on a successful hunt," he told her captors. "This one seems too good to just use for meat." Sarah screamed in shock and pain as he abruptly attempted to finger her with his clawed hand. "And feels like a virgin," he said. He licked his claws. "So, not pregnant with any human pups yet. Lupin!" he called to one of the other monsters standing by his throne.
The other monster snapped to attention and stepped forward. "Yes, my lord?" He looked nearly as brawny as the leader, but was younger, his shaggy hair sunstreaked sandy brown rather than greying.
"You've served me quite well recently. You deserve a reward. Do you like this one?"
The younger monster stood there blinking his gold-glinting eyes. "My lord?" he said eventually, which seemed to serve the same function as "Um," but more formally.
"This pack could use more werewolves with magical abilities like yours," said the leader. "Get this bitch pregnant, raise some pups to do magic like you. This pack would get even stronger."
"Actually, given what is known about the inheritance of magical ability… Yes my lord. An excellent plan. A true leader thinks long-term. I am honored to serve—"
"You're babbling again, Lupin. Do you like this one, or should I give this bitch to someone else and catch another for you?"
"This one is fine, my lord," he said, not looking at her.
"That's settled then. You're relieved of duty for the rest of the day. Go take your bitch, have fun."
"Thank you, my lord."
"You need any help restraining her?" he added with a grin of his sharp teeth.
Lupin scoffed. "Very droll, my lord." Then he pulled a stick from his sleeve and pointed it at her. The two monsters who'd been gripping her arms suddenly let go and stepped away in fear. "Incarcerous." Ropes shot out of the stick and tied themselves tightly around her. "Mobilicorpus," he added, and she found herself floating weightlessly a few inches above the ground. This dream was making no sense. Monsters didn't need both fangs and antigravity superpowers, that was just overkill. She floated away past crowds of leering monsters, through the woods, until they got to a patch of pine trees, the ground thickly covered with a blanket of needles. It felt soft when she dropped to it, still bound.
Her designated rapist, who'd been walking along behind her, waved his stick in a circle around them. He then sent two bolts of white light from his stick. They curved behind a tree, from which two cries of "Ow!" were heard. Then he rushed to grab two teenaged boys? Teenaged monsters? From behind the tree.
"This isn't a peep show," he said, his eyes blazing gold. He growled, bared his long fangs, and shoved them away. One of the boys ran.
The other stayed to ask, "What's a peep show?"
The monster sighed. "I'll tell you later. Now go or I won't let you into tomorrow's class." The kid ran.
He slowly and carefully waved his stick in a circle again. "We're alone," he said very quietly. "But werewolf hearing is much better than human, so we have to assume that anything louder than a whisper will be overheard. I assume you realize there's no point trying to escape. We're much faster and stronger than you, and there are security spells around the whole camp. Sorry about the ropes. Finite Incantatem." The ropes binding her vanished.
"Werewolf?" she said. "I've been abducted by a bunch of werewolves?"
"Um. Yes. Sorry about that."
"But werewolves don't exist."
His eyes widened. Confusingly, they were brown now, not gold. She knew what that sort of inconsistency meant.
"This is a nightmare," she said confidently. "I'll wake up any moment.
"I wish," said the werewolf bitterly, which was further proof that this was not actually happening. He sighed. "You deserve an explanation."
"Whatever. I'll write it down when I wake up, and it won't make any sense."
"Where to even start? Well, for one, magic is real."
"Hilarious! Where does my subconscious get these ideas?"
"Please," he whispered desperately. "Don't sound happy. At least don't be loud about it. They'll hear you."
"I wonder if I can fly. It's my dream."
"I'll have to cast a silencing spell. Damn, but anyone listening will wonder why…" He picked up a large fallen tree limb. His eyes blazed gold for a moment. He suddenly shouted, "Shut the fuck up, bitch!" He slammed the tree limb into the trunk of a large tree. Pine needles rained down on them annoyingly. He shook the pine needles off himself with a very dog-like motion. Then he put a finger to his lips to hush her, unnecessarily, as she was speechless. He put down the tree limb and drew that stick from his sleeve again. He waved it in complicated patterns around them while muttering strange incantations. Then he put the stick back in his sleeve and sat next to her on the pine needles, but still avoided looking directly at her. "Now that I've knocked you unconscious," he said calmly, "no one will wonder about your sudden silence, so my silencing spell should go unnoticed. Feel free to talk normally, at least in this area between these four trees."
