Harry Potter and the Seven House-elves

Harry Potter and the Seven House-elves

Harry Potter's life would have been perfect if Lord Voldemort had never been born, but unfortunately for Harry, he had. And so had Draco Malfoy, an evil little Slytherin twit who spent every free moment of his life (awake or dreaming) devising plans to make Harry's life a living hell, though Harry, quite thankfully, did not know this. If Harry had known this, he would have been so terrified that the Slytherin boy spent so much time thinking about him that he probably would have jumped out of the highest tower window at Hogwarts. After all, what civilized Gryffindor would want to be in Draco Malfoy's dreams? Besides Lavender Brown that is, but she was always a little strange, so we won't talk about her.

Well, little did Harry know that our dear Dark Lord Voldemort had finally devised the perfect plan. When in doubt, use Muggle tactics! There was nothing Lord Voldemort would like better than to hold Harry Potter's bloody heart in his hands, and that is exactly what he planned to do. What does this have to do with Draco Malfoy? Well who better to approach Mr. Harry Potter and cut out his heart? The plan was fool-proof.

But of course, there was one tiny flaw: Why, on this planet or any other, would Harry Potter simply allow Draco Malfoy (or anyone, for that matter) to cut out his heart? And come to think of it, wouldn't people notice the hole in Harry's chest and the knife in Draco's hand? And that is where the wonderfully genius brain of our far from beautiful, but oh so intelligent, Voldemort comes in. He advised Draco to commit the crime within the confines of the Forbidden Forest. How convenient of Hogwarts to have its very own Forbidden Forest!

Once upon a Sunday morning, Harry Potter decided to pay his good friend Rubeus Hagrid a visit. Hagrid lived across the Hogwarts grounds in his very own hut. Very rarely did Harry venture this trudge across the grounds alone and was usually accompanied by his best friends, Ron Weasley, the ravishing red head, and Hermione Granger, the brilliantly brainy brunette. Today, however, Harry had been unable to find Hermione and had decided to leave Ron asleep in the sixth year boys' dormitory.

As Harry edged closer to the Forbidden Forest, he felt as though someone were watching him. Instinctively, he whipped around and caught sight of a flash of blonde hair ducking behind a tree. Our hero decided to investigate this matter further, just as Lord Voldemort had anticipated. Very slowly, Harry took cautious steps towards the trees, and Draco Malfoy, who had ducked behind a large oak, waited impatiently. And waited and waited and waited...

...Until at last, he came face to face with Harry Potter. Now, Draco fancied himself quite the brilliant little wizard and decided not to follow Lord Voldemort's plan precisely. He thought instead of bringing Harry's heart to Voldemort (which was absolutely disgusting and Draco couldn't understand why anyone in their right mind would ever even want to touch a human heart with their bare hands), he would bring Harry Potter's entire body. That way, Draco wouldn't have to trouble with where to cut in order to retrieve Harry's heart from inside his body, nor would he have to deal with the messy blood all over his brand new robes, which brought him a great deal of relief.

Well, Draco hadn't realised just how difficult it was to perform the Killing Curse. He had seen his father do it many a time, and it looked rather simple. The trouble with Draco, you see, is that despite his handsome looks, his skill at flying a broomstick (which, unfortunately for him, does not even begin to compare to Harry Potter's), and his ability to come off as terrifyingly evil, is the fact that he is not too bright. He does not seem to understand, after all these years, that performing magic takes practice.

When Draco Malfoy pointed his wand at Harry Potter and uttered the words, "Avada Kedavra," Harry would have laughed, if he hadn't been so taken by surprise. When Draco Malfoy's eyes widened and he uttered the words, "You're still alive?" Harry should have laughed, but instead he ran, though we're not sure why. And run Harry did, away from Draco Malfoy. Silly child.

After running and running, Harry stumbled upon the Whomping Willow. And it was not a happy run-in, such as one you may have with an old friend, allowing you to catch up on good times over a cup of tea. No, the Whomping Willow decided to bring back some bad memories, reminding Harry of the first time the two had met and the Willow had not only damaged Harry's best friend's father's car, but also his best friend's wand.

