The Winning Streakjana_chDecember 3 2017, 02:01:24 UTC
On the principle of Occam’s Razor, I prefer to assume that Dumbledore, for whom good pedagogic practice is a low priority, simply threw his indentured double agent in the deep end and made him Potions Master and Head of Slytherin at the tender age of twenty-one. If so, the only noteworthy thing we know about Severus as an extremely young Head of House is that he presided over Slytherin’s seven-year streak of winning the House Cup beginning only three years after he took the job-a streak which would have continued had it not been brought to an end by Dumbledore’s theft of the Cup in Harry’s first year. I have put together a timeline of Severus’s early years as House Head.
Severus’s final year as a Hogwarts student was 1977-1978; his first year as a teacher was 1981-1982. When he started teaching, the current fifth, sixth, and seventh years had all known him as a student, though not necessarily well. They had been first, second, and third years in 1977-78. Slytherin’s seven-year winning streak began in 1984-85, the first year in which there were no students at Hogwarts who had actually seen Snivellus bullied by the Marauders. You’d think many of them would have heard about it from siblings or school gossip, but at least they hadn’t been there. If we can attribute the winning streak to Snape’s leadership, then he had taken only three years to crush the gossip and rally his serpents behind him against the rest of the school.
One way in which Snape differs from Slughorn is that his loyalty is very much focused on Slytherin House. Harry calls this favoritism, but in fact it’s part of his job description as Head of Slytherin. He protects and advocates for his students; all the Slytherins know he has their backs, whether they’re targeted by students of other Houses or feel they’re treated unfairly by other teachers. Under Slughorn, those Slytherins who didn’t qualify for the Slug Club may well have felt neglected. Their Head should have been looking out for them, and instead he focused on a mixed group of personal favorites. The Slug Club itself was a good thing, giving students a way to socialize across House lines, and facilitating the entrance of talented newcomers into wizarding culture. But it would have been better if it had been run by someone who was not a Head of House. Dumping the Slug Club and giving all his attention to his Slytherins must have won Severus their loyalty and personal respect despite his youth and half-blood status. It probably didn’t take long for Slytherin House to notice the difference between Snape and Slughorn, and to respond to Snape’s support with careful good behavior (in public) and hard work in class, both of which would gain House points, and lead to the winning streak.
Re: The Winning StreaksunnyskywalkerDecember 3 2017, 03:23:07 UTC
You're probably right about JKR's intentions. On the bright side, I guess 21-year-old House Head Snape teaching students he overlapped with would allow for drama...? Dumbledore was just being considerate to fic writers, yeah, that's it!
Good point that the Slug Club shouldn't have been run by a Head of House. In fact, that might be a good role for the Headmaster to fill. You know, if they had a hands-on headmaster. They're supposed to be enough above House divisions to administer the entire school, and presumably Headmasters are usually well-connected. House Heads could focus on cultivating their own students and then nominate them for the Headmaster's club in fourth or fifth year.
Headmaster Slughornjana_chDecember 3 2017, 07:20:35 UTC
Who’s up for an alternate universe tale in which Horace Slughorn instead of Albus Dumbledore follows Armando Dippet as Headmaster? Albus could go off and fight dark lords on his own time without wrecking wizarding Britain’s educational system as a sideline. Binns is gently eased into retirement; Hagrid is never promoted from assistant groundskeeper; Trelawney supports herself reading cards and tea leaves at Madame Puddifoot’s; Severus gets a dunderhead-free position as a potions researcher in Australia, along with an Aussie girlfriend and a nice tan.
Oh yes, and the Marauders: Remus is home-schooled; the elder Mr Potter is persuaded to keep his valuable heirloom invisibility cloak at home after he learns how his son has been misusing it; endless hours of shuttle diplomacy keep Sirius and his family marginally reconciled until after graduation at least…and Peter is ignored.
