Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (4 page)

      Harry was silent. Judging by the fact that Draco Malfoy usually had the best of everything, his family was rolling in wizard gold; he could just see Malfoy strutting around a large manor house. Sending the family servant to stop Harry from going back to Hogwarts also sounded exactly like the sort of thing Malfoy would do. Had Harry been stupid to take Dobby seriously?

      “I’m glad we came to get you, anyway,” said Ron. “I was getting really worried when you didn’t answer any of my letters. I thought it was Errol’s fault at first —”

      “Who’s Errol?”

      “Our owl. He’s ancient. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d collapsed on a delivery. So then I tried to borrow Hermes —”

     
“Who?”

      “The owl Mum and Dad bought Percy when he was made prefect,” said Fred from the front.

      “But Percy wouldn’t lend him to me,” said Ron. “Said he needed him.”

      “Percy’s been acting very oddly this summer,” said George, frowning. “And he has been sending a lot of letters and spending a load of time shut up in his room.…I mean, there’s only so many times you can polish a prefect badge.…You’re driving too far west, Fred,” he added, pointing at a compass on the dashboard. Fred twiddled the steering wheel.

      “So, does your dad know you’ve got the car?” said Harry, guessing the answer.

      “Er, no,” said Ron, “he had to work tonight. Hopefully we’ll be able to get it back in the garage without Mum noticing we flew it.”

      “What does your dad do at the Ministry of Magic, anyway?”

      “He works in the most boring department,” said Ron. “The Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office.”

      “The what?”

      “It’s all to do with bewitching things that are Muggle-made, you know, in case they end up back in a Muggle shop or house. Like, last year, some old witch died and her tea set was sold to an antiques shop. This Muggle woman bought it, took it home, and tried to serve her friends tea in it. It was a nightmare — Dad was working overtime for weeks.”

      “What happened?”

      “The teapot went berserk and squirted boiling tea all over the place and one man ended up in the hospital with the sugar tongs clamped to his nose. Dad was going frantic — it’s only him and an old warlock called Perkins in the office — and they had to do Memory Charms and all sorts of stuff to cover it up —”

      “But your dad — this car —”

      Fred laughed. “Yeah, Dad’s crazy about everything to do with Muggles; our shed’s full of Muggle stuff. He takes it apart, puts spells on it, and puts it back together again. If he raided our house he’d have to put himself under arrest. It drives Mum mad.”

      “That’s the main road,” said George, peering down through the windshield. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.… Just as well, it’s getting light.…”

      A faint pinkish glow was visible along the horizon to the east.

      Fred brought the car lower, and Harry saw a dark patchwork of fields and clumps of trees.

      “We’re a little way outside the village,” said George. “Ottery St. Catchpole.”

      Lower and lower went the flying car. The edge of a brilliant red sun was now gleaming through the trees.

      “Touchdown!” said Fred as, with a slight bump, they hit the ground. They had landed next to a tumbledown garage in a small yard, and Harry looked out for the first time at Ron’s house.

      It looked as though it had once been a large stone pigpen, but extra rooms had been added here and there until it was several stories high and so crooked it looked as though it were held up by magic (which Harry reminded himself, it probably was). Four or five chimneys were perched on top of the red roof. A lopsided sign stuck in the ground near the entrance read,
THE BURROW
. Around the front door lay a jumble of rubber boots and a very rusty cauldron. Several fat brown chickens were pecking their way around the yard.

      “It’s not much,” said Ron.

      “It’s wonderful,” said Harry happily, thinking of Privet Drive.

      They got out of the car.

      “Now, we’ll go upstairs really quietly,” said Fred, “and wait for Mum to call us for breakfast Then, Ron, you come bounding downstairs going, ‘Mum, look who turned up in the night!’ and she’ll be all pleased to see Harry and no one need ever know we flew the car.”

      “Right,” said Ron. “Come on, Harry, I sleep at the — at the top —”

      Ron had gone a nasty greenish color, his eyes fixed on the house. The other three wheeled around.

      Mrs. Weasley was marching across the yard, scattering chickens, and for a short, plump, kind-faced woman, it was remarkable how much she looked like a saber-toothed tiger.

