Disclaimer: Anything you recognise isn’t mine. The basic idea for the plot isn’t mine, as this is written for a challenge on portkey, made by Femtedd. Hope you enjoy it.

A/N: Okay, just warning you now that I don’t have much time to write at the moment, considering I have a lot of assignments and stuff due. My lecturers would throw their hands up in horror if they knew I spent more time writing fanfiction than the essays to help me pass university, lol. (Oh, how said I am). In any case, I’ve shortened this fic down from what I was expecting it to be, not only for my own sanity, but also to make it seem a little more believable. It just would have been impossible to have Hermione not discover a way out of her situation quickly (let alone have Harry not find out quickly). After all, she’s not stupid.

Ah, I just discovered the typos littering that last chapter! I’m sorry. I do try to go over them the best I can, but it seems I always slip up somewhere.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings and onto the next chapter we go…

The Horrors of a Servant

Unfortunately for Hermione, it proved very difficult to start the search for her wand and clothes. The crazy, old house-elf, whose name she discovered was Nippy, would not let her out of its very questionable sight. The elf insisted that Hermione had to learn how to be a good house-elf before the master came, and so Hermione had been dragged rather forcefully into the kitchens where she would begin her house-elf training. Of course, she had not given up in her protestations that she was in fact a witch, but after once more being threatened with the menacing wooden spoon, Hermione had acquiesced enough to let her mutterings remain in her mind; instead, silently plotting her own escape once Nippy the insane elf allowed her to.

“Now first things first,” Nippy said in his/her squeaky voice (Hermione was still trying to figure out whether it was a female or male). The elf stood woozily for a moment and then started pacing up and down in front of Hermione, eyeing her rather like a drill sergeant, though the effect was somewhat ruined by its large, bat ears flapping wildly with each tread of its little feet. “You is to learn how to show more respect, and to not speak of being a human. That is a bad, bad thing for an elf to do.”

Hermione just stared blankly at the elf, and while she was indeed curious to learn what house-elves were trained to be (it could help with S.P.E.W after all), right now all she wanted to be doing was finding her wand and getting herself out of this mess before Harry came. Research could come later.

“Herminny did you say your name was?” Nippy asked, eyes bulging in a rather alarming way.

It felt rather like a strange sense of déjà vu. Viktor Krum had mistakenly called her ‘Hermyninny’, and she even had the pleasure of a giant named Grawp fondly nicknaming her ‘Hermy’. Now she was being called Herminny, and while it was a rather cringe-worthy and horrible name, Hermione understood that elves seemed to have difficulty with people’s names, and since hers was more difficult than most, decided to let Nippy have his… her, whatever it was, way with the pronunciation of her name.

“Very well, Herminny, you is been called to be Harry Potter’s personal servant. You do know how to use your magic, don’t you?”

Hermione knew it would pointless to say that she didn’t since she was in fact a witch and therefore only knew how to do magic with a wand, and so simply nodded her head. The more she appeased the elf the more likely she would be released from its wrinkly clutches. At least that was what she thought anyway.

“Good.” Nippy’s ears flapped vigorously with the movement of its head nodding up and down happily. “Then you can start by preparing the Master’s room, and remember that you must always bow to him so that your nose touches the floor, and you can’t complain, and you must never leave a mess, and always be silent unless he asks you to speak. In fact it would be better if you were invisible to him at all times unless he has called you. All elves are bound to their master, so no matter where you are in the house you will hear his voice echo in your mind if he wishes you for something.”

Hermione vaguely wondered if the magic would work for her since she was not an elf, but then she realised it didn’t matter anyway. She would not still be here once Harry got back, and she would certainly not be her measly little height either. Then she’d really give Harry a piece of her mind for putting her in a situation like this, even though she did know that it was quite unlikely Harry would ever have realised she could be thought to be a house-elf, and that she was being unreasonable in laying all the blame at his feet. That was not the point though. The point was that she was believed to be a house-elf, and she didn’t enjoy it one bit.

“That will be all, Herminny. You may leave now.”

Nodding politely, Hermione turned around and walked to the kitchen door.

“Why does you not just use your vanishing magic?” Nippy asked with a very wrinkly frown, so that its face seemed to cave into a massive jumble of lines.

Hermione cringed slightly, knowing that logically she would make a very useless house-elf. Without her wand she could not disapparate, and so could not vanish in an instant; without her wand she could not make things appear or clean things straight away, which was one of the prime things a house-elf did, and without her wand she could not prove she was a witch to the rather blind elf, and therefore give a decent excuse on why she could not just disappear with a simple click of the fingers.

