deathtocapslock | McGonagall’s Impartiality: A Test Case

We’ve been talking about Harry’s perception that HIS head of house was “strict but fair” while Slytherin’s was grossly biased. I tend to believe that Minerva, indeed, credited (and cherished) that description of herself. Certainly in canon she deducted points from her own house (first year, 138 more than we saw Severus deduct from Gryffindor), and she gave detentions when earned by her own (eight in canon to Gryffindor versus Severus’s six—two more than we saw her award to Slytherins). So we can see that she might believe that she is fair, that she punishes equally transgressions committed by her own house and those of their rivals.

But let’s examine her response to almost-identical situations with the houses switched.

A student alleges that another student has committed, or is in the process of committing, a serious crime. What does she do?

We see her in this situation twice. Once in sixth year, when Harry Potter tells her:

“I think Draco Malfoy gave Katie that necklace, Professor.”

On one side of him, Ron rubbed his nose in apparent embarrassment; on the other, Hermione shuffled her feet as though quite keen to put a bit of distance between herself and Harry.

“That is a very serious accusation, Potter,” said Professor McGonagall, after a shocked pause. “Do you have any proof?”

“No,” said Harry, “but…” and he told her about following Malfoy to Borgin and Burkes…..

“You saw Malfoy leaving the shop with a similar package?”

“No, Professor….” [Harry, Ron, and Hermione bicker about Harry’s theory.]

… “That’s enough!” said Professor McGonagall…. “Potter, I appreciate your telling me this, but we cannot point the finger of blame at Mr. Malfoy purely because he visited the shop where this necklace might have been purchased. The same is probably true of hundreds of people---”

…. “—and what is more,” said Professor McGonagall, with an air of awful finality, “Mr. Malfoy was not in Hogsmeade today…. he was doing detention with me. He has now failed to complete his Transfigurations homework twice in a row. So, thank you for telling me your suspicions, Potter,” she said as she marched past them, “but I need to go up to the hospital wing now to check on Katie Bell. Good day to you all.”

So. When a Gryffindor accuses a Slytherin of a crime, she first warns the Gryff that that’s a very serious accusation. (If false, of course, the Gryff is committing the crime of slander.) And then McGonagall invites the student to present his proof.

He establishes that he has none (and his friends confirm that they don’t believe his speculations). She allows him, however, to present his speculations until it’s clear he has no real case, and no actual information to give her.

Having listened him out, she then reveals that she has knowledge that makes the specific accusation flat-out impossible: Draco could not have handed Katie that necklace in the Three Broomsticks, because at that time he was in detention with her.

She then thanks the slanderer for sharing his suspicions, and sweeps out.

Good on Minerva, putting Harry in his place when he proved his allegations were without any base in fact! (Although in fact they were accurate….)

Only.

Was that how she treated Draco first year, when she caught him out at midnight and he explained, “You don’t understand, Professor. Harry Potter’s coming—he’s got a dragon!”?

Did she invite him to offer his evidence? Did she ask him if he had personally seen the dragon (he had) or whether he had evidence of Harry’s and the others’ intentions (he did: he possessed Charlie’s letter to Ron arranging the whole)?

Did she warn Draco that accusing Harry of having a class XXXXX forbidden beast without evidence was slander, and that he had to provide proof? Did she invite him, urge him, to present any proof he might have?

Or did she exclaim:

“What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on—I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!”

and lead him off by the ear?

The truly tragic thing is, Draco apparently believed Minerva’s press. From his protests, it seems that he actually imagined at first that if he stood up for the truth the head of Gryffindor would at least investigate his (utterly true) claims about Potter’s crime, and vindicate him.

Well, Minerva quickly disabused Draco of that notion.

Now, let’s look at Minerva’s reaction when Filch, twenty minutes later, caught Harry and Hermione coming back out of the Astronomy Tower—she having just caught Neville trying to warn his housemates that Malfoy was trying to catch them red-handed smuggling a dragon off that tower.

She didn’t consider even for a moment that the Slytherin’s accusations might have been true, even though the Gryffindors’ placement and Neville’s clamor supported his story. She didn’t recall Draco, to present any evidence he might have had.

No. She decided (perhaps based on her experience with Harry’s father, who knows?) that the truth must be, ”You fed Draco Malfoy some cock-and-bull story about a dragon, trying to get him out of bed and into trouble. I’ve already caught him. I suppose you think it’s funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it too.”

(I’m kind of wanting to construct a story involving the Marauders and Snape, and Minerva’s misperceptions, for her to jump to the conclusion that what was going on was, a gang of Gryffs had conned a Slyth into thinking the Gryffs were up to something expulsion-worthy, and had maneuvered the Slyth-dupe into getting himself in trouble to try to catch those Gryffs…! Could this be her take on the werewolf caper? If so, she can’t have been in on Lupin’s secret….)

Next point. By the end of that night, the one thing that Minerva thought she could be certain of was that Draco Malfoy had never lied to her. She believed that he’d been deliberately led astray by Harry, but had told her the truth as he believed it.

So.

The points loss and detention were originally for being out after curfew, so she might not have rescinded the formal punishment she’d already awarded.

But surely at least Minerva sought out Draco the next morning and told him she knew he hadn’t lied to her? That would only be fair. It’s a monstrous thing to miscall an innocent child a liar, when you have absolute proof that he was speaking the truth as he saw it. When you know that he sincerely believed other students to be endangering everyone in the school by releasing a dangerous monster, and he was only trying to stop them….