Re: Headmaster SlughornsunnyskywalkerDecember 3 2017, 17:28:52 UTC
Dumbledore could also spend more time on his Wizengamot and International Confederation of Wizards duties, whatever those are!
As flawed a headmaster as Slughorn would have been in some respects, his networking powers probably would have solved some of the problems that festered under Dumbledore's inaction and conflicts of interest, as you point out. He'd ignore some students, but Dumbledore ignored most of them anyway, so they'd be no worse off. Slytherin wouldn't be cast as the Evil House of Evildoers, and inter-House networking would be encouraged.
I wonder whether he would have made efforts to counter Voldemort's appeal to some of the students, or whether he would have been too afraid to touch the issue? (So, again no worse than what happened under Dumbledore.)
There's also managing the school's endowments (or however they fund it) and hitting up alumni for donations. Slughorn probably would have been much better at that. I bet the Blacks and the Potters would find themselves being reminded of how much he'd done to keep their heirs out of trouble, for starters. Don't they want to show their gratitude to the school in material form? Wouldn't it be a fitting legacy for the Potters to replace all the school brooms? With enough fundraising, maybe they could even afford assistant teachers for the overloaded departments!
Oh yeah, and dealing with complaints. Which must be a full-time job in itself. Slughorn would have gotten a secretary to help out.
Being a hands-on headmaster would be a ton of work, and pretty thankless most of the time. No wonder Slughorn didn't want the job. No time to enjoy life. But surely there's someone, somewhere in the ww who would want the job and be good at it.
Re: Headmaster Slughornjana_chDecember 3 2017, 22:54:58 UTC
Slughorn would probably hesitate to do anything too obvious to counter Voldemort’s appeal to his students, but there is a lot he could do under the cover of good pedagogic practice-beginning, as you said, with not treating Slytherin as the House of Villains. Whereas Dumbledore saw ambition as something to be crushed (“Ambition made me kill my baby sister!”), Slughorn sees it as something to be encouraged and guided into beneficial channels. The Slug Club, now sponsored by the Headmaster, offers Slytherin students (and others) opportunities to gain legitimate power in the wizarding world so they don’t feel the need to take up with a charismatic outsider. It also doesn’t hurt that Horace, despite having adopted modern liberal ideas, clearly retains many of his old-fashioned prejudices about blood status. The Blacks and the Malfoys will say, “He’s moved with the times because that’s what you have to do to get ahead these days, but deep down he still has the right ideas.”
The other thing Horace could do is put a lot of careful effort into finding a counter-Voldemort replacement for himself as Head of Slytherin. The new Slytherin Head of House takes on the risks of openly opposing Voldemort’s ideology while Headmaster Slughorn remains above it all. Sluggy needs a pureblood (or a mixed-blood with a lot of important pureblood connections) who is genuinely liberal on the issue of blood status but not self-righteous about it. Ideally the new Head would protect and support Slytherin students the way Severus does, and thereby win their respect and loyalty, but be able (as Severus was not, due to his double agent role) to guide them away from Voldemort and convince them they have a future in mainstream wizarding culture. Finding someone like that would not be easy, but if Horace thought it would atone for his mistake in the matter of the horcruxes, he might well be willing draw on all his networking skills to achieve it. I wouldn’t put it past him to have the imagination to look beyond Hogwarts alumni and find someone from an old, high-status pureblood family on the Continent who had historically opposed Grindlewald but had, as yet, expressed no explicit opinion about the new Dark Lord.
And Headmaster Slughorn would definitely hire a secretary, a bursar, and a personal assistant or two. Or three.
P.S. By the way, I don’t think Slughorn would actually retire Binns. He’s not that dedicated to high educational standards. But he would not hire Trelawney or promote Hagrid, and Severus would never have applied for a teaching job if he hadn’t been forced into it.
