Autor's Note:

To the Reviewer "Gatherer": wait for chapter 9 ;)

Freedom

If he were to believe in cosmic balances or roles in the game of fate, Harry would probably have to start worrying about himself. He sincerely hoped not to become a figure like the Albus Dumbledore of his universe. The thought crossed his mind because a plucked-looking bird, probably about a metre tall from tail tip to beak, seemed to think that his head was the best possible place to sleep.

Now he had never been able to observe such behaviour between his old mentor and his befriended phoenix, but perhaps this was where the eccentricity began. No record existed in his world of how the two had met and Dumbledore certainly hadn't told him. However, there were certainly accounts of the few people in history who formed friendships with a phoenix. And they were all - much like the Dumbledore of his world - very strange oddballs in their own right. Had they always been like that, or had the bond with these animals changed their very nature? Perhaps he needed to do some research.

Of course, that would do him little good. He could hardly order a phoenix what it should do or not. At least he hoped it would not get into the habit of sitting on his head. The bird might be absurdly gentle with its claws, but it was not a pleasant feeling. Of course the irony did not escape him, as some people had repeatedly compared his hair to a bird's nest in the past. Fawkes seemed to share that thought. At least he mentally sent Harry images of nests and sleeping phoenixes when he tried to move the bird.

Since Fawkes had brought him back to his office - how the bird knew where to find it, remained a mystery to be investigated at some point in the future - he had been sitting in front of his desk and was basically in a very ambivalent and pensive mood. He had merely sent a vial with his memories to Riddle and a small note asking the latter to examine those swiftly. He wondered how Riddle would deal with Dumbledore's death. Joy, relief, or even disapproval that it was Harry who had struck him down?

Harry still couldn't believe that he had actually done this. And he didn't know what to think about it himself. Certainly it tore at his heart to have killed someone who wore that face. Nevertheless, it could not be clearer that both were completely different people. One had been a well-meaning, but sadly quite overwhelmed philanthropist who had been thrust into a leadership role despite his lack of competence at it. The other had been an ice-cold, arrogant autocrat who lived in the deep conviction that he had to lead and guide others, because otherwise the world would drown in greater evil. Perhaps this was really how the Death Eaters had seen his Dumbledore. Harry had no idea if that was the case.

And he also knew far too little about this world and what was happening in it. Had Riddle wanted to do away with him and had he lied? That was the main question on Harry's mind. Perhaps he really could not have known that Dumbledore would come. In fact, there was more to be said for him than against. For in the end it was only Dumbledore's unhealthy interest in Harry, the new pawn on his board, whose rules of draw he wanted to scout out, that had led the old man into the Menagerie.

But he could not gauge the chances that Dumbledore himself had told him the full truth. Perhaps there had been other magical tripwires laid out in the complex that Harry had simply overlooked. And yet there was the doubt about Riddle's motives. Basically, he would have been grateful, if this world had really been a perfect mirror and this Tom Marvolo Riddle at least as good as Dumbledore in Harry's home dimension had been.

There was still something shady about this Riddle here. However, Harry saw no motive for treachery. He was useful to the man, this trip had shown that. Harry filled a job for which he had been unsuccessfully looking for a replacement for a short while. He did not even believe that Riddle could see him as some kind of competition. His suspicions were probably completely irrational, but he could not hide the fact that his trust in Riddle had not exactly been strengthened by the whole action.

Suddenly he was jolted out of his musings as the door to his office was ripped open unannounced. Fawkes startled at this, making a disgruntled sound and digging his claws deeper into Harry's scalp under his complaints. A person stormed into the room whom Harry had not expected. It was the glum house-elf from the food counter, only now he didn't look the least bit bored. Rather, he looked furious, which made his features seem even sharper and more pointed. He started to say something, but then noticed the bird on Harry's head and regarded it briefly with a puzzled expression. Then the house-elf slammed the door and asked forcefully and loudly, "Has the strange master seen them?"

Harry blinked and replied with a counter question, "Who should I have seen?"

The house-elf stamped his foot angrily and shouted: "The others, who are like Durl! The strange master must have seen them. Where did-" here Durl faltered, as if it were giving him trouble to say it. He made a guttural sound instead that sounded like frustration and resumed, "Where did Master Riddle, take them?"