The insane, crazed tree thrust Harry this way and that in its branches, tossing him about as though he were a mere Quaffle, which is probably an overstatement, considering the strength of the Whomping Willow compared to that of dear little Harry. Just when Harry thought he had received enough beatings, the tree began another round of whipping the boy about.

It is quite lucky, and rather curious, that Dobby the house-elf, wearing four mismatched socks (two on his hands, two on his feet), a pair of oversized shorts which had once belonged to a Weasley(though which one is not quite clear), and an "I Love London" t-shirt that Dennis Creevey had been looking for for three weeks now, should have emerged from the roots of the Whomping Willow, for when he did, he pressed his little sock covered house-elf hand to a knot of bark near the roots and the tree stood still. In summary, Dobby saved Harry by emerging from some opening near the roots of the Whomping Willow and switching the angry tree off. Paralysed as it was, the tree seemed to drop Harry to the ground, and Dobby rushed forward, pulling a now unconscious Harry Potter into the roots of the tree. The little house-elf dragged the boy through a tunnel and down a corridor until they reached what appeared to be a dark and dingy kitchen. In this kitchen was a large dining table with enough room for eight diners. All but one of these seats was occupied. In six of the large wooden chairs sat house-elves, five of them dressed in tea towels stamped with the Hogwarts crest, one of them wearing an extremely filthy blue skirt with a matching blue blouse. In the seventh occupied seat, at the head of the table, sat a tall, brown-haired girl, who Harry would have recognised instantly, had he been conscious.

"What is it, Dobby?" the girl asked, looking at Dobby curiously.

"It's a Harry Potter!" one of the tea towel clad house-elves exclaimed, pointing excitedly at the unconscious boy.

"Yes, Miss. Granger, Doseydum are right, it is the wise and wonderful Harry Potter!" Dobby replied.

Miss. Granger rose from her seat. "Oh Harry, I'm so happy you've finally decided to join us!" she cried gleefully.

"Harry Potter sir is fast a-sleeping," an incredibly fat house-elf, name of Tubbalard, pointed out.

"How do I longs for sleep," Doseydum yawned.

"Curses him for a-helping!" Winky, the house-elf dressed in the hideously filthy blue skirt and blouse cried out, jumping onto the table and wagging a long finger at Harry. "I hates this conspimirationicy thingy!"

"Conspiracy," Miss. Granger corrected in a know-it-all sort of way. "How do you espect to make a difference if you can't even pronounce conspiracy?"

"I wants no differentings!" Winky cried, stomping on the wooden table. "And by the way," she said, pausing her stomping fit for just a moment, "it's expect, not espect."

"Now, Winky," Miss. Granger said calmly, "you only think you don't want freedom because you're afraid of change. Trust me, your life will improve-"

"Improvings nothing!" Winky screamed, kicking the face of a surprised looking, tea towel wearing house-elf. The house-elf who had been kicked fell out of her chair, lying still on the ground.

"Looks what you done to Bewilda!" gasped a very shy-looking house-elf in a very tiny voice.

"Shuts you down, Tilly!" Winky growled, and Miss. Granger thought for a moment the angry house-elf may be demonically possessed. How utterly terrifying.

"Please, Winky," the human girl said shakily, "try to calm down."

By this time, Dobby had succeeded in reviving a dazed Harry Potter, who blinked at his surroundings in surprise.

"Harry Potter lives!" Dobby exclaimed, and proceeded to bounce around the room in excitement until at last he hit his head on the candelabra hanging from the ceiling, learning his lesson once and for all to not bounce about the room in joy.

Harry looked up at Miss. Granger (who he knew as Hermione), eyes wide with shock.

"I'm so happy you finally decided to join the cause!" Hermione said happily.

"What?" Harry looked around at the room, the long table upon which Winky the house-elf stood, an unconscious house-elf lying on the stone floor, and another four house-elves seated around the large table. "I... Malfoy tried to kill me, and then I ran and the Whomping Willow tried to kill me, and what the hell is going on here?... Are you trying to kill me?"

