Red (The Hobbit Fan Fiction)

4. A Full House

4. A Full House

            I hope he can forgive me for my outburst. This thought constantly rolled around in my mind. I wanted Bilbo to forgive me, I felt terrible for storming out of his hobbit-hole like that. I should have known better than to do something stupid.

            I kept bashing myself all the time it took to reach Bag End. I had tried to figure out how to best apologize to my best friend, but nothing seemed to stand out. I decided I would just apologize on the fly and hoped that I didn’t stumble on my words.

            I made my way through the gate and up the stairs. I had my hand ready to knock on Bilbo’s door, but noise from inside made me pause. I pressed my ear to the door. It sounded noisy in there, as if he had company or something. Since when did Bilbo Baggins ever have company over? Judging by how loud it was, it sounded as though he had quite a bit of people over.

            Was it a bad time to apologize to him, when he was supposedly entertaining others? But I came all this way to apologize, and at night of all times! I huffed, irritated that I was going to interrupt Bilbo’s get-together with other people just so I could apologize to him.

            I rapped on the door a few times. I doubt he heard me knocking, what with all that was going on inside. I knocked again, louder and harder this time.

            “I can’t take any more of this!” I heard Bilbo grumble from the other side of the door. My brows knitted together. What was he going on about?

            Bilbo looked as startled as I did when he opened the door. Whatever look of annoyance he had had on his face disappeared entirely. The noise level increased as it flowed to me.

            “Lily,” he stuttered. “What are you doing here? It’s a bit late to visit, isn’t it?”

            “It is?” I asked. “Listen, this couldn’t wait until tomorrow. I really want to apologize for my behavior earlier today. You didn’t deserve that kind of treatment from me.”

            “I kind of wished you had talked to me about this tomorrow, actually.” Bilbo looked over his shoulder. “What are you doing?!”

            I tried to peek past Bilbo to see what the commotion was about, but he was blocking my view.

            “Bilbo, what’s going on?” I asked curiously, trying to worm my way past him.

            “Lily—”

            My mouth dropped the moment my feet hit Bag End’s floor. What on earth was this?

 I saw dishes flying from one room, being caught by a Dwarf with dark blonde hair, tossed to another one—this one with much darker hair, and the dish flew away into the next room. My eyes widened. I even realized the Dwarves were singing, but I was too stunned by the sight to pay attention to the words.

            Also, it sounded as though there were many more Dwarves than the two I was staring at.

            “Did you let in a circus or something?” I asked Bilbo, feeling befuddled.

            “It’s a long story,” he whimpered. “I don’t think now is the proper time to explain it all.”

            “You’ll have to tell me sometime, preferably before I leave.”