The beginning of Albus Dumbledore's teaching career

[oryx_leucoryx]

Some of this will be highly speculative, but I will try to justify speculation with canon as much as possible. There will also be plenty of open questions. The goal is to fill in the missing years, between the moment Albus parted ways with Gellert in the summer of 1899 and the moment we see him going to meet Tom Riddle at the orphanage in 1938.

The biggest question I have is about the influence Albus Dumbledore had on headmaster Armando Dippet. We see that in the 1940s Albus had significant influence on the headmaster - he convinced him to remove certain Dark Årts books from the library and to not hire recent alumnus Tom Riddle when veteran DADA prof Merrythought retired. What I find curious in the situation is that Armando listened to Albus' views regarding Dark Arts when Albus was the Transfiguration teacher, while the school had a professor who was a specialist in DADA - above mentioned Galatea Merrythought - who was senior enough to have taught Albus himself back in the day. It would be as if Albus as headmaster preferred the opinions of Severus on the Charms curriculum over those of Filius. How did that come to be?

We don't know what Albus did after his sister's death in August 1899, nor do we know when he started teaching, except it was well before 1938. I'm guessing Albus' time as alchemist under Nikolas Flamel's mentorship took place in the early part of those years. I doubt he had time to do alchemy seriously while teaching a required subject! We don't know anything about Potterverse alchemy except for the fact that Flamel created a working Philosophers' Stone, but if there too alchemy requires a high level of purity from the practitioner then perhaps Albus' reputation as alchemist contributed to him being perceived as an authority in opposing Dark magic? (I wonder if Albus ever confessed - knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or due to some influence - his planned adventures with Gellert to his mentor. Perhaps that was the reason he was called to solve the Dark Lord problem in Europe - because Flamel knew about their shared past and expected some emotional reaction from Gellert.)

But then, if his reputation was in alchemy - and Potions (uses of dragon blood?) - why was he hired as Transfiguration prof? Note that Molly says in HBP that Albus and Horace started teaching at the same time. This sounds like both the Transfiguration and the Potions posts were available. Why not hire the brilliant new teacher for the job that most suited his recent experience? As far as one can tell from canon Albus doesn't claim any public achievements in Transfiguration since those prizes he earned at school. Does this mean that whoever hired him (whether Phineas Nigellus Black or Armando Dippet) had known him in his student days?

So when were Albus and Horace hired? And by whom? Does Molly know of the beginnings of their respective careers because she heard from Muriel, who attended Hogwarts from 1902 to 1909? Or perhaps from her grandparents, who may have attended in the second decade of the 20th century? In that case they were hired by Headmaster Black and started teaching as Armando Dippet's peers. Alternatively they may have been originally hired by Dippet. And depending on what Dippet himself taught, maybe they were hired in 1925 when Dippet became headmaster, with one of them taking Armando's former job. Any indications as to what he might have taught?

But maybe this is the wrong question to ask. If Albus was working with Nikolas, why did he switch to teaching? I seriously doubt canon!Albus would prefer teaching to research, unless something came up that made the research situation unpleasant. Like a reminder that he really shouldn't be involved with this kind of thing that may lead to immortality (of sorts). In the form of news of Gellert's rise in Europe.

So this is my proposed scenario: September 1899, after Aberforth went to Hogwarts for his 5th year, Albus became an apprentice with Nikolas Flamel. They worked on assorted projects. Then news started coming from Europe about what Gellert was up to. At some point, whether because Flamel started hinting that Albus might be able to do something about Gellert or because Albus was becoming uncomfortable with the news and what it implied about his own past, he went to interview for the next teaching job that opened. We don't know when this was because it isn't clear how long it took from the moment Gellert stole the Elder Wand from Gregorovitch until his exploits became newsworthy. Though canon suggests enough time went by for Gellert's appearance to have changed beyond recognition as neither Gregorovitch nor Tom make the connection (is this a theme with Dark Lords?). But this could still have happened while Phineas Nigellus Black was headmaster (say in the early 1920s; 1923 if we want any kind of equivalence with Hitler's timeline). Albus arrived at the school with a reputation as an alchemist. This got him the admiration and following of some teachers, in particular those who were personally or politically uncomfortable with the Dark Arts. While Phineas was still headmaster there was little Albus could do besides networking (besides, he was the new guy around), but once Armando took Phineas' place (presumably in 1925) the time was ripe for Albus to collect the rewards in the form of influencing the new headmaster's policies. And perhaps it was a gradual process, because Merrythought stayed around for 20 more years, so I don't think she wasn't feeling abruptly sidelined.

