The puppet's eyes were meticulously carved—delicate wooden eyelids, eyelash lines, and a pair of round little pupils. When its eyes seemed to move slightly, Harry assumed it was just because he hadn't held it steady, causing the wooden eyes to shift under the force of gravity.
Overall, it was an exceptionally well-crafted puppet. Based on his years of experience living on Privet Drive, he estimated it could easily fetch five hundred pounds in a shop.
Yet here it was, buried in a gnome's burrow.
Harry poked at the puppet's eyes, then turned to Ron and said, "Look! I dug up a puppet from the ground."
Ron was still busy tossing gnomes. He had clearly gotten the hang of it—after fumbling a bit, he managed to grab another gnome from the dirt and, with a strong swing of his arm, sent it flying. Only after that did he turn toward Harry in surprise.
"What? A puppet? What's that?"
"You don't know what a puppet is?"
"It's a Muggle toy, little Ronnie," Fred interjected with a grin. "If you had taken Muggle Studies in third year, you'd know. In the Middle Ages, Muggles used to carve human figures out of wood, often with movable joints, to create the illusion that the puppets could move."
Ron raised an eyebrow at Fred. "So… it's just a wooden doll?"
Ding! Thunk!
"You know what dolls are?" Harry asked in return.
"Yeah, Dad got one for Ginny before. He even enchanted it to move, and it would sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star all day long. She loved it when she was little."
"I can sing too."
A small, thin voice suddenly chimed in.
For a moment, the four of them froze, looking at one another in confusion, trying to figure out who had just spoken. But all of their mouths were firmly shut.
Two or three seconds later, Fred was the first to react—his eyes shifted to the wooden puppet in Harry's hands.
The puppet no longer looked lifeless as it had before.
Under Fred's gaze, its head moved vividly. First, it twitched its pointed wooden nose, then rolled its carved wooden eyes before wiggling its limbs in an attempt to stand up in Harry's palm. Its expression, too, was lively and dynamic.
Evidently, that tiny voice had come from its mouth.
"It's alive?" Harry quickly spread out his hand to let the little puppet move freely on his palm.
"Muggle puppets can move?" Ron asked, fascinated.
"Idiot, we're at the professor's house. That means it's not a Muggle puppet," George pointed out.
The puppet wriggled again and finally managed to stand upright on Harry's palm, its tiny wooden legs planted firmly. Then, in a solemn tone, it looked up and declared,
"No, technically speaking, I am not alive."
"I am not a human. I am just a puppet made by my father, Geppetto, so I cannot be considered alive. My brother Pinocchio is the one who is truly alive—because he became human."
"Who's Pinocchio?" Harry asked.
"He was originally a puppet like me, but our father carved him from a special piece of wood, so he could move from the very start. Later, he was rewarded by the Blue Fairy and transformed into a real boy," the puppet explained.
Harry and Ron exchanged glances, intrigued by the story. However, based on their knowledge of A History of Magic, they suspected there was another version of the tale—where the so-called Blue Fairy was actually a wizard who happened to pass by a puppeteer's home one night and casually enchanted a puppet to move.
That so-called "special wood" was probably some kind of alchemical material that had accidentally fallen into Muggle hands.
"Then were you brought to life by the Blue Fairy too?" Fred asked.
"No." The puppet shook its tiny head earnestly. "I was brought to life by a good wizard."
"A good wizard?"
"Yes, the good wizard who lives here," the puppet's small mouth moved as it spoke. "Once, my brother Pinocchio told too many lies and fell ill, so our father traveled far and wide to seek help from the good wizard. The wizard eventually agreed to help him and, before my father left, he brought me to life as well."
"But my father was in such a hurry that he didn't notice I had fallen out of his pocket."
"So I lay in the forest until now."
"Oh… I'm sorry," Harry said awkwardly, scratching his head.
The puppet tilted its head at him. "Why are you sorry?"
"Uh? Oh. I mean… I'm sorry for reminding you of all that. Being left alone in the forest must have been lonely."
"Should I feel lonely?" the puppet asked, standing steadily in Harry's palm, its wooden eyes wide and round. "Just because I lay in the forest for a while? But I've always been lying down ever since I was created. Before, I was on a wooden shelf. Whenever no one talked to me, I would close my eyes and return to the darkness."
Harry suddenly found himself at a loss for words.
"Uh, I mean… you were all alone…"
He stammered for a while but couldn't figure out how to respond. The little puppet, however, simply stood in his palm, looking up at him with curiosity.
It wore a tattered yellow shirt and red shorts, but throughout their conversation, it had never once attempted to brush off the dust.
It just stood there, its words and demeanor completely different from what Harry had expected. That, more than anything, left him at a loss.
Fred noticed Harry's discomfort.
"Hey, creatures like this are just different from us," Fred said reassuringly. Then, clearing his throat, he asked the puppet,
"Do you like your family?"
He asked this mainly to show Harry that animated objects didn't necessarily think like humans.
"Of course."
The puppet answered without hesitation.
"I love my father and brother, and the good wizard who created me. I want to stay with them forever."
Yet for some reason, after saying this, its already-pointed wooden nose seemed to sharpen just a little. A faint, human-like expression of complexity flickered across its otherwise stiff wooden face.
But the puppet quickly returned to its usual blank look, leaving Harry unsure if he had imagined it.
After dealing with the gnomes, the group began searching for the professor's requested herbs amid the gnome-dug chaos. During this time, George and Fred discovered another use for the puppet—it could recall every herb it had seen and accurately describe their properties.
With its help, they gathered all the necessary ingredients in just ten minutes.
Their pockets were now stuffed with a variety of exotic herbs—some ruby-red rosemary that glowed mysteriously, small chili peppers that burst into blue flames intermittently, and ghostly leaves that turned semi-transparent at times.
The last one, they nearly missed. It was the puppet who pointed it out—an entire bush of near-invisible foliage.
In just a few minutes, Fred and George had completely fallen in love with the puppet.
"...We have to take it back with us," Fred said as they headed toward the Chicken-Legged Hut. "Think about it—it could help us ace our Herbology and Potions exams! If we let it read our textbooks, it could memorize everything, and we'd never have to flip through notes again."
"You're right, my dear brother! And it could even help with our pranks—it'd spot any flaws in our plans!" George added excitedly.
The puppet, now perched in Fred's hands, spoke in its tiny voice once more: "I'm happy that you like me."
That only made Fred and George more eager to keep it.
But Harry looked slightly uneasy. He whispered to them, "But isn't it the professor's? Wouldn't taking it be wrong?"
"Wrong? Not at all, Harry," Fred replied, pausing to address him.
"You heard the puppet—it doesn't belong to the professor. Its creator lost it, and since they never came back for it, it means they don't care. If they had, the professor could have just used a Summoning Charm to return it long ago."
"But we care, so it'll have a great life at Hogwarts."
Fred's reasoning convinced Harry. After thinking for a moment, he agreed that keeping the puppet probably wasn't an issue—it had been abandoned in the forest, and it was the professor who had brought it to life, so there shouldn't be a problem.
With that, he even began to look forward to using the puppet for homework.
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