Rate my (Dark Arts) professors: A look at the best and worst of Hogwarts’ strangest staff
A survey of Harry Potter’s Defense Against The Dark Arts instructors and the talented character actors who portrayed them
Film Features Ian Hart
Teachers never get enough credit, and that’s especially true of those who work at Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry. Hormonal teens are already a handful, but imagine dealing with hormonal teens who also have access to magic wands.
Among the staff’s most thankless positions is the Defense Against The Dark Arts instructor, who is tasked with preparing students to protect themselves from violent spells, dangerous creatures, and all sorts of assorted evils. By design, it’s a volatile role, and it’s had such a high turnover rate that many believe it’s jinxed, since no instructor manages to last more than a single school year (Dumbledore once asserted that Voldemort put a curse on it after his application was rejected). So it’s not entirely surprising that the professors it does attract tend to be quite peculiar, to say the least, with teaching methods that range from questionable to outright diabolical.
Throughout Harry Potter’s seven years at Hogwarts, there were seven different teachers for Defense Against The Dark Arts—many of whom got themselves into trouble after dabbling a little too heavily in the Dark Arts. For fans of the books and films, the revolving door of instructors became one of its signatures, ushering in some of Potter’s most eccentric allies and most fearsome enemies. With the Harry Potter film series reaching its 20th anniversary milestone this month, we’re looking back at the professors who dared to lead Hogwarts’ most hazardous classroom, ranking them from worst to best in terms of job performance—and overall legacy.
For extra credit, we’ll also be paying tribute to the distinguished character actors who have played the Defense Against The Dark Arts professors since Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone, shouting out recommended performances from TV and film where you can see more from each of them.
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Minerva McGonagall. People can keep the Cads, the next-level Weirdos and the Sinister Scamps. I like a loyal witch who can bring statues to life and rock a cat suit.
Nobody asked for your weird list of ‘turn-ons’!
I’m asking for everyone’s weird list of turn-ons! Omit no detail no matter how small or filthy!
Don’t say that, you’ll be flooded with Polyjuice accident cat-Hermione.
For me it’s inflating Marge Dursley or nothing.
I get totally horny for well-groomed elbows. Wait, was this supposed to be just Potter-related? I’m going to stick with my answer.
Ian Hart is great. He got his big break in TV as a supporting character in an iconic 80s drama series One Summer, starring David Morrissey. Both were able to use their native Scouse accents which brings me to one of David Thewlis’s worst performances, rocking a woeful Beatles-esque Liverpool accent in The Big Lebowski.
I always forget Thewlis is in Lebowski until he shows up lmao. I love him but it was a very strange casting choiceanyway yeah: Ian Hart is way too low on the list. his flopsweat-y hand-wringing performance is 100% just an act throughout the whole movie, and when he finally drops it for the big reveal at the end it’s honestly bone-chilling. I think him and Rickman together are 99% of the reason Philosopher’s Stone works in any way
Severus Snape is one of Harry Potter’s most complicated characters, with as many as admirers as he has detractors. But Harry himself names his second son after Snape, calling him “the bravest man I ever knew.”You mean how Rowling venerated her obsessive stalker character who was literally ok with murdering innocents, including children, all because he was bullied at school but then turned sides merely because the woman he creeped over for years (and who wasn’t interested in him at all) was killed in the process before then being entrusted with authority over children that he abused repeatedly.Yes how “brave” a man he was, and not just a creep whose only acts of good were out of a self-interested desire to “prove” himself to a dead woman…
We don’t have Severus Snape by Niles Chikkens, and to save time, I should mention we also don’t have Cadaveous Crepe by Dials Thickens, Average Ape by Fred “Wild Man” Wiggins or even A Sale of Two Titties by Bernest Bemmmmingwayq with 4 M’s and a silent Q!
Seriously, the more she tried to develop the characters the worse they got. Should’ve been an early clue.
Now excuse me while I shit my pants and wait for a teacher to come along and whisk my leavings out of my soiled undergarments.
