Lost: One Naked, Spotty Three Year Old Boy With Red Hair...Answers To The Name Ronnie
They had been searching for ten minutes now.
"You were supposed to be watching him, William!"
"With which of my black eyes was I supposed to be watching him with, Char?"
Bill, Charlie and Percy had split up and covered every inch of the back yard and the area surrounding the Burrow before meeting up again outside the broom shed they had searched first of all. Charlie was panting, he had run into the woods just to be sure that Ronnie hadn't got himself lost good and proper, but Bill felt pretty sure that Ronnie's fear of spiders would keep him out of there in the dark.
Thinking of his baby brother's arachnophobia suddenly hit Bill hard. The image he had in his head of little Ronnie, stark naked and sick, wandering around alone in the dark and scared out of his wits made him shake all over.
"I've lost him," he whimpered as he saw Percy approaching them and shaking his head sadly, "I've lost him."
Charlie and Percy exchanged anxious glances and Percy patted Bill on the back the way he'd obviously see his dad do when his mother was about to get hysterical about something.
"He's only a baby...and I lost him!" Bill said as he shook even harder now, his voice a strained yelp.
Charlie was looking very uncomfortable at this scene. Bill hadn't cried in front of anyone since he was a little boy. Charlie was never that comfortable with crying in general, he could handle it from the babies but never an older brother, and he tentatively put his hand upon Bill's shoulder.
"He's not lost, okay, Billy-Boy?" Charlie forced a smile onto his face, "He's probably hiding. We just need to find out where he's found to hide that's never been used by the twins before and then we'll all be back in the house and everything'll be alright."
"I lost one of the babies," Bill said, as if Charlie hadn't spoken a single word.
"Look!" Charlie said impatiently as he gripped both Bill's shoulders now and shook him hard, "We will find him. We will get him home and seen to my Madam Knight. We will put him to bed by the time mum and dad get home and you will not get into any trouble for this, alright?"
Bill looked into Charlie's eyes with disgusted disbelief.
"I don't care about getting into trouble," he said hoarsely, "I don't care if Mum gives me a good hiding or disowns me for life, I don't care about any of that shit, Charlie. I want my little brother back!"
Bill's voice cracked and broke altogether on his last word and his head dropped. Charlie stiffened before hugging his brother and rubbing his back. Bill felt Percy curling his arms around both of them, his head at their waists, and Bill lost it completely and broke down.
"I didn't even want to baby-sit tonight," he sniffed, "I knew I couldn't handle it, but she wouldn't listen. There were too many of you!"
"I'll tell her, alright," Charlie said as his rigid discomfort in their hug dissolved and he hugged Bill properly, "I'll tell her I left you alone and knocked you out when I came back and things got out of control and it was all my fault. I'll tell her to blame me."
Bill shoved Charlie away from him, forgetting Percy's presence altogether and accidentally knocking him onto his backside, and stomped away into the darkness.
"I don't want someone to take the blame for me. I want somebody to bring Ronnie back to me safe and sound." Bill clamped his hands to either side of his mouth and bellowed at the top of his lungs, "Ronnie! Ronnie! The medibitch has gone home and Mummy's on her way, please come home. Ronnie, I'm sorry!"
Charlie and Percy were following him, Charlie reaching him first and grabbing his arm to pull him back towards the house.
"Bill, stop it, you're upsetting Percy."
Bill turned around briefly to see Percy's worried and frightened face, and dropped to his knees in front of him.
"Perce, I need you to think really hard for me, okay?" Bill said desperately, Percy nodded, "Is there anywhere, anywhere at all, that you think Ronnie could be hiding?"
Percy shook his head and looked at Bill as if fearful that he was about to get yelled at.
"I looked everywhere I thought of, I promise."
"'S alright Perce, you did really well, don't worry about it," Charlie said as he put his arm around Percy's shoulders reassuringly.
Bill ran his hand through his hair and made another whimpering sound.
"Oh Godric Charlie, he's only three and he's not well and the last I saw of him he was still bloody naked!"