Re: Headmaster SlughornsunnyskywalkerDecember 4 2017, 03:53:44 UTC
Ooh, a Continental hire has all kinds of possibilities. Viktor Krum's grandfather was murdered by Grindlewald; I wonder whether he has a great uncle or great aunt who opposed him and survived? Though a Beauxbatons grad might be an easier sell than a Durmstrang grad, at least initially.
Heck, why not let Slughorn enjoy semi-retirement as a professor emeritus running his club on campus and get Continental hires for Slytherin Head and Headmaster. One from Beauxbatons, one from Durmstrang. Maybe they each have a British parent or aunt or something so they can claim connection to the Grand Traditions of HogwartsTM. Have three people on campus mentoring students and teaching them to network. They'd probably focus on different students and use different methods, which would be a good thing.
Re: Headmaster Slughornoryx_leucoryxDecember 4 2017, 23:15:06 UTC
Slughorn would be limited in countering Voldemort if (as I think) he did not know who this newcomer Voldemort type was. When Tom came back he looked very different, and he seems to have avoided close contact with those who knew him previously apart from that one interview with Dumbles and the group of close 'friends'. My pet theory is that the reason Dumbles easily had an open position for Severus when he needed one was because that was when Horace realized (or was helped in realizing) who exactly Voldemort was. Prior to that all Horace saw of Voldemort was photographs in the Prophet, if there were any. So he did not know that his mistakes regarding the Horcruxes had anything to do with the crises.
Re: Headmaster SlughornmaidofkentDecember 5 2017, 16:44:21 UTC
I have wondered whether the situation in 1981 could have been a reverse of the one at the start of HBP. As you say, Dumbledore needed an open position for Severus, and he did not want that to be the DADA post. Why not ask his old 'friend' Sluggy to teach DADA for a year - difficult times, Dumbledore needs someone skilled and loyal in the post, and it would only be for a year, then you can go back to Potions. Young Snape could cover meanwhile.
That way, Slughorn remains as head of Slytherin in September 1981, allowing Severus the necessary free time to dance, apparently, to Voldemort's orders.
If Slughorn came to realise in whatever way that Voldemort was the same person as the charmer with the interest in Horcruxes, and then resigned in guilt, that would then be the DADA curse in action.
Interesting comments, all! I do wonder, though, whether we might be missing a point. How much is the position of headmaster of Hogwarts purely ceremonial? Just because in our world a school head has an actual function doesn't meant the Hogwarts head does.
Not to start a hare, but is there canon for what Dumbles actually DOES, day to day?
Re: ThanklessmaidofkentDecember 6 2017, 10:20:29 UTC
We know from CoS that the Governors can override the Head on occasion, but that would be the same in a Muggle school, where the Head has considerable day to day power.
Dumbles seems to be the one in charge of hiring - he interviews Tom and Sybill, brings in Remus when he wishes to (acto Pottermore), replaces Sybill with Firenze, and it is only when he can't find a DADA hire that the Ministry sends in Umbridge.
We know that Lucius Malfoy thinks that Dumbledore is the worst thing to have happened to Hogwarts, which implys a great deal of power for DD, but of course Lucius might know or suspect more than most about DD's extra-curricular activities at the school.
I suppose the best answer to the question of whether the Head Master has actual rather than ceremonial power is that both Albus and Tom want the position
Re: Thanklessoryx_leucoryxDecember 6 2017, 16:11:54 UTC
Not only does the headmaster hire the teachers, he can single-handedly eliminate a subject (or so it seems) - Dumbles claims to have intended to eliminate Divination. (And may have been the reason no Alchemy class opened in decades).
And obviously, the headmaster controls the protections of Hogwarts.
Re: Thanklessoryx_leucoryxDecember 6 2017, 16:29:27 UTC
It seems Lucius' complaints were about Dumbles' policies regarding Muggle-born students, but we know nothing (or very little) about policies of previous headmasters.
