A Headmaster other than Albus

[oryx_leucoryx]

So here is an idea for an AU scenario. Anyone is free to develop it into a fic, but we can just discuss the what-if:

Sometime between November 2nd 1981 and July 1991 Albus Dumbledore died suddenly. Maybe in some magical mishap, maybe a sudden heart attack, whatever. The important bit is he didn't expect this to happen and had no time to do any ad-hoc cover-ups nor did he have a chance to influence the choice of his replacement or to incorporate his death into some plot. The permanent replacement is chosen by the Board of Governors. If this happens early enough Lucius isn't yet on the board, if later he is on, but probably still trying to earn a reputation as an outstanding member of society who would have never joined forces with Voldemort willingly so I don't think he'd support anyone blatantly against the inclusion of Muggleborns. Anyway, the replacement turns out to be someone not as outwardly impressive as Dumbles - not so showy, with perhaps average or slightly above average magical performance, but a capable administrator with good organizational and interpersonal skills, but most importantly someone who cares about the students' well-being and education. It can be someone from Slughorn's network or even someone who thought well of Albus as long as s/he didn't have a chance to look too closely at how Hogwarts was run, but definitely not an Order member or any other close associate of Dumbles. Maybe an older, more experienced and less idealistic version of Percy.

The members of the Hogwarts staff are as we know them in PS (Care of Magical Creatures is taught by Kettleburn, Hagrid is still a groundskeeper), except for DADA. Depending on timing, Quirrell might be the Muggle Studies teacher. I think the DADA curse should still be active, so the teachers are still being replaced annually (we don't want the new school Head to have it too easy).

So I think this new person shows up and tries to run Hogwarts like a normal school. Some teachers object because that's not the way it was always done, some are relieved to have a professional in charge for a change. The handling of disciplinary matters changes. The inter-House politics change.

And then in the summer of 1991 Quirrell comes back from a sabbatical with a personally transplant. And one Harry Potter oddly doesn't reply to his acceptance letter to Hogwarts. (I doubt the new Head had a reason to look into Harry's situation of hir own initiative earlier, but maybe someone can make a convincing argument for that?) So what now?

Comments

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Well, I expect they do! Just because DH (and, IMHO, HBP) were more carelessly written than the earlier books. But -

You've asked two very good questions: why are these books such a mess, and why did we ever think they weren't? I believe both have the same answer. My grand unified theory of the Potterverse is called "Harry Potter and the Mores of the 19th Century". I can't remember if you've read it already; if you haven't, you can find it here: http://mary-j-59.livejournal.com/28732.html

Basically, Rowling has a lot of talent, humor and energy, and she also knows a lot of classic British literature. But she was, I think, writing these books completely off the top of her head. There is a lot of emotion in them - at least, the earlier books - and some of us responded to that. There's also her dry wit and all the wacky little details - again, those things were much more obvious in the first books.

But, as someone said, either in the comments to my essay or elsewhere, the echoes of depth so many of us perceived in Rowling were, quite simply, echoes of other literature. She borrowed motifs from Dickens, the Brontes, Dante, Tom Brown's Schooldays, The Worst Witch, fairy tales - you name it. And she threw these things together in a kind of hodgepodge, without considering the implications of anything. And - very important - without rereading, and without rewriting. So you get classic 19th-century anti-Semitic stereotypes in a set of books that purport to be against prejudice; you get bullying heroes in books that purport to be against bullying, and so on. Rowling just borrowed stuff wholesale and never, IMHO, considered the implications of any of it, whether good or bad.*

And that, again in my opinion, is how we ended up with the rather pernicious mess that is Harry Potter.

The other thing you have to consider is the publishing pattern. Rowling had three books ready to go when the first was accepted, and she was publishing a series. The publishers must have been thrilled! Here were these action-packed "boy books", three set to publish and four more to come. The first three books were published in less than two years - I was going to say, about a year, but I don't honestly remember. At any rate, it was fast. And the kids got more and more eager for the sequels, and we adults began reading along. And, honestly, the books were fun. We had a blast at our Harry Potter parties at the library - at least, until we hit HBP. That was just ponderously grim and boring. Nothing to celebrate any more.

