Harry Potter fans blown away by Umbridge's secret backstory

Professor Umbridge is evil; I don’t think anybody would dispute that.

She partook in Voldemort’s eugenicist tirade against the Wizarding World’s muggle-born population, and abused Hogwarts’ pupils by making them write lines in their own blood.

There’s the time she sent a dementor after Harry in an attempt to remove his soul, almost taking Dudley Dursley’s in the process, and she’s just a bully.

I could go on.

An interesting question was recently posed by Reddit user Gema23 though: “Was she born evil or did she turn evil?”

Or to quote Wicked’s Glinda, “Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?”

Well, I’m of the opinion that no one is born evil. Our behaviour is a manifestation of what we’ve learnt.

That being said, Harry Potter fans have been sleuthing, and it appears that Umbridge certainly began to show evil tendencies at a very young age.

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“I think it’s explained that her brother was a muggle [...] and she felt hatred to muggles due to that,” wrote one Reddit user.

“She has an inferiority complex because she was a half-blood and her father was a Wizarding janitor, plus she was unremarkable at Hogwarts and was never made Prefect or Head Girl,” added goro-n.

“I think she felt inferior, and it changed her. She could bully those kids because she FINALLY had some authority, and it went to her head. [...] She was unremarkable, likely as a student at Hogwarts, and in general ... and watching talented CHILDREN who were better at magic and surrounded by friends when she had none probably triggered the heck out of her daily,” suggested EdenCapwell.

Some have even suggested that Umbridge might not have been able to have children of her own, taking her rage out on other people’s, but I’m slightly more dubious about that one.

It’s much more likely that her evilness stemmed from her resentment over her station in life, yearning for more and then, as others have pointed out, abusing that newfound power in the process.

It’s certainly interesting to fill in the gaps. Perhaps that’s something the upcoming Harry Potter reboot TV series will concern itself with doing.