It's the day Harry Potter fans from all over have been waiting for - J.K. Rowling posted a new story on her website today, exploring the back story of one of the most twisted Hogwarts professors.
Professor Dolores Umbridge was actually inspired by a real person - a teacher who she "disliked intensely on sight," Rowling writes in her essay published on the online home of Harry Potter, pottermore.com, and on Today.
"What sticks in my mind is her pronounced taste for twee accessories," Rowling writes. "So although this teacher didn't "look like a toad, was never sadistic or vicious to me or anyone else, and I never heard her express a single view in common with Umbridge ... it is true to say that I borrowed from her, then grossly exaggerated, a taste for the sickly sweet and girlish in dress."
Umbridge's love for kittens, however, was not inspired by this teacher of Rowlings. Instead, it was inspired by the irony of a former officemate filled with negativity who hung pictures of fluffy kittens on her walls.
"She was the most bigoted, spiteful champion of the death penalty with whom it has ever been my misfortune to share a kettle," writes Rowling. "A love of all things saccharine often seems present where there is a lack of real warmth or charity."
The story also includes the tale of Dolores' past, where we learn that she is actually a half-blood and how she became a Hogwarts professor in the first place.
Read the whole story here.
