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.

There was a family portrait of the deceased Bell family - Derek and Alice and their parents, waving, a cat weaving between their legs and Derek's old owl perched on his shoulder. Derek was exactly as Bilius remembered him most in this portrait - around thirteen, with gawky features that didn't quite fit his still growing frame yet. He wore his Hogwarts uniform, sans the robes, and Alice stared up at him with wonder in her eyes, admiring the big brother she'd always adored so much.

"You comin'?" the current Mrs. Bell asked from where she'd paused when she realized Bilius was distracted.

Bilius pointed to Derek in the photo. "Derek was my best mate in school."

The woman duck-waddled back to him, and she stared at the portrait on the wall as though she'd never really noticed it. "My husbands cousin, he was," she said, "Only met him a time or two meself, but he seemed like a good boy."

"Yeah," Bilius nodded, "The best there was."

She paused, then, "We've a ghoul in the attic you might be interested in."

"Interested in?" Bilius asked, making a face, "Who would be interested in a ghoul?"

"Well, it's just this one came with all the rest the lot the Ministry brought to us from Derek's family. Roger said that Derek was particularly good friends with this ghoul. Didn't know it was possible, myself. Heck, I didn't particularly know about ghouls at all before I met Roger. He always said it was surprisin' Derek was able to train him, but Derek was good at trainin' creatures, he said..." She was headed for the stairs, the gnomes in the garden forgotten, and Bilius trailed after her, hesitant to pull his attention from the framed photo.

"Yeah, Derek was excellent at it, he wanted to be a dragon tamer," Bilius said as he took the stairs behind Mrs. Bell.

Mrs. Bell let out a hoot, "Dragon tamer! The Wizarding World won't ever stop astounding me." She smiled and led the way down a hallway to a door at the end. She nodded at it. "Goes up to the attic, this does. Ghoul's up there. Usually sleeps in the old Hogwarts steamer."

Bilius said, "You're alright if I go and have a talk with him?"

"Alright with it? Bloody worth every penny they would pay ya at the Ministry for degnoming to have you take him off our hands! He bangs the pipes and keeps my Davey awake, and I'm bleedin' tired enough with this one in here keeping me up and uncomfortable all the night long," she waved at her oversized belly.

Bilius nodded, "I'll bet..." And he turned to the door, wrenching it opened and started up the stairs.

Upstairs, the light was dim - just a bit filtered through a rather dirty window down the far end of the house, and loads of dust. Bilius felt reminded of his own room back at the Burrow. There was a good deal of clutter all about, and he moved carefully amongst it, nearly tripping over a small basket full of knitting that he recognized instantly -- it'd been Alice's. She'd always knit Derek a new Gryffindor scarf every year for Christmas. Derek had a whole collection of them that he'd always kept.

Bilius spotted the steamer truck that had stood at the foot of Derek's bed in their dormitory at Hogwarts for all seven years they'd attended. It had stickers from all the places his family had traveled over the years smeared across the top, including a place called DRAGON CAMP that Derek had gone to during summer holiday before their fourth year. He smiled, remembering Derek's excitement over having gotten to see real live dragons for the first time, and he thought of how much little Charlie would enjoy that camp experience... when he was old enough, of course.

"Hullo... any ghouls up here?" Bilius called, feeling rather foolish. Ghouls, after all, weren't capable of holding conversation. They had very limited brain capacities, and were rather known for their stupidity. Then he heard it. A clunk. He turned about and there, tucked into a corner by the door through which he'd come, sitting on top of an exposed toilet pipe, was the ghoul.

He was a nasty, round-faced thing with thick limbs and a big nose that was shaped rather like a tomato. He had no hair, but big round ears and a wide, crooked mouth with teeth that were blunt and rounded at the ends, like a row of corn kernels that weren't quite straightly placed.

Bilius stood, staring at him, his hands on the lid of Derek's old steamer. He stood upright. "Hullo," he said to the ghoul gently.

The ghoul stared at him, eyes searching him over.

"Name's Bilius," he said. "I hear you were a friend of Derek's, ey? Me, too." He gestured at the trunk and the ghoul's ears perked as his eyes widened and he came to attention. Bilius lifted the lid of the trunk and the ghoul jumped up and hurried over, sitting on top of the trunk to stop Bilius from looking inside, his eyes gone from wide and innocent to angry and forbidding. "I just want to see his old stuff, mate," Bilius said. "Seen it all before. Hell, I'm the one that packed it last..." He hated remembering that day - after Derek had died - cleaning up the dormitory of Derek's things and packing all of them up in that trunk... taking care of each thing as though it were precious, even though the person who had treasured them was no longer there to care if they were damaged or not.

The ghoul groaned and waved his hands, slapping the trunk with agitation. There was something about the way he did it - about the way the ghoul's eyes carried a bit of anguish in them as he made his ruckus. 

Bilius nodded, "I miss him, too," he said, filling in the communication gap.

The ghoul stopped his waving and groaning and looked at Bilius in wonder.

Nobody had talked to him with that tone of voice since Derek Bell had gone away.