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Befuddlement struck as soon as Vernon Dursley stepped out of the house early on a late summer's day. He was going to take the car to work when something moved out of the corner of his eye. As he turned to look, he saw something vaguely humanoid digging a hole in the grass. The size of the creature was that of two footballs stacked on top of each other. It looked like Vernon had commissioned a special garden gnome in his own likeness, not that he would ever admit that that was what it looked like. It jumped down into the hole. Vernon did not hear it land at the bottom and bent down to inspect the hole. It was deep. Concerningly deep. He held his fingers tight around his briefcase.
A few birds chirped in the background. A car passed by, and Vernon quickly straightened his back and nodded a hello to the passing neighbour. As he looked down again, there it was; it poked its head out of the hole. Vernon let out a not-so-manly scream and proceeded to hit it on the head with his briefcase, like a whack-a-mole. It fell down. He heard the dunk as it landed at the bottom of the hole.
He ran to the car and drove off to work. But he could not stop thinking about the creature during the day. He was so distracted during his lunch meeting that he didn't contribute any embellished stories of his own.
He needed answers, no, not really, he needed the thing gone. He thought about stopping at the library before heading home. But what would a few books do about a capital M creature? That stupid boy would be in so much trouble when he comes back next summer. Leaving such a beast at their completely normal home. He was fuming.
He stopped at the shops. He bought ant poison, mouse traps, those sponges that stink to scare off deer, mole scares, and an ultrasonic sound repeller. He set up everything when he got home.
Petunia looked at him, questioning what he was doing, only he did not want to tell her there was something magical living in the garden. So he told her he had seen a mole. He dumped the package of ant poison into the holes. The wind swept some of it away. He went to bed happy that evening, knowing that he had done everything he could to be rid of the creature. He slept well.
The next morning was sunny, which helped with his even happier mood. Although it did not last very long, as he stepped out to make sure the gnome creature was gone, he stopped in his tracks when he saw two holes in the grass.
He swore and quickly lowered his voice and continued to swear in his head as he took assertive steps into the kitchen and filled the kettle to the max, and put it on the stove. Then he waited. As soon as it started to whistle, he grabbed it and ran out to the garden again. He poured the boiling water down the holes. Half of it to each. It was clearly not enough, he heard no sound coming from the depths under his garden. He left the kettle on the drive and drove to work.
When Vernon got home in the evening, he unloaded multiple filled fuel dunks from the trunk of the car. In the pocket of his suit jacket was a new box of matches. But before he tried anything with his new plan. Plan B, his plan A, involved Dudley's air gun that was stashed away until he was older. He didn't count any of the previous failed attempts as plans.
As the sun began to set, Vernon loaded the air gun and sat hidden behind a bush and waited. Petunia had said she hadn't seen anything in the garden, so these creatures were crepuscular. Something rattled from one hole. A gnome got up. Bang. A shot hit it in the side. The gnome looked at the small projectile and scraped it off its skin. Its magic has protected it. Bang Bang Bang. The gnome turned around and ran straight at Vernon. He was quick to his feet, dropped the gun, and ran around the house. But it was still after him. Petunia looked out the window and only saw Vernon doing laps around the house.
After a while that seemed like an eternity for Vernon, the gnome was no longer chasing him. He stopped and heaved. His body had not done that much exercise in years.
After dinner, he went outside again. It was close to 10, and all of the closed neighbours were indoors. He dragged the fuel tanks and piled them onto the grass. He then emptied three full tanks of petrol into one hole. He took out the matchbox and lit one match on fire. He threw it down the hole, but it had barely left his hand before a loud bang echoed in his ears. Flames multiple meters high arose, and he had to quickly step back to not burn his eyebrows off. That was more fire than he had planned. The flames did not seem to stop anything soon and instead started to dance in the wind. Some of the grass caught fire where the petrol had dropped after he poured it. He tried to stomp it out. It continued spreading. The hedge caught fire. Vernon started to panic. A few neighbours stepped out to see what had made the loud explosion noise from earlier. Sirens came closer from far in the distance. Petunia hid the fuel tanks as Vernon stood frozen. The fire trucks arrived, and the firemen put out the fire. The police got a half-sensible explanation from the Dursleys that it must have been a gas pipe that broke. They did not buy it but let it slide for some reason.
Vernon came clean to Petunia and told her about the vile magical gnomes that had moved into the garden. But when Vernon pointed out the holes in the grass, Petunia could not see them; she even stepped on one and hovered in the air as if there was ground beneath her feet. Vernon was speechless. The World did not make sense.
For weeks, Petunia said there was nothing in the garden, and Vernon just sat and watched as the gnomes multiplied. They were generally against shrinks, but Petunia demanded that he go and see a psychiatrist. He refused. He was not mad, they were real. As much as it pained him, he needed to make contact with the boy or someone competent in his magical world. How hard could that be?
He remembered the leaky cauldron from having dropped off the boy for supplies. He dressed in his finest suit to show the freak how one was supposed to dress. He walked up to the bartender and asked directly about where he could find someone that he could pay to get rid of gnomes. He got the name of a place and got directions to where in the Alley it was. It was disorienting to walk down the Alley. He tried to walk with confident steps when he felt strongly that he did not belong in such a freakish place as it was.
Lucius Malfoy saw the well-dressed stranger walk along the shops frantically looking for something. He looked important. He had an aura that told everyone around him that he had no time for nonsense. Perhaps he was a foreign ministry worker. Maybe it was a good time for networking.
Vernon sneered as the queer and aristocratic looking man approached him.
“Good day, I'm Lucius Malfoy. Would I be able to help you find the place you're looking for?” Mr. Malfoy asked.
“Vernon Dursley, I don't know, can you?” He said and gave the name of the place to the blond man.
Vernon stared at his long hair in discust and called him a fag in his head.
Malfoy began to show the way. Vernon explained that he had problems with gnomes in the garden.
“Why don't you get rid of them yourself?”
“Do you think I have time for that?”
“Touche.”
He found the place, and before Malfoy left, he invited Vernon to afternoon tea at his estate. Vernon declined, he claimed he was busy, but in reality, he didn't want to be around the freaks for longer than he had to.
“Another time, then,” Malfoy said goodbye.
The magical pest control guy travelled via apparition with Vernon to Privet Drive. Vernon spewed into what was left of the hedges. The gnomes were taken care of, and he got a card with the address to the pest control firm so He could owl if they came back. Vernon contemplated throwing the card in the fire, only to end up hiding it under all of his other cards in his wallet.