house elves - Did Harry free Kreacher accidentally / unwittingly?

Does Harry giving the locket to Kreacher allow him, Kreacher, to be free?

We've seen in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as well as in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, that presenting a house-elf with any kind of wizarding clothing, even accidentally, grants freedom to a house elf. Harry knows this fact very well.

Yet, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Harry had a sudden inspiration. He pulled out Hagrid's purse and took out the fake Horcrux, the substitute locket in which possible_spoiler_character had placed the note to Voldemort.

"Kreacher, I'd, er, like you to have this", he said, pressing the locket into the elf's hand.

Why would Harry do this? We've already seen in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that Kreacher is capable of being very liberal with how he interprets wizarding words, to the detriment of Harry and his associates, so it is entirely possible Harry is risking Kreacher interpreting this action as Harry giving him [Kreacher] an item of clothing (since a locket is meant to be worn, etc...)

Answer

Unknown. As far as I can tell this has never been confirmed in any other sources, and Kreacher's behaviour afterwards is that of a happy-to-serve elf, free or no.

There's some quite weak evidence in the following chapter that he's still magically bound, when Harry gives him an order and he instantly complies, to what is obviously his detriment (emphasis mine):

There was the sound of pattering feet, a blaze of shining copper, an echoing clang, and a shriek of agony: Kreacher had taken a run at Mundungus and hit him over the head with a saucepan.

"Call 'im off, call 'im off, 'e should be locked up!" screamed Mundungus, cowering as Kreacher raised the heavy-bottomed pan again.

"Kreacher, no!" shouted Harry.

Kreacher's thin arms trembled with the weight of the pan, still held aloft.

^{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Chapter 11: "The Bribe"}

But we can't be completely certain.

Slightly stronger evidence is that this possibility doesn't seem to occur to anybody. Though the reasons for this oversight aren't stated explicitly, we can easily imagine some:

Jewelry doesn't count as clothes

This seems a sensible assumption, but to my knowledge is not made explicit.

Harry is hoping that loyalty will trump binding magical contracts

It's clear that, magical contract or no, Kreacher will help the people he's loyal to, to whatever extent he's permitted to do so; this is something Hermione points out explicitly:

What do wizard wars mean to an elf like Kreacher? He's loyal to people who are kind to him, and Mrs. Black must have been, and Regulus certainly was, so he served them willingly and parroted their beliefs.

[...]

I'm sure 'Miss Cissy' and 'Miss Bella' were perfectly lovely to Kreacher when he turned up, so he did them a favor and told them everything they wanted to know.

^{Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Chapter 10: "Kreacher's Tale"}

Treating Kreacher with kindness will induce him to help them, freedom or no. That's the hope, anyway.

It's actually a fairly low-risk plan

This isn't a reason, per se, but consider the costs versus the benefits of giving Kreacher the locket. Having Kreacher bound to Harry's service isn't actually that helpful at the moment, and it's already demonstrably harmful. Setting him free is going to have one of two outcomes:

He's disloyal, and runs off to Bellatrix. But, so what? The reason Dumbledore talks Harry out of freeing him in Half-Blood Prince is because of all the sensitive information the elf has been presumably overhearing, but what does any of that matter anymore? The Order has abandoned Grimmauld Place, so he doesn't have any fresh intelligence, and anything he did know is fairly stale.

This is, of course, presuming that he can't tell the Death Eaters where Grimmauld Place is, but why should they care about that anyway? As far as they know, Snape has already spilled the beans¹.

He's loyal, and he stays despite being freed. See the previous section for why this seems like a likely outcome.

¹ Probably, maybe

harry potter - Do the Kwikspell courses work?

In Harry Potter we are introduced to Kwikspell course in The Chamber of Secrets (and never hear about it again). We see Filch taking courses, presumably by mail. The descriptions of Kwikspell make me think it is for people who are weak in magic (kind of like how Neville was supposed to be when he was younger), but had magic in them nonetheless. However, Ron's comments later in the chapter make it sound like it is mainly for Squibs to learn magic. However, it is strongly implied through out all the books that Squibs are essentially Muggles, and will never be able to do magic. How then is a Kwikspell course supposed to work? Do we have any information to know if it works at all? Is it a scam? An answer from any level of canon is welcome. Answer Kwikspell courses are (probably) useful to some wizards, but not to squibs. The Kwikspell course literature comes with two testimonials. Madam Z. Nettles of Topsham writes: ‘I had no memory for incantations and my potions were a family joke...

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

languages - Do we ever see written English in the Star Wars films?

In Empire Strikes Back , we see a transcription of what R2's beeps and bloops mean, but it's not English (sorry for the low quality, it's from the 2004 DVDs): I'd assume it's what Basic looks like when written, but is there some point in the the Star Wars films we see written English instead? (This sort of spun off from a discussion in How do people understand astromech droids? .) Answer At one point there was English but it has been phased out in subsequent versions of the films. Chris Gould at DVD Active did a comparison of all versions of each of the Star Wars films, and in his comparison of Episode 4 , there are a couple of screenshots showing how the power gauge for the Death Star tractor beam was changed. I imagine there are probably more to be found in his other comparisons but I haven't got around to reading those yet.

Was the "pure soul" of Harry's what had really hurt Voldemort?

In the Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort possesses Harry, and it hurts. Greatly. I think that Dumbledore explained that it was because Voldemort's rotten soul was incapable of assimilating Harry's pure soul, that Voldemort didn't understand the love and friendship etc that Harry has in his heart. But, I think it was a lie. Remember that in Deathly Hallows, while looking for information regarding Horcruxes, it is discovered that it is in fact possible to merge a soul fragment back, but that the process was extremely painful. Now then, if Voldemort tried to possess Harry, and Harry had a fragment of Voldemort's soul, I think that it could have been the true cause of Voldemort's pain: the fact of having his soul so close of another fragment. I think that Dumbledore knew that fact, but had to lie to Harry because it was inappropriate to let him know that he had one of Voldemort's soul fragments at the moment. Is that right? Or was it truly the pure soul of Harry's...

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