She turned and faced Nippy, who was eyeing her suspiciously through glassy, green eyes. “I’d much prefer to walk,” Hermione said simply, and then practically ran out of the kitchen door, desperately hoping Nippy would not follow to see if she could really use her magic. Though not a cowardly woman by any means, it was very hard to be as confident and brave as she used to be without her wand- not to mention she was much shorter, and being bullied by an elf that had clearly lived far too long and was now loopier than even Luna Lovegood.

Once she was a safe distance from the kitchen, Hermione stopped in the middle of the hallway and wondered where would be the best place to start looking for her wand and clothes. The elf had to have used magic to send them somewhere. Hermione knew enough about magic (though admittedly not elf magic) to know that people couldn’t just banish objects into nothing. They had to be somewhere in the house, for where else could Nippy have put them?

“Guess I’ll just work my way from the top,” Hermione mumbled to herself.

The first room she came to was locked, and after much fruitless tugging and kicking at the door Hermione had to give up and go to the next. That one proved to be a complete waste of time. The only things in the room were dozens of dusty boxes, and after rummaging through a few of the battered cardboard holders, discovering nothing more exciting than a new cross stitch pattern she had never seen before, and a photo album all of large, different coloured kneazles, Hermione gave up on that room too; of course, it wasn’t because a giant, fat, black spider had leapt out of the last box she had attempted to search and chased her with vicious pincers clashing threateningly…

Still trying to catch her breath, and placing a hand against her wildly beating heart, Hermione let out a shaky sigh and felt more than a little bit exasperated. The house was not ridiculously large, but it was big enough for her to take a long time to search every room, and being considerably shorter, she would also take twice as long to walk and twice as long to reach something higher than she normally would. Oh the joys of being short with no magic…

“This is just ridiculous,” she muttered, stomping down the hallway twenty minutes later and still no closer to discovering the whereabouts of her missing belongings. Something purred, and Hermione froze in the hallway, heart speeding up again in that sharply painful way, her skin tingling with darkly ominous feelings. A loud ‘pad, pad’ of large feet on the carpet started coming towards her, and hands clenching into fists, Hermione stared at the opposite end of the hallway that turned sharply into a corner. She had a feeling she knew what was going to round that corner, and wasn’t really all that surprised when the two yellow eyes peeped around the wall and fell on her quivering body. Whiskers twitched contemplatively, a very long, fluffy tail swished impatiently, and a deep meow echoed down the hallway from the humongous black kneazle staring at her, which she realised was the star in the photo album she had been glancing at not so long ago. The godzilla kneazle hissed in a decidedly unfriendly way, and Hermione was left wondering how very hideously sharp cat teeth could look when one was much smaller than said cat. She’d never seen such a monstrosity, and wondered how many engorging charms Harry’s very distant relative had used to make the cat grow so large. Unromantic mind or not, Hermione was very ready to believe this monster to be the cause of death for the cat-loving woman… and wondered if it would be her own too.

“You’ve got to be joking,” she muttered to herself, wondering how on earth she managed to get into these situations. The spider was one thing, but now a ridiculously large, black cat? Was she trapped in some terribly warped fiction where the writer was throwing out every possible idea in the book? Possibly….

The kneazle watched her intently, its tail swishing again. Hermione, the happy owner of a very fluffy cat named Crookshanks, knew by her own cat’s mannerisms that this unhappy kitty was contemplating whether house-elf sized, bushy-haired females would make a tasty treat. The last thing she needed was to become a delectable dish for an over-grown cat, and so with forced calm, Hermione started backing away slowly, all the while watching the kneazle. She knew to run would risk it chasing after her, and since she was short, and it was large, she wouldn’t get very far if it did.

Hermione blinked and almost tripped over at the sound of a screechy voice blaring loudly in her head. A voice that sounded rather familiar, and rather like Nippy…but how could that be possible? She was a witch, not a house-elf…

“What?” she said without thinking (a shocking thing indeed), and too late realised that she had triggered the gigantic kneazle into action. It crouched and wiggled its furry bottom, all ready to pounce on her and bring her to an untimely demise. With great presence of mind Hermione flung herself against the wall, letting the fluffy ball of doom go shooting pass her in a flurry of black fur. She didn’t wait to see whether it was still watching her, and sprinted down the hallway in the opposite direction as fast as her little legs could carry her. She almost tripped over the upturned carpet, but thankfully saved herself by the stairs, though unfortunately almost cracked her head open on the thick wood of the banister. Her lungs were protesting against her sudden burst of activeness, Hermione never being one for too much exercise, but she commanded her body to move, and continued her mad dash down the stairs, tripping over the last few to go flying rather ungracefully through the air and come to a spectacular finish right in front of a pair of black boots.

