Harry Potter: Glory Bows to Me

Just as Dobby listened to Amanta's instructions, grabbed Winky and was about to snap his fingers to take her back.

Harry suddenly said, "By the way, Dobby, can you do me a favor?"

"What favor? Dear Mr. Harry, - as long as Dobby can do it, Dobby will do it."

Dobby stopped what he was doing and looked at Harry, waiting for Harry's instructions.

Harry looked at the unconscious Winky in its hand and scratched his head.

"No rush...send her back first, and we'll talk later. It's just about detecting dark magic items."

It seemed that Harry had not forgotten his Invisibility Cloak.

Amanta almost forgot about this because of what Shanshan did.

However, as for the test results - of course, nothing was found.

She saw at that time that Draco was trying to strike down Harry's arrogance. Even if she took a step back, she knew that this was a gift from Dumbledore to Harry, so of course there would not be any dark magic on it.

Only nervous Harry took it seriously.

……

I heard that many house-elves in Malfoy Manor expressed deep sympathy for Winky's situation. They tried their best to help her a lot. Winky's emotions became more and more stable. Amanta and Dobby were temporarily relieved.

It seems that these conservative and loyal house-elves still have a lot of common topics.

Although there was originally going to be a banquet on Christmas Day, most of the guests had no intention of attending. They all dispersed as soon as they left the Ministry of Magic last night, and even during the day the next day, no one came.

So the second dinner originally scheduled for Christmas Day was naturally cancelled.

Draco had no choice but to instruct the house-elves to send apology letters and small gifts to each guest according to the invitation list.

Even the guests who stayed in the manor temporarily left in a hurry after taking a nap.

Lucius returned the next day and brought back the news that the trial of Crouch father and son was expected to begin in a month.

Various rumors about them were already rife in the Ministry of Magic.

The Department of International Magical Cooperation was in complete chaos. After all, their superiors had been arrested, and almost no one had the heart to work. The wizards who came to work overtime were also discussing the Christmas Eve dinner at Malfoy Manor, and Barty Jr.'s method of escaping from prison.

They were almost starting to engage in deductions like Muggle detectives.

But the Aurors who were actually responsible avoided talking about it.

Most of them were in a hurry, occasionally talking in low voices, and vigilantly cast anti-eavesdropping spells around them. I heard that they had basically found out the truth of the matter, so they had set a date for the trial.

The trial was scheduled for a month later because they still lacked some evidence and clues, and they needed to submit all the information before the trial began.

In addition, they also tested old Barty's wand and found that his wand had cast the Forgetfulness Charm many times. They followed the clues and found a witness - they speculated that one of old Barty's members had accidentally discovered the existence of young Barty, but was cast a Forgetfulness Charm by old Barty, so he became a little confused.

When she heard that the trial of Crouch father and son would begin in a month, Winky perked up a little - of course, she didn't know the specific situation, she just thought that she would be reunited with her master soon, and she even thought of several ways to apologize to old Barty most sincerely.

Although she felt very sorry for what little Barty had done, she still firmly supported, or rather covered up, his behavior and never allowed anyone to have opinions about her masters.

However, Barty Jr.'s previous kidnapping of Draco and knocking out Narcissa had already caused the house-elves at Malfoy Manor to be quite critical of him or occasionally curse him in private.

This might be the only point of friction between them, but fortunately Dobie would always come to smooth things over.

But it may not be considered a smoothover - there is Dobby's existence and his pursuit of freedom and yearning for salary.

Even if other house-elves had some grudges or slight frictions, when faced with Dobby's shocking remarks, they would still choose to band together for warmth, unite, and collectively oppose Dobby's weird ideas.

Soon after, Winky seemed to be in much better condition, and when she was free, she would often go to the kitchen to help other house-elves with their work.

But Dobby would occasionally tell them with concern.

Sometimes, Winky would secretly drink alcohol when no one or the house-elves were paying attention, and drink several bottles of alcohol, which was not in line with the alcohol intake of a house-elf of her size.

Then she would come back drunk and cry her heart out.

It seemed that the comfort from other house-elves was not enough to help her get over the fear of dereliction of duty or even possible dismissal.

……

The Christmas holidays passed quickly, and with only one week left, Amanta asked Draco to pay attention to the time Lucius and Dobby spent alone together.

"Hmm? Why are you asking about this?"

Draco asked, confused.

"Have you forgotten our plan?" Amanta asked back.

"The plan that will have us walking barefoot back to London?"

Harry frowned in confusion.

Amanta raised an eyebrow.

"not sure."

Draco thought about it and told them what he knew.

"After lunch every day, I heard that my father would work in the study, and he would usually ask Dobby to assist him at that time - usually to help him organize documents, or stand by with something in his arms. I saw it the last time I went to see my father for something."

Amanta nodded.

"Then let's just start from here."

"Do you have any idea?" Harry asked mysteriously.

"Of course... the house elf can break the contract just by touching the clothes, right?"

They discussed the matter and went over some details.

However, they still did not tell Dobby about their plan - Dobby was a talkative person to begin with, and if he knew about it, it would be too easy for him to accidentally reveal their affairs.

One afternoon, when Lucius was working in the study.

Amanta gritted her teeth and went to Lucius' study.

Lucius was reading a long table filled with densely packed numbers and letters, and was circling and correcting something on it with a quill pen dipped in red ink.

After hearing Amanta knocking on the door, he first let Amanta in, and then asked without raising his head: "Amanta, what's the matter?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Lucius, but I have something I want to ask you."

