Chapter 10-Bewitched Gnomes
Enjore started laughing immediately. "YOU'RE the Ravenclaw Hellons?! Oh, that's just too perfect! Rush, now that I think about, I think I would like to join the brotherhood!"
Rush scowled. "Please tell me you're joking," he said, disappointment creeping into his voice as Enjore tried to breathe while howling.
The blue figures shook their head and slowly began to turn a brownish color which must've been how they naturally looked. Both of them stared at each other in awe. Then, Fifer spoke. "Long ago, the Bewitched Gnomes of Hogwarts used to simply be the Gnomes of Alden." A shock drove up Jamie's spine as she recognized the name. "We lived a simple life on a manor, below the gardens. Each day we would get up and pick the food we needed. We were considered pests, though, and driven out monthly. No matter, we would always return to our home and wait for a the same eventual process." Jamie remembered going through the garden and looking for holes that led to an elaborate tunnel system below the ground. She now realized that those tunnels must've belonged to the Gnomes.
"One day, everything changed," Fifer continued. "A small girl with blonde hair would often do the weeding and pushed us out each month. One day, she came along with one of your wands, calling it a stick of magic. She began making sparks with it, waving the thing in the air. Gnomes are naturally curious, so we all came above ground to see what was going on. I suppose she had planned this because the tiny girl used it to put a form of enchantment on us I'd never recognized. She looked to only be a little older than you lot. I doubt she knew what she was doing. A few minutes after we were hit, a man wearing long black robes and a pointed cap took her away from the garden."
"It must've been a ministry employee," Frances reasoned. "If she was older than us, then she most certainly wasn't allowed to use magic outside school."
"But, you see, I've become familiar with your ways after living here for so long and I know you all stay here for ten months out of the year. She was there each and every day."
"That doesn't make sense," Enjore interrupted. "She could only use that wand if she was a witch and, unless she wasn't allowed to go to school at Hogwarts, she should've been here."
He nodded. "My reasoning exactly. At the time, we were shocked by the enchantment. Each and every one of us was banished from the yard with no hope of returning to our home. We needed to find a wizard home, for we can only live amongst magic, so we traveled for miles until we found a wizard home right down the road. For a while, we were content with living there until we found that we could use magic! Simple magic, of course. Nothing as advanced as what witches and wizard use, but we found that the more wizards that were in the house at one time, the stronger our magic became."
"You were feeding off their magic?" Enjore questioned.
"I'm not so sure I would say 'feeding off of it.' We had our own magic, it was just that the presence of wizards made it strong enough for us to use in ways we had never imagined possible!"
"Hey, I've got Gnomes living at my house," Roscoe said. "And none of them seem to have a quarter of your intelligence."
The gnome nodded. "Indeed. That was an additional result of the enchantment. The longer we used our enhanced powers, the more we were able to think clearly, pick up the human language, and figure out spells of our own. We all felt as if we had been transformed from barbarians into scholars!
"We learned quite a bit from this wizarding family. No longer were we ignorant, but paid attention to each thing they said, discovering that we could turn invisible and eavesdrop on their conversations. The wizarding world seemed intriguing, indeed, but the most interesting was the fact that their oldest child, a female, was to be attending Hogwarts. The more we heard about this place, the more it seemed like a paradise. A school full of hundreds of witches and wizards to enhance our power while we sat in classes and listened to all the information these professors gave away for free! We deducted a plan which was for each of us to hide in various places in the car, luggage, and the wizards' clothing while we rode to London and found our way onto the train at King's Cross. Even on the train, we felt our powers increasing exponentially. Oh, how exciting it was! Finally, we made our way into Hogwarts and found that we were permanently invisible!"
"The original founders put countless spells on this place." Enjore disclosed. "One of them could've reacted with the enchantment that girl put on you, making you permanently invisible."
"And trapped as well. We found that we could not leave the premises. Nonetheless, this did not bother us. Gnomes prefer to stay in a singular home for much of their lives. Moving twice was such a steep adventure for some that many Gnomes lost their lives from the shock."
