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, 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 –'

'I'll help too, just let me go get changed!" Amelia bolted up the stairs. 

'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 mantel- piece. 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 marvellous,' 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 flowerbed and a big green pond full of frogs.

Amelia ran out of the house in a purple t-shirt and overalls with rainboots on, her already short hair pinned behind her ear with a pink hairclip. 

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