"Riddle and I have been wandering different areas of the Menagerie. I have no idea what he was doing there. So there were House Elves there? Why are you so upset? Shouldn't you be happy that they were freed?" Harry threw at the angry house elf.

But the latter only scowled at him and explained, "No, Durl has no reason to be happy. And no, they are not House Elves. Durl is not a House Elf. Durl prefers the word Mountain Elf. But all those who are like that share the curse of the House Elves."

"I've never heard of Mountain Elves. And that still doesn't explain your anger," Harry commented calmly. Fawkes seemed to have fallen asleep again.

Durl snorted and said, "It must be Mountain Elf. The other two words, would have been Gobelf or House Goblin and they sound stupid. Durl is angry, because Riddle will surely hand her over to the goblins. And that's wrong and cruel and unfair," for each of the qualities he mentioned, he again stomped his foot. "It is not enough for such a generous master to mock Durl and treat him like a common House Elf, no, he must also ruin Durl's clan."

"I'm not sure I understand the situation, Durl. Wouldn't your kin be better off with the goblins than in Dumbledore's cage?"

Harry already suspected what Dumbledore had been up to here. Magically forced hybrids of goblins and House Elves. Presumably he had wanted to find a way to replicate the goblins' very own magic, as he had done with the blood of the half-unicorns.

The self-proclaimed Mountain Elf gave a fierce growl and replied to Harry, seething with anger, "The goblins will kill them all! They see Durl's kind as contrary to nature. The gullible master hopes he can win their trust that way. But they will never work with humans. They hate them even more than the half-breeds. Durl's mother taught him a lot, and she learned everything from her mother, who was a goblin."

"It doesn't really fit with what I know about goblins," Harry explained in wonder. "They don't usually destroy anything that can be of use to them. What they or their clan produce is their property and that includes their children. To destroy them would be an outrage against their very laws. They may melt down one thing to create something new, but that is quite impossible with living beings. It is not unheard of for them to keep slaves, but to kill someone just because their existence is unnatural? That's strange."

"I guess the strange master only knows spoiled and fat Gringotts goblins," Durl replied in an agitated voice. "They do not count. They are soft servants of men themselves. Subjugated and abused. Durl's grandmother was a goblin from the northern Highlands. They have different customs. Inherited blood is more important than gold. Bare rock is more important than silver. And flowing water is more important than copper. The land itself is subject to them.

"They are still great smiths, but they know more than property. They are still strong. And they still fight back, as they have for centuries, millennia. Durl is only half like them. He wishes he could be free, speak their language again. But Master Riddle does not give Durl what he wants. Instead, he has to speak like an idiot, and there is nothing he can do about it. For the master commands him."

Before Durl addressed his master he gave another gagging sound, as if he wanted to call him something else. Harry didn't know if there had been goblins in the Highlands in his world. He had not heard of them. He was familiar with clans from the Alps, Carpathians and Pyrenees, but in Britain he only knew of Gringotts. Presumably the goblin wars here had been different in more ways than one. The divergences were so great that even the culture had adapted to the changed life. It made sense that in a permanent siege situation, the goblins would look more to their kin and their safety.

However, he still didn't see why they would kill the half-beings. Then again, humans weren't much better in that regard. People like Hagrid or Flitwick had been subjected to considerable hostility, after all. And of course, goblins not infrequently had a habit of being particularly spiteful when they managed to exact revenge for a past wrong. Nevertheless, he knew better than to lump all members of a species together. Just as not all goblins were callous, greedy hagglers in his homeland, not all had to be cruel and merciless here. In the end, Harry could not determine whether the goblins of his world were really so different from those of this one.

What Harry could say with certainty, however, was that Durl was obviously bound against his will. That was a rarity with House Elves, as much as Hermione had denied it. Now Durl was not really a house-elf and it sounded a lot more clearly like slavery here. To find out more about the situation his counterpart was in, he asked, "How exactly did you get into Riddle's circle in the first place? If you really did come from Dumbledore's reprehensible experiments, I can't imagine you just escaped like that."

Durl looked at him with a strange look, which Harry interpreted as surprise at his interest, and said, "Durl escaped because the guards were stupid. Durl hid, in a big box with teeth. It was taken away and Durl made himself invisible. His mother had made the plan for him so that he could have a better life. So Durl went to join Dumbledore's enemies.

