Harry frowned as he thought over his conundrum. He and Sirius had just finished their daily talk on the mirror and not even a week in, he could see Sirius sliding back to his usual mad behaviour. Kreacher, it seemed, had taken to annoying Sirius once again now that he had less to do and without Harry or the twins to run interference Sirius was slipping into the rage, gloom, and doom.

But it was the issue of Kreacher that was taking up most of Harry's time. As a house elf privy to the secret of the house he couldn't be let go of which was really what Sirius wanted. Harry began comparing the differences between Kreacher and Dobby only to find there were a few more similarities than he'd like. Fanatically devoted to someone other than their master, check. Privy to sensitive information, check.

Desperate to leak that information? That question worried him.

Dobby hadn't been able to directly tell him about the Chamber of Secrets, true, but he had managed a way around it to warn him. He had been brilliantly sneaky and while Harry didn't like calling it that, he had betrayed the family that he worked for.

And it was far too easy to see Kreacher doing the same.

Harry couldn't allow it. The more he thought about it the more it unnerved him. House elves had powers that quite frankly terrified him. They were capable of wandless magic, circumventing wards (the blood wards at Privet Drive had been no obstacle to Dobby) and fanatical in a way that made Harry very wary.

Kreacher could be very dangerous. And Harry didn't like that.

"Dobby?" Harry called out softly and the house elf appeared before him in a split second.

(Another thing to add to the list of scary things about House Elves: Capable of apparating inside Hogwarts, where apparating was supposedly impossible.)

"Master Harry Potter sir is calling Dobby?" Harry was taken aback by the wet, adoring wide eyes pointed at him. He had gotten a bit too used to glares and sniggers this year.

"Right, Dobby-" Harry took a deep breath and began, "I know that you like working here in Hogwarts. But I am looking for a house elf and if you would be okay with it, I would like to hire you." The wet eyes were now weeping outright and Harry quickly added, "But if you don't want to that's fine, I'd just appreciate you pointing me in the way of a house elf who would want to work for me."

"Master Harry Potter sir is wanting Dobby to belong to him!" And then he flung himself at his waist hugging him tight. Harry patted his back unaware of the best way to handle this. The only one who hugged him was Hermione, which usually involved choking on hair and trying to breathe, or Sirius which usually had Harry going to the nearest mirror to see what prank the man had played on him.

"Yes, but here's the thing, I can't technically have you." The glee subsided considerably and Dobby's ears drooped. "I could but then I couldn't have you here in Hogwarts, right? And the thing is, one of the main reason I wanted to see if you wanted to work for me was for my godfather. He needs help and his house-elf...doesn't like him."

Dobby looked utterly affronted at the thought of that but then frowned and a thoughtful look came over him. "Your dogfather Sirius is a bad master?"

"Not exactly," Harry understood why Dobby was asking him that. He had 'bad masters' that he hadn't liked, after all, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for him to think that Sirius was an abuser of elves. And to be honest, the way Sirius treated Kreacher was horrid, even if it was mainly in retaliation. "Kreacher, the elf, he's loyal to the House of Black but Sirius isn't like the other wizards in the House of Black, doesn't even like his family, so-"

Dobby nodded knowingly, "Bad Masters had them too."

There must have been other house elves in the Malfoy house, ones who loved them for being Dark Wizards. But why did Lucius Malfoy call for Dobby then, he wondered. Was it just a power play, did old Lucy get off of hurting Dobby who so obviously didn't like him? Was that it?

"So...would you like to be our house elf then?" Harry asked again and Dobby nearly fell over, nodding and saying 'yes' rather vigorously. "Alright then, I'll call you tomorrow when I talk to Sirius again and we'll go over it."

Dobby hugged Harry once more and he was taken back to the first time he'd seen Dobby in the Hogwarts kitchen and another thought occurred to him.

"Is Winky settling in alright, Dobby? Or would she like belonging to a family too?" Two loyal house elves would be good. He could entrust Dobby to keep watch over Sirius and Kreacher while Winky could help him make his way around Hogwarts without alerting the wards. After promising to ask her Dobby disappeared in a snap and Harry settled down to an evening of more planning.


Despite being labelled a crazy attention seeker and what not, Harry found himself being a bit invisible in the Gryffindor tower. Oh sure, the first two days people had whispered and looked at him with frightened eyes but it went away pretty fast. Even Seamus had stopped his loud grumbling about Harry when it became clear that he wasn't going to react.

They kept expecting him to blow up and when he didn't, they didn't know what to do.

And Harry found his newfound invisibility to be quite interesting. It wasn't like being under the cloak, no fear of being caught and whispering or anything. But he overheard just as much as he might with the cloak. Like now when Fred and George complained to Lee Jordan about overbearing prefects with no sense of humour. It became clear whom they were talking about when they mentioned the prefect owling their mum, Hermione then. Ron wouldn't have the guts to do that, half the time it was Hermione and Harry reminding him to write to Mrs Weasley in the first place.