"Of course not, Harry, don't be silly," Hermione said, voice sounding awfully sugary.

"Then what is this?" Harry asked, sitting up as Dobby fetched him a glass of water. Harry accepted the glass of water but did not dare to drink it as he could see things floating around in the glass that he was sure his body would not be too keen on digesting.

"You mean you don't know?" Hermione asked, eyebrows furrowing. "But I thought you came to join us."

"If I knew what was going on, maybe I'd consider joining you," Harry replied evenly.

"Well, we've started a conspiracy," Hermione answered, "to free the house-elves."

"Oh Hermione," Harry said in exasperation. "How many times do we have to tell you, they don't want to be freed."

"Shh, Harry, don't give them any ideas!" Hermione snapped, hoping none of the house-elves had heard Harry.

"But it's true, Hermione," Harry remarked, shaking his head when Dobby offered him a cup of what looked like moldy soup. "Do these house-elves even know what this conspiracy is for?"

"Of course they do," Hermione replied, avoiding Harry's eyes. "And today we're taking action. We're going to march right up to the Minister of Magic and demand-"

"Hold on," Harry said, holding up a hand to silence his friend. "How are you planning on getting to the Ministry? It's not like you can apparate or anything."

"And even if I could," Hermione said through gritted teeth, red rising to her cheeks, "I wouldn't be able to apparate from here because you can't apparate or disapparate on the Hogwarts Grounds. This makes me wonder if you were lying when you told me you had indeed read Hogwarts, a History."

"Of course I've read it," Harry said, voice rather higher than he would have liked, blushing slightly.

"Then you would also know that I am taking a train to the Ministry of Magic," Hermione replied.

"What does that have to do with reading the book?" Harry asked.

"It clearly states in Hogwarts, A History, that one can take a train to London from Hogsmeade Station," Hermione answered, looking quite cross.

"You don't need to read Hogwarts, A History to know that," Harry said, once again shaking his head at Dobby, who now offered him a whole loaf of bread. "But how do you plan to get to London and back before Monday morning?"

"Don't you retain anything you read?" Hermione asked incredulously. "It also says that the fastest train in the universe travels from Hogsmeade to London every hour."

"Well of course I knew that," Harry lied. "But how do you plan on taking-" he paused to count the house-elves "-seven house-elves with you on a train without being noticed?"

"I'm throwing caution to the wind!" Hermione cried, suddenly jumping up on the table and throwing her arms up in the air and proceeding to laugh like a raving maniac.

Harry looked at his friend in alarm, backing away towards the door. It would have helped if he had stood up and raced out of there that instant, but Harry remained sitting on the ground in a room full of psychopaths, as he could now see when the house-elves (all but Winky, that is), began prancing around the wooden table, chanting in a language Harry had never heard before, and Hermione continued cackling like a lunatic. Yes, he would have been far safer had he stayed and laughed at the incredibly absurd Draco Malfoy.

It certainly came as a surprise to Harry when Kreaher, the incredibly evil house-elf, as seen in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, appeared in the room, standing between Hermione and Winky on the table. The chanting and prancing ceased.

"The Master has arrived," Tubbalard whispered, bowing so that his large, round nose almost touched the ground.

"All hail the Master," Doseydum said sleepily, also bowing to the ground and proceeding to snore.

Quite soon, all the house-elves, not including Winky and Kreacher, had begun bowing down to the table upon which stood Hermione Granger, Kreacher the Incredibly Evil, and Winky, the grumpy little snot.

"You has done goodly indeed, my precious Mudblood," Kreacher coaxed, stroking Hermione's arm.

"Kreacher, that's very rude of you," Hermione snapped.

"Kreacher is sorry," the house-elf replied, though he did not look or sound sorry to Harry at all. "My precious little witch."

"What in the name of Merlin is this?" a bemused voice asked from somewhere near Harry's elbow. It was Draco Malfoy.

