Houseelves loyalty

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 159636

>Jordan Abel:
> "House-elves come with big old manors and castles and places like
> that" - one would assume, then, that if the Weasleys came into some
> money and bought such a house, they would then have house elves.

a_svirn:
Or one could assume that they could buy a house and an elf 
separately. 
> 
> > montims:
> >  I would have expected him to stay with the family, 
notwithstanding all his
> > ancestors' heads...
> 
>Jordan Abel:
 Why? They're house elves, not family elves, and it's never been
> ambiguous that it refers to "house" literally as in the place 
itself,
> not "house" as in bloodline/clan/whatever. The line I quoted above 
is
> probably the clearest textual evidence one way or the other, 

a_svirn:

No, it isn't. There are clearer lines in COS:

 "The wizard family Dobby serves, sir ... DOBBY'S is a house-elf - 
bound to serve one house and one family ffor ever ..." 

"A house-elf must be set free, sir. And the family will never set 
Dobby free ... Dobby will serve the family until he dies, sir ..."

The quotations above show that Dobby is bound to the family, rather 
than to the house as a place. Granted, the first quote is somewhat 
ambiguous, yet still Dobby indicates that he's bound to a family.

Also, there is the fact that house-elves are slaves to all intends 
and purposes. Slaves are personal property rather than real estate 
(as serfs for instance). 

>Jordan Abel:
... the
> fact that they're based on the Brownies of myth strongly supports 
this
> view, 

a_svirn:
That hardly matters. All components of the Potterverse are based on 
some fictional or folklore characters, but they acquire another 
meaning in the world Rowling created. Besides, it is conceivable 
that initially house-elves were indeed very much like brownies and 
were bound to houses, however, after wizards tricked them into 
enslavement they become bound to them rather than to their houses. 


>Jordan Abel:
as is the fact that Harry inheriting Kreacher was used as a test
> as to whether he'd inherited 12GP. If there was a chance that he 
might
> have inherited 12GP but not Kreacher along with it, it wouldn't 
have
> been a very useful test. 

a_svirn:
The test was based on the fact that Kreacher was part of the 
inheritance that's all. It would be tricky to scan the whole place 
for any known jinx and course, that would prevent am *impure*blood 
to inherit it, but it was easy to test Kreacher. 

>Jordan Abel:
If there was a chance of the opposite
> (inheriting Kreacher but losing 12GP), it would even have been
> dangerous to rely on that test.

a_svirn:
I'd say it's dangerous in any case. But Kreacher was probably a 
primarly concern for Dumbledore.