.o0O0o.
If yesterday had been good for Dobby, then today was even better! Harry Potter said it'd be best to stay in Harry Potter's room, but didn't say Dobby couldn't clean it! Once Harry Potter and his friends were gone Dobby made the beds, put up the clothes, and would have started laundry, only he didn't know where laundry was done. Instead, Dobby gathered the dirty clothes into little piles on the boys' trunks, hoping he could laundry them later.
It was harder to find things to clean then. There were only a few stray hairs and very little dust on the tables, and the floors only had two small scuffs on it. Crawling under the beds didn't find him anything either, and there was always something there with other beds. Dobby had heard there was always work at Hogwarts but Dobby hadn't known the ones who did it did it so well.
Dobby bounced on Harry Potter's bed as he thought. Working at Hogwarts must be very differen–
Dobby felt a silent whoosh! whoosh through the room, hooking him by the neck and throwing him down on Harry Potter's pillows as the bed curtains around the room fluttered.
BEDS MADE, popped into his head before Dobby even had a chance to scream as all the trunks and wardrobes popped open and snapped closed and another smaller whoosh! whooshed around the room.
CLOTHES MARKED. TRUNKS UNPACKED. LAUNDRY TAKEN.
Dobby rolled off the pillows and scrambled to his knees, looking around for who's there. Dobby didn't see anyone, but the piles of clothes were gone. Thinking it wouldn't be against what Harry Potter said if Dobby only looked out of Harry Potter's room, Dobby ran to the door to peek out.
No one was there but STAIRS CLEANED popped in and out of his head as his head popped in and out of the stairwell. Dobby went back to look around Harry Potter's empty room with its made beds, marked clothes, unpacked trunks and taken laundry for something he could do to make Harry Potter's room the best room it could be.
'Harry Potter's room would look sparkly-clean with sparkly windows!' Dobby thought before he ran off to do just that.
Looking out the window, Dobby couldn't believe what he saw. Hogwarts was more beautiful than anywhere! The grasses and gardens were so green and well cared for – which made Dobby worry about the grasses and gardens at Old Master Lucius's house. They must be so wild now. They'd be yellow and weed-filled with Dobby's gone and surely Old Master Lucius would blame him for it.
Dobby tugged his ear for still caring about such things. He was Harry Potter's elf now and only what Harry Potter thought mattered. Dobby tugged his ear again to make sure he remembered – only to gasp when he remembered Harry Potter didn't want him to do that anymore. What was it Harry Potter wanted him to do? Oh! Dobby remembered.
With hunched shoulders Dobby said aloud, "Dobby apologizes, Harry Potter, sir."
Dobby waited in the empty room to see if there was an answer. Eventually, when nothing happened, Dobby thought everything must be okay.
A snap! saw the windows cleaned, but they didn't seem cleaned enough for Dobby. It was hard to make Harry Potter's room sparkle if the windows didn't sparkle first. Looking close, Dobby saw fingerprints, little streaks, and traces of dust on it that shouldn't be there, and even trying to scratch them off didn't help. Then Dobby remembered: windows have two sides.
The windows opened easily enough and Dobby found if he held onto the open window he could lean out and get to the other. A snap! caught Dobby's attention but before he could think something hit his legs and stomach while the rest of him was still outside. The world spiraled left as Dobby was yanked from his feet and while he tried to hang onto the window. Dobby couldn't help but give a panicked cry as his fingers slipped when the window yanked itself closed and he started to fall.
Arms whirling wildly, Dobby managed to grab hold of the slanted rock wall to stop himself. His feet were of little help but somehow Dobby managed to pull himself up to the windowsill. Looking inside, Dobby saw a house-elf in a snow white tea towel looking around scratching its head. Hoping she'd let him in, Dobby waved at her only to bang his nose against the windowsill when his sweaty fingers slipped and he fell again.
"Ack!" Dobby cried as he slid off the slanted wall into midair as wind rushed around him.
He landed hard on a slanted roof he didn't know was there after only a few feet, but he was still sliding. Dobby turned to try and find something to grab onto but he'd gotten turned around and the direction he turned held nothing but sky. Scrambling hard to stop himself, Dobby caught hold of the edge of the roof and though his butt banged into a window as hard as a Wheezy girl's head, he'd stopped his fall.
The tall stone tower seemed to stretch itself higher and higher as Dobby looked down, and the lawn didn't look quite so nice and soft anymore. Dobby closed his eyes to get away from the sight and try and catch his breath as he hung there. Once calm, Dobby opened his eyes to see a wonderful sight: far away, surrounded by lines of little plants in neat little rows, Dobby could see Harry Potter and his red-haired Wheezy!
Dobby was just about to wave when he had a terrible thought: Harry Potter told Dobby to stay in Harry Potter's room but Dobby's outside! If Dobby waved to Harry Potter then Harry Potter might see and be mad at Dobby, but if Dobby didn't wave Harry Potter might know he didn't and be mad at Dobby too. Dobby needed a way to get away but there was only one thing he could do.
"Dobby apologizes, Harry Potter, sir," the little elf said before wafting away in a puff of smoke.
Where he reappeared was small and dark, a cozy little place he could spend the day. Dobby hoped he could do it without anything else happening to him but everything seemed to find him today. That wouldn't do if Harry Potter was to let him stay at Hogwarts so instead of peeking out to see if anything else was coming for him, Dobby hid in Harry Potter's trunk, hoping whatever happened next would pass him by.
It worked, or at least Dobby thought it did. Dobby couldn't tell how long it'd been though since it was very dark and he'd fallen asleep. Something woke him now – a tug on the ear Dobby's mind couldn't place. Did Harry Potter need something? Was Harry Potter calling for him? Dobby shook his head. Dobby didn't think Harry Potter was calling for him because Dobby didn't hear Harry Potter. Still, there was only one way to find out.
With a snap, a puff, and a feeling of movement Dobby left the trunk. The tug had come from below and to the right, so that's where Dobby went. Dobby didn't want to show up where he'd get in trouble though, so instead of going straight there he went for somewhere close by.
Dobby found himself in a stairway – perhaps the same stairway he'd seen before, but nothing popped in his mind about the cleany-ness of it. Did the house-elves here have something to do with that? Dobby didn't know but it made him feel like he'd always be on the wrong side of the window, even if Harry Potter let him stay.
Noise from another room drew Dobby's attention to a door-less entryway and he peeked around the corner to see another wondrous sight: a huge room opened before him with so many things to clean. Everything was draped in reds and golds – sofas and chairs, wall hangings and rugs – and there were a dozen or more people already at work making it disordered and dirty! Hogwarts was truly a wonderful place to be, Dobby thought.
At a table near some windows, Dobby saw what had to be the wildly-feathered head of Harry Potter by what Dobby thought was Harry Potter's Miss Myknee and he leaned in more to get a better look. What they said was lost as an ominous presence pressed down on Dobby. Dobby looked over to see the hard-headed Wheezy-girl glaring at him from across the room as everything went dark.
Swirly black cloth swept before him and Dobby backed away and looked up to see a wild-eyed boy about Harry Potter's age smile and raise a strange box in front of his face. A popping FLASH! stabbed his eyes and Dobby couldn't see! Dobby put his hands over his eyes but it did nothing for the light already inside. Dobby wobbled around, not knowing which way to move – which only brought him right into a wall.
