Author's Note: Happy birthday to M, about 12 years late! I was a bad friend and didn't produce a birthday story on time, but I am finally here to deliver on her prompt of "Weasley sibling bromances." She also gets the extra long version (because I didn't want to bust the WC for Bingo on here).

Also happy international siblings day I guess? Mine are alright. Just kidding I love them to bits and can't wait to see them again in t-3 sleeps.

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Warnings: Anxiety, ableism based bullying, losing an animal.

Author's Note: Happy birthday to M, about 12 years late! I was a bad friend and didn't produce a birthday story on time, but I am finally here to deliver on her prompt of "Weasley sibling bromances."

Disclaimer: The following characters belong to J.K. Rowling, and this story derives from her original works, storylines, and world. Please do not sue me, I can barely pay tuition.

Warnings: Anxiety attack, ableism-based bullying and exclusion, loss of a pet

Word Count: 2998

Stacked with: MC4A; Spring Bingo; By Any Other Name; Snicket Fence

Individual Challenge(s): Gryffindor MC (x2); Seeds; Homeschooled!; Fortress; Unaccompanied Minors; Tiny Terror; Everyone's Cousin; Brush; Neurodivergent; Booger Breath; Wyrming the Heart (Y); Long Haul; Click Bait It

Representation(s): Tourettes Syndrome Charlie

Bonus challenge(s): Machismo; Bee Haven; Peddling Pots; Second Verse- Odd Feathers; Second Verse- Pocky Pockets; Second Verse- Pear-shaped; Second Verse- Endless Wonder

Tertiary bonus challenge(s): NA

Spring Bingo entry information:

Space Address : 1D

Prompt: Frog/Tadpole

Tadpoles in the Toilet

"As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others."

—Maya Angelou

The nice thing about having school in the kitchen was that once Mum was satisfied with your reading and numbers for the day, you got to do whatever you wanted. "Lesson plans" were really whatever you wanted. Since Bill liked riddles, Mum wrote him long lists to solve and gave him prizes when he got them—one day, she kept him busy while Charlie was having a really difficult reading lesson by setting up a treasure hunt around the Burrow. When he wanted to learn Gobbledegook, she found books from Aunt Muriel's collection to use.

This meant that in Charlie's lesson plans, he usually got to run around outside.

It wasn't a bad idea to send Charlie outside; but Mum had no idea how much trouble Bill saved her from.

"Charlie," Bill hissed. "Charlie!"

His brother was standing in the pond, drenched.

"I wanted to get close to the baby ducks," Charlie said, pointing to them.

"Charlie, Mum's going to be so mad, you're so dirty…"

"Bill look! Their feathers are all dry and fluffy now and they can swim…" Charlie said gleefully.

"Why did you cover yourself in mud?"

"When I asked Daddy how Newt Scamander gets so close to creatures, Daddy said that sometimes he hides his smell with mud. Look Bill, it's working!"

Bill sighed. He waddled back into the house alone. Mum was in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup.

"Are you two having fun?" Mum asked him, the baby strapped to her chest with a shawl.

"Yes," Bill said. "I just have to go pee."

He got into Charlie's room, picked out clothes, and threw them out the window so that Mum wouldn't see him come down with them. He collected them, and sat at the edge of the pond.

Charlie laughed watching the ducklings struggle to swim. The corners of his lips twitched up and down, as if he was smiling and unsmiling quickly. Mum and Dad had told him that Charlie's tics didn't hurt him; the worst would be the way people might react to them, so the best they could do was let Charlie be.

"Bill, do you see?" Charlie said, pointing again.

"Yeah," Bill said. "When you're done, you've got to put these on and then we've got to hang up the wet ones, okay?"

"Oh, okay," Charlie said. "Thanks Bill!"

Mum lifted Charlie up so that he could peak at the nest that the robins had built just under the porch roof.

"Count how many eggs you see, sweetheart," she said.

"Five!" Charlie said. "Does that mean there's going to be five baby birds?"

"Maybe, if they're all healthy," Mum said.

"Won't their mama take care of them like you take care of us?" Charlie asked. "We're healthy!"

"That you are," Mum said lowering him back down to the ground. She ran her fingers through his hair. "Animals are different than people, sweetheart. Sometimes it's harder for them."

"Well I'll be their mama then," Charlie said. He wasn't sure why his mother laughed before she ruffled his hair again.