Somewhere during these years Albus was offered the Ministry - twice, as Tom remembers. I'm guessing the third time was during Tom's absence, which is why he wasn't aware of it when he met Albus again. The Albus of King's Cross exaggerates this number - I think he was trying to impress Harry with how much he believed himself undeserving of power (protesting too much). Of course in the long term he had more influence putting down the Dark Arts at school than by running the Ministry for a decade or so. I tend to think the offer of the
political position came from those who ended up being Dumbledore's supporters in the Wizengamot for decades to come, people like Griselda Marchbanks and Tiberius Ogden. Their support must have been based on his various magical achievements, maybe also the recommendations of Albus' various correspondents. The fact that he had worked with Flamel must have been significant regardless of whether the latter was directly involved. And starting from 1940 these people also called him to take on Gellert. Of course, the two may have been connected - maybe the line was 'if you take care of the European Dark Lord we'll make you Minister'. Or perhaps 'look how we trust you - we want you as Minister! Just go and finish of Grindelwald (before he starts causing trouble here too)'.

Of course in 1945 Albus became the hero of the day and got his own chocolate frog card. From then on for 50 years he got everything he wanted, including controlling any powerful position he could use long term and the upbringing of 2-3 generations of British wizards.

Who else taught at Hogwarts during those years:

Phineas Nigellus Black: Born 1847. Died 1925. I'm guessing he was headmaster until his death. We don't know when he started teaching (but we do know he taught at some point, and loathed interacting with students), nor do we know what he taught nor when he was promoted to headship. Slytherin. We do not know if he was Head of House at some point either. He probably was headmaster when Albus was a student, or at least in Albus' later years as a student.

Galatea Merrythought: Taught DADA from 1895 to 1945. Which means she taught Albus from 4th year on. (Following Terri's proposal that in the past Hogwarts actually taught Dark Arts the transition, if there was one, happened during her tenure. Certainly Horace asks Tom if his interest in Horcruxes was for a project in Defense Against the Dark Arts.) If Phineas taught (DA)DA then maybe she was hired to replace him when he became headmaster.

Armando Dippet - Hogwarts headmaster, probably from 1925 until his death - either in December 1956 or a winter a few years later. It isn't clear what he did before that. Was he a teacher? For how long? What did he teach?

Herbert Beery - taught Herbology when Albus was a young(ish) teacher. Aspiring thespian.

Kettleburn - Care of Magical Creatures. Ended up retiring in 1993. Lost several limbs over his career. The description in 'Tales of Beedle the Bard' makes him appear to have no more common sense than Hagrid wrt the various creatures, but at least he took the risks himself.

Horace Slughorn - taught Potions. Started around the same time Albus did, but was younger (by how much?). Retired in 1981. At some point (before 1940s) became Head of Slytherin. Also founded The Slug Club - an in-House cross-generational networking system.

Someone I believe did not yet teach in those days is Binns. At least not in his ghost form. We know Harry studied from Bathilda Bagshot's textbook, which was published din 1947. This means that as late as 1947 there was a history teacher at Hogwarts who was aware enough of his surroundings to know a new book was published which would suit the curriculum better. Of course this implies that Tom Riddle had a live history teacher who was more involved in teaching than what we see in Harry's days. And puts most of the responsibility for ruining the teaching of history on Albus as headmaster.

Comments

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

Two thoughts:

1) It seems to me that Dumbledore's suggestion that information on horcruxes be removed from the library has less to do with Dark Arts knowledge, and more to do with things like "children shouldn't be exposed to such things." If so, then you wouldn't need to be an expert in either the Dark Arts or Defense in order to be listened to, and the opinion of someone who *did* specialize in the Dark Arts might not be valued as highly as someone with "more perspective."