That whole epilogue chapter read like crummy Harry Potter fanfic. “And Ron and Hermione got married and had babies and their names were Hugo and Rose and also Harry and Ginny got married and had babies and they named them Lily Luna and James Sirius and Albus Severus because Harry was so proud of Snape for loving his mom so much and being so very brave… “
The part I find hysterical about the epilogue is just how it’s probably the most unrealistic part of the entire franchise.Okay you have magic and wizards but you’re telling me every single school romance couple remained together after nearly two decades? No splitting up after finding that being permanently in each other’s space didn’t work or no divorces after having kids or an affair?Just out of the main three I can maybe understand obsessive fangirl Ginny literally giving up her dream career seemingly at 22 to give Harry the three kids he desired in quick succession but Ron, a person with a severe jealousy issue, quickness to see vendetta, and a lack of loyalty if he feels someone is getting the attention he feels he deserves, sticking by Hermione who is literally labelled the “Brightest Witch of Her Age” every five minutes and not having affairs with any woman who gave him a look and said he was the amazing one?Yeah, whatever…
Well, Neville and Luna didn’t last, though I can’t remember if that was one of the details she filled in via twitter. And bad and overplayed as the “high school sweethearts get married and live happily ever after” trope is, could you imagine the backlash if JKR said that Harry married some random witch that had never been mentioned before?But yeah, the epilogue had a real “I can’t believe this is actually part of the book” feeling for me too.
Except the Neville/Luna thing entirely consisted of only a brief line in Deathly Hallows Part 2 and it’s not contradicted in the film’s epilogue. So even in the film continuity itself they are still potentially together…And well maybe she just shouldn’t have had the epilogue be that hokey scene so far in a time-frozen future. If she wanted that sudden “life goes on” nostalgia maybe have it a year later where they all leave Hogwarts for the final time as students (having retaken the last year), seeing the whole array of that year cohort all together for the last time before going to different places in their futures.
Neville and Luna was only a movie pairing to keep the number of important characters down – in book-world, he ends up marrying a Hufflepuff who buys the bar in town everyone at Hogwarts drinks at.
Rowling’s announcement that Neville and Luna married people other than each other might have been something that happened in the interim between Deathly Hallows the book and Deathly Hallows 2 the movie (I think she wrote up who everyone in the books married pretty early in the post-books Pottermore period, when the main thing she was doing was answering reader questions). DH2 is where the idea that Neville and Luna were into each other came from (I think they wanted to pair off Luna because the actress playing her and Daniel Radcliffe had way better chemistry than Harry had with Ginny).
I think they wanted to pair off Luna because the actress playing her and Daniel Radcliffe had way better chemistry than Harry had with Ginny.Every actress in those films had better chemistry with him than Bonnie Wright.
They lucked out that Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson grew into decent actors (for the most part), but Wright was…a bit of a dud as Ginny.
A lot of people bag on her acting, but I don’t see that she had much to work with. The movies cut out a lot of Ginny’s material from the books, and it’s not like she was incredibly well-developed in the books to begin with. The one scene Wright gets to sell that there’s a connection between Ginny and Harry, the made-up-for-the-movie scene where she takes Harry to get rid of the the book, Wright and Radcliffe play pretty well, although it’s overshadowed by the fact that it looks like they’re both horned up over Harry attempting to murder someone. But that’s the script, not the actors’ fault.
Hey, not saying she was crap end of, just that she had no chemistry with the actor her character is meant to end up with.It’s a shame but not their fault.
Luna prefers the company of witches and in my head canon, lives happily with Cho.
Exactly. Not to mention the PTSD they all must be suffering which can wreak havoc on relationships. I get that she wanted a happy ending for them but the way it’s written except (1) it suggests that getting married to your teenage romance and having kids is THE happy ending and (2) ignoring trauma isn’t a happy ending, it’s denial. Would have been a better ending to just show them leaving Hogwarts with hope about the future, then let the fanfic writers have at it.