"Boys?" the voice of Madam Knight called for them from the back door of the Burrow, "Boys, come back inside."
Bill seemed to fall over his own feet and stumbled over his words at the same time.
"Didhegobackhome?" he sputtered as he ran like a madman back towards the house.
He was panting heavily and suffering from a painful stitch in his side when he reached the kitchen to see Madam Knight rocking a sleeping Ginny in her arms, the little girl covered in glowing white patches of lotion where every blister was now rapidly receding.
"Is he here? Did he come back?" Bill said, wincing while bending over and supporting himself by propping his hands against his knees, "Ronnie?"
The twins came to the kitchen door, George holding a cushion to himself and Fred chewing at his stubby fingernails, but no Ronnie.
"He's still not here, but I wanted to get Charles treated properly, and running around in the dark wasn't doing much good, was it?" Madam Knight said sadly.
"Sod my bloody pox, I'm not going to sit around here and get healed while my baby brother's out there all on his own!" Charlie snapped.
"You will do as you are told, young man, and you will do it now!" Madam Knight said abruptly, "As of this moment I am the only adult in this house and I am responsible for the lot of you until your mother comes home."
"We can't wait until Mum comes home before we go looking for him," Charlie said incredulously.
Bill shook his head.
"I'm going into town to see if a Muggle found him and took him in," he turned and headed back out the door.
Madam Knight pushed Ginny into Charlie's arms and followed the oldest Weasley boy outside.
"Surely he couldn't have got that far, William," she said as she tugged him around to face her by his elbow.
"Well if he didn't get that far, where is he?" Bill said, his face crumpling.
Madam Knight pulled him into her arms and he cried into her shoulder like a big baby. She rocked him and shushed him and rubbed circles on his back until he calmed down a little and pulled away, wiping his face with his sleeve.
"But he gets frightened easily," Bill sniffed.
"Look, I know you want to keep searching and I know that I'm not your mother so I can't stop you but please, I need you as the oldest to set an example for the others and tell them to stay here with me while you look. Charles really does need to be treated before I allow him to run around out there again."
Bill wiped his eyes again and nodded.
"I'm coming with you," the voice of Percy, who was just wandering up the garden path, called out.
"No, Perce," Bill began with a shake of the head.
"I've been looking after Ronnie all night and it's my fault he got out the window. I should have been watching him. I knew he was scared of Madam Knight and I let him get away from me." Percy's face was set with determination.
"Percy this wasn't your fault," Madam Knight said soothingly.
"I want to look for him with Bill," Percy said adamantly.
"Percy, you've been my saviour all night, you really have but..."
"I'm coming with you. Ronnie's mine to look after, you said, I'm his surrogate."
Madam Knight looked to Bill with an arched eyebrow and Bill sighed and clapped a hand around Percy's shoulders, almost knocking him off his feet.
"Alright, Perce. Let's try and tell the others to stay put here with Madam Knight while we're gone."
The please man was looking at them very suspiciously.
Percy had suggested they go to the please station to ask them if they could help them find Ronnie.
"It's where Muggles go for help with anything, I asked dad."
"Um," Bill said, reminding himself to say please to the please man, "please can you tell me if anybody has found my little brother. He's lost and we don't know what to do. We've looked everywhere. Please."
The man sat forward and leaned over his desk. He had a pair of glasses similar to Percy', black and horn-rimmed with very thick lenses, and what appeared to be a permanent frown on his face.
"Where are your parents then, lads?"
"They're out for the night, I'm babysitting," Bill said, shuffling his feet and lowering his head.
"And you've lost one, have you? Good job!" the please man said as he tried to raise one eyebrow, an impossible feat considering the man didn't have two separate eyebrows but one huge thick one crossing his entire face.
"I know sir," Bill mumbled, "but there are six of them and three of them are ill and..."
"Six?" the man exclaimed before glancing at Percy, his fingers curling over the desk top and his eyes peering up at the please man, "I take it this is one of them?"
"Yes sir," Bill nodded eager to get on with the big search.
"So where are the others?"
"They're at home, sir."
"You left them alone?" the man exclaimed.