      “Ah, “said Fred.

      “Oh, dear,” said George.

      Mrs. Weasley came to a halt in front of them, her hands on her hips, staring from one guilty face to the next. She was wearing a flowered apron with a wand sticking out of the pocket.

      “So,” she said.

      “Morning, Mum,” said George, in what he clearly thought was a jaunty, winning voice.

      “Have you any idea how worried I’ve been?” said Mrs. Weasley in a deadly whisper.

      “Sorry, Mum, but see, we had to —”

      All three of Mrs. Weasley’s sons were taller than she was, but they cowered as her rage broke over them.

      “Beds empty! No note! Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care? — never, as long as I’ve lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —”

      “Perfect Percy,” muttered Fred.

      “YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY’S BOOK!” yelled Mrs. Weasley, prodding a finger in Fred’s chest. “You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have lost your father his job —”

      It seemed to go on for hours. Mrs. Weasley had shouted herself hoarse before she turned on Harry, who backed away.

      “I’m very pleased to see you, Harry, dear,” she said. “Come in and have some breakfast.”

      She turned and walked back into the house and Harry, after a nervous glance at Ron, who nodded encouragingly, followed her.

      The kitchen was small and rather cramped. There was a scrubbed wooden table and chairs in the middle, and Harry sat down on the edge of his seat, looking around. He had never been in a wizard house before.

      The clock on the wall opposite him had only one hand and no numbers at all. Written around the edge were things like Time to make tea, Time to feed the chickens, and You’re late. Books were stacked three deep on the mantelpiece, books with titles like Charm Your Own Cheese, Enchantment in Baking, and One Minute Feasts — It’s Magic! And unless Harry’s ears were deceiving him, the old radio next to the sink had just announced that coming up was “Witching Hour, with the popular singing sorceress, Celestina Warbeck.”

      Mrs. Weasley was clattering around, cooking breakfast a little haphazardly, throwing dirty looks at her sons as she threw sausages into the frying pan. Every now and then she muttered things like “don’t know what you were thinking of,” and “never would have believed it.”

      “I don’t blame you, dear,” she assured Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his plate. “Arthur and I have been worried about you, too. Just last night we were saying we’d come and get you ourselves if you hadn’t written back to Ron by Friday. But really,” (she was now adding three fried eggs to his plate) “flying an illegal car halfway across the country — anyone could have seen you —”

      She flicked her wand casually at the dishes in the sink, which began to clean themselves, clinking gently in the background.

      “It was cloudy, Mum!” said Fred.

      “You keep your mouth closed while you’re eating!” Mrs. Weasley snapped.

      “They were starving him, Mum!” said George.

      “And you!” said Mrs. Weasley, but it was with a slightly softened expression that she started cutting Harry bread and buttering it for him.

      At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, redheaded figure in a long nightdress, who appeared in the kitchen, gave a small squeal, and ran out again.

      “Ginny,” said Ron in an undertone to Harry. “My sister. She’s been talking about you all summer.”

      “Yeah, she’ll be wanting your autograph, Harry,” Fred said with a grin, but he caught his mother’s eye and bent his face over his plate without another word. Nothing more was said until all four plates were clean, which took a surprisingly short time.

      “Blimey, I’m tired,” yawned Fred, setting down his knife and fork at last. “I think I’ll go to bed and —”

      “You will not,” snapped Mrs. Weasley. “It’s your own fault you’ve been up all night. You’re going to de-gnome the garden for me; they’re getting completely out of hand again —”

      “Oh, Mum —”

      “And you two,” she said, glaring at Ron and Fred. “You can go up to bed, dear,” she added to Harry. “You didn’t ask them to fly that wretched car —”

      But Harry, who felt wide awake, said quickly, “I’ll help Ron. I’ve never seen a de-gnoming —”

      “That’s very sweet of you, dear, but it’s dull work,” said Mrs. Weasley. “Now, let’s see what Lockhart’s got to say on the subject —”

      And she pulled a heavy book from the stack on the mantelpiece. George groaned.