Harry pulled out his wand, pointing it at Draco's nose. "Don't you dare come any closer," he warned.

"I don't think I want to," Draco said, making a face as though he could smell dog's droppings. That facial expression made him look a lot like his mother. "Potter, there's a bathroom across the corridor, couldn't you have held it in?"

"What are you talking about?" Harry asked, narrowing his eyes at Draco.

"Never mind," Draco replied, shaking his blonde little head. "Now will you please tell me what's going on? What are all these servants doing in here?"

"Well, I'm not really sure," Harry said, looking thoughtful. "I think it's a plot to kill me, or something like that."

"Isn't everything a plot to kill you?" Draco asked.

"It does seem that way," Harry replied unhappily.

Meanwhile, the house-elves had begun an odd little organized dance during which Kreacher would shout out a command and the six house-elves on the floor would comply. "Touches their feetsies to their nosies," Kreacher shouted, and all the house-elves on the floor lifted their feet to touch their noses. "Shaking of their bum-bums!" Kreacher cried out, and each house-elf on the floor began shaking his or her rear-end.

"This is absolutely disgusting, Potter," Draco muttered. "I mean, I knew you and Granger were weird, but what you have going on here is just... It's repulsive, Potter."

"No, that's not what this is," Harry said, realising his wand was still pointing at Draco's face. Wouldn't it be funny if he suddenly hexed the other boy? Harry couldn't help but giggle to himself.

"Then what is it?" Draco asked, arching an eyebrow at the heroic black-haired boy. "Did you arrive here by chance, surprised to find the start of some sort of house-elf rebellion, led by Granger?"

"Yeah," Harry replied nonchalantly.

"Oh wow," Draco murmured, "me too."

"And now my precious little elfies," Kreacher announced, grinning broadly, "welcome the Lord!"

To the surprise of everyone besides Kreacher, a man who looked rather snake-like emerged from one of the kitchen cupboards. He seemed to have been squeezed into the cupboard, which would have comfortably held a toddler, but not a grown man such as himself. He stepped onto the counter, knocking his head on the ceiling.

"That looked like it hurt," Draco said, grimacing as the man's red eyes flashed angrily.

"Whoever built this kitchen," the snake-like man who looked awfully familiar to Harry, "will suffer a painful death."

"You done the honour of killed him the week after last month," Kreacher said to the snake-like man.

"Well I'm glad," the snake-like man replied in his strange, inhuman voice.

"Hold it!" Draco exclaimed, rising to his feet. "Hold it just one ding dang minute!" He looked at the snake-like man with determined grey eyes. "Weren't you the actor in that theatre mother and I went to see this summer? What's your name, Lester?"

"No," the man replied, apparently taken by surprise.

"You toured with the Weird Sisters, didn't you?" Draco said. "You're the drummer from the opening band... What were they called? The Mortality Chewers?"

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about," the reptilian man replied, though he looked rather embarrassed.

"Then where have I seen you before?" Draco wondered aloud.

Hermione, who had finally realised that this was no House-Elf Liberation Front but in fact a plot to kill Harry Potter, also realised she had assisted a great deal in the making of this mess and it was her duty, as the problem-maker, to fix this problem. Before she could think of something better to do, she hopped off the table, grabbed Harry's untouched glass of water and threw it at the snake-like man, who she knew was Lord Voldemort. Poor Hermione, spending so much time reading meant her athletic abilities suffered, and due to her lack of hand-eye coordination, the glass of water hit the wall five metres from Lord Voldemort's ear, smashing into hundreds of pieces. It's a wonder she can cast a perfect Summoning Charm. Tubbalard the house-elf hurried to mop up the water and sweep up the glass.

Lord Voldemort looked at Hermione with questioning red eyes. "What were you even trying to do?" he asked her, rather rudely if you ask me.

"I've got it!" Draco cried, making Voldemort jump in surprise and hit his head on the ceiling once more. Curse that bloody low ceiling! "You're from that shop in Knockturn Alley. Remember, you offered me a mint and I politely refused, seeing that the mints seemed to be held in a filthy bowl that looked as though it had once contained blood. You've washed your hair since then, haven't you?"

