Bag End (I)

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat. No, it was a hobbit-hole, and that meant comfort.

Although, to be fair, when it came to Bag End, "comfort" wasn't exactly the best word to describe it. Or, rather, the word was not enough to comprise what Bag End was.

Located at the end of Bagshot Row in Hobbiton, right in the center of the land where Hobbits lived, the smial had been built for Belladonna Took by her husband Bungo Baggins. It was the most luxurious hobbit-hole in the Shire even before the Fell Winter, and retained that title in the years that came after those horrible months of famine, wolves and Orc attacks. All the way to the present day, it was the largest, most homely, most respectable hobbit-hole in the entire Shire.

As far as the rest of the Hobbit population knew that is.

Not that it wasn't true. Bilbo Baggins could boast about that much. He wasn't one to gloat, but he did passively relish in it. He did ever so enjoy the mornings spent on the bench outside, next to the waist-tall front gate. Bag End really was the best smial ever, comfortable and with damn near countless different rooms. But it had stopped being just a hobbit-hole about two years after he led his father on his final journey. Then again, that wasn't exactly accurate either. The actual transformation of Bag End probably started a year or so before the first odd things cropped up. No doubt around the time when he began to sing the songs taught to him by his adoptive mother, and play the instruments made by his adoptive father.

"Heed you the world, boy, as song goes a-rumble / Enough heart poured in sends the ground a-tumble."

Bilbo smiled at the memory of the playful but almost always present rhymes. He smiled wider when he recalled all the occasions when he had been called to entertain his fellow Hobbits at various festivals and birthday parties.

And his own parties. Ah, the stuff of legends.

Bilbo the Minstrel, they called him. Bilbo the Bard. Bilbo the Great Musician. Bilbo the Great Storyteller. The Silver Tongue.

The Nimble Hand.

Bilbo always had to suppress a bout of hysterical laughter at that one. Hobbits' ability for accidental innuendo was astonishing.

His personal favorite was The Soul of the Party, but there was no accounting for taste he supposed.

In all honesty, Mad Baggins amused him more, though not as much as the last two visits that Lobelia Sackville-Baggins and her husband Otho dared to make before they finally stopped coming, four years ago. No doubt they'd thought he'd deliberately strung the house full of traps and pranks in anticipation of their arrival. They'd made sure to complain and gossip about it to anyone who could hear, for months after the fact.

Maybe he would have done it under different circumstances. They hadn't let him grieve for his father for even a year before they descended upon him like pretentious bowtruckles, a month before his 34th birthday. And they kept hounding him for years and years until his own home got fed up with them.

And that was the truth of the matter: Bag End simply didn't like them. And Bilbo didn't really have the heart to hold it against his home when a wall cupboard door randomly popped open (Are you alright, cousin? You hit your head rather badly there…) or when lock-less doors refused to open when Lobelia began to skulk around the place. And the way the clothes tree shifted in place and tripped Lobelia, thus causing the silverware she'd hidden in her bodice (his mother's courting gift!) to spill all over the hallway floor…

Bilbo had briefly considered lifting her by the back of her dress and throwing her out, but he had an image to uphold. And uphold it he did.

He was Master of Bag End.

No one else.

Bilbo looked up. The sky, nearly cloudless, was an incredible shade of blue. He drew in a deep breath full of Old Toby's wonderful scent, then puffed, his pipe releasing a perfect smoke ring that glided away, growing wider and thinner as it did.

The oddities of Bag End had started out innocently enough. Bilbo didn't realize anything was out of the ordinary until too many minor things piled up. Like how the door hinges stopped needing oil in order to swing open or closed without creaking. The windows stopped needing cleaning. A room's air freshened up in less than an hour even if just the smallest window was left slightly ajar. And not only that, but dust cleared itself from the furniture by itself when he aired a room.

Then the strangeness became more obvious. He'd stumble into the kitchen seeking an early tea in the morning and find the cupboard door already open. The jars of honey would be closer to the front of the shelves when he went for them, easily within reach when he wanted to fix himself a quick second breakfast. Old scratches started to fade from the walls. The grime that always darkened even the best wood over time slowly disappeared, leaving everything from the mantelpiece to the frame of the front door looking as good as new, then better than even that. Eventually, the same started to happen to the furniture.

And after another couple of years of him switching between his Home and his Home Away From Home (and boy, did the bigger prudes of Hobbiton ever criticize Mad Baggins for repeatedly venturing into the Old Forest), weirdness started to get really blatant, though not overbearing. And usually not when there were guests present.

Yet eventually Bag End started to become restless, and Blbo Baggins knew it was time to go. There were no more songs to learn in the Shire, and his own compositions became staggered, rarer. The lack of inspiration and self-fulfillment set in, making him feel antsy and constricted. Stir-crazy. Deprived. His home reflected his state of heart in many ways, and he knew he needed a change.

So one day, in the spring of his 40th year, he packed up, locked the doors on his house and left. Bag End fell into slumber behind him. Bilbo took the Old Forest road as usual. It would make his fellow hobbits think he'd only gone on one of his usual haunts, even though, for the first time, he planned to go further.

