Dumbledore, Hagrid and Flobberworms

[davewitley]

No: HPFGUIDX 40433

Pippin has already pointed out how the small size of the wizard 
community makes professional detachment hard to maintain in all 
circumstances.

I think also that the actual Hogwarts set-up makes professionalism 
very hard to maintain too.

Hagrid's loyalty to Dumbledore is in fact very sorely tested in COS 
and POA.  When Fudge sends Hagrid to Azkaban completely baselessly 
Dumbledore is powerless to do anything about it.  Dumbledore, while 
able to help clear Hagrid himself over the Buckbeak incident, is 
unable to save Buckbeak.

So, if Dumbledore offers help to Hagrid over his teaching, and 
encourages him to move on from Flobberworms, what is Hagrid's 
reaction likely to be?  He will refuse, for fear of arbitrarily being 
sent to Azkaban on a trumped up charge if a Niffler nips Pansy 
Parkinson.  Dumbledore's only recourse then is to threaten Hagrid, in 
effect piling injustice on injustice.

It's not entirely surprising that later on, when confronted with a 
plainly malevolent Karkaroff, Hagrid overracts.  He still has every 
respect for Dumbledore's character, but I can't blame him for being a 
bit shaky in his respect for his ability to take the right action to 
defend himself.

In short, from Hagrid's POV, to teach at Hogwarts is to have to fight 
for your own survival, with only limited help from Dumbledore.  This 
does raise questions as to Dumbledore's wisdom in appointing such a 
vulnerable person, but dare I venture that it is a major theme of the 
books that *every* wizarding adult is so vulnerable that they are 
incapable of fulfilling the professional ideal of teaching (or indeed 
of fulfilling the basic requirements of adulthood)?  To quote Hagrid 
himself on another of Dumbledore's dodgy appointments: 'Best? He was 
the *on'y* man prepared to do it' (my paraphrase from memory).

You could say that the choice faced by an essentially weak Dumbledore 
is not between professional and unprofessional teaching, but between 
no teaching and appallingly bad teaching.  What I can't work out is 
whether JKR sees this as the aftermath of Voldemort's influence, or 
it merely reflects her real-life experience of teaching in England.

David