Dumbledore and Elves (Was: Elf Beheading?)

[Jenny]

No: HPFGUIDX 102584

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Lady Macbeth" <
ladymacbeth at l...> wrote:
 
> - Dumbledore's watched Winky FOR A YEAR NOW sit in the kitchens and 
be a falling down drunk, with no promise to do more.  No, he doesn't mind.  
Other masters would.  Would YOU want your servant NOT doing their job and 
instead drinking themselves into numbness every night?  Dobby's and 
anyone else's attempts to engage her have just sent her further into self-
pity.>

I reply:
It is true that Dumbledore hasn't done much in the way of helping Winky, but 
I'm not so sure there is anything to be done.  Winky is a disgraced Elf; no one 
else would have her, but Dumbledore took her in at Dobby's request.  He has 
already done something kind for her.  If he let her go again, she'd be 
homeless.  It also seems to me that he has enough Elves to do an excellent 
job caring for Hogwarts.  He may have Winky around out of pity, not to serve.

Lady Macbeth: 
> However, the impression I get from the books is that Dumbledore is the 
type who eternally believes of the possibility of "that which has never 
happened before happening".  PERHAPS Winky and/or Kreacher will recover.  
PERHAPS this won't have to be a long and bloody war with Voldemort.  He's 
an OPTIMIST, something I have a hard time being.  What disturbs me the 
most is that he's SUCH an optimist that he LET Kreacher continue living in 
Grimmauld Place, NOT concerned that he was a danger in any way to any of 
the inhabitants there, and NOT concerned that Kreacher's displayed 
secretive, vengeful and underlying violent behavior would ever come to play 
against any of them.>

Me:
Let me get this straight - you believe *Dumbledore* should have made the 
decision to send Kreacher away from the Black home even though 
Dumbledore does not live there and has no jurisdiction over what goes on 
there?  Am I wrong?

Dumbledore isn't perfect.  He makes mistakes and occasionally makes bad 
decisions.  I think it would be a stretch for us to believe he could have 
foreseen Kreacher's reprehensible actions.  Kreacher is not his Elf and we 
don't really have evidence that he knows Kreacher (or even Winky, for that 
matter) particularly well.

I don't think anyone, even Sirius who knew Kreacher best, would have been 
able to guess that Kreacher would leave the house to confide in another 
Black family member.

--jenny from ravenclaw