As promised, J.K. Rowling dropped a new Harry Potter story today on Pottermore. Since it is Halloween, she decided to focus on one of the most vile characters Harry ever encountered, Dolores Umbridge.
In the profile of Umbridge, also posted on Today.com, Rowling revealed that the character had a terrible ubringing. She hated her wizard father and Muggle mother, who were also unhappily married. Eventually, the family split and she went with her father. Her mother took their son and they never spoke again. From that moment on, she pretended she was a pure-blooded witch.
After Lord Voldemort fell, Umbridge was charged with torture, imprisonment and the deaths of several people and convicted. She even put innocent Muggle-borns in Azkaban who didn’t survive.
Rowling added her own thoughts of the character, revealing that Umbridge was inspired by a teacher she really didn’t like. However, she stressed that the woman was NOT “the real Dolores Umbridge.”
“She did not look like a toad, she was never sadistic or vicious to me or anyone else, and I never heard her express a single view in common with Umbridge (indeed, I never knew her well enough to know much about her views or preferences, which makes my dislike of her even less justifiable),” Rowling wrote.
The author added that Umbridge is “one of the characters for whom I feel purest dislike,” adding, “Her desire to control, to punish and to inflict pain, all in the name of law and order, are, I think, every bit as reprehensible as Lord Voldemort's unvarnished espousal of evil.”
Umbridge did appear in the Harry Potter films and was played by Imelda Staunton.
When Rowling isn’t writing these profiles of Potter characters, she’s working on a new set of films set in the same world. Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them will be a trilogy released by Warner Bros.