Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

end of the row behind them. The creature, whose legs were so short 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. Yet those long, bat-like ears were oddly familiar …
    ‘Dobby?’ said Harry incredulously.
    The tiny creature looked up and parted its fingers, revealing enormous brown eyes and a nose the exact size and shape of a large tomato. It wasn’t Dobby – it was, however, unmistakeably a house-elf, as Harry’s friend Dobby had been. Harry had set Dobby free from his old owners, the Malfoy family.
    ‘Did sir just call me Dobby?’ squeaked the elf curiously, from between its fingers. Its voice was higher even than Dobby’s had been, a teeny, quivering squeak of a voice, and Harry suspected – though it was very hard to tell with a house-elf – that this one might just be female. Ron and Hermione spun around in their seats to look. Though they had heard a lot about Dobby from Harry, they had never actually met him. Even Mr Weasley looked around in interest.
    ‘Sorry,’ Harry told the elf, ‘I just thought you were someone I knew.’
    ‘But I knows Dobby too, sir!’ squeaked the elf. She was shielding her face, as though blinded by light, though the Top Box was not brightly lit. ‘My name is Winky, sir – and you, sir –’ her dark brown eyes widened to the size of side plates as they rested upon Harry’s scar, ‘you is surely Harry Potter!’
    ‘Yeah, I am,’ said Harry.
    ‘But Dobby talks of you all the time, sir!’ she said, lowering her hands very slightly and looking awestruck.
    ‘How is he?’ said Harry. ‘How’s freedom suiting him?’
    ‘Ah, sir,’ said Winky, shaking her head, ‘ah, sir, meaning no disrespect, sir, but I is not sure you did Dobby a favour, sir, when you is setting him free.’
    ‘Why?’ said Harry, taken aback. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
    ‘Freedom is going to Dobby’s head, sir,’ said Winky sadly. ‘Ideas above his station, sir. Can’t get another position, sir.’
    ‘Why not?’ said Harry.
    Winky lowered her voice by a half octave and whispered, ‘He is wanting paying for his work, sir.’
    ‘Paying?’ said Harry blankly. ‘Well – why shouldn’t he be paid?’
    Winky looked quite horrified at the idea, and closed her fingers slightly so that her face was half-hidden again.
    ‘House-elves is not paid, sir!’ she 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, it’s about time he had a bit of fun,’ said Harry.
    ‘House-elves is not supposed to have fun, Harry Potter,’ said Winky firmly, from behind her hands. ‘House-elves does what they is told. I is not liking heights at all, Harry Potter –’ she glanced towards the edge of the box and gulped, ‘– but my master sends me to the Top Box and I comes, sir.’
    ‘Why’s he sent you up here, if he knows you don’t like heights?’ said Harry, frowning.
    ‘Master – master wants me to save him a seat, Harry Potter, he is very busy,’ said Winky, tilting her head towards the empty space beside her. ‘Winky is wishing she is back in master’s tent, Harry Potter, but Winky does what she is told, Winky is a good house-elf.’
    She gave the edge of the box another frightened look, and hid her eyes completely again. Harry turned back to the others.
    ‘So that’s a house-elf?’ Ron muttered. ‘Weird things, aren’t they?’
    ‘Dobby was weirder,’ said Harry, fervently.
    Ron pulled out his Omnioculars and started testing them, staring down into the crowd on the other side of the stadium.
    ‘Wild!’ he said, twiddling the replay knob on the side. ‘I can make that old bloke down there pick his nose again … and again … and again …’
    Hermione, meanwhile, was skimming eagerly through her velvet-covered, tasselled programme.
    ‘“A display from the team mascots will precede the match”,’ she read aloud.
    ‘Oh, that’s always worth watching,’ said Mr Weasley. ‘National teams bring creatures from their native land, you know, to put on a bit of a show.’
    The box filled gradually around them over the next half hour. Mr