Talk: Albus Dumbledore/Archive 4

Dumbledore becoming Headmaster revisited

I just remembered something: In Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Riddle visits Dumbledore shortly after he became the headmaster at the school, with it being so recent that he just heard about it and came to congratulate him on the appointment. Tom notes that Dumbledore had been offered the job of Minister for Magic twice, but Dumbledore corrects him and says that he had been offered the job of Minister three times 'by last counting', implying that this latest offer must have pretty recent for Riddle not to know about it. Between that year and when Dumbledore refused to hire Riddle when he had just became headmaster "between 1965 and 1971", there were three Ministers for Magic: Wilhelmina Tuft (1948 - 1959), Ignatius Tuft (1959 - 1962) and Nobby Leach (1962 - 1968); which places the years Dumbledore was offered and declined the job of Minister for Magic in 1948, 1959 and 1968 respectively.

When he defeated Grindelwald, Spencer-Moon's administration was still occurring, which means that the first offer he could have been extended was when it ended in 1948. So first Dumbledore is offered the post of Minister for Magic in 1948, he declines, an election is held, which is won by Wilhelmina Tuft, who presided over a period of welcome peace and prosperity, and died in 1959 when from an allergy to fudge. It stands to reason that if the wizarding community in Britain trusted Dumbledore to preside over the period of welcome peace and prosperity that would inevitably follow after he defeated Grindelwald, they would probably also trust him to pick up where Tuft left off, and offered him the job a second time after she passed away in 1959. He would decline a second time, which enabled her son Ignatius to capitalise on his mother’s popularity to gain election. Both of these seems to be perfectly consistent with Riddle's awareness of Dumbledore's two offers, as Riddle was working at Borgin & Burkes in 1948, and given Dumbledore's defeat of Grindelwald three years prior, their conquering hero turning down the Minister job would be pretty big news, so obviously Riddle would hear about it. The murder of Hepzibah Smith is thought to be somewhere between 1955 and 1961, as her death took place ten years before Tom Riddle visited Albus Dumbledore to inquire about a job at Hogwarts.

Well, if my math in correlation with the WW article on Ministers of Magic is correct, the placement of this murder is in 1959, because then Riddle would have heard of Dumbledore's second offer just before he stole Hepzibah's treasures and left the UK to travel, been missing for 'ten years', and since it's snowing when he visits Dumbledore to ask for a job and is still covered in snow when he enters his office, it'd be late winter 1968, just a few months away from the ten year anniversary of Hepzibah's death. It is highly unlikely (and arguably imprudent) that Dumbledore would be offered the post of Minister for Magic in 1962, when Nobby Leach entered the picture. As the first-ever Muggle-born Minister, Dumbledore, as an advocate for Muggle rights, would undoubtedly been supportive of Leach's campaign, and nobody would have been stupid enough to think that Dumbledore would be interested in undermining such a progressive candidate, hence why he's been offered three times and not four. Then Nobby's term ends in 1968, courtesy of Abraxas Malfoy, which coincides with Dumbledore being named Headmaster "sometime after March 1965 and 1971," and by then, Dumbledore has been offered the job twice, and has not accepted it. At this point, given his history of refusing the job and that it is now twenty-two years since he defeated Grindelwald, while they still wanted him for the job, the enthusiasm around wanting Dumbledore to take office would probably have mellowed down a bit by then, so instead of the offer being a big deal like it was in 1948, he might simply have received an owl as a courtesy without anyone at the Ministry holding their breaths, which he replied to with a polite rejection, and then Tom comes knocking either right before or right after Minister Eugenia Jenkins took office, unaware he'd been offered the job a third time shortly before he dropped by.

This also fits with what we know from Lupin, who was bit in 1965. Then 'the family’s lives were dominated by the need to hide Remus’s condition. They uprooted themselves from village to town, leaving the instant that rumours of the boy’s odd behaviour started", all the while his parents did "all they could to find a cure", so they had been moving around for some time; during which "Remus was not allowed to play with other children, in case he let slip the truth of his condition", and long enough for Remus to grow lonely in the absence of friends and playmates, and for his parents to worry he can't attend Hogwarts. In book 3, Lupin talks about his childhood; "then Dumbledore became Headmaster", which as mentioned above would have overlapped with this third Minister job offer in 1968. Then, "by the time he (Remus) was ten years old, he was capable of pounding down doors and smashing windows", causing his parents great distress. That'd be in 1970, and Dumbledore has yet to make contact. Then a bit more time passed, and "shortly before Remus’s eleventh birthday" (1971), "no less a person than Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, arrived uninvited on the Lupins’ doorstep", by which time Dumbledore had already commissioned and magically reinforced a small house at the edge of Hogsmeade, an underground passage dug going all the way from the school ground to said house been dug and a Whomping Willow planted over it, which would have taken place sometime in 1969-1970. That way, everything would have been prepared by Remus' arrival in 1971, and his teachers, who knew of his condition, would have had a couple of school terms to get used to the idea and to be reassured of the effectiveness of the precautions in place.

