Character:Armando Dippet
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Armando Dippet was the Hogwarts Headmaster before Albus Dumbledore.
According to Tom Riddle's Diary, Dippet instructed Tom Marvolo Riddle, then a fifth-year Prefect, to keep quiet about the events related to the Chamber of Secrets. In the memory the Diary revealed to Harry Potter, the Headmaster was portrayed as an old and weak-willed man, heavily affected by the happenings at the school, especially the death of Moaning Myrtle (CS13).
When Riddle applied to fill the post left vacant by Galatea Merrythought, who had taught Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts for fifty years, Dippet asked the young man to wait for few years. The Headmaster was very fond of him, but Riddle's youth was a factor he could not dismiss. Albus Dumbledore vehemently opposed the possibility (HBP20).
Dippet had very strained relations with the Care of Magical Creatures teacher of the time, Silvanus Kettleburn. Kettleburn's mistaken casting of an Engorged ashwinder in Hogwarts' first (and last) theatrical production led the Headmaster to believe him to be incautious and reckless. The production in question— The Fountain of Fair Fortune—was such a disaster that Dippet subsequently banned all future theatrical productions at the school (BB2).
Rita Skeeter wrote a bestselling biography of Dippet entitled Armando Dippet: Master or Moron? (DH13). Skeeter's approach was in all likelihood as negative as that which she adopted when writing The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore.
