Defending Umbridge
Was she the best of the Five?

Prior to the end of the most recent Hogwarts school year, Ms. Dolores Jane Umbridge, former high inquisitor of Hogwarts and former Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA) professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was asked to leave the school under rather mysterious circumstances.

Although most the Quibbler interviewed found that Umbridge's teaching practices were unjust, unfair, and even occasionally demented, not all at Hogwarts agree that she should have been "asked to leave."

“Asked? The poor woman was forced to leave! She had no say in the situation,” Hogwarts Caretaker Argus Filch asserts. "Hogwarts was in dire need of a strict and scholarly teacher like Umbridge."

Mr. Filch, the caretaker at Hogwarts for a number of years, insists that because of Hogwart's lack of discipline and demeanor, he's had to deal with more than his fair share of cantakerous students. Professor Umbridge provided the kind of control Filch has been seeking for Hogwarts students ever since he accepted the job from his predecessor, Ogg. Mr. Filch is particularly bitter about the instability of the position of professor of Defenses Against the Dark Arts (DADA), which has seen a high rate of job turnover in the last four years.

"For four years straight the Wizarding School was misfortunate enough to have four different unqualified and demented professors teach the DADA course."

(The staff at The Quibbler has contacted each of the former DADA professors and each of them, coherent or not, wishes to remain respectfully anonymous.)

Filch, however, has more than enough to say about the unnamed instructors. “Last year we had some crazy, blast-eyed, yellow-bellied ex-convict… or whatever he was called! Who cares what he was called? He didn’t know bird droppings’ worth about the subject and I hear he even taught the students illegal curses!”

"That is untrue," replies newly reinstated Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, "as a matter of fact, the previous year's Professor was quite well skilled in the Dark Arts. And illegal curses are certainly within the fourth year curriculum. How the teacher of the curses prefers to teach them is completely up to the professor as long as it involves no real physical pain to the students he or she is instructing."

Although Filch had no response to Professor Dumbledore's claim, he did inform the Quibbler that not all DADA professors have been "safe." "The professor who preceded the crazy ‘ex-convict’ was a werewolf!" he claims, noting that he and other Hogwarts parents working for the Ministry of Magic were panicked and outraged to discover their children were in danger of receiving a bite from a loose werewolf. "At least the man had enough common sense to resign from his position of DADA professor" A fair number of Hogwarts students, however, claim that he was "the very best professor we ever had.

Before this half-human teacher was a very well known man who seems to have disappeared. “A failure! A bandy-legged pansy man! That’s what he was! Liar! Can’t even call him a man! His favorite of all colors is lilac!” Filch snarls, although this reporter agrees with most of the female staff at Hogwarts that lilac should be preferred by more men as it is the color of humility, youthful innocence, and first love. Unfortunately, this man of great deeds, all told in many books, had no choice in leaving the Magic School as his mind was already made up (or unmade) by the end of the year.

Samuel and Martha Jordan, parents of Hogwarts graduate Lee Jordan claim that Umbridge was “a sadistic old toad," an assertion even Filch admits is "true--although her physical appearance struck fear in the hearts of many and that too was needed! She'll be missed. She wasn't even given the chance to be respected."

A professor who has worked at Hogwarts for almost half a century has made clear, however, that Dolores Umbridge was given a chance to be respected; that respect dimished due to her haughty aura, bigotry and dementia. "She was given every opportunity to be welcomed into the halls of Hogwarts," the professor asserts, "but I must admit that by the time the school year came to a close I wasn't even trying to stop Peeves from using my walking stick to prod her out the door."

Filch is not so certain Umbridge deserved her fate. “This world will crumble into tiny little pieces! Dolores Umbridgewas a wonderful woman of high stature and just what [Hogwarts] needed and now she’s gone. Without her, those horrible wankers, like Fred and George Weasley and Peeves the poltergeist, will run amok!"

"Not so," replies Peeves (who managed to deface several Quibbler printers and two pages of newly written print) about the Umbridge affair. "Filch is a smelly stinky squib, anyway, so who cares what ickly fickly Filchy wilchy thinks anyhow? And he's going to miss those wanking Weasley twins...he left part of their swamp as a souvenier."

Despite the differing views on Umbridge, she has one thing in common with her predecessors--her name must sadly be added to the bottom of the currently long list of Hogwarts former professors. She used to be the right hand woman of Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, but since he believes, as most of the public does by now, that the Dark Lord has indeed risen again, Umbridge may have nowhere to turn, as she still believes it is all “nonsense.”

Many at Hogwarts would claim the same of her teaching methods.