S.P.E.W. Yr 4
Ron keeps giving me these dirty looks because I bought one of Hermione's S.P.E.W. badges. He seems think I'm encouraging her in her efforts to "liberate the house elves." I'd hate to be the one to break it to him that nothing could discourage that girl. In all honesty, I just bought the badge to shut her up for a bit, but that plan kind of backfired. Before she was bugging me to join, now she's bugging me to be on a sub-committee or to lead some sort of boycott on businesses that use house elf labor.
Like we could boycott all of the businesses that do? And besides, house elves like doing work for nothing. It's like holiday for them. There are only a few odd ones that don't and they usually find a way to get out of it. I'm convinced that if more of them didn't like it that there would be many more house elf rebellions. Not a one yet and I'm certain that's a result of their commitment to work for wizarding families.
But I can't suppose you can readily explain that to someone whose never had experience with house elves before. Muggle-born witches and wizards usually jump to the conclusion that it's slavery and I suppose that if I look at it from the right angle I can see how they would think that. But I can also see that in the long history of slavery and the long history of elf servitude that the two are different.
Slaves rebelled and ran away. Elves don't do that. I agree with Hermione that slavery is wrong, but I don't think that house elves are victim of that. As for now, the S.P.E.W. badge I bought is going to sit on my night-stand. I paid for it and I'm going to keep it, but I'm not going to wear it around.
Neville