It was his first adventure, and also the first and last time when the Sackville-Bagginses tried to move into his home while he was away – Bag end did NOT like them skulking about, unlike the kindly (but thankfully oblivious) elderly gardener Hobson Gamgee. His home positively adored him for how faithfully he tended to the garden.

But it was also not the last of Bilbo Baggins' adventures. He went on several over the years, each of which began and ended at the home of his new parents, deep within the Ancient Wood.

Bilbo snorted and shook his head, then produced three smoke rings in quick succession. The nature of their relationship had never been stated, but it was clear regardless. Though it would have seemed ridiculous to his fellow Shire-folk. After all, while he may not have been an adult when he first met those who would essentially adopt him into their own family, Bilbo had been an adult when his birth father Bungo Baggins finally laid to rest.

It meant spending days that felt like years deep within the gloomy Old Forest, among trees that moved and whispered in the night.

It meant baring his soul and body to the Fëa and Hröa of the land.

It went against the norm for Hobbits.

It was perfect.

Bilbo leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes, basking in the sunlight. He would have relaxed the rest of the way, but a hum that only he could feel washed through the flower hedge decorating the slope behind him. He wasn't expecting guests (and Hobbits always knew to send advanced word) but someone was approaching. Purposely.

Huh. Well, all were welcome in Bag End until they proved they deserved otherwise.

The plants in the flower garden meandered in spite of the lack of a strong enough breeze, and all the petals became slightly more radiant than before. His home practically preened in anticipation of someone's arrival. Bag End had a sense for these things, which stretched some distance beyond his fences. And what Bag End knew, Bilbo knew so long as he was within the bounds of his property.

That's why he knew exactly how his smoke ring expanded and floated, and how it turned into a butterfly when someone – one of the Big Folk – walked along the path leading up to his gate. The butterfly fluttered its way back to him, bursting into smoke again as soon as it landed on his nose. The noise was like the tinkling of bells heard through the spray of a waterfall.

Leaning back, still with his eyes shut, Bilbo drew a circle through the air with the mouthpiece of his 10-inch-long pipe. The smoke obligingly formed itself into a ring again and floated away once more.

Yes. In Bag End he was Master.

With a hum of contentment, Bilbo Baggins opened his eyes and met the searching blue ones of the man standing beyond the fence. It took a single moment of observation – grey robes, long grey beard, gnarled staff he pretended to lean on like a walking stick even though he wasn't crippled in the least – to identify his visitor. Behind him, Bag End settled into a deep but still aware state of inertia that would hopefully avoid tickling the wizard's mystical senses.

Good. Discretion was an appropriate first response.

Bilbo had spent years compiling ballads and stories, and reading histories in various languages. Not recognizing Gandalf the Grey would have been asinine. Especially since the old wizard had been a personal acquaintance of his, or rather his mother, so many decades before.

And now, here the old wizard was, gazing down at him from beneath the brim of his tall, pointed grey hat. Obviously waiting to be verbally acknowledged. Bilbo looked for signs of surprise at his trick with the smoke. Or any reaction on Gandalf's part to seeing his eyes colored a vivid green (like the emerald leaves of water lilies, his adoptive mother had told him) instead of the original brown.

He found not even the slightest hint of a reaction.

Damn inscrutable wizards. Bilbo was sure that even Maiar shouldn't be able to put on such a perfect mask. Then again, maybe it was no longer a mask. Or maybe it never was.

Well, nothing to it he supposd. "Good morning."

"What do you mean?" Oh, here we go. "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not? Or is it that you feel good this morning, or that it is a morning to be good on?"

Bilbo tilted his head and squinted at the old man. "All of them at once I suppose." He absently gnawed on the mouthpiece of his pipe, knowing it would be good as new in less than an hour, no matter how deeply he sunk his teeth into it. It was one of several gifts his adoptive father had given him. "May I help you?"

"That remains to be seen," the wizard answered. Bilbo almost snorted. The man was deliberately trying to egg him on by acting all dramatic. "I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure."

"An adventure?" Bilbo finally gave into the impulse and snorted in amusement. "Troublesome things, adventures. They sneak up on you and lead you all over the place. Make you late for dinner. And supper, mustn't forget supper."

Gandalf hummed, then resumed his act of peering down at him. "And how would you like to be that one?"

Bilbo affected an exaggerated look of surprise on his face. "Me?" He lifted his eyebrows as far as they could go. "And how could you possibly assume I'd be open to such a thing? Especially when the proposition was made by someone who has still not introduced himself?"

"Ah, an excellent point. How very rude of me!" The wizard's voice was only slightly gravelly, but clearly amused. "Allow me, then, to introduce myself. I am Gandalf. Gandalf the Grey."

"That you are," Bilbo nodded, lifting himself to his feet and removing the pipe from his mouth. He felt the slight pressure of his pouch of Longbottom leaf in his waistcoat's pocket, but decided he didn't yet need a refill. "Gandalf, the wandering wizard who made such excellent fireworks. Old Took use to have them on Mid-summer's Eve. Are you still in business?"

