Buffy waited in the small courtyard at 11-o’clock. The place named as the meeting point for her ‘tutor’ in the letter she had received at breakfast was used only as a direct route from classrooms indoors to the greenhouses that were used in Herbology so at mid-morning on a grim Saturday the petite blonde was the only thing to disturb the silence of the paved area besides the whispers of the wind traveling through nearby trees. Since she had stepped outside, she felt like there was a coiled spring straining for release within her, causing a restless awareness that prevented her from relaxing on the wooden benches spotted about the area.

A door slammed shut, blown closed quicker than had been intended by the brisk wind that sailed by. The glass panes in the windowed door rattled due to the abruptness with which it had shut. The sound caused an immediate reaction in the slayer; she turned around as quickly as a startled animal. Though not getting into a fighting pose her stance shifted so that she was on the balls of her feet, knees slightly bent and the arms that had been hugging around her slim waist as a form of protection from the chill of British weather fell to her sides; seemingly relaxed but muscles taught and ready. To most she would have looked like an innocent woman-child a girl in the midst of becoming an adult meekly awaiting acknowledgement, but the man that had come to meet her had traveled too far, had too many scars to fail to notice that she was battle ready.

Deep within him he felt the familiar urge rise up in his chest, the animal within had sensed a fellow predator in the girl and the beast fought to be released, to prove his dominance. This place had been claimed by him decades ago and something in him demanded permission to defend its refuge. He forced down the whisperings. There were only certain times when he was unable to resist that call and it wasn’t now. There was only one thing that shocked him about the call; despite its demands for a fight, the beast was afraid.

The Slayer clamored to be released, refusing to allow Buffy to relax. It’s within him the monster stirs. Then suddenly the insistent pull dimmed and she could focus more clearly on the man in front of her. He, as well as the feelings her slayer senses were still sending her, was eerily familiar. Searching her memory Buffy came up with the answer at the same time that recognition flashed into hazel eyes.

“You’re the one on the platform!”

To any outsider observing their meeting it would seem that they both spoke almost immediately after they turned to face one another, mere seconds being used to assess one another, for each of the beings buried deep within the seemingly harmless and fragile shells to answer questions that their conscious minds didn’t even know were being asked. Both parties relaxed, their respective demons retreating as each acknowledged that this was a fight that would await another day.

“Do you have it under control?”

After the intensity of their meeting he knew he shouldn’t be shocked, but nevertheless he was surprised to see compassion and understanding in her eyes, not the fear he had become used to. It amazed him that somehow this girl, in two looks and as many sentences had made him feel more accepted and somehow normal than even his friends at school had. He closed his eyes, feeling into the part of him where the monster slept and nodded as he opened his eyes. She had somehow managed to relax even that brute.

“I don’t want to assume he’s the only British werewolf, but you’re Professor Lupin? Right?”

He winced slightly, thinking of the reputation that he had left behind at this school. In spite of being loved as a teacher, Snape’s careful revelations about the night that Petigrew had escaped had made sure to reveal the follies of the werewolf in full and some of his students still cringed from him if they met on the street.

“I’m not a Professor any more, and you are Miss Summers.”

“Buffy” She immediately corrected. He looked at her sharply for a moment then nodded. “and I am Remus.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment. Having just all but sniffed one another in an animalistic greeting, shaking hands seemed pointless. Buffy eventually broke the impasse by bowing her neck to him as she would do to Giles before they sparred. Recognizing the gesture for the sign of respect it was, the werewolf returned it with a smile.

Out of the corner of her eyes Buffy caught a flash of movement in one of the windows on the first floor that overlooked the courtyard. Looking back to Lupin she saw in the slightly startled look that he had also realized that they were being observed.

“We should move to a more private location.” He murmured in his slightly horse but calming voice.

Buffy nodded and moved to the door, for some reason finding herself trusting the werewolf with sad and tired eyes which nevertheless contained a vibrancy that contradicted his gaunt face and graying hair. Despite both her fears that these lessons might lead to disclosure of her secrets and hopes that they might help her understand the power that stirred inside her, she hadn’t expected to feel such a strong connection to the person that Dumbledore had sent to train her. Thinking of the Headmaster made her remind herself that regardless of her instincts, Lupin was here at his bidding and couldn’t be entirely trusted.

Moving to pass by him and make her way into the building she felt a hand on her shoulder gently stopping her in her tracks.

