Chapter Text
Eglantine Took was a good, respectable Hobbit. As expected of any good, respectable Hobbit, she had raised five good, respectable Hobbit children. And done so very well, if she may say so herself. Despite her youngest and eldest’s penchant for mischief and rather eccentric company, she knew they were both good children. Or rather, she knew her Peregrin was, Periwinkle was much too old and, well, too big to be called a child anymore. But such was the way of parents! With her younger daughters having already flown the nest and Eglantine well into her matronly years, she was decidedly less bothered about being left with a troublesome tween and six-foot-one (yes! really!) spinster. If that made her a topic of some ridicule at social gatherings, then so be it. She had enough to say about the oddities of a whole host of far less savoury Hobbits to more than make up for it.
Eglantine Took was, as all Hobbits are, normal above all else. It was a part of the unspoken Shire creed — to stick to your own — with the exception of good-natured gossip on topics that certainly weren’t her business. Despite marrying into the Took family, she certainly wasn’t born one; she was almost as far as could be from the curiosity of her son. She was just normal, plain old normal. As normal as she really could be when her daughter was the way she was. She avoided using any of the language most Shire folk deemed appropriate to use for her Periwinkle.
Periwinkle Took was any Hobbit’s dream child; intelligent, kind, and fond of her homely comforts. An upstanding member of her community, if you overlooked her affable mischief-making with her younger brother and cousin, that was. There was just one small, or rather very, very big issue. Something which Eglantine was loath to acknowledge, and she had quite frankly never admitted the truth behind it, not even to Periwinkle herself.
The truth was, Periwinkle wasn't exactly a Hobbit — in fact, she wasn’t one at all. Eglantine had her suspicions as to the true nature of her daughter, but Gandalf was in quite the hurry when he dropped the squealing babe into her arms all of fifty years ago. The Wizard had towered in a shell-shocked Eglantine’s doorway, gently prying the body of her stillborn daughter from her arms with placating promises to bury her properly, and replacing her with a healthy, glowing baby girl more than double her size. She had barely been in a state to understand what was happening, least of all to question the Wizard. After making her swear to raise the child as her own, he had disappeared off into the night, not to be seen by Eglantine until Bilbo’s infamous eleventy-first. In fact, she had been too busy glaring at Gandalf to even notice that the old Hobbit had vanished.
Needless to say, none knew of Periwinkle’s un-Hobbit-like origins, and all four Farthings seemed to have miraculously bought her rushed lie of her just being, well, big. Even her husband! Tooks, you know. Half of her believed it was meddling on Gandalf’s part, and half of her believed it was entirely organic; simply a result of Shire folk’s bull-headed nature and complete lack of any contact with the outside world. With her tawny curls and subtly pointed ears, if one overlooked her towering height, she was quite Hobbit-like — both in looks and character. That was if you also overlooked her small and hairless feet (really, so strange), but Eglantine had long since managed to persuade Periwinkle of the merits of floor-length skirts.
Eglantine was sure Periwinkle would have been quite the catch had Gandalf found her a foster home in Bree or some other place where there were Big Folk aplenty. But for Hobbits, she was much too big to be anything but an oddity. A beloved oddity, granted! But an oddity nonetheless.
For the first decade or so of Periwinkle’s life, Eglantine had presumed Periwinkle was Human. From Bree, she had thought, as she’d never travelled farther than Buckland. But the trouble was, Periwinkle just kept growing. While the Big Folk were called so for a reason, from books she’d read on the subject — ones she’d covertly sought out early in Periwinkle’s life — it seemed to be on the rarer side for Human ladies to reach such a height.
And then there was the trouble of the ears. Originally, Eglantine had presumed that all the Big Folk had pointy ears, just like Hobbits. It just made sense for ears to be pointed! But then she had discovered that Human folk, in fact, had round ears. After intense scrutiny of her admittedly limited supply of books (the only way she would have been able to obtain more was through Bilbo Baggins, and she avoided opening that can of worms as much as she could, especially for fear of raising suspicion around her daughter), she had surmised that she had to be some sort of Elf. A strange thought, really, that she had raised an Elf. Her!
After such a realisation, Eglantine quickly developed a plan of action. One in line with her good, respectable Hobbit principles. And that plan consisted of filing such incredible information away to the back of her mind and carrying on with her normal Hobbit life and normal Hobbit family just the way she had been. After Bilbo’s sudden departure, any threat she had dreamt up of a sudden exposure thanks to the old bachelor’s keen eye and fantastical travels had faded away into no more than the memory of a few knowing smiles, easily dismissed via his crackpot reputation.
While she had never exactly been the happiest with Periwinkle’s friendship with his young heir, least of all before his disappearance, she supposed it was only natural. They were second cousins once removed after all, and Frodo had been born mere months after Periwinkle’s arrival. Similarly, she wasn’t particularly happy with Periwinkle and Peregrin’s association with one Meriadoc Brandybuck. She had firstly objected on the basis of him being a Brandybuck — strange folk, truly — but that prejudice had soon faded in favour of concern for the trio’s unruly antics.
She had hoped that Periwinkle would prove to be a wise, mature influence on the younger two. And that was somewhat true. She had gotten them out of many a scrape, though had never been able to do particularly much in the face of a (well-deserved) earful from old Farmer Maggot. Ordinarily, though, the combination brought out a mischievous streak that she never would have thought existed during Periwinkle's younger years.
Their jovial troublemaking had never truly extended to anything serious, though, and over the years Eglantine had grown quite content. She turned a blind eye to her children’s shenanigans and watched them grow into fine Hobbits. Because really, regardless of Periwinkle’s heritage, she certainly acted like a Hobbit. As far as Eglantine was concerned, that made her one.
That was why, when Peregrin came prancing home one fine late summer’s evening, waxing lyrical about Frodo Baggins’ sudden new plans to move down to Buckland — and his own plan to make the trip with him — she wasn’t concerned. Curious, yes, as to why the master of Bag End would sell such a coveted and beautiful smial for so peculiar a land as Buckland, but he had been raised there and ought to be quite peculiar himself, so she supposed that explained it. She met Periwinkle’s decision to help Meriadoc cart Frodo’s belongings down to his new home with similar contented curiosity. It was only a short trip, after all. Peregrin would be in good, responsible company, and Periwinkle would be in company significantly less so. But she was happy enough to send her off with her cousin and a wagon full of Frodo’s belongings, and a stern warning to both of them to behave.
She wasn’t worried. She found little reason to be worried at all these days. That was why, when a letter returned a few days later, carried by a rather frazzled and sweaty-upper-lipped Fredegar Bolger, explaining that her children would be leaving the Shire entirely, she thought she might just die right in her chair.