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House Elves


”Help me, Mister Regulus! Help me!” The tiny house elf sobbed and waved her arms. “Don’t let them be killing me!” Tears as large as the elf itself fell from her eyes, rolling across her cheeks and splashing into puddles… turning into rain that beat upon his back as he ran across a hazy marshland, clutching something, always clutching something in his fist. “Help me, Mister Regulus!” the elf’s voice echoed through the sky like thunder, lowering… deepening… becoming croaky… until he came to a stop on a path leading up a hill and he looked down and beside him stood Kreacher. “Master Regulus musn’t -- he musn’t let them be killing me!” Kreacher begged, grabbing onto Regulus’s robes, his fists balling about the fabric. Regulus walked up the hill along the path, dragging the elf like a ball and chain, clutching that something...and looking over a cliff at an ocean, dark, ominous green-black with algae and the waves crashing horribly hard against the rocks. “He must not be letting them kill us.” Suddenly the teeny house elf Orion had murdered and Kreacher and a plethora more elves surrounded him and they were all begging him, all crying… ”There’s a hundred more where that one came from,” Orion’s voice echoed over the sea and it seemed the elves just kept on multiplying as far as Regulus could see. And he turned to the water and he felt as though there was a choice he could not make… one that was splitting his very soul into pieces. “Make up your mind boy,” hissed Voldemort’s voice. “Will you help me?” Regulus looked down at his fist and there it lay - a shabby, tarnished looking trinket that seemed to burn his hand and he dropped it and it fell to the ground, hitting the grass at his foot and Kreacher picked it up, holding it aloft to him in his palm and he asked, “Is Master Regulus choosing the trinket over Kreacher?” with the saddest, most heart-breaking tone in his voice… “Kreacher loves his Master Regulus… no matter what he is choosing.” ...and then his father’s voice. “AVADA KED---”

Regulus sat up in his bed, screaming. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoOoooo!” he bellowed, clutching at the blankets, his heart racing, “NO NONONONONONO!”

“The hell, Black!? Shut up! It’s the middle the night!” moaned one of the other boys in the room. “What’s with all the racket?”

Sweat poured over Regulus and the tears fell from his eyes were hot and burned the rims, seating them. “No, oh no, no no -- Kreacher!” he cried, “KREACHER!”

There was a loud CRACK! and the elf stood on the foot of Regulus’s bed. The elf took one look at Regulus and he grabbed onto his master’s hand in worry, “Master Regulus, Kreacher is here… Kreacher is here…” he looked around the room and clicked his fingers, the pitcher of water pouring a glass that floated over and Kreacher caught it up, handing it to Regulus, “Drink, Master Regulus, drink this water.” Regulus took the cup, gulping the water, his chest heaving. “Kreacher’s here, Master Regulus, Kreacher’s here.”

Regulus nodded as his throat pumped the water into his system and he started to calm down. Only a dream, he realized. It was only a dream… and a quite impossible one, really… Of course Kreacher was okay. Of course it wasn’t real. He finished the water and swept his fist over his mouth, staring at the house elf with wide eyes - just so glad to see him. He grabbed onto Kreacher’s little hand and pulled him close, wrapping his arms around the elf, who stood awkwardly, letting Regulus do it, an uncertain look on his old little face. The tufts of fur in his ears twitched. “I’m sorry, Kreacher,” whispered Regulus, hugging the elf.

“Why is Master Regulus sorry to Kreacher?”

“For not paying you better attention.” Over the summer, Regulus had been so intent on learning everything and anything he could about the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters that he hadn’t spent near the amount of time he normally would’ve done with Kreacher. They’d only played Exploding Snap once and they hadn’t even truly finished the game, though the elf had dutifully set up the board every day…

“Master Regulus is busy, Kreacher understands,” Kreacher croaked.

Regulus let go of the elf. “I’ll do better.”

“Master Regulus is already the best to Kreacher,” Kreacher mumbled.

“Everything alright?” Barty Crouch was sitting up in his bed, the next one over, looking through the curtains of the four poster with concern. The other boys had rolled over and covered their ears in exasperation against the noise that Regulus had been making, but Barty had sat and waited patiently while Regulus had drank the water from Kreacher and given the wrinkled old elf the hug. Barty looked at Regulus with genuine concern.

Regulus nodded, “Just a nightmare,” he told Barty. He looked at Kreacher, “Thank you, Kreacher, you can go before Mother finds you missing and you get in trouble. Thank you for coming.”

“Yes, Master Regulus,” and with a click of his fingers and a crack!, Kreacher was gone.

Barty stared across the gap between the beds. “Do you fancy some tea?” he asked, and Regulus nodded and the two boys crept out of their beds and down to the common room. They made tea and sat on the couch and Barty stayed silent, waiting for Regulus to speak when he was ready to.

Regulus sipped his tea slowly, letting the herbs move through his veins, warming him, chasing away the horrible echos in his mind of all the scenes in his terrible dream. Finally, he looked at Barty. “My father killed that Lupin boy’s house elf over the summer,” he said.

Barty just looked at Regulus without saying a word, his eyes steady.

