The Shire, Hobbiton, Bagshot Row; T.A. 2992, December 20th

If you had just so happened to have the misfortune of walking down the lane of Bagshot row that cold December morning, you would have heard at least one of three things from within the walls of Number Three Bagshot Row. The First the sound of something smashing against the wall, the second the scream of a child, and the one thing you would have never failed to miss, was the yelling that followed.

It could certainly not be ignored, by anyone inside the house.

'I'm going to that protest and you can't stop me.'

Came the loud voice of the most rebellious son of Bell and Hamfast Gamgee.

'Oh Urabo*, I can't, you can storm out all you like son, you can scream and wail up the hill right up to the picket lines, but you'll not step over that mark…over the line between bystander and busy-body.'

The boy laughed, slapping his knees.

'And…oh…how exactly are you gonna stop me, old Gaffer? I can out run you, out box you and out last you…I'll be up at that protest at the Shriff's holdings before you can even bring yourself to open the door.'

'I'll stop ye because if you step past that picket line you can find somewhere else to sleep for the night, and the rest of the nights that you still live in Hobbiton. This will not be your home anymore.'

'Da!' A girl's voice this time, high, barely into her tweens.

'Not now Daisy…I've made my call, I'll have no Ninnyhammers in my family thank you.'

'You really think this is okay, Dad? That what they're doing to you and…and the life you tried to build.'

'Shut up, shut up, do not twist my word back up at me boy. You know…you think that you can just go down there and have your say, have your voice heard by yer betters and that will be it. Either they'll hear you out or ignore ye, is that what you think?'

The boy's hackles rose at that.

'Why shouldn't I, a Took can say whatever they want? A Brandybuck can dance a jig under the light of a grieving moon and all they get is a titter. I can stand to be laughed at, I can stand to be yelled at, but what I can't stand is to be ignored entirely because I never bothered to say anything to begin with.'

The Gardener of Bag End laughed then, long and hard, in such a cruel way , that it would take a hobbit of far greater bearing than this narrator to stand up to. But then there are few alive today who could match the steel and the nerve of Halfred Gamgee.

'You think we're all just having a laugh, that this is silly joke or a phase that we'll grow out of, well you're wrong…and one day, one day I'll show you just how wrong you really are.'

He might have run out the door then, might have run up the hill and away to go join that sad and fateful protest. Might have been one of the many hobbit youths that just never made it home that night, yes, might is a word that Halfred Gamgee would ruminate on every night after his father's death.

What might have happened to him if the old hobbit hadn't reached out and caught his arm that day.

'Don't you think of anyone but yourself…do you really think you're the only one who they'll make pay for the stupid things you do? A Took can be adventurous, and a Brandybuck mad because they're at the top. We're not…we're the bottom and you don't get to walk off and joke about the stupid things you do when you're on the bottom, you suffer, and you pay.

'Don't make the same mistakes I did, don't think that just because they're ignoring you now, that they're humouring you now that they won't lose their patience. That they won't wake up one day and realise you're not just the funny fool at their feasts, that you're a threat to them, and don't you think for a second that they won't stamp that threat out with all the power they have and let me tell you boy, that is a fecking ton of power to feel pressed down on your face.

'So, if you want to go, go, but I'm done making the others pay for your idiocy.'

And with that he let go of the boy, whose shoulders slumped in defeat.

'It's not fair,' said the irate youth and that made the father laugh even harder.

'Since when has the Shire ever been fair?'

Arda, Middle-Earth, The Shire, Hard Bottle Marketplace; T.A. 2995, July 16th

Sam found himself down in the dirt, the heavy weight of Sandyman on his belly. He struggled to throw the older boy off, but the brutish miller's son had grown over the last summer and was just too big.

'Aww can't put you back together again can we Dumpty. Best for ye as far as I'm concerned, Gamgees are nothing but pond scum masquerading as fine folk.'

Sam could feel the boy's breath over his face, it was hard to miss the stench of rotten fish and potatoes in the air.

'Be better for the world I say if I just snapped your neck right here, and be done with ye. What'd you say to that, fleshy?'

Sam squirmed, the other boy's large foot pressing hard on his stomach.

