Every good movie or book franchise has an excellent villain, and there are few of those villains are better than the Dark Lord himself, Voldemort.
In Harry Potter, Ralph Fiennes stars as Voldemort in the movie, and viewers get an up-close-and-personal view of his slew of disgusting followers who adore the despicable monster. From the first scenes, we learn the very apt nickname — He Who Must Not Be Named — because he's done so many despicable things, and his followers have joined him.
With that said, not all the monsters in Harry Potter are Death Eaters. In fact, some people in this universe are even more terrifying than Voldemort’s followers. They have their own issues, twist things in their own way, and have caused chaos in the worst form imaginable. We shared a list of four villains in the Harry Potter franchise who are worse, and have done worse things on occasion, than the Dark Lord's followers.
Dolores Umbridge
I could go on for hours about why Dolores Umbridge is absolutely horrible. Heck, I have gone on at length about how much I despise this woman and wish that the centaurs who picked her up in the Harry Potter books in Order of the Phoenix never returned her to the world of the living.
Maybe that’s a little strong, but at the same time, I can’t get behind this woman and what she does. Obviously, she’s part of the magical government, and after Harry returns from the Triwizard Tournament and proclaims Voldemort’s return, she’s basically sent there to shut that down.
She is essentially the personification of propaganda for the Ministry. That what Harry is saying is wrong, and that anyone who listens to him should be punished. The Ministry is the be-all-end-all for reporting the world's misgivings, and if they say Voldemort isn’t back, well, he’s not.
Not only that, but she's really cruel. She gets too high on power and abuses it. Even in her detentions, where Harry was forced to write with an enchanted quill that carved into his skin, you could see she got pleasure from it. She should have been full-on arrested for that. Either way, she’s terrible, and I’d gladly lock her away.
Rita Skeeter
So no, Rita Skeeter isn’t considered a villain by definition, but she's definitely an antagonist in this franchise, one who I despise more than anyone else on Voldemort’s side. At least those people believe in something. Rita goes for whatever will sell her papers the most.
She is the manifestation of wizarding world clickbait. She’ll take a story, spin it her own way, and catch her subjects off guard in a pose that makes them look terrible. Because of her, some horrible news articles have spread about characters we all know and love, especially in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Worse, she used her unregistered Animagus — a beetle — to transform and eavesdrop on conversations to get dirt on people who didn’t sign up for it. I get the whole “to be a fly on the wall” thing, but there’s a difference between spreading gossip and blatantly writing up lies.
I’m thankful that Hermione trapped her in her beetle form in the Harry Potter books. I worry about what else she would have done if they hadn't caught her at some point.
Pansy Parkinson
Is putting Pansy Parkinson, a Slytherin and Draco's friend, a little much? Maybe. But to me, she is an absolute villain. Why?
It's simple; she was the only one in the entire school who willingly surrendered Harry to the Dark Lord when he demanded it. And then the entire school turned on her.
I genuinely understand that. I’m sure she was scared in that moment, and the last thing she wanted was a full-on battle, but everyone in there was scared. Everyone didn’t know what would happen next. So if your first instinct is to basically send a boy off to their death simply because of your fear, you're not a super great person. At least the Death Eaters fight for what they believe in; Pansy was just a coward.
Gilderoy Lockhart
While Gilderoy Lockhart wasn’t a villain at first, as the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, he certainly wasn’t a great guy. Throughout the series, we see he’s basically a phony. And at the end, he becomes a villain when he threatens to wipe children's memories to sell another book, rescuing Ginny and escaping his lifelong fraud.
He’s the worst because he willingly erased other heroic wizards' memories to use their conquests as his own novels. He’s a fake in every way, and I, for one, will never stan a fake. Gilderoy was only ever loyal to himself. It makes me curious as to how Kit Harington will play him in the upcoming series.
You can check out every Harry Potter film on HBO Max for a villain refresh with these four terrible people.
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