Amanta came over and handed over one of the books from the pile that the Malfoys had given her.

It was a book about Charms. It had some traces of being flipped through and had some bookmarks and sticky notes inserted into it. There seemed to be a lot of stuff stuck in it, and a few pieces of parchment were sticking out of it, with a lot of handwriting on them.

But fortunately, the book was thick enough and the cover was hard enough, so it could barely hold these things.

"There is one thing... Can you tell me if this kind of printing error also occurs in the printing of books in the magic world? The words on a few pages are completely printed upside down..."

"Although I don't want to trouble you with such a small matter, but... this happens to be a very critical point of knowledge. Madam Narcissa is out walking around Diagon Alley with her friends again, so I have to ask for your help... Can you help turn the font back?"

With a sincere and studious attitude, she asked Lucius for help very sincerely.

certainly--

However, she had already asked Draco whether printing errors also occurred in the wizarding world.

Draco confirmed this.

Even though the wizarding world has its own magical printing presses and publishing companies, their printed spells are not always accurate, or in other words, there are many errors caused by magic.

After all, they cannot guarantee that every employee will be extremely focused on their work.

Sure - a few pages have the words printed backwards, but that's a minor, harmless blemish.

But Lucius, who was very proud, would never allow such a thing to happen. What's more, this was a gift from him and Narcissa to others, so he would definitely not refuse Amanta's request.

"Damn Obscurus Book Company... for making such a stupid mistake."

Lucius grumbled quietly, but he couldn't spare any time for the moment.

He had no choice but to reach out from the table and take it hastily, then throw it to Dobby beside him.

"Dobby, turn to that page and let me see what's wrong. Maybe I can fix it with some spells."

Dobby took the thick book full of notes and inserts, flipped through it, and searched carefully for a long time with a confused look on his face.

After all, there were so many things that Amanta had put in this book. Although Amanta whispered that she had put something in those pages, it was obviously not so easy to find.

But as it flipped through the pages, when it came to a certain page, Dobby's huge green eyes opened wider and wider, almost popping out of their sockets, and he froze in place.

Lucius glanced to the side and found that Dobby was no longer flipping through the book, looking for the printing error that Amanta mentioned, but was staring at the book in his hands in a daze.

"What are you doing? Dobby, show me now."

Lucius said impatiently, he had been waiting for a long time.

Dobby grinned happily, and the corners of his mouth grew wider and wider.

It shouted with joy: "The master of the house gave Dobby a pair of socks! A pair of socks! A pair of brand new Christmas socks! Dobby is free! From now on, Dobby is a free elf!"

Dobby pulled the still-unopened pair of socks out of the book, threw the book on the floor, and raised his hands to dance.

"Dobby is free! Dobby is free! Dobby is wearing new clothes! This is wonderful!"

She also tied her socks around her body and posed in various postures.

Lucius's face was filled with shock.

Amanta acted even more shocked than he was.

"Uh... sorry... I don't quite understand, what does this mean?"

She asked dully, seemingly petrified by Dobby's appearance.

"It's talking about... what socks? Amanta, why are there socks in your book?"

Lucius hadn't yet fully realized what was happening.

Amanta was stunned for a moment, then explained: "Oh, shit... I seem to have forgotten one thing. I read too late last night... When I saw that part, I wanted to mark it, but I was too lazy to find a bookmark, so I used a pair of new socks next to me as a bookmark and clipped it here."

She pointed to the socks in Dobby's hand with an embarrassed look on her face.

Dobby had wrapped his socks merrily around himself, and was dancing and singing at a voice so loud it was almost incoherent.

"Dobby has socks! A brand new pair of socks! A pair of red and green Christmas socks! There's even a Christmas tree on it! I can't believe that Dobby can wear Christmas socks on Christmas!"

"So, what exactly happened?"

Amanta looked at Dobby's behavior with a confused look on her face.

"Ahem, hum... Miss Amanta, don't you know that as long as the house-elf touches the clothes, the contract will be automatically terminated and they will no longer be servants here?"

Lucius' expression looked extremely complicated, mixed with a variety of rich emotions such as speechlessness, heartache, shock, anger, etc., but he still explained the reason to Amanta.

Amanta's eyes widened.

"Really...? Sorry, I've never heard of that..."

"Yes, shouldn't this be common sense?"

Lucius gritted his teeth, his kind elder smile almost failing.

Amanta immediately apologized.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mr. Lucius, I really don't know... You know, I'm an orphan, and I grew up in an orphanage in the Muggle world. No one has ever told me these things..."

Amanta said this sincerely and lowered her head, not daring to look at Lucius's expression again, as if she felt extremely sorry for this.

But she waited for a long time and still didn't get any reply from Lucius.

She had to add again: "I'm sorry... I will compensate you for your loss, but I don't have any money now, but you can do the math and I'll do some part-time work to pay you back."

After she finished speaking, she raised her head slightly and glanced at Lucius out of the corner of her eye.

Lucius's face was horribly dark.

Amanta clenched her fingers nervously.

Oops……

Although she said she would compensate Lucius for his losses, this did not seem to calm Lucius's anger - the value of a house-elf could not be repaid by simply working.

After all, Lucius is still a genuine Death Eater.

Once he gets angry, he won't start with himself, right?

Lucius endured and endured, endured and endured.

He clenched his teeth, the smile on his face seemed to tremble, and finally he squeezed out a word from between his teeth with difficulty.

"It's okay, Amanta. I hope you won't put your socks anywhere next time."