'Go…Fuck…yourself, Sandyman.'

The small crowd around the two roared with laughter, and Sandyman pressed down harder and grabbed for Sam's throat. The younger boy wriggled and gasped under the miller's son's grip. Pain shot through him and as the vice like hold around his windpipe began to tighten; the world became a mesh of fuzzy blurs.

A sharp thwack brought the youngest son of Hamfast Gamgee back to the land of the living. His eyes snapped open and his head swam with the pain of the slap, his ears still ringing from its force. A pair of hands grabbed Sam's shoulders and pulled him up, leaning him against a hard surface that the boy thought might be a log, or a cart. But the voice beside him, barking orders to someone in the distance was instantly identifiable.

Sam's brother Hal stood over him, his was even more of a dark thunder cloud than usual, and that was really saying something. Halfred yanked him to his feet and gave him another good shake and a slap around the ear.

'Think it's funny, do you? Getting into a tumble with the miller's son right when we're about to strike back?'

Sam fidgeted under his brother's glare, his face growing pale and red as he tried to bite back his own anger. Why was everyone always angry with him now a days, Sandyman had been…Sandyman was an arse, it wasn't his fault if he tried to fight back against such a hobbit. In the end the young boy decided that the truth, like most times, was the wisest choice here.

'It wasn't my fault Hal, I swear, he started it!' The elder did not seem to be remotely convinced by that, but Sam squared his shoulders and soldiered on regardless.

'He started saying all these horribly things about Da, how he deserved what he got because he was sick in the head and ought to have been locked up. Said it was his punishment for a life of wickedness, I told him to stop but he just wouldn't listen. So, I tried pushing him to make him stop. He called his goons on me, and then they started circling and chanting that song about the falling egg. They called me Humpty Dumpty and then they tried to kill me!'

By the end of his speech Sam was in tears, real honest to Ancestors tears rolling down his cheeks. Hal's features softened, marginally.

'Aye well getting into fist fights ain't gonna bring Da back … and it ain't the way to win back his honour from those scum that snatched it from him.'

Hal dusted the younger boy off.

'But don't you worry now: Marmadoc, Whitfoot and I have got it all sorted out… all you must do is stay low and keep out of our way, do you hear me Samwise Gamgee? I catch sight of you again before this is all over and I'll give you more than a scelpt ear. Now go around the back of the cart with the others, you should be safe enough there.'

Mildly disgraced Sam made his retreat towards the heavily piled wagon – it was an ugly thing, so Sam knew his brother must have some hand in making it. A leader, even a visionary some folks called him but Halfred Gamgee would never be a craftsman. The thing had been smattered with the bright red of his brother's cause, but that was where the effort had clearly ended – nails of the ragged and snarled kind stuck up every which way around that wagon. And that was just the ones on the outside, Blarney only knew what horrors they'd made on the inside. What on Buck's sword** was Hal planning now?

An undisclosed location in the Shire; Three Weeks Prior

Marmadoc Gamgee was not a brave hobbit, so the thought of Marmadoc Gamgee as a revolutionary would have made most of the folks that knew him collapse into wails of laughter.

Yet here he was, sitting in the middle of this meeting of revolutionaries and trying not to draw more attention to himself then need be. It wasn't hard. Will Whitfoot and Hal Gamgee were more than capaple of filling the silence all by themselves.

'You are a mad hobbit, I've followed you this far without complaint, but you've truly turned the corner this time…Gamgee,' snarled Whitfoot.

'Without complaint, is that what you call it? I'd hate to see what your combative side looks like, if this is the complacent version of your personality.'

Marmadoc closed his eyes and tried to pretend he wasn't here, he shouldn't be…he shouldn't be here at all, he should be back home in Tightfield, learning how to make rope from uncle Andwise. His Mother would like that, it was a good profession for a bastard to have. Ropers didn't need to have their father's name to make good at their profession.

He shouldn't be here at all, in this rebellion, let alone one of the founding members. But then Hal had asked, and he never could say no to Hal…even when he really should. After all, he was Hal Gamgee…and who said no to Hal Gamgee.
Even Whitfoot was having a hard time with saying the word to him, and he could say it to anyone at this point.

