Thank you to my new Patrons: Aydan Mam, Marc Smith, Sam Tollefsbol, Jameson Mulroney, Gregory Lamberta, Journey_Man Mike, SouthMonk
-/-
"Give me your stupidest house-elf."
Narcissa stared at Harry as if he'd started speaking Gobbledygook. "What?" she asked, for the first time in the whole conversation looking completely baffled.
"Every pure-blood house has that one elf, you know. The one getting ideas beyond its station." He meant, of course, Dobby.
"You want a house-elf. A misbehaving one," Narcissa asked slowly, as if unsure that she'd heard him correctly.
"Yeah."
"And you'll sign a teacher's contract."
"Well, no, I'll sit down with you and negotiate one. If we don't come to an agreement I'll keep the elf. He's just a fee for the time we'll probably need to agree to the specific wording and the payment for you getting my real name."
Narcissa frowned. "What do you imagine the contract to say, approximately."
"It will stipulate a pay. Since I know you've hit on hard times perhaps ten galleons an hour and free access to your entire library. A room in your mansion in case I ever want to sleep over. Lodging and meals and such, you know," Harry said idly. "In return, I'll oblige myself to teach your son to the best of my ability." Which wasn't saying much, since he didn't even know legilimency yet. "I'll promise to not harm him in any way that was unavoidable for the sake of teaching or my safety during the duration of the contract, which I can cancel at any time, as long as I give a week's notice." Narcissa made to say something. "Provided I am not, during that week intending to kidnap your son and wait for the period of non-harm to run out."
Narcissa licked her lips, looking nervous. "You'll sign a clause not to share anything you've learned in the library, or my son's head. Ever."
"Unless I've received that information somewhere else."
"I'll let my lawyer sign up a draft. Send it to you. We'll go over it together through correspondence," the woman decided when she noticed that Harry wasn't going to be unreasonable about it. The only thing he wanted was not to be obliviated, and not be forced to not harm Draco if it was the boy initiating conflict in school.
Narcissa paused, noticing an issue.
"I'll book a mailbox in Diagon, put it under Charon. The correspondence will go there, and my new house-elf will check it once a day in the afternoons," Harry decided.
A sniff. "Good luck getting him to do anything correctly, he'll probably cook you the letters for dinner."
"Oh, so it's a him?" Harry asked curiously, leaning forward.
"I sincerely hope you need a house-elf as a ritual sacrifice, it's about as much use as you'll get out of this one."
Harry refrained from telling her that she didn't know the value of a truly loyal house-elf. But, hadn't her mother had Kreacher, who'd defended her long after her death, taking orders from her portrait? Or was he mixing up the Black family tree somewhat? It was a complicated one. Walburga was the mother of Sirius, but Sirius was the cousin of Narcissa, so Narcissa was not the daughter of Walburga.
"You leave handling the house-elf to me," Harry ended up saying. "And, if I'm not misjudging the situation, we've discussed what we had to discuss."
"I'd want the lessons to start before September," Narcissa said.
"That can be arranged$. We should have the contract handled by then. Depends mostly on you really, I'm not too picky about what's in it. Keep it simple."
The woman breathed in, deeply. "Alright, that's settled." It was clear that it was taking her a lot of strength to do what she was doing.
How low must have house Malfoy fallen if the matriarch was stuck picking the mind arts teacher of her son from the street?
Or was it perhaps that if she put up an ad for a teacher, only vultures would apply? Picking someone at random in this case was more likely to end up in a mutually beneficial relationship.
"Dobby," the lady barked suddenly, a pathetic creature appearing at her side with a crack. "You're being sold," she informed the nervous-looking elf dressed in a tea towel. Its already large green eyes bulged out even further, before a handkerchief landed on his head, covering them along with his snout-like nose.
The house-elf put up a hand that was trembling something mighty to pull off the offensive piece of cloth. He looked at it, then back to Narcissa, who refused to meet his gaze. Then to Harry, who had a small smile on his face. He'd felt a magical connection between the elf and Narcissa snap.
"Dobby, is a free elf?" he asked confusedly.
"Oh, I wouldn't say so. More like under, new management," Lady Malfoy said snidely before promptly standing up, throwing a galleon on the table and walking past Harry, where she paused for a second, gently laying a hand on his shoulder. "You'll hear from me soon," she said, before rushing off.
Harry tried to share an amused look with the elf, with whom he, decisively speaking, did not have any sort of magical connection yet. Dobby just looked at him suspiciously, backing off a bit.
"Dobby, right?" Harry asked, extending a hand. "It's nice to meet you."
The house-elf looked at his hand suspiciously, perhaps more used to things that looked like it striking at him, rather than being offered as a greeting. Eventually, after a few long seconds, the elf stepped forward, clutching the handkerchief like a lifeline and shook Harry's right hand, with his left. "It is nice to be meeting you sers."