Am I making sense?

Also, while we are at it, (and I realize this is a bit more of a stretch, but hear me out), in book 2, when Harry makes contact with Tom Riddle's Diary, he is told the following: "“Of course I know about the Chamber of Secrets. In my day, they told us it was a legend, that it did not exist." ('in my day' referring to the time he was a student) "But this was a lie. In my fifth year, the Chamber was opened and the monster attacked several students, finally killing one." note how he is not denoting Armando as a new headmaster - but "the headmaster in my day", was Professor Dippet, just like how the Headmaster in Harry's day was Professor Dumbledore. And yes, the assumption is that Dippet, in the absence of any candidates to have held the position between Black and Dippet, and the fact that Dippet was not exactly too young for the job in 1925 when Black died, etc, etc, but that's an assumption we've made. A fairly reasonable one, sure, but based on what Riddle said above, and but given all the little tidbits about Dippet, from Dumbledore's emphasis on how Dippet was so fond of Riddle and convinced of his honesty, to how selective he is in the people in people he confided in, to the failed pantomime by Professor Beery during the Yuletide for the students at Hogwarts and the exchange visit from Castleobruxo, can we agree that Dippet headed Hogwarts since at least 1938, when Tom Riddle first arrived at Hogwarts Castle? This also seems to roughly fit with Kettleburn's sixty-two periods of probation:

If Umbrdige's any indication, Hogwarts staff can be put on probation at any time and there's no set duration, but a Hogwarts school year is made up of three terms, right? So if we're charitable and assume Dippet was a pragmatist, he'd put Kettleburn on probation sometime in the first term, take it off during mid-term to offer up a chance for self-improvement, and put it back in the third term when his reckless behaviour inevitably got the better of him. If so, Kettleburn was put on probation on an average of twice a year. That makea two probation every year for thirty-one years by the time Dippet retires in 1968, placing his first probation in 1937. Of course, this might just be an indication of when Kettleburn began teaching, with diligent and prudent Dippet taking an immediate dislike to the bad example he set for the students, yet never fired him because he was a genuinely good teacher that knew his stuff and never neglected the safety of the students in class, which he took more seriously than his own. Dippet, however, could still have taken up the post after Black's death in 1925.

Tfoc (talk) 03:13, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

You are making sense. But that doesn't mean it isn't an entirely speculative exercise that is far from conclusively proving anything; there's no way to determine when and on what occasions Dumbledore was offered the post of Minister for Magic without it being explicitly said.

Moreover, your reasoning rests on quite a bunch of assumptions that have little canonical basis, to wit, that Dumbledore wasn't offered the post of Minister before Grindelwald's defeat (that would be consistent with the remark on Pottermore that it had been offered to him in "times of crisis"), that Dumbledore couldn't have been offered the post of Minister mid-term and that after he had refused the incumbent simply remained in office (Leonard Spencer-Moon and Wilhelmina Tuft, for instance, had to be re-elected at least once; other Ministers might have been too since there's a maximum interval for elections but not a minimum), or that Riddle's miscount had to be because the latest offer happened recently (it is just as plausible one of the offers wasn't as publicised as the others, or that he forgot about an offer that happened a long time ago, or that he simply misremembered).

There are other a couple of other assumptions you make that have no sound basis, but aren't as important for the sake of argument (i.e. that enthusiasm around wanting Dumbledore to take office had died down by 1968 — which clearly didn't, since both Philosopher's Stone, chapter 5 and Order of the Phoenix, chapter 5 say he was still expected to succeed Milicent Bagnold in 1990. Also, inferring anything about Nobby Leach's politics based on his blood status alone could be as potentially misguided as saying Margaret Thatcher was a feminist because she was the first woman PM).

