Marauders - Always - Part One

CLXXV: The Tower in Blackburn

In the tour ticketing booth outside of a small castle that was set up on a hill in on the edge of the town of Blackburn, there sat a young man of approximately sixteen, named Timmy Goodall. He was leaning back in his seat, feet up on the desktop, eating an apple in the mid-morning lull. Several school groups had checked in and his fellow tour guides had been sent off on their duties but he himself had not been assigned any groups for the day - he got to stay in the booth and accept the coins of the non-school visitors for the day. All he had to do was smile, nod, push a ticket through the window to them, and tell them to enjoy their time at the tower.

His teeth flashed in the mid-morning sun as he chomped on his apple noisily, flecks of the flesh of it shining on his chin.

Suddenly a shadow passed over him, blotting out the sunlight, and he dropped his feet from the table to turn about and found himself staring into the bearded face of a broad-shouldered young man with a thick beard and piercing eyes that glowered down at him. He was huge, this man, and Timmy stared up at him, chewing on the last bite of fruit that he'd taken, the apple forgotten as he dropped it in his moment of awe.

"G-good afternoon," Timmy stammered. "What may I do for you?"

The goliath that stood before him replied simply, "The Alpha is here."

Timmy stared up at the man for several long moments, the words sinking in. He had, of course, been trained precisely what to do if this phrase was ever uttered to him, but he'd never dreamed that he actually would hear it said. He blinked in disbelief for several moments.

"Aren't you going to show us in or do I need to rip open the door and remind you of the proper protocol?" the man asked gruffly.

Timmy got up hurriedly, grabbing the keys from the hook on the wall and quickly twisted the placard in the window from open to closed. He could hardly breathe as he burst through the doors of the ticketing booth and around to open the gate.

"I am sorry, sir," Timmy stammered, staring up at the huge man.

He was precisely what Timmy had imagined the Alpha would be like from the stories he'd heard growing up. His hands shook as he held open the gate for the man, watching as he stepped through the gate, looking around the courtyard of the small castle, and then looking back as the two smaller men with him stepped through the gate as well. Timmy wondered why the Alpha had chosen such fragile men for his ambassadors - one of the men that followed him was quite peaky from the walk up the hill, limping from what was clearly bad knees, and looking rather threadbare and skinny-faced - even more than most of the starving pack family members usually looked. This one had an almost haunted look to his eye.

Which was why he was even more shocked when the hulking man that he had thought was the Alpha turned and stepped into a stance of following the lead of that fragile man, whose hands clasped rather desperately to a cane upon which he leaned.

Timmy realized then that the weak one - he was the Alpha?

Why, on any given full moon night, Timmy himself could likely have overthrown that man. Surely there was some mistake.

There had to be.

He had all he could do not to laugh.

No wonder his family had been so eager to blatantly disregard the regulations of the pack in recent days. What was this twig going to do about it? Timmy's eyes glowed with amusement.

"You know the protocol," Remus Lupin said stiffly, looking down his nose on Timmy Goodall. Height was the one thing that Remus Lupin did seem to have. He loomed several inches taller than Timmy.

"Yes sir," Timmy said, suppressing the laughter. He scurried ahead, beckoning them to come along.

He led the trio across the courtyard and into the corridors of the castle. The tower was old and designed in the Tudor style, with old English roses carved into the stones and ironwork throughout. They passed glass platform-encased exhibits, and past the two of the school groups that had checked into the museum. They followed him past a tea room and a formal parlor, up a grand staircase and down a long corridor, finally turning into a small library with high vaulted ceilings with windows that stretched away over their heads.