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Today In Harry Potter Controversy: Was S.P.E.W. Secretly Awful?

We’re all familiar with Hermione’s quest to guarantee the rights of house elves through the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, right? Many of us admired—nay, applauded—her humanitarians efforts. But is there a darker side to this seemingly upstanding organization? Could Hermione’s intentions, so pure on the surface, be borderline sinister when viewed under a more critical lens? “Blasphemy!” you interrobang. “What has this website come to?!”

But now that we’ve published an article arguing against The Cursed Child, we figure we’ve got nothing to lose. It’s time to take a deeper look S.P.E.W. and its legendarily brilliant founder.

First and foremost, we can all agree that S.P.E.W. is an awful name for an organization (or for anything at all, really). It’s so bad that it’s even awful in French—the language of LOVE and Fleur Delacour—where the acronym translates to “dirty.” Other notably horrendous translations include “fart” and “vomit,” which, COME ON.

Hermione’s second, and arguably more severe, mistake, is thinking that house elves are people. As Ron points out, house elves simply aren’t human, and therefore human rules don’t apply to them. Don’t believe us? Imagine Dobby wearing socks with sandals, a terrible crime in the human world. On him, IT’S FREAKING ADORABLE. Plus, house elves can apparate on school grounds, and as anyone who’s read Hogwarts: A History can tell you, that should be impossible. Clearly, these big-eared peeps cannot be governed by the laws of men.

Hermione makes a similar mistake when she lures Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest to be attacked by centaurs. (Umbridge, more like Dumbridge, AMIRITE??) While we humans see her as clever, the Centaurs are offended, because it goes against their culture to help humans, much like it goes against the culture of the house elves to not help humans.

“But what about Dobby! And Firenze!” you protest, still slightly distracted by the thought of house elves scurrying around in sock-sandal ensembles. Well, we know for a fact that both Firenze and Dobby are scorned within their races for their actions.

What’s more, Firenze is only willing to betray his culture and teach at Hogwarts because he’s helping out THE GREATEST WIZARD OF ALL TIME. And Dobby may only hate serving humans because he works for the worst family ever. Of course he didn’t want to work for the Malfoys! But if he’d worked for the Weasleys, would he have been so keen to be freed?

If all this isn’t enough to convince you, we also have Hagrid’s testimony that, far from loathing their servitude, house elves actually enjoy it. WHEN HAS HAGRID EVER BEEN WRONG? Aside from that time when he basically told small children how to get past a ferocious three-headed dog…or when he bought that dragon egg from Voldemort…or when he raised an enormous, man-eating spider…or when he took adolescents into the Forbidden Forest to help him track down whatever nightmare creature was killing unicorns…OKAY WE’RE VEERING DANGEROUSLY OFF TRACK HERE.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of S.P.E.W. is that Hermione never even asks the house elves if they want to be freed. Instead of discussing the matter over pumpkin pasties, she tries to trick them into freeing themselves by hiding hats around the Gryffindor common room. (NOT COOL, GRANGER.) The elves are so offended by this that they give up working for a fourth of the student body. And you can hardly argue that Hermione doesn’t realize that her underhanded actions are causing distress to the very elves she’s purporting to help—after all, she saw how upset Winky was when she was freed,! IT WAS THE CHAPTER PICTURE, FOR GOODNESS’S SAKE!!

We’re not saying Hermione’s convictions are completely wrong—there’s bound to be another Dobby out there who wants to be free. But can you really say, with the utmost confidence, that Hermione went about righting an injustice in the best way possible? WE SUBMIT THAT YOU CANNOT, and we can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comments.