Re: ThanklesssunnyskywalkerDecember 6 2017, 19:36:19 UTC
Oh, now that is an interesting question. After all, the school originally had four heads, working in concert, and no headmaster over them. Maybe originally the House Heads appointed a Headmaster just to mediate between them! The position wasn't Head Master, it was Master of the Heads. Slightly different. The Board of Governors probably came later, or grew out of some lesser, pre-existing liason with the government. And possibly the Headmaster gained power over the centuries.
Okay. Dumbledore says he could have eliminated Divination, as Oryx points out. But Divination is an elective (as is Alchemy). Could the Headmaster eliminate Transfiguration or Potions or another core subject? Somehow I suspect not. (Well, maybe Astronomy, after a couple more decades of its importance in ceremonial magic being downplayed to the point where most wizards think it's pointless.)
He also controls the protections of Hogwarts, again as Oryx notes. He can lift the anti-Apparition enchantments at will, do whatever he did when he and Harry flew across the walls, and possibly influence the "don't hurt the students" spells from his office, if such exist. These are notable powers, but they are also what you would expect for a position designed to keep the four Heads from fighting each other for supremacy. The Hufflepuff Head can't get mad at the Ravenclaw Head and remove the anti-Apparition enchantments in Ravenclaw Tower so the 'puffs can invade and trash their common room, or whatever. And for that matter, we don't know whether the four Heads in concert might not have the same powers over the Hogwarts protections. That would be an important check against a power-hungry Head, one might think.
The Keeper of the Keys also has the power to admit people to Hogwarts, as I think you hashed out a few years back. Another check on the Headmaster.
I just looked at the arrival of the Beaxbatons and Durmstrang delegations, and it's interesting. Hagrid is "with other charges"; the kids think with the skrewts, but for all we know he's lurking out of sight with his pink umbrella doing... something. Dumbledore is standing in the back row, and the kids probably wouldn't know if he'd lifted any enchantments or not. He does specifically tell Maxime "Welcome to Hogwarts." Karkaroff seems to have been there before. And who knows whether there's a magical difference between "being allowed onto the grounds/castle by the Headmaster" and "being admitted to Hogwarts by the Keeper of the Keys"?
Hiring, okay. That was probably done by the four Heads in committee originally. Once they got a Headmaster, maybe that person initially hired for electives, with the Heads' approval, and there was just... mission creep over the years, plus influence from Muggle culture. Maybe Phineas was so unpopular because he claimed more powers for the Headmaster, which have never been given back. Dippet probably kept to the status quo. But Dumbledore has claimed even more. We might look at him as not doing much, but maybe he's the headmaster with the most executive power in Hogwarts history.
What DOES he do most of the day, though? Are those little silver instruments Dumbledore's, or the Headmaster's? What do most of them do?
McGonagall seems to make the schedules and other admin work, so whatever Dumbledore does, it probably isn't that. Maybe he really is managing the money.
Severus’s final year as a Hogwarts student was 1977-1978; his first year as a teacher was 1981-1982. When he started teaching, the current fifth, sixth, and seventh years had all known him as a student, though not necessarily well. They had been first, second, and third years in 1977-78. Slytherin’s seven-year winning streak began in 1984-85, the first year in which there were no students at Hogwarts who had actually seen Snivellus bullied by the Marauders. You’d think many of them would have heard about it from siblings or school gossip, but at least they hadn’t been there. If we can attribute the winning streak to Snape’s leadership, then he had taken only three years to crush the gossip and rally his serpents behind him against the rest of the school.
One way in which Snape differs from Slughorn is that his loyalty is very much focused on Slytherin House. Harry calls this favoritism, but in fact it’s part of his job description as Head of Slytherin. He protects and advocates for his students; all the Slytherins know he has their backs, whether they’re targeted by students of other Houses or feel they’re treated unfairly by other teachers. Under Slughorn, those Slytherins who didn’t qualify for the Slug Club may well have felt neglected. Their Head should have been looking out for them, and instead he focused on a mixed group of personal favorites. The Slug Club itself was a good thing, giving students a way to socialize across House lines, and facilitating the entrance of talented newcomers into wizarding culture. But it would have been better if it had been run by someone who was not a Head of House. Dumping the Slug Club and giving all his attention to his Slytherins must have won Severus their loyalty and personal respect despite his youth and half-blood status. It probably didn’t take long for Slytherin House to notice the difference between Snape and Slughorn, and to respond to Snape’s support with careful good behavior (in public) and hard work in class, both of which would gain House points, and lead to the winning streak.