"There we are," Dad said, once his sticking charm had finished securing the fallen branch across his bedroom window. "See? No need to cry, Charlie. All the cocoons there are still okay."

Charlie turned his face away from his dad's leg, where he'd buried it to muffle his sobs, and looked up.

"So they'll still become butterflies?" Charlie asked.

"Yes," Dad said, running his fingers through Charlie's hair. "They'll still become butterflies."

Even if he'd stopped crying now, the tics on his face kept coming more violently than before. Dad knelt in front of him and ran his hand in circles on Charlie's back.

"Deep breaths, okay?"

"I'm sorry, they won't stop," Charlie said.

"That's okay, Charlie. I just want you to take deep breaths because you'll be okay, just like the butterflies, okay?"

"Bill, want to know a secret?" Charlie asked nervously.

Bill nodded. "Obviously."

"It's this way."

Bill crawled into the blanket fort, behind his brother.

"Your secret is in the fort?"

"Not a fort, an animal hospital," Charlie said.

He'd built a nest out of pillows and he lifted a towel up. He looked inside to see…

"Charlie!" he said. "Why did you bring those in the house?"

"Because their mother's gone!" Charlie said. "She disappeared!"

"Oh no," Bill said. "Charlie, is this was bit Percy yesterday?"

Charlie hesitated. "They didn't do it on purpose, I know they didn't. They're so sweet, Bill…"

"Charlie," Bill sighed. "We have to tell Mum!"

"She'll put them back outside!" Charlie said. "Foxes and hawks and other animals will eat them! They're just babies, Bill. We wouldn't just leave Fred and George outside!"

"Fred and George are people, Charlie!"

"They're people with family and these baby rabbits don't have them," Charlie said. "They're so sweet, Bill. There's Ears, Cottony, Sunday, Easter…"

Oh no. Bill had once heard Mum tell Dad never to let Charlie name things, because when they were named it was all over.

"Okay, look," Bill said. "Let's… let's just put them under the porch, and tell Mum we found them. Maybe we can tell her that we have to keep them for a school project and we can make a house for them outside and they'll be safe, okay? And then Mum never has to know one of them maybe bit Percy."

Charlie's eyes brightened. "Yeah! Yeah, that's perfect!"

"Okay. Is there anything else you put in the fort?"

"No," Charlie said.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

They shook on it.

"Charlie, what are we going to do with this?" Dad asked.

"Love it," Charlie said, holding the duck that he had bought at the farmer's market with the galleon Cousin Throckmorton had given him for his birthday.

"BILL DON'T!"

Charlie burst into the bathroom and Bill pulled up his pants in a rush.

"Charlie!" Bill protested.

"Don't use the toilet," Charlie said breathlessly—as if he'd run across the house to tell him.

"Dad said he'd finally fixed the pipes downstairs!" Bill said. "Let me pee!"

"No, no, no," Charlie said. "Look."

He opened the toilet lid and, swimming in there were…

"Mum's going to kill you."

"No she won't! She'll understand!" Charlie said. "I couldn't leave them in the pond now that that Gridylow moved in."

"Did you go near the pond with the Grindylow in it? Charlie! That's dangerous!"

"Well I was keeping an eye on the eggs and they were so close to becoming embryos, I had to save them!" Charlie said. "M. Lovegood is coming to remove the Grindylow so soon Bill, and then they can go back to the pond. But look! They're growing so much! One of them even has legs already…"

"Legs?" Bill said.

"Legs!" Charlie said. "Legs, Bill! Look! It's swimming in the back there, I've named it Earl—"

"I can't look, I have to pee!"

"Can you pee in the bathtub just this once?" Charlie asked. "Please, Bill?"

Bill peed in the bathtub.

"Hey," Bill said, sitting down in the broom shed. "I talked to Mum. She agreed to stop putting up mouse traps in here, but she said we had to keep them in the house because of how little Ginny is—mice might give her diseases."

Charlie pondered this, completely still other than the corners of his lips jerking up and down, and an eyebrow too. He nodded.

Bill watched Charlie rip up pieces of bread and toss them into the shed. Little brown field mice emerged and snacked on the pieces before retreating into the shadows.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

"When I'm at Hogwarts I know you're gonna have to keep taking care of your creatures, but don't forget our brothers and our sister too," Bill said.

"They've got Mum," Charlie said. "My creatures have nobody else."

