J. K. Rowling presents Umbrigde's backstory

[t0ra-chan.livejournal.com]

In time for Halloween JKR gave us another short story (more background info to be honest, it's not like it has a plot). You can read it at Pottermore (if you have an account and can actually remember your user name and password) or you can read it here: J.K. Rowling writes Harry Potter Halloween tale profiling 'malicious' Dolores Umbridge

My personal take on this little story is that it's wholly pointless. It just repeats that Umbridge was always a nasty person with no depth to her and she's worse than blood purists. Nothing really new or insightful is revealed, nor do I believe did anybody care to know this sort of stuff about Umbridge. I also found it very unbelievable that anybody would buy her claims of being a pureblood, considering how small the wizarding community is. And of course she was a Slytherin, because where else could an evil person in HP have come from.

Comments

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

And the "proper" illustrations on the American OotP books surely wasn't helping (although in Ms. Grandpre's defense she was following Jo's text descriptions; still not sure about her depictions of Sirius [he looks younger than Snape even after jail?] and Severus [stupid goatee! I can't differentiate him from Kakaroff now]).

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

There are heroes in evil as well as in good.--Francois de La Rochefoucauld

It also doesn't help that Snape is played by the incredible Alan Rickman who is closer to 60 than the 31 he was when he met Harry for the first time.

[vermouth1991.livejournal.com]

Almost all of the adult characters were played brilliantly by more than competent actors. Alan Rickman was 55 in the year 2001, but actually none of the Marauder-era characters' actors were really in their 20s in flashbacks or in their 30s in the Present Time. My previous post was mainly about the illustration on Chapter "Occlumency" where Mary Grandpre depicted Sirius giving the "If you try anything funny on Harry..." speech, and I felt that the unshaven Sirius (BTW the movies flipped the sides so that Sirius was the unshaven one—very appropriate imo) looked way too young for someone out of Azkaban.