Blaire Harrowgate (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
blairewhich) wrote2022-02-24 02:48 pm
blairewhich) wrote2022-02-24 02:48 pm
{HP AU: 'Who's Your DADA?'}
~
Who's Your DADA?
Rating: PG
Summary: Summary: Headcanon for ACTUAL canon, merged with HP AU. X’D Best summed up by this exchange between me and Chris:
Alory:
...Is it wrong that my headcanon is that....McG did MOST of the Real Work to keep Hogwarts running
Like DD COULD do it, he was very intelligent and such, but he was such a loose cannon that McG was just like GIVE me that!!
Chris:
LOL NO THIS IS NOT WRONG AT ALL.
It is, in fact, very good and I support this XD
“Merlin’s beard, Albus, another suspect professor for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position? I had thought that after this year’s abysmal showing, we’d agreed that you would let me do the hiring for that position for once!”
Professor Minerva McGonagall has come to beard the lion in its den, as it were, and stands before Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, angling a severe look down at the man himself over his sizable desk. Dumbledore had risen politely when she’d first entered, only to settle himself back down again when she’d given an impatient flick of her hand and immediately launched into their current discussion, if anything so one-sided can truly be termed a discussion. For the most part, it’s been McGonagall demanding an explanation as she reminds him of the details of the previous fiasco, punctuated by rather outraged gestures at the article in the paper describing the individual whom Dumbledore, she has recently learned, has contracted to work at Hogwarts this coming year.
Despite being all but upbraided by his colleague (and deservedly so), Dumbledore has the gall to smile complacently up at her and say in his soft, deceptively absent-sounding voice, “Ah, but Minerva, you were so very happily busy sending out the new acceptance letters. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
McGonagall refuses to have her concerns--myriad as they are, and well-founded at that--simply waved away as Dumbledore always seems inclined to do. He has the classic Gryffindor recklessness and disregard for the rules, while she has the true lion-hearted sense of justice (not merely the petty, always-playing-favourites sort that the current headmaster possesses), and they both have their house’s sense of pride in spades. When they disagree, as they most certainly do now, the results are always something to be seen.
“Honestly, after last time, it’s a wonder that we have any students left at all,” she snips, then casts a baleful look around at the portraits of past headmasters and headmistresses lining the walls--all of them silent and unhelpful, a few even pretending to snore. A fine lot of good you all are, she thinks with an inward huff that escapes to become more than half outward as well.
Dumbledore, however, remains entirely unruffled by her exasperation. His disinterested gaze briefly flits across the headlines and a few sentences of the article before he turns one of his usual unflappable smiles up at her.
“It was a simple misunderstanding, that’s all.”
At that, McGonagall looks at him askance. “Albus, two students nearly died!”
“And are both expected to fully recover by the end of the term. Excellent news, is it not?”
Judging by her thunderous expression, McGonagall finds nothing excellent in this at all, but her pursed lips make it obvious that she isn’t going to waste any further time attempting to argue that particular point. Not when she has another that she’s growing increasingly adamant about making.
“As much as I trust your judgment, Albus, if things get out of hand again this year, I’ll-”
“All will be well, Minerva, never fear. I believe this year’s professor should be...quite educational, if not entertaining."
"For us, or for the students? Because they're the ones we should be thinking about, Albus!"
Albus twinkles at her serenely. Minerva McGonagall is not amused.
Another decade or so passes, predictably so: the school goes through ten more Defence Against the Dark Arts professors, including a half-Veela (who charmed half the students in her classes, resulting in some of the worst grades on record--though whether she’d done it intentionally or not was still unclear); a vampire (who bit at least one student for an in-class ‘demonstration’); another two wizards who had lied about their exploits almost as miserably as Gilderoy Lockhart himself; a bumbling but friendly squib who kept losing her notes and unfortunately didn’t have much even theoretical knowledge of magic; and an honest-to-Merlin Egyptian mummy who, two months into the term, had collapsed in a pile of dust and sent a whole class of students to the Hospital Wing with dire cases of Rot-Lung.
Enough is enough, the Deputy Headmistress decides as she reviews that list of failures with a gimlet eye. She’s through with sitting idly by and allowing Dumbledore to continue hiring these disastrous would-be professors--he couldn’t have produced a more ludicrous parcel of bumbling galoots if he’d tried. If she knows Albus--and she does, for better or worse--he finds some sort of amusement in the idea of that professorial position being ‘cursed’, never mind the fact that because of this little private joke of his, several generations of witches and wizards haven’t had proper instruction in one of the more crucial areas of magic. The idea of a ‘curse’ of any sort is, in this case, absurd.
