The Elves were directly based off of “Brownies”

It’s also highly unusual that elves were depicted this way, considering most fantasy stories hold them in high regard as being magical beings seeing themselves above humanity for reasons that are normally geniunely sound (Better moral compass, natural magical talents… Whereas in Harry Potter it’s the exact opposite, humanity seems to be the highest creature and Elves feel like to squabble before them…

There’s no way the “Brownie” similarity is unintentional

So what’s a Brownie? Well it was a way of explaining slaves to young children back in those days, to brush off the casual cruelty by lying to kids. Essentially the myth of the “Brownie” was to re contextualize the suffering of the black slave as a magical event, a beautiful mysterious thing to be observed not with horror, but with wonder. A big part of the myth claimed that you can’t give a Brownie anything nice like proper clothing, or else this “breaks the contract between Man and Fae” and they run back into the woods never to be seen again.

“No it’s okay children, they’re magical forest people called Brownies! And they LIKE doing that work for us! Oh and we can’t give them anything nice, or they’ll disappear forever! And you wouldn’t want that to happen! No no, really, they’re faeries, and they like being whipped like that!”

Feeling disgusted? Good, that sickness in your stomach is proof that you’re a better person than JK Rowling.

tl;dr Harry Potter elves are a resurrection of Pro-Slavery Propaganda used to indoctrinate children into thinking it’s okay to treat people like shit. They had to GASLIGHT LITERAL CHILDREN into thinking that black people were magical elves, in order to stop them from feeling bad about slavery… and JK decided to bring that back for her kid’s book.

As much fun as Hogwarts Legacy is, I hope she rots in hell and then is reborn as a transgender woman to learn basic empathy.