Chapter 3 - Hiring Dobby
A two hundred year old page of parchment turned under delicate female fingers. Brown eyes raced frantically over handwritten lines. A teenaged brow furrowed in concentration as a young scholar tried to escape from her haunting memories the only way she knew. She was trying to push everything aside and come undone in the activity of studying.
It wasn't working.
Examining and internalizing little moving pictures which illustrated the text, Hermione felt a sudden burst of sadness: Harry would have loved this book. It explained first how to cast a spell, presented its uses in a duel and afterward presented effective spells to counter it.
She had stopped reading, her eyes blindly fixed on one of the sketches. She barely registered the wand repeating the same movement over and over. The sadness grew stronger with every breath, threatening to make her crumble. When she was fully engulfed and ready to break down, something else happened.
Rage overwhelmed her. It fed on her sorrow like fire on sooty coal. If it had been a blinding flash it might have been less painful than the sadness, but as it was, her anger was burning on a constant high, searing and hurting her, ultimately scaring her.
When Hermione came back to her senses, her hands had cramped around the edges of the tome. She tried to relax them. She tried to even her breathing so her nose would not flare at every intake of air.
She slammed her book shut with a fluid motion, threw it on a nearby table, and jolted on her feet. A few long strides later she could be found standing outside of an ancient bedroom, arms akimbo. "Sirius!"
She tried to hold onto the fury. It was easier for her to be angry than sad. Everything got extremely hard when she was in the blue. She could find no motivation for anything. Sometimes she even found herself hiding from the world in her bed. At least while she was enraged she got some things done.
A creak accentuated an opening door. Sirius Black emerged clothed in muggle wear. As soon as he left it he shut the room off. "This one is nearly done."
Grimmauld Place was still a dirty and more importantly an infested place. As if to prove this point, Sirius' clothes had been stained by dust while his hair was knotted and his skin scratched by angry Pixies. At times it seemed that the only reason for the magical pests to not roam the halls freely were other vermin preying on them.
"Sirius why is it that we are still living in the middle of a garbage bin? It has been over a week and there are only two partially inhabitable rooms." The young woman gestured at their two bedrooms. The sleeve of her loose jumper dangled distractingly around her pointing arm. They had bought clothes a few days prior. Hermione had chosen to only wear black for the foreseeable future. It was fitting for her mourning.
"Three." Sirius corrected and tried a lopsided grin. By now he knew Hermione at least a little, and so far he had learned two things. First, her mood was best when she had read a book. And second, he got away with a very certain kind of humor.
Hermione huffed indignantly. "Fine lets count the library too!" Sirius had been working on it for days but was still not done.
"Thank you," Sirius drawled ironically. But this time he failed at lightening the mood. He knew it instantly, as Hermione's eyes became slits.
"I thought this would be the least of our problems!" the witch hissed. "We managed to get pounds from Gringotts! Ollivander was willing to send you a wand of the same materials and measurement as your old one! We could even verify that the wards around this house had not eroded after years of missing maintenance!"
Hermione was short, especially in comparison to Sirius but her temper made up for that. The man already feared her outbursts. He tried very hesitantly to defend himself: "It is complicated to clean the house up."
"Why is that?" Hermione probed tersely.
"For a lot of reasons..."
"Name them!"
Sirius sighed. He gestured at the door behind him. "Well those pests are magical. They may be small and relatively weak, but they're fast, and I have to capture or banish them one by one."
"What else?"
"I am not very proficient with household spells. Summoning dust or making it vanish or even banishing it into a single corner is actually rather complicated! These charms are weak in power but they are area-of-effect or multi-target spells and that makes them hard to execute. It would be easier if I was at least used to the furniture but I have not been here for two decades and barely remember anything besides my own room and the damn drawing room!"
"Kreacher can do the cleaning while you concentrate on eradicating those magical nuisances!" appointed Hermione.
"The damn house elf is of no use!" Sirius started his own complaining tirade. "He only follows my orders superficially. If he does something, he does it as slow as possible and imperfectly on top! Half of the time he wanders off as soon as I look away. And I am pretty sure if I call for him he evades my summoning by pretending he cannot hear me."
"Elves can do that?" Hermione blinked bewildered. "I thought they were bound to follow their masters command?"