"Dobby!" Dobby heard Harry Potter's voice say in his ear while he was in his closed-eyed state and Dobby twisted away with a pop! Dobby heard an "Oh, wow!" from where he'd been as he appeared before Harry Potter.
"Harry Potter called for Dobby?" Dobby asked cheerfully as he tried to blink away the large dark eye-blob covering Harry Potter's face.
"Er– yes," Harry Potter said, his Miss Myknee handing him a letter. "Can you deliver this letter to the Daily Prophet for me?" Harry Potter asked, handing the letter over to him.
"Oh yes, Harry Potter, sir. Dobby can be doing it," a happy Dobby said.
"Oh, and Dobby," Harry Potter added, "Professor McGonagall said if you want to stay you'll have to stay with the other house-elves. Is that alright?"
'Harry Potter's asking Dobby what he wants?' Dobby thought. 'Dobby's never been asked what Dobby wants before. Harry Potter is the greatest master ever,' he decided.
"Oh yes, sir," Dobby agreed, ready to agree to anything if it kept him with Harry Potter.
Another FLASH! happened nearby, quickly followed by an eager "What's that, Harry?"
Harry Potter must've been wary of the flash too because he quickly said, "Get your things from the Burrow too."
Dobby took this as permission to leave. Anything that got him away from the angry flash was a good thing to Dobby, so Dobby popped away as fast as he could.
.o0O0o.
Bafflingly sudden changes were just the way things were done, at least it was when you worked for Gringotts. Everyone knew whatever you were doing could change in an instant if the Overseers wanted it to but in the three years he'd been working for them none of the big changes had really affected him… at least if you discounted where he'd been pulled back from Egypt with everyone else and Overseer Alkrat coming to him for everything.
Still, Bill never thought he'd end up stationed where he was, and piecing together the rumors flying around didn't do much to shed light on how the whole thing happened. The I.C.W. coming in to investigate the whole Sorcerer's Stone was definitely part of it, as was their takeover of the offices on the third floor – some mysterious place called Confidential. With the island dispute between Gringotts and the Ministry finally resolved, most of the I.C.W. wizards were being transferred out of the country again, which sparked some mad scramble within Gringotts for some reason.
One goblin he knew said Confidential had been broken up, with Director Fillast taking personal control over something called "the grim." No one he asked seemed to know what had happened to the old Overseer of the department – or whether or not the grim was the fabled grim of scary stories – but they also didn't seem to care. Another one though said the big news was Fillast pulling what remained of Confidential down to sublevel one, the first floor below Gringotts, so he could keep a close watch on it, which certainly sounded like grim news for anyone who worked there.
Regardless of what he thought though the people he talked to were far more concerned with who'd end up getting the office space it opened up. Rumors flew around of a potential merging of the Hereditary and Personal Accounts departments, prompted by another rumor of an Overseer he'd never heard of before, Slaggran, taking Grand Overseer Barchoke's old office, which – if true – could potentially open up space on the fourth floor as well. But while Bill had been left wondering what it'd mean for Harry's case, since he knew Barchoke had been involved somehow, it fell to someone else to fill the void.
Taskmaster Marsh was a fairly controversial figure, at least as far as rumors went, not in the least because he'd so recently been an Overseer himself. No one was quite sure why he'd been demoted but the man was so unliked most people didn't care, aside from coming up with their own reasons why it could've happened. Whatever it was, something spurred him into trying to move the Hogwarts Accounting Department up from second floor to third, even going so far as to claim the vacant fourth floor office as his own.
There was an almost unrelated story about the account managers wanting to take over the soon-to-be-vacated second floor, but everyone overlooked it because of what happened next. The thought of the new guy, Hobson, staging some kind of counter-attack to claim the third floor for himself was simply laughable. Taskmaster or no, after spending time with him on the island, he just didn't think it was in the man's character.
'Fight a few dragons and pull one over on the Ministry, sure,' Bill thought wryly as he silently crept up the steep stairs between the second and third floor. 'But stage an internal goblin rebellion over office space? Not bloody likely.'
Regardless, every rumor agreed the guards became involved at one point. While he personally thought the most likely scenario was Director Fillast coming in to sort everything out, the near total silence about what really happened sent a far louder message about just how far up things went in order to get resolved. Bill couldn't help but see what – in human circles – would've been a clear political message in the outcome.
Taskmaster Marsh was seen returning to the second floor in an huff, the space on the third floor was given over to something called G.I.U.D.A., the Gringotts Island Urban Development Agency – telling everyone with a lick of sense precisely how important Taskmaster Hobson had become in his brief time here, while Bill himself had been pulled away from listening to rumors when a gofer presented him a dispatch straight from Director Fillast. The fourth floor office everyone seemed intent on fighting over… was being assigned to him.
Bill didn't know what do to with this information. What did it mean to have an office on a floor reserved only for Overseers and close staff? Was he being promoted? Why? What had he done to warrant that? More importantly, what did they expect him to do when he got there?
'And most importantly of all,' he thought, quickening his pace up the steep stairwell, 'is anyone going to hold this against me? The last thing I need is someone coming after me for getting an office I didn't want and a job I don't even know what it's for.'
When he got to the fourth floor landing Bill took a moment to stand there quietly and listen. Peering down the stairwell didn't show him anything, and he didn't hear anyone following, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Goblins could get prickly about anyone using magic around them but he slipped out his wand from his robes trying to convince himself under the circumstances they might actually consider it prudent.
"Homenum revelio," he whispered, feeling a wave of magical energy burst forth from his wand in every direction, going all the way up to the fifth floor as well as down to the bottom.
Bill didn't feel any of it come back towards him though, which was supposed to mean there's nobody there, but it didn't feel nearly as reassuring as it was supposed to. The suspicious part of the mind only made you wonder, 'What if they found a way around it? They could be right behind you and you'd never know.' He wasn't about to let paranoia get the better of him though so he put his wand away and pulled open the white stone door to go forward.
He found proof of one rumor as soon as he saw the guards across the hall. They most certainly hadn't been there the last time he'd been on this level, just the day before. And though the multitude of rumors made it feel more like a year ago, a quick glance showed no sign of blood, neither red nor green, so hopefully they were only there for show.
Suddenly uncomfortable, Bill couldn't help but feel much more out-of-place now than he had then. For all he knew they could think he was another intruder. Were they supposed to know he was allowed to be here or…?
"I got a message from Dir– um– Overseer Fillast–," he began only to be quickly interrupted.
"Red hair," the guard on the right noted. "You Weasley?"
"Yes," Bill replied hesitantly, wondering where this was going to go.
"Down that way," the goblin said with a nod down the corridor, which he thought suspicious, but was wise enough to smile and nod and immediately start walking in that direction nonetheless.
'Well, so much for me being promoted,' Bill thought as he fiddled with his ponytail before flicking it back over his shoulder. 'If I were getting bumped up here because I deserved it they'd be far more obsequious. Maybe it's some kind of mistake.'
