Harry Potter: Ranking All Defence Against The Dark Arts Teachers From Worst To Best

The Wizarding World is a strange place.

As the name suggests, it is a universe full of witches and wizards, as well as odd creatures, secret societies and dark forces of evil. One of the weirdest things in all of J.K. Rowling's world however, is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft of Wizardry.

While children from magical families look forward to their tenth birthday and their Hogwarts acceptance letter, kids from muggle families like Hermione Granger are pretty much thrown in the deep end, receiving their letter before even learning of the existence of magic.

In place of the likes of Maths, Science, and English, the children suddenly swap to the likes of Potions, Herbology, and of course, Defence Against the Dark Arts. Even at the best of times, this would surely be terrifying to a class of school kids, but surely even more so when the teacher's position is supposedly cursed.

Throughout his seven years at Hogwarts, Harry Potter was taught by no fewer than six different Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, a number that would have been higher had Harry not spent his final year off searching for Horcruxes.

Though all of these teachers affected him some way, it was only the vast minority that were anything close to positive.

When thinking about the least popular and most pointless professors, one name springs to mind. Umbridge.

When learning how to fight against evil beings, wherein any mistake or misstep may end in death, surely a practical approach to the subject is better, rather than doing nothing but reading textbooks, right? Well not according to Dolores Umbridge.

Her complete denial of Lord Voldemort's return allowed for a complacent view on the subject, aiming simply for the students to pass their exams and make the school look good, rather than actually being able to defend themselves.

This in turn forced the students to create 'Dumbledore's Army' in the secrecy of the Room of Requirement, where they learnt defensive spells under the tutelage of Harry. It certainly speaks to how useless Umbridge was when one of the students taught his classmates more than she did.

As if all of this wasn't bad enough, while in detention Umbridge forced Harry to physically scar his own hand instead of writing lines on a chalkboard, all for stating what he knew as a fact that she simply refused to believe.