"They are! But over the years they get away with certain things and accept those as extension to the boundaries they are allowed to make decisions in," Sirius rushed to explain, in hopes of defusing Hermione's rage.
"That is fascinating," Hermione whispered. "So basically if they don't want to do something they can find a way to evade a chore."
"They cannot outright disobey," Sirius clarified. "But you would have to be extremely specific on your orders to make them do something they don't want to."
"So there is nothing we can do to make Kreacher more useful?"
"No."
After a long moment of silence Hermione came to another realization: "He could even betray us. Just like Dobby did with the Malfoys!"
"Shit!" was just the first curse from Sirius' lips. After gathering at least superficial composure he called: "Kreacher! Kreacher come here in this instant! Whatever you are doing, stop it and come here now!"
For once it seemed Sirius had found the right commanding tone. The called elf appeared in front of them. He bowed in such an overly respectful manner that it was obviously sarcastic. "How can Kreacher serve his master today?" The small being spared Hermione barely a look but even that was enough to express his loathing.
Sirius glanced at Hermione. She had stiffened. If Kreacher hated Sirius, there was no word to describe how he felt about the young woman. In the role of his master, Sirius had given the elf a lot of instructions over the past week. Especially on how to treat Hermione. But it was obvious that the creature was full of malice towards her. And despite Sirius' numerous orders, the elf found a surprising amount of opportunities to display his feelings.
"You will not leave this house." Sirius started and took a moment to think over what else he did not want the elf to do: "And even while you are here, you are not allowed to talk to anybody except myself and Hermione. You are not allowed to use the floo connection or send a message in any other way." Sirius became quite creative in the next few minutes. He had obviously put a lot of thought into circumventing security measures. Finally Sirius finished: "If we tell you to leave us alone or go away, you are still not allowed to leave the house. Do you understand?"
"Kreacher would never betray his family. He understands perfectly," answered the wrinkly elf proudly. "Is Kreacher allowed to retreat?"
"As long as you stay inside the house," Sirius demanded once more.
"Kreacher would never leave." The elf snapped at his current master before he vanished with an overly loud cracking sound.
Like the wizard beside her, Hermione stared at the spot Kreacher had vacated: "What do you think?"
Sirius tried to straighten his hair out. "I think that he will have a hard time getting around that."
"Fine," Hermione nodded. "Now what about the house?"
"Kreacher will never be of any use to us. We need an elf that is willing to do at least the cleaning part. He could even cook for us. I don't see Kreacher changing his attitude about burning our food to cinder." Sirius sighed. "But there is no way we could get an elf. Since I am a fugitive and you are a muggleborn we could neither get one from the ministry or another family."
Hermione thought this over. "We could ask Dobby to work for us temporally. Naturally we would pay him."
"Dobby? Is that the elf Harry freed at the end of his second year?" Sirius asked curiously.
"Yes that is him. I will owl him and ask." And with that Hermione retreated to her room leaving Sirius behind in the hallway.
As it turned out, Dobby arrived the next morning before Hedwig actually returned to Hermione's side. The elf had a pretty set idea what he wanted out of this job. Had Hermione or Dobby been less stubborn the negotiation could have been far shorter. But for some unknown reason Dobby insisted his payment to be no more than 3 Sickles and 5 Knuts a day. At least on the matter of holidays Hermione managed to trick the small being into a second day off if a month housed more than four Sundays.
"That will be fine Miss Grangy!" To Hermione's embarrassment the little elf bowed so deep his nose nearly touched the ground. "Dobby is happy to work for family." Dobby bowed once more. "Working for school was fun too but working for family is better." And he bowed a third time.
"Please stop bowing."
"Miss Grangy don't like bowing?"
"No I do not like you to bow to me. And please call me Hermione."
"So no bowing?"
"Right no bowing."
"All right Miss Grangy." The elf was ridiculously happy.
"Dobby! Look at me. I want you to concentrate. From now on you are going to call me Hermione." She spoke her name slow and enunciated clearly. "This is important to me. I know you will not manage instantly, but I am sure you can do it."
Dobby nodded in understanding.
After a moment the witch asked: "How will you address me?"
"Her-my-oh-NE!"