so. ahem. jaime is posting this absolutely at random-because i ran across it on my hard-drive-to make up for the fact that i haven't been writing. i'm not honesty sure what's going to happen with it, because the second i have time to actually write new stuff again i promised myself i'd finish Fun Is Relative, and because i only have a couple chapters to go that should only take about the rest of forever.

so. for now, meet my Bill. my tween, hormone-crazed, car-obsessed version of Bill.

he's damn adorable, isn't he.

(warnings: yes, i've done it again. another romance between an underage boy and an inappropriate object-and yes, whatever you just thought of will be the most disturbing part of this. unless the idea of a baby Percy sucking on his feet is somehow arousing to you. in which case...please don't review and tell me, alright? seek professional help.)

Dad had taken him out back weeks ago—in his bumbling, almost-but-but-not-entirely secretive way, as Mum would kill him if she found out—to show him the new car, and ever since Bill had been waiting to get his hands on it.

It couldn't be hard even for a nine year-old to sneak out to the garage unnoticed, he'd thought, not if Dad had been doing it. Mum's frankly eerie instincts were dulled quite a lot by being pregnant—again.

He could still remember the sudden heady freedom of the first time. He'd been particularly adventurous even as a toddler, rarely allowing Mum to restrict him to the confines of his room even for an hour, and the months of being not only able to escape with increased ease but to steal almost as many biscuits as a four year-old could want from the unguarded cupboard as well had nearly made up for the appearance of the new little brother at the end of it all.

It was harder to creep about these days, with small siblings scattered about, but little Percy was still mostly interested in his own feet, and Charles, while being more likely to tattle by dint being slightly more coherent, was also more receptive to threats for much the same reason. So provided Mum and Dad weren't up to actually see the scuffle should one of his brothers catch him, it didn't much matter if they did.

So, sneaking out of his room late at night to the garage, he'd taught himself how to drive.

Basically. He'd found the Muggle manual sitting in the glove compartment of the Anglia, which was more than Dad ever had, and while the rules written in it were sometimes ridiculously silly—why would one bother to keep to the left when Dad said the car could fly? could one only take it up over roadways?—the ones about the car itself appeared quite fascinating, and he could almost imagine what it would be like to actually use them. The mechanics of driving, and engines in general, seemed as though they were already in his head, just waiting, and the feeling made him only keener to get the thing out of the family's dusty old dump of a garage.

The garage was where Dad did most of his puttering, often with nasty results, as when he tried to get the lids off a row of sticking tin cans by Charm and ended up splattering the walls and ceiling with a solid coat of paint and varnish, or the time he somehow wired a toaster and a set of headphones together and the resulting device singed its outline into the floor and turned the windows opaque with smoke.

Which, at least, was useful for his purposes, as it was hard to make out anything within the structure from outside, through the warped and smoggy glass. He could turn the lights on to read, and see the gearshifts, though some of the little buttons on the console were too faded—or cryptic—to understand. But they didn't look too important, so he mostly ignored them, and could keep the glow of light from the garage at a relative minimum.

The smoked out windows would be necessary tonight, though, when he finally took the car out the door, because he'd need the lights on and showing through the doors—which fortunately faced away from the house—if he ever wanted to be able to find them again in the dark.

Dad used charms when he stayed out in the garage late into the evening, but he had already explained to Bill, patiently, that magic was going to have to wait until he was older.

He'd said that about the car too, of course, but Bill had realized a long while ago that getting his underage hands on a wand would be rather harder than biscuits or the wreck of a family car.

So, pausing at his bedside when he slipped out from under the covers, he reached back toward the cot and picked up one of the lamps Mum had enchanted. The spells were set to allow even someone without magic to turn them on and off. It should give enough light to be his beacon in the garage, and if Mum or Dad came in to see it missing, it'd probably be morning already and they'd be missing slightly bigger things, like him. Hopefully neither Charles nor baby Percy would wander in in the middle of the night, as they often liked to do seemingly just to annoy him, and note its absence, because knowing them they'd find that far more interesting than their missing brother. Then again, Charles found bugs in the garden that he had to show everyone on an hourly basis, so maybe Mum and Dad would just ignore him if he woke them up to tell. Lamp tucked under his arm, he slipped his fingers around the door, opening it in a way he knew wouldn't creak and stepping out carefully onto the landing floor.

this may someday be finished even if it receives no reviews, but the chances of it happening would increased by several hundred percent if it gets some. so help jaime be the better person we have always wanted to be by encouraging us to actually do some work for goddamn once.

(...the swearing was at us, not at you. by my good lord, i construct unusual sentences sometimes.)