Secret Lakes and Expensive Trinkets
The two house elves who met Voldemort
I’ve been thinking a lot about house elves lately. But not about Dobby, or even about Winky.
I’ve been thinking about Kreacher and Hokey.
Both of these house elves have met Voldemort personally. Whilst Hokey met a young and handsome Tom Riddle, Kreacher met Voldemort at the height of his powers shortly before the death of Lily and James Potter; full on snake face and red eyes. Kreacher just hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting Voldemort, Kreacher has had the pleasure of spending time alone with Voldemort, and then being discarded and left to die by Voldemort. Voldemort required an elf, and Regulus, Sirius’ brother, offered Kreacher. Hokey, on the other hand, happened to meet Voldemort while he was working at Borgin and Burkes, before he came to power.
I’m sure that Kreacher has heard a great deal about Voldemort from Regulus, and probably from Mr. and Mrs. Black as well. After all, they were delighted when Regulus joined the Death Eaters at the tender age of 16. Sirius had already left the house and was living with James, unable to be under the same roof as his family. It would be very interesting to me to know what exactly Kreacher had heard about Voldemort from his masters and what he thought of him. Obviously, after decades of serving the Blacks, Kreacher is just as racist and bigoted as they are, calling Hermione Mudblood and the Weasleys traitors and brats, among other vile things. We don’t know enough about house elves to know whether or not they would support political movements. Kreacher is an elf who will follow someone who shows him kindness and mercy, and Regulus has shown him that. If Regulus trusts Voldemort, then Kreacher must too.
In the sixth book, we learn of Voldemort’s hidden lake, filled with Inferni (enchanted dead bodies), with a small island in the middle where a plinth resides, carrying a basin filled with poison and hiding his Horcrux, the locket of Salazar Slytherin. The cave is full of enchantments; you must bodily injure yourself to even enter it, and that’s if you’ve managed to find the entrance among the dangerous rocks and surf. Once you’ve cut yourself to enter, you must find the magically hidden boat, and once you have taken the boat to the rocky island, the only way to reach the Horcrux is to drink the terrible poison that will cause you physical pain but also to relive all of your worst memories and fears. The only relief will be to drink water, which can only come from the lake itself, and once that lake water is touched, the army of corpses that float underneath the surface will come and drag you into the depths. The only way to fight the Inferi is with fire, but by the time that you’ve gulped down the poison, you’re really in no position to be casting spells. What’s interesting to me is that Voldemort uses Kreacher to test out all of his enchantments, to make sure that they work. He doesn’t use a Death Eater who is low on the totem pole, or even hold someone hostage that he does not like, like an Auror. He uses an elf, presumably because elves are slaves, are worthless, are expendable. This is par for the course for Voldemort, not thinking of lesser creatures, but it’s very interesting that he chose an elf to make sure that his enchantments worked against humans. As we see in the sixth book, the boat doesn’t even register that Harry is aboard it because he is underage, and Voldemort doesn’t believe that an underage wizard would even be able to find the cave. So why did Voldemort take an elf with him and not a fully grown wizard to make sure that everything was perfect to hide his all-important Horcrux? Was it simply because he was expendable?
Very few people have seen Voldemort’s Horcrux, the locket of Salazar Slytherin. As a direct descent, it belonged to his family on his mother’s side for centuries until his mother, pregnant with him and desperate, sold it to Caracticus Burke. From there it was snatched up by an old lady who collected such trinkets named Hepzibah Smith. No one but her and Voldemort’s descendants had seen the locket, and of course, Hepzibah’s house elf, Hokey.
Like Kreacher is with the Blacks, Hokey is privy to all of Hepzibah’s treasures and she is privy to Voldemort himself before he is Voldemort. When Hokey knows him, he is a young and attractive boy working for Borgin and Burkes who visits Hepzibah to try to get her to part with her relics. He believes that the locket belongs to him as a family heirloom, and he kills Hepzibah to take it and of course, he turns it into a Horcrux. The last person to see the locket and perhaps to hold the locket was Hokey the house elf, and here is where Voldemort shows us how he understands house elves, just disregards them. He does not assume that Hokey will not tell anyone that he has murdered her mistress. He does not assume that she will be loyal to her mistress. Instead, he plants a false memory in Hokey’s mind so that she believes that she poisoned Hepzibah, and she confesses. Voldemort is wary of Hokey and in this instance he sees her both as powerful in terms of how she may be able to take him down, but also as something to be discarded because he uses her as his scapegoat, knowing full well that she will be imprisoned and killed for the false memory that he implanted in her.
Kreacher is the same way. Voldemort understands that Kreacher will flock to those who are kind to him, and he knows that Regulus will volunteer him. He knows that Kreacher will be well behaved and that he will do whatever is required of him while they are alone in the cave with the lake. Kreacher is not just another house elf; he is important to Voldemort and important to his plan. Voldemort knows that Kreacher will see the Horcrux, and he is okay with it. But just like Hokey, Voldemort knows how Kreacher may be able to bring him down. Rather than having Kreacher drink the poison and then saving him and returning him to Regulus, he makes Kreacher drink the poison and he leaves him to die, discarding him. The last thing that Kreacher sees before he is dragged under the lake by the dead and rotting hands of the Inferi is Voldemort leaving the lake. We may be able to assume that if Voldemort had taken a wizard with him, he would’ve done the same thing; discarded them as he had done Kreacher in order to keep his secret safe. But it is much easier to discard something that you view as lesser.
Voldemort understand house elves. He understands their specific brand of magic. However, he does not care about them, or about their magic. As Hermione and Dumbledore remind us, this is one of his great flaws. Voldemort believed that Kreacher had perished, but he forgot that as a house elf, Kreacher was able to Disapparate in a place that had an enchantment barring Disapparition. No wizard could’ve Apparated or Disapparated in the cave, but Kreacher could when he was called home, and he did. Had Voldemort brought a wizard with him to test his enchantments and his potions, Regulus would not have found the Horcrux. Kreacher would not have told Regulus about the cave. Regulus would not have found the cave and taken Kreacher back with him, replacing the Horcrux with the fake one.
It is because of two house elves, Hokey and Kreacher, that two Horcruxes are located and destroyed. It is not because of Harry or Dumbledore. It is because two house elves strayed across the path of Voldemort and he saw them as expendable. Voldemort is learned enough to know how their magic works; he boasts that no one has studied magic as he has. But he does not care. And he is not alone in his uncaring. There is no one in the series who attempts to understand the specific brand of magic allotted to house elves. Harry does not, Ron does not, even Dumbledore does not. Hermione advocates for them, but she does not research how their magic works. Hokey and Kreacher, and by extension Dobby and Winky, are overlooked in the parts they play. Dobby saves Harry’s life numerous times, and Winky indirectly brings Voldemort back to his body. These achievements are overshadowed by the fact that no one, not just Voldemort, cares about house elves.
To care about a house elf is not just advocate for their freedom, but to be kind to them, to understand their magic. The only person that I can think of who did this at all in the series is Regulus.