Yes, in her opinion, the only ‘curse’ that the position of Hogwarts’ Defence Against the Dark Arts professor truly holds...is the fact that Dumbledore has been allowed to select which applicant should fill the position.
In which case, she thinks to herself with a small, grim smile as she purposefully takes up her quill-pen, I believe that it’s long past time to break that curse.
Three days later, over tea, Dumbledore brings up the topic once again. Seeing the merry twinkle in his eye, as if it’s nothing more than a game, Minerva bites into a biscuit with a little more force than is strictly necessary, but as she chews, she reminds herself that the matter is already settled, taking a sip of her tea to wash down that ambitious mouthful, more than ready for this conversation to unfold.
“Ah, Minerva, I meant to mention this a few days ago. About the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, I’ve received an inquiry from one of the American LeStranges-”
“The position is already filled, Albus,” McGonagall cuts in smoothly, looking cool and collected as she takes another pull from her tea cup.
In contrast, Dumbledore blinks at her over his half-moon spectacles, betraying a brief flicker of surprise that she would have missed if she hadn’t been watching for it specifically, which is soon covered up again with his usual genial obfuscation.
“Is it? Pray forgive my curiosity, but if you would be so kind as to share with me the identity of our newest hire, I should be most appreciative.”
McGonagall nearly rolls her eyes at how passive-aggressive that mild-seeming statement is, but instead decides to give the often-unforthcoming headmaster a justified taste of his own medicine. Sitting back more comfortably in her seat, she takes another unhurried sip of tea before she speaks.
“I hired someone I think you'll approve of.” She pauses for a moment to select a ginger biscuit from the plate between them, taking a bite and chewing it completely before swallowing. “Former Death Eater, from a family of infamously dark wizards, only narrowly avoided going to Azkaban.” Another pause for another sip of tea, and by now McGonagall knows that if Dumbledore was one to fidget, he’d be doing so; as it is, he’s simply munching steadily away at a biscuit of his own, though she can read the impatience in the set of his shoulders, and decides to give one final push. “He might very well be a murderer in the bargain, so he seemed like exactly the sort of person you'd want to hire."
At that, Dumbledore is actually struck speechless for a moment, a cascade of crumbs littering his beard as his mouth falls open for a telling second. His recovery is admirably smooth, biting into his current biscuit with enough force to produce a second tiny rain of crumbs, giving himself the perfect excuse to Vanish them all. That done, he peers over his half-moon glasses at the deputy headmistress, a keen light of curiosity--and, indeed, almost over-eager mania--burning in those often-twinkling blue eyes.
"Whom did you hire, Minerva?"
He says it as casually as he can manage, doing his best to hide how intrigued he is by the situation at hand, and if she didn’t know him as well as she does, she might almost be fooled.
As it is, she sees right through him, and so once again she takes her time, finishing that biscuit and her tea before giving him a very small, very smug little smile over the rim of the cup as she finally gives him the name of their new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor:
"Blaire Harrowgate."
For a second time in nearly as many minutes, the headmaster is stunned into silence. McGonagall sets her empty tea cup and its saucer down on the tray between them, and rises to her feet.
“Thank you for the tea, Albus. Now, I really must get back to sending out all of the acceptance letters for the new students.”
She allows herself another small smirk as she closes the door to the Headmaster’s Office behind her. Harrowgate--Blaire--had been an excellent student, a favourite of hers despite the fact that he was a pivotal member of the Slytherin Quidditch Team. But that was neither here nor there; it had been his thoroughness and dedication that she’d liked in him as a student, the way that he applied himself to his studies with an earnestness that so many students seemed to lack. Sharp-eyed as she was, she had been able to discern the reason behind it as well. It wasn’t that he had felt duty-bound to get good marks, or even that he’d truly just loved to learn like his close friend Corrin Wiseacre. Rather, it was a very Slytherin motivation: a hunger for more knowledge, and therefore more personal strength and power. That he’d wanted that power largely to protect the people he cared about was no great secret to McGonagall either, and that much was something she could understand very well. It was one of many reasons that she’d decided that he would make an excellent Defence Against the Dark Arts professor: one way or another, he would make certain his students learned what they needed to keep themselves safe. Also like her, she suspected that he wouldn’t tolerate any mischief or intentional foolishness in his classroom; if he was anything like he had been as a prefect, he would be the epitome of ‘tough but fair.’
Even so, despite how well-suited he was for the job, it was plain that Dumbledore isn’t pleased by her selection. That Blaire holds little love for the current headmaster is more than evident (and more than understandable, in her eyes), but McGonagall isn’t particularly concerned on that point, and for good reason.
After all the odds Blaire Harrowgate has beaten throughout his life thus far, she strongly suspects that the so-called ‘curse’ on the Defence Against the Dark Arts position will soon to be laid to rest as well.