"Poor Errol," Piper said, staring at the floor sadly.
"Yes. As well as magic and intelligence, we found a new emotion from the enchantment: love. We discovered that when other gnomes died, we became sorrowful as if a piece of us had been taken. We had never before experienced such a strong emotion as gnomes are used to living simple lives. Still, we desire to keep this emotion and will teach it to our children for generations to come!" Jamie thought about how only her mother had ever shown her love, but wondered if she loved her brothers. Did she? She still wasn't completely sure what love was and wanted desperately to find out.
"How long ago did you come to Hogwarts?" Enjore inquired.
"Alas, since Septemper, it has been five years."
"That's around the time the Ravenclaw Hellions appeared," Francis estimated.
"No wonder no one's ever been able to figure out who they are or catch them in the act," Rush said, amazed. "They're invisible and not even students!"
Fifer nodded.
"Wait," Enjore said. "We understand how you got here and operate, but why do you cause mischief?"
"And why have you been switching things in the school for the past month?" Francis added.
Roscoe jumped in, "And why are all of your pranks limited to the Ravenclaws?"
Fifer looked to Piper uneasily. "When September came and all of the students arrived, one of our gnome brethren wandered off while the students came. When he returned, we found that he was slowly returning to his original gnome state and we could finally see what we were once like. He was angry and gruff, insulting everyone around him until he could no longer speak except in grunts. His magic became limited and eventually returned to an Alden Gnome after only a day. With this new emotion, everyone was concerned. We found that whoever touched him returned to normal as well. He was banned from the garden, but we found that it was difficult to tell which gnomes had it in the starting stages. Before long, over half of the Hogwarts Gnomes had become Alden Gnomes. Over the years, our numbers had increased to a whopping seventy-five gnomes. Only thirty-nine of us remain bewitched."
"That sill doesn't explain why you've been switching everything," Frances pressed.
"We knew that our only hope was to ask the wizards of the school for assistance, but many of us were at an impasse. Some thought that we would be thrown out of our home at the school like we had so many times before at Alden Manor. We were afraid they would not help us, but I convinced our brethren that we, at least, needed to try."
"So, why didn't you just talk to us?"
"Alas, we couldn't! Our permanent invisibility spell and small voices made it nearly impossible to communicate with the school's professors. We had resolved to talk to the headmaster, but found his office locked and the other teachers constantly too preoccupied to pay us any mind. Finally, we resolved that we needed to get the attention of someone somehow and began using the magic we were best at: switching objects. Piper, of course, preformed that excellent display with the broomsticks over three weeks ago, for she is the only one of our kind skilled enough with telepathy to do so."
Piper sighed, "It drained so much energy from me that I just woke this morning from a deep sleep."
"Why didn't you just write us a message?"
"Alas, we don't know how," he said, ashamed. "The classes here do not teach how to communicate through writing and, therefore, we have not been able to learn. It seems to be a natural-born talent for humans."
"So, this entire time, you've just been trying to get our attention?"
Fifer nodded. "Each time we switched something, a gnome was always close at hand, attempting communication, but our voices are so small in your crowded hallways, only when we switched something while a person was alone would we be able to generate a reaction."
Tyler suddenly jumped up pointing to himself. "Do you mind switching their voices back?" Enjore asked kindly.
"My dear, it would be my pleasure. Piper?"
"Ready." The two clapped their hands simultaneously and Jamie choked when she tried to speak. Her voice was gone again!
"You're the ones I heard w-w-when I w-went to b-b-bed at night," Tyler stuttered.
The gnome nodded his head. "We had no idea what a nargle was, so we assumed that it was what students of Hogwarts called gnomes. Each time we were around you when you tried convincing them we were here, our hopes were diminished as no one believed you. We also were tracking the one you call Jamie." Jamie's eyes widened as Fifer turned to her. They had been watching her? "You see, we observed you looking through the book of Hogwarts and thought you might be looking for a suitable location for where we lived. This gave us the idea that you, also, had heard our cries, but could not communicate because of your lack of voice. When a colleague of ours was about to speak with the one you call Tyler on the roof today, he noted you entering and decided to take the opportunity to switch Tyler's stuttering voice with Jamie's lack of one to see if Jamie would tell people that Tyler was, indeed, correct about the nargles. We find your methods unusual, but effective, especially since we are now visible."