I don't see the relevance of the tangent about Dippet, but as you say so yourself, it is a stretch and — I would add — all conjecture. --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 16:42, 19 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay... So once more, I have found a couple of missing pieces of the Potter puzzle that is this wiki, produced first-hand by J. K. Rowling herself, and I have, once again, gone through the trouble of putting them into their allotted places before bringing it to the attention of the wiki by posting my findings in a public place. And as usual, the response I get is the equivalent of somebody getting their hands on a pair of scissors, cutting out bits of a cardboard box that's been decorated with a Potter-esque motive using crayons, before they're being passed off as something that could very well be as much part of the picture Rowling's made as the pieces I brought to the table directly from her own writings. And here we are again, dealing with your fanfiction. And with a couple of complete non-sequiturs and at least one moot point thrown in I see. I don't know, man, if quoting Rowling and doing some mental arithmetic based on available information to narrow down a year set between 1965 to 1971 to 1968 is your idea of "an entirely speculative exercise", I would be very interested to hear what you'd call the James Potter series by G. N. Lippert.

"Dumbledore could have been offered the post of Minister mid-term and that after he had refused, the incumbent simply remained in office" - first of all, that's not a thing in canon. In canon, the Minister for Magic is democratically elected, and unless they die in office or resign, be it by their own accord or because they're pressured into resigning by the public and the media for messing up something fierce or otherwise falling short of acting in the best interests of the people they're supposed to govern, they serve for seven years, and then it's all up in the air who the next Minister will be. They're either reelected or voted out, and if there is ever a time Dumbledore's offered the job, it need to be under circumstances where we know for a fact that the job would be available be offered up to him. And secondly, in addition to your idea that someone can be offered to someone else mid-term is completely fanon, it also contradicts the statement from Rowling on that same page that once elected, "their community is behind them in a way that is rarely seen in the Muggle world." Hence, being offered the job means that there can't be already Minister for the magical community to support, there needs to be a vacancy so the job is up for grabs so it's available to be offered up, because the wizarding community at large wants Dumbledore to _become_ the Minister they'll be standing behind.

Sure, we know from Harry Potter (website) that the post can be offered to an individual without a public vote, but if the Minister's competent, there's nobody with the authority to march into the Minister's office and go; "Sorry, sir, but we like this chap better, so there's the door." As for Dumbledore being offered the job of Minister for Magic in a time of crisis? Ever heard of Lord Voldemort's first rise to power, mate? That's what I mean by fanfiction, you invent these nonsense scenarios based solely on your own imagination, and then you posit them as some sort of attempted defeater for my attempted contributions by appealing to Rowling's work. Can we stick to actual canon? For once?' You always do this; you're not entirely alone in doing it, but every time I point out something Rowling or other accepted sources tells us happen in canon that don't conform to some previously held interpretation of yours, you push these fan-made creative writings in my face that's riddled with something that can only be called creative liberties. Tfoc (talk) 09:16, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Discuss the point, not me. And kindly stop suggesting everyone who happens to disagree with you is simply out to get you for some reason.

We have been over this. We are arguing, as we often do, over the plausibility of a scenario you are positing. Unless you provide a direct reference that states what you claim, the existence of plausible alternative scenarios demonstrates that your presumptive scenario is just that, presumptive: in other words, it does not necessarily follow from the pieces of information you present. --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 14:43, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not discussing you, Seth, I'm pointing out the similarities between this latest point you're making and those that came before it. And just so we're clear; you are arguing over the "plausibility" of what I posted above. I, on the other hand, is simply trying to draw your attention to two separate bits of overlapping of text that Rowling authored, and pointing out that when they're read back to back, one fills in the gaps left by the other since Rowling has been meticulous enough to make sure the math fits and thus left no room for ambiguity. Hence, we now know something we didn't know before." You're arguing "probability", I'm just advocating for this latest revelation from Rowling to be added to the wiki. As for "the existence of plausible alternative scenarios" when talking about a fictional universe, all that proves is that fanfiction is a thing. You can make stuff up. Brilliant. I got it, you are creative. Good for you, Seth, but your ability to invent a non-canon scenario and superimpose it on canon events does not take away from anything of the above, because, again, it all comes directly from Rowling herself.

Fiction is a puzzle. Parts of it, and sometimes really big parts of it can be retrieved from the box in one piece, but then sometimes, the pieces is scattered around and you need to look for them. Luckily, though, the same red thread that we follow through the narrative of the seven original books can be found in Rowling's other writings, too. Only, it moves back and forth between different texts; forming parts of a whole, meaning you need to be a bit perceptive to notice the overlap. As I said, it's a puzzle. But very well, Seth, since you're clearly not convinced yet, here's an example: You pointed out that Dumbledore could have been offered the post of Minister before Grindelwald's defeat, because "that would be consistent with the remark on Pottermore that it had been offered to him in times of crisis," right? Wrong.