Who's Your DADA?
Rating: PG
Summary: Summary: Headcanon for ACTUAL canon, merged with HP AU. X’D Best summed up by this exchange between me and Chris:
Alory:
...Is it wrong that my headcanon is that....McG did MOST of the Real Work to keep Hogwarts running
Like DD COULD do it, he was very intelligent and such, but he was such a loose cannon that McG was just like GIVE me that!!
Chris:
LOL NO THIS IS NOT WRONG AT ALL.
It is, in fact, very good and I support this XD
“Merlin’s beard, Albus, another suspect professor for the Defence Against the Dark Arts position? I had thought that after this year’s abysmal showing, we’d agreed that you would let me do the hiring for that position for once!”
Professor Minerva McGonagall has come to beard the lion in its den, as it were, and stands before Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, angling a severe look down at the man himself over his sizable desk. Dumbledore had risen politely when she’d first entered, only to settle himself back down again when she’d given an impatient flick of her hand and immediately launched into their current discussion, if anything so one-sided can truly be termed a discussion. For the most part, it’s been McGonagall demanding an explanation as she reminds him of the details of the previous fiasco, punctuated by rather outraged gestures at the article in the paper describing the individual whom Dumbledore, she has recently learned, has contracted to work at Hogwarts this coming year.
Despite being all but upbraided by his colleague (and deservedly so), Dumbledore has the gall to smile complacently up at her and say in his soft, deceptively absent-sounding voice, “Ah, but Minerva, you were so very happily busy sending out the new acceptance letters. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
McGonagall refuses to have her concerns--myriad as they are, and well-founded at that--simply waved away as Dumbledore always seems inclined to do. He has the classic Gryffindor recklessness and disregard for the rules, while she has the true lion-hearted sense of justice (not merely the petty, always-playing-favourites sort that the current headmaster possesses), and they both have their house’s sense of pride in spades. When they disagree, as they most certainly do now, the results are always something to be seen.
“Honestly, after last time, it’s a wonder that we have any students left at all,” she snips, then casts a baleful look around at the portraits of past headmasters and headmistresses lining the walls--all of them silent and unhelpful, a few even pretending to snore. A fine lot of good you all are, she thinks with an inward huff that escapes to become more than half outward as well.
Dumbledore, however, remains entirely unruffled by her exasperation. His disinterested gaze briefly flits across the headlines and a few sentences of the article before he turns one of his usual unflappable smiles up at her.
“It was a simple misunderstanding, that’s all.”
At that, McGonagall looks at him askance. “Albus, two students nearly died!”
“And are both expected to fully recover by the end of the term. Excellent news, is it not?”
Judging by her thunderous expression, McGonagall finds nothing excellent in this at all, but her pursed lips make it obvious that she isn’t going to waste any further time attempting to argue that particular point. Not when she has another that she’s growing increasingly adamant about making.
“As much as I trust your judgment, Albus, if things get out of hand again this year, I’ll-”
“All will be well, Minerva, never fear. I believe this year’s professor should be...quite educational, if not entertaining."
"For us, or for the students? Because they're the ones we should be thinking about, Albus!"
Albus twinkles at her serenely. Minerva McGonagall is not amused.
Another decade or so passes, predictably so: the school goes through ten more Defence Against the Dark Arts professors, including a half-Veela (who charmed half the students in her classes, resulting in some of the worst grades on record--though whether she’d done it intentionally or not was still unclear); a vampire (who bit at least one student for an in-class ‘demonstration’); another two wizards who had lied about their exploits almost as miserably as Gilderoy Lockhart himself; a bumbling but friendly squib who kept losing her notes and unfortunately didn’t have much even theoretical knowledge of magic; and an honest-to-Merlin Egyptian mummy who, two months into the term, had collapsed in a pile of dust and sent a whole class of students to the Hospital Wing with dire cases of Rot-Lung.
Enough is enough, the Deputy Headmistress decides as she reviews that list of failures with a gimlet eye. She’s through with sitting idly by and allowing Dumbledore to continue hiring these disastrous would-be professors--he couldn’t have produced a more ludicrous parcel of bumbling galoots if he’d tried. If she knows Albus--and she does, for better or worse--he finds some sort of amusement in the idea of that professorial position being ‘cursed’, never mind the fact that because of this little private joke of his, several generations of witches and wizards haven’t had proper instruction in one of the more crucial areas of magic. The idea of a ‘curse’ of any sort is, in this case, absurd.
Yes, in her opinion, the only ‘curse’ that the position of Hogwarts’ Defence Against the Dark Arts professor truly holds...is the fact that Dumbledore has been allowed to select which applicant should fill the position.