"But Master Riddle betrayed him! Durl didn't just want to survive, he wanted to be able to be himself independently. To hone his powers. Now he lives only as a servant. He used the curse that had been sleeping inside Durl and chained it to himself. Now Durl must do as he says. The master had promised that it would only be for a short time. But he lied! And now Durl cannot even be sure of the welfare of his kin."

While the creature did not burst into tears, as Harry knew many House Elves would, such a sour and unhappy expression crept onto his face that Harry began to think about whether he should offer him a way out. After a deep breath, Harry told Durl, "There is a way to free you. However, this one is extremely dangerous."

"The strange master is lying. Only a master can release his slave. It is a magical bond, between two souls," Durl now retorted angrily again, probably at his impertinence in giving him false hope.

But Harry made a placating gesture and explained, "I assure you it is a very real possibility. A good friend of mine has long been researching a way to separate House Elves from witches and wizards who abuse and mistreat them. A bond of servitude is so strong that it can even work through complete severed bubbles of space.

"This had been her most promising candidate for a painless separation. After many years of studying this bond, she came to the conclusion that there was only one situation in which such a bond breaks. The death of master or servant."

"The strange master would kill Master Riddle for Durl?" asked Durl in surprise. "Durl would be very grateful for that, but he would have to stop the attempt if he knew about it."

"No, I have no intention of doing that. The thing is: Death doesn't have to actually happen, it just has to pass a point where the bond loses its cohesion. Then it ruptures. Unfortunately, it's not exactly easy to simulate death without letting it happen. And I've really only been able to try it once, when a house-elf asked me for help."

Durl interrupted him here suspiciously, "Why would a house-elf seek out the strange master? How would he know that he knows the way to freedom? I still think he's telling Durl fairy tales to calm him down."

"Ah, how do I explain this," Harry said with some embarrassment. "Well, to the House Elves, from the place I come from, I was quite a respected figure. This unpleasant form of popularity led them to seek me out sometimes when they thought they had ferreted out a plot against me, when they wished to bestow their effusive gratitude on me, or in very rare cases when they hoped to find help through me.

In this case it was the servant of an old Irish family who lived very secluded and uninterested in the happenings of the rest of the magical world. I don't think I have ever seen such a grotesquely mutilated house elf in my life. He seemed to be one badly healed scar. When I told him about the possibility, he immediately agreed. It seemed better to him to die than to continue this wretched life. After all, his family had forbidden him to take his own life.

Amadamy, that was his name, survived the procedure. However, he still committed suicide afterwards. I tried to dissuade him with words, but I fear his experiences had been so bad that he could see in his suicide the only freedom there was for him in his battered soul. After that incident, fortunately, the opportunity did not arise again. Most House Elves, unfortunately, stand unwaveringly by their submission to the magical world."

"They are parasites on magical beings. Of course they want to stay with them, otherwise they lose their power," Durl murmured bitterly, though his thoughts still seemed to revolve around the method of freeing him.

Harry replied with a sigh, "It may be that they usually gain strength through this bond, but they don't depend on it. Free House Elves live just as long as bonded ones. It is a common myth that they could not survive without a so-called host.

"This excuse is only repeated over and over again so as not to have to question the handling of them and the convenience of the wizarding community. Before they met humans and fell into that fateful relationship of dependence, House Elves must have already existed in some form."

Naturally, Harry also knew of other hypotheses on this subject. Many believed that House Elves had sprung from breeding lines of humunculi and were thus, at least in the broadest sense, of human origin. Another approach placed them closer to poltergeists and dementors, as it was assumed that they were originally non-beings who represented an emanation of helpfulness and care, arising from the neediness of many magical people.

Just as dementors originally came from their despair and poltergeists from their repressed urges. Perhaps it was even a mixture of both possibilities, that is, ghosts that had arisen from the unconscious had been bound to artificial bodies. Of course, Harry knew as little as anyone else who studied the history of magical beings.

The oldest theory, of course, was that House Elves were the last remaining offspring of a line of magical creatures that had been called simply elves. If that was so, then the wizards and witches of the past had left very few thoughts about them. And where those existed, they could also be referred to House Elves or easily dismissed as abruptly, Durl asked, "What would Durl have to do to die but not outright?"

