"I say, we will have no more marriages...."

[Flying Ford Anglia]

No: HPFGUIDX 4456

The venerable "Caius Marcius" wrote:

<<<Perhaps I've missed something (please alert me if I have), but 
AFAIK none of the Hogwarts professors seem to be married. I do not 
recall any mention of a Mr. Sprout or a Mrs. Flitwick, let alone a 
better half of Snape or Lockhart. Do Hogwarts profs have to take a 
vow of celibacy, or do these academic posts pay so poorly that 
marriage is out of the question?>>>

We did discuss this a while back.  I pointed out that all the 
teachers appeared to be singletons and someone made the point that 
they might have a partner tucked away in Hogsmeade or even living in 
the Hogwarts grounds.  However, it seems unlikely that we wouldn't 
have seen some of these significant others at the Yule Ball, for 
example.

Poverty has never stopped people from marrying each other and, 
obviously, people don't need to be married to each other to be a 
couple. The adage "two can leave as cheaply as one" springs to mind.  
A vow of celibacy, however, seems a *bit* much for a teacher - what 
purpose would it serve? If it's true, it would be no surprise that 
Dumbledore has trouble finding suitable DADA professors.

More recently, I made the point that, since we haven't seen partners 
of any persuasion, there is no reason to suppose that some of the 
teachers couldn't be gay. It may be that the teachers' other halves 
aren't allowed into the school and that, from Harry's POV, we don't 
hear much discussion which mentions them.  Perhaps if we dropped in 
on a staff meeting (do they have them?) we'd hear all the adult 
gossip and get a completely different perspective.

This is probably just a case of JKR not wanting to clutter up her 
cast list with too many 'off-screen' characters.  In the context of 
the storyline, most of the teachers don't get enough lines to be able 
to afford references to their domestic or romantic doings.   

Neil