I understand what you’re saying—and I’m sure that’s the way Rowling intended the story to read—but I think you should consider that in the aftermath of the Dark Lord being defeated by a mostly-teen army, there was probably a lot of hooking up, and with the Room of Requirement destroyed, probably not a single condom in the whole castle. I’m betting a lot of those marriages were at wand point.But yeah, there don’t seem to be any divorces in the wizarding world, not even when married Bellatrix is getting knocked up by not-her-husband Voldemort. Maybe they all marry via unbreakable vow spell? Teens would definitely be stupid enough to do that…
No because in the HP universe no one has sex ever because Rowling is clearly extremely uncomfortable with the idea that heterosexual teens have sex and clearly uncomfortable with people of the same sex showing any romantic affection at all.
But, the internet has so many colored penciled drawings of all the characters from Harry Potter fucking each other.
Ron was whatever Rowling needed to be at the time in order to make the story go where she wanted it to go. So if she needed him to be pettily jealous of Harry’s notoriety to stoke up some drama for a while, then he was that. It’s one of her greatest weaknesses as a writer, and something that repels me about YA writing in general, which tends to traffic heavily in the mercurial nature of teen emotions. There’s no reason Ron couldn’t mature and come into his own, so let’s say he did.
Back in the day, my American self wondered if the durability of high school romance was a British thing. (I’ll hold for your laughter.)In Cursed Child, a play that is both oft-maligned and enthusiastically enjoyed — sometimes by the same people — all is not smooth sailing for Hermione and Ron.
My Affairus Forgetus spell?
It’s the same problem I had with Avatar/Legend of Korra telling me Aang and Katara, younger even than the Potter kids, ended up together forever.Pandering to the max. To be fair, Ron would never be able to do better than Hermione, and he knows it. Absolutely he sticks around. But from her point of view, it never made much sense. She totally settled.
I remember reading an interview where she said something along the lines of “I wrote the ending really early on” and being like, “yeah, that tracks.”
Yeah, that read like her publisher called her up two weeks before printing…“Love it. Love, darling. Just, um, we need something to let everyone know that they all lived happily ever after. Just toss something in there. Coupla pages! Ciao, darling!”
You’re fun.
Not to mention the fact that Snape was literally Neville’s GREATEST FEAR. Not Hermione (which would be a very justified fear – petrificus totalus doesn’t look very fun). Not the Dementors. Not even Bellatrix Lestrange, who literally tortured his parents into insanity! Neville’s greatest fear is a teacher. This is not because Neville is cowardly (he isn’t), it’s because Snape is a forking monster who terrorizes children. I don’t care how sad he is about his crush dying, HE TERRORIZES CHILDREN.At least with his abuse of Harry, you can kinda sorta justify it because James Potter really was an asshole, even if Harry had nothing to do with that. But what did poor Neville or his family do to Snape?
HARRY: Time to name my sons after all my important male role models. You’ll be James Sirius, and you’ll be Albus–HAGRID: Hey, Harry. Just wanted ter say how proud of you I am, since I’ve known you since you was a baby, and I was the one who brought you inter the wizarding world, and I was the one ter protect you from You-Know-Who, and I was the one who carried yer body out of the Forest, and I never manipulated you or used you ter relive my school days or set you up ter die. Just wanted ter say that
HARRY:
HARRY: Severus
It takes a stalker to know another. Keep telling on yourself.
Says the person who continues to follow me around this site incessantly.Also at least I can read an article titles detailing it’s the list of DADA professors and not go “my favourite was McGonagall” like a drooling idiot.
Fucking THANK YOU! I loathe and I do mean LOOOATHE how people hold Lily and Severus up as this big unrequited love story. That James “stole Lily away from Severus” because Severus and Lily were always soulmates.
How can you look at that picture ant NOT think they should be singing
“I see a little silhouette-o of a man…”?!
Fuck Snape. He’s a wretched assclown who would have been beaten to a pulp by any self-respecting parent at a real school for the way he treated children. He’s a stalker creep who throws around the Wizard equivalent of the N-word when a woman rejects him.
Oh, and fuck Draco too. In fact, fuck all the Slytherins. They should have been thrown out.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Hogwarts is a pretty shitty school.
And yet all the characters still show unbending devotion to authority figures because socially conservative writer…
We all act like this was some sort of new revelation but the genre Jo was writing in is the classic British boarding school. Harry Potter was not even the first to have fantasy elements. That genre is all about respect for authority, classism and a general idea that the rich are better then the poor.