"The option I used with Amadamy was a poison and the matching serum. The serum was swallowed in a capsule before the poison. It was supposed to unfold at just the right time. The poison was drunk by him afterwards. I had determined the draught of last choice to be the best option, as the antidote is quite reliable.

"The trick is to erase the knowledge of the serum from memory. Then the House Elf's very intuitive magic will not know that there is a rescue and the bond with the Master will disintegrate in what it understands to be the moment of certain death," Harry elaborated on the method. "However, there is no guarantee of success here. If the serum releases too late, you would be dead. If the capsule dissolves too early, the bond remains. To what extent your goblin heritage plays into it, I am also unable to determine. Goblins do not react to the same things as House Elves or humans with symptoms of poisoning, even if magical poisons often have a comparable effect.

"The biggest problem, of course, is my rather mediocre brewing skills. The potion of last choice is quite a difficult brew and the antidote is even worse. It would require a great deal of trust on your part, which may not be justified. However, I can competently enchant the capsule with context-delayed vanishing spells."

"Durl knows a potion mistress. She would make them," Durl replied with certainty and a smile that showed his sharp teeth.

Sceptically, Harry replied, "A means of suicide and the antidote to it? I'm sure that person would ask uncomfortable questions."

"Oh no, not Miss Asterope. She likes Durl and if the strange master explains the situation to her, she would certainly help. Durl can summon her," the house-elf replied, nodding vigorously. Here, for the first time, the self-proclaimed Mountain Elf reminded him a little of Dobby.

Unfortunately, the creature did not wait for his answer, but simply tore open the door and ran away. At this, a question slipped into Harry's consciousness: Were house elves in this dimension also unable to apperate? Or did mages simply consider this skill to be something beneath them?

Durl obviously did not use this ability. But he was not a pure house-elf either, and besides, perhaps the Riddle here had not underestimated the abilities of the House Elves and prevented their form of teleportation in the Refuge's spells. Another subject for his research.

It wasn't too long before the now grinning Durl was dragging a panting woman behind him and into the room. When she had caught her breath again and her incredulous gaze fell on him and Phoenix on his head, she started laughing loudly. Not really being piqued and the sound echoing pleasantly in his ears, he calmly explained to her, "Yes, yes, I know. Fawkes' idea of a roost still leaves a lot to be desired. Or maybe it's his sense of humour that is lacking. I'm not quite sure about that yet."

She was a relatively good-looking woman, probably around thirty, but with witches it was always difficult to estimate their age - at least if they paid some attention to their appearance. Her curly hair was a very dark brown colour and her eyes a dull dark grey. Something in her sharply cut features seemed familiar to Harry, but it was too common in magical society to plunge him into deeper pondering.

Smiling, she replied, "You must grant me, Mr James, that the sight is not without a certain absurdity. It is the funniest thing I have seen in many months. I will cherish the memory of this sight," at this she bowed theatrically to him, giggling a little again.

Still cheerful, she continued, "So you are the mysterious Mr. James. I must say, you are not what I expected. I wouldn't have trusted one of my grandfather's henchmen to look after the affairs of House Elves."

At this Harry gave Durl a sharp look, but the latter just shook his head as if he didn't want anyone to reveal to her that he wasn't really a House Elf. The mention of her grandfather, however, was even stranger to Harry, who could only draw one conclusion from it: "You are Mr. Riddle's granddaughter? I had heard that he was married, but that he had children is completely new to me."

"He's not the type, is he?" she now replied rather icily and cheerlessly. "How such an ice-cold wizard could sire my so kind father is a mystery to me to this day. My grandfather and I do not have the best relationship, but I still know him better than most. He usually surrounds himself with those who are as he sees himself: pragmatic, opportunistic and rational.

"I would rather say unscrupulous, arbitrary and heartless. And it would be strange indeed if such a person suddenly discovered a heart for downtrodden House Elves. Especially when you consider that - if your method actually works - you would be acting directly against something my grandfather did. Are you one of those who bites the hand that feeds them?"

"I was not given an order that house elves were not to be freed," Harry explained with raised eyebrows. "Your assumptions about my relationship with Mr. Riddle are exaggerated. As long as I have a singular usefulness for him, the power imbalance between us is negligible.

"That is, even though it might upset him, I am willing to put up with it. What could he possibly do? Take away the job he needs me for? Stop asking me for help when it comes to obscure excursions I don't want to be involved in anyway?"

