Luna Lovegood (now Luna Longbottom, she thought) sat at her kitchen table eating a box of Chocolate Frogs she had received as a wedding present. She bit the heads off a pair to stop them escaping then looked at the cards hastily dropped on the table while capturing the frogs. Lord Voldemort. A new addition to the Chocolate Frog Card family, he was sulking in the shadows as though the mini-Voldemort knew his life-size counterpart had been defeated. She glanced at the card next to his. Harry Potter. Hmm. He had his own Chocolate Frog Card now. He looked so happy in the picture. Between Harry’s cheerfulness and Voldemort’s bad temper Luna half wondered whether they could read the Daily Prophet. But, no, she decided, it must just be their nature.
Luna looked around at her new kitchen. Nargle-proofed and well-equipped with pots, pans, spatulas, and the like; being married to a successful Auror did have its perks. She sometimes worried Neville might get hurt, but now that Voldemort was gone the job was much less dangerous.
She noted this morning’s Daily Prophet on the counter. It was open to the marriage bulletins. There were so many. The end of the war had brought much joy and now everyone was getting married. Harry himself was marrying Ginny Weasley in a double wedding with Ron and Hermione, proclaimed an article near the top of the page. How adorable, thought Luna. She couldn’t wait.
She picked up Harry’s card, examining his smile. The whole world seemed to be smiling lately. The couples on the page were smiling, Harry’s card was smiling, the world was at peace. Everyone, it seemed, had been smiling since the defeat of Voldemort.
Suddenly Luna heard a tapping on the window. A large owl was perched on the windowsill, holding a letter in it’s beak and impatiently tapping on the glass. She hastily went and retrieved the letter from the owl, which left immediately. Luna skimmed the letter.
Dear Mrs. Longbottom,
We are pleased to inform you… selected… article… wizarding sweets for your magazine... need to collect a few sweets… few factories… scheduled for a tour… Chocolate Frog factory… half-past four…
Luna looked at her watch; it was already four o’clock. By the time she had quickly brushed her hair and changed her robes she had four minutes left. No problem, she thought. She spun on one heel and felt the familiar sucked-through-a-rubber-tube sensation of apparating before she appeared in front of the large factory. Seven angry workers were marching around in front of the building, holding signs and chanting something about unfair pay and working conditions. They were urging other workers to join, and they approached Luna, thinking she was a new employee.
“Working here is awful! Are you a new employee? Join our strike!” they yelled at her.
Just then Luna was rescued by a large man in plum-coloured robes who asked her into the factory. He was mobbed by the workers immediately, but managed to get inside without much injury.
“Stupid workers, on strike again. This is the second time this week. I should really just replace them.” The man was quiet for a moment, thinking.
“Excuse me sir, but I don’t believe I know you,” said Luna.
“Oh, I’m sorry, completely forgot. I’m Theodore Nott, owner of the Chocolate Frog factory.” The man held out his hand to shake.
“Nott… hmm… I’ve heard that name before…. Well, I’m Luna Longbottom,” said Luna shaking his hand.
“Hello Luna. I’m sorry you came during one of our strikes. That staff is getting quite troublesome. In fact, I think I’ll just fire them all… What are you doing?” he asked Luna suddenly, for she had taken a small flannel out of her pocket and was carefully scrubbing her hand.
“I’m checking to make sure I haven’t picked up any Bumbleschnozz infections from you.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I’m going to go do a bit of firing.”
“All right then. Have fun.”
Mr. Nott marched out the door and Luna could hear him yelling. It sounded as though he had fired all of his employees.
“Now that you’ve fired everyone, how’re you going to make any chocolate?” asked Luna.
“I’ve got that covered. Gnomes!” said Mr. Nott loudly. A small army of gnomes came marching in. “These are my new workers. I have some footstools and phone books so they can see over the equipment and they should make fine workers.”
“Are you sure about that? It seems awfully risky to me. They could wreck your factory.”
“They won’t. They’re good little workers.”