She suddenly had nothing to say.
Her designated rapist took off his shirt. His skin was crisscrossed with terrible scars. Under the scars, he had muscles like a cartoon superhero. Supervillain, she corrected herself. "Go on, take it, put it on. Please." He was holding his shirt out to her. "I'm not that good at transfiguring things into clothes, and it's hard to have a conversation with a naked girl. And you must be cold. I'm sorry they took your clothes. I'll try to get them back for you later." He was still averting his gaze. She, on the other hand, stared.
She reluctantly took his shirt and put it on. It seemed clean enough, and felt very warm. The sudden warmth made her shiver. He was tall, so his shirt covered her to the tops of her thighs.
"Thank you," he said. He had less difficulty looking at her now, although she found it harder to look at him once she remembered that it was rude to stare. "I'm sorry, I know my scars are hideous. I didn't mean to make you look at me, you may look away of course. I just thought, well, now we're sort of even. I figured you wouldn't want to be naked."
"This is worse than those dreams where you're naked in class."
"You get those too? And then there's a test you didn't study for, and a paper you didn't know about is due."
"Those are the worst!"
"Those are actually some of my better nightmares. Anyway, as I was saying, magic is real. Things you were told are myths are real. Werewolves, dragons, unicorns, etc are all real."
"Ooh, unicorns? No offense, but I'd much prefer unicorns to werewolves. If I concentrate, I should be able to take charge of this dream, right? Come on, unicorn!"
The werewolf blinked at her. Then he smiled. He had slightly crooked human teeth, not fangs. "I don't have much use for unicorns, but if you could make a chocolate bar materialize, that would be great. I haven't had chocolate for weeks."
"No problem. It's my dream."
"And a cure for lycanthropy," he added. "That has priority over even the chocolate, actually."
"I'm on it," she assured him. "What's lycanthropy?"
"The disease that turns humans into werewolves. Oh, and cancer. Cure that first, then lycanthropy, then make a chocolate shop appear over there between those trees, and they're giving out free samples to advertise their new location. Put a library next door."
"You're awfully bossy, you know. This is my dream. What if I want an ice cream shop and a roller rink? And a cure for the common cold?"
"If this is your dream, you have an awful lot to answer for. Or perhaps I should say there is considerable room for improvement. Anyway, as long as your ice cream shop has chocolate ice cream, I'll forgive the rest." The werewolf looked basically human now. He had perfectly ordinary brown eyes, human teeth, and short-bitten human nails. He sighed and rubbed his temples. "This is fun, but I'm wasting time. Whether you believe it or not, you've been captured by a werewolf pack. I'm supposed to be raping you right now."
"I don't mind chatting instead."
"I'm not going to do it! Sorry, you have no reason to trust me. You don't even believe I exist. But as long as I'm trying to convince you of unlikely things, that includes convincing you that I'm not a rapist."
"You're more into lycanthropy for the cannibalism, are you?"
She'd said the wrong thing. The look he gave her was frightening in a perfectly human way. "Werewolves eating humans isn't cannibalism," he said.
"What?"
"Cannibalism means eating members of one's own species. Werewolves aren't human, so werewolves eating humans isn't cannibalism, it's anthropophagy, from the Greek anthropos, meaning human, and phagia, meaning eat. Anthropophagy refers to the consumption of humans by any species, human or otherwise."
"So that makes it all right?"
"No! Of course not. Eating humans is evil whatever it's called. It's just not cannibalism when werewolves do it, it's anthropophagy. You used the wrong word. The English language is a tool capable of great precision when used correctly."
She blinked at him for a while. "All right. You're not into it for the rape or the cannibalism, you're just into it for the anthropophagy. Sorry, my mistake."
"I don't prey on humans. I don't even eat humans that other werewolves have hunted. That's just a stereotype. Well. All right, some stereotypes have a basis in reality. Some werewolves do eat people. All right, everyone in this pack except for me does, but I don't."
"So what are you doing here? There can't be many opportunities to argue semantics in this crowd."
The look he gave her now was at least an improvement over the last few. It was a cautious, distrustful look. "I have nowhere else to go," he said. "Humans would kill me on sight if they knew what I was. I can pass for human most of the time, but it's difficult, and impossible at the full moon. Here I'm accepted for what I am."
