Harry Potter and The Jade Dragon

Chapter 8 ~ The Caretaker's Wife

After the first few days at Tian-Long, Harry and the others gradually became accustomed to their daily routine of hurrying to the Hall for breakfast in the mornings, followed by the day's lessons. Lady Han-Yin usually gave them something amusing to do during Potions, while Master Yang-Kang was still ranting and raving about the Devil's Curse. Divination classes were spent tossing coins and then checking up on the relevant Hexagrams using the Book of Changes, and trying to interpret their meanings. For Care of Magical Creatures, they had some respite from the dragons, and had a look at kylins, which were a type of Chinese unicorn; each had a slender deer-like body, and a tail that looked curiously like a cow's.

To Harry and the others' relief, Malfoy, after seeing what Robert had done to Yu-Lin that first evening, had ceased to annoy them and was keeping to himself. He, Crabbe and Goyle always sat at one side with Yu-Lin, away from the others, and would disappear as soon as the class was over. Harry sometimes saw him and Yu-Lin looking at the rest of them, whispering and smiling slyly, and wondered if they were up to anything.

Most of their free time was spent catching up with their assignments, which they either did in the Green Dragon common room together with the other Green Dragon students, or out of doors if the weather was good. The days seemed to fly, and they were so busy that there was no time to feel homesick, although they were getting rather tired of eating Chinese food every day.

Even this was solved, when one day Yu-Lin and the Slytherins did not turn up at the Hall for breakfast.

"Good news for you!" said Fatty, coming back from the teacher's table where he had been talking to Lady Wen-Li, "Draco Malfoy has requested that he and his friends be given some western-style food for a change, and so Lady Wen-Li has also appointed a house-elf to us, who will prepare whatever food you wish to have."

Ron and Harry's faces brightened, but Hermione, on hearing the word 'house-elf', arranged her features into a disapproving frown.

"Slave labour," she muttered, pushing her bowl of porridge away from her so that some of it slopped out of her bowl, "Even here, miles from home, we have – slave labour!"

"What's that?" said Shan, looking startled, and pushing her glasses up her nose.

Ron sniggered.

"Hermione strongly believes in protecting the rights of house-elves," he said to Shan. "Including giving them salaries, pensions and sick leave."

The Tian-Long students all looked surprised.

"You mean, you don't pay your house-elves?" said Pixie, giggling.

"House-elves here are paid," said Fatty, grimacing. "They even expect a bonus at the end of the year. Of course, it's not so bad here in China," he added. "In Hong Kong, besides the bonus, they want a paid vacation every year, even though we bring them along whenever we go on holiday."

Hermione looked astonished.

"Really?" she said, her eyes widening, "they're – they're paid? With – with bonuses – and everything?"

Fatty nodded glumly.

"They don't like doing the more menial tasks either, like cleaning the toilets," he said. "My father thought of employing some from England, because the English ones are a lot more docile, but the tax on foreign labour is so high that it wasn't worth it. Plus, they don't understand Cantonese."

Hermione was still looking astonished. Pixie, noticing this, giggled again.

"Don't forget, they are Chinese," she said, dimpling at Hermione. "Chinese all know how to make money."