Harry Potter: 10 Worst Things Dolores Umbridge Has Ever Done

Dolores Umbridge might be one of the vilest and villainous characters from Harry Potter. She is definitely right up there with Voldemort and some of his worst Death Eaters, even if she technically never was one.

From her first introduction to Hogwarts through to the horrible things she did at the Ministry of Magic under Voldemort’s rule, she was a character that never did anything kind of admirable. But, some of the things that she did were worse than others. We’ve put together a list of the ten worst things that Dolores Umbdrige ever did in the Harry Potter books.

10 KEEPING STUDENTS FROM LEARNING HOW TO DEFEND THEMSELVES FROM THE DARK ARTS

When Dolores Umbridge first starts teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, she makes it clear that she’s not going to be actually teaching the students how to do spells. She makes them read from a boring, dry textbook and insists they can defend themselves just by knowing the theory.

Even if Voldemort wasn’t actually back, there is always the chance that there are wizards or witches who would use dark or bad spells. Knowing how to protect yourself just seems like common sense.

9 CREATING THE INQUISITORIAL SQUAD

As Dolores Umbridge gets more and more power at Hogwarts, she becomes worse and worse. As she becomes High Inquisitor, she creates a rather authoritarian and terrifying atmosphere. She goes so far is to create the Inquisitorial Squad.

This group is a collection of students, all Slytherins, who are just there to report on other students to Umbridge and get them in trouble. This just shows how low Umbdige was willing to go.

8 HOW SHE TREATED PROFESSOR TRELAWNEY

While it’s not surprising that Professor Trelawney would be fired, and in many ways, she probably needed to be, how Umbridge handled the entire situation was cruel.

She made a big show of throwing her out of Hogwarts, despite the fact that Trelawney was clearly distraught and had nowhere to go. Umbridge clearly has no compassion and didn’t care at all that Trewlaney was breaking down.

7 ALLOWING FILCH TO IMPLEMENT TORTURE PUNISHMENTS

This is extreme and definitely should be illegal. If they were able to follow through with this, cruel and unusual punishments would be used on teenagers just for doing things like showing up late to class.

6 SENDING DEMENTORS AFTER HARRY

Umbridge was doing awful things before she was ever even introduced in the story. It’s later revealed that she was the one who sent the Dementors to Little Whinging with the intention of getting Harry in trouble or worse.

This just goes to show that she was doing horrible things all along and trying her best to use horrible means to achieve her ends. She’s clearly fine to break the rules and laws when it suits her.

5 HER HATRED OF “HALF-BREEDS”

While Umbridge isn’t a Death Eater, and never officially becomes one, she definitely is in line with many of their beliefs. She talks about many other beings as being “filthy half-breeds.” This bigotry is clear with how she treats Hagrid.

It’s also made apparent in her disdain for centaurs. She’s clearly someone who is full of hatred and loves the idea of being pureblood. She has a lot of love of punishing people just because she can.

4 TORTURING STUDENTS DURING DETENTION

This is definitely one of the vilest things that Umbridge ever does in the Harry Potter series. Harry is likely the first student to receive this horrible treatment, but he’s not the last. While Harry has to endure multiple detentions with her, he also sees other students who bare the scars of her punishment.

Making students repeatedly carve words into the back of their hand is sadistic and cruel. The fact that she would do this to anyone, not to mention young teenagers, is evil.

3 DRUGGING HARRY AND OTHERS

While Umbdrige is cruel to a lot of people, she definitely has Harry singled out. She hates him because he goes against the Ministry and believes that he is helping Dumbledore go behind the Ministry’s back. She does a lot of horrible things to Harry, and other members of Dumbledore’s Army, because of this.

One thing she does is to use Veritaserum unknowingly on students to get information. While she’s not really drugging them since Snape didn’t give her the real thing, the fact is that she thought she was.

2 SUPPORTING VOLDEMORT

While it really does seem like Umbridge was basically a Death Eater by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she never actually was. Even though Voldemort was running the Ministry at that time, it’s not clear how obvious that was. Regardless, she definitely supported most of his most awful ideas.

She gleefully went along with trying to get rid of all Muggles and Muggle-borns, most likely cause she just loves power and hurting other people.

1 BECOMING HEAD OF THE MUGGLE-BORN REGISTRATION COMMISSION

While Umbridge did some truly horrible things while she was at Hogwarts, the worst thing she did overall was to become the Head of the Muggle-born Registration Commission. As the head of this, she was in charge or trying Muggle-borns in court, registering them, stripping them of their wands, and throwing them in jail.

It’s also implied that she was connected with finding and punishing, and even killing, Muggle-borns who wouldn’t register. She clearly was fine with torture and murder, and she was also extremely bigoted. Her hatred and totalitarian ways are truly terrifying.

About The Author