As Rita Skeeter tells us in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; "Grindelwald never extended his campaign of terror to Britain", so even if their wizarding community might felt for their counterparts abroad that was targeted by Grindelwald, and even if the Ministry sent people abroad to lend a hand in fighting him, there was still never a crisis going on within the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic in London that merited an offer being made to Dumbledore without a public vote. Hence, the time before Grindelwald's defeat does not qualify.

We know from Lupin's bio in Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies that by the mid-1960s, "the amount of Dark magical activity across the country was increasing steadily. While few yet knew what lay behind the mounting attacks and sightings, Lord Voldemort’s first ascent to power was in progress and Death Eaters were recruiting all kinds of Dark creatures to join them in their quest to overthrow the Ministry of Magic. The Ministry called in the services of authorities on Dark creatures – even those as minor as Boggarts and poltergeists – to help it understand and contain the threat."

We know from Slughorn's bio in Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists that by the time Riddle arrived at Hogwarts to apply for a job, "a Dark wizard of immense power called Lord Voldemort" was already known to be active in the wizarding world, contrasting the mid-1960s of when Lupin was bit, when it was not common knowledge. And yet, wizarding Britain had yet to fall into war, which only happened in 1970. So what do we know about the late 1960's? Well,Nobby Leach left office under suspicious circumstances, a Dark Wizard of immense power had officially become active in the magical world, the existence of a violent Pure-blood tendency in the United Kingdom had become sufficiently pronounced that pure-blood riots were abound during Squib Rights marches, and Britain was on the brink of war. In other words, Britain was in a state of crisis.

And so, the year Nobby Leach left office in 1968 is the first point in time where the situation in Britain was so dire that the necessary preconditions for Dumbledore to have been offered the job of Minister for Magic without a public vote have actually been met. This concedes, as explained above, with what we know of Dumbledore's appointment from Lupin, and with the ten year absence of Riddle and the murder of Hepzibah Smith. We known that from 1970 to Voldemort's fall in 1981, wizarding Britain was in a continuing time of crisis, and during that whole time, we know that successive Ministers feared Dumbledore’s charisma and magical talent, and were inclined to harbour fears that he wished to succeed them; and the opposition against Lord Voldemort that rallied to his side rather than to the Ministry, aka the Order of the Phoenix, was seen as a renegade outfit by the Ministry; an attitude shared by Eugenia Jenkins, Harold Minchum and, up until its disbandment one year into her term, Millicent Bagnold.

So, with 1968 being the first year he can have been offered the job without a public vote, there are three years where Dumbledore could have been offered the job of Minister, and that's in the middle of the changes of regimes taking place between Leach and Jenkins in 1968, Jenkins and Minchum in 1975, and Minchum and Bagnold in 1980. Note how in books 1 and 5, it's never said that Dumbledore was offered to succeed Bagnold in 1990, only that people wanted him in the job, even though he never applied. And so, again, by Riddle's visit around Christmas in 1968, Dumbledore has recently turned down the offer to succeed Leach. His offers to become Minister hence fell on the following years: 1948, 1959, 1968, 1975 and/or 1980, with people wanting him to apply for the election in 1990 when Bagnold retired. So the question if Dumbledore would take office was brought up five times at minimum, and six times at most. And this is all J.K. Rowling, not me. Tfoc (talk) 18:22, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Quite the contrary, it's all you.

I'll be the first to concede that my point is similar to others I've made in the past, since they all are in response to the same basic mistakes in inference you tend to repeatedly use: something is not conclusively proven just because you manage to fill in the gaps between scraps of information with a scenario you might find perfectly adequate but — and I repeat this for emphasis — does not necessarily follow from the scarce information we do have.

There is no "latest revelation from Rowling" (if there is, stick to citing it plainly, instead of trying to expand on what it is given); there is indeed indeed much "room for ambiguity". --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 20:40, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

Quite the contrary, it's all you.

Seth, I really hope Rowling reads my reply to you, because if she ever happened upon this discussion and I were playing as fast and loose with whether the above are "all me" as opposed to being "all her", I might get sued me for copyright infringements, and then arrested for theft of intellectual property. In the meantime, though, This is what I want you do do: Look up a passage from your favourite work of fiction work, then post it here on the talk page. It can be Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, R. R. Martin, R. R. Tolkien, take your pick. Because then I can go "that's all you, Seth!", then perhaps you can get an idea of just how absurd that assertion you made is.