Ten minutes later the factory was a mess, gnomes running amok everywhere, trying to burrow in the chocolate vats, they even tied Luna and Nott to poles.
Luna woke in a dark room, surrounded by gnomes. Apparently, the gnomes had taken her to their home (Den? she thought). There was quite a bit of talking in Gnomish that Luna couldn’t understand. Then the gnomes left all at once.
When Luna’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, she noticed two round doors the gnomes must have disappeared through. Just then Luna jumped, she had heard a noise. There seemed to be a muffled noise coming from somewhere nearby. She listened carefully. It seemed to be coming from… her pocket? Luna reached into her pocket, withdrawing a few spare Knuts, her anti-Bumbleschnozz flannel, an old lollipop, and the Harry’s Chocolate Frog Card. The mini-Harry in the card seemed to trying to talk to her.
“Luna! Luna!” came Harry’s voice, tiny and shrill.
“I didn’t know Chocolate Frog Cards could talk,” said Luna.
“Normally they can’t. Real-Me just had Neville give this card, which is really a small portrait stuck over the Frog Card, to you, in case he and needed to communicate. Right now my real self is giving me the message to relay to you. One moment.” Little Harry darted out of the portrait, presumably to the portrait Harry had, presumably to get more of the message. He soon came back. “Okay, Real-Me says that you need to find this one thing, I can’t really pronounce it, the chocolatewackosockamajigger. Um, yeah.”
“Okay,” said Luna. “Goodbye, mini-Harry!”
“Bye.”
Now, Luna thought to herself. Whatever I need must be through one of these doors. But which one?
“There’s only one logical, scientific way to decide this,” she thought aloud. “Eenie, meenie, miney moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go, my mother said to pick the very best one and you are it…” Luna ended up pointing to the door on her left, so she opened it up and stepped through. Mere seconds after she shut the door, the gnomes came back bearing a large tray of delectable food, plus several offerings of gnome-made jewelry, bits of roots and rocks tied together, only to realize that their queen had been snatched from their clutches. They were all very sad, but gnomes are not ones to let a good feast go to waste, so they just ate it as a mourning feast instead of a celebration feast.
Luna was in a giant chamber filled with small, brightly-colored objects. Nargle eggs? she thought. But then she realized the truth. They were jelly beans, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, to be precise. Then, the wave of fragrance hit her, like a semi hitting a brick wall. The intoxicating aroma of sugary jelly beans filled the room, and there was a faint sound of singing in the air.
A single voice rose above the rest for a solo:
“Oh, I’m jellybean-miner and I’m okay, I sleep all night and I work all day.”
Then dozens more voices joined in for a chorus:
“He’s a jellybean-miner and he’s okay, he sleeps all night and he works all day,” they echoed.
“I dig up beans, I eat my lunch, I go to the lavatory, on Wednesdays I go shopping and have buttered scones for tea.” After each verse the other voices would echo the first then sing the chorus. Luna stood there, half-listening and half daydreaming.
“I dig up beans, I skip and jump, I like to pick wild flowers, I put on my old work boots and I drive around in cars.”
“I dig up beans, I wear old boots, overalls and a hat, my middle name is Matthew, I shorten it to Matt.”
“I dig up beans, I sing this song, I have some yellow socks, I also have a pet rock, I keep him in a box.”
“I dig up beans, I feed my rock, His name is Mister Fred, he lives inside a shoebox with a sandwich for a bed.”
Luna was starting to get bored of the song when suddenly the singing stopped. Apparently the song was over. That was good, five verses was about all she could stand. She walked forward, gazing at wonder at the huge piles of candy. Then a bean fell on her head. She looked up and realised that the pile nearest to her was shaking dangerously. There was also a faint sound…laughter?
Several gnomes stepped out of the mound through a small door she hadn’t noticed before (don’t ask me how they managed to fit a door into a mountain of candy), and threw a few apple cores and banana peels in to a small rubbish bin. It must be the lunch hall, she realized. Rather late to have lunch, but they must have an interesting schedule. They must be very jolly to laugh that much, but then, she hadn’t had much experience with gnomes.
