Questions on the Heads of Houses

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

So, a couple of questions I wanted to toss out about the Heads of Houses.

First, Snape, the Head of Slytherin, seems to be much younger (31 when we and Harry meet him) than the other Heads of House.  But, at (by?) that time he seems to have the support of his students (as well as supporting/defending them).  In particular, in second year we see Draco Malfoy sucking up to him by suggesting his father (who is on the Board of Governors) would support Snape's possible candidacy to be Headmaster.  

On the other hand, someone (Jodel?  Whitehound?  Swythyv? Oneandthetruth?  I'm not remembering at this time) suggested that Snape might have been installed as Head of Slytherin to weaken the house (given his dependence on Dumbledore).  (And that the loss of the Slug Club funnelling fresh talent into the Ministry did fatally weaken it to the point Voldemort found it possible to topple it with one blow.)

So.

Do we have canon how much Snape's house supported him?

Do we have canon when he was actually installed as Head?  I always assumed he replaced Slughorn as Head of Slytherin and Potions Master simultaneously in 1981, but that's an assumption.  So my assumption Snape was to credit for that long string of Slytherin House Cup victories might not be correct.

And... the Board of Governors has something to say about the headmastership.  What about House Heads?  Was Snape, whatever year he was installed as Head of Slytherin House, installed with their approval, against their will, or what?

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

Hey Terri! Long time no see!

We never see Severus in conflict with Slytherins before HBP, do we? There Draco is keeping Severus out of the loop of his plans, and Severus is speaking critically of Crabbe and Goyle's academic situation - but in any case, these happen in a private conversation.

Severus keeps his interactions with Slytherins private. We get hints that he does discipline them (because they make an effort not to be caught by him), but he always supports them in front of Gryffindors - and Slytherins know not to put him in the uncomfortable position of having to deal with undeniable offenses. He also supports the House spirit by showing up to Quidditch games, and in POA he even wears a green scarf.

Hmm, in COS he gets the Slytherin team permission to use the Quidditch pitch very shortly after the Gryffindor team (and since the Gryffs were busy talking - was it about strategy? I forget - they missed their practice entirely).

I can't remember any personal interaction between a Slytherin student other than Draco and Severus.

I don't think there is canon for your other questions. (Nor do we know when Lucius became governor.)

[oryx_leucoryx]

Regarding House Heads, what we know is that we never see Minerva, Fillius, or Pomona show anything but solidarity with Severus until he kills Albus. The strongest case is, of course, when they support his insistence that it was time Gilderoy did something about the monster.

[sunnyskywalker]

Interesting questions!

We don't know exactly when Professors Sinistra or Vector joined the faculty. Or Madam Hooch or Pince, for that matter. One of their predecessors could have been Head of Slytherin during the '80s, or at least part of them.

While it seems unlikely that the instructor for first-year flying lessons/Quidditch referee could be a Head of House, if Hooch's predecessor had been, perhaps their instruction (and partiality?) could have given Slytherin an edge in the Quidditch Cup and thus the House Cup.

Having an older Head of Slytherin who retired in, say, 1988, with Snape only then taking the position after several years of teaching, certainly sounds more plausible than appointing someone who'd finished school so recently that some of his students remembered him as a student. And if the Board of Governors does have a say in House Heads, Snape having proved himself for several years first ought to work in his favor.

I figure that if JKR has given us an opening to have Hogwarts operating even slightly like a real school, we should take it.

The Winning Streak

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

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 Streak

[sunnyskywalker]

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 Slughorn

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

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 Slughorn

[sunnyskywalker]

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 Slughorn

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

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 Slughorn

[sunnyskywalker]

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 Hogwarts^TM. 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 Slughorn

[oryx_leucoryx]

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 Slughorn

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: Slughorn and the DADA curse

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

Resigned in guilt... now THAT's an interesting take!

