Poxy Kids
Bill scrubbed Ginny's face with a wet flannel while cursing Charlie's name and hoping that the rash his vigorous cleansing was bringing up on his baby sister's perfect skin would fade by the time his mum and dad came home.
He could see it now. Mum creeps up into her little princess' bedroom, leans over the cot to kiss her sleeping angelic form goodnight and screams in horror at the sight of a human radish, waking the whole household.
He turned to see Ronnie using his dirty hands to make a picture on the huge roll of parchment Percy had laid out across the floor for him. Bill thanked Merlin for Percy at times like these. He could always depend on him to come through for the family. He'd never walk out on them when they needed him most.
"What's this one, Ronnie?" Percy was saying as he pointed to a brown smear that Ronnie was adding finger marks around while pulling a face of enormous concentration.
"Hedgepig," Ron said as he scrunched up his nose and poked his tongue out between his teeth.
"Hedgehog Ronnie, can you say hedgehog?" Percy was always encouraging Ron and Ginny to talk properly. Charlie was always encouraging them to talk gobbledegook, it was an ongoing war of which Percy always seemed to be on the losing end.
"Muh-huh," Ronnie said as he drew the hedgehog's pointy nose while squinting in concentration
"Well can you say it for me now? Hedge-hog," Percy said as he held his breath expectantly.
"No," Ron muttered before drawing a circle with his finger.
"Give it up, Perce," Bill sighed as he looked back into Ginny's big eyes. He laughed as he saw her licking the bar of coal tar soap and then pulling the most revolted face you could ever imagine seeing on a two-year-old, "there's no need to distract him when he's occupying himself like that."
"I'm not distracting him. I'm talking to him," Percy said, more affronted then a seven year old really had any right to be.
"And he's drawing a picture of a great fat turd with a worm crawling out of it in compost. I really don't think you and Ronnie are communicating on the same level, do you?" Bill snapped while Ginny giggled and a string of tiny bubbles floated up to the surface of the water. "Oh Gin...be a lady, will you?"
"'S not a turd, it's an apple!" Ron said grumpily, pointing from his hedgehog to his supposed apple and muttering to himself in that sickeningly adorable way of his, "Apple for the hedgepig."
"Hedgepi-" Percy began before shaking his head to correct himself, "Hedgehogs eat slugs, Ronnie, not apples."
Ronnie looked at Percy as if he was insane, and Bill lifted Ginny out of the sink and plonked her down on a waiting towel to dry her.
"There you go beautiful, isn't that better?" Bill smiled as he dried and tickled the baby at the same time.
He noticed that the nasty red patches were still quite prominent and rubbed a little more gently so as not to aggravate her delicate skin any more.
"Your turn next, Ronnie," Bill called over his shoulder.
"No!" Ron said before frowning hard at one of his mucky footprints on the parchment and tilting his head at an angle thoughtfully.
'No' was Ronnie's favourite word these days. He said it to everyone in response to almost everything, and he would say it with such clipped determination too.
"Yes," Bill said wearily as he passed his clean sibling to Percy and bent down to pick Ronnie up off the floor, "you can't stay like that all night, can you?"
Ronnie tried to squirm out of Bill's hands, but he was lifted up and lowered into the grimy sink.
"Is dirty!" Ronnie complained.
"Well you shoulda gone first then shouldn't you?" Bill said, tetchily.
"No!" Ronnie snapped, and splashed some of the disgusting brown water into Bill's face.
"Oi, you little brat!" Bill blinked the water from his eyes while Ronnie laughed wickedly, "I'll put you over my knee when you're cleaned up."
"Won't!" Ron said as he tried to splash Bill again.
Bill caught his baby brother's arm before he could thrust it forward and leaned in close. He adopted his most fierce expression and growled into Ronnie's face.
"Try me, brat!"
Ron suddenly got that look on his face that reminded Bill so much of Fred and George just before they were about to so something destructive, and vowed to keep the little ones apart more often in the future.
"Mummy didn't say you could smack. You're not 'loud to," Ronnie smiled smugly in a way the reminded him of that git Charlie.
"Well what she doesn't know will hurt you Ronnie," Bill found himself saying with menace.
For a moment Ronnie looked as if he was going to blow a big raspberry into Bill's face and call his bluff. Of course Bill would never hit one of the babies, he'd kill anybody else who ever tried, but he must have been quite convincing as something happened that he was never really equipped to deal with.
Ronnie's bottom lip trembled and he started crying.
"You big bully!" Percy snapped as he set Ginny down on the kitchen table and nudged Bill aside to take over cleaning Ronnie, "It's alright Ronnie, nobody's going to smack you."
Bill felt like screaming the bloody house down.
"I wasn't going to!" he protested, "I was just trying to make him behave himself."
Ronnie was sniffing and grizzling as Percy shushed him and rubbed the compost residue away as gently as he could. The sound of her brother crying set Ginny off and soon Bill was trapped in a kitchen with two screaming toddlers, an irate maternal seven year old boy and a floor covered in hedgepigs eating turd apples.
