Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry

Defence Against The Dark Arts: Week 1

Professor L. Dumbledore
LadybirdCookie
(substitute teacher)

A gnome, or garden gnome, is a magical creature commonly known to infest the gardens of wizarding households. The correct taxonomical name for gnomes is, purportedly, gernumbli gardensi or sometimes referred to as gernumblies. They are found throughout Europe and North America. A gnome in the Muggle world is an inanimate statue that looks like a small Father Christmas.

Gnomes can reach an approximate size of one foot, are usually brown in color and have disproportionately large heads, making them look like potatoes with legs. Their feet are hard and bony, and they do not look anything like the garden gnomes of Muggles.

Gnomes live in burrows underground, known as gnomeholes, where they dig up and eat the roots of plants, creating little heaps of earth around gardens a lot like moles (and as such causing considerable damage to them). Gnomes also seem to like worms and Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans. The natural predator of the gnome is the Jarvey.

I have released a gnome for each of you in the Hogwarts grounds inside an invisible barrier charm so they don't escape into the castle and the Forbidden Forest. Your job is to find them and find them and bring them to me (caged) so I can lift the charm and you must get rid of them by throwing them into the Forbidden Forest.

In other words, write a short story (min. 200 words) about you finding the gnome and getting rid of it.

Class dismissed.