“Not that way.” amusement shone in his eyes as he turned from her without answering her inquiring look. He led her around the edge of the school past the turn to the Greenhouses. For a moment she was worried that he was presumptuous enough to take them into the forest. She would be safe, but without help from the werewolf within there was no way this frail man could defend himself against everything in the wood, wizard or not. She relaxed slightly when he rounded the corner of the castle around so that they were facing away from the forest, following along the wall.

Lupin finally stopped alongside a lone window at ground level in the wall. Over the glass were numerous iron bars crossing with about a hands width between them. He placed his hands carefully on the bars at a strange angle to one another and simultaneously twisted the bars. A whole section of the wall around the window swung inwards, seams in the stonework appearing out of nowhere to form a doorway leading into a dark passage.

As they stepped over the threshold torches on the walls burst into flame lighting a short passage that, Buffy guessed, merely took them through the thick walls of the castle. They came to a wide spiral staircase and Lupin paused before stepping onto it.

“This stairway is protected. Follow my steps precisely as on some steps you have to stand on a specific stone.”

They made their way up the stairs, Lupin warning her before they took any of the steps that she had to take care on. They finally reached a landing, but unfortunately he didn’t stop there but immediately climbed the staircase that wound further up. After the first couple of ‘special’ steps on the second staircase, Buffy noticed that they were following the same pattern that they had on the first one. There must be a pattern. She started to mentally note each stone they needed to stand on. By the end of the third flight of stairs she had them all figured out and no longer needed prompting to step in the correct places.

On the first step they stepped on the sixth stone from the wall, then on the fifth it was the fourth stone they had to tread on. There was a gap until the fourteenth and fifteenth steps where they stepped on the fifth and second stones respectively. On the eighteenth step they stood on the first stone and on the twenty third, the third. Each landing was exactly twenty five stairs from the previous one. Buffy thought about the sequence, sure that there must be a pattern to the sequence of numbers or they wouldn’t repeat continually.

Twenty five steps… one, five, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, twenty three…

Buffy tried to remember the tricks Willow had for the number games she had tried to interest the reluctant student with, and, even after giving up that as a lost cause, the redhead had often voiced her thoughts out loud as she mulled through a particularly difficult problem. She was so busy thinking through the numbers that she failed to notice when she reached the fourth landing and the part of her brain that had been counting the steps continued to ‘twenty six’ as she stepped onto the forth landing.

In a flash of inspiration she realized what it had been that she was missing. It wasn’t twenty five but twenty six steps… they were letters, no doubt making up some sort of password. She counted through the alphabet figuring out the letters that corresponded to the steps as she made her way up to the fifth landing.

A… E… N, O… R… W…

Buffy frowned. The letters made no sense whatsoever. Perhaps she was wrong and it was just a random pattern devised to trick anyone attempting to come up the staircase. Coming out onto the seventh landing they finally finished their climbing and Lupin lead Buffy through a solid doorway into a room that was filled with such a bright light in comparison to the dull flame lit stairwell that she was momentarily blinded.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the light and she saw that they were in a large studio like room. The huge north facing windows that seemed to covered top to bottom the entire outward wall of the room arching as they neared to ceiling pulled whatever light there was from the dull sky and lit even the furthest corners of the room. Some of the lower windows, taller than most men, stood open to allow fresh air to enter the unused room.

Opposite the door they had entered by was a magnificent fireplace with a black marble mantle with a pair of leather armchairs and a long couch arranged in front of it. It took Buffy a while to figure out why the room seemed so familiar with a massive desk at one end and beautiful paneling on the walls. It was when she stepped forward to examine the fireplace that she saw an image that in her months in the castle had become as well-known as the photos that had littered her home in Sunnydale.

Spanning the full width of the impressive fireplace was a large iron grate that, already containing a crackling fire, resembled the skeleton of a dying ship, reminiscent of the Vikings funeral practices. But it wasn’t this that had caught Buffy’s eye. On the inside of the chimney breast was a sheet of polished bronze that somehow repelled the soot of centuries, shaped expertly ob the wall behind the fire to picture an eagle in flight. The light of the flames on the metal made the bird almost seem alive, like a phoenix rising out from the blaze, but to any Ravenclaw it would be recognizable as the bird made immortal in the statue that guarded their common room.

The room was what the Ravenclaw common room would look like as a private room, more spacious and airy as it only had to have work space for a single occupant and comfortable seating for the occasional guest. On each side of the desk, which stood near the back of the room facing the windows, were stairs curving up to a wide landing on the southern wall and centrally behind the desk was a portrait of a young girl, barely out of her teens.

