House-Elves yet again

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 181268

a_svirn wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/181113>:

<< Yes I can. If I make the binding enchantment illegal, wizards will
have to undo the bondage. (big snip) why should anyone bother to find
and use the countercharm if things are perfectly legal and convenient
(for wizards) as they are. >>

I feel compelled to nitpick. Just because something is illegal doesn't
stop all people from doing it. Mundungus Fletcher's thefts, Willie
Widdershins's hexes on toilets, Mortlake's extremely odd ferrets,
Death Eaters using Unforgiveable Curses, and the whole deal of Crouch
Sr sneaking Crouch Jr out of Azkaban and keeping him  hidden under
Imperius and an Invisibility Cloak are examples. If the bondage
enchantment on House Elves were made illegal, I don't suppose Crouch
Sr would have obeyed that law either. You will have to provide law
enforcement as well as passing the law. 

In my real reply, I'm not sure whether you and I mean the same thing
by "find the countercharm". I believe that the countercharm is not
known to wizards and therefore cannot be found by even the most
extensive library research; it must be found by experimental research,
like Muggles finding a new drug for bipolar disorder or something. 

If the bondage enchantment on House Elves was illegal while the
countercharm was still unknown, then even the most law-biding wizard,
eager to obey all laws, could not lift the enchantment by
countercharm. His only option for obeying the law would be to give
clothes to the Elf.

I believe wizards should be researching to find the countercharm.
Meanwhile, other wizards should be passing and enforcing laws against
House Elf abuse. And I have a pet idea for a law to be passed and
enforced and (the hardest part) explained to the House Elves, by which
the masters must give clothes now that will be received when the Elf
wants to receive them -- I think that's kind of like when Muggles put
money 'in escrow', but the clothes would be put in a closet from which
the Elf could take them if inherited by an unwanted master or whatever.

(An amusingly paradoxical idea is that a wizard could order a House
Elf to discover the countercharm, because House Elves can do amazing
magical things if they're just obeying an order, such as Kreachy
escaping the Inferii.) (When House Elves were released from the
bondage enchantment, or even freed by clothes, they might lose the
ability to do impossible magic when ordered, as they would no longer
have to obey all orders even if impossible.) 

I don't know what would happen if the bondage enchantment were lifted
from House Elves by countercharm. I keep thinking there was some group
of magical beings or beasts on whom the bondage enchantment was
placed, but maybe it's possible that the beings were created, bondage
and all, by one enchantment, and they would kind of evaporate and
cease to exist if the enchantment were lifted. Would that be genocide?
If that were discovered, I think the research program should change to
try to find a way to modify the original enchantment rather than end it. 

If they were pre-existing beings or beasts who were put under a
bondage enchantment, then when they were released from the bondage
enchantment, they might completely lose the desire to serve wizards
and completely lose the desire to do housework, if those traits had
been implanted in them by the bondage enchantment. 

If they were pre-existing beasts who were put under enchantment, then
when the enchantment was removed, their intelligence might drop to the
level of some animal and they might no longer have the ability to use
language, if that were implanted in them by the bondage enchantment.
If this were discovered, I think ethicists would argue about what to
do about it. Some would be all for removing the enchantment and ending
this human meddling with their true nature. Some would argue that
turning beings into beasts is -- I don't know the words, except Yuck.
I keep thinking 'kind of like murder' because it terminates a being...

House Elves might be quite nasty beings once disenchanted. I have
previously offered two wild speculations on that. One is that the
ancestral House Elves were a group of goblins so violent and obnoxious
that the other Goblins combined pest control with punishment by
putting the enchantment on them and delivering them to wizards.

The other wild speculation has nothing to do with Goblins, but holds
that the ancestral Elves were so violent among themselves that after
one battle, only two Elves in the world were left alive, a male from
one side and a female from the other side. And they decided to make
peace and get married and reproduce the species of Elves. But when
their second one killed their first son in a temper tantrum, they put
this bondage enchantment on all their descendants as a way to keep
them from killing each other.