"Charlie, we've got to go," Bill said.

Charlie dallied near the rabbit hutch outside. Sunday was the last of the baby rabbits to be around the Burrow—Mum and Dad had convinced Charlie that the others should be given away as pets.

"Are you sure that rabbits can't come to Hogwarts?" Charlie asked sadly.

"Yes," Bill said. "I am absolutely positive. But, chin up, your frogs are coming."

Charlie nodded, and grinned at the thought, but only momentarily.

"Charlie?" Bill asked. "You're going to love it at Hogwarts."

"Were there other kids who had tics like me?" Charlie asked him bluntly.

"Not in my class," Bill said. "But maybe. I don't know everyone. It's a big school."

"What if I bother the others?" Charlie asked.

"You won't," Bill said. "And if you need anything, we'll probably be in Gryffindor together so I can…"

"I'm not going to need your help," Charlie said defensively. "I just want to know, that's all."

"Hey," Bill said quietly, pausing by Charlie in the dining hall. His brother had been sitting alone for the last few meals now, and Bill had heard some stuff through the rumour mill that he didn't… well, like. "When I've got time, I like going to the owlery. It's nice and quiet, and you get to hang out with other peoples' owls."

That was a lie. Bill hated the owlery; it smelled. But Charlie would love it, and he looked alone and anxious.

"Your brother is so cool," Tonks told Bill. Bill blinked in confusion.

"Who?" he asked. Tonks had some weird ideas, but calling Charlie cool felt like a stretch for anybody.

"Charlie," she said. "Bloke's outside right now with this raven he's domesticated. Calls it Dominic. It's doing tricks and everything."

"Oh boy," Bill whispered under his breath.

"Hey," Charlie whispered to Bill at breakfast. "So what's the policy on keeping hedgehogs in the Dormitories? Like, 1-5?"

"None," Bill said. "The policy is none hedgehogs, Charlie."

"Okay," Charlie said. "Okay thanks."

"There's no way that question was purely hypothetical."

"I have to go now," Charlie said quietly.

Charlie burst into Bill's dormitory room, throwing his bag on the floor.

"Best. Day. Ever!" he said.

"You had your first Care of Magical Creatures Lesson, didn't you?" Bill grinned.

Charlie's girlfriend went to bed, leaving them alone in the Common Room studying for their NEWTs and OWLs respectively. Bill knew that Charlie hated studying alone, but that the vocal tics made him too self-conscious about studying with anybody else. After 15 years of brotherhood, Bill had learned to tune them out, and so there they were. But he was worried, now.

"Charlie?" Bill asked, looking up.

"Yeah?" Charlie asked him.

"Are you sure Cassandra McLaggen's good for you?" Bill asked. "It seems as if… it seems as if you take care of her more than she takes care of you."

"I don't need anything," Charlie said. "I'm just happy being with her."

"Okay," Bill said. "Just… sometimes I see you two and I think that you take care of her an awful lot, and I'm not sure that she's paying as much attention and being as careful with you as…"

"I don't need that," Charlie said more forcefully. "I'm okay, Bill. And you can stay out of my things, I don't need you looking out for me."

"Mum's going to kill you when she finds out you pierced your ear at Tonks' party," Charlie said.

"How's Mum going to find out?" Bill asked. "The same way she found out about the tadpoles in the toilet? Oh, wait… she never did, did she?"

"You can't call tadpole every time," Charlie muttered.

"No, but I could also call Badger in the Basement, Otter in the Attic, Fawn in the…"

The Bank had given him plenty of time off to prepare his move to Egypt, which meant that it was a perfect time to visit Charlie in Romania.

Bill was surprised by how comfortable Charlie was. It had taken him months to feel happy and safe at Hogwarts, after all. But here he was, showing Bill across the Târâtoare Institute happily—pointing out this office as his supervisor's, this office as another's, that closed door as a lab that was closed to contain a particularly nasty burning smell, this particular reading room as his favourite one…

"Now I want to show you my lab," he said grinning and reaching into his shirt to pull out a key hanging around his neck.

"I thought you weren't supposed to start any original research until your fifth year," Bill said.

"You'll see…"

The room had been charmed to stay warm, and the only light came from the coals in the fireplace, over which some strange contraption hovered.

"That's Incubator 1282," Charlie said.

He followed his brother inside and peered at the incubator.

"Those eggs look too small to be dragons," Bill said.

