[HPFGU-OTChatter] Malfoys' House Elves
Amber
reanna20 at yahoo.com
Fri Jun 8 14:42:54 UTC 2001
--- Rita Winston <catlady at wicca.net> wrote:
> But how good are House Elves with numbers? Can they receive the bills
> in the [Owl] post, verify that the bills are accurate, and write
> checks to pay them? How good are House Elves with money? Can they owl
> order new cookpots, bedsheets, laundry powder -- ordinary stuff that
> needs to be replenished from time to time? Can they go grocery
> shopping for food? If the House Elves can't do that stuff, I can't
> imagine Narcissa deigning to do it herself, she would need a
> human(like) upper servant, a housekeeper or butler.
Most certainly the Narcissa that we've seen in canon (not that we've
seen much of her, though) wouldn't stoop to do such menial tasks. And
for some reason my gut instinct says that the House Elves wouldn't be
good with money, or at least they wouldn't pay the bills. I can very
much see the Malfoy's hiring a witch or wizard to take care of their
financial matters. Either that or Lucius takes care of them himself.
I imagine that House Elves probably go shopping for food, and stock up
on things. That seems to fit in with the jobs we've seen them do in the
past. However, bill managing doesn't seem to fit in as well, don't know
why.
> Narcissa must be getting tons of owls all the time. Do you think she
> has magic to tell her which messages to throw away unread, which to
> respond to with a form letter of politely negative reply, which to
> respond to with a cheque, which to actually read herself, and what
> new commitments to enter in her datebook? If not, either she has to
> do that work herself or have a human(like) social secretary.
That's some complicated magic! Well, it's entirely possible. Remember
the zooming letters in SS/PS? That seems to indicate that there's a way
to send letters by magic without owls. There'd probably be a way to
receive the letters correctly as well.
I get nervous about the idea of magic responding to letters. It just
doesn't seem like something I would trust to magic to get correct. I
can see trained House-Elf scribes. Or the Malfoys hiring out some
witch/wizard to handle their correspondence.
~Amber
=====
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