"Only under the shield," Billie said. "It was my idea. My parents created this spell, you know. It traps things and returns whatever may be hiding to its original state. It was originally made for catching werewolves and animaguses, but I figured it would work on you two."
"It was an ingenious assumption to which we gnomes applaud."
Billie smiled and said sarcastically, "You know, I'm just an average Ravenclaw with mad deciphering abilities. Nothing to applaud, really." The group of first years rolled their eyes.
Francis ran to fetch the headmaster, seeing as the rest of the group could not get past the shield to access the exit, and returned with the muggle studies teacher, Vannozza, Chase Douglas, and Richard Darby. The Fifer repeated his story. All the while, Francis, Billie, Roscoe, Rush, and Enjore added things in like "And that's how they got here!" or "It was Piper who did the broom bit." They left out the part about the gnomes being the Ravenclaw Hellions. Enjore had advised them it would only put them on thin ice with the headmaster to know all of the mischief they had caused over the years through practicing their spells on Ravenclaws and Fifer promised that, at a later date, it would all be explained. The headmaster, Professor Darby, was instructed by Professor Douglas that it might be wise to trust their newest friends considering they had done no real damage in switching things.
Sure enough, the Bewitched Gnomes of Hogwarts's story checked out. By the greenhouses lived the Bewitched Gnomes which had set up a complex system of gardening that had baffled the Herbology professor for the past five years while the regular gnomes had been infesting the flower garden of Professor Townsend down by the hut near the Forbidden Forest. After capturing all of the plagued gnomes, they were died a temporary bright green color, so they would be able to be seen while Irwin and Professor Young, the Transfiguration professor, figured out what had happened.
Under the Bewitched Gnomes' requests, a few of them were taken to figure out what spell was on Hogwarts that kept them from turning back to normal, because, though being invisible was an advantage, it was also a disadvantage because they could not see one another. It was eventually found by Professor Wilcox that the gnomes had not reacted with a school enchantment after all, but had simply started eating a food unknown to them when they entered Hogwarts: mandrake root. Since the gnomes burrowed underground to make their homes, they immediately started eating these roots upon arrival at the school five years ago. Taken out of their diets, not only could the gnomes be seen on command, but they could leave the gates of Hogwarts. Not that any of them wanted to. They had finally found a place to call home which they were not thrown out of each month.
The Bewitched Gnomes were kindly asked to stay outside the school unless otherwise instructed and they immediately complied for many of them had nearly been crushed over the past month, when they were invisible, from students charging down the hall. In all, life improved greatly for the gnomes although many of them disliked that they could no long eat mandrake root which they all regarded as highly delicious.
Jamie was assigned the job of taking Fifer and Piper back to their greenhouse garden while the others caught the plagued gnomes. Rings were put around their wrists so Jamie could tell where they were and the force field was taken down, leaving two floating rings. When Jamie was sure the others had gone, Jamie wrote that she had something to ask them before their departure. "My dear …we can't read," Fifer said awkwardly. That was right! Jamie had completely forgotten! How would she communicate if not through her board? They certainly didn't know SEE.
"It is alright, Dear," Piper said. "In addition to telepathy, if I reach out, I can sense what you wish to say. The action simply tires me, so I do not usually conduct it. In your case, I will make an exception. Simply think what you may."
Jamie nodded, utterly amazed. She thought as if she were saying a spell. How many years ago were you bewitched?
Piper looked woozy. "A worthy question," she squeaked. "We came to Hogwarts nine years ago, but stayed at the previous wizarding home for four years, meaning that we were bewitched roughly nine years ago." Jamie sighed. Nine years ago, Ladie would have been twelve.