'You can't possibly expect the others to agree to this Gamgee.'

Will Whitfoot was a strange lad, the most upper-class of them, he had by society's standards the most to lose. If he'd stayed back home, he'd have had a comfortable life, why he may have never needed to work a single day in all his life. And yet here he was in this basement arguing over the perfect way to ... to assassinate the Mayor.

'Why not, there's not a hobbit in the Shire, rich or poor who hasn't been betrayed by that hobbit. You really think even the Tooks are going to mourn him when he's gone, Blarney do you even think his own wife will? He's the point man, the head of the snake, once he's gone…'

'What then?' snarled Whitfoot. 'Things won't go back Halfast, everyone who lost their lives will still be dead when you're finished your little revenge fantasy. Except now you'll have a very angry crowd of Shriffs on your heels. Things won't get back to normal once he's dead, they're going to get worse.'

Halfred Gamgee didn't say anything to that, he just stared at the other hobbit as if…as I if he'd never seen such a sight before. Not many hobbits could leave Marmadoc's cousin so, but then Wil Whitfoot was not most hobbits.

'Alright,' said the young rebellion leader. 'Then Will, what do you think we should do?'

And so, the young gentlehobbit told him, and for the rest of his life Marmadoc Gamgee couldn't help but think that it all would have been better if…if they'd just stuck to the botched assassination plan.

***
The Shire, Road through Hard-Bottle: TA 2995, September 12th

Merry Brandybuck was beginning to become quite irate, everyone was just being so difficult lately. First Uncle Bilbo steals his favourite cousin and then his parents make Merry wait almost a whole year before he can go visit. They said it was to let him settle in, but Merry knew in his thirteen-year-old heart of hearts that it was a conspiracy set against him personally. What cemented the theory for the young hobbit was the fact that his parents weren't even taking him to Frodo themselves…they had gotten this old man with the funny looking hat to take him. Even if he had turned out to be a wizard …his hat was still funny looking.

It had been exciting at first, Merry had never met a big person before let alone one as funny looking as this one. And back at the start there had been others, men in long green cloaks and tall people with weird pointy ears.

Of course, that had been nearly a week ago now and the funny people with hobbit-ears had split off from their party, leaving Merry quite alone with the strange hatted man and his band of men in dark cloaks. It wasn't that they were scary or intimidating, really Men were just bigger versions of hobbits when you got right down to it; no, it was the fact that they were all so very boring! You'd think from reputation that traveling with a wizard and what he later learned were a group of rangers would at the very least be mildly entertaining. You would of course be mistaken, wizards it turned out were not the cryptic adventurers in Mister Bilbo's tales, they were instead grumpy old men who had far too little patience for small hobbits.

They rarely talked and even when he did, all they talked about was how quite the Shire had grown. How still all the streets they passed were since they'd left Buckland; they weren't entirely wrong of course, the silence in the streets of Hard-Bottle was daunting, even to a fauntling as bold as Meriadoc Brandybuck. But he didn't have to mention it quite so often, as if there was nothing better to talk about… which for a wizard Merry knew simply couldn't be true.

'This is high-noon…there should be a market place open here, as there was last time I travelled this road.' The Wizard tugged at his long grey beard and frowned at the abandoned looking houses the party passed.

'Well of course there wouldn't be anymore, not after the riots.' Said Merry, in a fit of frustration. The Wizard jerked the cart to a stop and several of the rangers who had been riding behind, perched proudly on their noble steeds, now crashed into them in a flurry of curses and angry noises.

'Riots?' The old man hissed a note of panic entering his voice. Merry bit his lip, on the one hand his parents had told him never to talk about the riots of Hard-Bottle, on the other the Wizard had basically brought it up himself by asking so many questions. And Merry supposed it must be the height of rudeness to refuse to answer the questions of a wizard, and his parents had always told him to be polite to his elders, and there was no one in the whole Shire older than a wizard.

'The Riots of Hard-Bottle, we're not supposed to speak of them, but I'll tell you since your old and you asked.'

