Expecto il padrino

[sunnyskywalker]

A bit of silliness.

I stumbled across the blog post "The meaning of Expecto Patronum: From Hogwarts to Ancient Rome," which discusses the meaning of "patronus" in ancient Rome, and notes that a patron is more like a (legal) Mafia don bribing officials to protect you from the law than a sparkly representation of your soul protecting you against supernatural evil. Which is an interesting choice for the spell, "unless she really intended for Harry Potter to be calling on The Godfather," as the author says.

Of course, others have noted the similarities of the Roman patronage system to modern wizarding Britain. For example, pharnabazus's 2004 series Expecto Patronus: or how the wizarding world really works. It holds up pretty well despite being written before book six. Dumbledore as a powerful wizarding patron with many clients, which makes him a political heavyweight other patron-networks in the Ministry might reasonably conclude is a threat to their own influence, seems just as accurate after book seven.

Coincidentally, I've been re-watching series one of the original British House of Cards. If you want patronage networks and backroom backstabbing, here you go! Chief Whip Francis Urquhart is such a nice, grandfatherly fellow who appears above all that petty factionalism and can explain how destroying his rivals' reputations and the occasional straight-up murder is really for the greater good. ("This is a mercy killing.") And he knows absolutely everyone's dirty little secrets and how to manipulate them. How very...familiar. Not that I'm saying Dumbledore would ever spike someone's cocaine with rat poison, oh no. He would never--just ask him! And I'm sure it's a total coincidence how many powerful young witches and wizards who threaten his position or don't obey him completely end up dead or otherwise neutralized. Honest.

Still, it raises a probably-most-irrelevant question: is the position of Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot roughly equivalent to Speaker of the House of Commons or Lord Speaker, as I think most fans have assumed, or is it the equivalent of being Chief Whip? I mean, I'm sure Dumbledore knows as much as he can about Wizengamot members regardless, but it would be amusing if his actual job was to know everything and use it to pressure them into voting the "right" way for his faction.

Dumbledore: a version of Francis Urquhart who decided that controlling people behind the scenes was actually a much better job than being the top boss after all?

By Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Fair use, Link

"You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment."

Comments

[jana-ch.livejournal.com]

Not silly at all. It sounds entirely accurate to me. And Slughorn is Maecenas, patron of the arts–such as the wizarding world has. Harry may think he's smarmy, but compared to Godfather Dumbledore, he's truly benevolent.

[sunnyskywalker]

Slughorn never abandoned a protegee to rot in Azkaban without trial, true. Dumbledore sets the bar really low.

[chantaldormand]

We learn so little about Dumbledore's position in Wizengamont (and about the Wizengamont itself) it's very hard to to tell just how much of his power is granted by political system and how much by his own machinations.
And there is no doubt in my mind that for majority of his tenure as Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus had a lot of "incidents". Granted, most of incidents during pre-Harry era weren't anywhere as bad as not expelling student for major breaking of Statue of Secrecy (CoS) or helping student free escaped prisoner (PoA), but rampant bulling and favouritism during Marauders era would be wonderful argument for his political opponents.
And yet, during first few books everybody (but nasty Slytherins) sees Albus as either benevolent ruler or eccentric old man.
So what is his Secret?
Well, it's awesome PR combined with moulding young wizards and witches' minds during their stay in Hogwarts.
And it takes a lot to remove Dumbledore from his political positions.
Considering that Draco passes school rumours to Rita during GoF, we can pretty much assume that between end of GoF and beginning of the next school-year Rita introduced the public to any incidences Albus managed to suppress during Harry's 1-4 years. And that is why people question Dumbledore's sanity so much during OotP
There wasno need for supposed Philosophical Stone to be in school of kids. And one of teachers goes missing at the end of that school year.
Muggleborn students (under headmaster who is supposed to be pro-muggleborns) gets petrified without any official investigation. Again the teacher mysteriously gets disposed.
Then after full year of hunting mass murderer- who managed to sneak into the most secure place in the UK — it turns out the headmaster employed a werewolf without informing parents.
And so on. Pre-OotP Albus pretty much treated Hogwatrs as his playground.

