Winky's dismissal and wands

[Grey Wolf]

No: HPFGUIDX 46922

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., Ashfae <ashfae at t...> wrote:
I said:
>> You have raised the issue that Hogwarts is wrong at using elves, and 
>> that Percy is likewise wrong at expecting total obedience. Let's 
>> tackle them. Percy was right at expecting such thing since elves 
>> take pride in being faithful to their masters. The problem with 
>> Winky is that she was sacrified in the altar of politics (i.e. she 
>> had been obedient but her master was going to acuse her of his own
>> errors). If Percy had the one 
> 
> 	Actually, that's not what happened. It looked to the world in
> general that Winky was sacrificed because of politics and had done
> nothing wrong herself, as Hermione so emphatically pointed out; but
> we didn't know the whole story at that point. She *did* fail in her
> duties. She abandoned Barty Jr.'s side at a crucial moment, which
> allowed him to escape and send up the Dark Mark. I feel sorry for 
> Winky, but she had made a serious error of judgement, and it can be 
> argued that Crouch Senior was perfectly right to sack her. He had 
> trusted her to look after his son, and she failed.

Interesting point of view, I hadn't considered it that way. I had 
simply looked beyond that point to what lies beyond: Winky did not, in 
fact, leave Jr.'s side: she followed him and *tried* to stop him, but 
she couldn't. I said it was Sr.'s fault because it's his spell that 
goes awry: what was suposed to keep Jr in line wasn't Winky, but the 
Imperius. It was because the Imperius failed that everything happened, 
and Sr, instead of realizing it was his own fault, decided to sacrifice 
Winky. 

> 	As an additional point on the argument about non-human creatures 
> and wands, many of them don't seem to need wands; house-elves, for 
> example, have very powerful magic of their own, and don't need wands 
> to implement it. The law disallowing nonhumans to use wands may not 
> be as prejudiced as it first seems in that respect.
> 
> 
> 	Ashfae

Ehhh... I thought had pointed that in my own post (that elves don't 
need wand since their wandless magic seems extremely powerful as it 
is), so I hope that wasn't intended as an attack on my views. At any 
rate, it's nice to know someone agrees with me on that issue.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf