The Lovegoods’ House
If you go north in the village Ottery St. Catchpole, where the Weasleys live, you will come to the house of Xenophilius Lovegood, editor of The Quibbler.
It is standing alone and isolated on one of the low hills that trail along the little stream like a chain. By the way, you can perfectly fish freshwater Plimpies there, like Luna, who lives inside the house with her father, does from time to time to enrich the Lovegoods’ menu.
Odd, just like its inhabitants, is also the house, because it’s not rectangular and box-shaped like the most houses, but circular and thus suggests that the little hill is decorated with a top hat or a bowler.
The Lovegoods’ house is surrounded by a savaged garden where all kinds of weird plants thrive, among them even a flesh-eating Snargaluff tree and of course bushes of Dirigible Plums, whose fruits Luna likes to wear as an alternative for earrings.
The massive door with iron mountings is guarded on the left and right by two ancient apple trees that carry not only apples, but also mistletoes that Mr. Lovegood offers on a sign at the garden’s gate.
Like it is respectable for wizards, the Lovegoods don’t have a bell but a solid knocker that looks like an eagle. Maybe the Lovegoods are traditional Ravenclaws?
If you enter the house you immediately stand inside the kitchen that takes up the whole ground floor. Round like on the outside it is inside, too; the kitchenette with its cupboards adapts in a curve to the round walls. You could think you were inside the garden again, because everything inside the kitchen is covered in brightly painted birds, insects and flowers of all kinds.
The wrought-iron spiral staircase in the middle of the kitchen leads to the first floor, where the Lovegoods have their living room. But it isn’t very cosy in here, because the room is also used as Mr. Lovegood’s workroom, as the ancient, rattling printing press shows. Even the last corner of the living room is stuffed with books and manuscripts; the floor is covered with memos, galley proofs and maps, while the ceiling is covered with fluttering, pinching models of the strange animals that crowd the Quibbler’s world.
If you go further upstairs on the spiral staircase, you reach Luna’s bedroom on the second floor. Like the kitchen, this room also is designed likewise colourful and artistic. But in this room it’s people whose portraits decorate the ceiling. They are Luna and her four friends at Hogwarts: Neville, Hermione, Ron and Harry; a golden bond made of the continuingly repeated word “friends” flows around the faces and connects them.
Unfortunately, the drawing, like big parts of the house, was destroyed, because Mr. Lovegood had hung up the horn of an Erumpent, against all reason and ministerial decrees. While Harry was visiting the Lovegoods, suddenly Death-Eaters appeared, coincidence or not, and prompt the horn exploded by mistake due to a stunning spell by Mr. Lovegood in the general ruckus which thrashed half of the house.