"Oh no sir, the me...a lady came to look after the sick ones, the babies and my brother Charlie, they've got dra... they're covered in spots, sir."
"You mean they've got the measles or Chicken pox or something like that?"
"Chicken pox!" Bill declared excitedly, "They've got Chicken pox."
"And you left them with your family doctor, is that right?" the please man was making notes on a piece of paper now.
"Yes sir, the doctor woman is looking after everybody while me and Percy, that's my brother here, look for Ronnie. Ronnie's the one who's missing, sir."
"Ronnie," the man wrote Ronnie's name on his pad, "last name?"
"Weasley."
Bill was getting very impatient. Couldn't they do this while roaming the streets with an army of please men calling out Ronnie's name and setting chocolate traps to entice him out into the open?
"And how old is he?"
"He's..." Bill felt himself getting choked up again and took a deep breath before speaking in a firm confident tone, "He's three years old, sir."
The please man glanced up at Bill and seemed to be taking this problem a lot more seriously now.
"Oh right, can you give me a description of him or a photograph to show my officers?"
Bill cursed under his breath, he hadn't thought about bringing a photograph. Then he realised that he wouldn't have been able to use one if he had; Muggles weren't supposed to see the moving photographs that wizarding families took.
"Sorry sir, no photographs."
"That's okay son, now how tall is he?"
"This big!" Percy suddenly piped up as he put his hand to his hipbone.
The please man leaned over the desk to see Percy's gesture and then sat back to make another note on his piece of paper.
"So what does he look like?"
"Well," Bill thought as he conjured up his image of Ronnie in his mind and felt a little pang of guilt at losing him again, "he's got red hair like ours," he paused to let the please man write that down, "he's got freckles, blue eyes..."
"He's got pox," Percy chipped in helpfully.
"Oh my word, he's one of the sick ones too?" the please man said with a huff at the luck of this poor kid.
"That's was why he ran away," Bill said as he began to bounce from foot to foot, "we told him the me...doctor was on her way and he's scared of her. He doesn't like doctors y'see?"
"Who does?" the man said with a shake of the head, "So what was he wearing when you last saw him?"
Bill swallowed.
"He wasn't wearing anything, he'd just been bathed and then we found the pox and called the doctor and then..." Bill flung his arms up into the air helplessly and found himself getting into a panic again.
"It's alright there son, with a description like that I'm positive he'll be hard to miss!" the please man said as he got up from his chair.
Bill took a bracing breath in and smiled down at Percy. Finally they were going to get out there and search for little Ronnie. The please man put his piece of paper through a machine and pressed some buttons. The machine sucked the paper in and spat it back out at the other end. The man then picked up, Bill knew by its description only, a fellytone and pressed more buttons. He read everything out from his description of Ronnie and then said goodbye before clapping his hands together and sitting back down.
"Would either of you like some tea?" he asked pleasantly.
"What?" Bill snapped with outrage.
"Tea? I think we might have some fizzy drinks somewhere, I could steal something from the staff room for you I'm sure."
"What about my brother?" Bill exclaimed.
The please man nodded at Percy.
"Him too, would you like a drink sonny?"
"My name's Percy sir," Percy said without a hint of sarcasm at all.
"Forget drinks," Bill snapped, "aren't we going out with dogs and those flashing cars and loads of people to look for him?"
The please man seemed to think something was funny, which only infuriated Bill all the more.
"I've put our best men onto it don't you worry. We'll get him back to you soon enough. I am going to need an address for you and I'm afraid you won't be able to get away with not telling your parents you lost one of their brood. When he is found we won't be able to just let him go with you because you say he's your brother."
"But he is our brother!" Bill declared, wondering what on earth this please man was talking about.
"Come now," the please man said, "I'm sure your mother warned you about going off with strangers. There are some bad people out there and little ones have to be careful these days don't they? Well, so do we. How would you feel if you came to us and we told you we just gave your Ronnie away to the first person to come and claim him?"
Bill's eyes widened and Percy shuddered and gripped his arm tightly.
