History

Early Life

Her parents were Orford Umbridge, a wizard, and Ellen Cracknell, a Muggle. Dolores was a witch, but her younger brother was a Squib. Influenced by her father, she looked down on her mother and brother, believing they were beneath her and her father. Dolores and her father rejected them, so Ellen and her son left for the Muggle world and were never seen again before Dolores turned fifteen.

She eventually got her wand, made of birch wood with a dragon heartstring core, and it was unusually short at 8 inches. Garrick Ollivander said that short wands are not picked because of a person's size, but because they lack something important in their character.

At eleven, Umbridge started at Hogwarts and was sorted into Slytherin. Her head of house was Horace Slughorn, the former potions professor. They did not get along, as he thought she was an “idiotic woman." During her time at Hogwarts, she was never given any positions of power, like Prefect or Head Girl, so she did not enjoy her studies.

After finishing Hogwarts, Umbridge quickly moved up in the British Ministry of Magic. She began as an intern in the Improper Use of Magic Office and became Head of the department before she was 30, showing her ambition.

As she built her career, Dolores, who was very ambitious and wanted power, felt ashamed of her father, who had a low-level job in the Department of Magical Maintenance. She convinced him to retire early and paid him monthly to keep him out of the public eye. After that, she lied about her family, saying she was a pure-blood witch instead of a half-blood. She later became a member of the Wizengamot and then Senior Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic. When asked about her father, Orville, Dolores would laugh and deny any connection. She said her late father had been a respected member of the Wizengamot. Even though this was easy to prove false, people who feared her pretended to believe her stories. Throughout her career, Dolores tried to gain the favor of her male bosses, not caring who they were, as long as they were powerful. However, it was hard to get to know Dolores personally, and those who did did not like what they found. When drunk, Umbridge often spoke very unfair and hateful views about people who were not pure-blood or not magical at all, and her opinions were so strong that they shocked even those who disliked Muggles. Dolores never married, probably because of this. She became friends with powerful people like Lucius Malfoy, mainly because they shared the same views about wizardry. Dolores also knew Professor Severus Snape because of their connection with Lucius. Umbridge held a low opinion of half-breeds and passed a law in 1993 that made it very hard for people like Remus Lupin to find work.

As a Professor at Hogwarts

Dolores was made the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts for the 1995-1996 school year. Albus Dumbledore did not agree to this hiring. The main reason she was placed there was to allow the Ministry of Magic to monitor events at Hogwarts. This monitoring was due to the Minister's irrational fear that Dumbledore wanted his job or was training students to spy on the Ministry. Since she had been denied power as a student, she saw this as a chance to have power over those who had not given her what she wanted. During the Welcoming Feast, she even interrupted Dumbledore to give a speech about how the Ministry of Magic would start "Interfering with Hogwarts," speaking to the students condescendingly, as if they were little kids. She said that Defense Against the Dark Arts would be limited this year. But, to her embarrassment, most students ignored her and went back to their conversations. At the end of her long speech, Argus Filch was the only one to applaud her genuinely.

Umbridge taught using a Ministry-approved plan that covered only theory and left out practical Defense Against the Dark Arts. She used a simple book called Defensive Magical Theory by Wilbert Slinkhard, which focused more on talking and solving conflicts than on real defense. By teaching only basic ideas instead of real spells, she and the Ministry wanted to stop Dumbledore from training students who could challenge them. Dolores was not a good teacher. She had no experience and struggled to keep students interested. She told them to read from the book, did not allow questions, and just watched from her desk. Most students felt unprepared for real dangers because the book was unhelpful. Some students, like Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Harry Potter, Dean Thomas, and Parvati Patil, spoke up in class but were quickly silenced or punished. Harry spoke out the most and often got into trouble. Umbridge repeated the Ministry’s claim that Voldemort had not returned and said Harry only wanted attention. When Harry disagreed, she punished him with detention, making him write "I must not tell lies" over and over with a Black Quill that used his blood as ink and cut the words into his skin, leaving a scar.

After a short time at Hogwarts and talking with the Minister, Umbridge gained more power through Educational Decree Number Twenty-Three. She became the first "Hogwarts High Inquisitor" and used her new role to judge, scare, and fire any teachers she or the Ministry thought were not good enough. Umbridge was rude to many teachers she checked, especially those close to Professor Dumbledore or those she thought were unfit, like Sybill Trelawney. She even measured Professor Flitwick's height with a tape measure, which made him unhappy and offended. Some teachers did not let her scare them. For example, when Umbridge visited Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration class, she tried to bother the professor by interrupting and faking coughs. Still, the professor either ignored her or answered with sharp remarks.

