Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [19]
Cornelius Fudge
While Vernon Dursley is just a petty dictator in his own home, the character Cornelius Fudge causes trouble for the whole world, and Harry in particular, so in some ways he’s nearly as bad as Voldemort. He’s the freakin’ Minister of Magic, with an Auror police squad at his beck and call, but Fudge can’t seem to protect Harry from danger. Talk about denial—after Voldemort rises again in GoF, Cornelius refuses to believe it, so in OotP he encourages the Daily Prophet to smear both Dumbledore and Harry as mentally disturbed liars. Fudge is almost worse than Vernon because he takes away the one refuge Harry has left, which is the magical world. In OotP, he also installs his protégé, the hideous Professor Dolores Umbridge, as the High Inquisitor at Hogwarts, and school becomes a misery, not just for Harry, but for all the students and teachers. Vernon at least looks out for his own family of Petunia and Dudley, but old Corny Fudge doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his own reputation as Minister of Magic.
Fudge is a smarmy politician who reminds us of an awful lot of Muggle politicians. He likes to be seen as caring toward The Boy Who Lived, but tosses Harry aside when public opinion turns. Fudge favors the wealthy and racist purebloods, so he’s an even worse snob than the middle-class Vernon, who at least works for a living. All Fudge really wants is to hang on to power and control, and he doesn’t really know how to run the government with any success unless Dumbledore helps him. So where brains are concerned, Cornelius Fudge and Vernon Dursley are just about equally stupid.
Professor Dolores Umbridge
To even entertain the possibility of a more insufferable character is an insult to Dolores Umbridge herself. Umbridge is actually a Ministry of Magic official installed at Hogwarts by Cornelius Fudge to interfere and spy on Dumbledore. Her mantra is “wands away” while the kids sit reading a boring textbook, and she punishes them for talking back or doing any minor offense [OotP, p. 239]. Her black quill of pain is an instrument of torture worthy of Voldemort. As if writing lines in blood isn’t enough, Umbridge also unethically tries to dose Harry’s tea with the truth-telling potion Veritaserum to get information for the Ministry about Dumbledore’s plans. She truly loves her job, but expanding and educating young minds is not the point, and she is more of a jail warden than a teacher.
As bad people go, the block-headed and evil Carrows in DH probably inflicted more pain on the schoolchildren, but Umbridge is more subtle and scary, with her little girl voice and her kitty cat plates on the wall. And who can forget her hideous “hem-hem” giggle that drove everyone crazy? She’s the devil in a pink cardigan.
It’s true that Snape is just as blunt and insulting to students who don’t make the grade, such as poor Neville, who burns cauldrons into puddles of metallic goop. But Snape actually teaches his students, and when he gives detentions, they are all very humdrum Muggle-style tasks, such as scrubbing bedpans without magic, writing an extra essay, or copying notecards from Filch’s filing cabinet. He never carves up a student’s hand for fun and amusement. Snape is obviously working against Umbridge, refusing to give her unlimited Veritaserum and lying to Draco about Harry’s Occlumency lessons so Umbridge won’t find out.
In fact, all the teachers hate Umbridge with a passion, and she drives them completely insane with her evaluations. She is sarcastic and rude, and she interrupts classes constantly in a year when the students need to study for O.W.L. exams. She does her best to destroy the teaching staff, throwing Madam Trelawney down the stairs and nearly out of the school, helping Fudge and his Aurors attack Dumbledore, fighting against Hagrid and chasing him from the grounds,