Voldemort shook his head. "That's exactly why I used you as a diversion in my plan," he said smoothly. "You may look like your father, but you certainly don't think like him, brainless little git."

"Just because the sight of blood makes me peaky does not make me a useless person," Draco said defensively.

Now, if our villains had been paying attention, they would have noticed the disappearance of our dear Harry Potter, but unfortunately, they failed to notice Harry rise to his feet and casually walk out of the room. If Harry Potter had ever been in need of a Fairy Godfather, it was now, and sometimes Harry Potter is a lucky boy.

"Well hello Harry!" Sirius Black, Harry's Fairy Godfather, said. He was sliding down the railing of the staircase as Harry entered the corridor outside the kitchen. Harry noticed Sirius was still wearing a tall black top hat on his head.

"Sirius!" Harry whispered. "Voldemort's in the kitchen!"

"Last time I heard someone say that," Sirius said, a reminiscent look upon his face, "it was my brother. He died right after that, mind you."

"Well that's very encouraging," Harry replied curtly, "but seeing as you're my fairy godfather, how do you plan to get me out of this one?"

"There doesn't seem to be a problem," Sirius said, raising an eyebrow. "I mean, he's in there, and you're out here. You're not really in much danger, are you?"

"Hermione's in there too," Harry said, trying to keep his voice down so that he would not be heard from the kitchen.

"Well maybe if she's in danger, her fairy godfather should do something about it," Sirius replied, exasperated. "But since I am not her fairy godfather, it is not my responsibility."

"Are you Sirius Black or not?" Harry asked, raising his voice for effect. "Sirius Black wouldn't leave his friends in danger!"

"Fine, fine," Sirius sighed, and disappeared, right before Harry's eyes.

"Sirius?" Harry asked, moments later realising that Sirius had transported himself to the kitchen at the speed of light. It wasn't technically disapparating or apparating, so the dear fairy godfather broke no rules put in place by Hogwarts, A History.

"Right then," Sirius was saying as Harry re-entered the kitchen, "Hermione, you go back to the castle and never again may you think about setting house-elves free. Draco, he's Lord Voldemort, for crying out loud."

"But I could have sworn he was that mediwizard in Romania," Draco insisted. "Mother suspected he was a vampire from the way he kept eyeing our necks so she contacted her cousin from France who's a vampire. Then we realised he thought Mother was a vampire and he was only paranoid. Father was furious and disposed of him, so does it really make sense that he's here? Or maybe he's just and illusion?"

"No Draco," Sirius shook his head, "he's Lord Voldemort. And Voldemort, you're late for your trial at the Fairy Godparents' Society! They sent me to fetch you, and what do I find? You, threatening young school children? This will not look good to the panel of judges, you may never become a fairy godfather. Kreacher, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you into custody. It's one thing to sell out your master, but have a legion of house-elves bowing down to you and kissing your filthy feet? That is just disgusting."

"Evil blood-traitor!" Kreacher shrieked, hoping the other house-elves would join him in a chant of "We hate Sirius", but the others seemed too mesmerized by Sirius' grace to do anything. Needless to say, Kreacher looked like a complete fool, waving his arms around and chanting before he realised the other house-elves were still staring open-mouthed at the fairy godfather.

"Right then Harry," Sirius said, smiling at Harry, "I think that solves it."

"So this is goodbye?" Harry asked, lip trembling.

"Well, I'm sure we'll see each other again," Sirius replied.

And here we have it, the bittersweet ending. For the time-being, Harry Potter could feel at ease as he knew Voldemort was busy trying to become a fairy godfather. However, once Voldemort's trial was finished, he could strike again at any time, so Harry would have to keep a wary eye open. And if, by some suspicious chance, Voldemort was awarded with the ability to one day, after he passed through the veil, become a fairy godfather, Harry's troubles would never be over. But for now, let him rest happily.