Voldemort wasn't the worst villain in 'Harry Potter'

Voldemort, the main antagonist in the magical world of 'Harry Potter', was played by Ralph Fiennes.

It's pretty clear from the very beginning that Voldemort was  trying to kill Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) as a baby in order to overturn a prophecy that predicts he will fall at the infant's hands.

At the young age of 17, Harry and his best friends Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) set out to destroy Voldemort's Horcruxes, hunting pieces of the Dark wizard's soul so that he can finally be killed once and for all.

Whether you've read the books a several times, watched the movies over and over again, or done both, you probably think that Voldemort is  Harry Potter's worst villain — but you might be wrong about that. 

While Voldemort is a horrific, vindictive, and cruel mass murderer, there's someone arguably even worse than him: Professor Dolores Umbridge, played in the movies by Imelda Staunton. A high-ranking Ministry employee who will do anything for personal gain and professional development, Umbridge is the worst person in the Harry Potter series, particularly because she presents herself as a hero. 

J.K. Rowling, who penned the original Harry Potter book series, was pretty clear about why she created the character of Umbridge in the first place: she didn't want the concept of "evil" to be entirely black and white. She expresses this through Sirius Black (played in the films by Gary Oldman):

The world isn't simply divided into totally good people and nefarious Death Eaters — making it clear that bad people can also work for seemingly virtuous causes like the Ministry of Magic.

In an essay on Wizarding World, Rowling relays how Umbridge turned on her own family in order to succeed within the Department of Magical Law Enforcement; she hated her father because of his lack of ambition within the Ministry and ultimately got him fired, and lied about her Muggle mother to assume pure-blood status.