Hermione's Hats

[Robert Jones]

No: HPFGUIDX 95132

I've updated a message I posted last fall and was wondering if 
anyone had any comments:

How do the House Elves get freed?  It cannot be by merely touching 
clothing.  The Hogwarts students get their clothing cleaned, 
presumably by the House Elves.  In Book 1 chapter 5 when Harry 
receives his letter from Hogwarts, it says that the students should 
have their names in their clothes.  Why would this be if their 
clothes weren't somehow mixed up with other people's clothes, and it 
is only during cleaning that this would happen.  The clothes aren't 
cleaned magically wherever they drop them and left there.  In the 
Polyjuice scene in COS, Hermione said she went to the laundry to 
steal some robes — so she knows there is a laundry and that someone 
is cleaning them, and I'm surprised that there weren't any House 
Elves hanging around for her to sneak by.

The House Elves are freed only if their master *hands* them some 
clothing (like with Dobby at the end of COS).  Dobby speaks of 
being "presented with" or "passed" clothes (COS, p. 177 US ed.)  

Dobby treats Harry like a master in the scene in OOTP 27 where he 
warns Harry that Umbridge is coming to the Room of Requirement.  So 
presumably the students count as "masters."  If the students are 
not "masters" and only DD or the teachers are, then Hermione is 
making another mistake.  But in any case, masters still must hand 
clothing to the Elves to free them.  The Elves can pick up the dirty 
clothing of the students and clean them without being freed.  It is 
only being passed the clothing that counts.

The essential problem is this: House Elves are not freed merely by 
contact with their masters' clothes (or else why didn't Dobby free 
himself when he was at the Malfoys by just grabbing some clothes 
himself?) or by intent (since Lucius did not intend to free Dobby 
when he inadvertently threw him a sock).  So how can Hermione's hats 
work?

So ... this means that the great Hermione Granger is making a 
mistake when she thinks that the hats she is gleefully knitting and 
leaving around the Gryffindor Common Room will free the House 
Elves.  She is not handing the hats and socks to the elves and so 
they can't be freed.

How did Hermy think her clothes were being cleaned for years?  She 
knew there was a laundry.  The Elves can pick them up and nothing 
will happen.  But they are still annoyed and insulted that someone 
is trying to trick them and so they do not clean the Common Room.  
Shouldn't good little House Elves go on doing their duty despite 
this?  Hermione did enough to turn off even dedicated House Elves 
from doing their job.  That was quite an accomplishment in itself.

Second, why hasn't Hermione noticed the problem?  Why hasn't she 
thought this thing to death the way she does everything else?  And 
why didn't she bother to check to see if her hats were actually 
working by checking with the House Elves in the kitchen?  As one 
poster suggested, is this story line a signal of her drift into 
arrogance? Or is JKR using it for something in Book 6?