MAGIANIMA // Hermione Granger

Joke Too Much

Atlas took up a sizeable slab of steak and brought it over to her plate, whisking her wand so it was instantly cut up into equal-sized cubes. She smiled happily and grabbed her fork, stabbing it through her first bite and bringing it to her mouth. Only, before she could indulge herself in the delight, another tray popped up in front of her, holding a medium-sized ice-pack in its centre. Fobbo had somehow heard her apparently. She grabbed it and stuck it to the back of her head as she went back to her food, Hermione eyeing the sequence in bewilderment.

She glanced along the table as she ate, eyeing up the sorted first-years and making eye contact with Colin Creeevey and his little brother Denis, the boy who'd walked in with Hagrid's moleskin around him and had actually fallen into the lake. They waved at her heartily so she quickly swallowed and returned the gesture with a smile, returning to her table gazing.

Cedric waved wildly in her peripheral so she turned to look at him, ignoring the conversation beside her as he mouthed words of worry and excitement all in one. His face kept making rapid changes. Distress, happiness, anxiety and then joy, it was quite befuddling. Ultimately, he had just wanted to know if she was ok so she gave him a quick thumbs-up which sent him back to the friends and food around him.

A clang to her right knocked her out of her searching and she turned to see Hermione quite horror-struck, a spilt golden goblet of pumpkin juice in front of her - the origin of the sudden sound.

"There are house-elves here?" She said breathlessly, staring up at Nearly Headless Nick. "Here at Hogwarts?"

"Certainly," Nick nodded, looking surprised at her reaction. "The largest number in any dwelling in Britain, I believe. Over a hundred."

"I've never seen one!" Hermione said.

"Well, they hardly ever leave the kitchen by day, do they?" Nick said with a minuscule shrug. "They come out at night to do a bit of cleaning...see to the fires and so on...I mean, you're not supposed to see them, are you? That's the mark of a good house-elf, isn't it, that you don't know it's there?"

Hermione stared at him.

"But they get paid?" she said. "They get holidays, don't they? And - and sick leave, and pensions, and everything?"

Nick laughed so much his ruff slipped and his head flopped off, dangling on the inch or so of ghostly skin and muscle that still attached it to his neck. Atlas grimaced and slowed her chewing, finding the sight incredibly off-putting.

"Sick leave and pensions?" he repeated with a hint of disbelief, pushing his head back onto his shoulders and securing it once more with his ruff. "House-elves don't want sick leave and pensions!"

Hermione looked down at her hardly touched plate of food, then put her knife and fork down upon it and pushed it away from her. Atlas regarded her a moment, looked down at her own plate, back at her, to her fork and then sighed, pushing Hermione's plate back in front of her.

"Come on, Mi, just eat it," Atlas urged and waved a Yorkshire pudding under her nose.

"Slave labour," Hermione said and pushed the food away, breathing hard through her nose as if to get rid of the tantalising smell. "That's what made this dinner. Slave labour."

"What if I told you they were...sort-of paid?" Atlas sighed and Hermione glanced up at her with a raised brow. "In sweets and books, they won't take money so I buy them things. Minerva has told them to take breaks, even Dumbledore assures them they can leave whenever. Fobbo is my house-elf...well...I found him in the woods and brought him here but he refers to me as his master."

The Yorkshire pudding was back beneath Hermione's nose in seconds, Atlas going back to tempting the girl into eating. They locked into a lengthy staring competition, Atlas now grinning as she continued to tease Hermione with the food. "What was Nick talking about then?"