A little ways down the hallway he stopped to look back at them because something about it didn't sit right with him. He'd always known goblins to go out of their way to address everyone by their proper title, especially guards. Both here and in Egypt they'd always called him 'Curse-breaker Weasley,' so what'd it mean when they just called you 'Weasley?'
He continued on before they could think anything was amiss but kept a close watch for tale-tell signs of struggle all the same. After all, if one rumor could prove true then so could others and he didn't want to be caught in the middle of whatever the next batch of them would be.
The silvery-gray dragon-decorated walls were as luxurious as they'd been yesterday but the wealth displayed had lost its luster, at least to him. As pristine as everything was, trying to think of it as scouting a recently unearthed tomb full of unknown curses and dangers liable to jump out of every corner helped a bit, though not as much as he hoped. He knew he'd feel better with a wand in his hand and a buddy at his side, but neither of those were welcome here.
Brought on by a healthy paranoia or not, the increased scrutiny helped him hear movement and talking in the distance well before the hall opened up into the bizarre little indoor courtyard at the center of things. To one side of the grotesque fountain, near where two other corridors began, Bill saw a shorter, pudgy, almost slovenly-suited goblin standing with the taller, crisply-dressed overseer he knew to be Director Fillast. He couldn't hear what they were saying but from the way the shorter one was trying to gesture and take in both corridors at once as well as the almost constant stream of gofers hustling files from one now-unlabeled corridor to the other while a second stream were carrying things out of a third corridor towards the stairwell on that side, led him to believe there was a couple other rumors proving true.
Edging his way closer he saw another pair of guards at the beginning of a fourth corridor, this one leading towards the rear of the building. The only overseer's office he'd ever been near had been Alkrat's, and his wasn't down any of those; Corporate Accounts being one of the few corridors still with its little plaque labeling it. Hoping for more information on what this confusing ordeal meant, and perhaps finding a polite and non-career-damaging way to decline whatever it was, Bill started towards the overseer in question.
"It's a dangerous proposition," Director Fillast told the shorter goblin.
"What's dangerous about it?" the pudgy one wheezed in return. "It'd combine it like we want and make the place much more open."
"Certainly, but rearranging corridors is far more complex than knocking down walls. If the wrong support is removed the fifth floor would crush you and fall into the street," the director informed him, catching sight of his approach.
"It wouldn't be the entire floor…," the wheezing one equivocated, nervously straightening his suit around his girth.
"You Weasley?" Fillast asked, the goblin's eyes raking up to his hair as he spoke.
"Yes, sir–," Bill smiled.
"Oh! You're the one getting my old office," the wheezy one now revealed to be Slaggran said in greeting. "Don't let the owls get to you. Getting mad only encourages them to better their aim," he advised bafflingly.
The director spared the other overseer a glance before turning back to him.
"If they do become a problem, come to me and I'll see what can be done about them–"
"–Why didn't you ever do it for me?" Slaggran whinged.
"You never reported the problem," Fillast replied.
"I mentioned it in the meeting that one time," the other overseer wheezed.
"You implied you didn't like it, yes, but you never filled out a Problem Report," he said as if a problem didn't exist until it was put on paper. "I think you'd agree Mister Weasley is a special case though. His work is far too important to be delayed by the likes of owl droppings."
"My work, sir?" Bill asked with a deepening sense of dread.
"Oh, yes, I love mugg– Ow! You kicked me," Slaggran accusingly wheezed at Fillast while the other goblin gave him a look and nodded at the stream of gofers. "Oh, right," the pudgy overseer said more quietly before looking back up at him with a smile. "Have you ever had pizza?"
"I– can't say as I have, sir," he replied by rote, knowing now there was no way out of this.
"If you ever decide to try some," Director Fillast said with a professional smile in place, "or have need of anything – magical or otherwise – don't hesitate to let me know. We've become quite adept in acquiring such things, it'd be no problem at all."
Bill couldn't feel his feet but thought if he could they'd be like boulders weighing him down to the bottom of a lake, with the surface – and air – being so far out of sight above him it might as well have been the moon. Standing in a courtyard or not, he certainly had his back against a wall. If given the chance, he'd gladly change places with the malformed crying goblin they'd made a statue of – or even one of the stone heads.
"And before I forget, your office is down that corridor," the taller goblin said, gesturing across the crying fountain to the far hallway with its goblin guards. "Its seclusion and added security should fulfill your desire for secrecy, and when you're ready to put your research into practice there's some surrounding office space available for you and a staff."
"That sounds… wonderful, sir," Bill was forced by good business etiquette to say when what he really wanted to say was, 'This can't get any worse.' He took a few steps back before saying, "Well, I won't take up any more of your time. I really should be getting started."
"Can't wait to see what you come up with," Slaggran wheezed in a manner he might've thought was reassuring. "Alkrat's said good things about you."
Again he smiled and nodded as he retreated from a goblin pair, taking his time to circle the trickling fountain to see where the guarded hallway took him. As it turned out, there were four other guards in the hallway – in his hallway. Two were standing halfway down it with two more standing beside what looked to be a shrunken vault door at the very end.
As he got closer, the two at the end walked towards him and passed him by to join the others. Besides getting a quick look at him they hadn't done anything to acknowledge his presence; their silence making them feel more like jailers than guards. Closing in on the vault door, Bill found the kind of unintended humor only a goblin could provide in the reused plaque they'd affixed to it.
'Confidential,' it read while to anyone with half a brain it might as well say, 'Shh! We're hiding super-serious and very important stuff in here – but you're not supposed to know, so act dumb if you know what's good for you.' At any other time it might've been enough to elicit a chuckle, but as it was…
The little vault door lacked any sort of handle, or even a place to put a key, which meant it was either magic – which goblins didn't use – or… A touch was all it took for the door to spring to life with various clicks, clanks and unlocking sounds coming out of it while he was left to stand there wondering if keying it to him personally was really all that necessary. His thoughts on who else they might've given access to was cut short when the door slowly opened towards him.
The room inside was kind of a let-down after the door itself because it was pretty much what he'd come to expect from the better offices. It was a bit dark, and bare of any real ornamentation except a desk, chair, and what looked to be a couple ever-burning torches for light, but it wasn't what he'd expect an overseer to have. Three or four times as big as his father's office at the Ministry, carpeted, and with finished stone walls instead of the rough-hewn look, the highlight of any above-ground office was the window itself and, though large, the view showed nothing but a small gap of open space before being blocked off by brick wall.
Most people at Gringotts would've given their eye teeth, or taken someone else's, to have had a chance at this office, while he–
A dull thud sounded behind him, followed quickly by the clicks and clanks of him being locked inside. A hand pressed against it had the door open again, which thankfully lessened the fear he'd never be going home again. He let out a breath and ran his fingers through his ponytail before he walked around the desk to get a better look out the window.
'Others would kill to have an office like this and I'm worried about not being able to go home and live with my mother,' Bill mused. 'Charlie would never let me hear the end of it, and laugh that it's what I deserve for getting him probed.'
Looking left and right out of the window only showed more of the same brick wall but looking down changed the view entirely. Gringotts wasn't nearly as tall as Hogwarts but for a moment you could be excused in thinking so. The space between buildings was rather narrow – six or seven feet at most – and it seemed to make the height feel higher than it was.