If the wizard was offended by the 'old' comment he did not show it, well he hardly could. It wasn't like it was something he could deny.

'It was the Ganymen who started them, well them and their kin, so everyone says. They weren't pleased when Mayor Proudfoot outlawed them you see, so they started rioting in the streets of well all over the Shire really, but it was worst here for some reason. And it was the only place where the perpetrators were caught…everywhere else they just vanished before the authorities could find them, or so my parents say.'

The old man stared at Merry as if he was mad, which the young hobbit thought very rude… he didn't have to answer the old coot's questions, he'd done so out of simple hobbit decency. But before he could tell the old codger just what he thought of mean old grumps like him the old thing lashed the reins of the cart and sent them shooting along the road at a jolt. There were cries of out-rage from behind them as one of the rangers, who'd been leaning on the cart while it stalled, picked himself up from out of the mud. The Wizard didn't seem to care.

'I must find Bilbo; I must speak to him now!'

Hard-bottle market place: T.A. 2995, July 16th

Madam Bullroarer's tea stall had been open since sun up, since its proprietor had no interest in lying in bed with their lazy lout of a husband. Penny Proudfoot-Knocker, formerly Took, the proprietor of said stall, did not bare the alias of Madam Bullroarer without reason. Some said her voice could wake the dead…there was even a rumour floating round the more rustic of drinking establishments that on the day she was born there had been an attack of the Goblin variety planned on Hard-Bottle that very night. But when the Goblin chief had heard Madam Bullroarer's birth wail, he had turned his greasy tail and fled in the other direction. It was complete and utter nonsense of course, there hadn't been a goblin sighting round these parts in more than a hundred years, but still she had well-earned the name never the less.

Frodo Baggins could certainly appreciate this, for she had him by the ear. Unfairly he might add…he hadn't even been causing the mischief she'd accused him of. No matter how loudly he tried to protest to his innocence in the thievery of her special teas, she ignored him and proceeded to pull him up by the tips of his ears and bellow to all that would hear her, which if you believed the rumours included the entire Shire.

'Thieves, thieves and liars is that what it's come to now, hmm? Oh, to think my proud namesake to have spawned such a line as this one. Why he must be rolling in his grave at the shame, the sheer shame of it all, I say!' Around the bend of the street Uncle Bilbo stuck his head out of a well-worn door way.

'What is this now?' The older hobbit came fully into his cousin's view and Frodo saw that Bilbo was weighed down by several full bags of shopping strapped to his side. Under the weight of the new provisions for his larder, the Master of Bagend came hobbling towards them, his frown growing with each step he took.

'Penny, what on Blarney's Justice has happened, you look like someone's pulled the roof down over your ears.' Then a pause and 'No one has had they?' Frodo wasn't sure whether to laugh or be insulted that Uncle Bilbo thought that might be a possibility.

'If I hadn't caught him in time Mister Baggins, if I hadn't caught him in time. Ruffians and Hooligans that's what the mighty line of the Took has become; why if my father had been alive…' Bilbo cut her off mid-tirade with a half-hearted apology and relieved the irate Madam of her charge with the practised ease of someone used to dealing with the daughter of Caleb 'Major Lawman' Took.

No one should be subjected to what the collective youth of the Shire had christened 'the Lawman Speech' more than once in their short lives, but Bilbo had been subjected to it a grand total of seven times since his return from his infamous adventure. It was not an experience he wished to revisit so soon after the last one, but Madam Bullroarer had been thrown off her rhythm with the apology. Something she was not quite so used to receiving so quickly, and she did not look like she would be picking it up again anytime soon.

Just as Bilbo and Frodo had managed to pass out of the line of sight of the now stunned tea merchant, there was a cry from up ahead and suddenly the street was swarming with hobbits. Hobbits in that strange unmatched uniform you saw lurking round the Brandywine bridge if you didn't look away quick enough, the same kind that had become an increasingly common sight around the twists and turns of the lanes of Hobbiton.

Above the sea of brightly coloured mismatched uniforms and copper coloured badges that gleamed upon each chest, a voice raised itself high…a very familiar voice.

