The start of Legacies is now just weeks away (okay, seven weeks, but that’s better than months!), and we’ve gotten a taste of Headmaster Saltzman, but do we know what his headmaster style will truly be?

It’s hard not to hear a word like ‘headmaster’ and not immediately envision Dumbledore sitting in his office thinking things over with his pensieve and Fawkes by his side. We are the Harry Potter generation, so he’s the go-to headmaster when the term floats in our heads.

Headmaster Alaric Saltzman has a lot of conflicting qualities that could make him a very stern headmaster, or more lax and understanding. Will he be more of a Dumbledore-ian type of patriarch or take the more no-nonsense approach of Professor McGonagall?

Well, we know he’s not going to be a Snape, so we crossed that off the list right off the bat. Alaric isn’t evil or unreasonable, nor is he much of the double agent type, so it really is down to Dumbledore and McGonagall for his governing style. Hopefully he’ll go for a bit of both, but here are a few reasons why we think he could go either way.

Headmaster Alaric Saltzman, Dumbledore style

Dumbledore adopted a bit of a fatherly role for Harry, especially since his parents died early in his life. I expect that Alaric could take a bit of that role with some of these kids, especially those that may have been abandoned by non-supernatural families that couldn’t handle having a special child. He played father to Elena and Jeremy for a long time, so that is a natural role for him.

Alaric is a good man, so he definitely is going to try and bring out the best in these kids, and Dumbledore definitely knew when to draw the line about discipline. He knew that punishing Harry, Ron and Hermione for breaking school rules to try and save lives wouldn’t have been right, and I expect to see Alaric get into a bit of that, too.

I mean, he did suspend Hope Mikaelson for turning a werewolf into a hybrid who then jumped out a high-story window, but maybe she needed to go home for a bit, and maybe the benevolent leader knew that. Alaric will have that sixth sense for discipline, knowing when to draw a hard line for the rules and when to look the other way about a break or two.

The one Dumbledore-ian quality I hope Alaric doesn’t embrace would be his tendency toward manipulation. The phrase “pig for slaughter” comes to mind. Harry needed to be raised up to die at the proper time. I would hope that if Alaric knew one of his wards was destined for a sacrificial death, that he would tell them at the appropriate time and help them to embrace their future, rather than keeping them in the dark until the last possible second.

Headmaster Alaric Saltzman, McGonagall style

Okay, so we know that McGonagall became headmaster after the Battle of Hogwarts and led the school for a number of years before retiring to a quieter life. She also was interim Headmaster a couple of times when Dumbledore would leave for significant periods of time. We didn’t see much of her in this role, but based on how she supervised students in her classes and in her role as head of Gryffindor house, we can imagine how her ruling style would be different than Dumbledore’s.

First of all, she’s much more strict about rules than Dumbledore, so I expect that while Harry, Ron, and Hermione came off scott-free with Dumbledore all those years, McGonagall would have had them cleaning things the muggle way for their incessant rule breaking, even if they had good reasons.

Alaric has seen how being lax about rules has affected people he loves, after all, Damon forced him to break or bend his own rules for nearly eight seasons. He knows what comes from bending the rules, so maybe he looks on his time as Headmaster as a time to instill strict discipline, hopefully instilling a healthy fear of consequences into the students in his charge.

Mr. Saltzman always had a relaxed nature about him when he taught at Mystic Falls High School, but he’s seen more of the world since then, not to mention died, come back as an Original vampire, died again, and is now human, hopefully for good this time. I don’t think it would be hard to imagine a more hard-assed version of Alaric settling into his role at the Salvatore School.

So which do we think it’ll be?

Only time (and the season premiere of Legacies) will give us a better glimpse into Alaric’s governing style, but I hope he can find the best of both worlds and be both authoritarian and friend when need be.

No matter who’s governing style he leans towards, Alaric will always be one hundred percent himself, and that’s all we can really hope for. He’s gone from teacher to friend, friend to parent, parent to headmaster, but has always been true to the guy who just wants to keep his friends safe and make the world a better place.