Disclaimer: The Harry Potter Universe (and more specifically, the brilliant characters of Filch and Dobby) belong to JK- but the tender love they share belongs to us all.
Slashing Wildly: The Epic of Filch and Dobby
Filch stared morosely at the grim stone wall across from his desk. He'd tried so hard in the previous days to suppress the memories, but at long last he had to admit to himself that it wasn't working. Long lashes framing beautiful tennis-ball eyes plagued his passion-wracked brain, but alas- his sweet Dobby had gone to the great kitchen in the sky.
Filch had stopped eating, mostly. The occasional scrawny first-year was his sole source of sustenance. Filch just couldn't bring himself to brave the kitchens, where the essence of Dobby still permeated the stone walls and copper pots. The aged caretaker, always gaunt, had assumed skeletal proportions that had frightened one new student into thinking him an inferi. Filch had cured his delusion with a month of detentions.
But even punishing the horrible little miscreants that plagued the school was a hollow joy. Those brats had it so easy, running around, blasting statues into powder and turning suits of armor into toads. Now he no longer even had the coping mechanism of whips and chains. In a way, he almost missed the Dark Lord's regime... except that they had killed Dobby. A moan racked Filch's frame.
In the days following the restoration of normalcy, Filch had made the journey away from Hogwarts- his first in many years. A pilgrimage to the shrine of his only love. He picked several of his best mismatched socks and placed them on his final resting spot. In fact, he had often taken to wearing Dobby's old socks and tea towels around the school so that his eternal spirit wold forever live on.
The clock chimed three o'clock. For no other reason than that it would give him something to do, Filch hoisted himself out of his chair and into the hall with the intention of finding some delinquents disguised as students to punish. As he ventured into the walkway, he heard shouts and laughter behind him. He whipped his head around and was immediately smashed in the face with a Fanged Frisbee. The laughter died away and the offending student promptly adopted a look of abject contrition, expecting to be punished severely. Instead, Filch said not a word as he put two fingers to his mouth to feel the blood spreading from the split in his lip. Tears filled his eyes as he fled back to his office.
His lips. He could remember another use for them, once. Many times. The first time, of course, was in this very office... Dobby had shown up in his office in the wee hours of the morning. Filch had fallen asleep at his desk, very drunk off firewhiskey and visions of the sexy little elf that just wouldn't leave him be. The offending elf had rapped smartly on the door jamb of Filch's den and let himself in just as Filch was raising his head blearily from his desk.
"Sir-", squeaked the diminutive servant. "Sir, I hates to bother sir at this late hour, but sir's nest is very, very cluttered. If I might be of service?" he trailed off.
Filch rose unsteadily. "I'll show you service." he growled, crossing the space between them in two large strides. He bent down and roughly grabbed Dobby by the collar of his lumpy maroon jumper, lifting him up to the desk. He captured the elf's wrinkly lips with his own and imbued the kiss with all the passion he'd been repressing since the elf took up employment at Hogwarts.
Furtive snickering and squealing from behind the door of his office made the old man open his eyes blearily. He stumbled back to his feet, crossing the room with an odd gait not dissimilar to the drunken stumbling of the past. The door was thrust unceremoniously open, and a pair of students hastily leaped apart.
This was too much. Filch hated the sight of their young, lustful faces, the limbs just barely unwrapped from around each other. The boy was shoving his shirt tail hastily back into his trousers. Not in flagrante delicto, but give them a few minutes...
They shoved off before Filch could even get in a good rebuke, scurrying away into the dimness of the corridor. He was getting rusty. He hadn't even managed a dire parting threat. And he felt a strange odd feeling, almost akin to jealousy. It was a feeling he'd been privy to before. That was the one thing he and his beloved had ever argued about. Dobby's unending devotion, nay, his worship, of The Boy. Filch could not countenance even thinking his name. He growled and prowled back into his office, slamming the door. But now he was not filled with atavism, but with a hunger. For retribution. For revenge.
Most luckily, his nemesis was scheduled to attend an idiotic fund raising ball at Hogwarts for Deprived Orphans of Voldemort's Second Rise. This event was to be attended by all the members of the highest ranks of society. Naturally, Filch was not invited. He spent hours scouring the Great Hall, polishing tarnished silver, and dusting chandeliers. When the pompous twats actually arrived, Filch had already created his dastardly plot. The guests poured in through the front doors, attired in sweeping robes and formal hats. Filch, as usual, sat checking the guest list. The Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Ministry's legal whiz, Hermione Granger, smiling serenely on the arm of her gangly date. Filch couldn't remember his name. A Weasley, but there were just so many... Hagrid was conspicuously missing (was he ever any other kind of missing, at his great, beastly height?) Filch had heard that he was off in Djibouti, trying to introduce Blast-Ended Skrewts to a justifiably skeptical populace.
And the toast of the affair. Confident, grinning with just the right mixture of boyish charm and friendly charisma. Harry Potter, no longer the Boy Who Lived, but the man who had single-handedly defeated Voldemort in a duel. Filch's insides clenched with hate as the jaunty wizard with the rumpled hair passed by, talking to his fiancée. Another Weasley, but rather more attractive than her brother. Of course, her looks held no charm for Filch, as she was a bit tall for his tastes. He crumpled up the guest list as the last stragglers wandered in. Time to act. Yes, now was the time.