"As long as you go along with the rape and anthropophagy and such."
"Well. Yes."
"You just stood there and watched Greyback assault me. You didn't do anything to stop him."
"I'm sorry. Sometimes, when it won't be noticed, I do what I can to relieve the suffering of the victims. I'm hoping, if I work my way up through the ranks, I might have some influence eventually. I can't make waves now. Later, maybe. Lord Greyback is really impressed with me so far. He says my magical abilities are very helpful to the pack."
She looked at this strange, now human-looking monster before her. "That's an extra-evil type of evil," she remarked.
"What? I just said I don't rape, I don't hunt or eat humans—"
"But you enable those who do. If what you said is true, you're the only one here who knows better, which in a way makes you even worse that the werewolves who hunt humans like some kind of wild animals. Like, you can't blame a cat for killing a robin, since the cat is just controlled by its instincts, but a human who thinks about it and then decides to let a pet cat outside? That's where the blame lies."
"I don't have time to criticize your choice of metaphor right now, although believe me I am sorely tempted. We have to think of a way out of our immediate problem."
"This part of the dream is pretty cool, the ethical conundrum. Which is more evil, the wild animal kind of werewolf or the intelligent enabling kind? The latter, I think. I hope I remember this part when I wake up."
"Listen to me. They're expecting blood. We have to come back bloody. I'd offer mine, but it has to be human blood. We can smell the difference. I'm afraid I'll have to cut you somewhere, like your hand. Then you'll smear blood where it would be if I had raped you. I'll make a show of carrying your unconscious, bloody body through camp back to my tent. It shouldn't be necessary to add any other bodily fluids. We're so attuned to human blood, that's all anyone will notice. Then, um, have you had dinner yet? I have some food in my tent.
"That really doesn't sound like a fun date at all."
He buried his face in his hands. "It doesn't sound very fun to me either. That's not the point. That's the only plan I could come up with that gives us both a chance of surviving this night uninjured. Do you have a better idea?"
"You could let me go."
"And have Lord Greyback think me ungrateful, question my loyalty to him, and kill me. No thank you."
"You could escape with me."
"That's easier said than done. I have nowhere else to go. Besides, a different wizard set up the wards around this camp, so I'd have trouble letting anyone through them."
"Wizard?"
"Greyback considers me the second-most-trustworthy wizard here. The first is a werewolf who calls himself Whitefang."
"Isn't that a heavy metal band?"
"Probably. I wouldn't know. I'm more into folk. It was a novel by Jack London, but I don't think this wizard knows that. He just thought it sounded cool, and it fits his pretensions of being a vicious monster."
"This dream keeps changing. Are you a werewolf or a wizard?"
"I'm afraid that question can't be answered without a rather involved foray into semantics, as it depends on whether you're using the legal or functional definition. I was inarguably a wizard before Greyback bit me, turning me into a werewolf. I like to think of myself as a wizard, but most of my fellow wizards wouldn't agree. The Ministry of Magic classifies us as beasts, not humans, nor even beings, so legally I'm not a wizard, since a wizard by legal definition is a type of human. I don't even have such sparse rights as are granted to beings such as merfolk and centaurs. I have no more rights than a doxy or flobberworm, and I definitely have no legal right to use a wand. I'm much better at magic than most of the werewolves here, though, and perhaps better than the average human wizard if I may say so myself. That's mostly a matter of training and practice. Lord Greyback specializes in biting human children to turn them into werewolves, then raising them to live like animals and hunt humans. He's lousy at teaching them magic. He's asked me to teach his pups. The education of these poor kids was seriously neglected until I got here."
"That sounds fascinating! What kind of magic do you teach?"
"You just listened to me babble about semantics for an unnaturally long time. This must be a trick. You're trying to postpone the awful task before us."
"No, I—"
"Would you rather I cut your right or left hand?"
"I'd rather you not. I'd rather wake up from this nightmare."
"So would I." He suddenly took her right hand n his left, and moved his wand in a slashing motion at it. "Diffindo."
It hurt less than she'd thought it would. Extremely sharp blades hurt less than dull ones. Invisible, magical blades apparently hurt less than that. The slash across her palm was dripping blood.
"I'll look away," he said, and did so. "Make it gory."
