Bring a fairy tale to Hogwarts!

Chapter 72 "I am the Little Wooden Puppet that the Good Wizard Brings to Life"

The puppet's eyes were carved, very finely, with wooden eyelids, eyelids, and a pair of small, round eyes. When its eyes seemed to move, Harry guessed it was because he hadn't been holding it properly, and the wooden eyes wobbled under the influence of gravity.

Overall, it was an exceptionally finely crafted puppet. Based on his years of experience living on Privet Road, he estimated it could fetch at least five hundred pounds in a shop.

But he was buried in a goblin's cave.

Harry then reached out and poked the eyes, then said to Ron beside him:

"Look! I dug a puppet out of the ground."

Ron was still throwing goblins. He was clearly quite skilled at this, as he quickly pulled another goblin out of the ground, then swung it away with his round arm. After throwing it, he looked at the ground and said:

"What? What's a puppet?"

"You don't know about puppets?"

"They're just toys for Muggles, little rascal," Fred chimed in with a grin. "You'd know if you took Muggle Studies in third grade. In the Middle Ages, many Muggles would carve wooden figures into human shapes, often with movable joints, to create the illusion that the dolls were moving."

Ron raised an eyebrow at Fred: "Isn't that just a wooden doll?"

"Ding-hoo".

"You know about dolls?" Harry asked again.

"Yes, Daddy got one for Ginny before. He even put a spell on the doll so it could move, and he sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' to Ginny all the time. Ginny loved it when she was little."

"I can sing songs too."

Just then, a thin, small voice suddenly broke in.

Harry and the other three didn't react at first. They stood there blankly for a few seconds, looking at each other, trying to figure out which one of them had said what had just been said, but everyone kept their mouths tightly shut.

Two or three seconds later, Fred was the first to react, looking at the puppet Harry was holding.

The puppet was no longer the lifeless thing that had been lying in Harry's hands.

At that moment, under Fred's gaze, its head came to life.

First, it twitched its pointed wooden nose, then rolled its wooden eyes, and then twisted its limbs, trying to stand up from Harry's hand. Its expression also changed.

Clearly, the faint sound just now came from its mouth.

"Is it alive?" Harry quickly opened his palm, allowing the little wooden puppet to move on its own in his hand.

"Muggle puppets can move?" Ron said with surprise.

"Duh, we're at the professor's house now, so it's not a Muggle puppet," George said.

The puppet wriggled, and its tiny body finally stood up in Harry's palm, its two little wooden legs firmly planted. Then, it raised its head and said in a serious tone:

"No, theoretically speaking, I am not alive."

"I'm not human, I'm just a puppet created by my father Geppetto, so I can't be considered alive. Pinocchio is the one who is truly alive, because he became human."

"And who is Pinocchio?" Harry asked.

"He was originally a puppet like me, but my father carved him from special wood, so he could move from the start. Later, he received a reward from the Blue Fairy and became a human," the puppet said.

Harry and Ron exchanged a glance, both seeing the novelty of the story in each other's eyes. However, following the common tropes in "A History of Magic," they actually thought there was another version of the story—that the Blue Fairy was a wizard who, one night, passed by a puppeteer's house and casually brought a puppet to life.

That movable piece of wood was probably some kind of alchemical material, but it just happened to be obtained by Muggles.

"So you were also brought to life by the Blue Fairy?" Fred asked at this moment.

"No," the puppet replied solemnly, "I was brought to life by a good wizard."

"A good wizard?"

"It's the good wizard who lives here," the puppet said, its little mouth moving. "Once, Pinocchio got sick because he told a lot of lies, so Dad traveled all the way here, hoping the good wizard would save him. The good wizard finally agreed to his request, and then, as he was leaving, he brought me to life too."

"But Dad was walking in a hurry and didn't notice that I fell out of his pocket."

"So I've been lying in the woods ever since."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Harry, holding the puppet, scratched his head awkwardly.

The puppet tilted its head and looked at him: "Why are you apologizing?"

