After the two students leave the kitchens much better than when they arrived, to go back to their dormitories, Pitts receives another late night visitor. It seems the headmaster keeps the same long hours as Pitts himself does.
Professor Dumbledore notices the 3 now washed empty mugs on the counter ready to be magically put away. He obliges with some magic of his own and they are soon tidied away. Professor Dumbledore is pleased to see that all is quiet in the kitchens. He has timed his visit well. He knows that in a few hours time the kitchen fires will be lit again in readiness for the breakfast rush and Pitts may not have the time or the patience for his visit.
He sits down and Pitts soon joins him, climbing up onto the table he is sitting at. Pitts makes himself at home, sitting down so that his legs are dangling over the table edge.
" Even Pitts needs a rest!"
The headmaster does not disagree.
It seems to Pitts that Professor Dumbledore had taken more than just a passing interest in how the Gryffindor witch and wizard have found detention. Maybe Pitts was wrong to say he was not a dating agency after all. They seem very comfortable in each other's company.
Pitts reports back to the headmaster on the students he puts to work in his kitchen for their detention. His reports are usually made up of harsh words and grumbles, which doesn't help the headmaster at all. Pitts finds the students serving detention in his kitchen a major inconvenience. He has enough to be getting along with without finding them work to do. Pitts had even told Professor Dumbledore as much when the headmaster told him that he would be sending another student by the name of Samantha Morales to join Jae Kim in detention.
Professor Dumbledore had been steadfast in his decision despite the house elf's determination to have his say. Pitts had deduced that Jae Kim was like some of the house elves he knew. He was smart for a young wizard, but would take the easier option in most things if he could. That was until Samantha Morales had joined him in detention.
The last thing Jae was interested in was being friends with a Prefect. It would not do his reputation any good at all as far as he was concerned. He had chosen to follow a different path in his fifth year at Hogwarts. It was a path that Professor Dumbledore felt was unwise for him to continue along. Professor Dumbledore was after all responsible for the safety of the school and those who stayed there. Jae had been smuggling forbidden items into school for sometime until he had finally been caught out by the caretaker, Argus Filch. The caretaker had gleefully scurried along the school corridor with Jae in tow in search of Professor McGonagall, Jae's head of house. Jae had been too lazy or too smug to give Mr Filch the slip. He felt his parade down the school corridor would add to the kudos he had amongst his customers and those he thought of as the cooler students. Instead of Professor McGonagall they had found the headmaster. Professor Dumbledore had decided it was time for Jae Kim to see the error of his ways and he had been given his detention time in the kitchens.
Pitts didn't want a smart non rule following student in his kitchen, thinking detention in there would be what was called a doddle. He preferred the less intelligent kind. Kitchen detention hadn't been quite the doddle Jae had expected, but it hadn't been hard work either. He had soon gotten use to being there, in fact he quite liked it. The smell of freshly baked bread reminded him of his grandmother's house. He took inspiration from the warm loaves and soon became skilled in creating new recipes for sandwiches so much so that he found himself sleeping in class. This new development gave Professor Dumbledore cause for concern in that Jae Kim might not learn anything from his time in detention. The headmaster knew just what to do. Samantha Morales had a serious amount of detention time to do as punishment for investigating cursed vaults and disobeying her headmaster. However, she was hard working and was good at staying awake in all her classes including History of Magic, something Jae was not. The headmaster knew Jae would be impressed by Samantha's rule breaking and want to know more. He would want to be in the same classes as her.
Professor Dumbledore was soon proven right. Jae had told her," You're my kind of prefect!" when he had found out what she had done to get herself in detention for the whole of the new term.
It was a good amount of time for her to be a positive influence on Jae. Professor Dumbledore did not want another Peter Pettigrew on his hands. Jae was duly impressed by Samantha as soon as he met her and she him. She invited him to join her friends for a study session in the library at the end of their first detention together. He had accepted, joking that he had never been in the library. The rest they say is history.
Their detentions are over, but they pop down to the kitchens to see Pitts and make hot chocolate with him.
" Pitts will miss his witch and wizard!"
" Samantha Morales and Jae Kim," Professor Dumbledore replied, aware that Pitts might not know their names.
" Pitts has a feeling that he won't be seeing them in detention anymore."
" Maybe not in detention," Professor Dumbledore agreed. " but who knows what the future may bring one day."
It's the end of a busy day in the kitchens. Pitts feels though that this one has been different. Pitts allows himself a moment of reflection before he goes to sleep. He has the most wonderful feeling that the day when he becomes a free elf may be sooner than he thought. Maybe it is just the warmth inside of him from the last of the hot chocolate the young wizard had made him or something the headmaster said. It is a strange, yet comforting feeling. It hadn't gone unnoticed by Pitts that the young wizard had poured three mugs of hot chocolate. He couldn't recall a wizard ever doing something like that before for him. And then the headmaster put the mugs away for him. Maybe things are changing at last. Until they do Pitts settles for a good night's sleep and a dream that his master will one day make him a free elf.