Bill couldn't make out if the alley he was looking down into was the same he'd brought Charlie in through but in the end didn't think it mattered. That nugget of information wouldn't lessen his problems or make what the overseers were expecting him to do any less impossible.
'Oh, come on now, why so glum?' he sarcastically asked himself. 'It's not like they're expecting you to solve the phony gold problem by completely revolutionizing magical matter theory using muggle means. Oh, wait! That's exactly what you're supposed to do!'
Sometimes Bill really hated the way his mind worked; sarcasm wasn't helpful right now. Trying to take this disastrous new turn seriously though, it was hard to not look at it as anything but huge mess of inflated expectations he didn't know how to fulfill… but then again, the same could be said of his time in Cairo. The job had sounded like an amazing adventure but when he got there he didn't have a clue about how to actually go about being a curse-breaker.
When everything shifted from thinking about doing it to actually doing it, how could the mind not go numb? Suddenly everything you don't know looms large and you're faced with going out to find ancient ruins and gold without being cursed, crushed, or let the mummies get you, only without anybody telling you the first thing about how to do any of it. Where was he supposed to find a ruin? Even if he did, how was he to dig it up? And when he did, what if somebody else had plundered it first?
It'd honestly felt like all seven years at Hogwarts had never happened at all.
Thankfully, the feeling didn't last very long once you got to a dig site and paired with someone who'd been there for a while. Looking back, it's rather surprising how having someone to show you around could drastically change things so much. He wasn't responsible for everything – Merlin no! – they had an overseer, site managers, locators, diggers, and a dozen other things besides to see to all those issues; the only thing he'd have to worry about was the bit about making sure everything in the tomb was safe so the Loot Removal Team can go in for it afterwards.
Trying to think of this new problem the same way he would a dig was bound to fail almost immediately – the jobs were just too different – but it didn't mean the same way of looking at things couldn't help. If he stepped back and tried to look at it not as one impossible job to do but as a series of much smaller tasks to accomplish, then it became much easier to wrap his head around. And, on the upside, it made any outcome for failure far less frightening too.
With enough study, he'd either be able understand the muggle way of seeing things as a mixture of different kinds of atoms, or he wouldn't. If he didn't then the whole project would either be over or given to someone else to see if they could get anywhere with it. Such a failure could spell an end to his career at Gringotts, true, but as it was, it might not be such a bad thing if it happened; at least then he'd never have to hear Alkrat call him 'Beel' again.
Best case scenario is he manages to figure out how the atom thing is supposed to work. Then, Bill supposed, was figuring out whether or not it was actually true. He wasn't quite sure how he was supposed to do that but maybe by the time he got there something would occur to him. And again, if it didn't or if it didn't pan out, then perhaps the project was doomed from the beginning and he could go back to doing something else.
'They can't really blame me for it not working when there was no way to know it's impossible, now can they?' he asked himself while running his fingers through his ponytail once again. 'I mean, when gold itself is called into question and nothing seems to get anywhere, even insane ideas have to be tried, don't they? Then at least you know you've tried everything.'
Bill thought he could work with that if the time ever came for it. If the worst happened and they never came up with a quick way to find phony gold, then his odd muggle idea would just be one more in a long list of ideas they tried to make it work. Gringotts would be forced to spend years searching for something they might never find, but it wouldn't be his problem afterwards; he will have done his part, and even tried doing the impossible.
'If I put it that way, Alkrat might like me more if I fail,' Bill thought humorously.
Looking down at things from this fourth floor perspective, those two first steps seemed small, and not at all insurmountable. If anything, when – or more appropriately if – he managed to get those two done: figuring out the muggle atom and seeing if it's true, everything else would be squarely in the magical world again. If there were in fact multiple types of atoms then there's no reason to think they couldn't design something to tell if their gold had the impurities they say it should, and then all it took was building it.
"Four little steps," he said, summing things up. "Five, if I count actually checking the gold, then it'll be done. That's not so bad," Bill reassured himself, running his fingers through his ponytail again out of habit. "There's still the whole 'revolutionizing magical matter theory' thing, but it's not like I'd really done anything – the muggles did it first."
As strange as it sounded, that was a level of unimportance he was happy with. Having grand achievements attached to your name at a dig had nothing but upside, it attracted attention from the people above you, told them you were qualified, capable, and well worth the money they were paying you, and led them to assign you to a better spot in the next dig. Here at Gringotts, where people were willing to shed blood over office space, something told him grand achievements only made you a bigger target while grand failures led to precipitous drops.
Bill knew the danger he felt could be nothing more than a figment of his imagination, his mind magnifying it like a trick of perspective, but that didn't mean there wasn't some truth to it. The view from the heights of Gringotts was anything but rosy and not likely to get any bett–
A shadow passed somewhere above him before a splat-splat-splat-splat! hit the window, cutting off his thought. Flecks and smears of something slid down the outside of the window as he tried to angle himself to get a better view of whatever it was above him. He didn't have long to wait before a few owls flew by, followed quickly by another round of splat-splat-splat-splat!
"What, even the owls want to lay claim to this office or something?" Bill asked with a laugh, glad for the moment of levity. "Once I'm done they can have it, for all I care," he remarked before backing away from the window and giving the office a good once-over.
'Well, one thing's for certain,' he concluded as he took out his wand to move the desk so he'd be out of the obstinate owls' sight. 'In the whole country, no one's life has become as weird and complicated as mine.'
.o0O0o.
Even in an empty corridor he felt like people were watching him, and when they were around he knew they whispered behind his back. He'd known they'd whisper about all the big stuff going on but he hadn't expected this. News of him and Hermione had been bound to get out eventually but now it had made him feel like an animal at the zoo, just there to be gawked at.
Harry tried not to feel angry or embarrassed as another group of gossipy girls giggled their way past him to the Great Hall but knowing what all they could be giggling at made it a much harder thing to do. He could feel his face redden despite himself.
"Just ignore them," his girlfriend of one day – or apparently weeks depending on who you asked – said as she returned from the tiny room across the way, her search there for a way down to the kitchens proving fruitless. "I'm sure it'll pass in a day or two."
She was taking things much better than he was, and she wasn't the only one. The giggles were soon replaced by the sound of Ron's snickering.
"Honestly, it's not funny," Hermione said, fighting herself to only give a minor scowl.
"Every girl in school knows exactly what Harry's underwear looks like," his best mate reminded her. "What do you call it besides funny?"
"Intrusive, annoying, irritating," Harry immediately replied. "Nosy?" he suggested with a look.
"Well, yeah, I can see that for you," Ron admitted. "But it doesn't mean it wouldn't be funny if it happened to someone else. Fred and George would be wearing their underwear on the outside if it happened to them."
"All the more reason not to tell them," Hermione pressed, only slightly prissily, obviously making at least some effort to moderate her fights with Ron. Perhaps aiming her tone for midway between letting him slide and throttling him until he saw sense.
"Did you find anything?" he asked, instinctually trying to smooth things over.
"Just a door to a stairway leading down," the other boy replied, gesturing to their left. Ron led them to the door he'd found only to look back at him curiously. "Is Dobby supposed to meet us or…?"
"Oh, er– Dobby?" Harry forgetfully asked the air around him only for the elf in question to pop! up beside them carrying a wicker basket bed bigger than he was.