It’s not acting like it’s a new revelation, it’s just still funny how she tried to write a “boarding school story” except it fails as one because of how it works against her own attempted moral themes and is now seemingly surprised that the fandom took entirely different views from it than she intended.
I HAVE SEEN THIS COMPLAINT BEFORE AND I AM WONDERING IF WE ALL READ THE SAME SET OF BOOKS.
They teach the students all about the magic world and hardly anything about the muggle world, almost as if they want them to grow up to be adults completely dependent on the Ministry Of Magic.
Sure, it’s common knowledge, but thank you for the reminder of just how great Alan Rickman was in Galaxy Quest.
What a savings.
Best line delivery of the movie, or best line delivery ever?
Sorry, your comment didn’t appear before and now it looks like I was just parroting you!Best ever, is the answer.
I have never heard so much defeat condensed into three words.
That’s the single greatest line reading in history.
Branaugh/Lockhart was a great example of the dangers of mistaking charisma and confidence for competence. I almost felt like Dumbledore put him in the role just to publicly take the air out of him.Speaking of Dumbledore (and every other member of the faculty, honestly), how did he not sense Voldemort living inside one of his professors, or that Moody was really Crouch? Those seem like pretty big misses.
he’s eventually revealed to be Ares, the film’s big bad Which was the weakest part of the movie, so, uh. Maybe not so much praise for this.
Oh, i mean, I certainly don’t think I’m praising that? Truly hated the “twist”—especially because the movie telegraphed it early on by putting such a competent actor (Thewlis) into a seemingly small role.
I think that the twist would have been great fun if it was a character that we had lasted a while with, and given a story arc that actually mattered. If Ares was disguised as a supporting character over a trilogy, and was significant to Diana only to reveal himself, that would have been great fun.
Sure, Snape was a less-than-compassionate educator (to put it mildly), but he also slyly taught his students what they needed to know: jumping ahead to the werewolf section in Azkaban, for example, to help explain the absence of Professor Lupin.People really don’t get Snape, do they? Snape is an asshole. He’s petty, abusive, bigoted, and an absolutely abysmal educator. He didn’t skip to the werewolf section to help his students understand Lupin better, he did so to fuck over Lupin and get him fired. Because, again, Snape is an asshole. Yes, he has a tragic love story in his past (to the extent that a one-sided romantic obsession can be construed as a “love story”), and yes he was ultimately on the side of good, but that doesn’t come anywhere close to making him a good person, much less a good teacher. C’mon.
I mean, given that Lupin couldn’t fucking remember to take the potion that prevents him turning into a rampaging monster capable of tearing people apart it’s one of the few times Snape’s actions were slightly justified.
Ultimately justified, yes, but his motives were hardly pure. At the time he was literally just trying to out Lupin and dick him over.
That’s what I mean by slightly justified. He wasn’t doing it to satisfy the Health and Safety Executive that’s for sure but Lupin was a fucking idiot.How would they explain to the parents that little Archibald was returning from detention and was unfortunately torn into pieces by the werewolf teacher who forget his meds.
If you just found out your best friend was framed for murder and treason by your next-best friend, and the next-best friend you mourned is still alive and nearby, you might forget to take your pills, too.
How would they explain to the parents that little Archibald was returning from detention and was unfortunately torn into pieces by the werewolf teacher who forget his meds. My guess is they just check the “Werewolf[Teacher]” box on the form letter before mailing off the weekly student death notifications
The book explains this: Lupin was waiting for Snape’s potion when he saw Sirius, Ron, and Pettigrew on the Map, and he left before Snape arrived. We can debate whether taking the potion and waiting out the full moon was more important than capturing the Potters’ true killer.
Nope, here’s the passage from the book:Snape was slightly breathless, but his face was full of suppressed triumph. “You’re wondering, perhaps, how I knew you were here?” he said, his eyes glittering. “I’ve just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along. And very lucky I did… lucky for me, I mean. Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you running along this passageway and out of sight.”Lupin forgot to get it previously, Snape found out and tried to get it to him but then found the Marauder’s Map out in his office.Lupin is just genuinely useless.
