Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets By J. K. Rowling chapter one the Worst Birthday

Enchantment in Baking, and One Minute Feasts — It’s Magic! And unless Harry’s ears were 
deceiving him, 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 around, cooking breakfast a little haphazardly, throwing dirty looks 
at her sons as she threw sausages into the frying pan. Every now and then she muttered things 
like “don’t know what you were thinking of,” and “never would have believed it.” 

---

“I don’t blame you, dear,” she assured Harry, tipping eight or nine sausages onto his 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!” said Fred. 
“You keep your mouth closed while you’re eating!” Mrs. Weasley snapped. 
“They were starving him, Mum!” said George. 
“And you!” said Mrs. Weasley, but it was with a slightly softened expression that she started 
cutting Harry bread and buttering it for him. 
At that moment there was a diversion in the form of a small, redheaded 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 Harry. “My sister. She’s been talking about you all 
summer.” 
“Yeah, she’ll be wanting your autograph, Harry,” 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 Fred. “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 —” 
“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 mantelpiece. 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 marvelous,” 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 flower bed, and a big 
green pond full of frogs. 
“Muggles have garden gnomes, too, you know,” Harry told Ron they crossed the lawn. 
“Yeah, I’ve seen those things they think are gnomes,” said 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 Harry’s face, Ron 
added, “It doesn’t hurt them —you’ve just got to make them really dizzy so they can’t find their 
way back to the gnome holes.” 
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.” 

---

Harry learned quickly not to feel too sorry for the gnomes. He decided just to drop the first one 
he caught over the hedge, but the gnome, sensing weakness, sank its razor-sharp teeth into 
Harry’s finger and he had a hard job shaking it off — until — 
“Wow, Harry — that must’ve been fifty feet…” 
The air was soon thick with flying gnomes. 
“See, they’re not too bright,” said George, 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 Ron 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 George. “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, going bald, but the little hair he had 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 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