J.K. Rowling explains Dolores Umbridge in new post on Pottermore

For a Halloween gift, J.K. Rowling has explained the origins of her frightening witch, Dolores Umbridge.

In a long post on Pottermore, the official online community for Harry Potter fans, Rowling explains that Umbridge was based on a teacher of her own, “whom I disliked intensely on sight.”

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For the record

Oct. 31, 8:54 a.m.: An earlier version of this post quoted J.K. Rowling as saying Dolores Umbridge was a character “whom I liked intensely on sight.” The correct quote is “whom I disliked intensely on sight.”

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Rowling writes about the connection she’d observed in the real world between cute and cold. “I have noticed more than once in life that a taste for the ineffably twee can go hand-in-hand with a distinctly uncharitable outlook on the world,” she writes.

This is true for Umbridge, who dresses in pink but can be quite cruel. During “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” she forces him to carve “I will not tell lies” into the back of his hand, leaving a scar. And she bans Potter from playing Quidditch.

Umbridge, Rowling writes, “is one of the characters for whom I feel the purest dislike.... 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.”

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