I'll be the first to concede that my point is similar to others I've made in the past, since they all are in response to the same basic mistakes in inference you tend to repeatedly use: something is not conclusively proven just because you manage to fill in the gaps between scraps of information with a scenario you might find perfectly adequate but — and I repeat this for emphasis — does not necessarily follow from the scarce information we do have.

Then it's a good thing indeed that all I've done so far is summarising what we've been told through Rowling's own writings and done some simple mental arithmetic to fact-check the the chronology of events we're introduced to throughout the seven original Harry Potter novels, and that any "error of inference" that I'm possibly capable of making has never been part of the equation. Also, forgive me if I take your evaluation of whether something necessarily follows from the information we have with a grain of salt; lately, you've showed what at least 'seems to be a complete disinterest in information we have; as every time I point to information we have, you've chosen to indulge in your own creativity as means of arguing against me when I point out actual canon material. And either you ignore it, or you take it out of context.

In the Imperius Curse debate, you were adamant in your conviction that when fake Moody told Hermione straight to her face that he wouldn't be controlling the class completely when using the curse on them, he meant something different entirely, and never really replied to any of the other points I made. Now, you've taken that same debate tactic one step further by trying to dismiss my point with yet another irrelevant "whatifism" you came up with at the top of your head to do with - well, anything, really. Which is why I keep telling you that your ability to conceive of made up scenarios that's not part of canon has squat to do with this topic.

There is no "latest revelation from Rowling-"

Argue semantics, why don't you? Fine, fine; it is almost five years since Rowling published those digital companion books, so it's less a recent revelation from Rowling and more of a slightly older one that we hadn't thought of checking out yet.

(if there is, stick to citing it plainly, instead of trying to expand on what it is given); there is indeed indeed much "room for ambiguity".

Your knack for mental gymnastics never fail to astound me, Seth Cooper, and I'm not sure it ever will. But then I'm not into writing fanfiction either, and so this perceived ambiguity of yours seems to elude me for that reason. But I've sort of figured out by now that you won't accept that a broom is a broom unless we're literally whacked over the head with it, so let me put it this way: When Rowling writes additional lore, we're not dealing with Dora the Explorer, so there won't always be someone looking straight into the camera, going; "okay kids, so what did you learn today?". I mean, we were closer to that while reading the original novels, seen as how they're - you know - books, and we're presented a fully-fledged storyline that we follow from start to finish from Harry's point of view and hence sort of handed things on a platter because that's what you have to do when you write books. You have to narrate them. Those articles, on the other hand, aren't taking us by the hand through a narrative, though, because they're not a written story. They are pieces of the story we already know that we weren't previously privy to; and understanding how they inform us on the story means we have to think for ourselves for a change. And it's when those pieces are fall into place that we learn more about the story in the novel than we were previously. It's a puzzle, and it's not ambiguous at all.

PS: When I said "think for ourselves for a change", that was not a jab at you/me suggesting you never do that, that was "think for ourselves for a change" as in opposed to the hand holding we get through a narrative given in the books, where we don't need to figure things out in the same way because the details are dumped into our lap in a way they're not when given in articles of in-universe truisms. Tfoc (talk) 01:56, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

If by "thinking for ourselves" you mean whenever we lack detailed information we ought to invent scenarios you feel must be the singular demonstrable truth — even though it has already been pointed out (on this and numerous other discussions) that they are arguable and that when there are innumerable other possibilities none should be assumed as true (or even less so, confirmed) — then we most assuredly ought not to be "thinking for ourselves". I repeat myself when I point out that what isn't said, just isn't said, and ought not to be assumed. You also seem to be missing the fundamental difference between entertaining the possibility a different scenario for the purposes of argument (what I'm doing), and claiming they must be canonical fact: the former is an hypothetical counterexample, the latter is assuming a scenario must be true because canon does not say it is false.

As for your postscript, I could list numerous jabs directed at me in your previous messages (and a couple more can cursorily be found in this page's edit history). As you have already been warned not to do this, both here and elsewhere, they have been ignored thus far as a courtesy. --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 17:21, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

You're right. If by thinking for yourself, I meant "whenever we lack detailed information we ought to invent scenarios you feel must be the singular demonstrable truth", we should then most assuredly not be "thinking for ourselves". But that's not what I mean when I say "think for yourself", so that's a moot point. When I say think for yourself, I am talking about thinking for yourself in the colloquial sense. As in using your noodle. In this case specifically, it'd refer to the act of reading what Rowling writes in a Pottermore article, and then stopping to think about where in the timeline the fictional universe the article is referring to, and by extension, what that tells us about about Rowling's other writings, because that's what these articles are, they're extensions of preexisting writing from Rowling. An ex post facto addition to the lore, if you will.

