We’re back with another segment of “Harry Potter Characters That I Have Beef With.” Spot number four belongs to Professor Dolores Umbridge. Dolores Umbridge was introduced to us in the fifth installment, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She took the position as Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA) professor on Ministry orders after word had been released of Lord Voldemort’s return during the fourth installment, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Professor Umbridge is arguably a worse villain than Voldemort himself; hence why I have more beef with her than I do with Voldemort. First of all, she dresses terribly. She receives a lot of hate in the Harry Potter fandom for dressing like “a bottle of Pepto Bismol.” However, putting her fashion sense aside, she’s just a terrible person in general. Throughout the entire movie, we see cases of this. For starters, she never even teaches the subject she is supposed to; and when the children call her out on this, they are forced to serve one of her infamous detentions. We’ll get into her methods of punishment later on.
Throughout the entire year, Professor Umbridge tells Harry that he is lying about Voldemort, whom he saw with his own two eyes and watched kill his close friend, Cedric Diggory. When Harry points out that she isn’t teaching them DADA, she simply replies by asking what they would need to protect themself against. Harry replies sarcastically, “Oh I don’t know, maybe… Lord Voldemort?” The two then get into an argument over the return of Lord Voldemort which results in Umbridge telling Harry to “see [her] later.”
When Harry does go to her office after classes, he is there to serve a detention. At this detention, Harry is told that he needs to write lines. She hands him her own “special” quill and when he asks how many lines, she cryptically replies “as many as it takes for the message to sink in.” It is discovered as he is writing that the quill is charmed to etch the message into the writer’s skin in cuts. She used this heinous method of “punishment” on all of the kids in Hogwarts, including the first years (who were only 11).
She also implemented “rules” that sucked all of the fun out of being at Hogwarts. She rewarded anybody that brought kids that were disobeying to her attention so she would be able to implement more detentions. She enjoyed handing out detentions and harming children. In short, Dolores Umbridge is a very bad person and deserves everything bad in life.
I really liked this post! I definitely agree her fashion choices and forms of punishment are heinous! It is horrible how she finds joy in giving punishment to children even as young as eleven. I can definitely see why you have beef with her.