"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 novel carry out on a larger scale.