Freedom for House-Elves (Was: Kreacher the Plot Device Elf)

[quick_silver71]

No: HPFGUIDX 162060

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at ...> wrote:
<snip>
> Betsy Hp:
<snip>
> The way I see it, Kreacher starts off as a prisoner of war.  He is 
> bound by the house-elf enchantments to the enemy.  Harry has made 
> sure that he cannot escape, and he's humanely given him food and 
> shelter (which I agree is a good thing).
> 
> But then Harry (or JKR?) makes the odd decision of having Harry 
> behave not as someone responsible for a prisoner of war.  Harry 
> becomes a slave owner in every sense.  He assigns Kreacher a task 
> Kreacher does not want but has no choice but to do.  That's not 
Harry 
> acting responsibly.  It's Harry acting as a normal wizard of the WW 
> who owns a house-elf.

Quick_Silver:
Ok I agree with what you say but at the same time I feel that there's 
meant to be a certain irony to the Kreacher scenes. In OotP Kreacher 
manipulated Sirius's ignorance about the nature of house-elves and 
his own magical enchantments (by his rather interesting interruption 
of "Get Out") to bring about the plan that would have resulted in 
Harry's death. Instead it killed Sirius and left Kreacher as the 
property of Harry who has seen how dangerous house-elves are 
(personally I wouldn't let go of my wand if I was a wizard and a 
house elf was near). Then Harry uses Kreacher (and Dobby) to spy on 
Malfoy...the son of the person Kreacher was spying for in OotP. 

Quick_Silver (who thinks that the joke was on Kreacher this time)