House elves and some spoilers for Swordspoint WAS: realistic solutions

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 180924

> SSSusan:
> Yep, I think Harry was the warm & fuzzy kind. I also think that he 
> could be the kind like I described above.  *If* anyone in the WW 
ever 
> figured out a practical way to free all the house elves so that 
they 
> didn't have a bunch of homeless, miserable Winkys, but content, 
> gainfully-employed or employable free elves, I think Harry would be 
> all for letting Kreacher go.
> 
a_svirn:
Except that Winky is neither homeless, nor unemployed. She belongs to 
a thriving elvish community, lives in the grandest establishment in 
the WW, and is treated well, despite the fact that she does not 
obviously discharge her duties properly. If all she wants is to serve 
and to belong somewhere then why on earth isn't she happy? Why isn't 
she buzzing around baking treacle cakes and polishing armour suits? 
There are plenty of opportunities for her in Hogwarts to fulfil her 
basic need to serve, aren't there? Apparently, there is more to her 
misery than just the fact that she's free. 

Starting from the fact that she wasn't *freed*, but rather *sacked* – 
that was the word Sirius used, and he would know the right 
terminology – being a pureblood himself. She was dismissed from the 
service she liked, and dismissed with ignominy. Moreover, unlike 
Kreacher in OotP and HBP and Dobby she actually loved her masters. 
Things like that happened in real life all the time. Especially with 
childless women-slaves, or those who were forced to separate with 
their children, or those, who were employed as a nurse to their 
little masters – and that likely to have been the relationship 
between Winky and young  Barty. Moreover, she worried that she failed 
her loved ones, and probably even place their lives in danger. 
Eventually she learned about their pitiful end, and had to live with 
the knowledge that nothing of these events would have happened if she 
hadn't been derelict in her duty. That's quite enough to cause severe 
clinic depression to anyone. Surely it is a bit misleading to ascribe 
her abject misery to the fact that she's free.

a_svirn