Chapter 10

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Ed looked around at all the people excitedly moving towards the big stadium. The air itself was vibrating with anticipation.

“Prime seats!” said the Ministry witch at the entrance when she checked their tickets. “Top Box! Straight upstairs, Arthur, and as high as you can go.” 

The stairs into the stadium were carpeted in rich purple. They clambered upward with the rest of the crowd, which slowly filtered away through doors into the stands to their left and right. Mr. Weasley’s party kept climbing, and at last they reached the top of the staircase and found themselves in a small box, set at the highest point of the stadium and situated exactly halfway between the golden goal posts. Besides him, Winry moved a little closer so that she can hold on a little to him.

Hundreds of people sat in the boxes around the long oval stadium field, which seemed to emit a golden light. Ed couldn’t see any form of light except for the golden light. At either ends of the field stood three hoops, fifty feet high. A gigantic blackboard stood opposite them with gold writing dashing across it as though an invisible giant’s hand were scrawling upon the blackboard and then wiping it off again.

All in all, it was nothing like the small-scale tournaments that Ed remembered from his days in Resembool, when he was still in school.

“Dobby?” he heard Harry say. He looked towards him to see a tiny creature sitting in the second from the last seat at the end of the row behind them. The creature, whose legs were so short that they stuck out in front of it on the chair, was wearing a tea towel draped like a toga, and it had its face hidden in its hands.

The tiny creature looked up and stretched its fingers, revealing enormous brown eyes and a nose the exact size and shape of a large tomato. Ed suddenly remembered the book Al had shown him excitedly as he explained about different creatures.

‘So, this is a house-elf…’

The creature looked to Ed a lot similar to the goblins, but instead of the grumpy look this one seemed to have a very frightened look. He also found out as the creature and Harry talked that she was a female of the species.

He had read in one book that in order to employ an elf the wizarding families had to purchase a license and once an elf becomes available that fits their need, there is a huge amount of paperwork and licensing fees as well as a magically binding contract that needed to be performed to bind the house-elf to that wizarding family. Basically, the ministry is paid to sell them a slave.

‘Wonder what the house-elves think about this.’

“House-elves is not paid, sir!” the elf said in a muffled squeak. “No, no, no. I says to Dobby, I says, go find yourself a nice family and settle down, Dobby. He is getting up to all sorts of high jinks, sir, what is unbecoming to a house-elf. You goes racketing around like this, Dobby, I says, and next thing I hear you’s up in front of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, like some common goblin.” 

‘Well, guess that answers that.’

As Ed heard the conversation between the elf and Harry, he couldn’t help but feel sympathy. He had read in his father’s books about his life a s a slave. Though back then he didn’t know it was about his father. Hohenheim had written that most of the slaves there did not know about their rights and their masters have never bothered to educate them either. The more ignorant the slave was, the better it was for their owners.

At least the slaves in Xerxes could educate themselves. It seemed that the house-elves were not even given that, making them stuck in an eternal cycle of slavery.

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