Disclaimer: As usual, Harry Potter is the property of one J.K. Rowling.
A/N: This was done for the Random Characters Challenge at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenge Forum.
Bill sometimes resents his family.
It's summer, and he's lying on his back in the garden, staring up at the brilliant blue sky, waiting for the bright sunlight to burn his eyes. The grass is prickly and freshly mowed; there are little clumps everywhere he looks. He flips his shiny new prefect badge in one hand, enjoying the way the cool metal feels against his hot skin.
Shrieks drift out from an open window, and he luxuriously closes his eyes, waiting for his mother's inevitable scolding, glad that it isn't him on the receiving end.
One…two…
"FRED WEASLEY! DO NOT TAPE KICK ME SIGNS TO YOUR BROTHER'S BACK…"
Bill tunes out the rant, and inhales deeply, tasting the woodsy smoke that has somehow floated from the Lovegood's veritable bonfire, several houses away. It is not often that he gets to enjoy simply being outside and doing nothing. His O. are this year, and he already anticipates working very hard to succeed. After all, the Auror Program didn't accept Es, right?
He chews his bottom lip, still thinking about career choices.
"Bill."
The voice is insistent.
He tries to ignore it.
"Bill!"
He cracks open an eye. It is his mother.
"Yes?" He sits up and brushes grass from his hair, which he is trying to convince his mother to let him grow long. Squinting, he looks up at his mother's tired, overworked silhouette, framed by the sun on either side.
"I need you to take care of the children while I run out to the market," she says. "Can you do that for me."
It is not a question.
"Sure," he says dully, wishing that he had no siblings.
All he wants to do is lie about in the garden and do absolutely nothing. He's earned that right. He's worked hard all year. He is a Prefect.
But he never gets that opportunity.
Sighing, Bill stands up and makes his way to the door, his mother following.
"You can practice for when you're a prefect, darling," she says with a smile. "I'm sure that they'll listen to you."
Bill smiles and nods, all the while internally cringing in horror.
She Disapparates, and he is left with the six cretins of Britain.
His brothers and sister have never listened to him.
Well, except for Percy.
Percy has never made any problems for him.
Percy is Well Behaved.
Percy is Quiet.
Percy is his favorite brother.
Charlie, on the other hand, while they probably have more in common personality wise, is not fun to 'look after'. There is a two-year difference between them, and Charlie doesn't feel that Bill has the authority to tell him what to do.
Bill privately agrees.
The twins are absolute nightmares.
They give new meaning to the word 'mayhem'. The last time he had agreed to watch Fred and George, they had ended up lighting the neighbor's Kneazle on fire.
He plans on locking them in their room.
Ron and Ginny are a handful, sometimes. But they're generally sweet kids—when they're not beating the crap out of each other for no apparent reason.
Bill can't believe he was actually looking forward to coming home.
One of the twins—Fred or George?—runs streaking by him…absolutely nude.
Great, Bill thinks miserably as he begins to grab handfuls of air, missing his brother by inches each time. What if he escapes?
The scenario is doused as Bill grabs the offending twin firmly by the arm, and begins to lead him away from the doorway.
"Put some clothes on," he orders sternly, in his best 'big brother' voice.
"Not until you tell me my name," Fred-or-maybe-George taunts.
It's a good strategy.
Even at eight, the twins are very aware that no one but themselves can tell them apart—even their own family. It is only after applying himself to decisive memorizing of the distinct patter of freckles on Fred's cheek that Bill is able to tell which twin is which. The freckles, no matter how much Fred wants to deny this, look like lips.
He squints at the freckles, and there are the lips, right underneath his younger brother's right eye.
"Fred," Bill says, and the way in which the twin's shoulders slump tells him that he's right. "Put some clothes on," he says again.
Fred sticks his tongue out and wriggles out of Bill's tight grasp. "Make me."
"Fine," says Bill determinedly, and pulls out his wand from his jean pocket, brandishing at a suddenly aghast eight year old.
"You can't use magic!" Fred exclaims, with a mixture of shock and admiration. "Mum said you couldn't."
"What mum doesn't know can't hurt her," says Bill. "Abra-"
"NOO!" Fred runs shrieking from the room. "I'll put clothes on! I'll put clothes on!"
Bill waits until the room is clear to break out into laughter. He had never been planning on using magic to coerce his little brother, but apparently Fred is terrified of it. He files that away for a mental note, and wanders into the living room in search of Ron and Ginny.
They are rather amicably playing with Exploding Snap cards, their infectious giggles involuntarily causing him to smile.
Ginny catches sight of him, and her face lights up.
"Bill, Bill," she says excitedly. "Look what we made! It's Hogwarts!"
Bill obediently examines the little tower, privately thinking that it looks more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa than anything else.
"That's nice, guys," he says out loud. "Looks just like it."
"Really?" Ron says eagerly. "Cool!"
"Charlie, look, it's Hogwarts!" says Ginny, running over to her older brother and pulling him over.
Charlie, who is cradling a gnome in his hands, looks it over with an indifferent eye.
"It's…great," he says unenthusiastically. "I'll be in my room, Bill."