'We are the Hobbits of the Cause and we demand justice for Hamfast Gamgee and all the Ganymen who suffered under Proudfoot's rule.' Yelled Halfast Gamgee, and with that… the street dissolved into total chaos.

Middle-Earth, The Shire, Hobbiton; T.A. 2995, September 14th

They had ridden through the night, the young hobbit at Gandalf's side falling into a heavy doze halfway through, and only now as the sun was rising over the gentle slopes of the shire's hills, did they reach the borders of Hobbiton.

Gandalf was relieved they'd made most of the journey in darkness; the wizard didn't think he'd be able to cope if he had to suffer any more of what he saw in Hard-Bottle. A silence of un-hobbit like proportions consumed that place, hobbits simply did not make that kind of dead-silence. Oh, they could be silent for sure, Gandalf had not been false in his argument to Thorin Oakenshield all those years ago, but it was of a different kind to the one he'd encountered in that town. That sort of silence only came into being when there was simply no one there to make a noise. Last time he had ridden through it the town had been a bubble of activity and life, as most hobbit towns were.

He'd journeyed far and wide over the lands of Middle-Earth since then and through all that time he'd heard not one iota of news from the Shire. That was hardly surprising, hobbits were not known to send bulletins to the out-side world of their troubles…but to hear nothing of a tragedy that could clear a whole town in less than a year…well that was something else entirely.

It had not been a small town either; Hard-Bottle to the best of the grey pilgrim's memory had been the second largest town in the Shire, only paling in spectacle to the township of Michel Delvin. Or so he had thought, but an hour ago when the cart carrying the wizard and hobbit, and the pathetically lagging Rangers, moved through where Michel Delvin should have been…there was nothing. Not even the silhouettes of houses against the black drop of the night sky. All that was left was the thick smell of smoke in the air.

Something terrible had happened in the Shire.

The Shire, Hard-Bottle, Marketplace: T.A. 2995, July 16th

When the panic started Sam was trapped in his brother's cart. Some of the other cousins of smaller stature had managed to slip out of the big wooden prison just before the panic had set in. In fact, most of Sam's Goodchild cousins had vanished almost inexplicably, leaving the young tween quite alone in his rattling wooden cage.

Around him the world shook and for one horrible second Sam thought there had been another explosion, and it was only when he went sailing head first into the shoddy wall of the cart, upturned nails digging deep into the flesh of his cheeks, that he realised it was just that the cart had been pushed onto its side. It began to shake again under the force of hobbits franticly trying to climb over it in their panic to get away.

Sam sobbed, he could feel the blood running down his chin and…and yet he couldn't let himself black out. If he fell asleep now, he'd be dead for sure…soon the panic would be too much, and the hobbits outside would rock the cart so badly that…that surely, they would crush it. He had to get himself out, which meant he had to pull himself away from the spikes holding him in place. The pain, oh dear Blarney the pain was almost mind numbing – and he could hardly think of anything more than lifting his hand up, and pushing - pushing on the wood above his head. Push and pull, push and pull, until all he could see was the blood running down and into his eyes. Yet he didn't stop and with a sicking popping sound his face was free of the nails.

As he stumbled back Sam tried to steady himself by out stretching his hand to one of the few patches of wood in the cart that wasn't peppered with nails. A brief breath of safety, even if he was still in utter agony, before the cart began to shake again. This was it…soon the cart would roll again, and Sam would be dead, dead just like Da. Giving into his own fear Sam slammed his whole body-weight against the side of the cart, then he did it again, and again until the wood under him began to crack and splinter. He was very nearly there; he had very nearly made a hole big enough for him to crawl through when an arm shot through that hole and latched onto him. Sam screamed and thrashed around but no matter how hard he struggled the arm just wouldn't let go. In his terror the young hobbit tried to bite the hand, there was a grunt from outside and Sam could taste blood in his mouth, but it still wouldn't let go.

Then from the top of the cart Sam heard a noise, like something big and heavy rolling down towards him. Again, he tried to dislodge himself from the hand, but it still wouldn't let go no matter how loud he screamed. It took him slamming the thing into the wood surrounding them for its grasp to at last lessen and he was finally able to roll away…but it was too late, and Sam sank to the ground, a bloody welt rising on the back of his head.