"Dobby's here, Harry Potter, sir," Dobby said eagerly as Harry took the basket from him.
"Mum really let you go?" Ron asked the elf as its eyes flickered between him and the basket. "I thought she'd still have you cleaning," he smiled.
"Missus Wheezy said no cleaning, sir," Dobby said somberly, as if someone had fallen seriously ill. "She's making messes."
Unsure what to make of something even Dobby thought insane Harry motioned for Ron to lead the way.
"Did you deliver my letter?" Hermione asked as they followed Ron through the door to a flight of stone steps, Dobby trailing along behind them.
"Oh, yes, miss. Dobby went straight there," he replied, happy to be of service.
Harry was a bit too slow in smoothing his brow when he answered and it was something his girlfriend made keen note of.
"You still don't approve," Hermione stated as they descended.
"It's not that I don't think something needs to be done," he said, trying to pull his thoughts together better this time around. "I just don't know if it's a good idea."
"How can you say that after what happened in class?" she asked pointedly, making him wonder if this was him failing to live up to his new boyfriend obligations. Lockhart had specifically called her out after all.
"You saw it, mate. It was a madhouse," Ron agreed, leaving him the odd one out as they entered a broad stone corridor.
"Everyone deserves to know their tuition's being wasted as long as the man's teaching here," the crusading Hermione declared.
"And I'm not saying they don't," Harry replied, trying to get things out properly. "I'm just asking if you should be the one to do it. You've got one detention from him already," he reminded her. "How much worse will it be if you're the one who tells everyone? You saw how much he hated getting bad press."
"Well it's too late to take it back now," his girlfriend said with a hint of defiant victory, "but if anything does happen it'll be a small price to pay if it gets people to open their eyes about him."
Harry supposed it was true, but he still would've felt better if he was the one sticking his neck out instead of her.
"You ever seen a place like this?" Ron asked, drawing them out of their conversation to look at where they were.
It was certainly an odd place, at least compared to the rest of Hogwarts. Rather than finding themselves in a gloomy underground passage, like the one leading to Snape's dungeon, this one was roomy and surprisingly well lit. Aside from a bunch of old barrels stacked next to a wall at their end, there was a homey warmth to it Harry couldn't quite place.
"It feels like a hallway to a cafeteria," Hermione said, nailing it instantly, the cheerful paintings of food lining the walls now all the more prominent.
"A what?" their wizarding friend asked.
"The Great Hall in muggle schools," Harry briefly explained, though he supposed the Great Hall was more like a mixture of a cafeteria and an auditorium – a cafetorium? Thinking of things in those terms somehow made going to school in an enchanted castle seem somewhat less grand than it had been before.
Hermione went to the first painting, giving the various cheeses there a quick once-over before starting down the corridor.
"What are we looking for?" Ron asked as they caught up to her at the next painting and Harry took a moment to look for the source of a fleshy, flappy sound which turned out to be the pitter-patter of Dobby's somewhat overlarge feet on the flagged stone floor. House elves might refuse to wear proper clothes but at least they should allow themselves shoes.
Hermione was about to respond when a prolonged creeeaaak! back from the way they just came drew their attention. Looking back they saw the stacked wooden barrels had swung themselves out into the hallway and a small line of Hufflepuffs were emerging from behind them. Most went up the stairs directly, though one did pause long enough to give them a suspicious look as the barrel-door creaked their way shut again.
"Do you think that's the way to their common room?" his girlfriend wondered once the other students had gone, echoing his thoughts on the matter.
"I suppose barrels work as well as the Fat Lady," Harry replied, though how a stack of barrels was supposed to hear their password was beyond him. 'Then again,' he thought, 'the Fat Lady's ears are made of paint, so…'
"Now we know how they get to breakfast so fast," Ron noted, almost sounding envious them.
"Is there a particular painting we're looking for?" Harry asked as they started off again.
"Yes, there's supposed to be one with a pear in it," she replied.
"Why guard the kitchens with a pear though?" he asked, trying to make sense of how they hid things in the wizarding world.
"Maybe it's a warden pear," Ron smiled at some private joke.
Hermione stopped to look at him oddly.
"How do you know about warden pears?" she asked, sounding like Ron had stepped on her foot.
"Apples and eggs aren't the only thing we eat at home," the other boy said, wondering what had gotten into her this time. "What, did you have to look it up?"
"Yes," the perturbed girl said shortly as Harry sighed and kept walking. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to work a pun into the conversation when it's about an eight hundred year old breed of pears?"
"It wasn't that hard," Ron scoffed as Harry got to a painting of a huge green pear sitting in a gigantic silver fruit bowl.
"Guys, I think I found it," he called out to them tiredly, for once not even able to care about getting them to stop their squabbling. 'They'd just be back at it the next time they say anything.'
For all this business about pears, Hermione sure looked like she'd spent the day sucking on lemons as she marched up to the painting in question. She must not have been in a joking mood either for whatever pun she'd researched went unsaid as she gave the fruit a light scratch to one side, causing it to squirm, chuckle, and suddenly turn into a large green door handle. Harry did think he caught a light scoff of 'warden pear' as she pulled the door open but thought it best to keep his silence.
He did think her jokes were better unresearched though, but that was just him.
There were a few steps down to the kitchen itself but compared to the size of the cavernous room it looked more like a step ladder than a staircase. The high-ceilinged room was easily as large as the Great Hall and there were four long wooden tables in the exact spots the House tables were above them. While students were busy stuffing their faces above them, down here there were dozens of house elves carrying glittering brass pots and pans while dashing back and forth between the tables and the great brick fireplace at the other end.
Harry was just beginning to wonder how they got the food up to the Great Hall when one of the house elves set a pan filled with bacon sandwiches down in the center of a table near them before gesturing upwards with open hands, almost as if offering it to the ceiling. When he looked back the pan was empty, except for some crusts of bread and a load of breadcrumbs. The elf hefted the pan off the table again only to come up short when it saw them.
"There's is students, not being fed!" it squeaked out, looking at them with surprised eyes the size of saucers.
Instantly the kitchen went dead quiet as near fifty house elves all turned to look at them at once.
"Er– Hello," Harry said curiously, at a loss of what else to say.
Hermione followed it up with a quick, "We don't want to disturb you."
The little house elves then went scrambling back to the fireplace as fifty more steamed out of a doorway so small it had blended in with the shadows.
"Bloody hell! How many of them are there?" Ron cried as they were quickly surrounded by a hundred beaming, bowing, and curtsying house elves, many of them offering them pan-loads of sandwiches and other light dinner foods.
"Did Sirs and Miss not get enough?" one elf asked from the crowd.
"We's can make more. Binky make more," another offered as they pressed in around them and Harry had to lift Dobby's wicker basket bed to keep it out of their faces. As odd as house elves seemed to be about – well, everything, but especially clothes – it didn't seem to stop them from all wearing the same tea towel uniform, stamped with the Hogwarts crest and tied around them like a toga.
"Oh, no, you're all doing a very good job," Hermione said placatingly, as if speaking to a class of excitable small children. "And we don't want to distract you from what you were doing. There're many more students to serve besides us."
