House elves and WW ethics

[jazmyn]

No: HPFGUIDX 58120

Some things we may be failing to see in this...

Wizards do not consider house elves to be humans, thus they could very 
well feel they are possessions, such as livestock or pets. Yes, even 
slaves.  The more evil types, such as the DEs likely consider muggles as 
'animals' too. If it were not for the MoM, muggles would be in constant 
danger from members of the WW who don't share muggle views on slavery or 
  treatment of sentient creatures.

Yes, its not politically correct by muggle standards to keep intelligent 
creatures as pets, slaves or even as livestock, which is why Hermione is 
more shocked then those raised in the WW.

However, even muggles cannot be held to their own ideals of treatment of 
sentient creatures.  If a sphinx landed in a small town, asking for 
directions, the cops would likely still shoot it.  Panicky humans are 
not rational humans.  If muggles knew about the WW, how would they 
decide what are animals and what are 'people'?

As for house elves. they appear to be either breed or created by magic 
originally as servants, possibly with the loyalty and slavish attitude 
built in, which is why they are so happy being slaves and so unwilling 
to leave this state. Its against their nature to not be slaves, thus 
creating horrible conflict within them when this is challenged. (i.e. 
Dobby wants to do the right thing, but his programing is creating 
conflict, thus he punishes himself)

One also wonders about postal owls. They are clearly not normal owls, 
being as they appear to have human level intelligence, yet deliver mail 
with no other pay then a treat. Like a dog fetching the paper. Are they 
slaves or taken for granted because they don't look as humanoid as a 
house elf?  Are they just really smart pets?  They do appear to be 
better treated then house elves on the surface, which might be why 
Hermione doesn't start a 'free the postal owls' movement.

Something to note..

We should not pretend that the WW is a happy little place, whose people 
are superior to humans in every way. They can be just as evil as 
muggles.. even more so as 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'.  Making 
non-humans into slaves, cutting up what we might see as intelligent or 
rare creatures for potion components or as foodstuffs, turning fellow 
humans into toads or experimenting on house pets could be quite normal 
for them, even if it might shock most muggles.  However, magic can often 
repair the damage to some of the above, so it may not be seen as a 
problem. Magic can make happy slaves and turn toads back into humans.

Clearly even their government is as messed up as any other.  Seeing as 
they don't even know what their Dept. of Mysteries does and that they 
have rules that are silly or unenforceable as some laws we muggles have. 
  Their Aurors have not been able to get rid of Voldemort, so its not 
likely they have ways to trace what people are doing what magic and 
where at all times.

Yeah, they detected magic at the Dursley's, but its possible there were 
monitoring spells placed at the Dursley's house and not some general 
'map' showing who is doing what like some giant Marauder's Map of Magic. 
  The MoM doesn't likely have enough Aurors to police everyone anyways. 
  There is the possibility that students have something planted on them, 
like in their house badges, that reports magic use within a certain 
distance, maybe 100 meters or some such, but doesn't report who did the 
magic, just that it was done.  Until we find out how they knew about the 
magic use, we can only guess. It could very well be that only Harry was 
being monitored due to the fact that he is in danger from DE retribution .

Jazmyn