[HPforGrownups] Winky thoughts......could possibly turn into OOP thougts

[Amanda Geist]

No: HPFGUIDX 58038

There's a bit of an OoP spoiler down in here, just FYI. It's marked so you
can stop before you read it if you want.

Tonya said:

> Winky is actually Barty Crouch JR'S house elf.  Meaning that Barty
> Crouch Sr could not REALLY have "fired" her from service.  Maybe he just
> told her to get out of his house since Jr wasn't there any longer.
> SOOOO because of this Winky cannot find Jr so she goes along with Dobby
> to Hogwarts.  That could explain why she won't tell any secrets and why
> she is sooo upset about his absence.  ALSO, remember when she sees Jr in
> Moody's office she runs to him and calls him "Master".

Most house-elf discussions on the list in the past have seemed to take the
view that Dobby is an extreme example of an atypical elf; in binary fashion,
it seemed that Winky and her reactions are viewed as more the norm. I think
this is completely incorrect, and the human tendency to want to find a
"right" example when we are presented with a "wrong" has misled us. I have
said this before, but not recently: I believe that Winky is every bit as
atypical as Dobby, possibly more so.

I think there are three elements to a house-elf's enslavement--the elf, the
family, and the location. Location must be just as key as the others, for
house-elves are found in old manor houses and castles, not places like the
Burrow, even though it seems to me that any elf would love having such a
large, caring family to care for.

To obtain a house-elf, I think you must obtain a location that one comes
with; thus, you become its family. I think it is the owners of the location
to which a house-elf is bound, who are the elf's family. It may be that only
certain locations will do. It *is* the House-Elf Relocation Office, not the
Re-Assigning office.

If I am correct, when a family frees an elf, what they are doing is
banishing it from its location, and another one must be found. Dobby has
changed his master with his location (although, as we have seen, old habits
die hard), and is loyal to Dumbledore--the "family" that came with his new
location. His atypicality is that he wants paying.

Winky, on the other hand, is atypical in her unnatural attachment to the
*family* of her location. She has been freed by the family and banished from
her location, but she has neither bonded with her new location nor accepted
her new family. She is in total denial, unlike Dobby, who has embraced most
of the standard role and attitudes of the house-elves (he just has money and
a day off). Winky's attachment to "her" people, outside the limits of the
spell and preventing her relocation or reattachment at *all,* I believe, is
just as odd for house-elf psychology as Dobby's wanting payment.

I think it probably is because she had a much closer relationship with Barty
Jr., during his imprisonment, than house-elves usually do.

SPOILER>>> BE YE WARNED




So I have no doubts whatsoever that she is the vengeful house-elf.
Dumbledore and Harry have caused the deaths of both Crouch men (or I believe
she will see it so), and given the way house-elves can move around within
and through the Hogwarts defenses, I think this could be a real problem. I
think only another elf will be able to protect against bad elf magic, and
Dobby may have a lot to do.

~Amanda