Tea-Towels In Love

Dobby was chopping chicken somberly in the Hogwarts kitchens the night that Cedric Diggory died.

The chicken was for Dumbledore's morning enchilada; Dobby preferred to chop it physically instead of levitating the knife. (The others cruelly, privately laughed at him for this.) He could have actually lifted the utensil himself, of course.

But this house-elf now needed to have something that would occupy him; something to keep his mind off his burning desire… his passion… his sorrow.

When you are in love with an alcoholic, we humans generally seek counseling. There they reassure us that no, it is not our fault that they are like this, it is an addiction and not something we did. Dobby, however, had no AlaElf meetings to go to. Dobby was wallowing in guilt and resentment and love, at least as much guilt as an eternally perky magical creature could summon.

Oh, Winky! Why couldn't he take her mind off of that Crouch character? Dobby himself caused her elfin brain cells' deaths from constant drinking! It was his fault for not being attractive enough to keep bottles out of her hands.

Her lovely, slender hands!

He tried to recall the first time he had wanted to make love to her.

Had it been the way her nose had sexily drooped one day in Dumbledore's office?---No. No, it was earlier, it was earlier that that nagging, beautiful seed of wanting Winky had been sown. Perhaps when she had affectionately kicked him in the shins that time when they tramped around the bog in Salisbury…but no, that had only intensified the feeling.

Okay…fine…it had possibly been when he had met her, actually…

It wasn't his fault, really!

You see, Winky was known as one of the most sensually beautiful house-elves in the Hogwarts kitchens (Dobby thought in his defense). A bit dangerous, though… so usually the other male elves stuck to safer fare, like Mousy and Turdie, the pleasantly plump and perkily popular twin sisters…but she still did get hit on. Although that had diminished as the disease had ravished her once stunning bone structure, Dobby could still feel the thrumming of her beauty through his elfin heart.

The first day he had felt that current of EMOTION was indeed the day he had found her, he realized now--- on a wizarding household's doorstep, sleeping under a tiny newspaper. Dobby had just been rejected, again, for a job, not even halfway through the application process. As the muscular wizard gentleman booted him out of the door, he had landed on said newspaper.

A squeak from below made him realize that it was not wrapping a squishy packet of food, but a small soft body.

(Almost, ah, pleasantly soft. Although all he could consciously think at that moment were excessive apologies, Dobby did notice this much. (Pervert.))

He scrambled off it, said something to the gist of "SORRY!" three times before hastily peeling back the paper from the wounded creature, said it once more for safety's sake, and then---

stopped dead, stopped breathing.

Winky's heavy-lidded, sensual house-elf dinner-plate eyes blinked blearily up at him.

Her blouse was unbuttoned--- three buttons unbuttoned as she relaxed! Revealing elfin cleavage… Dobby hadn't even known that house-elves had cleavage. (Tea towels hid it, really.) His giant eyes grew gianter. Dobby was in love.

Nothing had changed since. ---And his beloved had no idea!

Crouch! Winky only wants Mr. Crouch. Mr. Crouch is nowhere near as hot as Dobby. Mr. Crouch is old and saggy and mean. Dobby is young and strong! Dobby has hot shorts! Pick Dobby, Winky! Dobby would think furiously, tiny tears of passion dripping onto the vegetables.

Alas, Winky had not yet "picked Dobby". She pined and wept, never noticing the cauldron of lust that was her protector.

(Well, that's about to change.

Bwa ha ha.)

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