BECOMING PRONGSLET ⟶ Harry Potter

Chapter Four

Milo stood in the Weasley garden as the rest of the group arrived to start de-gnoming the overgrown garden. There were plenty of weeds, the grass reached up to Milo's waist, plenty of wild plants growing happily around the gnarled roots of the surrounded trees. And frogs to be heard from the green pond. Already Milo could hear the gnomes scurrying about and attempting to hide so they wouldn't be captured. Harry reached his side, trying to take in the flourishing green scenery before he glanced up at his older brother. He didn't know why he hadn't noticed before but now he did, Milo was now wearing glasses. 

"Did you recently get glasses?" He asked with a slightly amused tone. Even Harry noticed the resemblance that Milo now bore to their late father, similar to him. The glasses definitely helped quite a bit. 

"Yes," Milo sighed lightly," unfortunately, Mum caught me squinting and brought me in, only a short while ago too. Seems as though it runs in the family, doesn't it?"

"You got square ones too," Harry said, " just like the ones he had. I saw it in some of the pictures that Hagrid gave me."

Milo turned to him curiously with a question popping into his mind. "Hagrid? He gave you photos of them?"

Harry nodded his head. "Said he contacted some old friends of theirs asking for photos and they sent the ones they had in."

It was quiet for a moment, Milo wasn't upset at all at the idea of Harry having photos of their parents, in fact, he was glad that Harry had them. However, his mind was stuck on the idea of Hagrid getting into contact with one of the old family friends. Who was it and where were they? His mind automatically went to one of the uncles, Remus, his whereabouts had been unknown for quite some time, did they suddenly change? Milo wanted to talk to him, he wanted to know why the man had removed from the picture, knowing that he and Harry were out there.

"Did Hagrid mention any names?" Milo asked.

"No, why-" Before Harry could figure out his brother's train of thought, the twins and Ron were getting underway as they had already found a couple of the gnomes trying to run off. It certainly wasn't like garden gnomes like the ones found in muggle garden as statues as Harry looked at the ugly and bizarre creature. 

"Adorable, aren't they?" Milo said as he lifted one up into his hands. That wasn't exactly the word that Harry was looking for when it came to describing them and he had to wonder if Milo's glasses were actually helping the boy to see. It looked as though the gnomes were made of leather, with heads made of potatoes. It had horny little feet that Ron avoided as he grabbed another by the ankles and held it upside down.

Milo looked positively pained as Ron gave the demonstration to get the gnomes from finding their way back to their gnomeholes. He began spinning the gnomes and then at one point, let it go so that it went sailing over twenty feet into the air and then landed with a good thud over the hedge. The gnome in his hands had suddenly stopped fighting and squirming about until he heard the thud and then went into a full panic. 

"Gerroff me! Gerroff me!" It squealed loudly trying to escape as Fred grabbed another one. 

"Pitiful," he called to Ron, "I bet I can get mine beyond that stump."

Milo couldn't bring himself to throw the little creature in his hands and the gnome made note of it and just kept watching the boy. The others were quick to grab plenty of gnomes and began to toss them over the hedge. Harry had gone for his first one, only to have the gnome bite down on his finger. He swung his arm about trying to get the gnome to let go and when it finally couldn't bite down anymore from the sheer force, it was sailing through the air about fifty feet by Fred's judgement. 

With the flood of gnomes being thrown out of the garden, plenty of others took the hint and started leaving on their own.

"You might to go with them," Milo whispered to the gnome in his hold, " or you'll risk the idea of being thrown too and I don't think you want that."