HP: She married Malfoy after becoming an exchange student.

After tossing the scarf to the elf, Draco walked away without looking back. Elias followed behind him, glanced at Dobby who was weeping bitterly, and then left as well.

For the next few days, Dobby helped in the kitchen, washing dishes, mopping the floor, and peeling potatoes. He folded Draco's scarf and put it under his pillow, taking it out to look at it every night before bed, then folding it again and putting it back. When the other house-elves asked him where the scarf came from, he said, "It was a gift from the young master of the Malfoys to Dobby."

The other elves looked at him with pity, but also with distance. The elves all knew that the Malfoy family had given up on Dobby, but no one asked any further questions.

Dobby didn't mind. Every day he counted the copper coins he earned in the kitchen, stacking them into a neat little pile. He planned in his mind that he could save up enough to buy a small pot to boil potatoes, wear those clean little clothes, and go to Hogsmeade on the weekend for a butterbeer.

With hope for the future, Dobby fell asleep.

In its sleep, someone crouched beside it. That person reached out and gently pressed their hand on Dobby's head.

Dobby didn't open his eyes, he just blinked his eyelashes—he thought it was the old elf next door calling him to get up and watch the fire.

Then his head started to get hot. Like a branding iron, like magma, something was melting little by little under his scalp.

Dobby suddenly opened his eyes.

The boy next to Malfoy looked down at it. The fire in the hearth flickered, and the boy's face was not clearly visible.

Dobby opened his mouth, letting out a short, breathy sound: "...Rhine...Hart..."

Elias lowered his head, his long, silver-gray hair falling over his shoulders, his silver eyes as calm as a lake in the depths of winter.

He said, "Draco doesn't want your life. But I do."

Dobby trembled all over, its eyes began to lose focus, and its green pupils slowly dilated into two murky black holes.

"The Malfoys don't want you anymore. But here with me," Elias's voice was as soft as a sigh, "I won't leave anyone alive."

"Dobby...not yet..." The elf's voice grew softer and softer, like the last flicker of a candle flame, "Not yet...not yet...not yet..."

With a "crack," Dobby's head snapped in Elias's palm, his body curled up, and he stopped breathing.

Elias withdrew his hand and gave Dobby one last look.

The little elf curled up in the corner, using Draco's scarf as a pillow, like an old doll that had been carelessly discarded.

Elias pulled the scarf from under Dobby's pillow, tapped it lightly with his wand, and it was as clean as new. He folded the scarf neatly and put it in his robe pocket.

Then he crouched down and turned Dobby's body over. With a wave of his wand, Dobby's corpse turned into a wisp of extremely thin, faint smoke. The smoke swirled once under the low ceiling of the kitchen before dissipating.

The stone door slowly closed, emitting a heavy, muffled sound.

Elias climbed the spiral staircase, his boots clicking slowly on the stone floor. He pushed open the door to the common room; Pansy and the others were already back, chatting and laughing around the fireplace.

Elias walked through the common room and pushed open the door to his bedroom.

Draco is still awake.

He sat on the bed, already dressed in his pajamas, his gray eyes half-closed, staring blankly at the black lake outside the window. Seeing Elias enter, he turned his head, his gaze sweeping over Elias before settling on his bulging robe pockets.

"Where did you go?" Draco asked.

"I took care of something." Elias took off his outer robe and hung it in the wardrobe.

Draco didn't press the matter. He lay down, pulled the blanket up to his chin, and rolled over to face the wall. After a few seconds, his voice came muffled from under the pillow: "That scarf, I need to wear it tomorrow."

Elias stood before the wardrobe, his fingers pausing briefly in the robe's pocket. A dark green scarf, neatly folded, lay there quietly.

"Okay," Elias said, "I'll give it to you tomorrow."

"Where's Dobby?"

"I'm gone."

Draco breathed a sigh of relief: "It's good that it's gone. I didn't want to see it anyway."

"Go to sleep," Elias said, blowing out the candle by the bedside.

[Volume 2 - End]