Is it anywhere stated or implied who the Headmaster of Hogwarts was when Dumbledore was at school? This would have been c.1892-99. Could it have been Phineas Nigellus, or do the dates make that impossible?
Yes, Lupin does say this, but it is contradicted elsewhere. In HBP, Ch 20, we learn more or less exactly the year Dumbledore became headmaster by following Voldemort's timeline.
We know from CoS that Tom Riddle was 16 in 1942, and in HBP, we learn that he was born on New Year's Eve, meaning he would have been born in Dec of 1925, and would have been at Hogwarts from 1937-1944. Immediately after finishing school, he asked Headmaster Dippet for the DADA teaching post and was refused on the grounds that he was too young, so he took at job at Borgin and Burkes instead. The scene Dumbledore shows Harry in the Pensieve of Riddle learning about Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup takes place no more than a year or two after this, so 1945/46. Then Dumbledore shows Harry his own memory of Voldemort returning to ask for the DADA job again, which takes place ten year later (1955/56), and Voldemort mentions that Dumbledore has only recently become Headmaster. So McGonagall likely took over the Transfiguration job when Dumbledore moved up.
Rowling is not well known for keeping her timelines tidy, but I'm more inclined to accept this version of events than Lupin's offhand statement, since he was born in 1960, and became a werewolf as a young child, so maybe around 1965.
But I guess none of this is here nor there for the OP, since whenever Phineas Nigellus Black was headmaster, he was long dead by this time.
Well, I don't insist on it being Phineas. That would be interesting and useful for ficcing purposes, but it was more a case of not wanting to get it wrong than needing it to be someone in particular. :)
I think the latter must be wrong (i.e., that Rowling forgot or didn't think clearly about the fact that Dumbledore wouldn't have been head yet), because Lupin would otherwise never have had the experience at all, of feeling that he wouldn't be able to go and then suddenly hallelujah. He would be saying something like "It was lucky that Dumbledore was headmaster then too, because otherwise I might never have been able to go to Hogwarts."
It's also possible that Lupin is misremembering, because he would have been very young at the time that this all went down. He might not know when Dumbledore started as Headmaster, and only know that there was conflict with the Ministry over his ability to go to school or not, which Dumbledore eventually won. Since McGonagall began as Transfiguration mistress in ~1955 (according to her statement to Umbridge in OotP), it only seems to make sense that the position was vacant at the time. At no point do we ever see more than one professor at a time teaching a given subject (apart from Trelawney and Firenze in OotP, but that's an unusual circumstance for which Dumbledore is exploiting a loophole). My feeling is that Rowling hadn't quite thought out the timeline for all this when she was writing PoA, but since everything subsequent to Lupin's comment suggests that Dumbledore became headmaster in the mid-1950's, I think it must be considered canon.
We know from CoS that Tom Riddle was 16 in 1942, and in HBP, we learn that he was born on New Year's Eve, meaning he would have been born in Dec of 1925, and would have been at Hogwarts from 1937-1944. Immediately after finishing school, he asked Headmaster Dippet for the DADA teaching post and was refused on the grounds that he was too young, so he took at job at Borgin and Burkes instead. The scene Dumbledore shows Harry in the Pensieve of Riddle learning about Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup takes place no more than a year or two after this, so 1945/46. Then Dumbledore shows Harry his own memory of Voldemort returning to ask for the DADA job again, which takes place ten year later (1955/56), and Voldemort mentions that Dumbledore has only recently become Headmaster. So McGonagall likely took over the Transfiguration job when Dumbledore moved up.
Rowling is not well known for keeping her timelines tidy, but I'm more inclined to accept this version of events than Lupin's offhand statement, since he was born in 1960, and became a werewolf as a young child, so maybe around 1965.
But I guess none of this is here nor there for the OP, since whenever Phineas Nigellus Black was headmaster, he was long dead by this time.
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