"Oi!" cried Ron, who by this time had been overcoming his shock enough to reach out for one of the pans of food, only to have it unceremoniously whisked away before he could grab anything as the ones with food ran back to doing what they'd been doing before.
Harry was wondering how to work his way into the conversation to introduce Dobby when he noticed a bright look on his girlfriend's face saying she got an idea.
"Ron," Hermione said, turning to the other boy as the other elves began to cluster up again. "I think Harry and I will be staying here, to help Dobby get settled in. Why don't you go on up to dinner?"
"Why? There's plenty of food down here," the boy pointed out as Harry got the sense there was something else going on.
"Yes, and eating down here might be fine enough for us," she stressed, "but I'm sure you'd be more comfortable eating upstairs, wouldn't you?"
It was hard to see how it could be any more obvious than that. Hermione was putting up a sign saying: 'I'd like to make this an official couple only section. Could you please be a friend and leave us for a bit?' Harry hadn't been expecting this to suddenly turn into a boyfriend-and-girlfriend thing when they left the Common Room but guessed it might just come with the territory of dating one of your best friends. And when he thought about it, even if it was going to be awkward after this, being here with her was sure to be better than in the Great Hall with all the stares and whispers – unless, of course, this became another fight.
Ron glanced between the two of them, understanding dawning on him as a house elf pressed through the assembled mass with a small stack of sandwiches.
"Oh– er– sure," the boy said, taking the food from the elf and uncomfortably starting to eat as he backed towards the stairs. "Dis isn't weally a place to eat, ish it? No chairs or nuffin.'"
There was a rush of movement as a few house elves disappeared and a table and three mismatched chairs appeared in the nearest shadowed corner. Half a heartbeat later there was a little flickering candle in the center, giving it a warm glow some might take for romantic. Ron looked at it, looked then back at them, and swallowed his food.
"I'm gonna go," he said with no further pretext. "I'll see you later."
And as the kitchen door swung shut, leaving him and his girlfriend alone with a herd of house elves, Harry had to appreciate that while Ron and Hermione seemed to make fighting a form of friendship, there was at least one thing they seemed to agree on: sometimes three's a crowd.
.o0O0o.
As far as first days of school went, Ginny had to say this one was pretty good. Truth be told though she didn't really have anything to compare it with since learning your letters and numbers at home from your own mum didn't count. Learning stuff from Luna's mum when she was over there didn't count as a proper school either, she didn't think, but today had gone better than any school-like thing they could've had there anyway.
From the paintings and suits of armor to the staircases that moved, everything had been just like she'd been told in stories at home. People's faces weren't quite how she imagined them – she'd pictured Professor Snape to be so much older and more wrinkled from frowning than the one they got and for some reason thought Mister Filch would be a little younger – but otherwise they looked exactly like they were supposed to. The dungeons were just as dark and spooky as they described, but the excitement went out of it quickly when you had the real Professor Snape scowling at you for being too excited to pay attention.
But how could anyone be expected to pay attention when this place was enormous? It was way, way bigger than the tall glass buildings she'd seen in the muggle world. They could spend all day every day exploring this place and still not see everything. It was no wonder they wanted you stay here for seven years, it'd take you that long just to learn about even half of it.
Of course, not everything they'd learned was about castles and caretakers. She'd met loads of new people who were just as likely to get lost as she and Luna were. Everyone was just as excited as she was to be here so in no time you heard all about them: their name, where they were from, whether they'd ever heard of Hogwarts before or not – the lot of it.
Everyone was also just as eager to trade stories of what they'd learned so far too, though most of it was stuff she'd heard before. The-Boy-Who-Lived and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named were mentioned quite a bit, but she decided not to share everything she knew on the subject lest she seem like a star-struck fan and not The-Girl-He's-Supposed-To-Be-With, which she was. Besides, only one other person she met had ever met him in person, like she and Luna had, and he was a mousy-haired boy named Colin Creevey.
Colin was definitely a big-time Boy-Who-Lived fan though and you just knew he'd never rise to be a true friend because he hardly spoke of anything else. Her feelings did twinge a bit when he said he was one of the Hogwarts Hopefuls, and twinge a bit more when he said he'd gotten his picture, but the photo he showed them was so silly it more than made up for it. That Hermione girl looked so stupid in it! It was great! He was such a silly fan though he'd already resolved to ask him for a signed photo of just the two of them – though she wouldn't say no to one herself if Harry offered. Really, anything would be fine as long as that girl wasn't in it.
It was well into dinner, and Luna well into telling Colin about the blibbering humdinger, when she felt someone pass behind her going the wrong way. Turning in her seat showed it to be her least-liked brother, Ron, making his way to the cluster of Second Years just up the table from her. Strangely enough, he was already eating.
'Did he steal food from the other tables as he came in?' she wondered, feeling more than a little embarrassed even being this close to him. 'Sometimes it's hard to believe he's a Weasley.'
There was something odd about seeing him there though, and it made her mind twitchy trying to figure it out. He hadn't said anything to her when he passed, like the twins did, but she hadn't expected it from him. Was it odd because she hadn't seen him all day? She didn't think she'd seen him. In fact, she was pretty sure of it because if she had seen him then she would've seen that girl hanging all over Harry, and she luckily hadn't seen that at all.
That slid everything into place to form a kind of emptiness around him, like the world had a Harry-shaped hole that was supposed to have been filled and impossible to explain why it was there. Why wasn't Harry with him? Where was he? And what was her brother doing here without him? He never went anywhere without Harry, and she wasn't the only one to notice.
"Where's Lover Boy and the Brain?" an Irish boy asked as Ron sat across from him.
"Dawn inna kichins," her brother replied through a mouth full of something; one day he might learn to swallow before answering but Ginny wouldn't hold her breath waiting.
"This place has kitchens?" the black boy next to him asked curiously.
"My Gran says they have the most house elves in the country down there," a round-faced boy next to them said quietly, almost as if speaking too loud was enough to get him into trouble, "so it must be pretty large to keep them all."
"There was at least a hundred down there alright, and another hundred came running in to drown us in food," her brother said, clearly enjoying the other boys' attention. "Must be at least a thousand down there. We were supposed to bring Dobby there to live, but suddenly it changed to this mushy candlelit dinner, so of course I got outta there so they could – y'know," he finished with a gesture of mild disgust.
"Hang on–," the Irish boy interjected, only to be overtaken.
"–You mean Harry and Hermione?" the stunned black boy asked disbelievingly while all Ginny felt was the dagger of treachery twisting in her stomach.
"Seems I don' call him Lover Boy for nothin'," the Irish boy grinned.
'This can't be happening!' Ginny thought. She wanted to scream, and cry, and run back to her dorm so she could write to Tom for consolation, but there were far too many people to witness her heartache for her to do it. 'Ron should've done something to ruin it. He's always ruining the things I want; he should've at least been a good brother and ruined that to make up for it.'
"That's such a Harry thing to do," an older tan-skinned girl closer to her said to the girl next to her.
"Oh, definitely," her dirty blonde cohort agreed with a mischievous grin. "He's probably been planning it for weeks. No matter how bad those muggles may've treated him, he definitely came out of there a romantic."
"You think that's what did it?" the darker girl asked dubiously. "It'd seem to me it'd hurt with that, not help. If anything, I'd think it'd be him being an orphan that did it."