He picked Ginny up and carried her out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her bedroom. He passed by the twins on the landing. They were rolling around and kicking out at each other, declaring that one was copying the other. Bill just stepped over them wearily and continued onwards to Ginny's room.
He set Ginny down in her cot and stroked her damp hair flat where it had started to curl a little around her face. As his hand brushed past her soft skin he felt a bump, then another. He leaned in close and peered down into Ginny's face, her eyelids drifting shut as he did so, and saw that she was blistering where every one of those sore patches had been.
"Shit, did I do that?" Bill hissed at himself.
"Ssit!" Ginny mumbled lazily as she tried to mimic his curse.
Bill grabbed one of Ginny's arms to examine it and saw the firm little blisters, like oval pearls, dotted all over her skin there too.
"No, no, no, no!" he began to chant the mantra of all reluctant babysitters everywhere.
There was the sudden sound of footsteps thundering up the stairs, and Bill spun around on the spot to see Percy stopping in the open doorway, holding a naked, squirming Ron ahead of him in great alarm.
"Bill, Ronnie's got..." he began before stopping as he saw Bill drop to his knees and grab handfuls of his hair in both his hands.
"No!" he whimpered, on the verge of copying Charlie and just walking out of the house altogether.
The twins, looking very sweaty from their play fight - Fred seemed to have lost one of his baby teeth in the process - scampered to the door and clung to Percy's legs anxiously.
"What's wrong with Bill?" George said nervously.
"There's...nothing...wrong...with...Bill!" the eldest Weasley said as he pounded out every word with his clenched fist on the floor.
Fred stepped forward and frowned at his baby sister's bedroom floor before stamping on it with determination just once and then looking to Bill for approval. Bill lost his utter hopelessness and patted Fred on the shoulder with a tired smile. Fred seemed pleased with himself and stamped again, this time with two feet.
"No, Fred, you can stop now, it's all right," he wondered how to explain his mini breakdown, "the floor's...behaving now. Thanks for your help, though."
Percy took a step into the room, still holding his nude baby brother ahead of him as if he was about to explode, and dragged George along with him, as he was still clinging to his leg.
"I think Ronnie's got dragon pox!" Percy said, while Ronnie looked even grumpier.
"I'm not poxy!" he snapped.
Fred backed away, crossing his fingers in the way he did when he was playing tag, and declaring that he wasn't 'it'.
"Ronnie's got the lurgee!" George said with a grimace and the twins ran from the room and into their own to barricade themselves in with their toy chest.
Bill took Ronnie in his arms and sighed.
"Ginny's got it too, it just came up."
Ronnie wriggled himself over Bill's shoulder to look down into his sister's cot. He pointed his finger at her accusingly.
"You made me poxy!"
"Come now, Ronnie," Percy was saying as he moved around to meet Ronnie's eyes, "Ginny didn't do anything on purpose, did she? And for all we know it might have been you who gave it to her."
Bill couldn't quite fathom how Percy was delivering this information to their spotty brother as if he was supposed to be pleased with this news.
"'S not my fault," Ronnie said with a whimper.
"No, little man, it's not," Bill said as he pulled Ronnie down into the cradling position, "he didn't mean it like that. Percy was just saying it was nobody's fault."
"What the hell happened to my face?" Charlie's voice boomed from the doorway.
He stood there, looking absolutely livid, and gestured to the small patches of pearl-like blisters all over his cheeks. Bill wanted to swing for his selfish git of a brother and thrust Ronnie into Percy's arms before marching over to meet Charlie nose-to-nose.
"This is your fault!" he bellowed.
"What is?" Charlie asked as he took a step back away from Bill.
"The pox!" Bill exclaimed, "You bought the pox into this house and then infected the little ones and buggered off!"
Charlie blinked and leaned around Bill to see his sleeping baby sister in a similar condition to himself and little Ronnie writhing in Percy's arms, greatly disgusted at being passed from brother to brother while erupting in similar blisters himself. Bill stepped right into Charlie's face again.
"I hope all those blisters merge together to form the word 'Git' across your forehead, because that's what you are!"
"You wannna get out of my face sharpish, pretty boy," Charlie warned.
"Or what?" Bill smirked, "You'll infect me? I've already had it, smart arse!"
"Well you've already had a broken nose, but I'm sure I could give that to you again!" Charlie bumped against Bill's much smaller chest with his own.
"Knocking out the babysitter and giving the babies he's sitting dragon pox, that's really gonna endear you to Mum, isn't it? You'll never get that new broom now, Charles!"
"Stop it!" Percy yelled as Ginny began to cry and Ronnie started punching at Percy and ordering him to put him down.
"Not until this tosser pulls his weight!" Bill declared over his shoulder to a very pale looking Percy.
As Bill's face turned back towards Charlie, almost in slow motion, he saw the twins peeping around the side of their bedroom door and gasping. His eyes met Charlie's fist just before he felt a deep thunderous whump inside his head and then didn't see or feel a thing.