A/N: The Gaffer's Rest/the storage room posses the same qualities of looking deceptively small from the outside as the TARDIS does, only without as many rooms. Harry Potter Fanfiction University used with permission of Meir Bryn. All people, places, and things of the Harry Potter fandom belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, Warner Brothers, and anyone else who has a legal claim. If you recognize it, it ain't mine.
"Cookies all around!" I shouted, arms full, as I kicked the storage room door shut behind myself. "Hobbits by the foosball tables, the rest of you, wait by the bar!" I hurried back to the foosball table to leave off five dozen of the Urban Legend Cookies I'd baked up earlier. That's what I called them, at least, in honor of the fact the recipe came from the infamous urban legend about the $250 Neiman Marcus cookie recipe. The cookies were as good as billed, even if the story wasn't.
On top of my head rode Cap'n Jack, squawking and chirping at everyone as we passed, greeting the Corsairs with 'Your mother's a dogfish' and the Hobbits with 'Vote Gamgee for Mayor'. Various residents of Hobbiton ribbed Sam about using Jack for advertising and Master Gamgee blushed and denied having anything to do with it.
"There are five dozen cookies for all of you," I told the assembled Hobbits sternly. "I will set the container down on the foosball table. You will wait to descend upon it like a horde of barbarians until after I am away from the table." I had no desire to be trampled to death. "Do not complain to me if you do not get a cookie. There are enough for everyone. If you don't get one, whinge to those who are at the front of the crowd." Slowly, I set down my pile of containers at one end of the table and removed the top one, placing it at the other end of the table and removing the lid. I carefully picked up my pile of containers and backed away, never taking my eyes from the Hobbits. Only when I was a good two feet away did I turn and start for the bar. Behind me, I heard what sounded like a pack of wolves tearing into a carcass. "Hobbits!" I muttered under my breath.
The remaining containers I placed along the bar, removing the lids as I went. "Enjoy," I told the waiting Men, Dwarves, and Elves, grabbing two cookies for myself from the last container. "Remember, tomorrow night we're all going to the Dinosaur BarBeQue downtown so bring your appetites. Be ready to leave around four. We want to get there ahead of the crowd." The restaurant, home to the greatest ribs on the planet, had advertised an 'all you can eat' special for tomorrow night. I smiled slightly, feeling pity for the kitchen staff. They had no idea what was about to descend upon them, but it wasn't like anyone would've believed me had I called to tell them to smoke up an extra large batch of ribs because thirty-something Hobbits and a horde of men's men would be coming for dinner the next night. I'd have placed reservations but the Dino didn't take them so the restaurant was going to be caught totally unprepared. "Like lambs to the slaughter," I murmured. I'd leave an extra-large tip when we were done.
The feast at the Dino was possible thanks to what the Tower Guard had earned when they joined me to work crew for a day with the local stageworker's union. The issue of ID had been easily taken care of with one trip to the Harry Potter Fanfiction Academy. The Death Eaters had loved the idea of making fake IDs and the prototypes they showed me were fabulous but they refused to budge from the IDs being portkeys which would pull any Muggle in contact with them to the old Riddle estate to be tortured, so I'd been forced to find someone else to help me out. In the end, it was Dumbledore who made the IDs. There was a small problem with the pictures on the first batch moving but he fixed that easily enough when I reminded him Muggle pictures are static.
So, armed with falsified documents, we went and worked crew for the Tim McGraw and Faith Hill concert which had come to town. The men were familiar enough with the modern world and all the devices which run by strange magic that all the equipment and wires and lights weren't a total shock, though I did have to discretely remind a few of them not to gawk several times. The lights rising and lowering were particularly fascinating to them and no matter what I told them, they remained convinced that the motors which raised and lowered the lighting trusses weren't magical devices.
The road crew for the show were singing the praise of the soldiers when we took our coffee break after two hours of hauling wires and stringing them on the trusses.
"He just picked the whole spool of wires up and carried it across the arena!" A.J., one of the lighting roadies, gushed about Artamir. "I've never seen anyone do that before. He's amazing!"
"They all are," added Gabe, a roadie working on setting up the stage. "You tell them what you want, show them how, and they go right to it and bam get it done in no time." He took a bite out of his bagel and a swallow of coffee. "We could really use them on road crew. They don't speak real good English, though."
'You don't want them. Trust me,' I thought sardonically as I ate a Boston Creme donut. The Tower Guard were extremely wary of motorized vehicles and it was only through a direct order from Aragorn they'd gotten in the van this morning. The idea of trying to get them to travel by bus all over the country for months on end was an incredibly amusing one, at least for me. The road crew, however, would probably want to string them up from the trusses before their first day was out.
By the end of the night, I was ready to string them up from the trusses myself. We'd been sent home around one in the afternoon once set-up was complete with orders to return for load out at ten, which meant we should get there by nine-thirty.
"We'll be returning while the concert is still going on," I told them on the way home. "There are a lot of special effects so it's going to seem like many strange and magical things are happening and you might think some of them are evil or dangerous. They aren't. Everything will be totally under control. People know what is going on and how it works and there is no magic or evil involved. Remember that."
"Should we be prepared, just in case?" Castamir asked.
"No. Nothing evil or dangerous will be happening." 'Not unless you count the drunks and the obnoxious fangirls,' I added silently. "If you have any doubts at all, ask me before you do anything." Famous last words.
There wasn't a full-fledged scene of chaos but it nearly came to that when Roger (who never stopped whinging on about his helmet and how he hated it) saw two fog machines doing what they were supposed to do and decided to hack the devices of Sauron to bits. Thankfully, Tarcil, one of his less-dense cohorts who had paid attention to what I'd said, saw him drawing a dagger to begin stabbing the nearest fog machine and stopped him. Roger didn't take kindly to the intervention and thus began an argument. Kendra, one of the sound techs, told them to shut up and stop disturbing the concert. Roger and Tarcil, of course, ignored her so they were 'escorted' from the control area outside by two well-muscled road techs and told to leave (though in much less polite terms).
I'd followed them at a discrete distance (guilt by association is such a pesky thing) and waited until after their 'escorts' to go chew Roger and Tarcil out.
"I told you, Roger, not to come armed and that everything was fine and if you had any doubts to talk to me. Is there any part of that you did not understand?"
"One must always be prepared," he replied. "It is a foul thing which produces smoke without fire. It should have been killed."
I closed my eyes and slowly counted to ten. "Tarcil, I'm giving you the key to the van. I want you and Roger to wait there for the rest of us. Thank you for stopping him from stabbing the perfectly harmless fog machine."
When I returned inside, load out was just beginning and for the next three hours we were busy getting everything back into boxes and onto the trucks to head to the next city on the tour. I heard Gabe talking to a few of the Guard about joining road crew and, no surprise, they refused, saying they had no desire to travel in carriages powered by strange magic. Not much later I heard Gabe telling other road crew that the Guard were totally bonkers and he was glad he didn't have to deal with them every day (though in much less polite terms).
A week later our paychecks arrived.
"This is strange money," Aragorn remarked when he saw my paycheck.
"It's one kind we use. To turn it into the other kind, I need to take it to a money lender. If you could find the Tower Guard and tell them I need to talk to them?" Eru only knew how but I needed to teach the Guard how to sign their names in English and write 'Pay to the order of Laurel Whitney' on the backs of their checks so I could deposit them in my checking account. I sighed and rubbed at my temples, the beginnings of a migraine scratching at the inside of my skull.