Re: Slughorn and the DADA curse

[oryx_leucoryx]

Wasn't that the reason for his resignation in your 'Unlikely Allies'? (Any chance for more of that? Or Folly?)

Re: Headmaster Slughorn

[sunnyskywalker]

What an interesting idea! And it does seem possible given Slughorn's personality.

Thankless

[terri-testing.livejournal.com]

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: Thankless

[maidofkent.livejournal.com]

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: Thankless

[oryx_leucoryx]

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: Thankless

[oryx_leucoryx]

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: Thankless

[sunnyskywalker]

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.

Re: Thankless

[sunnyskywalker]

You know, I think I haven't been giving Jo enough credit here. Her explanations often don't make sense, but she's very good at observing and depicting complex dynamics. And I bet either her school when she attended or the English program she taught in suffered from most or all of these problems:

-Unclear chain of command/authority assignment
-Poor communication in absence of anyone assigned to facilitate much of anything
-Understaffing, leading to many staff doubling up (and having no time to figure out larger policy issues even if they think they do have the authority)
-Loss of institutional knowledge due to staff retirements + poor documentation
-Little to no training for new staff due to all of the above

Hogwarts might be in an awkward transitional period where the House Heads have lost some of their historical authority and the headmaster and Board of Governors have gained some, but no one's exactly sure where the boundaries fall anymore. So who's responsible for what? Who knows? Which means you get a combination of (1) sometimes people just do stuff without knowing whether they have authority or not, because someone has to do something, and (2) a lot of other stuff doesn't get done.

We can tell the teachers have very heavy course loads, and many are doubled up: McGonagall as the only Transfiguration teacher and House Head and Deputy Headmistress; Hagrid as grounds/gameskeeper and CoMC teacher; Snape as the only Potions teacher and House Head (and spy, not that that's an official school duty). We also know that once upon a time, Dumbledore and McGonagall both taught Transfiguration at the same time. Maybe the same was true of most or all of the required classes. Junior teacher for the lower years, senior teacher for OWL year and above (leaving time to be House Head too). The progressive staff reduction could be down to a combination of funding and uncertain authority (or battles over it between the headmaster and Board).

We know they've lost several long-term teachers and never got fully trained replacements. DADA, obviously (Merrythought > 30 or so one-year wonders). Kettleburn > Hagrid. Slughorn > a very young Snape. We don't know the conditions under which Flitwick and Sprout started teaching. That sort of loss doesn't just affect classes, but all sorts of other procedures no one ever thought to write down before, because everyone knows how and we've all been here together for decades, until someone leaves and we're all scrambling. Maybe all the House Heads used to run networking clubs, and by the 1970s, Slughorn had taken over for all the Houses because the other Heads didn't know how or didn't have the time anymore. Didn't the club in Tom Riddle's day seem like more of an all-Slytherin gathering?

Hogwarts looks exactly like it's been going through this kind of crisis for at least the past couple of decades. Who hasn't seen (or worked in) a similar environment?

Re: Thankless

[oryx_leucoryx]

.... And who was in charge all those decades?

What I'm wondering about is whether there is any evidence that Hogwarts was better run before Albus took over. Maybe Lucius knew what he was talking about when he said Albus was the worst thing that happened to the school in a long while.

Re: Thankless

[sunnyskywalker]

The only points I can think of are (a) at least there was one teacher helping some students network, and (b) at one point, Transfiguration had two teachers, which core subjects clearly need. Which isn't a whole lot, but then, I think it's entirely possible that Dumbledore inherited these problems and didn't do anything (or at least nothing that worked), so things just kept getting worse.

Wait, we know they also once started a drama club, and one headmaster tried to expel Peeves. Both of these efforts failed horribly, but they show that staff in the past were willing to try things more often than current staff. Oh, and they must have installed plumbing at some point pre-1945, which is a significant infrastructure improvement (and must have been a big project to coordinate).

Re: Thankless

[nx74defiant.livejournal.com]

Great job of describing the downward spiral Hogwarts has been.