CHAPTER DISCUSSION Chamber of Secrets Ch. 2, Dobby's Warning

[Catlady (Rita Prince]

No: HPFGUIDX 188745

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188728

Zara discussed CoS Chapter II in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188730>

and Bart replied in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/188743>:

<< The House Elves, which were probably created magically, >>

Created magically from what? I'm inclined to believe that they were bred from enchanted and domesticated Goblins, so long ago that wizards have forgotten, but Goblins have not; it is another reason why Goblins distrust wizards, besides the different notions of ownership, and the somewhat different notions of humor.

On another tentacle, humans can interbreed with Veelas, humans can interbreed with Goblins (Rowling said off-page that Flitwick has a touch of Goblin blood in him), and I think humans can interbreed with House Elves... maybe Veelas and Goblins and House Elves and all the magical beings who are humanoid are all descended from humans. 

<< clearly have a psychological need to serve. From what we have seen, by House Elf standards, Dobby was insane. One can only assume that it was his servitude to the Malfoys that drove him insane. >>

I view House Elves in a more magical and less scientific way. Rather than a psychological need to serve, I view it as a compulsion that was magically placed on their whole species in a long ago time when legendary mages were more powerful than any living in the latest few centuries.

While the other House Elves think Dobby had gone mad because he wants to be free and they view freedom as a big disgrace, I think Dobby had a perfectly sane reaction to being so much abused by the Malfoys, who 'reminded' him to punish himself because they found it so pleasantly amusing to witness his physical pain. We have that whole thing with Hermione explaining that Kreachur's loyalty goes to the master who treats him kindly rather than the master who owns him. But while Kreachur was able to switch his loyalty to Miss Bellatrix a few months after being acquired by Sirius, Dobby had spent many years with the Malfoys and no kinder master to switch to. Sometime in all that time with no master available to switch to, he decided to switch to no master.

I don't understand why Miss Narcissa wasn't as kind a master to Dobby as Miss Bellatrix was to Kreachur. Miss Bellatrix was not a kind person; she enjoyed hurting humans; I figure the only reasons she would be kind to Kreachur were that she had been taught it was the etiquette of her class to be kind to House Elves or that she had been taught that House Elves turn disloyal and dangerous to masters who treat them cruelly. Miss Narcissa was Miss Bellatrix's sister and they were raised together, so she should have been taught the same. It appears that the senior Crouch, also from an old money family, also accepted a lot of advice, requests, and even criticism from Winky, and never told her to punish herself. 

As for Mr Lucius, maybe he was not taught that masters should be very careful not to break their House Elves because House Elves are difficult to replace. That would tend to indicate that he was raised in a family with no tradition of owning House Elves, meaning that his family's wealth was recent, such as starting with him, his father, or his grandfather. That would cause the old rich pureblood families to sneer at him behind his back for being nouveau riche. Altho' Rowling's 'Black Family Tree' indicated that rich purebloods with old money are perfectly willing to marry poor purebloods with no money ever, because the pure blood is so much more important to them.... I have always wanted the Malfoys to be *very* old money, already aristocrats when the head Malfoy of that era made an alliance with Salazar Slytherin.

If the reason Narcissa joined her husband being cruel to Dobby is that Dobby kept enraging Narcissa with remarks the mirror image of what Krechur said to Sirius and his friends, then Dobby must have been raised in a house with the different values than those of the Malfoys and the Blacks. Some listies used to speculate that Dobby was the Potters' House Elf, given to Malfoy by the office of House Elf Relocation when all the adult Potters were dead and baby Harry's location was 'unknown'. (That would explain why he chose Harry to be his new master when he was free.) But I can't think of anything Dobby could say to infuriate Narcissa that would not reflect badly on his upbringing. If he called her a bad Dark Wizard, a racist, a sadist, a snob, she would just laugh because she is proud of being those things.