Reply
Good point that the Slug Club shouldn't have been run by a Head of House. In fact, that might be a good role for the Headmaster to fill. You know, if they had a hands-on headmaster. They're supposed to be enough above House divisions to administer the entire school, and presumably Headmasters are usually well-connected. House Heads could focus on cultivating their own students and then nominate them for the Headmaster's club in fourth or fifth year.
Reply
Oh yes, and the Marauders: Remus is home-schooled; the elder Mr Potter is persuaded to keep his valuable heirloom invisibility cloak at home after he learns how his son has been misusing it; endless hours of shuttle diplomacy keep Sirius and his family marginally reconciled until after graduation at least…and Peter is ignored.
Reply
As flawed a headmaster as Slughorn would have been in some respects, his networking powers probably would have solved some of the problems that festered under Dumbledore's inaction and conflicts of interest, as you point out. He'd ignore some students, but Dumbledore ignored most of them anyway, so they'd be no worse off. Slytherin wouldn't be cast as the Evil House of Evildoers, and inter-House networking would be encouraged.
I wonder whether he would have made efforts to counter Voldemort's appeal to some of the students, or whether he would have been too afraid to touch the issue? (So, again no worse than what happened under Dumbledore.)
There's also managing the school's endowments (or however they fund it) and hitting up alumni for donations. Slughorn probably would have been much better at that. I bet the Blacks and the Potters would find themselves being reminded of how much he'd done to keep their heirs out of trouble, for starters. Don't they want to show their gratitude to the school in material form? Wouldn't it be a fitting legacy for the Potters to replace all the school brooms? With enough fundraising, maybe they could even afford assistant teachers for the overloaded departments!
Oh yeah, and dealing with complaints. Which must be a full-time job in itself. Slughorn would have gotten a secretary to help out.
Being a hands-on headmaster would be a ton of work, and pretty thankless most of the time. No wonder Slughorn didn't want the job. No time to enjoy life. But surely there's someone, somewhere in the ww who would want the job and be good at it.
Reply
The other thing Horace could do is put a lot of careful effort into finding a counter-Voldemort replacement for himself as Head of Slytherin. The new Slytherin Head of House takes on the risks of openly opposing Voldemort’s ideology while Headmaster Slughorn remains above it all. Sluggy needs a pureblood (or a mixed-blood with a lot of important pureblood connections) who is genuinely liberal on the issue of blood status but not self-righteous about it. Ideally the new Head would protect and support Slytherin students the way Severus does, and thereby win their respect and loyalty, but be able (as Severus was not, due to his double agent role) to guide them away from Voldemort and convince them they have a future in mainstream wizarding culture. Finding someone like that would not be easy, but if Horace thought it would atone for his mistake in the matter of the horcruxes, he might well be willing draw on all his networking skills to achieve it. I wouldn’t put it past him to have the imagination to look beyond Hogwarts alumni and find someone from an old, high-status pureblood family on the Continent who had historically opposed Grindlewald but had, as yet, expressed no explicit opinion about the new Dark Lord.
And Headmaster Slughorn would definitely hire a secretary, a bursar, and a personal assistant or two. Or three.
P.S. By the way, I don’t think Slughorn would actually retire Binns. He’s not that dedicated to high educational standards. But he would not hire Trelawney or promote Hagrid, and Severus would never have applied for a teaching job if he hadn’t been forced into it.
