The Admiral of Hogwarts

“I remember you, Miss Roop, you were a top student in Gryffindor.” Because Dumbledore sat down to have tea together, the atmosphere in the living room quickly relaxed. After the headmaster drank two cups of tea and tasted several kinds of refreshments they had made, he turned his gaze back to Firefly and said.

“Thank you for your praise, Headmaster.” Firefly, who was sitting there, gave a very elegant bow, then raised her head and looked at Professor Dumbledore. “By the way, may I ask if there is anything you came here for today? Is it related to the petition I sent you before?”

“Yes, it’s this letter.” Professor Dumbledore nodded, put down his teacup, and then looked very seriously into Firefly’s eyes and asked. “Can you tell me why you wrote me that petition? Especially since you are still a lower grade student—”

“Professor Dumbledore is not using any magic right now.” Just as Dumbledore questioned Firefly, Hood’s voice rang in Hugo’s mind through the Admiral Network, “The headmaster is now simply asking Firefly about these things, which is different from the views in those fanfics you remember.”

“That’s normal. In any case, Professor Dumbledore is a white wizard and the headmaster of Hogwarts. When facing his own students, how could he use magic similar to Legilimency?” Hugo said at this time, “So, those fanfics in my mind can only be used as a reference at most, and definitely can’t be fully believed.”

Just as Hugo was communicating with the ship girls through the Admiral Network, the conversation between Firefly and Professor Dumbledore had reached a crucial point. After confirming that writing this letter was entirely Firefly’s own idea, Professor Dumbledore began to ask her about the reasons why she opposed Lockhart’s novels becoming textbooks.

“From the replies I’ve received from everyone these past few days, I’ve found that the most common reason given is that this set of books does not conform to Hogwarts’ tradition of selecting teaching materials.” Firefly said quite methodically, “However, I have reservations about this point of view. After all, tradition is not necessarily entirely good, just like Hogwarts’ tradition of corporal punishment for students, which has already been abolished.”

“It’s very good that you can think like this.” After listening to Firefly’s analysis of the first reason, Dumbledore nodded in agreement. “It is an excellent quality to not blindly follow when encountering anything. After all, as independent individuals, we need to think for ourselves—”

“Ah, I’m sorry, old people always want to educate others.” After rambling for a few sentences, Dumbledore subconsciously shook his head, then continued, “Since you don’t completely agree with this view, then what is the main reason that prompted you to mail me the petition?”

“It mainly comes from two aspects.” Firefly looked very seriously into the old headmaster’s eyes and said, “One of them is about the content of these books. At least all the parents I asked believe that the biggest difference between these so-called textbooks and other textbooks is that they are essentially just some best-selling novels, and academically they are not suitable for use as textbooks.”

“Well, that is indeed a problem.” Professor Dumbledore nodded very seriously after hearing this sentence. As a scholar who has fought on the front lines of teaching for more than half a century, he can naturally see the quality of a textbook. Obviously, after receiving the petition, he took the time to look through Lockhart’s works, and then found that these new textbooks were indeed not very suitable for learning Defense Against the Dark Arts.

“Lockhart’s books are some very good novels, and they also contain some useful knowledge.” Professor Dumbledore said very fairly. “However, they are indeed not very suitable for classroom teaching—by the way, what is the other reason besides this one?”

“The other reason is that the prices of these books are too expensive.” Because the Western world doesn’t really avoid talking about issues related to money, Firefly spoke very casually about the second reason.

“Families like mine or Granger’s have better economic conditions and fewer children at the same time, so they can afford the prices of these books. But for some other people, it’s not like that.”

“For example, one of the employees hired in the shop my sister opened has a child who is attending Hogwarts this year, so after receiving this book list, he asked my sister to pre-pay a month’s salary. Otherwise, his family may have difficulty even eating next month.”

“This is true, Headmaster Dumbledore.” Hood said at this time, “This employee of mine is 30 years old this year. Not long after graduating from Gryffindor House at Hogwarts, he married his Squib wife and made a living doing odd jobs in the wizarding world until he was hired by me and had savings.”

“However, because he has been working for too short a time, his savings are not very large, so much so that if he wants to buy this set of books, he has to borrow money everywhere.” A look of pity appeared on Hood’s face. “And when I was helping Firefly sort out those letters, I found that such families are not a minority.”

“Yes, yes. —” After listening to Firefly and Hood’s words, a serious expression also appeared on Professor Dumbledore’s face. As the greatest white wizard in the British and even the entire European wizarding world, he naturally knew the situation in the wizarding world and understood that what Firefly and Hood said was true.

However, from another perspective, the autonomy of professors in Western schools is very large. They can independently decide their teaching content, the type of teaching materials, and even have absolute decision-making power over school affairs in some schools. Therefore, even Headmaster Dumbledore is not very good at interfering with the teaching of other professors.

Therefore, Professor Dumbledore seemed a little embarrassed. On the one hand, he also knew that the examples cited by Firefly and Hood were true and represented the inner voice of the vast majority of students and parents.

After all, whether pure-blood or Muggle-born, rich or poor, those parents naturally hope that their children can learn real knowledge in the classroom, instead of reading these popular novels.

But on the other hand, as the headmaster of a school with a long history, he also did not want some traditions to change too much, especially the autonomy of the professors. Otherwise, he worried that more factors would affect all the professors at Hogwarts in the future. For example, the Ministry of Magic might take this opportunity to interfere with Hogwarts.

“Sir, I know the importance of academic independence.” As beings similar to heroic spirits, the ship girls can really understand people’s hearts through a series of subtle actions, especially people like Dumbledore who directly put the problems in their hearts on their faces. So Hood directly said to the headmaster, “But I think in some cases, specific problems should be analyzed specifically—”

However, just as Hood had just started, there was another knock on the door. Veneto immediately stood up to see what had happened.

A few seconds later, Veneto quickly brought in a middle-aged woman whose hair was styled into elaborate, stiff, and strange large curls, wearing a pair of jewel-encrusted glasses, and wearing a dazzling green robe.