[sunnyskywalker]

Karkaroff disappearing right at the end of the Triwizard Tournament probably also looked suspicious. Was he in league with escaped Death Eater Barty Junior all along? Well, Dumbledore couldn't have known...oh, wait, he was there when Karkaroff admitted to being a Death Eater himself and sold out his comrades in exchange for freedom? And Dumbledore invited him to Hogwarts for most of the school year? The same year he didn't notice that his good friend Moody was actually a Death Eater in disguise? Um.

One of the few things I think it's safe to say about the Wizengamot is that it's a part-time legislature. Which has plenty of historical precedent, so that's fine. It probably mostly meets over summer (also common historically), conveniently when school is out and Dumbledore has more time for legislating. As the high court, it probably has to deal with a few cases the rest of the year, but probably not that many.

But yeah, how much power membership gives anyone is hard to say. There are about 50 members, who are probably the most prominent members of wizarding society anyway and so they already have a lot of power just by being in the old boys' club. The Wizengamot probably basically is the old boys' club, institutionalized.

[chantaldormand]

With Karkoroff situation is even worse- not only he is DE who sold out his fellow terrorists, but he is also a Headmaster of school located in another country. He is also a judge for the Triwizards Tournament. Just imagine if during one of Olympics one of judges or foreign representations' trainer went MIA and wasn't found. No matter in which country Durmstrang is located and how important Karkoroff is there, that country should make MOM's life difficult.

If it meets in summer then could be twice as interesting- perhaps it could be traditionally compatible with schoolyear so it won't interfere with Wizengamont members' education? Nowadays Hogwarts teaches mostly underaged students, but maybe in past there were classes for adults?

[sunnyskywalker]

And if Durmstrang holds a similar position as Hogwarts in its catchment area, the headmaster is also kind of like the Secretary of Education. Which makes his disappearance an even bigger deal. No wonder the Wizengamot members were so annoyed at Fudge and Umbridge for summoning them all to hear a case of underage magic a couple of months later--they were probably still scrambling to manage the fallout. Which was even more complicated by the questions about why the British Ministry hadn't particularly noticed or cared when their equivalent of the Secretary of State started calling in sick for months on end until he suddenly vanished too. (I don't care what the Weasleys say--they can't blame Percy for that. Crouch must have worked with a lot of people, both foreign and domestic, and evidently none of them worried about Crouch's uncharacteristic absence or the orders which looked suspicious in hindsight.)

The ridiculous Hogwarts school song mentions students as ranging from "old and bald" to "young with scabby knees," and given the history of education, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Hogwarts traditionally accepted a much wider age range. It's a lot more likely than the school somehow having a very modern calendar with strict age cut-offs since its founding, centuries before the Muggle world adopted that structure. Both the school schedule and the Wizengamot schedule could have been pretty irregular for a long time, so there's a lot of possible flexibility there.

Though even in, for example, small town governments where all the positions are part-time and they all have second jobs, I'm pretty sure that that there's plenty of work to be done even when they aren't actively meeting. Talking to constituents and learning about their concerns seems like an important part of the job. How would Dumbledore manage that? Just how much time does he spend hanging out in pubs? Or maybe he only has a Wizengamot seat because the Headmaster of Hogwarts automatically gets one, and his "constituency" is the students? He still doesn't talk to them much, though... And this would mean he either had a Wizengamot seat by other means before becoming headmaster, or he was offered the position of Minister several times without even being on the Wizengamot somehow. Which sounds ridiculous, but not impossible, I guess.

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, we know he receives many letters with parents' complaints, so that's one way of knowing what constituents think...

[sunnyskywalker]

I wonder how many letters complained about the constant turnover in the Defense position and recommended that he hire someone sure to be able to handle the job this time, like that famous and charming expert, Gilderoy Lockhart?