Dumbledore's employment policy (WAS: Characters You Hate)

[Scott Northrup]

No: HPFGUIDX 51140

 Grey Wolf:
> Or are you suggesting that, since the only person that is willing to
> teach the DADA lessons is Lockhart, Dumbledore should *force* someone
> into the position? That is what you seem to be suggesting, after all:
> to get someone who *does not* want the job and force him to teach it
> anyway.
>
> The bottom line is that even if there is a qualified ghost out there
> that could teach the lessons, or a teacher of Hogwarts had enough time
> to teach DADA (which is false, no teacher has that much time, it's a
> full-time job that requires 42 hours/week just for lessons, which comes
> out to 8.4 hours a day), Dumbledore would never force anyone into a
> position he doesn't want, because he's a decent person and a good
> headmaster.

Agreed.  I was always under the impression that the hiring went something
like this:

-Dumbdore makes an announcement to the press that Hogwarts needs a new DADA
teacher.

-Lockhart, deciding that such prestigious position might make for a good
book later on, decides to send his resum to Hogwarts, in book form.

-Dumbledore, unaware that Lockhart is a fake like the rest of the WW,  sees
that Lockhart is self-absorbed, yet very talented. Having received no other
applications, Dumbledore signs Lockhart to a 3-term contract.

-Weeks (days, perhaps?) after the start of school, Dumbledore realizes that
all of Lockhart's books must have been fiction, because he's clearly an
idiot.  However, seeing as how school has already started, and Lockhart is
contracted for the full year, Dumbledore decides to let him stay.  He'd have
trouble finding a replacement, and he doesn't want to cancel DADA
altogether.  Now he's probably thinking, maybe the position /is/ jinxed.

Okay, now that may not have been how it went, exactly, but I'd like to point
out two things.  First, Most of the WW thinks that Lockhart is a super
wizard- he does have an Order of Merlin, after all.  Dumbledore would have
no reason to suspect the guy is actually an idiot without having spent some
time around the guy.  Second, Dumbledore's hands are pretty much tied- I
don't think he had much of a choice, and once school starts, then what?

-Scott
(Defender of Dumbledore!)