In which case, she thinks to herself with a small, grim smile as she purposefully takes up her quill-pen, I believe that it’s long past time to break that curse.
Three days later, over tea, Dumbledore brings up the topic once again. Seeing the merry twinkle in his eye, as if it’s nothing more than a game, Minerva bites into a biscuit with a little more force than is strictly necessary, but as she chews, she reminds herself that the matter is already settled, taking a sip of her tea to wash down that ambitious mouthful, more than ready for this conversation to unfold.
“Ah, Minerva, I meant to mention this a few days ago. About the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, I’ve received an inquiry from one of the American LeStranges-”
“The position is already filled, Albus,” McGonagall cuts in smoothly, looking cool and collected as she takes another pull from her tea cup.
In contrast, Dumbledore blinks at her over his half-moon spectacles, betraying a brief flicker of surprise that she would have missed if she hadn’t been watching for it specifically, which is soon covered up again with his usual genial obfuscation.
“Is it? Pray forgive my curiosity, but if you would be so kind as to share with me the identity of our newest hire, I should be most appreciative.”
McGonagall nearly rolls her eyes at how passive-aggressive that mild-seeming statement is, but instead decides to give the often-unforthcoming headmaster a justified taste of his own medicine. Sitting back more comfortably in her seat, she takes another unhurried sip of tea before she speaks.
“I hired someone I think you'll approve of.” She pauses for a moment to select a ginger biscuit from the plate between them, taking a bite and chewing it completely before swallowing. “Former Death Eater, from a family of infamously dark wizards, only narrowly avoided going to Azkaban.” Another pause for another sip of tea, and by now McGonagall knows that if Dumbledore was one to fidget, he’d be doing so; as it is, he’s simply munching steadily away at a biscuit of his own, though she can read the impatience in the set of his shoulders, and decides to give one final push. “He might very well be a murderer in the bargain, so he seemed like exactly the sort of person you'd want to hire."
At that, Dumbledore is actually struck speechless for a moment, a cascade of crumbs littering his beard as his mouth falls open for a telling second. His recovery is admirably smooth, biting into his current biscuit with enough force to produce a second tiny rain of crumbs, giving himself the perfect excuse to Vanish them all. That done, he peers over his half-moon glasses at the deputy headmistress, a keen light of curiosity--and, indeed, almost over-eager mania--burning in those often-twinkling blue eyes.
"Whom did you hire, Minerva?"
He says it as casually as he can manage, doing his best to hide how intrigued he is by the situation at hand, and if she didn’t know him as well as she does, she might almost be fooled.
As it is, she sees right through him, and so once again she takes her time, finishing that biscuit and her tea before giving him a very small, very smug little smile over the rim of the cup as she finally gives him the name of their new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor:
"Blaire Harrowgate."
For a second time in nearly as many minutes, the headmaster is stunned into silence. McGonagall sets her empty tea cup and its saucer down on the tray between them, and rises to her feet.
“Thank you for the tea, Albus. Now, I really must get back to sending out all of the acceptance letters for the new students.”
She allows herself another small smirk as she closes the door to the Headmaster’s Office behind her. Harrowgate--Blaire--had been an excellent student, a favourite of hers despite the fact that he was a pivotal member of the Slytherin Quidditch Team. But that was neither here nor there; it had been his thoroughness and dedication that she’d liked in him as a student, the way that he applied himself to his studies with an earnestness that so many students seemed to lack. Sharp-eyed as she was, she had been able to discern the reason behind it as well. It wasn’t that he had felt duty-bound to get good marks, or even that he’d truly just loved to learn like his close friend Corrin Wiseacre. Rather, it was a very Slytherin motivation: a hunger for more knowledge, and therefore more personal strength and power. That he’d wanted that power largely to protect the people he cared about was no great secret to McGonagall either, and that much was something she could understand very well. It was one of many reasons that she’d decided that he would make an excellent Defence Against the Dark Arts professor: one way or another, he would make certain his students learned what they needed to keep themselves safe. Also like her, she suspected that he wouldn’t tolerate any mischief or intentional foolishness in his classroom; if he was anything like he had been as a prefect, he would be the epitome of ‘tough but fair.’
Even so, despite how well-suited he was for the job, it was plain that Dumbledore isn’t pleased by her selection. That Blaire holds little love for the current headmaster is more than evident (and more than understandable, in her eyes), but McGonagall isn’t particularly concerned on that point, and for good reason.
After all the odds Blaire Harrowgate has beaten throughout his life thus far, she strongly suspects that the so-called ‘curse’ on the Defence Against the Dark Arts position will soon to be laid to rest as well.