"It was his family, Mister Scott. Good elves aren't running from their families," she explains as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"That's sad, to wizards. Maybe not to elves."

"It is not being sad. Dobby was being a bad elf when he was running away."

Nod.

"What happened to Dobby? Where is he now?"

She looks down at her feet again. "Dobby was helping against the Dark Lord when he—"

"I'm sorry."

A moment of silence.

"I'm not sure I understand something. Is Hogwarts your family?"

She takes a few seconds to reply, trying to come up with an explanation. "Hogwarts is being to Tinky what Dobby's family was being to Dobby," she settles on.

"What happens if students want different things? Do you ask the professors, or the Headmaster?"

"We is giving each student what they want, Mister Scott."

"That's good. Um. I had a question about the food. Do you make it? Is there meat in any of the sauce?"

Now she lights right up. "Oh, yes, we is making all the food! Some sauces have meat and some don't, we have lots of things, Mister Scott!"

"Is there a way to find out which foods have meat in them?"

"We can be marking them with magic for Mister Scott."

"Thank you so much, Tinky. And thanks for answering all of my questions, I'm sorry if they were too much for you." 

"Tinky is being happy to help, Mister Scott!"

"I didn't actually eat dinner, because I wasn't sure what would be safe. Do you have anything I can take?"

It's almost like he's spoken an incantation. He's suddenly surrounded by house elves trying to give him as much vegetarian food as they can.

Scott proceeds to have a late dinner, then.

They will give him food until he can't have any more food.

He does eventually hit that point, for certain values of "eventually". What value of eventually is it, anyway? It's probably getting late.

Yep, late enough that the fruit bowl painting opens up to reveal one Professor Horace Slughorn. "Mr. MacDougall, I believe you should be in bed!"

He looks appropriately contrite.

"Sorry sir. I wanted to talk to the elves about my food, and I thought I should do it before breakfast."

He nods. "That's all well and good, and I commend going after what you want, but you would have done well to look into other avenues to reach your goals. This kind of complaint and request should be made of your prefects and, ultimately, Head of House—that being me. We're your first port of call."

"Isn't it better to go directly to the source? Or is that too obvious?"

"Too obvious. In general it's better for no one to know your hand was involved at all. Or even better, do have your hand involved but in a way that makes people not believe it." He laughs. "Anyway, you'll learn how to Slytherin from your older years, I'm sure they'll have a lot of fun teaching you how to plot. Now let me show you to our Common Room."