Why Did Dumbledore Keep Hiring TERRIBLE Professors? - Harry Potter Explained

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Lockhart, Umbridge, Quirrell, Dangerous Werewolf, Imposter Professor. Were these really the best the Wizarding World had to offer? For a magical school with a reputation like Hogwarts, it feels quite unusual that these people ever stepped foot in the castle, let alone taught actual students. But when it comes to the role of Data Professor, Hogwarts just can't seem to get it right. Or is it just that Dumbledore can't get it right?

For as long as the school has existed, Defence Against the Dark Arts has been a core subject that teaches students how to defend themselves against dark magic, creatures and curses. Though I'm not sure it's been particularly successful in this regard. Pexie Pixie Pessinome, anyone? And for as long as Harry attended Hogwarts, and as it turns out from many decades prior, the subject had a particularly high turnover rate. And by particularly high, I actually mean absurdly enormously astronomically high. In fact, every single year that Harry went to the school, he had a completely different professor that taught the subject in an entirely different way.

Unfortunately, there is an explanation for this, as explained to Harry by Dumbledore. Oh, he definitely wanted the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, said Dumbledore. The aftermath of our little meeting proved that. You see, we have never been able to keep a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for longer than a year since I refused the post to Lord Voldemort.

Basically, Tom Riddle wasn't happy that he was rejected for the position himself and placed some sort of curse on it. Right after he graduated from Hogwarts, he applied and was rejected by then headmaster Armando Dippit. And then more than two decades later, Riddle once again pursued the position and was subsequently rejected by Dumbledore. And from this point onward, no one could maintain the Defence Against the Dark Arts post for more than one year. And as far as conventional understanding of the Harry Potter story goes, everyone has always accepted this fact at face value. No one can hold a position for more than a year, and that's about all there is to it. Now this does explain why so many horrible teachers were at Hogwarts during Harry's time there, but it does not explain the extremely questionable placements by Dumbledore. How did Harry end up getting taught by a man with Voldemort on the back of his head, or a man whose entire career was falsified by stealing the achievements of other witches and wizards? The decision to hire these people was not part of the curse. So why did Dumbledore hire all of them? Starting with my favourite. When Harry comes back to Hogwarts for a second year, the new Defence Against the Dark Arts position has been filled by none other than Gilderoy Lockhart. Me, Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, third class, honorary member of the Dark Force Defence League, and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's most charming smile award. But I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the abandoned Banshee by smiling at her.

By this stage of his life, Lockhart had built a massive amount of prominence as an author, telling his readers tales of his heroism and illustrious magical ability. He was a dark wizard-catcher, a dragon-tamer, a troll-conqueror, and he was the only one who could see it. If there was a dark and powerful presence in the world, Lockhart had vanquished it all by himself. But catch, only he was there to witness it. After each and every time that Lockhart traveled, he would return home with a new book, filled with self-promotion, heroism and extravagance, and it really left a positive impression on most of the magical population.

On paper, he was probably one of the best Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers Hogwarts could possibly hope to find. You could name any dark creature, and he had probably dealt with it, allegedly. The only problem is that Dumbledore seems to have already known that quite a bit of it was complete nonsense. According to old Pottermore material, Dumbledore personally knew two of the witches and wizards whose achievements Lockhart had taken credit for, which meant he had very good reason to suspect that Lockhart's reputation had been built on the work of other people.

Albus Dumbledore's plans however ran deep. He happened to have known two of the wizards for whose life's work Gilderoy Lockhart had taken credit, and was one of the only people in the world who thought he knew what Lockhart was up to. And so, rather than just exposing him outright, Dumbledore seems to have decided that the best way of dealing with Lockhart was to...

hire him?

Lockhart had spent years controlling how people saw him. He wrote the books, told the stories, posed for the photographs, and made sure that the people who had actually accomplished the things he was taking credit for could no longer contradict him. At Hogwarts however, he would actually be expected to demonstrate the magic he supposedly knew, and that would be his undoing. Dumbledore was convinced that Lockhart needed only to be put back into an ordinary school setting to be revealed as a charlatan and a fraud. Professor McGonagall, who had never liked Lockhart, asked Dumbledore what he thought students would learn from such a vain, fame-hungry man.