"Yeah, of course. Does Hogwarts always have just as many elves as it needs?"

Jiffy drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "It is being a little thin on work in summers, Mr Timothy."

"Someone should find summer work for you! Could you do work away from Hogwarts if it was good work?"

"If the Headmaster was wishing to loan us out, we could!"

"If Hogwarts got more students and there was more work, would there be more elves? How does that work?"

"Elves is having children when there is enough work for them, Mr Timothy."

"Thank you! That's all I wanted to know!"

"Jiffy is hoping Mr Timothy is enjoying his snacks!" beams Jiffy, and he dives back into the bustle of the kitchen.

He is! They're delightful snacks! And forcing a spike in the elf population by using them to replace the human slave trade is probably feasible. He is not delighted at the prospect but tells Miranda this anyway.

"It would really be better to find some other way to do it," she sighs. "But it'd be better than not doing it."

"Trust me, I'd love to think of another way to do it. Although I'm not sure what to do if we figure out another way of doing it after we've already done it with house-elves. At that point it might be best to just leave things be... incidentally, they're unhappy in the summers because there's not much to do, I bet I could talk Headmistress Twimble into loaning us them, if we can think of things that it'd be helpful to have them for - can't do a test of whether they find the conditions of human slavery tolerable, Statute..."

"I do wonder if they can be funneled into tasks other than domestic chores - construction, clearing land, digging canals, that sort of thing, it could be made seasonal if it isn't already - and yeah it'd be hard to back out of having house-elf replacements everywhere once you'd gotten people used to them -"

"And even if you had something better you'd have lots of house-elves - there are millions of slaves in the Americas - who'd be desperately unhappy without work to do."

"And they live a pretty long time and it's not trivial to move them from job to job..." Sigh.

"We shouldn't do it lightly. But - we also can't not do anything lightly -"

"I'm aware. But as long as we're not in a particularly good position to go full speed ahead on Plan House Elves we can use the time to think, so there's that."

"The Statute remains inconveniently a thing."

"So inconvenient."

"People dislike it for all kinds of different reasons."

"What're yours?"

"Rather sits in the way of ruling the world, doesn't it?"

"Well, you could rule the magical world, but yes, if you want to be comprehensive, and why wouldn't you."

"Why indeed. Anyway, there are a lot more Muggles than wizards. I'd be ruling an admittedly-powerful-but-fairly-insignificant corner, and that is not very appealing. Also, since there are a lot more Muggles than wizards, good policy affects Muggles more than wizards. Or bad policy."

"Makes sense to me."

"I also just don't think there are any good reasons for the Statute. Muggles might annoy us with demands? Really? Muggles might kill us? Really?"