"Does he mean dark wizards might try to take Ronnie?" Percy whispered fearfully.
Bill guided Percy over to a row of plastic chairs and sat him down.
"Don't be silly Perce, he's a Muggle and Muggles don't know about dark wizards, do they?" Bill smiled while feeling sick inside.
"But he says there are bad people who take little ones away who don't belong to them, bad Muggles," Percy was shaking a little, "What if a bad Muggle finds him before the please men?"
Bill sat down beside Percy and watched as the please man moved away from his desk to talk to a lady in a similar uniform to his own.
"It's just a precaution," Bill said, trying to convince himself as much as he was Percy, "you know big words, you know what a precaution is, don't you, Perce?"
Bill watched as Percy nodded and then lowered his head and wiped his eyes.
"But the please man thinks somebody bad's got Ronnie," Percy sniffed as his shoulders fell, "Somebody's going to hurt him."
"No," Bill said confidently as he hugged Percy to him, "Nobody's going to hurt Ronnie, nobody!"
"Well I told you we'd track him down quick enough, didn't I?" the please man said with a grin merging with his constant frown.
Bill jumped up from his seat and rushed back over to the desk, looking over the man's shoulder for Ronnie.
"You found him? Where is he? Is he alright? Is he here?"
"Nobody hurt him, did they?" Percy said as he peered around Bill to the please man.
"Nobody hurt him at all, son...Percy," the please man corrected himself with a smile.
Bill felt himself hit with so much relief that he felt dizzy.
"Oh thank you," he whispered to the grubby ceiling above his head.
"An elderly couple taking their dog for a walk came across him running down the lane that leads out to that overgrown field on the edge of town. They took him to the children's home on St. Martin's Lane, I'll get a car to take you down there and you can give them your contact details so they can get your parents to come and pick the three of you up."
"So you'll let us see him, you believe us...that we're really his brothers?" Bill said nervously.
The please man looked at Bill over the top of his glasses and cleared his throat.
"Despite the two black eyes," he said sternly before breaking into a warm smile, "I can see you're a good lad. They'll let you both stay with him until your parents come."
Bill remembered his panda face and tutted before smiling at the please man.
"Babysitting younger brothers, it's bound to happen sooner or later," he said as he pointed at his bruised eyes.
The door to the children's home opened and a weary-looking thin woman with bags under her eyes smiled at them.
"Well, there's no need to ask who you're here to see," she said as she pointed at Bill and Percy's hair, "Come on in, boys. The poor little fella got himself into a right state."
"Excuse me?" Bill said as his heart skipped a beat.
"Oh don't worry dear," she said as she patted Bill's arm and led them down the narrow hallway, "I just mean he's found himself in a strange place surrounded by strange people and he got a bit tearful, that's all."
"Oh, right," Bill said with a relieved nod.
"I called the GP to come and have a look at his chicken pox, he should be here soon."
"Okay," Bill nodded, not wanting to worry about how to explain a magical disease to a muggle gee pea, before wondering exactly what a gee pea was.
The woman paused for a moment and looked a little more awake as she widened her eyes to look right at Bill and Percy.
"Can I ask by the way, how many of you are there because all I'm getting from him is names names names?"
Bill grinned and pointed at himself and then Percy, "I'm Bill, I'm the oldest, and this is..."
"Charlie," the woman said with a grin.
"Uh, no," Percy said.
"Fred?" the woman guessed, again Percy shook his head, "George?"
"You've got a pretty good memory to know all the names like that," Bill said, "sometimes I still forget!"
The woman laughed at this and slapped Bill's arm playfully.
"So Ronnie's been asking for everyone then?" Percy said, Bill noticed something strange in his tone but couldn't quite place what it was.
"First he wants his mummy and daddy and then he's telling us that Bill's in charge but Charlie hit him," she pointed at Bill's black eyes, "that looks like it hurt, the twins pushed him in compost but he's not allowed to tell anyone," Bill chuckled at this, "then him, Charlie and baby Ginny got poxy. Well, I nearly died when he said that! That is just the most adorable thing I've ever heard."