From the landing extended two wrought iron staircases which seemed to be supported by the air itself as they wound and intertwined on their separate journeys to doorways high near the ceiling, one on the southern corner of east wall and the other on the west. At the back of the landing was a set of double doors shut firmly against further observation. Somehow the raised space had a decidedly more private feel than the open study she was standing in, causing Buffy to look away from the southern end of the room.

Lupin allowed her to take in the amazing space; it was perfect in both its intricacy and simplicity, with the sparse furniture and lack of extravagant decoration that might have marred the delicate designs of the iron in the windows and stairs or beautiful carving of the mantle.

“I don’t think we’ll be observed here. I’m not sure even Dumbledore knows about it.”

“Where…” Buffy asked quietly, worried that a loud voice would disturb the serenity of the room.

“Where are we?”

“Rowena Ravenclaw’s private quarters.”

Buffy had known that the room had some sort of connection to her house, but its belonging to it’s founder seemed unbelievable.

“But that was…” she tried to work out the rooms age in her head.

“1000 years ago? This room, as was the rest of the castle, was constructed by Rowena Ravenclaw. Strong enough to imbue the stones themselves with magic, she was more than powerful and knowledgeable enough to protect her home through the millennia.”

He could see more questions flutter through her mind as she digested this information, once more scanning the room before her eyes locked onto his own, curiosity not entirely sated but acceptant of the explanation for now. He once again felt the power of her gaze that seemed to strip him back to his bare soul and lay judgement on what it saw there. His own curiosity flared and he couldn’t stop himself from asking the question that sprung into his mind.

“How did you know what I am?”

The intensity of the gaze multiplied exponentially, weighing his soul as the frightened girl decided whether to trust him. He seemingly passed the test, as she decided to answer carefully “One of my friends from school was bitten.”

“A friend from Sunnydale?” His voice, if possible, grew more horse in his shock and he felt a twinge of pity for the other werewolf “How do they cope with the change on a Hellmouth?” he asked wonder and pity mixed in his tone.

Before he realised what he’d said he noticed the fear that had suddenly entered both the girl’s eyes and stance. The same fire that had been there before flaring ready for fight or flight. He continued as if he hadn’t noticed; hoping that the sound of an even voice would return her sense of peace.

“I was near one once when the full moon came” he winced, his features creasing along well worn lines at the remembered pain, looking straight through Buffy into his memory of a moonlit night as he continued “It gives the curse more power. I was more beast than man or even wolf that night.”

When she had calmed enough to find her voice she asked “How do you know about Hellmouths… I haven’t seen them in any books”

He looked at her sharply at her easy use of the term “And you won’t. The term is used usually by dark creatures and shunned by wizards, but” he smiled amiably as he continued “It’s much easier to say than ‘Areas of increased dark magic and demonic activity’ though even the existence of those isn’t accepted by most of the wizarding population. As a ‘dark creature’ myself, it’s a lot easier to acknowledge the truth to some things that wizards consider myths” He said this last phrase staring at her with such an intensity that she feared for a moment that he had figured her out, that he was going to reveal her. But then the moment was gone and the passionate eyes were once again dancing cheerfully in the weary face.

“Enough talk though, I’m here to help you to control your other half… though as you are undoubtedly not a werewolf the techniques I teach you may not work in your case.”

She settled down as he indicated, cross legged on the wooden floor in front of the tall windows. “I have found that there really is no way to completely control my other side. To prevent massive magic overflows the power has to be used in the way it was created for. The werewolf’s power is usually used up on the nights around the full moon during the transformation, but this can become more volatile close to the full moon when the power is recharged from the previous month and as yet unused.” The monotony of his breathy whispers and tranquillity of the room helped to once again ease Buffy into a relaxed state, forgetting her recent fears. “To prevent this happening I found a way to release this excess magic. To do this you first have to find where it is stored within you, reach inwards to the well of your power and take the extra that will otherwise get released uncontrollably.”

Buffy listened, more to his voice than his words, as he spoke of some meditation techniques that were scarily similar to those taught to her by Giles to help her use and control her slayer abilities. What most hit her from the speech was that first sentence. In order to use up the magic she would have to slay. The thought of once more fulfilling the duty that had seemed so often dull and arduous in Sunnydale excited her more than she cared to admit; pent up energy eager to get out and unused muscles craving the burn of a fight. The only problem was how to get out of the castle at night now that there were even more teachers around the school to spot her exit.