“Is this the other house-elf then?” A voice said distantly from above her.

“Yes, this is the new one, Master.”

Hermione winced, her face still flat in a squashed pancake against the polished floor, her body feeling rather like she had just fallen several feet in a belly flop onto water. She wasn’t sure she could move, and in a way she wasn’t sure she wanted to anyway. She knew Harry was standing right in front of her, and she also knew that the idiot had obviously not gone to Madrid, and so all of this had been a complete waste of time. The logical thing of course would be to ask Harry to Accio her wand and change her back to her normal size, but a rather illogical part of her brain was screaming at her on how embarrassing that would be to admit all that had happened (not to mention she was only wearing a pillow case), and a rather evil part of her was whispering that this would be a lovely way to get revenge on Harry for putting her through all this. Hermione wasn’t really sure where all these voices had come from, but she decided to listen to the last one, since right now she wasn’t feeling particularly logical at all- more like furious and shaken…and rather sore.

“Well… I don’t suppose you’ve seen a Hermione Granger around, have you? I did ask her to come check the place out, but-”

“Oh no, Master,” Nippy interrupted cheerfully. “There be no one of that name here. It’s only Herminny and Nippy.”

Hermione couldn’t even bring herself to be angry at the elf’s outright lie. More than likely it was just as forgetful as it was stupidly blind. She suddenly felt awful for such a thought, but really, even the most patient and loving house-elf person could be forgiven for some mental tantrums. She had been through a lot after all in her small stint as a house-elf, and while she was still determined to free them, she was very likely to never look at one the same way again.

She heard Harry’s feet shuffle and felt a finger prod her arm. “You okay?”

“Mhm,” she mumbled into the floor, not moving an inch. “Herminny is just, erm, polishing the floor for Master...”

Mentally cringing at not only referring to herself in third person, but also using that awful name, Hermione hoped that Harry would go away so she could go disguise herself better. Unfortunately Harry would still be able to notice she was not an elf (unless she stole his glasses of course; then he’d be as blind as that senile loon next to him), and so she needed to think of a way to disguise she was really a human. Bandaging her head seemed like the obvious idea, and that was what she would do, if he would just leave that is...

“Well alright then. I’m going to take a look around the house.” She heard him pause, as if he was trying to contemplate what to do with them. “Um, you two just do whatever you were doing before.”

“Yes, Master, of course master. Beware of the second floor, though, Master; a wicked kneazle lives there. Nippy has almost been eaten sixty times now.”

Hermione could almost see the gummy smile the elf would be wearing; as if it should be proud that monstrosity of a cat had nearly eaten it.

“Uh, right….”

She heard Harry’s feet walk away, and after waiting for a moment on the ground for a bit longer, finally sprung to her feet, wincing slightly from the sharp spasms of pain going through her body.

“Herminny did not come immediately when called,” Nippy scolded, bat ears waggling. “You is a bad elf.”

“Sorry,” Hermione replied, while brushing the dust off her pillowcase dress. “I was held up…”

What an understatement that was. Still, she had more important things to worry about. Like how to get her revenge on Harry. She wasn’t a very good ‘evil plotter’ when she thought about it. Sure she could plan and work things out in a trice, but thinking of something mischievous was not her forte at all. She did hope she could think of something though. This would all be a rather annoying waste if she didn’t.

“Nippy does not know if Herminny will be a good house-elf, but Nippy has work to do.”

Hermione watched the senile house-elf go tottering off and felt vaguely relieved to see the back of the blind elf. Plonking herself down on the ground again, she started to think of a plan to get Harry back for putting her through all of this. She didn’t plan on staying this way after all. She’d just play a trick on him to make him realise how angry she was, and then make him change her back to her original size. It sounded like a good plan to her, but she still needed to think of something to get him back.

“Hrm…” she frowned to herself, and then it came to her. Her brown eyes lit up, her lips curving into a small smile. “I’ve got it!”

A/n: Eh, so this fic didn’t turn out to be how I wanted it. I was aiming to have it be a good 5 or more chapters or so, and much longer chapters at that, but I was having trouble actually getting the fic to work. So, erm, yeah, sorry, and expect the next chapter to be the last. (I feel really bad now).