Forget Voldemort: The Harry Potter Villain Stephen King Finds as Creepy as Hannibal Lecter

Stephen King has opinions on villains, and he does not hand out gold stars lightly. So when he says the scariest thing in Harry Potter isn't the snake-faced wizard with a wand, I'm listening.

King's pick for scariest Potter villain isn't Voldemort

In a review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for Entertainment Weekly (resurfaced via The Digital Flix), King zeroed in on the book's real menace. Voldemort, he argued, is so far out in the supernatural stratosphere that he stops feeling genuinely threatening. The person who actually gets under your skin? The new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in pink.

"The gently smiling Dolores Umbridge, with her girlish voice, toadlike face, and clutching, stubby fingers, is the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter."

That's King's pull-quote, and he's not wrong. What makes Umbridge unnerving isn't magic. It's authority. She's the kind of adult who hides behind rules she writes, rewrites, and enforces with a smile and a quill that draws blood. It's familiar in a way Voldemort never is.

Why Umbridge feels uncomfortably real

Order of the Phoenix builds tension with the little abuses: detentions that cross the line, petty power plays in class, shutting students down when they challenge her, and punishments that exist mostly because she can hand them out. She is scary not because she'll blow up the school, but because the system backs her no matter what she does.

King even ties her to a specific childhood dread: the teacher who made you walk to school with a knot in your stomach. You turn the pages hoping she finally gets what's coming, while also bracing for the next bit of bureaucratic cruelty. And yes, in his review he points to one perfect example of her pettiness with teeth: if she'll ban Harry from playing Quidditch, she's capable of anything.

King loves the book, but he brings a red pen

It's not all villain talk. King praises J.K. Rowling for being in full command of her imagination here. He calls her ideas wildly vivid and endlessly inventive, and you can feel that she's having a blast in this world.

He also dings some craft choices. His long-running pet peeve shows up: too many adverbs, especially in dialogue tags. He jokes that characters rarely just say a thing; they say it exasperatedly, sharply, earnestly. Harry, in particular, spends a lot of pages speaking quietly, automatically, nervously, slowly, and yes, angrily. He even pokes at little tics like characters getting "dressed at top speed" instead of just putting on their clothes.

To be clear, he frames these quirks as minor and kind of charming — the side effect of a natural storyteller overflowing with ideas. Still, he argues she could tighten it up, and given the scale of the series, maybe should. He estimates the adverbs pile up at about 8 to 10 per page, which, spread across more than 870 pages, adds up to nearly a novella's worth of -ly words. His bottom line: we get it, we feel it, and we're enjoying ourselves without the extra seasoning.

Quick franchise notes

• Franchise: Harry Potter
• Author: J.K. Rowling
• Genre: Fantasy / Drama / Coming-of-age fiction
• Books released: 7 main novels (1997-2007)
• Movies released: 8 films (2001-2011)
• Total film box office: Over $7.7 billion worldwide
• Where to watch: All Harry Potter movies are streaming on Peacock

So, are you with King on this? Is Umbridge the most unsettling figure in the series, or does someone else keep you up at night? Tell me who and why.