2) It's possible that Binns is actually using a different textbook/edition than the rest of the class. Would anyone know? I think that most of the history we hear about happened well before not only the 20th century, but probably the 19th, and if the page numbers didn't match up, I doubt Harry would have noticed or cared. Maybe Hermione would've, but I don't know that Harry would have noticed *that* enough for us to have heard about it.

[oryx_leucoryx]

If Binns is still using the older textbook, who made the decision to switch to a different one? At least in the case of DADA the book(s) are selected by the teacher.

As for the Horcrux books - Why would Albus be considered as having a better perspective about what is appropriate for children?

[lynn-waterfall.livejournal.com]

(shrug) If the old textbook went out of print, they wouldn't've had a choice about switching to a new one.

I don't know why he'd be considered to have a *better* perspective, but better than whom? There's no particular reason to expect controversy; I doubt that the books had been recent additions to the library. I don't think it *has* to have been a matter of having authority of any kind.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

True, but I'm sure a current Hogwarts textbook wouldn't. It's the only school in the country after all, and a textbook for it is probably one of the surest money makers around.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

The WW runs on personal connections. The driving force behind the adoption of Bagshot's textbook was undoubtedly linked to the author or publisher. (There would be plenty of galleons in textbooks.) The easiest answer is that the headmaster made the decision, having had the excellent new book drawn to his attention by a trusted advisor ...

I rather like the idea that Binns died after 1947, though, as it hints at the human side of the cipher.

Bagshot's was a new book, not just a new edition, wasn't it? In that case, there would be much more difference between it and the textbook a 19th century Binns might be using than just the page numbers. Some student would surely notice if the chapter numbers, or (if he doesn't lecture directly to the textbook) the material was totally different. Maybe that's a reason to think that the books are the same, making it more likely that Binns chose it himself and died later.

Re the horcrux books. I'm not convinced that it was about suitability for children. They were also removed from the restricted section, weren't they, which is the reference area for staff and students with special approval only? Do we know what else is or isn't in there?

I wonder what faction Albus was in early in his career. Surely in the twenties he would be linked to more powerful figures from all that correspondance, and only became the kingpin sometime after 1945.

Was Dippet chosen as headmaster because he was easy to influence, or is that a fanon idea?

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Regarding Binns... I personally like the idea that Binns died after Albus became headmaster, and that it was Albus's idea never to replace him. Dippet might have been letting him stay on, getting a little doddery, secure in the knowledge he'd soon be replaced by someone younger and more dynamic.

I admit, the only support we have for this idea is that we have evidence that Albus considered competence at teaching an agreeable bonus, not a pressing concern, when he made his staffing decisions (Trelawney, Hagrid). We don't know that of any former headmasters/mistresses, and I'd prefer not to libel them by thinking so poorly of anyone but Albus.

Indeed, the staff whom we know or infer to have predated Albus's reign (Minerva, Filius, Pomona, Poppy, Kettleburn, Slughorn, Hooch)--going by apparent age, and the fact that positions seem to be tenured--seem competent enough. Note too that Umbridge's only two firings were, in fact, of Albus's two distincitvely incompetent hires.

And Albus is the only headmaster we know to have a specific reason for wanting history to be ill-taught, and modern history to be ignored altogether.

And I can just see Albus making the claim that it's not kind to deprive Binns of a job he loves, just because's he's no longer alive. One wouldn't want to be prejudiced againt the breathing-impaired, after all.

Albus is so nice that way.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Here's something I've been considering....

What if we were to compare Hogwarts to a real-world university rather than a real-world secondary school? In a real-world secondary school, instructors are hired and assessed according to their ability to teach. In a real-world university, however, professors are more often judged by their expertise in their field of study; their ability to actually teach the subject is often not such an important factor. Many of us, I'm sure, have taken classes with absolutely brilliant professors who, nevertheless, absolutely suck at teaching.

