House elves and some spoilers for Swordspoint WAS: realistic solutions

[pippin_999]

No: HPFGUIDX 180809

 > Magpie:
> > > Only if the book actually suggests the problem exists. In HP it 
> > > certainly shows that there's a problem if you're a bad Wizard 
> like  Lucius, but no I don't see any indication that there's any 
> problem  with Dumbledore or Harry or Hermione owning a slave.
> > 
<snip>
(I don't even remember Slughorn using House Elves as 
> poison testers to be honest. I don't doubt it happened, but I 
> definitely don't recall it as something that seemed to be there to 
> dramatize that Dumbledore owning House Elves was bad--
Dumbledore who has offered their freedom and they refused it.) 

Pippin:
HBP ch 22:
Slughorn uncorked one of the bottles of wine he had brought.

"I have had it *all* tested for posion," he assured Harry, pouring most
of the first bottle into one of Hagrid's bucket-sized mugs and handing
it to Hagrid. "Had a house-elf taste every bottle after what happened
to your poor friend Rupert."

Harry saw, in his mind's eye, the expression on Hermione's face if
she ever heard about this abuse of house-elves, and decided never
to mention it to her.
----
Harry explicitly recognizes that this is abuse and the text invites
us to imagine Hermione's reaction to it. We are not being encouraged
to agree with Slughorn that house-elves are disposable. 

But we see the limits of Harry's compassion here -- he's more concerned 
about Hermione's reaction than he is about a nameless, faceless house-elf.  
Harry is  a compassionate person generally,  so Rowling is saying something 
about the limits of human compassion, something she said in another
form when Dumbledore confessed he was more concerned about
preserving Harry's innocence than about the lives Harry could save.
The text doesn't support the idea that the instincts of compassionate
people will prevent abuse.

It also shows us that the potential for abuse is built into the system.
If elf abuse is a sign of owner unworthiness then we must conclude that
all owners are unworthy. Not only has every named elf in the canon
been abused,  abuse is so casual that Slughorn doesn't even see
it as a problem. Certainly he would not speak of it so blithely if he did --
he does not want Lily's son to think poorly of him. But no one's
ever taught him to consider  a house-elf's life  equal to his own. 

 
> Magpie:
> I didn't say anything about generalizing from Harry's experience. 
> We've already seen owners that aren't as good as Harry within canon. 
> That doesn't change that I don't see Harry/Kreacher dramatizing 
> anything bad for Harry. 

Pippin:
It's already dramatized something bad for him: Sirius is dead. He's
dead because he didn't see Kreacher's feelings as something
he needed to be concerned about. If that didn't teach Harry about
needing to see things from an elf's point of view, what would?

Harry didn't learn it immediately, but in  DH he comes to see that
Dumbledore and Hermione were right and he was wrong. It
seems like you want Harry to go back to where Hermione started
from, refusing to eat anything that's been prepared by slave labor.

It was a well-meant gesture, but nobody was impressed. I
can't see that they'd be any more impressed if Harry did it.

Pippin