She did. "Done."
He looked at her again, nodded, and pointed his wand at her hand again. "Episkey." The cut looked like it had healed a week ago, although her hand was still bloody.
"Doesn't some of this have to get on you?"
"Damn. You're right." He took a deep breath. "Hi!" he said brightly, holding out his hand to shake. "Remus Lupin, werewolf, at your service. I'm not at all pleased to meet you under these particular circumstances."
She shook his hand with her bloody one. "Sarah Briarcliff. Likewise."
He looked at his bloody hand. "Right. I'll, um, just step behind this tree for a moment. Excuse me." He was back soon, with less blood on his hand. He had a faint smear of blood around his mouth. He did his best to wipe the rest off his hand onto the ground. Then he held his wand in his left hand to point it to his right. "Scourgify." His hand was clean. "Shall I do yours?" he offered. When she nodded, he scourgified her hand as well. "Well, that's one chore off the to-do list. Our next task is for me to parade my violated victim through the gawking crowd, via a boastful, circuitous route, back to my tent. You've got the easy acting job, since all you have to do is pretend to be unconscious. Think you can manage?"
This was too weird.
"I could actually knock you unconscious if you prefer. Not by slamming your head against a tree of course, I mean with a spell. You might have a headache when you wake up though."
"No, you don't have to do that. I'll act unconscious. I'll try, anyway. I feel like I might get the giggles though. This is the weirdest dream ever."
"Miss Briarcliff. I don't know how to impress upon you how extremely serious this situation is. My rapid rise through the ranks in this pack has been noticed by other ambitious werewolves, and is a cause of great envy. They're watching me closely for any sign of dissent from Lord Greyback's anti-human agenda. By giving me a human to protect, my task just became harder by an order of magnitude. One mistake and they'll eat me alive, and I don't mean that metaphorically. Werewolves are cannibals too. Your death would be slower but more painful than mine. Our acting has to be perfect."
That was it. The dream was just too ridiculous. She laughed. She couldn't stop laughing.
He sighed and pointed his wand at her. "Stupefy."
—-
She woke to the sound of birdsong. She was in a comfortable bed. That was a really weird dream, probably brought on by being in a strange place. She waited for an explanation of her surroundings to click into her mind. She had been hitchhiking back from that festival, picky about which cars she got into, but then she'd been grabbed from behind by people with no car at all, who'd snuck up on her in perfect silence—
"Morning," said the werewolf. "I got your clothes back for you. You'll probably want to shower before you get dressed though. I've got a sort of camp shower set up here. Sorry, it's pretty primitive."
If she didn't open her eyes, this wasn't really happening.
"I can tell you're awake because of how you're breathing, and I know you're listening to me because your heartbeat sped up when I spoke. And again just now. I have to get to work soon, but I want to make sure you're taken care of first. Please open your eyes. This isn't the sort of muggle tent you might be used to. It requires some explanation."
She opened her eyes. If this was a tent, it was a large and luxurious one, more like a flat. Morning light shone through the arched green fabric ceiling and walls.
"Bathroom is there," he said, pointing. "Self-scourgifying bucket in lieu of a toilet, you'll figure it out. Sink, shower, towels. I happened to have an extra new toothbrush, so it's yours. Would you like some porridge? Sorry, all I've got is powdered milk to go with it. I haven't been to civilization to restock for a while. I'm out of tea."
She looked around. Most tents did not include so many bookshelves.
"You'd best just stay here today," he said. "Help yourself to books. I'll leave this porridge here on the table. I have to go." He left.
It still had to be a dream. It didn't seem quite as nightmarish at the moment. Nice tent. She was still wearing his shirt. Her thighs were caked with dried blood. The shower took some figuring out, but she got it eventually.
Her clothes had been washed and neatly folded. She thought they'd been ripped off her by clawed hands, but they looked undamaged; another inconsistency of this dream.
The porridge tasted OK. Reconstituted powdered milk was a little odd.
The toothbrush, still in its plastic packaging, was bright yellow and sized for a child.
Here she was, imprisoned in a surprisingly nice tent, in a werewolf encampment. She was bored. It didn't seem right, but she was.
She looked around. There was a brown suitcase on the floor at the foot of the bed, labeled "Professor R. J. Lupin" in shiny gold letters. It was locked.