"They're microdragons," Charlie said. "About the size of your average house cat, fully grown. During the Great War, they were bred as weapons—but they're not really healthy animals, they tend to die young. This clutch was brought in by a wandmaker who found them, just outside of Bucharest. We think it might be one of the last ones, if it's viable at all. Microdragons have never been successfully hatched in captivity, but I submitted a proposal and care plan, got the funding…"

"Charlie, that's great!" Bill said. His brother smiled, the corners of his lips jutting up and down softly. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I wanted to show you," Charlie said. He poked at the fire's coals a little bit.

"So you like it here?" Bill said.

"I do!" Charlie said. "Merlin, I'm glad I got in…"

"Of course, you got in, you had the best references," Bill said, elbowing Charlie. Charlie grinned.

"It's just… it's nice. Eventually I fit in at Hogwarts, and I loved it there too, but it took a while. And I had to be me in a cool way, you know? Whereas here… here, everything is enough," Charlie said.

"It's definitely a step up from tadpoles in the toilet," Bill said. "Seriously; I'm proud of you."

Bill showed the picture he'd gotten in the mail to his coworker.

"What are those?" the goblin asked.

"My nephews, apparently," Bill grinned. "Sorry, context. My brother works with dragons for a living. He's just successfully hatched a clutch of microdragons in captivity for the first time, anywhere in the world."

Charlie had also sent over an article clipped from Magizoology Monthly, where he was standing with three dragons the size of kittens cupped in his hands and grinning at the camera shyly. The dragons crawled up and down his arms before nestling against Charlie again.

Charlie opened the door of his dorm room and seemed surprise to see Bill.

"What are you doing here?" Charlie asked. His face looked gaunt, and his eyes were puffy and red.

"I heard," Bill shrugged.

"Isn't it like four hours of travel to get here from Cairo?" Charlie asked.

Bill shrugged again. Charlie rubbed his eyes.

"Can I come in?" Bill asked.

He nodded and stepped aside so that Bill could enter, closing the door behind him. By the time he turned back to Bill, Bill's arms were wide open.

"I'm sorry about your microdragons," Bill said.

Charlie burst into tears, burying himself in Bill's arms. Bill held him and let him cry it out. Judging by the state of the room, Charlie hadn't left it in days—it felt stuffy and closed-in. It was littered by empty tea mugs, boxes of cereal, unwashed clothes, disorganized lab notes and ignored correspondence, books splayed open…

Charlie stilled somewhat against Bill's chest when Bill gently nudged him to sit down on a reading chair, and then went to open the door. He poured his brother a glass of water from the pitcher on the dresser and brought it over. Charlie drained it. He was shaking, his vocal tics more complex than usual.

Bill wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and knelt in front of Charlie.

"I'm sorry," Charlie whispered. "They were just… they were doing so well… I wasn't expecting…"

"Don't be sorry," Bill said. "You know, when I got here, your friend Rebekah was the one to let me in to the dorm. She said that you were really beating yourself up, and she was worried about you."

"She's really nice."

"She said those microdragons turned a year old under your watch, there's no way that would have happened otherwise. And apparently you got so close to them and kept such detailed field notes that they think they can figure out how to save the microdragon population in the wild, now."

Charlie gulped.

"They still died," he said quietly.

"But they grew, what, an inch? Charlie, that's a record. You set a record. And they learned how to fly—they might never have flown, if you hadn't been there for them."

Charlie nodded, and rubbed at his eyes again.

They were quiet for a bit.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

"You've always defined yourself by how you take care of other things, but you can be pretty bad at taking care of yourself sometimes," Bill said.

"I'm sorry," Charlie said.

"No, don't be sorry, it's okay. It's just that one of my jobs as your big brother is to tell you that, so that you can remember how important you are," Bill said. "Be gentle with yourself, like you are with baby birds that fall out of nests and tiny dragons that have to be fed by hand and so on. Make sure you eat, make sure you drink, make sure you go outside. It's not always easy, but you should take care of yourself with the same kind of love you give everything else. Okay?"

"Okay," Charlie said, breathing in deeply. He rubbed at his eyes again. "I'm sorry for being trouble."

"You're not. My other job is to come down here and take care of you myself whenever you need it, you know."

"You're really good at it," Charlie said. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Bill said. "Literally: never mention it. To anyone. At all."

Charlie laughed.