If Hogwarts is more like a university, then being a professor may actually be a rather prestigious position in the WW, and it therefore doesn't seem so strange that Albus decided to become the transfiguration professor.

Also, if Hogwarts is more like a university, then Albus can justify his staffing decisions by claiming that the people he's hired are some of the foremost experts in their subjects.

Who alive knows more about history than Binns? Probably very few people. After all, most of them likely had Binns as a teacher!

Who alive knows more about magical creatures than Hagrid does? Possibly nobody.

And note how there's no mention of Umbridge trying to replace Binns, even though everyone agrees that he's an awful teacher

Note, as well, how Umbridge fires Trelawney, not on the basis that she is incompetent as a teacher, but on the basis that she is incompetent as a Seer.

[Umbridge] lurked by the fire in the heavily perfumed tower room, interrupting Professor Trelawney’s increasingly hysterical talks with difficult questions about ornithomancy and heptomology, insisting that she predicted students’ answers before they gave them and demanding that she demonstrate her skill at the crystal ball, the tea leaves and the rune stones in turn. --OOTP chapt. 25

Likewise, Umbridge seems to also fire Hagrid for reasons besides his lack of ability to teach, for she tries to remove him from Hogwarts altogether, not just from the COMC post, even though he is also the Hogwarts gamekeeper.

[sunnyskywalker]

That might also make sense historically. Iirc, you started medieval and early modern universities at around age 14 (give or take), and I think they did hire on experts whether or not those experts were focused on teaching as a primary career function. The wizarding world split off from the Muggle world before modern pedagogy and teacher certification were developed. Switching to primary education for a moment, think of all the young women as late as the 19th century who became governesses on the strength of having gone to school and probably knowing French. Not a formal process! Universities had more standards than that, but it would make some sense for Hogwarts to be operating on the model of "hire the foremost scholar who's willing to work here, and those kids better listen and be grateful for the opportunity." Come to think of it, weren't early universities unruly places with all kinds of student rebellions and brawls with the townspeople? That might explain a few things about Hogwarts culture too.

Hogwarts couldn't be exactly an early university, because presumably some of those "young sorcerers" they took on for, oh, most of the school's history wouldn't have been literate, much less able to compose those endless essays without some extra instruction. And there seems to be some trade school aspect to it too. (And they have a modern school calendar somehow...) It's probably a weird chimera of different kinds of schools smushed together for historical reasons which may no longer be relevant.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

And one more thing.

Jo Rowling does have experience as a teacher. Specifically, a year or so as a teacher of English as a foreign language, in Portugal.

I have no idea about the program that hired her, or what her supposed qualifications were. But I do know people who were hired out of college, or soon thereafter, as English-as-a-foreign-language teachers in secondary schools in obscure places, solely on the basis of being a native English speaker with a college degree.

An expert, in short, on the subject matter. What more could be required?

Some of them ended up being adequate teachers, too.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Yes, that works. And it would also explain why Lockhart applied for the DADA post--he thought it would be a feather in his cap (besides all those luscious book sales).

And there's Minerva, one of only 7 registered Animagi this century--how better to prove one's superlative skill at Transfiguration?

And you're right about Dolores establishing Trelawney as being incompetent as a seer, not as a teacher.

Hagrid--well, WE know that Hagrid has endangered students as a gamekeeper before Albus gave him a chance to do so as a teacher. If Umbridge found out about Mosag, or Norberta, or any other similar releases of illegal dangerous creatures..... or even that detention in the forest Harry's first year. Hagrid thought it acceptable to send two eleven year old boys off in a forest at midnight, escorted only by a cowardly hound, to track a dying unicorn and WHATEVER WAS KILLING IT? Maybe Draco finally realized he could tell about that (if not Hagrid's dragon), and that's what turned the trick.