The blonde girl giggled before motioning her friend close and Ginny strained her ears to listen.
"Either way I bet it's going to be one thoroughly snogged Hermione that makes it to the dorm tonight. And watch her deny everything too!"
Ginny clinched her fists under the table to keep herself from yelling "THEY ARE NOT A COUPLE!" at those two stupid girls.
The darker one gasped as something occurred to her.
"Do you think Witch Weekly would want to know about this?"
'No-no-no, they can't!' Ginny said to herself. 'If anyone knows about this she'll be seen as his Lady-Love, his One-And-Only. It'd be a disaster! That's supposed to be me, not her. Me! They may've gone shopping, went to the Hopefuls, studied, and been kidnapped by the goblins together but that does not make them a couple!'
"Oh, they'd just die to have it," her friend agreed. "Especially since Hermione admitted being boyfriend-and-girlfriend with him–"
Ginny felt like her life had ended, but it didn't stop the girl from talking.
"–She can say all she wants they only became 'official' on the train, everyone knows they've been dating for weeks."
Ginny knew she should've wanted to argue with that, but it was like her spirit had left her so there was no force behind it to get it going. What did it matter if she said none of it was a date? What would it change to say dating was going out so you could be publicly seen to be alone together, and it didn't fit with snooping around a kitchen with a house-elf? Could she really call a romantic candlelit dinner with a thousand house-elves seeing to their every whim not a date? If it'd been her she would've been gushing about it 'til the day she died…
"Now you've got to tell them," she heard the other girl say through dead ears. "You put it so much better than I can, Lav. And it's been weeks since the article about their other date. If we tell them now it might just make it in the next edition!"
"What article is this?" Ginny numbly heard herself say, seemingly still able to speak when her heart had stopped and blood had gone cold.
She looked up to see the girls up a bit and across the way looking at her like she offered them a bowl of Luna's plimpy soup.
"Don't you read Witch Weekly?" the blonde asked in return like what she'd asked about was the most obvious thing in the world. "Every girl in school's been talking about it all day."
"My Mum's got a subscription," she recalled vaguely, "but I haven't seen it lately."
From within her robes the girl called 'Lav' pulled out a worn copy of Witch Weekly and passed it to her while her friend asked, "Who could we send a letter to at Witch Weekly to let them know?" to get them back on their own topic again.
"I heard a rumor Rita Skeeter's one of their contributors," Lav replied in a quick whisper, as Ginny opened the magazine to the first of many dog-eared pages. "She tries to keep it quiet though since she's so famous from the Prophet. They can't have a star reporter trading in gossip, now can they?"
The rest of her meal forgotten, Ginny saw the worst sort of confirmation possible. The brightest of romantic pinks, used only to signify the brightest passions between two people, boldly proclaimed to the world not only Harry and Hermione's couplehood but the deep feelings they had for each other in the headline: 'Harry Potter's Romantic Rendezvous.' And to make matters worse, it was printed over the most perfect dream-like photograph of them sharing the most private and intimate embrace possible in the middle of Diagon Alley.
'So much for them not being publicly alone together,' Ginny sulked, nursing the feeling of heartache and betrayal since it was the only part of her dream life left to her. 'It's not just Ron,' she thought sadly, 'the whole family did this to me.'
The thought had come to her in a bit of a whine but the more she thought of it the more true it was. Ron betrayed her by wanting to invite Harry to stay with them in the first place, and their mum and dad had agreed. If neither of those had happened then none of this would have happened at all. Fred and George had done their best to embarrass her when he'd arrived – and Percy'd been no help, being constantly stuck in his room writing to his own girlfriend at the time – which made Harry see her as some frilly little child and not the obvious soulmate for him she most obviously was.
They'd only compounded their treachery by what they did in Diagon Alley too. Percy and his girlfriend, Penelope, were supposed to have walked about with Harry and Hermione as chaperones – which had obviously not happened. It was such a deviation from the normally prudish Percy there's no way it wasn't deliberate. And instead of noticing their unchaperoned status and doing anything to remedy it, her father started a fight in the bookshop to create even more chaos to cover for them while her brothers – who always ruined everything with their pranks – did nothing to ruin their first outing as a couple!
'Ron was probably the one who got them kidnapped by the goblins too, putting them in a tense and dramatic situation where they had to cling to each other for support,' she sulked. How exactly that was supposed to work when her father and brother had only been taken after the others were in custody, Ginny didn't know, but it no longer mattered anymore. 'And if Mum hadn't agreed to let Harry travel on his own, hadn't let him slide for Dobby wrecking the car, and hadn't kept me home when I should've been at the Hopefuls meeting then surely none of this would be like this right now.'
She was glad to pass the magazine back to the other girls as they rose to hurry off and spread the news of Harry and Hermione's happiness. Ginny didn't care, she didn't want to see anything more about it. It was bad enough to see the life she should've had slip away right in front of her but it was even worse to see everyone else celebrate it.
Colin and Luna finished their dinner and then they all got up to try and find their way back to Gryffindor Tower without getting lost. She didn't add anything to their conversation on the way there, not that the others noticed. Colin was still so excited by everything around him even Luna was left to listen most of the time. Ginny only wanted to get to her bed. She had so much to tell Tom it might be sun-up before she finished it all.
.o0O0o.
"You don't think that was too rude of me, do you?" Miss Myknee asked once the Wheezy was gone and Dobby could see all the Hogwarts house-elves start to wonder if there was any work to be had.
"Er– It… might've been a bit… unexpected?" Harry Potter replied. "I mean, we were here for Dobby."
Dobby's name being called made Dobby wonder what the Hogwarts house-elves thought of him. Dobby had done nothing to get them food, or chairs, and Harry Potter was carrying Dobby's bed. Did they think Dobby didn't do enough work? Would they think Harry Potter didn't need Dobby if Harry Potter did so much work himself?
"It was rather abrupt," Miss Myknee agreed as house-elves eyed him up and down. "With the rumors going around though I thought you'd like to have a break from it, and when I saw you with Dobby's basket I remembered what you said about going on a picnic. And while 'holding you to it' may have been a joke, I didn't see why we couldn't do it now and accomplish both those things."
In the corner Dobby saw the table, chairs, and candle disappear only to be replaced with a blanket on the floor, pillows to be sat on, several candles around the sides, and even food set out for them. There was so much work being done for Harry Potter and Dobby wasn't doing any of it! Dobby was Harry Potter's elf; Dobby had to be useful to Harry Potter, or why was Dobby there?
"Oh, it's a good idea, and I like it," Harry Potter told his Myknee as Dobby tugged on Harry Potter's leg to get his attention. Harry Potter looked down at Dobby and Dobby reached up for the basket since it was the only bit of work he could do. "I'm sure Ron understands," Harry Potter said as he passed the basket to Dobby.
"I hope so," his Myknee said before turning to the Hogwarts house-elves, who looked to Dobby as close he'd ever seen house-elves come to being bored when there was so little work to be done. "Sorry, we didn't mean to be rude or ignore you," Miss Myknee told them as if she truly valued their feelings as much as the great Harry Potter does. "Is there one of you who's in charge here?"