As for whatever "innumerable other possibilities" you have convinced yourself there are, as previously established, I don't care about fanfiction. I care about what Rowling actually say. And what Rowling says, and what is it Rowling tells us? Well, based on our earlier conjecture, we were told that Dumbledore became headmaster of Hogwarts between 1965 and 1971, and we knew the same year he became headmaster, he was offered the job of Minister for Magic. We know from Harry Potter (website) that there was a change of regimes at the Ministry of Magic in 1968, which is the only time Dumbledore could have been offered the post in that timeframe. We also knows that Remus was bit in 1965, a few years passed, then Dumbledore became headmaster, then a few more years passed, and Dumbledore showed up on their door in March 1971, at which point Dumbledore being headmaster was a public knowledge, which concedes with the year 1968 both mathematically and chronologically, and as if that weren't enough, is indirectly but still very much confirmed by the relevant page. Another thing we know is that the same year Dumbledore is appointed headmaster and offered the post of Minister, Arthur Weasley graduates from the school. We also know from Molly that in either 1968 or only few school terms prior, Dippet let Apollyon Pringle permanently scar one of their students, and wouldn't you know it, Dumbledore banned the old punishments when he took over from Dippet because he by contrast didn't allow people to manhandle his students; thus indirectly giving us some background information to an event that played a part in shaping Dumbledore's attitude on the matter when he took over. I agree that what isn't said, just isn't said, but the fact of the matter is that authors are capable of conveying information through their texts indirectly, and that's what Rowling has done. Whether you acknowledge that is neither here nor there, as canon is canon, irrespective of whether or not it is conveyed in a way that conforms to some arbitrary standard of individual editors on this wiki. Tfoc (talk) 00:09, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I, too, care about what Rowling actually says. That's why I keep pointing out that despite what you assume, Rowing does not say Dumbledore was offered the job of Minister for Magic the year he became Headmaster. Rowling also does not say exactly how many different elections there were between 1965 and 1971, or if at any given point the sitting Minister was willing for whatever reason to abdicate in favour of Dumbledore. Rowling does not say Arthur Weasley graduated the same year Dumbledore became Headmaster — moreover, she does not say Arthur's punishment had anything to do with "shaping Dumbledore's attitude" toward corporal punishment (it is stretching things a bit to think Dumbledore, then a 80-year-old, at youngest, who had been teaching for about 50 years, only made up his mind about corporal punishment at that point).

Canon is indeed canon, irrespective of individual editors calling arbitrary assumptions fact, or indeed of whether they are willing to acknowledge their assumptions are just that, assumptions. --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 01:23, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I don't doubt that you care a great deal about which content comes from Rowling or not, Seth, but as far as I can see based on your argument so far, you're falling just a little bit short of seeing, what that content is. First, you express this perplexingly creative interpretation of canon where characters who says one thing 'actually means another, and, apparently, implying that summarising Rowling's writings in chronological order based on the in-universe timeline somehow constitutes "inventing scenarios". And you suggests these things to be the case, all the while your attempted counter-argument rests solely on inventing things. Only when you do it, it's supposed to carry weight in the discussion for some reason; despite the fact that my argument are entirely based on Rowling's content and yours are as canon as Tara Gilesbie's My Immortal. As for your other objections, they've almost all been addressed already. I am just going to assume that I wasn't clear enough the first time around:

• Rowing does not say Dumbledore was offered the job of Minister for Magic the year he became Headmaster.*

Yes, she does. She tells us that the job can be offered to someone in a times of crsis without a public vote, (as opposed to being "offered" the job, where people simply wants you to take office really bad), and the necessary precondition for being offered the job where Dumbledore's concerned are first met, as I've explained already, were in 1968, which is perfectly consistent with the temporal placement of Dumbldore's appointment as headmaster and the "last count" of Dumbledore being offered the job as presented in book 6. So yes, she does. It's indirect, but she does in fact tell us.

• Rowling also does not say exactly how many different elections there were between 1965 and 1971,*

Again, yes she does. No election is held between 1965 and 1971 because first off, elections are held every seventh year, not every sixth, and there's six years between 1965 and 1971, and Eugenia Jenkins served from 1968 to 1975, meaning she was re-elected in 1972 and forced to resign three years later after the wizarding community in Britain deemed her inadequate to deal with Voldemort. So yes, she does. It's indirect, but she does in fact say that.

