The Marauders: Year Seven Part One

Any Ghouls Up Here?

Bilius Weasley was exhausted. 

It was a long day he'd had already, and he still had another stop to go before he could head back to the Burrow, where he'd been staying with Molly and Arthur, helping care for the bloody herd of children they'd been putting out. Bill and Charlie and Percy - and they'd only just found out that week that Molly was pregnant with a fourth Mini Weasley, as Bilius had taken to calling them... Tiring, tiring, tiring.  

Plus, he rather hated his day job.

In order to prove to Molly and Arthur - though mostly Molly - that he wasn't a total nutter, Bilius had taken a job that Arthur had secured him in the Ministry with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. It wasn't as glamorous as it sounded. When Arthur had raised the position offering to Bilius, Bil had pictured himself roaming about the country with a briefcase like Newt Scamander's, doing... whatever it was that Newt Scamander did. However, the position had been nothing of the sort. Rather, Bilius's official title was Gnome Removal Expert and his whole job, all day long, was to go to the houses of witches and wizards who had complained to the Ministry of having excessive gnomes in their gardens. So Bilius essentially spent all day everyday degnoming the gardens of lazy lay abouts who couldn't get off their duffs long enough to degnome their own properties. And for it, he got a very minimal wage, off of which he could not afford to live on his own and therefore he had to stay in Molly and Arthur's upper floor bedroom at the very tip-top of the Burrow's leaning stack of them, and endure all of Molly's worrying and nagging.

It was wearing him rather thin, honestly.

"At least it's a place, isn't it?" Arthur had said one night when Bilius had voiced his discomfort with the room after Charlie had broken into the room and Molly had got on Bilius about having Chrissy Blythe over while the children were around. 

A place, sure. But a prison was a place, too, Bilius thought bitterly.

He made his way up the walk of the last house of the day before he could finally go back to said place, carrying the tools box that held his degnoming gloves and baits, and looked over the post that the owls had delivered with his assignments to get the name of today's customer. 

Roger Bell.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

It was Derek Bell's cousin. The one who Derek had never much got on with, the son of the one who'd taken him in after his mum and dad had died. Bilius stared at the name on the parchment and felt a rather twisted sick feeling rise up in his belly before looking back up at the house. He drew a deep breath - this stop suddenly filled with purpose and meaning - and walked the rest of the way up to the house with his shoulders squared and his heart thumping quite loudly.

He knocked on the door.

The door was opened by a woman with frazzled looking hair, pregnant and carrying a baby on her hip already. She looked Bilius over, saw the badge from the Ministry, and said, "You here for the degnomin'? They're 'round back, mostly about the shed. Little buggers, they've bit my Davey here at least four times in the last week." She nodded at the little boy on her hip. "Nasty, they are. Tenacious, too. Good luck with'em. I hope you've got some thick gloves."

"I do..." Bilius nodded as the woman stepped back to let him in, dropping the little boy to the floor and nudging him to go and play. She pressed her palm to her lower back and duck-waddled through the house, leading the way to the back door. Bilius looked around as they walked. The house was nice and lived in, clearly a half-blood family, though, as there were some muggle contraptions about - like a telly set and a coffee maker on the counter in the kitchen. Bilius paused by the stair well when he saw a collection of family photos up on the wall, and his eyes scanned over them until he caught his breath.