"Yeah. I mean, I don't know know, but I know. If that makes sense."

He grins. "Perfect sense!"

She giggles. "But not everyone's nasty. If somebody's nasty to me I might not want to be around them, but I'd be around other people just fine."

"You don't always know who's gonna be nasty until they whip it out," says Feral.

"I guess. I know some people pretty well, though. I'd be really surprised if my parents did anything bad to me. I mean they aren't perfect but it doesn't ever get bad."

"I went looking for library elves yesterday but I didn't spot any. Maybe you can tell me stuff about the elves since you work with them sometimes? Do they like being how they are? Are they okay?"

"They want to be how they are," he says. "They want it a lot. I dunno if that's the same thing as liking it, though."

"It might not be," Bella agrees.

He shrugs. "So yeah. Don't go offering them all clothes unless you want a tiny little riot on your hands."

"Clothes?"

"...If you give an elf clothes it sets them free," he says, "if you have the right to, and it's the worst thing in the world for them, it's like - like you'd probably feel about burning down your house and running away and living on the street."

"Oh. What do the freed ones do?"

He shrugs. "I dunno, I've never met one."

"Where do house elves come from? I don't mean where do individual ones come from - unless it's not the way I can guess - but where does the species come from?"

"Dunno," says Feral.

"It just seems kind of - too convenient," says Bella. "I wouldn't do it, but I bet some people would, if they could, just make a whole species on purpose that wanted to be slaves. And I don't know how it'd happen without anyone doing it on purpose."

"I don't know yet," says Bella.

"...Are you gonna do something?"

"If I can find something to do. And I'm going to look for something to do. There might not be anything that'd be right to do or that I can learn how, but I bet there is."

He looks at her warily. "How do you tell what's right?"

She blinks. "By thinking about it," she says. "I don't want to hurt anybody."

"Uh-huh," says Feral. "See how far that gets you."

"I'm going to. I just said," Bella says. "Is something wrong?"