Bill saw Percy's face fall and realised that he had been waiting to hear his own name listed. He reached out for Percy but the seven-year-old had stopped walking after them and spoke up in a hollow voice.
"He's not been asking for anybody else?"
The tired-looking woman blinked before looking into space for a moment and then blowing air out through her hollow cheeks.
"Oh well there's his..." the woman looked very confused as she spoke, "...does he have a puppy or a pet or something?"
"No," Bill said with a frown as he shook his head.
"Well maybe it's what he calls his teddy bear, little ones make up the cutest names for things, don't they?"
"He wouldn't be asking for his teddy bear, believe me, " Bill said as he remembered the weeks of nightmares that woke the whole household after the twins had revealed their magical gift by turning his teddy bear into a spider, "something nasty happened to it and he wouldn't touch it again."
Bill saw that Percy was walking very slowly after them again, obviously hurt that Ronnie hadn't been asking for him at all, and reminded himself to have a word with him later to explain about temperamental toddlers and their mood swings.
"Well all I know is that this little kid screamed the place down for his snugglegut," the woman said as she shrugged her shoulders and continued onwards down the hallway.
Percy and Bill both froze on the spot and looked at each other with wide eyes. Percy looked as if all the blood had just been drained from his body.
"'I want my snugglegut! Where's my snugglegut?' Poor little thing got very worked up," the woman looked over her shoulder and saw that the two boys had stopped walking and frowned at them.
"He's..." Percy began, his voice sounding so tiny but hopeful, "He was asking for his snugglegut?"
Bill smiled at Percy as the younger boy realised why it was his name hadn't been listed along with the others.
"Crying his little heart out for it, lord knows what it is!" she said with a smile before noticing Percy's eyes welling up, "Are you alright, dear?"
Percy nodded and swallowed.
"I'm snugglegut!" he declared.
"Oh!" the woman said before smiling widely, "Oh isn't that sweet? You must be his favourite then?"
Percy stared at Bill in disbelief.
"No I just...look after him," he said meekly.
"Well you must be doing a very good job because he's been asking for snugglegut more then anybody else," the woman said with a knowing smile.
Percy drew a shuddering breath in as he fought to pull himself together.
"Where is he?" he demanded.
The woman stepped aside and revealed a closed door.
"He's in there."
Percy strode forward and opened the door without even pausing to knock. Bill followed him through and saw a brightly decorated room, it looked like a playroom with rainbows and bunny rabbits painted all over the walls, with beanbags and mobiles and toys strewn all over the floor. On one of the largest beanbags, curled up like a spotty ginger tomcat, was Ronnie. He had a tear-streaked face and his puffy red eyes were closed. A big brown blanket was wrapped around him tightly.
"Little sweetheart cried himself to sleep," the woman said quietly.
Percy crept into the room and sank to his knees. He wiped Ronnie's snotty nose with his own sleeve before sliding his arms beneath his little body and scooping him up. Bill felt proud of him for some reason and shared a grin with the woman before she made her excuses and told him to stay in the nursery with his brothers and she'd be back soon to get a number for their parents.
Percy wandered over to an empty rocking chair and sat in it, still cradling Ronnie in his arms. Bill closed the door behind him and slid down the wall with a deep sigh. They'd found him, safe and sound and well looked after, and Bill tried to remember how to go about life again without being absolutely terrified. This had been a long night and the worst was yet to come, his mother finding out about everything that had happened and killing him where he stood.
Bill smiled; he didn't care, because the worst wasn't to come at all. He'd seen what the worst could have been and he'd escaped it. Everything from this point on meant nothing.
He'd got the baby back.
Percy rocked Ronnie back and fourth in the chair and looked over to Bill with a smile.
"You are the best snugglegut mother anyone could ever want, Perce," Bill said as he supported his head in his hands.
Percy chortled, the movement of which made Ronnie open his eyes just a little. He saw Percy smiling down at him and his little hand grabbed hold of Percy's jumper before he burrowed his face into it and drifted back off to sleep.
"I'll always look after you, Ronnie," Percy whispered as he resumed rocking back and forth.