Now, if what Draco believed to have been going on, had been, he shouldn’t have handled such an egregious crime and violation of Hogwarts’ security by trying to catch the dragon-smugglers ALL BY HIMSELF. He should have gone immediately to a responsible adult, and he should NOT be rewarded for failing to do so, for trying to catch the criminals on his own…..

Hmm, does any of this resonate with canon?

And I suspect that’s what Draco’s own head of house told him, when Draco poured out his story and was finally heard. Severus must have pointed out that it was now too late to catch the smugglers, or indeed to prove that the dragon had existed, and that Draco’s plan was the very height of folly and imprudence. If Draco had gone immediately to Snape or written his father, they could have arranged to catch Hagrid in possession of the dragon, and Draco’s evidence would have made it plain that Hagrid’s three Gryffindor pals had conspired with Hagrid to conceal it. The gamekeeper would have been sent to Azkaban, the Trio quite probably expelled.

But Draco’s foolish decision to wait and try to catch them in the act had cost him the very prize he sought to gain. True, if he’d pulled it off, he would have looked a hero (rather than an informer). But at best, he faced a fight at two to one odds (worse if Charlie’s friends had arrived), so even had he not been spotted by McGonagall, his chance of succeeding in catching them was slim. What had Draco been thinking? Wandering the corridors without lookouts or backup, these are elementary mistakes…!

Charlie’s letter, without further evidence, could be dismissed as a forgery designed to entrap Draco. Weasley could claim he deliberately gave Draco the book containing that letter as a lure.

As for Draco’s eyewitness evidence, that’s actually the worst of Draco’s problems. Draco’s having known, and concealed for weeks, the existence of an illegal class XXXXX beast on school grounds, makes Draco as much an accessory to Hagrid’s crime as the Trio. Whatever his motivations for having stayed silent, Draco cannot come forward NOW to say that he had seen an illegal dragon in the gamekeeper’s hut without incriminating himself. If the dragon had escaped and injured a student—indeed if Ron had died or been permanently maimed by that bite, and the matter adequately investigated—Draco could have been prosecuted as an accessory, and expelled with the other three children.

Did Draco’s interview with Snape happen at 1 in the morning, like Harry’s and Hermione’s with their head of house? Or, unlike Filch, did Minerva have the authority to escort Draco back to his dormitory, so that Draco didn’t face his head of house’s displeasure—and debriefing—until sometime the next day?

I don’t think we can say. Unfortunately, it makes a difference in our judgment of Minerva. Because it seems probable that she never learned the truth of Draco’s wild story, that Harry and Hermione had been in possession of a dragon. They were not punished further, nor was Hagrid sent to Azkaban for endangering the students. So either Minerva, too, made herself an accessory after the fact to Hagrid’s and her students’ crimes, or she never knew of them.

And I still have enough respect for Minerva to think she wouldn’t cover up for Hagrid’s committing a crime of that magnitude. Ron was hospitalized, after all, and much worse could have happened. At the least, surely Minerva would not have gone along with Albus’s continuing to employ Hagrid without putting him under stringent supervision by a responsible adult. The man is simply not safe to have around vulnerable children, as he proved again in Harry’s subsequent school years. (He committed fresh crimes and/or endangered students in Harry's second, third, fourth, fifth, and seventh years.)

(What, indeed, did Severus say to Albus about Hagrid’s continued employment and eventual promotion? But of course we know from Lupin how seriously Dumbledore takes Severus’s expressed concerns that a fellow teacher might prove a danger to his students….)

But if Minerva never knew of Hagrid’s and the Trios’ crimes, that means Draco never told her his full story and presented the evidence. As he would have, surely, if she came to him later and apologized for calling him a liar. Unless, of course, Severus had not already made Draco aware of the gravity of his own position.

So. Either Minerva never apologized to Mr. Malfoy, or she did so after Severus had impressed upon Draco that it was now in his own interests to pretend he’d never actually seen the dragon, just fell for Potter’s wild boasts.

I don’t think we have evidence to decide. I would expect to see a change in the relationship between Mr. Malfoy and the professor if she had done him the justice to apologize, but Harry might well have been too sunk in his own misery to notice (even though he’s does usually pay attention to Malfoy). Canon doesn’t show us any direct interactions between them after she leads Draco off by his ear. But certainly in Draco’s second year, he doesn’t seem to respect McGonagall (Professor McGonagall, Mr. Malfoy) as Acting Headmistress. Telling Professor Snape he should apply for the position by virtue of being “the best teacher at Hogwarts” might be dismissed as mere sucking-up, but a minute earlier he’d expressed the hope for a “decent” headmaster and said, “McGonagall won’t last long, she’s only filling in….” Not nearly as disrespectful as any of Harry’s comments about Professor Snape, but not showing any evidence at all of regarding her as an improvement over that gross Gryffindor-favorer Dumbledore.

Still, it remains remotely possible that Minerva did the right thing and apologized for calling a Slytherin a liar without so much as allowing him to tell his story.

However, that would not alter the fact that she did so. Unhesitatingly.

So we know: when a Gryff accuses a Slytherin of a crime difficult to believe, Minerva patiently extracts any evidence supporting an accusation she knows to be impossible on the face of it, and (very correctly) reproves the Gryff when he proves to have none. To have been engaging in baseless slander.

When a Snake accuses a Lion? Minerva strikes him down instantly as a liar and refuses even to allow him to present his evidence. And does not credit him for an instant even when her students’ behavior confirms the little he’d managed to get her to hear.

Yes, the head of Gryffindor distinguishes herself by her impartiality, doesn’t she?