But even if not--if Dumbledore represented Hagrid as being an expert on magical creatures, he lied. Hagrid does have an instinctive ability to approach SOME of them and befriend them--he clearly has a touch with hippogriffs, for instance, and with the Monster Book of Monsters. But he lets himself be utterly blinded by his monster-positive prejudices. Norberta was female not male, did NOT see Hagrid as her mommy, and had no use for a teddy bear. Aragog's children appear to resent Hagrid for the restrictions their father has placed on them in Hagrid's name; no sooner is their father dead than they attack Hagrid, and note that they go after him again in DH. Neither the Skrewts nor the students enjoyed their walkies together.....

Hagrid is NOT an authority on Magical Creatures, because half of what he "knows" is dead wrong. Or rather, deadly wrong. HE has apparently inherited his mother's skin, difficult for tooth or claw or flame to penetrate, and her constitution, which is relatively immune to magical venoms as to most spells. So HE'S not often hurt by his determination to believe vicious monsters harmless. But the children around him, on whom he's siccing his monsters, don't share his immunity to harm.

So all Dolores had to do was uncover an area of ignorance or willful blindness that made Hagrid incompetent even as gamekeeper as well as discrediting Dumbledore's claims that he was a Magical Creatures expert, and he was out on his ear.

Actually, that's probably why she held her hand so long--she didn't want just to demote him (which she could probably have done after the first class she observed, if the post were supposed to be held by a Magical Creatures authority), she wanted to find grounds to rid Hogwarts of him entirely.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Regarding the forest detention: Hagrid may have decided on the details, but it was Minerva's name on the note. She was the one who placed 4 preteens under Hagrid's care in the forest at night, knowing that a unicorn killer was loose.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Oh, totally.

I now tend to think that Albus had told her this was a good idea (under the Confidere, of course).

However, what she did was to confide four children to the official Hogwarts gamekeeper for a nighttime detention meant to teach them, to rub in irrevocably, that throwing themselves into danger for thrills, or for spite against another student, was not an acceptible idea. The kids were meant to be frightened and demeaned. Did Minerva register that this particular excursion could possibly endanger their lives? There's no canon evidence in support of that.

Note that Draco's initial objection was, "But this is servant stuff, it's not for students to do. I thought we'd be copying lines or something. If my father knew I was doing this, he'd--"

"--tell yer that's how it is at Hogwarts," Hagrid growled.

But it's one thing to send students out at night under the gamekeeper's protection; after all, if he couldn't deal with the Hogwarts fauna, he'd have died long ago. Presumably Hagrid has demonstrated his general ability to deal with the Forests' inhabitants. It's quite another to send children out with no one but a hound companion. And that last was Hagrid's contribution to the night's festivities--there's no reason to assume Minvera was ever a party to THAT piece of wisdom.

Though Albus might well have been.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Minerva may have thought that detention with Hagrid would consist of something like shoveling manure, not chasing down unicorn killers.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Sending students to Filch of Pomfrey (the other low-esteem servants) didn't put students in life-threatening situations, after all--it put them in danger of spending hours in demeaning tasks like polishing trophies or scrubbing out bedpans, BY HAND.

such a humiliation as doing menial work with one's HANDS should surely have taught young wizards their lesson, no?

[oryx_leucoryx]

And Albus is the only headmaster we know to have a specific reason for wanting history to be ill-taught, and modern history to be ignored altogether.

Nor does he want the most qualified living magical historian to start blabbing about her former neighbor (as we know she was wont to do in 1981 without the help of Veritaserum). We don't know when she became senile, but she may still have had several decades of lucidity ahead of her in 1947.

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Nice catch!

[oryx_leucoryx]

Was Dippet chosen as headmaster because he was easy to influence, or is that a fanon idea?

So fanon that I've never heard of it before :)

We know very little about Dippet. Fans made a big deal about how Dumbles saw through Tom as opposed to Dippet, but after HBP we know the reason is that Dumbles saw Tom at the orphanage, before he built his cover - and did not tell Dippet what he saw. Rita Skeeter's book about him is entitled 'Master or Moron' so I suppose his public image was of a masterful headmaster (and she was insinuating he was more of a moron).