He disappeared (mundanely, of course; Filch had acquired ninja skills during an expedition to the Orient that allowed him to move invisibly- this was sort of like Apparition, but much less cool, and without the magic) to a third floor cupboard where earlier he had stashed a kitchen knife. It was one of the only presents he had received from his soulmate.
Filch remembered the day vividly. They had met atop the Astronomy Tower for a private assignation. Afterward, Dobby lay with his head cradled on Filch's sagging paunch as the caretaker stroked the soft white hair which carpeted the inside of the elf's velvety ears. Suddenly, Dobby sat up and stared soulfully into Filch's coal-black, beady eyes. For a long while, neither broke the moment.
"Argus." Dobby whispered abruptly. "Argus, sir, I is wanting you to know something." he murmured as his great blue orbs swiveled downward. "I is never feeling this way about someone befores, not even the great Mister Potter. I is wanting you to have this, Argus, sir."
After a long pause, fraught with angst, Dobby placed a butcher knife in Filch's lap. "You see, sir, I is never trusting anyone enough before nows, sir, to give them a sharp and lethal thing. This is my mother's kitchen knife, the first one her master is ever buying her, sir. I is wanting you to have it." The elf whispered, rather soulfully.
Two hours later, Dobby was summoned by Aberforth, to whom he went cheerfully. Filch never saw him again.
Filch had warred in his mind. There was, on one side of his tortured soul, the extreme desire, no longing, to believe that the elf had meant every one of his words. That he truly returned Filch's love. But his last actions, venturing forth to save a bunch of ungrateful humans! And, by all accounts, even his last words! Again, Filch felt a spasm of loathing too intense to allow the name to form in his mind. Seeing it on the guest list, as poisonous as basilisk venom, had been bad enough. He planned on only seeing it once more.
In the obituaries section.
Dinner was carried out while Filch retrieved the gifted blade. He tested it on his forefinger. A sanguinolent bead rose, streaked the shimmer of tempered steel. Clutching it in his fist, Filch stole downstairs. A knot of students was spying at the keyhole to the Great Hall. They saw Filch and blanched. They saw the knife and ran. Filch wondered if any would think to raise the alarm. Most likely they saw it merely as the newest form of his continued hatred of the students. Shackles one year, knives the next. Regardless of their motives, they fled, and he was alone.
Filch hid the blade behind his back, feeling the giddy guilt of a school boy. He opened the door a crack and slipped in. The Minister of Magic had taken the podium up front, his resonant voice booming out, and no one noticed his entry.
Ninja-ing up the walls like a gecko, he creeped across the ceiling to the chandelier, which only tinkled slightly as he climbed upon it. Poised to strike, he surveyed his target leisurely sipping a drink approximately five feet to his left. Completely unaware of his impending doom... The handle of the blade felt cool in his hand. It was time.
Slashing wildly and leaping from the chandelier, his adrenaline-filled yop echoed in the hall as he finally served the Potter kid his just desserts- an entirely different sort of dessert than those his angelic Dobby had once served the brat in this very hall. The noise alerted Potter to the attack. A face looked up, raven hair flopping wildly. Then Filch was upon him. He swung his knife blindly for a moment that stretched long and slow and beautiful. Adrenalin seared so strongly that he was unable to discern if he was hitting his target. Screams assaulted his ears, and then there was magic everywhere. Something shot past Filch's ear, a stunning spell. He twisted. Never had his ninja skills been put more to the test. Suddenly, strong, lithe arms closed viselike around his chest as a new attacker entered the scene. Filch was dashed to the flagstones as a stilettoed foot roundhouse kicked his face once, twice, three times, before flipping him onto his stomach and bracing itself in the small of his back as a pair of expertly manicured hands ripped a swatch of silk off a slinky evening gown to restrain the caretaker.
Ginny Weasley had spent some time in the Orient, too.
And as Filch was carried off, stunned, he saw in the blink before unconsciousness a wavy mane of red hair, a black dress ripped to the knees, bending over someone on the ground. But he couldn't see whom.
Pandemonium meant in the ancient cultures a kind of frenzy initiated by wild celebration. This was not what was happening in the Great Hall. Women were still screaming, despite the fact that all the violence was done with. At the high table, Professor McGonagall was trying to restore order in vain. No one would be calm until they had ascertained that the intended victim was safe. That the former Boy Who Lived was indeed still living. Ginny knelt at his side, and there was blood. Not so much visible, but tangible in a tang on the air. But then there was a breathy murmur in the crowd because the young man was standing, shakily, one arm bleeding through onto his dress robes, but with a small tight smile. Ginny's shoulders sagged in relief. Everyone's shoulders sagged in relief.
One person wasn't happy. Filch's shoulders weren't sagging from relief, but from old age. Captive now, he'd been enervated, and a smug, disgusted auror had informed him that he had failed. Filch would have killed himself then and there, a better tribute to Dobby, but sadly his knife had been confiscated, a loss as heartrending as his failure. He was hauled away. The verdict at the trial was almost certain. But Argus Filch never made it to his trial. He was found dead in his holding cell the morning after the attempted assassination of Harry Potter. He had hung himself from a rope made of assorted, knotted socks.