She smiled mischievously and said mildly: "In that case, I won't stand in your way. Then explain to me how exactly you intend to accomplish this impossibility. Durl has not explained it to me in any detail."

He gave her about the same, terse explanation he had given Durl. She looked at him sceptically for a while until she asked: "And where did this friend of yours get this idea? I don't really see how she could have come up with it. I'm no expert on magical binding spells, but if such a thing is possible, it must have been recognised before."

"I don't think so. The magical community is far too keen to sweep any moral issues raised by House Elf servitude under the carpet. And even if a sceptic emerges here and there, I don't think that person would also likely be a master of arithmancy. I don't personally think overly highly of this school of magic, but my friend had an understanding of it that was second to none. I did not understand her notes myself.

"There were quite a few pages of calculations describing the sub-processes of magical induction, as she called it. She found discrepancies in certain of these and interpreted them to mean that the binding ends before death. Of course, that's not something you just try out. But since the opportunity arose and it has already been successfully implemented once, we at least have a good reason to believe that it could succeed again."

After a brief penetrating look, she then turned to Durl and said to him, "Go to my storage and take the bottles labelled P-DOLC and S-DOLC and bring those here."

She waited until the house elf had gone. It did not escape Harry's notice that he still did not use any form of apperation. Asterope addressed Harry again, "Let's be clear: Normally I would not support such a folly. But Durl has been suffering from his bond with my grandfather ever since he came to the Refuge. It's been over a decade and it's never gotten any better. Durl is one of the few friends I have in this dump.

I hope you know what you're doing. If there is a chance to free him from his suffering, I can't stop him from taking it, no matter how squishy and untested it seems to me. I haven't seen him as happy as he is today for a long time. Especially since he has been very angry for the last few days. His temper doesn't usually swing anything so erratically."

"I think his anger will return as soon as he is free. The reason for it is still there, after all," Harry replied, having to pull himself together not to grimace at how empty of content and cryptic that statement was.

However, if he interpreted Durl's behaviour correctly, he wanted to hide his origins from her, so he would not explain the reason. But here he could point to Durl himself: "If he wants to talk about it, he will surely explain what it is about. However, I am unsure how justified his concern is. There's a lot of hearsay and conjecture involved. Talk to him when this is over."

Something very hard and unyielding entered her gaze. She said coldly, "If I can still talk to him then. If this inadvisable experiment fails and Durl dies, I will never forgive you."

"And if it succeeds?" retorted Harry challengingly.

At that moment, a smiling Durl came in, holding two vials. She did not answer immediately, but after accepting the vials, she replied with a serious face, "Then I will be sincerely grateful to you. And it is a profitable thing for me to be indebted to someone like you, you can take my word for that, Mr James. I have connections that go beyond the refuge. If you continue to offend my grandfather, you may be needing them."

Without delaying any further, Harry took a piece of parchment and turned it into a fist-sized stone capsule with an opening at the top. He took the serum, which Asterope identified as being labelled S-DOLC, and poured it inside. Then he sealed the capsule by transfiguring the object again. Finally, he took his wand and carved three runes into the capsule with a spell designed for the purpose.

Together, these symbolised the dissolution of a transformed object once an unspecified bond was broken. Of course, without a spell that carried Harry's perspective and conception, such an indentation would have been effectless and insufficiently defined. Runes, in Harry's eyes, were little more than an aid to allowing a static spell to flow into an object. Ultimately, it was his will and understanding that shaped the effect.

Once the object was functional in Harry's eyes, he shrank it and said to Durl, to whom he gave it, "Swallow this. Then I can erase your memories of already having it inside you."

"But how will the strange master make Durl take the poison if he doesn't remember the meaning?", Durl now wanted to know, frowning. Harry explained: "I will adjust your memories so that you believe that this poison is already the cure. I'm no master of memory spells, but I can manage that."

"No, I'll do that part," Asterope said with finality in her voice. "Probably I am the more suitable person for this. I would consider myself very skilled."

Durl seemed more comfortable with this idea and he swallowed the capsule. Asperope, after a heavy sigh, pointed her wand at Durl's temple and muttered sullenly, "Obliviate."