• -or if at any given point the sitting Minister was willing for whatever reason to abdicate in favour of Dumbledore.*

You're right. She doesn't tell us that the sitting Minister were willing to abdicate in favour of Dumbledore, or even that Jenkins had the option to do so. So why, Seth, why oh why on Earth do you want me to indulge the supposed "plausibility" of your fanfiction again? You see, if I hadn't made it abundantly clear earlier in this discussion, I happen to care about what Rowling says a whole lot more than I do about what she doesn't say.

• Rowling does not say Arthur Weasley graduated the same year Dumbledore became Headmaster —*

Arthur Weasley in 1968, and that is the year elementary school level arithmetic tells us Dumbledore was offered the job of Minister for Magic and appointed headmaster based on canon information. Whether you acknowledge it as such is, of course, another matter entirely.

• moreover, she does not say Arthur's punishment had anything to do with "shaping Dumbledore's attitude" toward corporal punishment*

Upon seeing Dolores Umbridge grab hold of and shake Marietta Edgecombe, Dumbledore was visibly angry and magically forced her to release the girl, saying, "I cannot allow you to manhandle my students, Dolores." If shaking a student is Dumbledore's idea of mistreating students, of manhandling them, them beating them raw definitively falls under that category as well. So yes, she does. It's indirect, but she does in fact say that.

• (it is stretching things a bit to think Dumbledore, then a 80-year-old, at youngest, who had been teaching for about 50 years, only made up his mind about corporal punishment at that point).*

You are misunderstanding me: I said the incident shaped Dumbledore's sentiments on the matter, not defined it. All that means is that after teaching for fifty years and seeing students receive corporal punishment without having the authority to do anything about it, what happened to Arthur would have given Dumbledore even further incentive' to ban it, not that that's when he made up his mind about it.

• Canon is indeed canon, irrespective of individual editors calling arbitrary assumptions fact, or indeed of whether they are willing to acknowledge their assumptions are just that, assumptions.*

Indeed, and you have been making quite a few assumptions, haven't you? Including that have led you, inadvertently, I'm sure, to project your own faults onto those who will not and do not share them. Tfoc (talk) 08:49, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I have lost count of how many times I have explained the big difference between asserting a given scenario must be true (what you are doing) and citing alternative hypotheses to illustrate the fact that your scenario is not the only possible one that fits the scarce information that we have (what I am doing) — note that I am not and never was passing anything as proven canonical fact, merely pointing out that the fact that there are plausible alternative explanations that also fit the information we have proves yours is not the only that necessarily derives from it. I can't be expected to keep explaining what arguing by counterexample is.

I have already addressed how we don't know (and can't know unless we're told) the specifics of the "times of crisis" Dumbledore was offered the position. I have also already addressed how the "at the last count" line does not necessarily imply Dumbledore had just been offered the position. I have also already addressed how canon says Ministry elections have a "maximum interval of seven years" but not a minimum one (meaning early elections can in theory be called at any time — like in the real UK, which has five-year maximum intervals but that didn't stop them from having elections in 2015, 2017, and 2019), meaning we don't know (and can't know unless we're told) when exactly there were Ministry elections.

If there is nothing to add apart from repetition of speculation that has already been pointed out to be backed by some some manner of firm canonical evidence (by which I mean direct, referenceable citations), I don't think I have much more to add. In the meantime, let's stick with the perplexingly creative stance of... witholding interpretations and not expanding on what Rowling did say. --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 15:29, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

The only thing these so-called "alternative hypotheses" actually illustrates, Seth, is that you have no idea what you're talking about. We're not homicide detectives scouring some crime scene in downtown New York and figure out what happened there, working with a bunch of unknown variables, we're talking about a work of fiction. There are no "possibilities", my man, because unless you want to enter fan theory area, there are no whatifisms to consider. There are what is, and then there are what isn't, there's no what if. So it really doesn't matter, Seth, so the above is a distinction without a difference.

if you're asserting a given scenario must be true, like you were when you insisted when "Moody" told Hermione he wasn't going to control them completely, what he actually meant was that they were going to be completely controlled in a safe classroom envirorment, and that he wouldn't make them do anything too crazy, or "alternative hypotheses", like your whatifsm about Dumbledore being offered the job mid-term. They're both indistinguishable from fanfiction, so I call them fanfiction. I have no idea how you've gotten it in your head that writing a summary of events in Rowling's writings in chronological order from an in-universe perspective constitutes "me asserting a scenario must be true", but that's not what I am doing. What I am doing is pointing out "Rowling tells us this," and you're going "nuh-huh!"