Reply
Heck, why not let Slughorn enjoy semi-retirement as a professor emeritus running his club on campus and get Continental hires for Slytherin Head and Headmaster. One from Beauxbatons, one from Durmstrang. Maybe they each have a British parent or aunt or something so they can claim connection to the Grand Traditions of HogwartsTM. Have three people on campus mentoring students and teaching them to network. They'd probably focus on different students and use different methods, which would be a good thing.
Reply
Reply
That way, Slughorn remains as head of Slytherin in September 1981, allowing Severus the necessary free time to dance, apparently, to Voldemort's orders.
If Slughorn came to realise in whatever way that Voldemort was the same person as the charmer with the interest in Horcruxes, and then resigned in guilt, that would then be the DADA curse in action.
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Not to start a hare, but is there canon for what Dumbles actually DOES, day to day?
Reply
Dumbles seems to be the one in charge of hiring - he interviews Tom and Sybill, brings in Remus when he wishes to (acto Pottermore), replaces Sybill with Firenze, and it is only when he can't find a DADA hire that the Ministry sends in Umbridge.
We know that Lucius Malfoy thinks that Dumbledore is the worst thing to have happened to Hogwarts, which implys a great deal of power for DD, but of course Lucius might know or suspect more than most about DD's extra-curricular activities at the school.
I suppose the best answer to the question of whether the Head Master has actual rather than ceremonial power is that both Albus and Tom want the position
Reply
And obviously, the headmaster controls the protections of Hogwarts.
Reply
Reply
Okay. Dumbledore says he could have eliminated Divination, as Oryx points out. But Divination is an elective (as is Alchemy). Could the Headmaster eliminate Transfiguration or Potions or another core subject? Somehow I suspect not. (Well, maybe Astronomy, after a couple more decades of its importance in ceremonial magic being downplayed to the point where most wizards think it's pointless.)
He also controls the protections of Hogwarts, again as Oryx notes. He can lift the anti-Apparition enchantments at will, do whatever he did when he and Harry flew across the walls, and possibly influence the "don't hurt the students" spells from his office, if such exist. These are notable powers, but they are also what you would expect for a position designed to keep the four Heads from fighting each other for supremacy. The Hufflepuff Head can't get mad at the Ravenclaw Head and remove the anti-Apparition enchantments in Ravenclaw Tower so the 'puffs can invade and trash their common room, or whatever. And for that matter, we don't know whether the four Heads in concert might not have the same powers over the Hogwarts protections. That would be an important check against a power-hungry Head, one might think.
The Keeper of the Keys also has the power to admit people to Hogwarts, as I think you hashed out a few years back. Another check on the Headmaster.
I just looked at the arrival of the Beaxbatons and Durmstrang delegations, and it's interesting. Hagrid is "with other charges"; the kids think with the skrewts, but for all we know he's lurking out of sight with his pink umbrella doing... something. Dumbledore is standing in the back row, and the kids probably wouldn't know if he'd lifted any enchantments or not. He does specifically tell Maxime "Welcome to Hogwarts." Karkaroff seems to have been there before. And who knows whether there's a magical difference between "being allowed onto the grounds/castle by the Headmaster" and "being admitted to Hogwarts by the Keeper of the Keys"?
Hiring, okay. That was probably done by the four Heads in committee originally. Once they got a Headmaster, maybe that person initially hired for electives, with the Heads' approval, and there was just... mission creep over the years, plus influence from Muggle culture. Maybe Phineas was so unpopular because he claimed more powers for the Headmaster, which have never been given back. Dippet probably kept to the status quo. But Dumbledore has claimed even more. We might look at him as not doing much, but maybe he's the headmaster with the most executive power in Hogwarts history.
What DOES he do most of the day, though? Are those little silver instruments Dumbledore's, or the Headmaster's? What do most of them do?
McGonagall seems to make the schedules and other admin work, so whatever Dumbledore does, it probably isn't that. Maybe he really is managing the money.
Reply
Leave a comment