"Now," Harry started. "I'd like to fix a little misconception. I didn't as much buy you, as I did negotiate your freedom. You are, in fact, a free elf," he explained, causing Dobby to look at him wondrously. "I just know that all these old families have a bunch of house-elves that don't want to work for them and Lady Malfoy asked me for a favour. The thing is, she didn't have anything I needed, so I decided to negotiate a good deed instead." He nodded.
"Sir is very kind to Dobby," the house-elf said with a reserved smile, however, Harry didn't have too much time. He'd dallied a lot, and he wanted to still get some stuff done today. Perhaps Dobby would also appreciate having some time alone to consider his situation.
"Now, with your newfound status as a free elf, I was wondering if I could hire you for a little job. As the Swiss would say, the pensum would be 5%, implying, going by a 40-hour work week, that you would work for me 2 hours a week. I'd be willing to part with four galleons a month for this, with two days a week off."
Dobby narrowed his eyes at him. "Dobby works all 40 hours a week, gets paid 4 sickles a month, and gets one day off every half a year."
Harry blankly stared at the elf. "That's not how you negotiate," he said, before shaking his head. "Two galleons a month, 6 hours per week, one day off a week."
"60 hours a week, 3 sickles a month, a day off every nine months," the elf shot back.
"Alright, alright, I take your previous offer. But be warned, I don't have that much work, so you'll mostly just be on call, not actually doing anything," Harry conceded with a groan at the stupidity of this conversation. "Is it possible to start right now?" he asked. "Have something urgent that needs to be done."
The elf nodded, and with a snap of his fingers, a magical cord shot out of its being and towards here, where it tried to latch on. The boy allowed it, and with no bang and no fanfare, he got himself a new house elf. He pulled out four sickles from his money pouch and handed it over to the house-elf, who looked at the money oddly as if it had never held any before. Then he showed it somewhere in his tea towel.
"What do sirs need Dobby to be doing?"
"Can you teleport me and my belongings to a place if I mentally hand you the coordinates?" Harry asked, at which Dobby paused, before slowly nodding.
"Dobby can. Master not want to apparate?"
"No, I'm fine without for the moment," Harry replied, before mentally prodding at the hat. 'Send him the coordinates to our special clearing,' he prompted. Before he knew it he felt a mental packet fly from the hat to the elf, who nodded seriously, took Harry by the hand and with a crack, they disappeared from the spot.
-/-
It was an hour or so later that Harry was sitting on a train heading for Manchester. He'd shown Dobby his little clearing, sworn him on all kinds of secrecy in regards to its location, Harry's own identity and basically everything else.
Perhaps it was a bit dangerous to employ a house-elf who had foiled his master's schemes in the past, future, and potential timeline? But, Harry had always liked Dobby's character, and the house elf was already growing on him now, after just an hour.
The little guy seemed excited by the new opportunity. Being given a pouch of coins and told to make the cave Harry used to practise magic in a hospital with some furniture, some magic. He told him to buy himself an actual outfit instead of a tea towel which had almost caused a misunderstanding in the elf thinking he was being fired a few minutes after landing the new gig. Shown the mailbox Harry had decided to rent, ordered to bring him whatever letters arrived in it with some discretion.
The usual.
The most important order had been, however, to not under any circumstances interact in any way with the Horcrux buried several feet underground. Although, Voldemort probably wasn't that likely to possess the body of a house-elf.
Well, you could never tell with these dark lord figures. Anyway, for the moment the Horcrux was secured in a place nobody had access due to the natural wards that had sprung up there. Harry's ill-begotten gains from his deal with Burkes were similarly stashed away in the cave, which was being renovated into a more liveable situation by Dobby. It was more for the house-elf than Harry really, as the boy wasn't going to sleep over at the cave anytime soon. But, if he'd told the house-elf itself that the cave was partially for him, he would have likely tried to haggle Harry down to a dog house next to the furnace or something.
Weird guy. A bit confused at his new lot in life, which was why Harry was fine with leaving him be for a few days as he hung out with Tonks. He'd always adapted best alone when other people weren't there to influence his mood.
For now, Harry was on a comfortable train reading a nice book and drinking some tea. Manchester would soon appear on the horizon, ruining the view, but Tonks would be there to salvage the visual aspect of that experience.
The meeting that he hadn't had with Skeeter he could do on the way back and overall everything was pointing towards a fun weekend.
-/-
AN: This chapter was a bit short, more intermezzo, but that's life sometimes. I sometimes think I should be more consistent. Two chapters ago it was 6k words, last one was 4k, this one is 2k. But, it just makes more sense to cut it of where it feels natural rather than wasting my time making arbitrary word counts. Just makes me lose my energy on stuff that isn't writing.
On Patreon you can now read ahead up to chapter 92. Or, you can just support me for the sake of supporting me. Every dollar counts and Imma have to pay my yearly taxes soon so i've been saving up.