On Dolores Umbridge and Peter Pettigrew

[mfterman]

No: HPFGUIDX 127566


To my mind, the person who strikes me as closest in personality to
Dolores Umbridge is Peter Pettigrew. Both of them more or less made
careers out of hitching on to more powerful and important people. They
were both to gain power from someone else.

Pettigrew's main problem was that he  first latched onto James Potter,
until James more or less outgrew the juvenile need for a sycophant and
then had the misfortune to be forced to switch over to Voldemort, who
was more or less immune to manipulation by way of servile flattery.

Umbridge had a good deal more good luck to end up with a vain and
insecure man such as Cornelius Fudge. I have few difficulties seeing
Pettigrew ending up a toady such as Dolores Umbridge was, flattering
Fudge and gaining powers over others in turn and going nuts with it.

Pettigrew was a good deal more servile in his few appearances, but in
both cases he was around powerful people who were ready to slay him at
any second, and he had no real backing in his favor. If he had someone
like Fudge in his pocket under circumstances where his enemies are
barred from direct retaliation, I think that he would have been a good
deal more arrogant.

-Mfterman