Author's Note: This is a series of ten stories that were written back in 2003, before I ever started writing Harry Potter fanfiction. ElfFlame and I posted them under the name "Lembas Productions" and the plan was to have a whole series of Lord of the Rings stories, but she never finished any, and I switched over to Harry Potter after a while. I'm finally deleting them from Lembas Productions and putting them under my own name, since they are actually mine. This is a bit of a homecoming for them! I hope you enjoy them! They're all based on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, and the start after Frodo moved out of Brandy Hall and in with Bilbo after being named his heir.
Merry and the Snow Hobbit- By Foodie
1390 S.R.
Merry-8, Frodo-22
Eight-year-old Merry was very sad and bored now that Frodo had left him. He had nobody to play with. No one was quite as much fun as Frodo had been.
It was wintertime and a nice, thick blanket of fluffy, white snow covered the entire Shire. It was during this time that Merry decided to visit Frodo. He knew Frodo lived at Bag End in Hobbiton, which was very far away from Brandy Hall. So Merry found a bag, filled it with good food to eat and warm clothes to wear, and bundled up. He knew his parents wouldn't notice he was gone, so he didn't leave a note for them. Merry had gone with his father several times to Hobbiton and even helped Frodo move there. He was sure he knew the way. He left right after his second breakfast and began his great adventure.
He would go north until he reached the Brandywine Bridge, then turn west and follow the East Road until he got to Bywater, from there it was only a short distance to Hobbiton and Bag End. It usually took a day and a half to get there in his father's wagon, so Merry thought it wouldn't take much longer than that to get their on foot.
The walk to the Brandywine Bridge was uneventful for the most part. He stopped a couple of times to throw rocks at what he thought were the glowing eyes of giant wolves staring down at him from the trees, until he remembered that wolves didn't climb trees. Merry figured it was time for afternoon tea by the time he crossed the bridge, so he sat on a snow bank and ate a cake he had packed in his bag. It felt good and exciting to be out all alone having adventures. He wished it would last forever. Soon, Merry was back on the road heading west.
Merry was disappointed that there weren't any more people on the road, but he supposed the snow was keeping them indoors. Darkness had fallen by the time he reached the village of Whitfurrows. He was too tired to even eat, so he found the nearest farm and climbed up the ladder of the barn, snuggled into the hay in the loft and fell asleep.
The next morning, he woke up and had to sneak back to the road without getting caught. He didn't want to get into trouble for sleeping in a stranger's barn. He was climbing down the ladder when he heard voices of children coming close to the barn. Running back up to the hayloft, Merry listened as the voices entered the barn. There was a boy and a girl, and they were milking the cows and talking happily. He heard the boy say, "We're out of hay, I'll have to go get some more for them."
Merry's heart raced as he heard footsteps on the ladder, coming up to the hayloft where he was. Quickly he ran to the far corner of the loft and dove under the hay. It was his only hope of not being caught. Merry watched as the boy threw hay down to the floor below him and then climb back down the ladder. Then the children left the barn. Merry was back on the road a couple of minutes later.
All that hiding had made Merry a very hungry boy. He fished out an apple and began walking again. He knew that he must not turn up or down any road until he passed the Three Farthing Stone. He knew that the first turn in the road after that led to Hobbiton. So, Merry walked straight on the road, past Frogmorton, until he heard a wagon come up behind him. He walked to the edge of the road to let the wagon pass. As it passed, it slowed down; the driver looked at Merry and wondered why he was out in this weather.
"And who might you be?" asked the driver.
"I'm Merry," he answered, not wanting to tell him too much.
"And where might you be going to in such cold weather? You must be freezing!" the driver went on.
"I'm going to see my friend," Merry told the driver.
"Well I'm going to Bywater. You're welcome to join me, if that's in the right direction for you," the driver said to Merry.
Merry's feet were quite cold and he was going in that direction. "Thanks," he said as he climbed on the wheel and over to the seat of the wagon. Together they drove for several hours until they reached Bywater. The sun had set by the time they got there.
"Do you have a place to stay?" asked the driver. "My sister lives with her family here and she'd be happy to let you stay for the night, if you wish."
"Thank you kindly, sir. I would much appreciate that," Merry said, accepting the invitation.
Merry was taken to a cozy hobbit hole where the driver's sister lived. She gave him all the food he could eat. Then she gave him a nice, warm bath and tucked him into a soft trundle bed in a room with all of her children. He fell asleep instantly.
Merry slept in the next morning, and ate his breakfast while the other children were playing by the fire. He thanked the family for their kindness and left to continue on his trip to Frodo's house.
As he left, Merry made a snowball, but had nothing to throw it at. So he bent down and put it in the snow and began rolling it as he walked. As it grew, he straightened up while he walked and rolled. He walked for hours, pushing the snowball that had now grown almost as large as he was.
Finally he reached Hobbiton with the ever-growing snowball. He turned up the road to Bag End, pushing the snowball with him. Merry didn't know what he would do with the snowball; he wanted to see how big it could get. Finally he reached Bag End. Merry knocked on the door. Nobody answered. What? He had come all this way and now nobody was home! Merry hoped they would return soon from wherever they were, so he decided to play until they did.
He pushed his snowball up the hill, to the very top, right on top of Bag End. The snowball was now several times larger than Merry and very hard for him to control. Merry decided to make a snow hobbit, so he made another snowball and rolled it around, up and down the hill, until it was half the size of the first one. Then he made another snowball, rolled it up and down the hill until it was about half the size of the smaller one. Now for the hard part: Merry had to get the smaller snowballs on top of the large one, and all of them were bigger than he was.
He rolled the medium-sized one to the side of the larger one and tried to push it up. It was no use; they were too big for him. Merry decided to give it one more try. He pushed up as hard as he could and felt something move, so he pushed some more. Unfortunately, what he had felt was the larger snowball start to roll. It rolled slowly at first, but gained speed very quickly as it went down the hill.
Merry couldn't stop the snowball; as he looked down the hill, he saw Bilbo and Frodo walking up to Bag End. "Look out!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. Bilbo looked up to see a gigantic snowball rolling towards them. Luckily, there was a tree right in front of them. The snowball smashed into the tree and broke up, but Bilbo and Frodo were buried in a mound of snow anyway. Bilbo dug himself and Frodo out of the snow just as Merry ran down to them.
"Are you two all right?" asked Merry, breathlessly.
Frodo looked at Merry with wonderment. "What are you doing here? How did you get here?" he asked.
"I missed you so I came over for a visit," Merry replied.
Frodo was quite amused over this and not at all angry about being buried by a snowball. He was quite used to Merry's antics.
Bilbo on the other hand, was not as amused. "Your parents let you come here alone? You could have killed somebody with that little prank of yours. Well it's getting cold standing here in the snow, come inside and let's hear your story from the beginning. Then I'll decide what to do with you." With that the three hobbits trudged into Bag End and sat by the warm fire eating bread and drinking tea and chatting with each other.
Merry stayed at Bag End for three days, helping out with the chores as punishment for his snowball accident. Word had been sent to his parents to come and get him, for Bilbo would not allow Merry to walk back alone all that distance. He knew he would receive more punishment for this when he got home, but he didn't care. He'd had the adventure of his young hobbit life, one that he'd never forget, as long as he lived.