On the Origin of House Elves

A Harry Potter thought experiment

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: K

Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Characters/Pairings: Dobby; [N/A]

Summary: Or, "Why indeed would an entire species of sapient creatures seem perfectly content to live in nothing short of outright slavery?" Half fan quibbling, half genuinely thoughtful consideration of the potential causes and factors which might have led house elves and wizards into their respective roles and places.

Ancient house elves were not especially powerful beings. While reasonably magical, their only proper defensive adaptation was a curious affinity for apparation. They had many predators, and unlike their larger, fiercer goblin relatives they possessed neither the strength nor the vicious cunning to fight except when in large numbers. Despite this, their family units were ordinarily small and scattered.

The elves of old were not proud or powerful creatures. Frankly, they were by the standards of humans very meek, timid, and cowardly. They preferred to hide from potential threats when they could, and one behavior which evolved as a result of this was their compulsive habit of cleaning.

Ancient elves were said to have a distinctive smell about them, you see, one which clung stubbornly to dust and grime and was apt to betray their locations to just about any potential hunter. Only by regularly cleansing their dens and disposing of filth before it could build up were they able to avoid the detection of predators. Comparable adaptations can be seen in many animals, such as canines who eat the distinctly odiferous droppings of their young, or small cats who bury their feces. Cleaning was, and is, an unthinking behavior for elves, as reflexive as scratching an itch or clearing one's throat.

In regards to diet, the ancient elves chiefly preyed on small vermin such as mice and roaches, and especially on fey pests like doxies and pixies. Like any predators, also, they naturally gravitated to habitats where their prey were plentiful. At the same time, humans, with their tendency of creating settlements where offal would build up, and a learned practice of storing food against lean times, have long created incidental habitats for opportunistic vermin, and have equally long striven to drive said pests away.

Thus, elves followed their prey into human settlements, the huts and villages of ancient man.

Initially, humans assumed that the small, wrinkled elves were scavengers and pilferers like the vermin they hunted, and they were just as unwelcoming to the diminutive goblinoids as they were to any garden variety pests. Yet with time they came to notice that where the elves appeared, other vermin seemed to grow scarcer, filth encrusted surfaces became clean, and fires were easier to start and maintain.

Muggles, who even in prehistory were respectful but wary of magic, came in time to see these creatures as helpful fairies or tiny gods. Some began to leave out occasional offerings to the elves—usually food—in hopes of keeping them around, and those who did this saw their huts kept clean and sound by their furtive little helpers, their food relatively fresh and safe from sneaking vermin.

Elves of those times found in human communities both a steady supply of food and a relative safety from predators, for humans attracted the creatures on which they preyed while warding off most of the small carnivores which might in turn have seen the elves as an easy meal. Neither of those things were by design on the part of the humans of course, and were rather simply a consequence of their existence as large, tribal animals and fearsome hunters of which most other beasts steered clear.

Still, elves were grateful for the relative comfort and ease they found in human villages. And like the muggles who made hearth gods and fairy tales of them, the elves who took up residence in their villages, and did so many little things that made their homes more pleasant (although never in plain sight, for they were naturally meek and instinctively avoided detection) they, the elves, came likewise to see the humans as almost deific figures: patrons, protectors, and providers. They revered mankind much as primitive man might revere the rivers which slaked their thirsts and took their dead, or the great and fearsome beasts which fed and slew them in turn.

The elves feared yet loved man, just as man feared and loved their gods.

And like many other creatures that humans found helpful, the elves were encouraged to stay and prosper. Man provided elf with a steady supply of food in the vermin drawn to their larders, and security through their cats and hounds and own predatory reputations against the foxes and badgers and other beasts that might like to make meals of the elves. And the elves, as magical creatures, were able to repay this invaluable boon in many small but meaningful ways.

Now, it would be controversial in many people's opinions to say that humans domesticated the elves, for house elves are sapient creatures with minds of their own, and it was wizards besides who sought to own these creatures and not merely live alongside them. For just as much as the power of science has made many modern muggles arrogant, so too did the power of magic make wizards and witches of old. At a point in history when muggles still feared and worshipped nature, happy enough to merely subsist and survive, their magical kin studied and learned to dominate the world around them.

And whatever the reader's opinion on modernization and ecology, it can at least hopefully be agreed that for all the benefits such a mentality may bring humanity, it also often gives rise to unfortunately selfish, destructive, and exploitative practices. Before muggles were poisoning rivers with the toxic runoff from their factories, wizards were dumping faulty potions into the water and altering whole biomes with the side effects of magical experimentation. Seeing themselves as chosen and worthy masters of the earth, they cared not what effect their actions had on nature so long as it did not harm themselves.