      “Mum, we know how to de-gnome a garden —”

      Harry looked at the cover of Mrs. Weasley’s book. Written across it in fancy gold letters were the words Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Household Pests. There was a big photograph on the front of a very good-looking wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. As always in the wizarding world, the photograph was moving; the wizard, who Harry supposed was Gilderoy Lockhart, kept winking cheekily up at them all. Mrs. Weasley beamed down at him.

      “Oh, he is marvelous,” she said. “He knows his household pests, all right, it’s a wonderful book.…”

      “Mum fancies him,” said Fred, in a very audible whisper.

      “Don’t be so ridiculous, Fred,” said Mrs. Weasley, her cheeks rather pink. “All right, if you think you know better than Lockhart, you can go and get on with it, and woe betide you if there’s a single gnome in that garden when I come out to inspect it.”

      Yawning and grumbling, the Weasleys slouched outside with Harry behind them. The garden was large, and in Harry’s eyes, exactly what a garden should be. The Dursleys wouldn’t have liked it — there were plenty of weeds, and the grass needed cutting — but there were gnarled trees all around the walls, plants Harry had never seen spilling from every flower bed, and a big green pond full of frogs.

      “Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know,” Harry told Ron they crossed the lawn.

      “Yeah, I’ve seen those things they think are gnomes,” said Ron, bent double with his head in a peony bush, “like fat little Santa Clauses with fishing rods.…”

      There was a violent scuffling noise, the peony bush shuddered, and Ron straightened up. “This is a gnome,” he said grimly.

      “Gerroff me! Gerroff me!” squealed the gnome.

      It was certainly nothing like Santa Claus. It was small and leathery looking, with a large, knobby, bald head exactly like a potato. Ron held it at arm’s length as it kicked out at him with its horny little feet; he grasped it around the ankles and turned it upside down.

      “This is what you have to do,” he said. He raised the gnome above his head (“Gerroff me!”) and started to swing it in great circles like a lasso. Seeing the shocked look on Harry’s face, Ron added, “It doesn’t hurt them —you’ve just got to make them really dizzy so they can’t find their way back to the gnome holes.”

      He let go of the gnome’s ankles: It flew twenty feet into the air and landed with a thud in the field over the hedge.

      “Pitiful,” said Fred. “I bet I can get mine beyond that stump.”

      Harry learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one he caught over the hedge, but the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into Harry’s finger and he had a hard job shaking it off — until —

      “Wow, Harry — that must’ve been fifty feet.…”

      The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.

      “See, they’re not too bright,” said George, seizing five or six gnomes at once. “The moment they know the de-gnoming’s going on they storm up to have a look. You’d think they’d have learned by now just to stay put.”

      Soon, the crowd of gnomes in the field started walking away in a straggling line, their little shoulders hunched.

      “They’ll be back,” said Ron as they watched the gnomes disappear into the hedge on the other side of the field. “They love it here.…Dad’s too soft with them; he thinks they’re funny.…”

      Just then, the front door slammed.

      “He’s back!” said George. “Dad’s home!”

      They hurried through the garden and back into the house.

      Mr. Weasley was slumped in a kitchen chair with his glasses  off and his eyes closed. He was a thin man, going bald, but the little hair he had was as red as any of his children’s. He was wearing long green robes, which were dusty and travel-worn.

      “What a night,” he mumbled, groping for the teapot as they all sat down around him. “Nine raids. Nine! And old Mundungus Fletcher tried to put a hex on me when I had my back turned.…”

      Mr. Weasley took a long gulp of tea and sighed.

      “Find anything, Dad?” said Fred eagerly.

      “All I got were a few shrinking door keys and a biting kettle,” yawned Mr. Weasley. “There was some pretty nasty stuff that wasn’t my department, though. Mortlake was taken away for questioning about some extremely odd ferrets, but that’s the Committee on Experimental Charms, thank goodness.…”

      “Why would anyone bother making door keys shrink?” said George.

      “Just Muggle-baiting,” sighed Mr. Weasley. “Sell them a key that keeps shrinking to nothing so they can never find it when they need it.…Of course, it’s very hard to convict anyone because no Muggle would admit their key keeps shrinking — they’ll insist they just keep losing it. Bless them, they’ll go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it’s staring them in the face.…But the things our lot have taken to enchanting, you wouldn’t believe —”