I stand corrected!
Yeah. Setting aside all the absolutely horrid stuff Rowling has subsequently said, she at least was on the money when she said, “You can’t make him a saint; he was vindictive and bullying. You can’t make him a devil; he died to save the wizarding world.”
Cannot believe that Quirrell also played the biggest badass on The Terror. Fucking unrecognizable.
Kind of crazy how ‘the greatest wizard of his age’ kept hiring Death Eaters to be the new DADA teacher over and over again.
Hey now, only 40% of the DADA teachers Dumbledore hired were wizard Nazis.
Where does Umbridge fall? Full-on wizard Nazi, or more of a cowardly Vichy collaborationist?
Dolores. Dolores. Dolores. Twice you spelled it Delores, even though it was correct in the section title! Why do people have such a hard time with such a simple name? Saw it sooo much in the Westworld comments.
Lupin was a far better teacher than Snape. Whereas Snape lorded his superior knowledge over his students so as to make them feel shitty, Lupin genuinely sought to pass his along in a manner that ensured the best chance of success. You know, like a good teacher.
Ah, but Snape never got over his 30-year infatuation with Harry’s mom, so associating with wizard Nazis and abusing and berating his students for years gets handwaved away as “it’s complicated.”
No, it’s handwaved away as “He regretted his actions, turned spy, and dedicated the rest of his life to fighting the return of wizard fascism.” If you think about how many of the guys who built rockets for the Nazis went on to build the rockets that landed humanity on the moon, it’s not that far-fetched.
“He regretted his actions, turned spy, and dedicated the rest of his life to fighting the return of wizard fascism”A) Snape doesn’t give a shit about wizard fascism. He’s pissed at Voldemort for murdering his unrequited crush, but let’s not confuse personal motives for political motives.B) Regardless, none that of that has anything to with the fact that Snape is a shitty, abusive teacher, his teaching ability being the purported topic of the article.
Wasn’t arguing he was a good teacher. If you went to school and the teacher spent all his time engaging in weird, unexplainable feuds with students and former classmates who are faculty members, that dude should be fired. At best, he’s like one of those college professors who can write a brilliant textbook but has no business being in the classroom. But regardless of his motivations (or teaching skills), Snape helped bring Voldemort and his people down, and then kept his cover for something like 14 or 15 years, to be able to bring Voldy down again if and when he should show up. That’s dedication to a cause, and in real life the state forgives crimes for less.
He only regretted his actions because it lead to the death of his love obsession. That’s it. And then he spent the next 30 years being one of THE most abusive teachers at Hogwarts including the child of his love obsessions. Snape always was and always will be a piece of shit. Always.
From a different one of your comments I see where you’re coming from, and I disagree. Not about Snape being a lousy teacher or a lousy person to Harry and other people associated with his childhood bully—some small part of Snape being an abusive, unfair teacher is justified by him maintaining his cover as a wizard Nazi, but not nearly enough—but about his motivations and what people consider resonant about them. I have no doubt that there are people who ship Snape and Lilly, and think they should have been together…but that’s just fanfic. From what’s on the page (or screen) there’s no suggestion that he and Lilly would’ve been a good romantic match, much less better than Harry’s dad. His regret over the actions that got Lilly killed made him turn traitor on Voldemort—and there is the suggestion from both Voldemort and Dumbledore that he harbored a secret wish that with James out of the way, he’d have Lilly for himself. And it’s not unreasonable to think that, since when all this happens James, Lilly, and Snape are all around 20-21 years old, so his crush on Lilly isn’t exactly ancient history. And at that point, you could believe the narrative that’s become popular since Rowling decided to let her TERF flag fly that he’s nothing but a stalker MRA.But that reasoning doesn’t work for the 17 years that follow. If he’s just a stalker motivated by the object of his affection, Lilly’s already dead. There’s no reason for him to protect Harry or oppose other wizard racists, which he does, after she’s gone. Which gets down to his real regret, which is the wizard racism that destroyed the one friendship he had in his life. Lilly doesn’t cut ties with him for being creepy or because she’s into James (she isn’t at that point) she cut ties because he throws a racial slur at her. And that’s what he regrets and spends the rest of his life making amends for.
