Ok but someone tell me why Harry didn’t grow up to be the best Defense Against Dark Arts professor Hogwarts has ever known
RIGHT??? what is up with this he becomes an auror crap?? Harry would have loved being a teacher and watching his students improve throughout the years. Revamping the curriculum because if he could teach kids as a child himself how to cast a patronus, perhaps everything they think of as only NEWTs levels and beyond really just weren’t taught well before.
Making him become an auror just makes him continue the fight he was forced into as a child and didn’t enjoy, Harry enjoyed teaching the DA. Why wouldn’t he chase after doing something he loves with his life????? And then he’d be able to train the next generation to make sure that they can protect the world, too.
thisthisthisthisthis
YES. I can just picture Professors Potter and Longbottom joking about students and the other teachers during meals, playing mini pranks on Headmistress McGonagall, who’d purse her lips and remind them that they were adults, then look away before they could catch the twinkle in her eye. All the students would either have a massive crush on them or admire them or both. Harry is the only teacher capable of taming Teddy (who became known as the prank king, comparable to the Weasley’s twins) and eventually James, Al, and Lily. He develops connections with each of his students and teaches them according to the way he’s noticed they learn best and his classroom becomes a usual hangout for students, as he’s always got food and a “lame dad joke” that everyone secretly loves.
I could go on, but I have to stop myself before I get too into this.
Okay, this now officially drives me nuts because this would have made SO MUCH SENSE. And not only because of Harry’s temperament. Yes, he would have LOVED teaching DADA, but do you know who else wanted to teach DADA?
Tom Riddle.
Voldemort cursed the position so no one could stay for over a year, and Rowling said that the curse broke upon his death. It would have brought the Prophecy’s plot line to full circle, because it shouldn’t have been anyone other than Harry who became the first un-cursed DADA professor.
It would have been just another part Harry vanquished.
And how important would it be to the students as well, and to him being able to progress with a comfortable, normal life? Because every witch/ wizard in the UK goes through Hogwarts. The first year after the war, he starts, and the students all come home at Christmas or in the summer and their parents are all ‘WOW you’ve been taught by HARRY POTTER what was he like?” And all these students who are totally over it already like “I don’t know, just… he’s just Professor Potter. He’s just Harry. He makes shit jokes and hands out chocolate in lessons. He’s just a really great guy.”
And over the years it stops being people yelling ‘The Chosen One’ or ‘The Boy Who Lived’ in the streets. He goes in to Diagon Alley with his family and everyone’s like ‘Oh my god, Sir! Hi! Look, it’s Professor Potter!’ And no-one wants to know how it felt to die or what vanquishing Voldemort was like- they want to tell him how their doing, and chat with him about how they want to go into the Aurors or Dragon taming, or what they’re doing now. They want one of their favourite teachers to meet their kids, reminisce about old lessons.But of course, everyone still knows it’s Harry Potter. And it becomes like a thing among the students, whenever anyone feels low on confidence or like they’ll never achieve things in life, and someone’ll cut in like ‘Of course you can. Harry defeated the greatest Dark Wizard in memory, and he’s a massive dork who’s a little bit frightened of his wife and kids, still trips over the trick step, didn’t get the date he wanted to the Yule Ball and spills pumpkin juice all over his robes regularly. He’s human just like you, and if he could do that, you can sure as hell make the DMLE if that’s what you want.”
Like Harry and Neville being constant reminders to all their students that heroes are just people- just real, normal, faulty people.
(And then can we also have Ginny Weasley, taking some time off from playing professional Quidditch so she comes to do a few years as the flying coach. And her first year Harry goes down to the pitch with a few of the 7th years he has under his wing, and Ginny being, as always, vaguely terrifying but in an incredibly attractive way. And all these 7th years just gaping at her like ‘Woah. You are married to her?!” And Harry just massively smug like ‘Yeah, I know right?’)
Tag: hp
controversial: dumbledore would’ve made the right decision taking the 1991-1992 house cup away from slytherin even if harry and co. hadn’t saved the school and stopped voldemort from returning to power
Can I ask why? Genuinely curious here
Slytherin students didn’t have better academic performance and they certainly didn’t have better behavior than the other houses. What they did have was a head of house who would award his own students points for almost no reason while handing out penalties to other houses like candy. If Draco Malfoy answered a question correctly in potions, he’d be awarded ten points, while Hermione giving the same answer would lose ten points for being a know-it-all.
That’s the thing, the game was rigged in Slytherin’s favor. Snape set his own house up to win, through absolutely no merit of their own, seven years in a row with no penalty. Meanwhile Dumbledore is made out to be the one who “just hands victory to his own house” after four members of his house put their lives on the line to save the school from a genocidal mass-murderer.
Gryffindor deserved the house cup because their students saved the school, but even if they didn’t, Slytherin should have had it taken away from them because they didn’t earn it.
I can’t even condemn Dumbledore for letting Slytherin believe they’d won, sit in a green-and-silver dining hall, and then changing it when he announced they’d actually lost, because after seven years of cheating, it’s not enough for them to just lose. If they’d just lost, they’d think they were cheated out of something that’s rightfully theirs. Allowing them to believe they’d just once again been handed an award they didn’t deserve, and then giving it directly to the house that actually did something to deserve it, teaches a valuable lesson.
Anyway, if we’re going to criticize Dumbledore’s abilities as a school administrator for anything, it’s how unchecked he left Snape’s treatment of his students. Even putting aside the emotional and physical abuse he inflicted on his students, there should have been some provision in place to prevent his abuse of the points system before he had a chance to hand it to his own students for ONE year, let alone seven.
There should have been a provision that the current holder of the house cup is ineligible for participation in the next year’s competition. There should be an upper limit on how many points you can take away from another house’s students, and how many points you can give to your own students. Students should be able to appeal unfair penalties to the headmaster.
Point is, Slytherin shouldn’t get an award just because their head-of-house refuses to play fair
I never thought of it like this before. Thank you so much, OP