There were three large bookshelves. One had familiar books, sorted by the age of the intended audiences. The lowest shelf had very simple board books and alphabet books. The next shelf up had The Cat in the Hat and such. The next shelf had most of The Chronicles of Narnia (lined up in the wrong order), a book on how to play recorder, a book of wacky science experiments, etc. The top shelf had Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dickens, a book each on starting your own business, car repair, sewing... It was a well-organized but seemingly random assortment.
The second bookshelf was even more confusing. It was organized the same way, but all the books were completely unfamiliar. The alphabet books on the bottom shelf had entries like "H is for hippogriff." The next shelf up had storybooks such as The Tales of Beedle the Bard and comic books featuring Martin Miggs the Mad Muggle. Next was Hogwarts, a History, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The top shelf had The Unauthorized Biography of Celestina Warbeck, some novels (She was a beautiful pureblood. He was an honest muggleborn. Would they ever find happiness?), some how-to, such as Household Hints for the Homemaking Witch, and Quidditch Through the Ages, which was just incomprehensible.
The books on the third, smaller bookshelf were all in a different language. Latin?
As a personal book collection, it made no sense. It was all breadth, no depth. He'd wanted a library next to the chocolate shop, she realized. This collection wasn't for him. It was intended as a library to suit all tastes.
She was still perusing this strange library hours later when she heard her captor's voice call from just outside, "Miss Briarcliff? May we come in?"
She froze. She had to say something. "Who's we?"
"I brought one of my students, Rex."
"Why are you asking my permission to enter your own tent?"
"I'm teaching Rex how to pretend to be human. This is what humans do, ask before entering. It ties in with today's lesson on the human concept of consent."
"I guess you might as well come into your own tent." She backed away from the door as they entered. The boy was one she'd seen yesterday, the one who wanted to know what a peep show was. He had a mop of sunstreaked strawberry blond curls and a face that was mostly freckles. He was gripping a book in his hand. His blue eyes widened when he saw her. Gold glints sparked in their depths. "You really have got a human in here!" he exclaimed. "She smells delicious!"
Lupin sighed. "Oh Rex. That is exactly the sort of remark that will identify you as a Dark creature. Plus your eyes were going gold, and I saw fangs starting. Meditate like I taught you, you are stronger than the wolf, turn your eyes back to your human color, yes, very good. It is proper to wait for an introduction before addressing a new acquaintance, and calling someone delicious just isn't done. It's best to avoid mentioning smells at all, since we can smell things that humans can't, and we mustn't let them know that. Let's try this again. Miss Briarcliff, this is my student Rex. Rex, this is Miss Briarcliff. "
"Pleased to meet you," said Rex.
Sarah stared at him.
Lupin glanced at Sarah as if he briefly expected her to say she was likewise pleased to meet this young monster, but he quickly looked away from her and back to Rex when he realized the absurdity of this expectation. Rex didn't seem to be expecting any particular response from her. "Very good!" he said to Rex. "You seemed quite human there. Didn't he, Miss Briarcliff?"
She nodded dully.
"Well, let's get you a book."
"Are there more like this?" Rex held up the book he'd brought, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
"I'll get you the next in the series, Prince Caspian."
"That's not the next one," said Sarah. "Next is The Horse and His Boy."
"I'm going by the order in which they were published."
"They weren't published in order. The events in the stories line up differently."
"Part of the beauty of the series is the non-linear way the story unfolds. Reading the story in chronological order spoils the effect."
"The plot makes more sense when read in chronological order."
"There's a lot more to appreciating literature than just understanding the plot."
Rex was following this discussion raptly, his eyes wide, and currently blue. Finally, he could stay silent no longer. "She's defying you!" he exclaimed. "You're really high ranking, practically everyone has to submit to you, but she's being insubordinate! Why aren't you biting her?"
Lupin sighed again. "I know how to act like a werewolf. That's not my goal here. I'm demonstrating how to act like a human. Pay attention. Even humans of vastly different ranks can disagree without biting each other. Underlings sometimes have very good ideas, and a leader who automatically dismisses those ideas is a fool."
The boy gasped. "You're saying Lord Greyback—"
"I'm demonstrating how humans handle disagreements. That's what Lord Greyback ordered me to do, teach his pups how to pretend to be human. I'm obeying his order."