"Not with that gnome," says Bill. "You know what Mum'll say…"
"Yeah, yeah, they don't belong in the house," says Charlie, rolling his eyes. "Doesn't she know that Sheila will die out there?"
"It's summer," replies Bill patiently. "I don't think gnomes get heat stroke."
"Yeah, they do," insists Charlie.
"Charlie…"
"I read it in a book!"
"You don't read."
"But what if they did?"
"The gnome will be fine. Put it outside."
Charlie pouts, and reluctantly drags himself in the direction of the door.
"Bill!"
He turns quickly, alarmed by the simple fact that Percy's voice is raised.
For Percy, anything above 60 decibels is a sign of bloody torture.
"Bill!" He skids into the room, another alarming sign.
Even at ten years old, Percy tends to glide in a graceful walk totally unseen by anyone under the age of fifty.
"They're pasting 'kick me' signs to my back! And kicking me! I told them to stop but they wouldn't!"
There's no point in asking who 'they' are. Ever since they were old enough to walk, poor Percy has been terrorized by the twins, who find him an easy mark for their pranks—even though he is older than them.
Percy huddles near Bill for support, looking appropriately horrified, his glasses askew.
And that does it for him.
His brotherly instincts kick in, and Bill bellows upstairs, "FRED! GEORGE! GET DOWN HERE!"
"No!" comes the inevitable chorus of defiant voices.
"GET DOWN HERE OR I TELL MUM!"
Thump. Thump.
The twins fly into the room—this time with clothes on, thank Merlin—and stand in front of Bill with identical innocent expressions.
"Don't tell mum! We didn't do anything," they tell him earnestly.
"Really? Why does Percy have a 'kick me' sign on his back?" he asks sternly.
"Because he deserves to be kicked?" offers Fred.
"Because we put it there?" says George.
"Well, don't do that," says Bill, unsure of what else to say. "If you do it again, I'll…turn you into monkeys."
"Cool!"
"I wanna be a monkey!"
"—with snake heads," he adds, trying to scare them.
"That wouldn't be a monkey," says Fred. "It'd be a snakey."
"Or a monake."
"What about—"
"Hey!" Bill snaps his fingers. "Don't do it again! Or I'll put a spell on you to…put you into Slytherin."
Ha. That ought to scare them.
"I don't wanna be in Slytherin!" they exclaim.
"Then stop pinning 'kick me' signs to Percy, and I won't," Bill says, and turns away, satisfied.
"Bill, I'm hungry."
The plea comes from Ron, whose appetite has lately resembled that of a pregnant chimera—voracious and without an end.
Bill sighs and goes into the kitchen, ignoring Fred and George, who have decided that they want to be monkeys. As they tumble around the house, hooting in a manner that sounds more like the dying screech of a barn owl, he opens cupboards, trying to find where his mother hides the snacks.
"Percy, do you know where the crackers are?" He turns to his younger brother, who is complacently reading a book at the table now that his torture session has ended.
"All the way to the left, top cupboard," Percy answers, and turns a page.
Just as he is about to dump the crackers on a plate, an enraged squeal comes from the direction of the living room, distinctly feminine in nature.
"BILL! FRED AND GEORGE KILLED HOGWARTS!"
"Merlin," Bill mutters, and races over, bringing over the crackers, which he thrusts in Ron's direction before kneeling before a red faced Ginny, who points wordlessly to the cards on the ground.
"Look!" she says, her lower lip trembling. "I worked for hours and hours and hours."
To a five year old, twenty minutes is a lifetime.
Bill sighs heavily.
"I'll help you fix it," he says.
"Can we watch?" ask the twins, who arrange themselves next to Ron, keeping a respectful distance away from the construction site.
"Only if you promise not to be monkeys anymore and don't knock it down," Bill replies, taking a card and completing the base of the tower.
They confer in whispers before agreeing to Bill's proposal. Eagerly, they lean forward.
"What are you doing?" asks Charlie, who has arrived in the living room, his arms gnomeless.
"Making a card tower," Bill says, his forehead creased in concentration.
"Neat," says Charlie, sounding interested now that it is Bill the builder, instead of Ginny. "Hey Ron, pass me some of those crackers, will you?"
Ron obliges by tossing the box, which Charlie catches with ease. Crunch, chew, swallow is the background music as Bill carefully places one card on top of another. It is almost quiet, and he can finally appreciate the fascinated audience of his siblings.
This is how Molly Weasley finds her children fifteen minutes later, six of them seated around a practically completed card tower, the seventh quietly reading in the kitchen.
They stand upon her arrival, swarming over the paper bags of groceries excitedly, the cards abandoned, the silence broken. Alone in the living room, Bill places the final card on top, and surveys his work with satisfaction.
It was a good afternoon, he decides.
"Thank you, dear," says Molly, coming over. "How was it?"
"Fine," says Bill. "But I don't want to do it again."
Molly laughs and doesn't respond to this wishful statement. She merely smoothes back his hair from his forehead and busily straightens the cushions on her way out.
Well, it was one thing to like your siblings. But it was another thing altogether to like babysitting them.