The Hogwarts house-elves looked to each other, perhaps wondering – like Dobby was – how house-elves could be in charge of anything. In the doorway they'd come through though Dobby saw another house-elf enter. He was old, Dobby thought, older than old; so old he was wrinkly and used a stick to walk.
"We work for Hogwarts," the old Hogwarts house-elf croaked as he came closer. "Hogwarts is in charge."
"Well then, could you ask Hogwarts to include our friend Dobby in whatever work it needs done?" Miss Myknee asked while Dobby fought to keep a smile off his face so he wouldn't look silly in front of the others.
'Dobby's got friends,' Dobby still said happily to himself.
"Hogwarts is a castle, Miss," the old house-elf croaked at her with a curious look. "Castles no be talking."
That made sense to Dobby. Dobby had never seen a house talk either.
"Then could you perhaps show him around and see that he's included?" Miss Myknee asked again before Harry Potter added, "Professor McGonagall said it'd be okay."
"Gimbal too old for work," the old one said as he eyed Dobby from ears to toes, "but he be shown." Pointing with his stick to Harry Potter's picnic he said, "They need drink," only to have it instantly taken care of by those around him. "No, no!" the old Gimbal croaked, "Let him do it. Take it away!"
Afterwards the old Gimbal pointed his stick to another and told them to show him where the pantry's kept. Harry Potter and Miss Myknee didn't mind waiting, and they thanked Dobby for serving them – but then Gimbal poked him with his stick to point to where Dobby was to go next. Dobby was busy running back and forth between the large hot fireplace and the tables the old Gimbal pointed to, and Dobby always worried if Harry Potter needed things, but Harry Potter seemed happy sitting with Miss Myknee and smiling whenever Dobby looked at them.
Soon the work changed from putting food out to taking it back. This was longer since the food was taken through the door and right, to the pantry. There, in hushed tones, Dobby was told they'd be keeping it for later, which Dobby didn't think they really wanted to do.
Harry Potter and Miss Myknee stood to leave then too and Dobby went over to hear what a good worker he was and how he's sure to have plenty of work to do there tomorrow. Harry Potter did say Harry Potter would still call Dobby if Harry Potter needed anything though, which Dobby liked hearing very much. They also gave Dobby his bed again so Dobby wouldn't be forgetting it.
Once Harry Potter and Miss Myknee left the old Gimbal poked him with his stick and croaked "Pivot!" making Dobby wonder which way Dobby was supposed to go.
"Yes, Gimbal?" another house-elf she asked as she ran up to answer him.
"Show this one–"
"–Dobby," Dobby said to introduce himself to them both again.
"Pivot," came Pivot's reply, and Dobby thought her tea towel was impeccably clean, even after such a long day.
"Show Dobby to sleep," Gimbal croaked before moving toward the doorway to the pantry and beyond.
Around old Gimbal, through the elf-sized door, and past the pantry Pivot took Dobby and there Dobby saw the biggest laundry Dobby'd ever seen. Pivot didn't take Dobby in but led him further down the narrow hall where two stacked rows of squares lined the walls. Each square had a bit of cloth hanging in it and as Dobby watched he saw Hogwarts house-elves go to one or another of the lower squares, twitch the cloth aside, and duck inside to a small space beyond while other Hogwarts house-elves would twitch aside cloths on the higher row and climb out of them.
Dobby looked over to Pivot.
"They works at night," Pivot said. "Hogwarts has ever so much work to do."
As one house-elf went into their sleeping place Dobby saw another house-elf already in it, and it had a littler one!
"You's can have kids?" Dobby asked her. Dobby thought Hogwarts must have lots and lots of work indeed if they's be having kids here.
Pivot blushed to her ears.
"Pivot has no family," Pivot squeaked. "Does… Dobby have family?"
"Dobby's owned by the great Harry Potter," Dobby said proudly, "and Harry Potter says Dobby can work for Burrow Wheezies whenever Dobby wants."
"Oh!" cried Pivot, properly impressed. "Pivot not mean family-family," Pivot said meaningfully before pointing to the curtain the other house-elf went behind. "Pivot means family-family."
"Oh!" Dobby said with a blush, knowing now what Pivot meant. "No, Miss. Dobby has no family-family."
Thoughts of Harry Potter, Mipsy, and pretty house-elves made Dobby think of something else.
"You's was in Harry Potter's room today," Dobby said, pretty sure he was right.
"Pivot was?"
"The high tower with a big room with lots of red and gold?"
"Grief-find-door, yes," Pivot said happily. "Pivot cleans twos and threes of Grief-find-door each morning. Where was Dobby?"
"Dobby was on a bed, and outside, and in a trunk," Dobby replied, which only seemed to make her confused for a moment.
"If Dobby's owned by Harry Potter, and Harry Potter's in Pivot's rooms, does Dobby want to clean Harry Potter's room instead of Pivot?"
"Only if Pivot doesn't want to clean it," Dobby said politely. "Harry Potter calls Dobby if he needs him. Harry Potter likes to do things himself," he finished in a whisper, lifting his bed a little hoping to explain how Harry Potter does work for Dobby without Dobby having to say it.
Pivot looked to his bed and nodded.
"Lone sleeping down here," Pivot said as Pivot led the way again. "If Dobby works for Harry Potter, and Harry Potter's in Grief-find-door twos and threes, where was Dobby before?"
Dobby didn't like talking about the time before Harry Potter but Harry Potter said Dobby'd have friends at Hogwarts and Dobby didn't think Harry Potter would think it good to not have friends.
"Dobby had a different family then," Dobby told Pivot as he took hold of his ear in one hand, only to stop it and let it go. "Old family wasn't like Harry Potter at all. And when Harry Potter met Dobby, Harry Potter likes him so much he calls him friend and asks to buy Dobby from them."
Pivot's eyes grew big with that.
"Harry Potter paid more than ten pairs of shoes for Dobby," Dobby said, remembering the happy day, as Pivot's eyes grew bigger still. "But Harry Potter didn't mind. Harry Potter said Dobby's worth more than twenty pairs of shoes!" Dobby finished in a smiling whisper as Pivot's eyes got the biggest they could get.
Dobby was telling the truth, but Dobby didn't want to seem to boast, so Dobby looked for something to do. Dobby saw the hall widened ahead, as if three sleeping places didn't have any have sleeping places in it at all. Dobby stopped there and set his bed down in the empty space.
"Dobby can sleep here?" Dobby asked.
"Dobby can," Pivot replied, though Dobby didn't think Pivot would herself. "Most wouldn't sleep there because this breathes cold on them," she told Dobby, pointing up to a rectangle hole high on the other wall.
"Dobby's old master's house was very cold where Dobby slept," Dobby explained. "Dobby doesn't mind."
Pivot nodded and left Dobby there and Dobby moved his bed up along the wall and climbed in to go to sleep. Pivot returned with a towel a little later when the cold breath from above had started chilling Dobby. She held the towel out to him.
"Dobby needs a blanket."
.o0O0o.
AN: While I may have no idea how many house-elves there actually are at Hogwarts, this chapter has 213 'Dobby's in it. lol ;) Poor Dobby really needs to learn not to speak about himself in the 3rd person so much. XD
As always, thanks for reading.