It was odd to think that only a few months ago Harry would have been lost without them and now it was becoming a chore to tolerate them. They kept on apologising over and over but it appeared like they didn't really have any clue on how to say sorry because they always added a 'but Dumbledore' to the end of it and absolved themselves of everything. Oh, they were 'sorry' that they couldn't write to him but they'd do it again in a heartbeat if Dumbledore told them to. And Harry would have preferred to have friends of his own instead of having lackeys of Dumbledore claiming to be his friends.

Dobby was a better friend than them. He'd even insisted that he be paid a galleon every two weeks instead of every week because 'Dumbledore is being a great wizard but he is no Master Harry Potter sir'. And the house elf would never know how much that meant to him that Dobby was actually willing to work for him (well, technically Sirius) despite knowing ahead of it that he'd be mainly working in Grimmauld place. Harry wasn't sure he would have been willing to move his base from Hogwarts to Grimmauld.

But Sirius assured him that Dobby was very happy with the amount of work he had, that he kept a close eye on Kreacher and that as an elf that had served at Malfoy Manor he knew how to deal with dark artifacts very well. He had already made Sirius a fortune trading some of the stuff in the house in Knockturn Alley and he had grudgingly gained Kreacher's approval by keeping Mundungus from stealing things from the house. Apparently it suited Dobby well to work in a dark house with very light masters.

Winky on the other hand refused to consider freedom for a second. She had been more than willing to be their other house elf though and was especially happy to be given the task of taking care of Harry by Sirius. Being owned by a proper family meant that the Hogwarts elves now accepted her into their fold too, which was great. There was even this one house elf, Blimp, who seemed to be eyeing her fondly when Harry had visited the kitchens.

(Harry was planning to ask the elf all about his intentions towards Winky. Wouldn't do to let him break her heart)

Both the elves had been given a choice and made the one that made them happy.

Which was why Harry was considerably pissed off to see Hermione knitting hats to free the house elves secretly.

"You're trying to trick them into picking up the hats. You're setting them free when they might not want to be free." Ron raged and Harry for the first time since summer was reminded of exactly why he liked the red head.

"Of course they want to be free!" Hermione protested and Harry couldn't help himself.

"You talked to them about it did you?" He sneered and she turned to face him, apparently delighted that he was talking to her only for her face to fall when she saw he was angry. "Asked them? Or did you just assume that they'd want to be free."

"It's slavery!" She screeched and Harry snorted.

"Tell me the names of any five of the hundred something Hogwarts house elves you're trying to free." He demanded and she spluttered in response, unable to answer. "Tell me about them, then, tell me these house elves you're trying to free what do they like to do? Do they like treacle tart like me? What kind of books do they read? Where did they learn their magic? Do they have a preference in Houses, maybe?"

"They shouldn't have to clean up after us like that in the first place!" She said, assuming Harry meant which common rooms they liked to clean and this time Ron scoffed.

"You're just disrespecting them forcing them to be free." He said and Harry agreed.

"Oh but Ron, you know how she always knows best for everyone. Doesn't matter what they actually want, that's ridiculous! Only thing that matters is what the great Hermione Granger wants for them." Harry said sarcastically.

With a sob Hermione swept off but she made sure to very pointedly take her knitting with her which just made Harry angry. Free house elves had a bad time of it, Dobby was happy to be free but even he admitted that the year he spent looking for work had weakened him and his magic had hurt him tremendously. House elves had a different kind of magic, it was volatile and needed to be expended or they would go mad. It was half the reason Kreacher was in such terrible shape, Grimmauld had been empty and he had been alone in there for so long with nothing to do, it was like his magic had cooked his brain.

But Hermione didn't know that because it wasn't in any book and she didn't bother to ask. If she had, she might know that freeing them wasn't the best choice, maybe she could actually work on their welfare and treatment instead of this but she didn't. Her reliance on books would be her downfall one day.

"Maybe we shouldn't have been so hard on her." Ron said guiltily eyeing the staircase but Harry didn't agree.

"There's a house elf called Blimp in the kitchens. He used to work for a Wizarding family called the Crewotts but they died in the war so he came to work here. He makes the bangers and mash for the Gryffindor table and uses the same recipe he did for his old family. He likes the greenhouses the best so Hufflepuff is his favourite House and he tries to look out for Neville too. He has a crush on Winky but he's only making his move now that she's gotten over her butterbeer addiction."

He turned to Ron who was looking at him in surprise. Admittedly a lot of this he had gotten from Winky who thought Blimp was dreamy and a proper house elf, but some of it Blimp had told him himself.

"They are not children. Treating them like it, isn't fair. They may be a bit more excitable but they aren't naive or innocents or anything. It's not that difficult to talk to them. She could convince them to ask for their freedom if she tried, but she doesn't, she just makes the choice for them and that's fucking patronising of her. I'm not going to mollycoddle her on this just because she cries. She can learn or she can shut up."

Anything else was just unacceptable.