"It's a shame about the Gryffindor Quidditch team," Tabitha called from a corner of the room as she hung up her cloak. "We always love a Gryffindor versus Slytherin match for the tournament, don't we, Ralph? I'm sure it pains your friends not to be out scrimmaging with us as we speak, James. Please give them our sympathies. By the way…," Tabitha crossed the room again, heading toward the stairs to the girls' sleeping quarters, "I saw several of the Ravenclaw players out at the pitch studying our drills. Interesting that your friend, Zane, wasn't among them. You haven't seen him, have you?" She tapped her broomstick on the floor idly, watching James' face.

        James shook his head, not daring to speak.

        "Hm," Tabitha murmured thoughtfully. "Curious, that. Nevertheless. Come, Philia."

        James watched, horrified, as Tabitha and Philia began to climb the steps. He thought furiously, trying to invent a quick diversion, but nothing came.

        "Sod off!" a pair of muffled voices suddenly squeaked.

        Both Tabitha and Philia stopped in their tracks. Philia, on the first step, whipped around angrily. Tabitha, ahead of her, turned much more slowly, a look of polite wonderment on her face.

        "Did you say something?" she asked James slowly.

        James coughed. "Er, no. Sorry. Got a, uh, frog in my throat."

        Tabitha watched him for a long moment, then tilted her head slightly and narrowed her eyes at Ralph. Finally, she turned away and disappeared up the rest of the stairs with Philia following, glancing back furiously. After a few moments, their footsteps could be heard from above. There were no angry screams or sounds of struggle.

        "Grotty blighter!" quacked the muffled voices again.

        "That crazy loon!" Ralph rasped, jumping up and grabbing his bag. "What's he doing?"

        "Come on!" James said, lunging toward the door. "If he's still up there, we can't help him."

         They both ran out into the hallway and threaded their way around several random corridors before finally stopping. Panting and hearts pounding, they dug their rubber ducks out of their bags, each examining his own even though they were identical. Two words were scrawled on the bottom of the ducks in black ink: Laundry room!

        "That crazy loon!" Ralph said again, but he was almost laughing with relief. "Figgle just took him down to the cellars with the rest of the dirty sheets! I say we leave him there."

        James grinned. "No, let's go get him before they try to stick him in the wringer. He probably deserves it, but first, I want to know what he might have found out."

The two boys ran to find the washrooms in the cellars. James stopped only once to ask directions from an annoyingly observant servant in a painting of a gaggle of dining knights.

        "I hardly had two minutes to look around before Figgle came up the stairs like a cannonball," Zane told James and Ralph when they found him in the washrooms. "She threw a handful of pink dust at me, and then pow! I'm down here."

        Ralph was looking around in awe at the enormous copper vats and the clanking machinery of the washers. Elves bustled around them, ignoring the three boys completely as they moved through the hive of their basement work space. Two elves on a catwalk above the vats were dumping wheelbarrows of powdered soap into the frothing water. White flakes filled the air and stuck like snow in the boys' hair.

        "Trust me, this all gets a lot less interesting after two minutes or so," Zane said tersely. "Especially when the Lollipop Guild here won't let you leave." Three elves were clustered around Zane, looking at him with obvious hostility.

        "Figgle brings a human down to the washrooms, we keeps him until someone explains why," the oldest and grumpiest elf said in a gravelly voice. "S'policy. Humans interfering with elf work is against Hogwarts Code of Conduct and Practices, section thirty, paragraph six. So, then, who be you two?"

        James and Ralph exchanged blank looks. Ralph said, "We're his… well, we're his friends, aren't we? We came to bring him back upstairs."

        "Did you, then?" the elf said with a penetrating glare. "Figgle tells a story about this human trying to do her work, she does. Says he was going on about elf welfare and such bilge. She was fair upset. Can't 'ave that sort of thing, you know. We gots a coalition agreement with the school."

        "He won't do it again," James soothed. "He meant well, but he's a bit dim about such things, isn't he? I'm sorry. He got out of our hands for a minute. Won't happen again."

        Zane acted offended, but stayed wisely silent. The head elf scowled thoughtfully at James. James was used to elves being subservient and meek or at least politely surly. Here, in their working realm, the rules appeared to be quite different. The elves had a coalition agreement with the school, the head elf had said. It almost sounded like they'd unionized, and that an essential rule of the elf union was that only elves did elf work. Perhaps they viewed it as job security. James wasn't sure if Aunt Hermione would view this as an improvement or a setback.

        Finally, the head elf grumbled, "I'm going against my better judgments, you know. The three of yous are on probation. Anymore interference with elfish protocol and I'll 'ave you before the Headmistress. We gots a coalition agreement, you know."

        "So I hear," Zane muttered, rolling his eyes.

        "But you don't even know our names," Ralph pointed out. "How are we on probation if you don't know who we are?" James elbowed him in the ribs.

        The head elf grinned at his fellows, who smiled back a bit disconcertingly. "We're elves," he said simply. "Now off with yous, and let's hope we don't see you again."

        The corridors leading out of the washrooms were, not surprisingly, small and short, with half-sized steps that forced James, Zane, and Ralph to mince carefully as they climbed them.

        "I don't know whether to congratulate you or kick you," Ralph said to Zane. "You almost got us caught by Corsica and Goyle."

        "But I did get into the Slytherin girls' sleeping quarters," Zane pointed out with a grin. "How many people can say that?"

        "Or would want to?" James added.