Rex nodded uncertainty.
"Let's get you the next book in the series, which is either Prince Caspian or The Horse and His Boy, depending on whom you ask. There are legitimate arguments for either." He held both books out to Rex.
Rex looked at both books uncertainly. "You said this one?" he asked, pointing to Prince Caspian.
"Yes, but you may choose either. I really wouldn't mind."
Rex took Prince Caspian.
"Enjoy it," said Lupin.
Rex nervously inched backwards towards the exit.
"You may go," said Lupin. "After!" he'd caught the boy's wrist in his hand as he bolted. "You take your leave of Miss Briarcliff."
"It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Briarcliff," he said. Then he looked at Lupin and added, "I'm going to have my own human someday, just like you." Lupin let him go and he was gone like a shot.
"Thank you," Lupin said. "Would you like some lunch? You wouldn't like what's being served in the main eating area, and I don't want it either. Your presence here at least gives me an excuse to come back here for lunch, as I told them I had to tend to my human. I'm afraid I don't have much to offer. I could open some tins of beans, corn, and tomatoes, call it a vegetarian chili."
"Whatever."
He set two bowls of hot chili and glasses of water on the small table, with some mismatched spoons and worn fabric napkins.
"I'm very sorry I can't offer you anything better. I do plan to go shopping as soon as I'm allowed out."
"The food's fine. It isn't the problem."
"I know. I'm sorry."
They ate in awkward silence for a while. "Thank you again for helping with Rex," he finally said. "These kids need to see how it's possible to peacefully disagree, and I can't demonstrate that by myself. That couldn't have gone better if we'd planned it in advance."
"So thanks to me, he'll be better at pretending to be human."
"Yes."
"So he'll be better at hunting us. That's the service you perform for Greyback, you train his werewolves to better hunt humans. You're good at it. That's why he rewarded you with me."
Lupin didn't answer. He wasn't eating either. He was taking slow, steady breaths. He's meditating to stop his eyes from going gold and his fangs from growing, she realized. He's working hard on not biting me. It's not safe to push this.
"Those seem like young books for a teenager," Sarah tried.
Lupin's brown eyes smiled at her in gratitude for the change of subject. "He could barely read when I first arrived here. He's made enormous improvements. I'm very proud of him." He refilled her water glass with, impossibly, that stick from his sleeve. It didn't seem sanitary to use the same tool he'd used to cut her hand for this. She drank, for her mouth felt dry. "Have you had enough lunch?" he asked.
"Yes."
He hurriedly gulped the last of the food from his own bowl and hers, then washed the bowls by waving his stick at them and saying "Scourgify." He put them away, then grabbed one of the Latin books off the shelf. "I've got to go. I teach human culture in the mornings and magic in the afternoons, plus whatever odd jobs Greyback has for me, so I'm pretty busy."
"You're going to teach magic?"
"I should be done by dinner time. Sorry you'll be bored here, but I really don't recommend going outside to interact with the other werewolves without me. At least you have books. Sorry this collection is so small. See you later." He left.
She needed a plan. She couldn't sit around reading a book on broom maintenance. She had to escape. She had to warn people that there was a pack of werewolves… OK, while a mental hospital might be better than this, she'd still be trapped. So, she'd escape and say nothing.
So, that was the overall plan. There were still details to work out, such as how to get through a camp crowded with super-strong, super-hearing, super-smelling, fanged, magic-using werewolves. And then, if what Lupin had said was true, a magical barrier that even he couldn't get through.
Impossible. It was impossible.
She needed a plan B. Signal for help? Smoke? That would surely attract attention, mostly of the werewolves in her immediate vicinity, very quickly.
Was this particular situation really so bad? Her captor seemed nice enough—
No. She would not succumb to that sort of thinking. Her captor was the most evil werewolf here. He was the one teaching the others how to better hunt humans. Despite his affectations of civility, he was worse than Greyback.
And here he was now, at the door of his tent. "Miss Briarcliff? May I come in?
"It's your tent."
He entered.
"One of my students brought me a rabbit," he said. "And I found some wild onions. I'll cook them for dinner."
"Thanks, that sounds tasty." She'd have to kill him in his sleep. The others would kill her afterwards, but at least she'd die a hero. She'd sacrifice her life for the greater good.
Maybe dying in this dream would finally wake her.