To fight back, Harry formed a group of students to practice Defense Against the Dark Arts their own way. He called it Dumbledore’s Army. Umbridge soon found out and, worried the students would rebel, made a new rule banning all student groups of three or more unless she approved of them. Dumbledore’s Army became an “illegal” group. The Slytherin Quidditch team quickly regained their rights, but Umbridge refused to grant the other teams theirs, saying she needed more time to decide. The Gryffindor Quidditch team had to wait almost a month before Professor McGonagall stepped in, probably to go to Dumbledore. This prompted Umbridge to contact Minister Fudge, who gave her full authority over all student removals, punishments, and penalties. For example, she permanently banned Harry, Fred, and George Weasley from playing Quidditch after a fight with Draco Malfoy, but Draco was not punished. After Harry gave an interview about Voldemort to The Quibbler, Umbridge banned the magazine at Hogwarts and threatened to expel any student caught with it. She also took away Harry's Hogsmeade privileges, saying he was lying. In spite of her efforts, the ban only made students more interested in secretly reading and talking about The Quibbler.

The Ministry of Magic approved these actions through Educational Decrees, but students usually found ways around them and often saw them as a joke. Using her new power, she tried to fire Sybil Trelawney from her job as Professor of Divination. However, she could not remove Trelawney from the school because Albus Dumbledore still had the power to let Trelawney stay and chose to use it. Umbridge was shocked when Dumbledore replaced Trelawney with a Centaur named Firenze. She could not stop Firenze from getting hired because the Ministry rules only let her pick a new teacher if Dumbledore failed to find one himself. They expected Dumbledore would not be able to find a replacement. Umbridge thought of Firenze, like all centaurs, as a "filthy half-breed."

In 1996, Umbridge and several other Slytherins discovered the headquarters of Dumbledore’s Army in the Room of Requirement. They found out after Marietta Edgecomb betrayed the group that Umbridge threatened to have Marietta’s mother fired from her job at the Ministry. She then tried to punish Harry by having him expelled from Hogwarts for starting the club, but Dumbledore used the lack of evidence against them and his own name to take responsibility for it. He said he had invited the group to a meeting and that no other meetings had taken place. Dumbledore also pointed out that the group had been formed before it became illegal to do so. After a brief argument with the Minister of Magic and the Aurors, he left the school.

Soon after, Umbridge created the Inquisitorial Squad, composed only of Slytherins, which rewarded students for reporting on others and allowed them to act as rule enforcers. After another new educational decree was passed, Dolores Umbridge took over as the new Headmistress of Hogwarts, replacing Dumbledore. This change inspired students to rebel against Umbridge and the administration openly. She soon became the target of countless pranks and tricks that were supposed to make her regret ever coming to Hogwarts. Much of the resistance was led by Fred and George Weasley until Umbridge tried to catch them in the act, but they continued to escape her on their brooms.

Even Hogwarts Castle seemed to work against her, with Peeves the Poltergeist leading the charge, per Fred and George’s request. Peeves would make her job even harder by blowing raspberries in her face as she walked by or bursting out of blackboards. She tried to expel him from Hogwarts, but this was impossible because he couldn’t exactly leave. She was also not granted access to the Headmaster’s Tower because it refused to recognize her and sealed itself off when Dumbledore left. She worked from her Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor’s office. The teachers refused to help Umbridge out of sheer dislike. They also rewarded Harry for standing up to her, giving him things like house points and sugar mice. Minerva McGonagall, who usually did not support Peeves and his antics, did not object to his tricks and even gave him advice on how to perform them better and cause more trouble. Umbridge later fired Rubeus Hagrid because he was a half-giant.

Second Wizarding War

Under Voldemort’s regime, Umbridge resumed as Senior Undersecretary to the Minister in 1997. She was then appointed as the head of the Muggle-born Registration Commission, where she conducted trials on Muggle-born wizards and witches, “investigating” how Muggle-borns supposedly obtained their magic. However, the real purpose of these trials was to perpetuate the standard that pure-blooded people were superior to others. She forced them to face Dementors and subjected these defendants to the threat of the Dementor’s Kiss. She even sent some of them to Azkaban for the crime of “stealing magic.” She also wrote the propaganda book called “Mudbloods and the Dangers They Pose to a Peaceful Pure-Blood Society.”

After Voldemort’s defeat and Kingsley Shacklebolt’s reform of the Ministry, Dolores Umbridge was tried before the Wizengamot for her enthusiasm regarding Voldemort’s plans and ideals. She was tried in Courtroom Ten, the same room where Harry Potter’s disciplinary hearing was held years prior. She was convicted of torture, imprisonment, and the deaths of multiple people. She was then sentenced to life in Azkaban, where she later died.

Credits/References

Written by Simone Winter
Base code by Andrew Sutherland, edited by Iselin Merilä and Desmond Gray.