Pet Peeve: Someone remembers the non-human creature's name and—voila!—the creature is then that's human's devotee for the remainder of the series, or until it dies. Usually the latter. How weird would that be? Imagine that no one really remembered your name, except your friends, then one uppity person who isn't from your species recalls your name! Would you then follow them to the ends of the earth? I wouldn't. How illogical.
The goblin dropped to its knees before Harry with quivering acid tears beginning to spill down its leathery cheeks, leaving trails of scorched, steaming and evaporating skin. Harry blinked, horrified, and recoiled.
"Wh..what's wrong?" he demanded. The creature crawled forward on all fours and seized Harry's pant leg. Harry immediately tried to shake off the scaly thing, but it clung tighter and began to audibly weep. Harry sighed, rolled his eyes at his companions—Sirius disguised in his animagus form was leaping around and barking loudly, Ron was merely blinking in astonishment and Hermione looked disgusted. Dumbledore was examining a carving on the wall and appeared to be oblivious to the entire event—and bent down to talk to the goblin.
"Rosvark," he said with more patience than he felt, "I'm sorry for whatever I said that hurt you but I need to get to my vault." Rosvark leapt to its feet, swiping tears away with the back of his hand, paying no attention to the damage he was causing to himself with his tears. It bowed quite splendidly—with large tears still dripping out of its eyes and off the end of its nose—and strode away without another word. Harry glanced at his companions. With the exception of Dumbledore who was now mumbling to himself about the wall and jotting notes in a piece of parchment, all of them were clearly speechless with astonishment; even Sirius was noticeably shocked, with his doggy expression of disbelief. Harry shook his head to dispel the feeling of shock and followed the goblin quickly, Hermione, Ron and Sirius trailing behind him.
Rosvark led the four of them—Dumbledore was still studying the wall with no apparent inclination to follow them to the vault—and waited for them to get into the railway cart with a low obeisance and a cringingly awed expression on its face. Once in the cart, Harry glanced round at his companions to be sure they were all safely ensconced within it and was struck by the goblin's stature.
"Rosvark…aren't you rather shorter than you were a moment ago?" he inquired, also noting that the creature's eyes were noticeably larger. He gulped to himself and hoped that he wasn't going mad, imaging things. Rosvark made another low obeisance and then climbed into the cart.
"Sir is, of course, correct, although it appears that Sir does not know that he himself was the catalyst?"
"Er, right, then. Can we go to my vault?" Harry asked awkwardly. Hermione bristled at Harry's dismissal of the goblin's words, and looked to be right about on the verge of exploding into a sentient beings' rights speech, but Harry shot her a desperate look, and she subsided.
Now really, truly rattled by the goblin's odd behavior – which only got more bizzare and servile the longer Harry was in Rosvark's vicinity—Harry rushed through his routine of fetching out some gold for the upcoming school year, and almost forgot to go through the trunk at the back of the vault which he'd noticed at his previous visit and meant to look at. He was thrilled to realise that the books within were his parents' old schoolbooks, and were full of annotations. He promptly decided to bring the entire thing with him.
"Rosvark," he started hesitantly, "I want to take this trunk up; could you give me some assistance?" Rosvark looked up, still blinking away those weird, acidic tears, and bellowed:
"Griphook, Bodrug, Ragnok!" Within a few seconds of stunned silence within Harry's trust vault, three small humanoids tumbled into the vault. Harry recognised Griphook from his first visit to the bank, and though that Bodrug and Ragnok looked familiar.
"Hello." Harry greeted the three new arrivals. "I'd like this trunk to be taken to the cart, please." he requested. "I'd do it myself," he explained, "except that I'm still underage and not supposed to use magic outside of school." The goblins nodded, curling their lips in rictuses of sneers at the humans as they did Harry's bidding, who followed them out to the cart with his sack of gold, Hermione, Ron, and Sirius trailing behind him.
The cart was crowded on their way back to the surface, as all four goblins joined them on the return journey. Harry couldn't help but notice that Rosvark was getting increasingly smaller as they went.
"Are you all right?" he asked in concern. The goblin, now only about half his previous size, nodded, his ears flopping, and sniffled again. The other three goblins were pointedly ignoring him.
At the surface, Griphook turned the trunk out of the cart with an unceremonious thump and dragged it over close to Dumbledore, who was still examining the wall, with Bodrug and Ragnok's help.
"Thanks!" Harry exclaimed. "That was really helpful, Griphook; Ragnok; Bodrug." he stuck out his hand and shook each of theirs in turn as he said their names. The three looked shocked.
"It's happening!" Rosvark squealed behind them, and bolted over to the three other goblins and seized their hands. They had adopted looks of pure shock when Harry had said their names, and continued to look apprehensive and baffled as Rosvark joined them.
"Wha…what's happening?" Hermione demanded as the four goblins began to shrink, or melt, rather, it looked like. They were all spewing the acid tears, and almost appeared to be bubbling as they shrank, eyes getting bigger and bigger, and ears turning floppy.
"It looks like they're turning into house elves!" gasped Harry.
"That's only a legend!" Ron interjected. Hermione rounded on him.
"What's only a legend?" she demanded. Ron glanced at her through slanted eyes.
"That once, if you were to name a goblin, they would be bound into service to you. That's the legend of the origin of the house elves." Hermione looked horrified.
"That's awful!" she declared, "Enslaving a creature using its own name!"
The goblins were now all recognisably house elves. One of them stepped forward.
"No, missy witch!" it contradicted, "Is a great honour to be a house elf!" Hermione knelt down to be at their level.
"How can it be an honour to be a slave?" she asked. The goblin-turned-elf wrinkled its pug little nose and sighed.
"House elves have great magic." it explained, "a true connection to the earth and all the magic of nature. The bond is necessary to give structure to such power. Otherwise, it would be impossible to know limits, because we wouldn't have any." it told her. Hermione only looked vaguely pacified by this answer.
The elves turned to Harry.
"We be your servants now!" they beamed.
"Err, ok?" Harry said, "But only if you want to be." they all nodded furiously, ears flopping and the last vestiges of goblin features melted away from their faces. "Ummm, I can't tell which of you is which anymore…" Harry said, embarrassed. The elves all stepped forward in turn.
"I be called Rassie now!" the first one, formerly Rasvark declared.
"Grippy!"
"Raggy!"
"Bodie!"
"Oooookay," Harry said. "Well. Um. Thank you for being my elves? Um. Let's go?" he headed out the door of the bank, the elves levitating his trunk, and all the goblins watched them go with true envy in their eyes.
Albus was still taking notes by the wall.
ns 15.158.61.13da2