"Listen? Oh. I'm sorry to have reminded you of all that. You must have had a very difficult time being left behind in the woods."

"Should I be sad?" the puppet asked, perched on Harry's palm, its wooden eyes wide open. "Just because I lay on the ground in the woods for a while? But I've been lying there ever since I was created, only before on a wooden frame. Whenever no one talks to me, I close my eyes and go back into the darkness."

Harry was speechless.

"Well, I mean—...just you alone—."

Harry stammered for a long time, unable to come up with a reply to the puppet. But in the meantime, the little puppet remained standing on his hand, curiously looking up at him.

It was wearing a dirty yellow shirt and red trousers, but it never tried to pat the shirt while it was talking to Harry and the others.

It stood there blankly in Harry's palm, saying things that were completely different from what Harry had imagined. This left Harry bewildered.

Fred noticed Harry's embarrassment.

"Hey, that's how they are. You can't expect goblins and fairies to be like us," Fred said reassuringly to Harry, then cleared his throat and said to the little wooden puppet:

"Do you like your family?"

He said this to let Harry know that the creatures that wizards bring to life are different from humans.

"certainly."

But the little wooden puppet said...

"I love my dad and brother, and the good wizard who created me. I want to stay with them forever."

But for some reason, after it said those words, Harry felt that its already pointed little nose seemed even more pointed. A complex, human emotion appeared on its puppet-like, slightly stiff expression.

But the little wooden puppet quickly returned to its original form, so Harry didn't understand what emotion it was and just assumed it was his imagination.

After dealing with the goblins, the group began searching for the spices the professor wanted in the grass, which was now somewhat ravaged by the goblin burrows.

During this time, George and Fred unexpectedly discovered another use for the little wooden puppet—it could remember descriptions of all the herbs it had ever seen, and could even describe their uses in great detail.

With its help, they spent only ten minutes gathering everything Victor wanted in the woods.

Their cloak pockets were now stuffed with all sorts of spices they had never seen before.

There are a few rosemary leaves that inexplicably turn a vibrant, almost dripping red, a small chili pepper that occasionally bursts into blue flames, and a ghost leaf that can transform into a semi-transparent shape.

They only found the last one after the little wooden puppet reminded them, because the whole bush was semi-transparent, and they would have just walked past it if the little wooden puppet hadn't pointed it out.

Within minutes, Fred and George were absolutely smitten with the little wooden puppet.

"We have to take it back." On their way back to Chicken Feet House, Fred and George said, "I need it for my Herbalism and Potions exams! Think about it, if we let it read for a while, it can help us memorize everything we need to know for the exam. We can just ask the puppet about anything we don't know, and we'll save ourselves the time of flipping through books everywhere to review."

"You're right, my brother. We should also involve it in the prank plan, because it will definitely be able to spot the flaws in our pranks!" George said excitedly.

The little wooden puppet has now been transferred from Harry to Fred. While they were discussing it, the little wooden puppet said again in its thin voice:

"I'm glad you like me."

This only made Fred and his men more willing to take it.

But Harry's expression held a hint of worry. He whispered to Fred and the others, "But this belongs to the professor, doesn't it? Isn't it a bit inappropriate to take it away?"

"Not good? There's nothing wrong with it, Harry," Fred replied, taking a moment from the discussion.

"Didn't you hear what the little wooden puppet said? It doesn't belong to the professor; the person who carved it accidentally lost it, but during this time..."

The person never came back for it; otherwise, the professor could have easily found it and returned it with a single Summoning Charm. This shows that the person didn't care about it at all.

"But we care, so it will definitely live well at Hogwarts."

Fred's words immediately convinced Harry. Harry thought for a moment and also felt that it wouldn't be a big deal to keep the little wooden puppet—it had been abandoned in the woods and had been brought to life by Professor Victor, so it shouldn't be a big problem.

Thinking about this, he even began to look forward to doing his homework with little wooden puppets at school.