“Used the avada kedavra on her, murdered her… She was the tiniest little elf, Barty… Couldn’t have been even a foot tall… and he didn’t care. He didn’t care at all. Not even a single bit of remorse. She hadn’t done anything wrong.” Regulus stared down at his tea. “It was as if her life did not matter.”

“Well… she was an elf…” murmured Barty. “Do they matter?”

“I think so,” Regulus replied, “They… they have a right to live as much as we do, don’t they?”

“They’re not… they’re not as good as a wizard is, though. They’re not… worth as much,” Barty said quietly.

“Why wouldn’t they be worth as much?” Regulus asked, genuinely confused.

“They’re house elves,” Barty said.

Regulus sipped the tea, thinking. When he lowered the cup, he asked, “But… but they’re a living creature. What makes my life worth more over theirs?”

Barty laughed, “Reg… under that logic, what makes your life worth more over a muggle’s?”

Regulus said, “Well… I’m magic, aren’t I? House elves have magic…”

“What about a muggle-born then?” Barty questioned, “What makes you better than a mudblood? There’s a hierarchy, remember, Reg? And house elves… well, they’re just not very high up on that hierarchy, are they?”

Regulus’s hands were tight ‘round his teacup. “Are you saying I shouldn’t have felt bad about that elf? That my father was right in killing her?”

Barty shrugged. “I dunno, Reg, but… but house elves, they’re… they’re not… they aren’t people.”

“Do you have a house elf, Barty?” Regulus asked.

“Yes, her name’s Winky.”

“And if your father murdered Winky -- would that be alright with you?”

Barty’s eyes looked quite uncomfortable at the thought. “She’s been with my family for a very long time, s’long as I can remember. Father wouldn’t ever kill Winky. She’s part of our family.”

“So… to you… to your family… Winky is… sort of a person?” Regulus asked.

Barty licked his lips, “It’s different…”

“How?”

“I dunno, Reg, but it is…”

Regulus put the teacup down on the coffee table and he got up, pacing nervously from the mantle and back again. He felt sick. “Kreacher’s like family to me, too. And I bet that tiny house elf was to the Lupins as well…”

“Are you feeling sorry for the half-blood puffer fish, then?” asked Barty coldly.

“I’m feeling -- I dunno what I’m feeling,” Regulus said. “But it’s been bothering me ever since it happened. I saw the life leave her eyes, Barty,” Regulus whispered. “It was… it was haunting.”

Barty pursed his lips and stared down at the teacup in his palms.

Regulus came over and lowered himself so he was sitting on the coffee table before Barty and he stared up at his friends, his eyes imploring, “Why is one life more valuable than another life? What makes one being more important than another? Every one of us has somebody who loves us, who needs us… Every one of us has a story… so what makes one being’s experience and story more important than another one?” He was truly asking, truly seeking an answer to a question that he did not understand.

“Dunno,” Barty replied.

“It doesn’t make sense, though, right? Why one would matter more than the other?” Regulus asked, “Or have I gone mad?”

“A bit mad perhaps,” Barty said.

Regulus sighed and he ran his hands over the back of his neck, staring down at his bare feet on the dark green carpet below. He felt anxiety coursing through him as the echos of the dream started to fill him back up again and he shook his head and stood up, pacing once more. “I don’t understand… I don’t understand. I need answers. I need to know why.”

“Perhaps you should write to… to somebody who can tell you,” Barty recommended quietly. “Like your parents or even Voldemort himself…”

“Yeah, good idea,” Regulus nodded, though he wanted answers more immediate than an owl would afford. He wanted answers now, in order to sleep well… but there was no way to get them. The floo network was off in the Slytherin common room. “I’ll write them,” he said.

“Alright. Good.” Barty said, “Shall we go back to bed, then, are you feeling a bit calmer?” He watched Regulus pace - already knowing the answer was no, that Reg was no calmer now than he’d been when they’d come down the stairs. He frowned.

Regulus said, “I just can’t stop seeing that little elf in my mind.”

Barty said, “At least it wasn’t Kreacher.”

“Yeah,” Regulus agreed. “I dunno what I’d do if he ever murdered Kreacher…” the thought made him actually ill. He remembered the night that Abraxas Malfoy had come to call and crucioed Kreacher, remembered Kreacher’s cries filling Number 12… That despair he’d felt that night weighed heavily on his chest now, even with just the memory of it. He could still see Kreacher clutching his ankles in his mind’s eye, could still feel the protective spirit that had coursed through him, making him argue with Walburga on the elve’s behalf… He imagined if Kreacher had been killed that day, how he might’ve reacted, how he would’ve held Kreacher’s body, heavy and limp in his arms… and he wondered if Remus Lupin had done that with his house elf’s body… if he’d been in as much despair and sorrow as Regulus would have been…

Maybe, perhaps, he was feeling just a bit sorry for him after all.

He looked at Barty.

“What if it does matter?” he asked. “What if it’s just being that defines a life as worthy? What if we’re all equally entitled to life as we each know it? And none of us are really more important than any of the others?”

Barty shrugged, “I dunno. What if?”

Regulus thought about it. “I dunno,” he said.