Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

It was the gambling that had got him into trouble. Now, in his later years, he could see how stupid it had been. But he'd been young then, with a young man's love of excitement and -- he could admit it now -- a burning desire to prove himself in all ways that did not require size or strength.

Gambling had been excellent for that: the hulking wizards who populated his world might have smiled at him condescendingly on the street, but those smiles vanished in no time when they faced him across a card table. When there was no one to challenge in the Diagon Alley pubs, he had even gone so far as to brave the stifling, smoke-filled rooms where the Muggles played faro and euchre. He'd been a novelty there, like something from one of the freak shows they loved to gape at. Still, they'd let him play, and whether he'd won or lost, a quick Obliviate! had always seen him out the door in one piece.

Unfortunately, such tricks had been impossible in magical venues -- no wizard with half a brain would have wagered so much as a Knut without first casting an Aequum Spell to guarantee fairness and honesty. The loser in a high-stakes game of Exploding Snap was bound to his commitment with the inescapable tether of magic, which was no problem as long as one's luck held out. His had not. And when he'd once begun losing, his debts had grown and grown until they were nearly beyond his capacity to calculate, much less pay. The interest alone had been enough to consume almost everything he earned.

After a few dreary hand-to-mouth years, he had come up with an idea for ending his misery. He was still known as a master dueler, though his financial problems had forced him off the semi-professional circuit and into a more lucrative teaching job. And dueling was a very desirable skill for the privileged offspring of old wizarding families, as well as the ambitious middle-class ones who wanted to improve their station in life. He would hire out as a private dueling tutor during the school breaks, and eventually he would escape the hole he had dug for himself.

It had not been an instant solution by any means, but slowly, over decades, the debts had begun to shrink. Eager to speed up his progress, he had taken on more and more students every year, until the year when Archelaeus Crouch had bought out all his time for the entire summer. Crouch's son Bartemius was trying for a spot on the Hogwarts dueling team, and the elder Crouch was willing to pay for a live-in tutor to help the boy achieve his goal. So off to the Crouches' house he had gone, defense manuals and training wands at the ready. And before he had been there a day, he had met her.

He had seen others of her kind before, of course; everyone had; they were among the commonest of magical creatures. But something about this one -- Abby was her name -- had been strangely appealing. It might have been her sweet, shy, quiet nature, or the way she had asked so earnestly if she could do anything to make him more comfortable, or simply the fact that she had stood no taller than his shoulder - a rare thing indeed for a man who had always had to stand on tiptoes to talk to the witches he knew.

Whatever the source of his attraction, it certainly hadn't been her ears, which were oddly bat-like, or her rather squashed and disproportionate features. Those things had helped to remind him how forbidden a relationship between the two of them would be. Not for a normal wizard, perhaps -- though people sniggered about it, many did take advantage of such creatures' complete willingness to please the wizards they served -- but for him particularly.

His grandfather had explained the way things were when he was still a schoolboy. Being a mixed-breed was dangerous. Their family must marry witches and wizards who would infuse human blood back into their line. It was nothing against elves, the old man had insisted, looking up at him seriously (at fifteen, he had been taller than either his grandfather or father would ever be, though not yet at his adult height of nearly four feet). Having elf blood was all very well if you were one, but if you were a human --

"But we aren't quite human, are we?" he had asked timidly.

"We will be," his grandfather had said. "We will be."

When faced with temptation at the Crouches' house, he had tried to do what he knew his grandfather would have wanted, but he had ultimately broken down. Abby had made him very happy that summer, even though she had refused to neglect her duties in any way to spend time with him. When the autumn had come, however, he had had to return to Hogwarts to teach, and she had stayed on with the Crouch family. And to his discredit, he had not thought of her much during the school year -- after all, she was only a house-elf, with little identity beyond the loyalty she bore to her employer.

He had been sure she wasn't thinking of him either. At least, he had been sure until he had returned the following summer, this time to coach Bartemius' younger brother, and found her going about her work with a wee elf-baby strapped into a carrier on her back. It seemed he had become a father without knowing it.

The revelation had filled him with guilt and shame. He felt as if he ought to do something -- ask the eldest Crouch to give her clothes and set her free, perhaps. Surely it could not be right for his child, and the mother of his child, to be enslaved, even by such a kind master as Archelaeus was. But if she were free, she would have nowhere to go. He would have to take her in, and that was simply impossible. If it was wrong for her to be the Crouches' servant, it would be even worse for her to be his. And he could not take her as his wife. He owed it to his family to marry a full witch, to produce children who would be a little taller, a little stronger, a little more human than he. And besides, his debts were already a great enough source of embarrassment. There was no need to make it worse.

Because of all that, he had left mother and child where they were. Abby had not complained - of course she had not; house-elves never did - but had wished him well and sent him on his way at summer's end.

He had never seen Abbey again afterward. Nor had he seen the child -- not until another summer, decades later, when the Dark Mark had appeared in the sky at the Quidditch World Cup, and a house-elf had been blamed. Not just any house-elf, but his own unacknowledged daughter, following in her mother's footsteps by serving a much older Bartemius Crouch.

It had surprised him when Bartemius had turned her out after the World Cup incident; as a boy, young Barty had been as kind and generous as Archelaeus, and would never have treated a house-elf so. She was free now, technically, but her freedom was no comfort. She had not even wanted to be freed. Why should she have? No one had ever taught her to desire anything but perpetual servitude. If he had only done the right thing so many years ago, he might have -

But he had not. And so it was justice, really, that fate had brought his daughter here to this place where he would forever be reminded of his failure; where he would see her skittering through the halls with trays of food for his colleagues; where she would come to his very own quarters to light the fires and sweep the floors, as she was doing at this very moment.

He watched her brushing the last contents of the dustpan into her bucket, being careful not to spill. She was taking more care of the floor than she had been of herself, he thought; her newly acquired clothes were all dirty and wrinkled, and he could smell a faint whiff of alcohol coming from her. Was she so unhappy here as all that? Did he have any right to ask her? Would she answer truthfully?

While he was still wondering, she finished her work and looked up to where he sat, perched on a special high stool that let him reach his writing desk.

"Is you needing anything else, Professor, sir?" she squeaked. Her voice was just like her mother's had been. So were her enormous brown eyes.

Filius Flitwick smiled sadly at his daughter. He had made enough mistakes in his life already, he thought. Best not to meddle and risk making any more.

"No, thank you, Winky," he said. "That will be all. Goodnight."