"Ah," breathed Fred, looking anywhere but his mother.

"Oh, dear," mumbled George, keeping his gaze cast down.

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 voice.

"Have you any idea how worried I've been?!" cried Mrs. Weasley in a hushed 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 George darkly.

"YOU COULD DO WITH TAKING A LEAF OUT OF PERCY'S BOOK!" yelled Mrs. Weasley, prodding a finger in her son'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 the sisters, who backed away instinctively.

"I'm very pleased to see you, dears," she said kindly. "Come in and have some breakfast."

She turned and walked back into the house with a nervous glance backward, they followed quietly

The kitchen was small and rather cramped. There was a scrubbed wooden table and chairs in the middle, and Lyla sat down on the edge of her seat, gazing around in awe. She 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 her ears were deceiving her, 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 very loudly, cooking breakfast a little haphazardly, throwing dirty looks at her sons as she threw sausages into the frying pan. Every now and then she would mutter things like "don't know what you were thinking of," and "never would have believed it."

"I don't blame you, dears," she assured Lyla and Arabella, tipping eight or nine sausages onto their 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!" cried Fred exasperatedly.

"You keep your mouth closed while you're eating!" Mrs. Weasley snapped.

"They were starving them, Mum!" said George.

"And you!" said Mrs. Weasley, but it was with a slightly softened expression that she started cutting Arabella's bread and buttering it for her. At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, gingery 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 Lyla with a grin. "Our sister. She's been talking about you two all summer."

"Yeah, she'll be wanting your autographs," 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 George. "You can go up to bed, dears," she added to the sisters. "You didn't ask them to fly that wretched car—"

But both felt very energetic.

"We'd love to help," said Arabella with a sweet smile, "I've never seen a de-gnoming—"

"That's very kind of you, darling, but it's very 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—"

Arabella gazed 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 handsome wizard with wavy blond hair and bright blue eyes. As always in the Wizarding world, the photograph was moving; the wizard, who Lyla supposed was Gilderoy Lockhart, kept winking cheekily up at them all. Mrs. Weasley beamed down at him.

"Oh, he is marvelous," she said, catching Arabella's gaze. "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. There better not be a single gnome when I come to inspect."

Yawning and grumbling, the Weasleys slouched outside followed by the Lyla and Arabella, who were eager to catch sight of the creatures. The garden was large, and in Arabella's eyes, exactly what a garden should be, gnarled trees all around the walls, plants she didn't recognize spilling from every flower bed, and a big green pond full of frogs.

"Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know," Lyla told Ron as they crossed the lawn.

"Yeah, I've seen those things they think are gnomes," laughed 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 Lyla's face, quickly Ron added, "It doesn't hurt them— you've just gotta make them really dizzy so they can't find their way back to the gnomeholes."

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."

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

"Wow, Lyla— that must've been fifty feet…" said George with a grin

The air was soon thick with flying gnomes.

"See, they're not too bright," said Fred, 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 George 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 Ron. "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, with a small bald patch on the back of his head, but the hair he did have 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 in 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—"

"LIKE CARS, FOR INSTANCE?"

Mrs. Weasley had appeared, holding a long poker like a sword. Mr. Weasley's eyes jerked open. He stared guiltily at his wife.

"C-cars, Molly, dear?"

"Yes, Arthur, cars," said Mrs. Weasley, her eyes flashing. "Imagine a wizard buying a rusty old car and telling his wife all he wanted to do with it was take it apart to see how it worked, while really he was enchanting it to make it fly."

Mr. Weasley blinked innocently.

"Well, dear, I think you'll find that he would be quite within the law to do that, even if— um— he maybe would have done better to, um, tell his wife the truth… There's a loophole in the law, you'll find… As long as he wasn't intending to fly the car, the fact that the car could fly wouldn't—"

"Arthur Weasley, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" shouted Mrs. Weasley. "Just so you could carry on tinkering with all that Muggle rubbish in your shed! And for your information, Arabella and Lyla arrived this morning in the car you weren't intending to fly!"

"Who?" said Mr. Weasley blankly.

He looked around, saw the two new girls, and jumped.

"Good lord, are they really the Potter twins? Very pleased to meet you, Ron's told us so much about—"

"Your sons flew that car to Surrey and back last night!" shouted Mrs. Weasley. "What have you got to say about that, eh?"

"Did you really?" said Mr. Weasley eagerly. "Did it go all right? I— I mean," he faltered as sparks flew from Mrs. Weasley's eyes, "that — that was very wrong, boys — very wrong indeed… "

"Let's leave them to it," Ron muttered to Lyla as his mother swelled like a bullfrog. "Come on, I'll show you to your bedroom…"

They slipped out of the kitchen and down a narrow passageway to an uneven staircase, which wound its way, zigzagging up through the house. On the third landing, a door stood ajar. Arabella just caught sight of a pair of bright brown eyes staring at her before it closed with a snap.

"Ginny," laughed Ron. "You don't know how weird it is for her to be this shy. She never shuts up normally—"

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