"What do you mean?"
"Well, there are stories of a type of brownie in Scotland who lives out in the wild near streams and waterfalls and doesn't give domestic help. Then there're stories of brownies who live near water but do come indoors and give that help. Then there are the stories of brownies who actually live in your house and takes gifts in exchange for the work," he explained.
"So if you take those stories as fact," Hermione said, "it means they've adapted over time to live with human beings."
"Precisely," he said with a pointed finger. "This will sound crass because we're dealing with an intelligent species, but human civilization rests upon the domestication of plants and animals, a process requiring generations of sustained contact to slowly mold the original wild creature into a serviceable domestic form."
"You don't domesticate people!" Hermione said shocked.
"What do you think slavery is?" he asked her. "And as long as there've been human beings there's been human slavery; it's only in the last two hundred years we've kicked the habit, and now we have predatory employers who treat their workers as virtual slaves. You could argue our entire economic system is a domesticated form of-"
"So what does this mean for house-elves?" she interrupted.
"I don't know," he said with a shrug, "this is all supposition. But there is a chance their need for a family, their need to work, is entirely cultural."
"Meaning wizards have brainwashed them into-"
"Not necessarily," her father cut in. "The house-elves may have convinced themselves they need the human family to survive. Think about it, if they were brownies, and if they did move from the wild into the home hundreds of years ago, then it's the only life these house-elves know now - meaning they've lost the knowledge of whatever skills they had as brownies that let them survive in the wild."
"So they'd be like tigers born in captivity?"
"They could be," he said with a shrug. "And we don't know what they were like before, so we can't say why they made the change at all or if they got anything out of it."
Hermione's eyes popped. "Like their magic."
Her father looked impressed. "Now that's a thought. Anyway," he continued, "If you freed every house-elf in the country right now, and told them to go and live on their own they might not have a clue what to do. And worse, they might lose anything they gained, so how to get food, how to protect themselves, and all the other things you need to be able to survive would be completely foreign to them - which is one reason I've never liked camping, I'd be lost in the wild - literally."
"So any house-elf who left the home they were born into would either have to find another human to work for or risk not being able to support itself, and they couldn't live outside the home on their own because the culture is so accustomed to get their work for free."
"Right, and if they failed to live on their own it would convince the other house-elves that leaving the home means death, which in time may morph into the belief they can't leave. But that's forgetting another obvious fact," he pointed out.
"What's that?"
"Magic," he said, spreading his arms wide. "We're thinking about them like they're normal creatures who evolved this way, but maybe there's something about the house-elves themselves which prohibits them leaving. Maybe it's some spell-thingy passed down from generation to generation, or maybe it really is 'just the way the world works,'" he shrugged. "Without having one to ask and tinker around with to see what works, what doesn't, and why, all this is a bunch of navel-gazing."
Hermione couldn't help but to make another face. As much as she hated not knowing something she hated not being able to know it even more. She supposed she could ask Harry about asking Dobby about all this but didn't want to look like she was taking advantage.
"Speaking of navels, your mother sent this," he said, handing her the cloth bundle.
"How do you go from navels to mother?" she asked.
"Well, where do you think you got your navel from?" he asked, poking her belly button. "Umbilicus," he said smiling. "Besides, it's not as cumbersome as my next segue is."
"What's your next segue?" she asked, turning back to the desk to unwrap the bundle and find that it was a shirt and sundry items to last her until they got home tomorrow.
"Wouldn't you rather ask why I was wearing an owl on my head?"
She paused a moment to sigh and roll her eyes before looking back at the madman she called a father. "Why were you wearing an owl on your head?"
"Because the mirror in my room insulted me," he said with a mad grin. "It called it a bird's nest. But speaking of mirror images," he said, making the awkward transition. "I don't like the thought of having some doppelganger wandering around this place. What if I run into some mad creditor who tries to rob me?"
"That'd be much more likely from the goblins," Hermione said. "You know they almost killed you today for what you said?"
"Well they were being particularly shifty," her father tried to defend himself. "The ancestry thing had 'let's take advantage of gullible tourists' written all over it. Though I suppose I shouldn't have implied that right in front of them, huh?"
She gave him a look.
"Yeah, well," he waved dismissively, "That's yet another reason it'd be best for me to stay right here tomorrow until we're ready to leave. And since you've got the hang of dealing with them, I guess I can let you handle your own banking from now on," he said as he passed the pouch of wizarding money he had to her.
"And what am I supposed to do if someone tries to rob me?"
"Use your stick thingy on them," he said, referring to her wand. "If you survived a troll, a mugger should be no problem," he held his hands up in front of him silently saying he wouldn't like to deal with either one, before getting up and walking to the door."If one of them is mistreated, then why don't they just leave? And sure, everyone likes to feel welcome but how is that supposed to keep them alive? Do they die from not being liked? And why the compulsion to work; how do they gain energy by expending it?" her father asked in a rapid-fire way. "Is it work they feed on, the food Lawyerman hinted at, or the magic of the person they work for? And where do they sleep, some unused part of the attic? Oh! Are they like Brownies?"