So the phenomenon is about 1/2 echoes of other, often truly great, literature, and 1/2 clever marketing. But there was never any real substance to it.

My two cents!

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

My grand unified theory of the Potterverse is called "Harry Potter and the Mores of the 19th Century".

I hadn't read it; thank you for the reference.

In that essay you essentially show the tropes/characters of 19th century literature which Rowling stole for her own work. In my own mind I've never limited her to just the 19th century. :-) Maybe because I've read so few classics. But yes, I've always thought that Rowling copied bits and pieces from all over the place, popular culture, Celtic myth - your literary classics - anywhere and anything, and just tossed them into the pot. *without thinking*. It's those last two words which are the crux as to why the series failed so badly.

As I commented just now on your essay, I think it's the skills that a professional author requires as he approaches the 'end game' of a series - the logic, the common sense, the dedication to detail, the ability to see options - which come to the fore and are needed the most. And the closer Rowling got to the end of her series ... the more she failed. I present "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" as the ultimate proof of that.

And it's those *very same skills* which would have been needed to give anything other than superficial treatment to Rowling's copied literary devices. So I think we can use DH as a sort of proof that Rowling lacked the ability to reason her way through what she'd done in her earlier books.

(Of course, the fact that she never re-read her work means it's only us, and not her, who will ever backtrack and tie all this together.)

Sometimes I come across fans who try to give Rowling a free pass because of her 'world building' ... in the earlier books. Pfah. It's *easy* to 'world build' when you're just tossing anything that catches your fancy into the mix - "off the top of her head", as you say - and there's no demand (yet) on making sense of it all and tying it all together. The hard part comes when you get into that 'end game'.

The sad thing is, billionaire Rowling wouldn't have learnt that lesson. Her interviews, a year after DH was published, had her still trying to lecture people on how to read her work and saturated with self-congratulatory pats on the back as to how clever she'd been. Sigh.

She borrowed motifs from Dickens, the Brontes, Dante, Tom Brown's Schooldays, The Worst Witch, fairy tales

I'm so glad you threw in 'The Worst Witch' there. Look, between the whole British 'public school' genre and The Worst Witch I think Rowling's celebrated 'originality' is very much exaggerated. I watched a couple of episodes of 'The Worst Witch' a few years ago. Okay, the television series was after PS, but the books and a couple of the movies were well before Rowling had her little train journey epiphany. Shucks, her childhood years were right smack in the middle of the books, I believe. Conscious copying or unconscious, I just can't join in the idolatry for her 'original thinking'.

So the phenomenon is about 1/2 echoes of other, often truly great, literature, and 1/2 clever marketing

I didn't know that about the three books being 'ready to go'. I only knew what HP was about with book #4.

It's still amazing that it became *so huge*, though. Would there be any truth to my speculating that, maybe, Rowling's work was the first instance of the British 'public school' genre to be (aggressively) marketed in the USA? I mean ... as an Australian I grew up with Dr. Who, for example, and I'm occasionally bemused by the posts of Americans who have no idea as to the history of the long-running show and think the current series is the best thing since sliced bread. I'm just wondering if Harry Potter was the first mass-marketed infusion of British 'public school' fiction for American children?

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

I actually have an answer for why the series became so popular, especially among people under 40, and it's not at all flattering to those people, but I haven't finished the article yet, so you'll have to wait for the explanation. BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

You DASTARDLY person, you!!!

I'm really curious. The acceptance of the last few books can be chalked up to how huge the HP juggernaut had become - nothing could stop it, it's human nature for fans to clump together and reassure each other that they're right, the series is wonderful, don't the emperor's new clothes look great? - but what made it so popular to start with?

Marketing, maybe, although it would be nice to pull out some real facts about that, about anything that Rowling's publisher did with her first books that had never been done before.

Otherwise ... I honestly did think I might be on to something with my idea that Americans hadn't really been exposed to the whole British Public School thing until Rowling's first books were pushed in front of them. Not being an American I don't really know if there's anything to my theory.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

It's possible, I guess, but I think it's important to realize that in America, boarding schools are usually considered a form of child abuse, so we don't have romantic ideas about stories featuring them. By "child abuse," I mean we don't send our kids to boarding schools unless (1) the parents are rich and want their kids to go to a fancy prep school; (2) the kids have some horrible mental disorder or behavior problem, in which case they go to a military school or boarding school that combines schooling with therapy. The stereotype of boarding schools in America is that that's where rich, selfish, uninvolved parents send their kids because they don't want to be bothered with actually raising them.

