house elves and laundry

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 88159

"drjuliehoward" wrote:
Makes me wonder why Hermione was so surprised to learn in GoF 
that there were house elves at Hogwarts. Who did she think did
the laundry? Were there just none around at the time she stole the 
robes? 
<snip>

Someone (attribution snipped in earlier post) responded: 
I've wondered the same thing.  Wouldn't this be mentioned in the 
book she always quotes, "Hogwarts: A History"?  If so, why was she 
surprised?  If it weren't mentioned, why not?  Could it have 
something to do with the way they became slaves to the wizarding 
world, given that they are powerful beings themselves?  Just 
wondering...

Arcum wrote: 
> Apparently not...
> 
> "'House-elves!' said Hermione, her eyes flashing. 'Not once,
> in over a thousand pages, does Hogwarts, A History mention that we
> are all colluding in the oppression of a hundred slaves!'"

Hermione wouldn't know about House Elves before coming to Hogwarts
before she's a Muggle-born and probably assumed (as we did if we
thought about it) that the laundry was done by magic. (Actually, it
probably is--just not by the Wizards themselves.) And the author of
"Hogwarts, A History" is not so much "colluding in . . . oppression"
as simply taking for granted a thousand-year-old tradition, much the
way we Muggles take electricity for granted. In describing a friend's
home, we wouldn't say, "The house had electric light and a washing
machine." It would never occur to a reader that it didn't.

Carol