Skip over navigation  Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire  J. K.
Rowling   Chapter Thirty-six–Thirty-seven   "You know, house-
elves get a very raw deal!" said Hermione indignantly. "It's
slavery, that's what it is! That Mr. Crouch made her go up to
the top of the stadium, and she was terrified, and he's got her
bewitched so she can't even run when they start trampling tents!
Why doesn't anyone do something about it?"  Hermione sets out to
combat inequality within the wizard world in this novel. In this
passage from Chapter Nine, she notes the oppression of the
house-elves at the hands of careless masters, which upsets her.
Although Ron and Harry tend to take her diatribes lightly, she
is trying to create a world in which all magical beings have
freedom of choice, and in which nobody is treated unfairly on
account of status, heritage, or race. Both Voldemort and poor
house-elf masters (such as the Malfoys) force servants into
terrible situations; Hermione does on a small scale what the
adult characters of the