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Rowling shares fascinating fact about Harry Potter's Umbridge
As a special treat for her fans this Halloween, JK Rowling revealed on her website that unanimously hated character of Dolores Umbridge from the hugely famous Harry Potter series was inspired by a teacher for whom she had complete and utter dislike.
As a special treat for her fans this Halloween,
revealed on her website that unanimously hated character of Dolores Umbridge from the hugely famous
series was inspired by a teacher for whom she had complete and utter dislike. She did not however, reveal the name of said teacher.
Umbridge, played by actor Imelda Staunton in the film adaptations of the popular fantasy series, is the seemingly sweet but innately vicious teacher at Hogwarts who bans young Harry from playing Quidditch and forces him to write the words "I must not tell lies" on the back of his hand in his own blood.
In an essay posted on Friday on her Pottermore.com website, Rowling says that the character of Umbridge was based on a person "whom I disliked intensely on sight".
"The woman in question returned my antipathy with interest. Why we took against each other so instantly, heartily and (on my side, at least) irrationally, I honestly cannot say," she writes.
Like Umbridge, the person had a "pronounced taste for twee accessories...(including) a tiny little plastic bow slide, pale lemon in colour".
Elsewhere, without revealing the person's name, she describes her as someone who had been her teacher "long ago...in a certain skill or subject"
"Dolores...is one of the characters for whom I feel the purest dislike," Rowling writes in the essay's conclusion.
"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," she adds, referring to Harry Potter's arch enemy.
Rowling posted the essay and other new writing on Pottermore at Halloween in conjunction with the launch of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth novel in the series, on the website.
