Dumbledore's near-criminal irresponsibility

[Eric Oppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 160599

One thing that occurs to me about Dumbledore is that his behavior sometimes 
devolves into irresponsibility that's nearly criminal in its intensity.  In 
some ways, he's a bit like Hagrid.  Hagrid's almost impossible to hurt, and 
tends to think that other, smaller people are just about as invulnerable as 
he is, so he often endangers others (Aragog, Buckbeak) without an ounce of 
malice.

Once Dumbledore got the idea that there was a curse on the Defence Against 
the Dark Arts teaching position, I'd say that continuing to allow it to 
exist was playing with the lives and sanity of the hapless, unknowing 
witches and wizards whom he allowed to teach.  Quirrel and Lockhart's fates 
could be laid at Dumbledore's door, and if Lupin had killed someone in 
werewolf form, or Moody had died in the trunk, the same could be said of 
them.  Even Umbridge's fate could be tied to the DADA Teachers' 
Curse---while she's a nasty piece of work and a Ministry suck-up, I honestly 
don't think she _deliberately set out_ to become a sadistic tyrant.  (The 
Blood Quill might have been SOP at Hogwarts in her time; compared with 
being, say, hung in chains by one's arms, it does look like nothing much)

As Headmaster, not to mention an immensely prestigous wizard, Dumbledore has 
a great deal of latitude about whom he hires as a teacher, and what is and 
is not taught at Hogwarts.  (Remember, at one point he was thinking about 
not offering Divination.)  Once he twigged that there was some sort of curse 
on the DADA teacher's job, he should have done something.  Perhaps, if he 
couldn't just quit _having_ a separate DADA class and make sure that what's 
needed is covered in other classes' curricula (the Patronus Charm, forex, 
could be covered in Charms class) he could have swapped around and had Binns 
teach DADA.  I don't think there's much that the DADA curse could do to a 
ghost---they're pretty hard to hurt or kill.  Of course, that would leave an 
opening for a History of Magic teacher---and if "History of Magic" just 
_happens_ to go into great detail about Dark Magic and how best to resist 
it, well, a lot of history is the struggle between Dark and Light magic, 
isn't it?

I could just see Snape teaching History of Magic:  "You are here to learn 
the noble and ancient history of magic---the stories of wizards and witches 
from the earliest recorded times onward.  While there is little or no 
wand-waving here, do not think for a second that this is a useless class. 
>From the stories of the great wizards and witches of the past, we can learn 
how best to deal with the threats that face us in the future.  We will be 
discussing great victories, terrible defeats, and accomplishments so 
stupendous that I doubt that any of you dunderheads could understand them. 
While this is not the same thing as those lurid historical novels that I see 
some of you have been reading---such as _Sweet Savage Sorcery_---the history 
of magekind is a very mature subject.  The stories about Rowena Ravenclaw 
and the Dance of the Seven Veils, Helga Hufflepuff's seduction of the Dark 
Wizard Gargamel---all of these, and a great deal more, have gone to make up 
the story of wizardkind."

It does occur to me that abolishing DADA, or folding it into other subjects 
and fobbing it off onto Binns, might cause problems with the OWLs and NEWTs. 
If this were done, Dumbledore might have to explain that there is reason to 
believe that there is a curse on the position, and either abolish the DADA 
OWL and NEWT, or just accept that very few Hogwarts students will do well on 
those particular tests, and allow for it.