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.
When he was filming all the DA stuff in Order of the Phoenix, Daniel Radcliffe chose to wear the Lupin-like cardigan because he thought that Harry would most want to emulate Lupin in the classroom i.e. an adult who taught his students to overcome their fears with solidarity, responsibility, and fun without speaking down to them. And just like Lupin, Harry had a hard past and a secret power that he never wished to have. Can you imagine how proud Lupin would have been to have Harry follow in his footsteps and help kids like Neville Longbottom overcome the things they fear? Harry would have loved to be a teacher at Hogwarts and now I need to sit down and lament that this is not canon in the HP universe.
I’d just like to take this moment to remind you all that there’s nothing stating that Harry couldn’t pull a Mcgonagall. Leaving the Ministry to teach is definitely something he’d do.
For that matter, he’d probably be a more effective DADA teacher with a couple of decades of experience in adult wizarding society? A first career as an auror would probably fill in some of the gaps of his own very spotty DADA education too – Harry did a great job with the DA, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready to teach DADA in peacetime. A comprehensive DADA curriculum includes a lot more than self-defense in duels with other wizards.
Plus there’s a strong thread in the books of how becoming too attatched to the school without engaging with adult society isn’t healthy? A big part of Voldemort’s motivation throughout his life was a desire to possess and control the one place he felt safe. Dumbledore didn’t trust himself in what he chose to view as legitimate authority – refusing to take the position of Minister for Magic despite being repeatedly asked – and instead did an enormous amount of harm in a position that was just as influential but where the people under his authority were much more vulnerable. Arguably, the pattern also extends to things like how Hagrid was denied the opportunity to even try to enter adult society, how as a young adult Snape was forced back into the school to serve the purposes of two men who still viewed him as a useful child, maybe even Binns’ inability to disengage from the school even after his own death. Granted, many of the other teachers do seem a lot better balanced and better connected to the outside world, and I think Neville could well be one of them – he’s already got a foot in wizarding society in a way that most of the obsession risks don’t, for one thing. But Harry is firmly in the “way too attached to Hogwarts” category, and I think he’d benefit from some time learning to view other settings as safe and fulfilling.
Monsters' Queen 