The Shire, Hobbiton, Bagshot Row, Bag-End: T.A. 2995, September 13th

Gandalf lifted the half sleeping boy and placed him shakily onto his feet. He'd debated just leaving him in the wagon, but thought better of it when he realised that Bilbo would not thank him at all for losing his young cousin mere feet from the hobbit's own door.

So, with the hand of a sleepy hobbit under one arm and his staff in the other the wizard marched up the garden path of Bag-End and rapped hard on the round green door. In fact, it took several long minutes of hard rapping before he got any response from the other side of that round green door.

It creaked open and a young hobbit face who he did not recognize, but assumed to be the much gushed about Frodo, peaked out.

'Yes? Who is it?'

Gandalf blinked, having become unused to being unrecognized by hobbits.

'Gandalf the Grey, I'd exchange pleasantries with you but I'm afraid I'm on some rather pressing business and I must speak to Bilbo now. Is he in?'

Frodo made a face at the wizard and may have continued to do so, if his eyes had not caught sight of the swaying hobbit beside the wizard . His face lit up and he pushed the door open wider and held out his arms.

'Merry!'

The child jerked fully awake and squealed with delight as he wriggled free of the wizard's hold and leaped into his cousin's arms. The two embraced, and so lost in that moment of joy that they seemed to have completely forgotten the wizard on the doorstep. Gandalf had to clear his throat to draw their attention back to him.

'Frodo Baggins, where is your Uncle…it is urgent I speak with him.'

The young hobbit raised an eyebrow at the wizard. 'Which Uncle would that be? I have many of them and few I speak to often enough to inform you of their whereabouts.'

The Wizard smashed his staff down on the ground and his voice became as deep and rolling as thunder. 'Bilbo! Where is your Uncle Bilbo?' The young hobbit's frown was firmly in place once again, as he stepped back away from the wizard, the boy Merry clutched to his side like a precious treasure.

'He's not at home today and will not be receiving visitors for the next few weeks. If you have something to tell him, please leave a message with one of the neighbours and they will relay in to him in the appropriate time. However, if you've just come here for a visit may I suggest that you reschedule. Good day sir.'

The door slammed in Gandalf's face and from behind Gandalf heard the distinct sound of a lock clicking into place, and a voice calling out.

'And when I say, 'good day sir' I do not mean it is a good day, or it is a day to be good on…I mean go away, sir.'

Middle-Earth, The Shire, Hobbiton, The Dragon's Keep Playhouse; TA 2995, August 1st

The riots that would come to be known as the 'Hard-Bottle Riots' were slightly misnamed. For one thing only one of the riots ever took place in the township known as Hard-Bottle. The rest spread throughout the Shire, stretching from the Brandywine River all the way up to the West Farthing.

Folks who had lost kin to the hangman's rope threw down their tools, their sheers and scythes , and revolted against those who they saw as their oppressors: The Mayor's office, the Shirriffs and the Bounders. It weren't even just lowborn lads and lasses that took up the cry either, many a Took was seen leading a charge against a group of heavily armed Bounders.

In the end though it was all for naught, the forces of the Mayor and his Shirriffs were just too strong and eventually the crowds were beaten back and cowed. Those that would not be, fled the Shire to parts unknown and had not been seen again. Among them – it was rumoured – fled one of the original rabble rousers, Marmadoc Gamgee.

The other two were still firmly in the Shire: Will Whitfoot had been saved from the noose by his family connections. His father hadn't exactly been able to make it vanish like he'd wanted, but it was considered just unseemly enough to hang a gentlehobbit by a rope, that the judges of the Shire were unable to pass a guilty sentence. Halfred Gamgee, had not been so lucky.

The Ganyman's son had been just twenty six when he stepped out onto that stage and approached the rope. When asked later no one could say for sure what the young hobbit's final words had been, some said they had been deep and profound – worthy of a playwright like Bilbo Baggins – while others claimed there were none. For History's sake though, I can state now with utter surety that the final words of Halfred Bilbo Gamgee were: I'm sorry, I really thought it would work.