Therefore wizardkind, many of whom distinguished themselves even in antiquity from their muggle neighbors, were aware of the elves and coveted them. Some witches and wizards, of course, were perfectly content to simply coexist with the elves in a symbiotic relationship, but the ones who sought mastery were also the ones with the drive and ambition to explore their magic and understand it, to use it to its full extent as a weapon and tool. These were the ones who would go on to elevate themselves above nonmagical humans, to uncover so many of nature's secrets and create traditions of spells and wands and oppression and war.

And these ambitious, resourceful, aggressive witches and wizards were the ones to seek out the elves and begin claiming them as possessions. They used primitive but powerful spells to bind the elves to their homesteads and bloodlines, jealously seeking to deprive potential rivals of their aid, and the elves—now house elves—gladly deferred to the wizards and called them master and mistress, for it was coexistence with humans that had allowed them to prosper in a harsh world, and they inherited from their ancestors an almost worshipful gratitude and reverence toward mankind.

The house elves accepted servitude, for the duties given to them were things they would have done regardless, and ownership gave their sorcerous masters a more vested interest in their welfare besides. Even more directly than before, the witches and wizards gave their house elves food and shelter, the protection of their reputations against violence and abuse. It was the feudal relationship of a serf to their lords, a thing which for long stretches of history would be accepted as perfectly right and normal.

It is somewhat relatedly that I mention the fact that ancient elves had no tradition of clothing or artificial adornment, and when they first began living alongside humans this was not too noteworthy. But as societies grew and evolved, it came to be that the wizards and witches who increasingly adorned themselves in animal hides or cloaks of hemp (as much out of vanity as practicality) came to find the nudity of their elvish serfs distasteful.

The house elves acquiesced reluctantly to demands that they cover their bodies, but refused to don or fashion clothing in the manner of their lords, for such mimicry seemed somehow abhorrent to their sensibilities. Indeed, those few elves who were forced by vexed or stubborn masters to take and wear articles of "proper clothing", like dogs shoved into sweaters by cooing owners, grew so confused and distressed that they fled in dismay and never returned.

So it came to be that wizards adopted the practice of giving their elves clothing as a way to get rid of them if they proved incompetent or mischievous (an atavistic tendency coming from their shared ancestry with goblins), and eventually as the magics binding elves to households grew stronger and more complex, this became the only way for the contract of servitude to be broken.

Yet while modern house elves no longer have the extreme, visceral aversion of their ancestors to the idea of clothing in and of itself, the freedom it symbolizes is still for most of them a thing to be feared and avoided. For a house elf being fired means exile from their ancestral home, being outcast into the very same cruel and unforgiving world that their ancestors had joined with humans to escapes. It is being sent away from friends and family and told never to return, a grim and traumatizing experience that few would wish to endure.

Freedom, to house elves, is a life without the safety and comfort that comes from a master to protect them, and an estate in which to live and work. Very few elves would choose liberty over security, and most of those who would were typically treated so horribly by their masters that even ancestral fears of solitude, starvation, and depredation seemed genuinely less terrible.

This is not that strange, honestly, for many humans make the same choice as the house elves, if less obviously so. Freedom is a lovely idea, but if put on the spot most people who are otherwise content would much sooner choose security and stability, protection and providence. It is the same for house elves, because as unpleasant as their lot may seem to most humans, it is for them comfortable enough and preferable to the nebulous, uncertain alternative.

Only one house elf in living memory has defied that choice, a revolutionary perhaps generations before his time, or a lunatic gone spare from bad blood and long abuse. Whatever the cause, and however history will remember him, let it at least be known that he chose independence, responsibility, to shape in some small part his own fate, whatever else may come.

Because, Dobby.

Dobby was a free elf.

A/N: House elves are one of the more interesting things presented in the world of Harry Potter, and one of the more subtly divisive among fandom too. Some people seem to favor Hermione's stance on the matter, while others seem to point out that most house elves shown seem quite happy with their lot. It's left honestly ambiguous in the source material—Dobby is certainly independent-minded in his own right, but even he says that he likes to work, and he canonically bargained Dumbledore DOWN both in regards to how much he would be paid and how many days off he would receive.

For myself, I find it very interesting to ponder how house elves may have come to be the way they are presented in the series, and the puzzle of their hypothetical cultural and biological evolution has given me plenty of intellectual fodder in the past. And, having recently caved into the march of technology and asked to get an iphone for Christmas, mostly for the sake of being able to listen to audiobooks—the first of which that I then bought were the Harry Potter books—I've been hankering to read or write some good HP fic.

And since the kind of fics I'd like to read are very difficult to find, I naturally resign myself to writing what I'd like to read. But as the Ron-centric and "what if" ideas have been slow going, this thing I cranked out in near as I could to one sitting will have to do for now, haha.

Updated: 1-8-16

TTFN and R&R!

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