Capítulo 102: The Dark Side of Detention
The elves made it clear they saw them as bad children. Bad children who needed to be punished. They actually made them clean rooms in the Castle no one ever used or visited in years. Ron told them that's what Argus had him doing too.
They didn't even know where the rooms actually were because the elves would hand them the cleaning products they needed and then pop them to the filthy room and leave them there to do the work. Without their wands! And since none of them could do wandless magic, that meant they had to clean it the muggle way.
Ron had actually tried to walk away from it the first time they'd done it to him, only to find both the door and the window were locked and wouldn't unlock with any unlocking spell he knew. Not that, without his wand, he could do any of the unlocking spells he knew of. Nor could he manually unlock the room they'd taken him to. There literally wasn't a lock on the door or window he could see and therefore touch to unlock.
Nor did they work together to clean one specific room. Each teen was taken to a different room and left there alone to do the work. They'd only be allowed to leave when the time expired or the room was clean and the elf would pop back to pick them up and return them to the hall outside of the kitchens. And if it was close to curfew where they wouldn't make it back to the tower on time, how was that the fault of the elves?
If Filch was standing there waiting with watch in hand, and followed them on their way to the tower making sure they didn't dare to run for it or venture into the secret passages to save time; Again.
How was that their fault? If someone, Professor Snape, intercepted them on their hurried walk back to their Tower, again how was that the fault of the elves or the custodian? Needless to say they were racking up a lot of detentions for being out after curfew. And since they didn't have the benefit of Harry's map or cloak any more there was nothing they could do to avoid them.
If they finished cleaning the room but still had time to serve, they'd be put to work turning table scraps and food scrapings into mulch for Hagrid's vegetable beds. This was a chore all three of them absolutely hated because the elves didn't allow for the use of tools in the process. In order to turn the left over bits of food into mulch they had to add wood pulp, hay, ash from the fireplaces, used straw, and buckets of stinky fertilizer none of them wanted to think about to the vat.
The mixture had to be blended together manually which involved climbing into the tub minus their shoes and socks and stomping on it the way wine makers used to mash grapes. Nor could they avoid having to put their socks and shoes back on their soiled feet as they did have to walk through the Castle to reach their tower after the detention.
And since the elves would do nothing more than hand them a damp cloth to clean-up with, they came out of those detentions covered in filth and reeking of all manner of disgusting things in desperate need of a good, long, cleansing shower. With Filch always waiting for them, there was no way any of the three would give him anything like deliberately soiling the Castle to assign them a new detention over.
What they hadn't realized was Hogwarts House Elves didn't work for the students. They worked for the Castle or for an individual adult in the Castle personally and every adult had at least one elf that answered specifically to them.
Also Wizarding history was replete with tales of House Elves being the child care providers for their masters. This meant they could indeed deliver discipline to misbehaving students so long as the adult they answered to specifically gave them permission to do so. But because Hermione was a muggleborn and the Weasely clan had never owned an elf, the triad didn't know those stories were actually true.
And in this case, even the Castle was in favor of the Triad being disciplined harshly for their actions against Harry. Even Harry had a story of a House Elf harming a person to protect Harry personally. The elf that featured in his story personally hated all three of them with a passion. All three of them were almost positive Dobby was behind the disagreeable detentions they were currently serving. They were right. He was.
So no. Detentions with the house-elves wasn't fun. But there wasn't anything they could do about it until people woke up and realized they were the victims here. For all three, these detentions were just one more debt Harry owed them.
What spare time the three did have, they needed to do the massive amounts of homework they were being given. It seemed word had spread amongst the teachers how Harry was subsidizing the educations of the two Weasely children and they were now determined that his money wouldn't be wasted.
The children would either buckle down and earn their patronage or they'd be dropped from the roster as failures. Tolerance was at an all time low when it came to their class work, essays, quizzes and exams. They piled the homework on them to make up for their slack in previous years.
And considering all they really had was an hour each day, it was understandable they were falling way behind. Even the weekends didn't seem to give more time for homework as most those days were being filled with run-over detention time.
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