In retrospect, I was putting far too much weight on Dumbledore's prognostication that Azkaban was out of the question. My model of Dumbledore didn't make mistakes like that.

Also, if the Wizengamut went around house-elfing people, that's pretty much guaranteed to make Harry declare war on them, which seemed like an obvious goal of the story arc even back then.

But I doubt it will come up in the story again, so unless EY weighs in, I'm not sure if we'll know one way or the other.