In fact, she hadn’t really known gnomes to be intelligent at all, but now here they were, wearing socks and overalls, and eating lunch in mountains of jellybeans.
Luna strolled through across the room to another door she hadn’t yet noticed. She stepped into a large, bustling hallway, full of gnomes whistling and briskly going about their business. She saw another doorway and peeked through it. Fizzing Whizbees? A second door contained Cockroach Clusters, and a third Toothflossing Stringmints. Slowly, Luna came to the realisation that all the Wizarding sweets must be made at this very factory. She saw a large poster at the end of the hallway that appeared to be a floor plan. There were four floors, two hundred rooms on the first floor, one hundred on the second, two hundred ninety-seven on the third, and for some reason, on the fourth floor only three rooms.
As Luna continued walking she passed a large floor-to-ceiling window she saw a courtyard with a large statue of the factory’s owner, Theodore Nott. He was holding a gigantic Chocolate Frog and seemed to be using it to ward off some sort of creature. Luna recognised it at once as a Nargle, and she suddenly understood why she was here. She wasn’t really here to retrieve the chocolatewackosockamajigger. Mr. Nott was obviously planning to use his chocolate to create a gigantic Nargle defense army, and she was obviously sent to help him. She was so happy she began running willy-nilly to find Mr. Nott and somehow knocked over 18 gnomes in the process.
However, after knocking down several dozen more gnomes in her attempt to find Mr. Nott, Luna realized that he was not there and gave up, simply tapping herself on the head with her wand and muttering a spell. She was abruptly assaulted my meringues and laughter. All nine managed to get stuck in her hair. As she was picking them out she examined Theodore Nott’s front room. There were several comfortable chairs and a bowl of plastic fruit, as well as some paintings of socks and overalls. There was, however, no sign of what could have thrown the meringues, unless Mr. Nott’s orange ceiling fan was singularly evil. Mr. Nott certainly has strange taste, she thought. Just then the Mr. Nott in question came into the room in a purple silk dressing gown. He looked quite surprised to see Luna, but Luna was even more surprised by the creature following him.
“A Nargle? How could you, Mr. Nott? All this time I thought you were against Nargles, now you’re helping them?” she said, searching her pockets for some chocolate. She found a bar of Honeyduke’s Best and shoved it at the offending beast, which gobbled it up immediately. She gasped.
“No, Luna, that’s not a Nargle,” said Mr. Nott companionably.
“But… what is it then?”
“This is an Elgran. It looks the same as a Nargle, but is the complete opposite. It loves chocolate, and is very nice and good, and always replaces your left socks instead of stealing them. In fact, I now have nearly twice as many left socks as right socks.”
“Oh, Mr. Nott! That’s wonderful. Did you discover them all by yourself?”
“Please, call me Theo. And yes, I discovered them in my great-aunt’s basement under several tons of jam.”
“That’s splendid! With your chocolate and Elgrans, we can fight off all the Nargles of the world!”
“That’s exactly what I was planning to do! I just needed a partner to help me, but hardly anyone believes in Nargles. Now that I’ve found you, my dream can come true!”
“Hooray! My husband Neville and I would be happy to help such a noble cause.”
“Your… husband? Oh, er, well, thank you very much!”
“You’re welcome, but may I ask you a question? What was it that assaulted me with meringues when we arrived?”
“Oh that was my ceiling fan, Frank. He’s very aggressive.”
“Oh, that’s okay then. As long as it wasn’t Nargles. Or gnomes.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Alright then.”
***
And so Neville, Theodore, and Luna made an anti-Nargle army and began to wage war on the evil Nargles of the world. Armed with chocolate and accompanied by the faithful Elgrans, they fought long and hard. And they attended several weddings in between. All in all, it was quite and enjoyable summer. Except for poor Harry, who was trapped in a sock on a small island, inhabited solely by Nargles, without his chocolatewackosockamajigger to ward them off, until Luna and her army or Elgrans rescued him.
The song the gnomes sing is a