I don't understand why people hate Umbridge so much. I mean, yeah she's kinda obnoxious, but she's just doing what Fudge tells her to. He's the Prime Minister so it's not like she can tell him to stuff it because he's the embodiment of delusions. He's a delusional sociopath using her as a puppet to mess up Dumbledore and Harry's lives, all despite her hatred of children, he disregards her preference to do what she's good at and makes her enact his reign of terror on the school. I feel like she'd rather be anywhere else. He's the one who wrote all the petty Educational Decrees in the first place. She probably invented the Blood Quill to use on the Ministry's more nefarious enemies before Fudge made her use it on children. I mean, normal people don't make people bleed just because they don't like them. And being completely objective, the incident outside the Shrieking Shack, and the one in the Forbidden Forest, validates her point that werewolves are dangerous and centaurs are jerks.
She's even more innocent in "Deathly Hallows" because she's not only the influence of the Imperius Curse, but the locket as well. If she was as evil as people say she is then Voldy would never have needed to try and control her. I think there's a part of her that really believes what she's doing is right and it'll work for everyone in the long run. She didn't deserve to have literally everyone treat her like garbage, or a life sentence in Azkaban. (I know Filch doesn't treat her poorly and neither does the Inquisitorial Squad. And it's not like Filch is struggling to adapt to an era where all of a sudden corporal punishment is considered unethical, rather than effective. And props to the squad for at least being less contentious than everyone else is.)
The series has plenty of far less justified slime buckets such as Zacharias Smith, Cormac McLaggen, Mary Lou Barebone, and even moreso Peter Pettigrew, the Dursleys, and of course Cornelius Fudge. Even Barty Crouch Jnr. is a damaged product of his horrible father's neglect, and Merula Snyde is a girl who has nothing to lose and wants to be respected just like Patricia Rakepick, so I pity them too and see where they're coming from. But the other people I mentioned don't invoke an ounce of empathy. Smith is a disloyal peacock, McLaggen is an abrasive man-child, Barebone is an abusive serial killer, Pettigrew is a delusional vermin, the Dursleys are nothing but bullies for the sake of being bullies (what kind of depraved maggots make their kid sleep in a cupboard, let their other kid get as fat as he is tall, or runs over old women on bicycles?!), and Fudge is a callous sadist with a superiority complex and delusions of grandeur without a single redeeming quality. Yet for some reason people act like Umbridge is worse than all of them combined.
The question is, why on earth is it so?!