After about a minute, she moved her wand away and Durl, now looking quite confused, fixed the poison with his eyes. This he quickly seized and gulped down. With a hopeful look he continued, "How long will it-" but that was as far as he got. He fell to the ground twitching and kicking. His face was contorted with pain and his breathing frantic and jerky.

Perhaps Harry would have felt better if the Mountain Elf had screamed, but his apparent ordeal played out silently. Perhaps Riddle had ordered him not to make any unnecessary noise, or something. Asterope had averted her eyes and was hugging herself as if to help herself feel more secure and confident.

As the shockwaves that flowed through the creature became less frequent, Harry cast a diagnostic spell on the elf. The spell that bound him to Riddle grew progressively weaker until it finally broke. And then, fortunately, exactly what had been intended happened. His twitching suddenly stopped and his breathing became shallower and more regular until he took a deep conscious breath. He did not open his eyes as he formed strange words with his mouth: "Nirp bôfan sdêlfe! Ratômf gsôrdan esk kmer kmôbr dûdf unk nirp svûdf."

The creature grinned almost in a manic rapture as he opened his eyes and continued his speech, "Radnalf bsaskâ sgâsdân agîl unk sbuk nirpî!"

While Harry had an inkling that it must be Gobbledegook, Asterope looked confused at this fit of speaking foreign languages. But then the liberated creature continued: "I! I, me, my! I can say again that I am I and not Durl who does as he is told. Sweet freedom! I will never again have to do what someone else tells me to do! And certainly I will never be bound to anyone ever again. Gsîst dsatl bsêktan, nirp tesksvukân!"

"So you are free now? You never told me you were from another country, Durl," Asterope turned to Elf with an uncertain smile.

Thus Durl was snapped out of his glee and he now looked at the woman with his mouth open, as if he had just realised again that she was present. He blinked a few times and swallowed hard before slowly saying, "You and I need to talk about things your grandfather forbade me to discuss with you. I could discuss them with him, because Riddle had only included members of the Fellowship in my Oath.

"However, since he was in the refuge and also not a member of the Fellowship, I could speak freely before him. Old Rabsêrldsak probably never intended to bring someone like Mr James here. But we'll talk about it in private. Not here."

Asterope nodded at her old friend with barely restrained curiosity and said to Harry: "You have done a good work today. Neither I nor Durl will forget it. But now he has to bring me up to speed. I promise you we will meet again soon."

With these words, Asterope hurriedly left Harry's office. Durl looked at him seriously and said to Harry, "Thank you. I am no longer magically bound to anyone, but my debt will forever chain me to you, Mr. James. Whenever you need help and I can give it, I will," and before the Mountain Elf turned to leave, he added, "But as a friend, not a servant."

Meanwhile, as the elf left, Harry scratched his chin and shook his head at the whole spontaneous action. He had always had a penchant for getting into abstruse situations. Simply releasing a house-elf, who wasn't one, from his bond hardly stood out given his extensive history of unusualness. It certainly wasn't what he wanted to do with the rest of his day. Or rather, the rest of his night.

Then, quite abruptly, the ringing sound of mail arriving via the transport system surprised him. Standing up, Fawkes chose this monet to push off his head and make himself comfortable on a cupboard in the room instead. He gave the bird an irritated look, which the phoenix answered with a trilling chirp that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. The fact that he had had a bird sitting on his head for the whole liberation of Durl made him doubt the judgement of Durl and Asterope Riddle.

Who in their right mind trusted such a person with their life? On the other hand, the reputation of phoenixes was beyond positive even in this world, even if the birds were described as much more dangerous than in his home dimension. Without being able to form a clear opinion about the mental stability of his former guests, he went to his inbox and found a note that simply said: "Meet me tomorrow at 12:00 in my private chambers. We have a lot to discuss. TMR."

Endnote

Goblin language snippets:

Nirp bôfan sdêlfe! - I am free!

Ratômf gsôrdan esk Kmer kmôbr dûdf unk Nirp svûdf. - The wizard has no more power over me.

Radnalf bsaskâ sgâsdân agîl unk Sbuk nirpî. - The dirty fool can lick my ass.

Gsîst dsatl bsêktan, nirp tesksvukân! - When the time comes, I will have my revenge!

Rabsêrldsak - Shithead

The ^ above a vowel are supposed denote that they are pronounced long.