In order to figure out what made HP so popular, you have to compare it with other kids' series that came out at about the same time, such as Warriors, Percy Jackson, and Series of Unfortunate Events. If you look at the differences between those series and HP, you can see what makes HP so popular--and it isn't pretty.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that about US private schools. Mind you, I'm thrown off by the daily US sitcoms which have the school kids wearing normal clothing - THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN SCHOOL UNIFORMS DANG IT - and those bright yellow buses. And the (free?) school lunches.

If you look at the differences between those series and HP, you can see what makes HP so popular--and it isn't pretty.

Do tell ...

(Okay, I'll wait for your article.)

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Again, US public (i.e., publicly funded, open to everyone) schools don't have uniforms (although they do have dress codes), unless the students are out of control, and that's a way of getting them back under control. Uniforms are therefore considered a form of punishment: "If you kids behaved yourselves, you could dress the way you wanted." For example, where I live, there is only one school--a middle school--that has uniforms because it had such horrendous behavior problems, and such low academic achievement, that the state took it over because the county couldn't handle it. And yes, many schools have free lunches, and even free breakfasts, for poor students. Where I live, the breakfasts are limited to elementary and middle schools, but the lunches go all the way through high school. And we do indeed have bright yellow buses.

[sunnyskywalker]

Just to note, there are also school lunches you have to pay for,* in the less-poor districts, which seems wrong given that "lunch" seems an awfully optimistic descriptor. I think they seriously consider ketchup a vegetable for government purposes, so they can claim the food is healthy.

*Which is where you get the trope of the kid who's always getting beaten up for his lunch money.

[oryx_leucoryx]

There's a level of income under which a student qualifies for free lunch, a still poor but not that much student can get lunch at a reduced price and over that level a student can buy lunch for its full price or bring lunch from home.

I'm not so sure how breakfast works, but in my district it seems only those schools that have a high percent of students from low income families even serve breakfast (kids who qualify for free lunch also qualify for free breakfast, others can buy it, I'm not sure what happens to low-income kids in schools where the number of low-income students is under the cut-off).

[sunnyskywalker]

They probably go hungry, do more poorly as a result, and get tagged as "not good students" :( I don't remember my elementary school serving breakfast, but it's possibly they did and I was just oblivious. Given the demographics they might not have, though.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the way it works where I live, also. I sub at both upscale and poor schools, and the free breakfasts are only offered at the poor schools. At the upscale schools, kids just go hungry until lunch if they don't get fed at home.

[oneandthetruth.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know, I work as a substitute teacher, so I know all the permutations of school food services. I don't know if ketchup is a vegetable, but recently the right wing nuts (wingnuts?) won a battle to keep pizza listed as a vegetable because of the tomato sauce. They also use a lot of potatoes, canned fruit (peaches, mixed fruit, and mandarin oranges), salads made from iceberg lettuce, and what vegetables they have tend to be overcooked and soggy. Then there's the white bread and government surplus cheese. Yuck!

I don't really blame the schools, though. They're cooking for hundreds of people at each school, trying to find something reasonably nutritious and economical that the kids will eat. It's a very hard job, particularly when you consider most Americans don't eat that well to begin with, so even if the schools do offer better foods, the kids may not eat it because they're used to having junk at home.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Yes. There are occasionally local initiatives in assorted districts to make school food healthier and often the kids don't eat it, so what's the point? And there are strict limits on how much the production of a school meal can cost.

[sunnyskywalker]

Part of the problem is which foods the government subsidizes to begin with to make them cheaper (like corn and all its derivatives), but the schools can't help that. (There are a few tricks they could use to make the "junk" foods a little healthier, at least, like using part wheat flour instead of only white, but probably there are massive political lobbies involved somewhere, because there always are.) And I don't begrudge them serving tater tots as a general principle; it just makes me sad that that's about all they can serve.