"And where else would I be?"

"Who knows? On an adventure? Then again, I suppose you're only starting one now." Bilbo walked over to his mailbox. "I'd ask what business a wizard would want with a respectable gentelhobbit like myself. After all, my mother always said not to meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." Leafing through his letters with one hand – mostly invitations to parties and tea – he turned to look up at the old man again. "I always did find it odd, that piece of advice. She shouldn't have been one to talk, given how often she actually left on journeys with you. And now, here you are at my gate. I suppose 'children shouldn't pay for the sins of their parents' isn't a creed wizards live by?"

"Sins?" Gandalf sounded positively shocked and slightly aggravated. "I would hardly call your mother's travels sins, young man. To think I would live to see the day when Belladonna Took's son held the way she chose to live her life against her, and met the idea of an adventure as something to be feared and mistrusted!"

"I hold nothing against her." Bilbo pointed the spiked end of his pipe at the old visitor. "And I don't mistrust the idea of an adventure. I just mistrust you."

Silence.

Well, not exactly. There was the wonderful sound of a woodpecker coming from Hobson Gamgee's apple tree down the road.

Gandalf frowned and leaned his head forward. The shadow that fell over his face would have made Bilbo wary if he was the same person of 10 years ago. "Now now, my dear boy, I assure you I bear absolutely no ill intentions towards you. Why, I have no idea why you would even think such a thing!" The wizard sounded honest and serious about that. "You've changed, Bilbo Baggins, and I'm not sure if it was entirely for the better."

Bilbo's cheer disappeared, though his expression stayed as wryly amused as before. "Then it's a good thing my good mood is unassailable by the opinions of others. If it were not, some of the things people have been saying about me would have stung."

Gandalf took that in stride. "Now why would you say that? I've only heard your kin saying good things of you. That you've become quite the accomplished musician and entertainer?" Bilbo said nothing. "Though I do believe I heard a few mutterings about a 'Mad Baggins' and his tendency to occasionally disappear into the Old Forest for anything from days to weeks at a time."

"Mutterings is a good word," Bilbo easily agreed. "What will they think of next?"

"What indeed."

Bilbo wondered if Gandalf was really playing dumb about the several times he disappeared for over four or six months, or if he really didn't know about them yet. "Well, it was nice meeting you!" He tucked his letters under the arm and turned to walk up the path leading to his front door. "Do feel free to drop by for tea any time this week!" The hobbit looked back over his shoulder. "I won't ask to be warned in advance, seeing as how wizards only ever arrive precisely when they mean to. Never late, never early."

"I will definitely take up that invitation!"

"Splendid!" Bilbo opened his door. "Well, good morning!" And got into the house, shutting the perfectly round door behind him. He had to take a breath and slowly release it, to calm his nerves. In any other situation he might have actually lunged at the opportunity to go on an adventure with others, but that encounter had been loaded with an indescribable but heavy sense of doom.

Once he regained his composure, he moved further in, emptying his pipe in the ashtray he'd placed next to the clothes tree for that exact purpose. And all the while, he was fully aware of the presence that stepped through his gate and strode all the way to the door.

Oh well. He supposed it was too much to hope for at least some sort of reprieve before he'd have to invite the old man insi-

He reacted just in time.

Bag End nearly hurled the door open into Gandalf's face (and yes, the door to Bag End could swing open both ways), but Bilbo clamped down his will and preempted the reaction. Although he could understand the response. What was Gandalf playing at, using that staff of his to carve lines into his door?

Bilbo leaned against the wall and took deep, steady breaths, dividing his attention between keeping Bag End passive and persuading himself that no, he really didn't agree with his home that he should give Greybeard the Meddlesome a face-full of wooden boards.

He was thankful when the wizard stopped carving after a single symbol.

Bilbo stayed there, inside the entrance hallway, for ten minutes, focused on the feeling of the uninvited visitor as he disappeared into the distance at a steady trot. Once he was sure the old man was far away from his smial, the hobbit strode back to the door and pulled it inward, looking down, straight at the spot where an all-new, blue, shimmering symbol lay. Shimmering.

It shimmered!

A sound almost reminiscent of a growl came out of Bilbo's throat. And it wasn't all owed to the meaning of that rune. 'Burglar wants a good job, plenty of excitement and reasonable reward.'

No, the annoyance came from elsewhere: the wizard had done magic on his house!

Bilbo Baggins crossed his arms and pointedly glared at the offending etching.

The blue shimmer burst away from the door like sand in the wind, leaving only scratches that were already mending.

As if Bag End would suffer the touch of craft belonging to anyone other than its Master.

Bilbo reentered his home and closed the door behind him. In about an hour, there would be no sign that anything had ever been sculpted into the door to Bag End, or that anything had ever affected it at all, time included. If Gandalf had a way to know that his little spell had been countered, he was probably on his way back already. If not, then whatever he had planned that involved directions written in dwarven had been derailed, likely to hilarious consequences.

Good, Bilbo thought vindictively. He was always up for a good laugh.