• — note that I am not and never was passing anything as proven canonical fact, merely pointing out that the fact that there are plausible alternative explanations that also fit the information we have proves yours is not the only that necessarily derives from it.*

Not in as many words, perhaps, but when you act as though your made up fanon have any credence at all in a discussion about what Rowling tells us through her work, you are effectively elevating it to status not merited by its source: You. Again, I don't care how plausible or inplausible you find a made up scenario of yours to be don't interest me.

• I can't be expected to keep explaining what arguing by counterexample is.*

I get that that's what you think you're doing Seth, but you simply aren't. You have made a myriad of these so-called "alternative hypotheses" throughout this discussion, and I have addressed each and every one of them, and pointed out where and how they conflict with Rowling, and hence aren't not only not as "plausible" as you thought they were, such as when you claimed we didn't know ir there had been any elections between 1965 and 1971, and I pointed out that yes, we do, but they're impossible. And still, you are stuck on this tape-loop where you are on going on non-stop repeat, insisting that I am pulling things out of my ear when I am literally citing Rowling. I have noticed how none of these "alternative hypotheses" have offered an adequate rebuttal to my clarification, and do you know why? Because they aren't. They can't be. Rowling has spoken, and your "alternative hypotheses" is in direct conflict with her. Your reasoning on this matter remind me of Cornelius Fudge from A Very Potter Musical. Lord Voldemort corners him, and Fudge turns, looks at him and hen goes; "I still don't believe it."

And even if we hadn't known the specifics of the times of crisis given, and we do, it was the first rise of Voldemort, with the same article I referred to even telling us just how the crisis in question affected and was handled by different Ministers, everybody knows what the word "crisis" means. We're talking about the job of a democratically elected head of state being offered up without a public vote when the wizarding community enters a state of emergency. This isn't some big mystery, it's bloody English. And of course, seen as how you got your head is stuck in the land of fanfiction and whatifisms, of course you won't think it "necessarily follows", but I repeat: Context matters.

If Riddle had asked Dumbledore "how many times have you been offered the job now?" and Dumbledore replied "Three at last count, if you would believe it," I would've agreed with you one hundred percent. Riddle wouldn't have been paying attention to Dumbledore's dealings with the Ministry and not known anything other than the fact that he was offered the job more than once, sure, that'd be one thing. But Dumbledore is a public figure, and his offers of the job of Minister for Magic were public knowledge, and Riddle was paying attention. The fact that "the last count" is one that Riddle wasn't aware of, however, tells us that the last count was recent enough not to be widely known yet. And it concedes with a change in regimes in a time of crisis that literally JUST took place where he could be offered the job , which isn't a coincidence. Whether you like it or not, that's not how fiction works.

Oh, and by the way, we know that early elections can happen in canon. Take Ulick Gamp, for instance. His term of office lasted from 1707 to 1718, meaning he held the post for seven years, was re-elected in 1714, and then there he either died in office or resigned, either way, an election was held four years into his second term, which Rowle won on a platform of being ‘tough on Muggles’. In the case of Eugenia Jenkins, however, we know she took over when the wizarding community was on the brink of war, as in a time of crisis/state of emergency, and her term lasted from 1968 to 1975, that is to say, seven years, the maximum interval for elections. We're told she served one term, and was voted out at first opportunity in favour of the hard-liner Harold Minchum. There are no mention of any in between elections, and inventing one or more for the sake of argument is just a huge waste of your time.

And this. again, concedes with Riddle's visit to Dumbledore when he first becomes headmaster between 1965 and 1971, and introduces us to the first and only opportunity presented in canon in the relevant point in time that actually meets the criteria for the previously established circumstances where Dumbledore is said to have been offered the job, your purely semantic argument above notwithstanding.

• If there is nothing to add apart from repetition of speculation that has already been pointed out to be backed by some some manner of firm canonical evidence (by which I mean direct, referenceable citations),*

I like how you managed to project your own faults onto me and summarise what I've been doing all along in one fell swoop, while simultaneously frame it as if I didn't. I don't think it was intentional, but the absurdity of it is positively inspired.

• I don't think I have much more to add. In the meantime, let's stick with the perplexingly creative stance of... withholding interpretations and not expanding on what Rowling did say.*

That's not the perplexingly creative position in question, Seth. That's the non-hypothesis to your alternative hypotheses. It's the globe model to the flat Earth model. But fine, call it quits if you like. We've reached a point where any confidence I once had in your credibility where discussing canon material are concerned have become basically nil, so I don't really see the point in keeping up this exchange anyway. Tfoc (talk) 22:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)