ESSAY: Little Things (aka House Elves) (May) Mean a Lot

[msbeadsley]

No: HPFGUIDX 80721

Early in GoF, as Harry and the Weasleys are finding their seats in 
the stands at the QWC, Harry sees a house elf whose face is hidden 
and addresses it, "Dobby?"

The house elf looks up, revealing that it is not Dobby, but 
responds, "Did sir just call me Dobby?" Then this house elf, who has 
introduced herself as "Winky," goes on to say, "But I knows Dobby 
too, sir!" and, a little later, "But Dobby talks of you all the time, 
sir!"

"...all the time"...excuse me, but all *what* time?  Winky is a house 
elf attached to the household of Barty Crouch, Sr., an important 
Ministry official.  We find out at the end of this volume that she 
has been spending a lot of her time holding the other end of Barty 
Crouch, Jr.'s leash, a task given her by the senior BC.  BC Sr. has 
his (at minimum) nine-to-five Ministry gig going on, and it's just 
Junior and Winky alone in the house during the day. At this point 
Dobby has been free over a year but is not yet attached (is he?) to 
Hogwarts/Dumbledore; is Dobby dropping by the Crouch home daily for 
tea, or what? (If so, where was BC Jr. at these times?) Are house 
elves, like domestics around the world and throughout history, part 
of a network of gossip and information whose myriad connections are 
right under the obliviously up-tilted noses of the wealthy throughout 
the WW? Did Dobby and Winky originally encounter each other at 
earlier functions both Crouch and the Malfoys attended?  Or did that 
hobo of a Dobby just "make the rounds" of the other households with 
house elves, looking for paid work, and strike up an acquaintance 
with Winky?

Winky had a definite opinion about Dobby's new, unenslaved attitude, 
which strongly implies she knew him back when he was a Malfoy flunky. 
(Doesn't it?  And did she really like him better when he was getting 
kicked around the Malfoys' parlor?) And, you know, it really wasn't 
necessary to anything in GoF for Winky to have known Dobby prior to 
her release.  The whole QWC plotline would have worked just as well 
without; maybe better, if the contrast between Dobby and Winky had 
just been obvious and not underlined by her conversation about how 
inappropriate Dobby's behavior had become.  And Dobby could still 
very well have become Winky's protector in GoF (a fellow freebie, a 
newbie freebie to boot, after all) after she came to Hogwarts; 
everything else could have played out just the same, even Winky's 
opinion of that high falutin', out-of-control freed bad boy of a 
House Elf, Dobby.

House elves have been pushing great plot arcs along since Cos, 
haven't they?  When Dobby broke the rules to save Harry, incidently 
getting him warned by the Ministry, locked in his room, nearly killed 
playing Quidditch, and clued in about the Chamber's last opening (to 
SRO crowds and rave reviews)?  PoA is an elf-free zone (as opposed to 
a free-elf zone, Hermione's ambition), but then in GoF there is 
Winky, whose goof allows BC, Jr. to go off and set up the action for 
the whole rest of the book; not to mention Dobby's last-minute save 
of Harry's chances in the second event in the TWT.

Are house elves like the WW's equivalent to Illuminati, or what?  
Have they all covertly been on Albus Dumbledore's payroll from the 
beginning?

In OoP, Kreacher is vital to events leading to the final, climactic 
scene: the battle at the Ministry, where Sirius Black dies and leaves 
Harry (and some of the rest of us) completely devastated [not to 
mention the "he was slipping Sirius bad herbs" theory].  Also in OoP, 
Dobby enables the DA.  In GoF Hermione even starts a *civil rights 
organization* around freeing all House Elves.  (How *can* we all have 
been so blind?  It's *all about* the House Elves--who, from all we've 
seen, the wizarding world might actually be better off without). Will 
*they* turn out to be the ultimate representation of "magic at its 
deepest, its most impenetrable?" 

End of Essay.

What *I* really want is for someone to carefully describe Kreacher's 
actions in OoP to Dobby and then lock those two in a room together.  
Oh, and maybe Winky, too; it might do her good. (Now THERE'S an 
outline for a fanfic. Free to good home. Anyone?)

Sandy, aka "msbeadsley"