The Quidditch World Cup should have been one of the wizarding world's grand celebrations, and Ireland's victory party and revelry should only just have begun.
But everything came to an abrupt halt because of the parade by suspected Death Eaters.
The campsite was in complete chaos. Burned tents were everywhere, and terrified people screamed in panic.
Aside from catching a few insignificant nobodies, the Ministry failed to arrest any important figures involved in the Death Eater march, even though everyone knew perfectly well who might have been among that crowd.
More than ten years later, the Dark Mark once again appeared over Britain.
Not only were the Ministry and ordinary people terrified, even the Death Eaters participating in the march panicked. The moment the Dark Mark appeared, they fled immediately, running faster than anyone else.
The Ministry also failed to catch the person who cast the Dark Mark, but they did find someone to take the blame.
No, more accurately, a house-elf to take the blame.
Eda did not know what punishment Winky would receive, but a piece of "clothing" was definitely unavoidable.
Barty Crouch, the former Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement who had once sent even his own son to Azkaban, left an extremely bad impression on Eda.
In Eda's eyes, Cornelius Fudge and Barty Crouch were not all that different.
Fudge was a politician whose head was filled with political struggles, while Crouch was a paranoid extremist. No matter which of them sat in the Minister for Magic's seat, it would be a disaster.
The "proper" resolution to the manually detonated human firework incident at the World Cup grounds had been achieved. The "culprit" had received the punishment they deserved.
Yet Eda only felt a bone-deep chill.
She had a feeling the Dark Mark was only the beginning.
Everything was far from over.
And this time, things would probably become even darker than before.
On the way back to the tent, everyone was in low spirits because of what had just happened.
After all, anyone who got blasted in the face with twenty Stunning Spells would have a hard time feeling cheerful afterward.
Among the group, Hermione reacted the most strongly.
The kind-hearted girl was furious over Winky the house-elf's miserable fate.
"How could they treat her like that!" Hermione said angrily. "Mr. Diggory kept calling her a 'creature'... and Mr. Crouch too! He clearly knew she didn't do it, but he still fired her! He didn't care how frightened or upset she was at all. He doesn't even treat her like a person!"
"Well, uh, she technically isn't a person," Ron blurted out thoughtlessly.
Then he immediately replaced Barty Crouch as the target of Hermione's fury.
Sometimes Eda wondered if Ron had accidentally swallowed all of his emotional intelligence while eating.
In the entire Weasley family, the two people with the lowest EQ were Percy and Ron.
Eda suspected both their emotional intelligence scores were probably negative.
Mr. Weasley and Lupin agreed with Hermione's view.
They believed the wizarding world truly treated house-elves unfairly and exploited them far too much.
But the issue of house-elf rights itself was practically a joke, because even the house-elves themselves did not care.
"Mr. Weasley, I don't understand! House-elves obviously have emotions too. They could live like humans, but Mr. Diggory and Mr. Crouch... why would they still do something so disgusting..." Hermione could barely continue speaking. After pausing for a moment, she finally said, "Don't they have any sympathy at all?"
"Our kind-hearted lady, let me tell you why," Sirius took over the conversation. "Because house-elves were conquered by wizards. For generations, they've been taught that their purpose is to serve their masters and never disobey orders. And now, that slave mentality flows in their blood. It can't be changed."
Hermione, who had grown up in the Muggle world in a happy and loving family, found it difficult to understand that kind of thinking.
She continued arguing back, "But shouldn't we improve their conditions? Shouldn't we stop them from being treated as lowly servants, or at least stop them from being treated the way they were today?"
Hermione's stubborn streak had surfaced, and for a while, no one could persuade her otherwise.
Even after they returned to the tent, Hermione argued with Percy for a bit because Percy believed Crouch had done absolutely nothing wrong in the way he treated Winky. In the wizarding world, everyone did things that way.
"Just because everyone thinks something is right doesn't make it right!" Hermione shot back loudly. "People used to think bathing was dangerous and would make people sick, but what happened in the end?"
Hermione was referring to one of Europe's most infamous dark chapters: the era when nobody bathed.
People in the Middle Ages believed that bathing enlarged the pores and caused illness. To avoid getting sick, everyone simply stopped bathing altogether.
From royalty and nobles to the Church, all the way down to commoners, nobody bathed.
Hearing it now was enough to make men silent and women weep, but at the time, people actually took pride in not bathing.
And it was precisely because of this that perfume became wildly popular.
"Hermione, having compassion is a good thing, but don't misuse your compassion," Eda said from the corner.
That remark, which sounded almost like criticism, finally stopped Hermione's rapid-fire momentum.
If she kept going like this, the Society for the Promotion of House-Elf Welfare was going to be founded tonight.
"Eda, don't house-elves deserve sympathy?" Hermione demanded.
She could not understand Eda's way of thinking. They had both entered the magical world from the Muggle world, so why could Eda ignore this kind of exploitation and oppression?
"They deserve sympathy, but they also don't," Eda answered ambiguously.
She continued, "There was once someone who had the same fanciful ideas as you. Someone who wanted to improve the status of house-elves and give them more rights. But do you know what the house-elves said?"
Eda did not wait for Hermione to answer.
Instead, she continued on her own.
"I'll tell you. The house-elves believed that the person trying to give them benefits, trying to give them freedom, trying to liberate them, was the biggest villain in the world. A complete and utter madman!"
"How could that be? He was helping them!" Hermione said. "But... but Dobby..."
"Dobby is just an exception. Besides Dobby, have you ever seen another house-elf long for freedom?" Eda continued. "If I gave one of my house-elves a piece of 'clothing,' then Agnes would chop off her own head tonight. She would think she was an unforgivably evil elf."
Sirius Black suddenly interrupted.
With great interest, he asked, "I always thought only the Black family's house-elves had that sort of habit. So the Rosier family is like that too?"
"No, Sirius," Eda said helplessly. "I was just giving an example, making an analogy."
Hermione reorganized her thoughts, trying to make one last struggle. "That's only because wizards instilled those ideas into them and turned them into this. If we could... if we could remove that slave mentality from them..."
"Oh, stop it, Hermione. You can't do that. Nobody can," Eda said with a smile. "God helps those who help themselves. The only ones who can do it are themselves. Only they can save themselves."
Eda sympathized with the suffering of house-elves, but she would not waste her effort trying to help them, because they were not worth her doing so. If Eda truly tried to help them, the house-elves would only see her as some terrifying monster rather than someone leading them out of darkness.
Even without wands, house-elves could still use magic, and their magic was even better than that of many wizards. They had always been capable of resisting and had always possessed the ability to fight back, yet they had never once thought about resisting.
They viewed help from outsiders as a terrifying disaster, while they themselves chose not to resist. As a result, they could only continue serving as slaves to wizards, allowing themselves to be beaten and scolded, bound by their masters, giving up everything they had, even their lives.
Just like Winky tonight. Even though she had not cast the Dark Mark, her master, Barty Crouch, discarded her like a chamber pot and turned her into a scapegoat.
The only ones who could help house-elves were themselves. Only if they awakened on their own and chose to resist would they have a chance to break free from their current status and breathe freely.
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