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Animals can't talk and most aren't regarded as sapient. On the other hand, house elves basically have a human equivalent mind in a small body, and are also non-consensual and generally unhappy servants of humans. As another commenter pointed out, this injustice actually is addressed in the books (though practically in passing) when a socially conscious/activist main character starts an organization opposed to house elf slavery, clarifying that it is conceivable to view it as i.e. worse than eating meat in-universe. Just that most characters don't care. This is silly to get into but again I regard it more as odd/funny than anything.
That's just Dobby. Normal house elfs are neither unhappy nor wish to leave.
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It's been a while since I read the Harry Potter books, but IIRC there's not much sign that other house elves besides Dobby don't want to be slaves. The problem is we hear so little from them that we're more-or-less just told that Dobby is an exception to the general rule that house elves are natural slaves.
Everyone remembers Dobby but the later books actually delve into the whole enforced but not necessarily unwanted servant relationship pretty well with Kreacher. An old, bitter, devoted to the concept of servanthood who hates his current (at character introduction) master and pines for his previous ones. Betrays the main cast but cannot be set free because of his knowledge of secrets and in a YA book for modern sensibilities, killing him is foreclosed as an option. Takes a liking to his new master who is initially very uncomfortable with the relationship but settles into a sense of normalcy. Has a heroic moment in the climactic battle but the literal last mention in the books is the protagonist wondering if the elf will bring his master a sandwich.
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Not only isn't there much sign house elves want freedom, we are shown the opposite. When Winky gets emancipated she's a depressed wreck afterwards, drinking and crying in the corner of the kitchen. And when she is asked if she gets paid by Dumbledore, she indignantly proclaims that she might be disgraced, but isn't so low as that. When Hermione tries to convince the other house elves about her cause, they are offended and push her out of the kitchen politely but firmly.
We don't get to see how house elf society in general feels, but at least the elves at Hogwarts do not want freedom.
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A wrinkle people often miss is that house elves supposedly are quite powerful themselves.
Powerful yes, but not so much as HP wizards who are in theory just shockingly OP.
I've always been drawn in to the setting partly by the idea that modern HP wizards (save a handful, like Voldemort and Dumbledore) are as silly, lazy & unoptimal in their use of magic as they are portrayed due to winning so hard against everything else that they no longer need to put in much effort.
Dobby casually overpowered Lucius Malfoy, a powerful Death Eater. And once upon a time the Elves fought a war against the wizards and lost so badly that their enslaved descendents shudder in horror at the thought of being freed.
Yes, HP wizards are quite strong but in the same way real world humans are. HP wizards can kill someone with a word but we baseline humans have, as far as combat is concerned, strictly better weaponry. It's true that in HP the castle disables technology and perhaps that's the kind of thing wizards can bring with them everywhere but wizards in HP really are only roughly as dangerous to eachother as the rest of us can trivially be if we allow the carry of our equivalent of wands. I was always disappointed in the lack of exploration of how a wizarding world would interact with the muggle world but I know think it was for the best. The HP world really just can't be resolved with living among muggles, especially not where any wizard is so poor.
You are absurdlyunderestimating how OP Harry Potter style Wizard's are. Wizard's powers are not equivalent to that of a modern human with a gun.
In an actual war between all of the muggle world and a group 10 talented wizards, the wizards would win in a single day. Apply an invisibility charm, aparate to Washington, imperio the President, do the same to all ranking cabinet members. Repeat for each country. Be back home for lunch. You already won, but you can spend the next week Aparating around under invisibility charm and casting imperio on everyone that matters.
That is a single trivial application of what you could do. It doesn't matter if a gun is better than an Avada Kadavra, a wizard should win every fight against a muggle without using any lethal force.
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I'll admit that not all wizards have access to the full magical arsenal, but HP wizards have:
-transformation, including perfect impersonation
-healing, regeneration & poison removal
-long-term mind control (Imperius curse alone solos the muggle world) and truth-detection
-limited time travel and the 'I win button' of perfect good luck
-invisibility, personal flight and teleportation
-installation cloaking (Hogwarts is nuke-proof because you can't target it)
-a million situational spells, potions, items & useful creatures that any given wizard might have access to, and will quickly proliferate if they prove useful (as, say, a ward against bullets might)
Wizards do not see muggles as a threat in the same way as humans don't really see bears as a threat - a careless human can easily die to a bear attack but this essentially never happens, and if humans ever decided to eradicate bears it would be an entirely one-sided affair.
Wizards can be poor because they don't have anything other wizards want & are barred by wizarding law (with downright spooky surveillance abilities) from participating on the muggle economy. But they're never truly destitute as long as they'vegot a wand, as they can magic up the rough neccessities of life in extrema.
More than that, you just cast an invisibility charm, apparate next to world leaders, Imperio them, repeat for people at every locus of control, and wizards control the muggle world.
Yup. And then have three options:
-commit to a grinding worldwide counter-insurgency against weak but numerous, intelligent and highly motivated foes, with no end in sight
-make the changes you want & then rebuild your masquerade and vanish from muggle perception. Memory charms arent perfect at information control, but you can probably limit the leakage to rumors & legends that magic was real in some past era...
I feel like the untold history of the HP world was pretty metal.
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Any Transfiguration master who knows where to read up on chemistry can, as HPMoR demonstrates, cause death and mayhem far more efficiently than if he had an automatic gun, or even a rocket launcher.
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