A journey "into the thickets of wildest guesswork."

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 161637

Beatrice wrote:
<snip> 
> Suppose that DD indicates in his letter to Petunia that there is a
house elf who will enter into the service of the family, if Petunia
desires it. As Harry's Guardian Petunia will command the house elf
until Harry reaches the age of majority (17, although Petunia thinks
it is 18 like Dudley as we see in HBP). Although Petunia hates magic,
she sees the opportunity: she can have the perfect house that she
desires with very little work. 

<snip>  There are multiple references to how clean the house is,
perhaps Petunia has a different kind of mother's little helper.  She
orders the elf to never reveal his / herself to Vernon, Dudley, or
anyone, especially Harry, but there is a small problem.  This will
only work until Harry is of age, when he will fully come into his
estate and the elf as part of that estate. So this elf has secretly
been caring for the Dursley's (hating every moment I am sure). This is
why Petunia seems so startled to hear that Harry is of age at 17 - "uh
oh, I will lose my slave." <snip>

> Okay, I am steeling myself to be flamed.  

Carol responds:
Don't worry. We don't flame on this list. Well, occasionally the
discussions get a bit heated, but generally we're very civilized in
our disagreements.

While I agree that we're supposed to wonder why Petunia is so
concerned about Harry's coming of age at seventeen rather than
eighteen and that it has something to do with the letter, I think she
has a much more pressing concern than the loss of a house-elf, the
loss of the protection from Voldemort et al. that exists as long as
she allows Harry to call her house his home. (We see in SS/PS and
especially in OoP that she knows more about the WW than Vernon does. I
think she has some idea that Harry is the key to defeating the Dark
wizard who killed her sister and her husband.)

I don't think, first, that Dumbledore, who believes that house-elves
should be treated humanely, could or would compel a house-elf to serve
as a slave to a Muggle. (I'm not even sure that a house-elf would work
for a Squib if one were the last heir of a wizarding family.) Your
hypothetical house-elf belonged to the Potters, not the Muggle
Evanses. He would have no obligation to work for the sister of James
Potter's wife. His obligation would be to Harry, who would not be
doing chores for Petunia if he owned a house-elf. (The house-elf would
never allow it, nor would he allow either Dumbledore or Petunia to
override his obligations to his true master.)

In any case, it seems clear that Petunia does her own cleaning and
cooking (unless she's forcing Harry to do it. It's she who creates the
"masterpiece of a pudding" in Cos, and in HBP, she's wearing rubber
gloves and a housecoat over her nightdress because she's "halfway
through her usual pre-bedtime wipedown of all the kitchen surfaces"
(HBP Am. ed. 46). She even attempts to dye Harry's school uniform in
the kitchen sink in SS/PS before he gets his Hogwarts letter. It's not
likely that she'd perform such an odious chore herself if she had a
house-elf.

I've wondered if Petunia has OCD (obsessive/compulsive disorder) or at
least attempts to compensate for her absence of magical ability with
an excess of cleanliness. (Maybe she even subconsciously feels that
her sister's "freakishness" has stained the family name.) Whatever the
reason for her behavior, it seems that Petunia herself is responsible
for the "unnatural cleanliness" of her home. No doubt it keeps her
busy and makes her feel indispensable to Vernon (whose sole virtue is
that he loves his wife).

Carol, who thinks that the "something more" to Petunia is what she
knows and can tell Harry about his parents, especially Lily