If we consider Hogwarts as the equivalent of a university then its library would be a resource for researchers. And where else would a random wizard/witch go to look up something that caught hir fancy? I'm sure the Department of Mysteries has a well-stocked library, but I doubt it is accessible to the public. The Wizengamot and the DMLE may have a library for legal matters, St Mungo's must have its own, but a publicly accessible library on areas of magical theory and practice would logically be at Hogwarts.

As for Albus' political position - he claims he was already someone's candidate for Minister before 1945. And since Tom was also aware of that (but not of the third time Albus' name came up as potential Minister) then it must have happened before Tom's 10-year Grand Tour.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

Oh, oops. Better change that word to 'random' then :)
(Some things just lodge in my head I guess)

Hogwarts being the only school in Britain sits well with it being university-like in terms of resources and prestige. I totally agree about the library.

We don't seem to see strange wizards researching in there though IIRC. If that's not just because Harry is oblivious to the place, public access may be restricted (visiting researchers over the summer?), making a position there more attractive - at least until the new hire finds out about the 80 hour work week!

From that perspective, removing the Horcruxes books looks even more like suppression of the Dark Arts rather than protecting children.

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Or perhaps Hogwarts has come to be seen internationally as something of a backwater and dangerously corrupt place, and everything of note in their library worth actually putting up with conditions has either been removed (Dumbles' crusade against anything "dark") and/or is also accessible closer to home. So not many scholars bother to come anymore. The Triwizard Tournament may have gone through because of the novelty, some quiet hope of politicking the Ministry into modernizing a bit, or other such motives. Speculation, yes, but I'm not inclined to take any position the text pushes at us without a large grail of salt, including the one that holds that the British WW is all that advanced - just my 2c.

[sunnyskywalker]

It's also possible that if you're someone Pince trusts, you can send an owl requesting a particular book and she'll send you an owl back with the book itself. I don't see this happening for the rarer, books, though, which serious scholars would need to use. On the other hand, how many scholars could there be in wizarding Europe who need the few particular books unique to Hogwarts? Maybe it's just an infrequent enough occurrence that Harry missed the two visits that happened during his school years. Plus, most of those scholars probably are attached to the relevant nation's main school, the equivalent of the Department of Mysteries, or the equivalent of St. Mungo's, all of which probably made copies of most books they'd want centuries ago, and anything published more recently was probably printed and still has multiple copies floating around. And the ww's publishing output just can't be that high, making it easier for each library to "keep up" on acquiring major publications.

So there wouldn't be very many unique items in any library, most likely. A few, sure, which aren't used often enough to warrant copying (but when you need them, you really need them, and Hogwarts gets its once-a-decade visit from a researcher). Harry never noticed any books in modern languages apart from English, so maybe the Hogwarts library doesn't collect those - but for recent materials, at least, you could probably owl the relevant library, again making the need for visits infrequent. And for all we know, Beaubatons and Durmstrang do collect works in multiple languages. (Durmstrang would have to, you'd think, since its catchment area apparently includes Bulgaria, Germany, and possibly Scandinavia. What language do they teach in? Latin, still?) Probably most of the unique items belong to the private libraries of old, wealthy families like the Blacks.

[malic-ba.livejournal.com]

Sure, European wizards likely have better options. And I wouldn't be suprised if condwiramurs has a point about how Hogwarts is seen in some quarters. But what about British wizards? We don't see any of those either.

I suppose scholars aren't all that common. Perhaps the private libraries of the old families, and what each individual researcher collects over time, are enough. (Wonder how much publishing there actually is in the wizarding world?) In which case that's a barrier to commoners becoming scholars (unless via Hogwarts or the Ministry).

Wonder how much of the writings of the Founders and other really early scholars is still at Hogwarts and how much is locked up in the Ministry?

[sunnyskywalker]

If there's around 10,000 wizards in Britain, how many of them could be scholars? And of those, how many are either not working for the Ministry or St. Mungo's (presumably with their own collections) and need a book only Hogwarts has? I'm betting it's a small number - small enough that visits would be infrequent and even students who spend more time in the library than Harry could miss that it happens. For that matter, if a scholar knows exactly which part of a book they need to look at, Pince could probably copy a couple of pages and owl them. It's only if they need to examine large portions of rare books that they'd need to go in person.

