Sunday, April 28, 2024

Why house-elves are totally better than wizards

house elf harry potter

Dumbledore then requested Madam Pomfrey to do all she could to comfort Winky before letting Dobby look after her. One day, when Bertha Jorkins came to the household with papers for Barty Snr to sign, Winky had her wait for her master to return. Bertha caught Winky speaking with the hidden Barty Jnr, and heard enough to deduce who was underneath the Invisibility Cloak. This caused the elder Crouch to rectify the problem with a brain-damaging Memory Charm. As he climbs into the sidecar of Hagrid's motorbike and takes to the skies, leaving Privet Drive for the last time, Harry Potter knows that Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are not far behind. The protective charm that has kept Harry safe until now is broken, but he cannot keep hiding.

Hermione Granger

Ron's caution that Harry was "over the top" when he gave Regulus' locket to Kreacher was not accurate; although it did result in Kreacher falling apart emotionally, it was necessary so that he could reassemble, centered around Harry, rather than around Sirius' mother. They serve their owner in unpaid employment and take residence in their house or establishment. They do everything they are ordered and because of that, many wizards treat them unkindly and take advantage.

Hogwarts Legacy On Switch Can Fix One Major Mistake From PS5 - Screen Rant

Hogwarts Legacy On Switch Can Fix One Major Mistake From PS5.

Posted: Thu, 26 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Scooby-Doo A Snack for Scooby Ornament – $19.99

If their owner gives them an article of clothing, it breaks the “enslavement” and the house-elf is free. For most house-elves, this would be the ultimate insult and they would be shamed forever. House-elves are small humanoid creatures who inhabit large houses belonging to wealthy Wizarding families. They are “bound” to the family of the house, which means they do all manner of menial tasks for them until they die. House-elves are apparently very happy with this arrangement and consider it a matter of pride that they serve faithfully and do not betray their families. To have the creatures specifically called 'elves' may be an allusion to the fairy tale of The Elves and the Shoemaker, where a group of elves worked for a shoemaker until his wife, in a fit of generosity, sewed them little clothes and gave them to the elves.

house elf harry potter

Ministry of Magic Classification

Kreacher was perhaps the most complex of the house-elf characters in Harry Potter. Not to overstate it, but he might have been one of the most complex characters in the series full-stop. We first met Dobby when he appeared in Harry’s bedroom in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, determined to save Harry’s life. And by ‘save Harry’s life’ we mean ‘stop him getting on the Hogwarts Express, forcing him to fly a car into a murderous tree’. The other house-elf characters – Winky and Kreacher – were just as fascinating.

Eventually, after being given back the locket that Regulus had switched for Voldemort's real Horcrux, Kreacher grew less hostile and was happier than he had been in many years, resuming most of his expected duties. At first, Harry disliked Kreacher too – because that’s what Sirius felt – and then came to hate the house-elf after he contributed to Sirius’s death. But as time went on, and after Harry became Kreacher’s master, the relationship between the two changed.

Upon preparing to dismiss her, she begged and cried at his feet in a pitiful manner, to which he simply backed away as though she was something "filthy and rotten contaminating his over-shined shoes", having lost whatever previous trust and respect he had for her. When the Knight Bus crashes through the darkness and screeches to a halt in front of him, it's the start of another far-from-ordinary year at Hogwarts for Harry Potter. Sirius Black, escaped mass-murderer and follower of Lord Voldemort, is on the run—and they say he is coming after Harry. In Harry's first-ever Divination class, Professor Trelawney sees an omen of death in his tea leaves. But perhaps most terrifying of all are the Dementors patrolling the school grounds, with their soul-sucking kiss... When Hermione discovered that Kreacher's master had been killed during his and Kreacher's mission to retrieve one of Voldemort's Horcruxes, she tried to comfort him with a hug but Kreacher appeared revolted.

house elf harry potter

This made finding employment a little difficult, until he was finally offered a job at Hogwarts. Dobby might just be one of the most progressive house-elves we’ve heard of – and his independent status made the other house-elves feel uncomfortable. So for all the might and power of the witches and wizards, it seemed that the only thing keeping them at the apex of power of the magical world was their certainty that they belonged there – and the equally strong conviction of the house-elves that they themselves did not. If Dobby represented one thing, it was that even the most ingrained behaviours can be changed with a little education. Better at heart, and more strongly magical, the one thing that held the house-elves back from domination was their inclination to serve.

Winky

They must wear whatever castoffs they can scavenge, which results in many of them wearing things like discarded, damaged pillowcases and rags twisted into rude loincloths. Most house-elves, however, do not want to be freed, and resist the suggestion most strongly. One exception is Dobby, who was the house-elf of the Malfoy family; he was so ill-treated there that he rebelled and eventually left their employ when Harry managed to engineer his receiving a sock from his master, Lucius Malfoy.

Heroic house-elves of the wizarding world

When Winky is dismissed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Dobby manages to get her employed at Hogwarts as well; however, she doesn't want to work, she simply sits, mourning the loss of her position and drinking herself to oblivion, for almost a year. She has not directly appeared in any of the books since then, though Dobby does mention her again in the next book. Unfortunately, as long as they’re enslaved, they aren’t likely to be using this magic for anything but their mundane work. Hermione Granger is working to bring enlightened thinking to the house-elves at Hogwarts, so far with very little success. There are over a hundred house-elves at Hogwarts, the largest number in any dwelling in Britain (GF12).

During such time, Winky persuaded Barty Snr to reward his son for good behaviour, despite it being a byproduct of the Imperius Curse, and Barty Jnr thought this love was no more than pity. After being freed, Winky fell into a depression from thinking she failed to service Barty Crouch, and began drinking heavily. At one point, Dobby got Winky a job at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where she for the second time met Harry Potter. On 2 May 1998, Winky participated in the Battle of Hogwarts, led by Kreacher into battle against the Death Eaters.

Kreacher is an aged old house-elf whose ancestors have served the family of the Blacks for centuries. He is nasty and rude to the current inhabitants of the house, number twelve Grimmauld Place, and doesn’t do much actual upkeep. He is devoted to the mother of Sirius Black, who died in 1985 [Y5] but whose portrait still shrieks orders from the wall of the front hall of the house.

He was generally pleased to be free, although he did enjoy working as a hobby. Dobby was ecstatic to be out of the abusive hands of the Malfoys, but equally pleased to join the Hogwarts staff. At Hogwarts he could come and go as he liked, did not have many tasks, and those he did have were fairly simple. Dobby requested some compensations for his work and eventually he and Dumbledore came to an agreement. Whether other House Elf magic is significantly different from human magic is uncertain.

Kreacher returned with Mundungus who admitted the theft, but said Dolores Umbridge had taken the locket from him (DH11). After these events, Kreacher was much more kindly disposed towards Harry and his friends, cooking delicious food for them to eat, washing and ironing their clothes, and finally accepting Harry as his true master (DH12). He also permitted Dobby to call him as he wanted (such as "a barmy old codger").

No comments:

Post a Comment

How a daughter's viral TikTok saved her family's struggling restaurant

Table Of Content Guide to the Russian River Valley: North How a daughter's viral TikTok saved her family's struggling restaurant Jan...