Why can no Hogwarts professor survive more than one year teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts?

In this very unofficial Harry Potter episode of Cursed...ish, Daniel and Angela return to Hogwarts to investigate one of the wizarding world’s most suspicious job openings: the cursed Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Across seven books, Hogwarts burns through professor after professor, from Quirrell and his deeply inadvisable Voldemort head-share to Gilderoy Lockhart’s fraudulent little memory-wiping empire, Remus Lupin’s tragic exit, Fake Mad-Eye Moody’s disturbingly committed lesson planning, Dolores Umbridge’s pink-cardigan fascism, Severus Snape finally getting the job he absolutely should have known better than to want, and the full Dark Arts nightmare of Voldemort’s Hogwarts.

Along the way, we talk Dumbledore’s questionable hiring practices, Barty Crouch Jr.’s bizarre commitment to education, whether anyone at Hogwarts understood red flags, and why this revolving door of cursed professors became one of the most effective recurring patterns in the Harry Potter series.

Was the Defense Against the Dark Arts job cursed because Voldemort hexed it after Dumbledore rejected him? Was it cursed because Hogwarts HR was apparently run by owls and vibes? Or was the real curse simply letting children attend a school where every year’s teacher came with a new trauma package?

Maybe cursed. Maybe not. But this time, honestly, pretty cursed.

Questions, comments, or your own accursed tales to share? Send us a hex at uhoh@cursedish.com.

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