For that matter, how many books are locked up in Dumbledore's office? And how many could you find in the Room of Requirement (where did the ones in the DA meeting room come from? summoned from the library, or created out of thin air, or what?)?

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

It might have been a well-stocked library back in the day, but sadly neglected in, say, the last fifty years with a consequent dropping of status..... Certainly one can't quite see Albus approving Madam Pince's requests to purchase tomes on the latest advances in the Dark Arts. But as of Albus's youth, it was probably a good collection--it's hard to imagine him doing research worthy of being published in Transfiguration Today, Challenges in Charming, and The Practical Potioneer without access, both to current issues of those publications, and to a well-rounded compendia of past research in the fields.

Bear in mind, too, that until the invention of the printing press books were hand-copied, and so books were incredibly rare. And it's probably the case that most wizarding books have anti-duplicating charms on them--certainly any commercially-published ones do, or the Weasleys would be spending a lot less money at Flourish & Blotts. So each of the wizarding schools might indeed have some unique volumes.... Fewer now at Hogwarts after the purges, of course.

[sunnyskywalker]

No, I doubt those purchase requests would be approved! But then, given the size of the ww, how many important publications in the Dark Arts could there be, especially if you stick to English? Three journals* and a book or three a year for the Anglophone world, maybe? And of those books, some wouldn't be very groundbreaking or original (one might be a "best of Dark Arts Monthly 1994" or something) and could be safely skipped if necessary for budget reasons. The collection might not have gotten as out of date in 50 years as a Muggle collection would have. And they probably still have the newer major publications in, say, Charms, so it might not be an all-around decline in the library.

There would still be some unique items, but we're talking small numbers here. If one or two people visits the Hogwarts library a year at most, and another three or four borrow a recently-published work or have Pince send them a magical photocopy of one article or chapter, how many kids would notice?

There wouldn't be that many hand-copied magical manuscripts to begin with, I would think. Unless wizards have somehow hung onto a few thousand magical scrolls from the Library of Alexandria or something, which would be cool! If there's more like a couple of hundred British manuscripts, and wizards have been copying them for each other for the last thousand-plus years (Muggle monasteries sometimes had ad hoc reciprocal copying arrangements - make us a copy of that one and we'll make you a copy of this one - and I assume wizards would do the same), and manuscripts don't have the anti-duplication spells which modern books would and so could be copied very quickly today, then it seems at least possible that most manuscripts people would want already have at least one copy nearer to home. (The equation might change if they also collect things like ancient Greek Muggle drama, but we have no evidence that they do.) So that leaves you with a few unique manuscripts which one scholar needs every ten years or so and a few unique modern publications which again will be used probably a few times a year at most by anyone outside Hogwarts. Nothing Harry would notice.

Flourish & Blott's seems to have more new titles coming out that one would expect (The Invisible Book of Invisibility sounds like a novelty item which just came out and will disappear for good within the year, which suggests a large publishing industry... oh dear, maths...), but the few titles Harry notices which aren't Hogwarts textbooks or by Gilderoy Lockhart might be a good percentage of the ww's yearly output plus some of the backlist. It seems like a lot of the newer publications are popular titles like Rita Skeeter's tabloid biographies or Lockhart's adventure novels biographies, which seem relatively affordable if some researcher does need one, if even the Weasleys can afford six complete sets of Lockhart's works. Plus they could probably borrow a copy from a friend rather than go to Hogwarts. (There's also titles like Mrs. Weasley's copy of Charm Your Own Cheese, but who knows how old that is. I doubt it goes out of date very quickly, and how big of a cookbook market could the wizarding world support?)


*Given the populations involved, it seems logical for Anglophone countries to pool their efforts, journal-wise. Why have separates Potions journals for the US, Britain, Australia, and Canada? The Practical Potioneer might cover UK/Aus/Can.

[oryx_leucoryx]

The publication date for Bathilda's book is from a footnote in Fantastic Beasts. It is mentioned as a recommended reference for learning about 'the dark days that preceded the wizards' retreat into hiding.'