I always felt that the perfect casting for Quirrell was Rowan Atkinson – he starts as Mr. Bean but turns into Blackadder II. (And I always envisioned Pierce Brosnan as Lockhart as well.)
I can agree on Atkinson but I thought Kenneth was perfect as Lockhart. He brings that Shakespearean charm to the character that really sells his performative fraud nature.
Hugh Grant was my choice for Lockhart when reading the book- he’d have been perfect for that foppishly handsome charm that mum’s and pupils could fall for – and so felt midly vindicated when I read he was the first choice for the role.
It’s a crime that Rik Mayall’s part as Peeves was cut from The Philosopher’s Stone.
but the teacher was a long-time follower of Voldemort’s, Not sure where you get that conclusion. He was a weak person, and Voldy got into his head, literally. And that confidence comes from Voldemort. I think the book explains it a little better than the movie.I think I’ll be here a while, correcting this slide show.
Yeah, I think the book’s explanation (which I could’ve sworn was repeated in the movie) is that Quirrel was a do-gooder out there trying to make his mark as a defense against the dark arts guy by being the one to single-handedly capture Voldy, and he just bit off a whole lot more than he could chew.
OK, I’m not sure the 6th movie even shows a Dark Arts lesson. All we know is Snape’s werewolf lesson from the 3rd movie.
Extra extra credit for Brendan Gleeson: Calvary, in which he plays Father James, priest of a small church in a quirky Irish village. He’s a good man, not very pious but doing his best to care for his congregation, even though most of them act indifferently or even hostile towards him. Including one man in particular, who, while in confession, threatens to kill Father James in one week’s time.While the movie is flawed, it’s still worth watching, especially for Gleeson’s performance.
Calvary is incredible so I’d disagree with the flawed qualifier (well, maybe Gillen using his Game of Thrones pirate voice) but I’d back you 100% with the Gleeson praise.
The cover image looks like a collection of rejected Doctor Who incarnations.
(wait, no, I take that back, because no one in their right mind would have rejected Alan Rickman from playing Doctor Who.)
In his seventh and final year at Hogwarts, Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) was (quite understandably) too preoccupied with other matters—like the return of Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) to take over the entire wizarding world—to focus on his courseworkUhhh.. Harry Potter definitely did not attend Hogwarts in book 7. This was literally the first sentence in the article, so I stopped reading.
That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but point taken that it didn’t read as such.
Gotcha! I don’t even remember this character so I wouldn’t call myself an expert. Today I learned The Green Knight was in a Harry Potter film.
Snape’s a dick. Anyone who revels in making the lives of children miserable doesn’t deserve to be number one. Obviously Lupin is the best DAtDA teacher.
That photo above looks like a parallel universe version of the Bohemian Rhapsody music video.
“sometimes people are rarely what they really seem to be”and occasionally people are frequently what they really seem to be
Can we stop with this Harry Potter retrospective shite? It was a mediocre series that should have faded from public memory well before we all found out that the woman who wrote it is an evil piece of shit- and that should have been the final nail in the coffin. By continuing to discuss it you’re helping make sure Rowling stays a major cultural figure and tacitly supporting her repugnant views. You should be ashamed.
Snape was an incel who tortured his students, people who defend him are weird af.
Not sure how Umbridge isn’t dead last, with a bullet. Not sure I ever hated a character more. And yes I know that was the intent, so… good job?Also, Vera Drake? For an abortion movie… pretty funny!
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Snape, while an exceptional wizard, especially when it comes to the art of legilimens or the ability to cast spells without saying them out loud, was not a good teacher. He constantly lets his grudge against James Potter negatively influence his treatment of Harry in the classroom, as well as bias him against Gryffindor students, and he clearly showed favoritism toward his own house, especially Draco (although that last part might be more strategic, given who his dad is). Lupin was the most useful DAtDA teacher over the seven books and eight movies, with the possible exception of Crouch-as-Moody, who, as pointed out, was damn effective even though he was a Death Eater in disguise. I think in the book he even effectively coached Harry how to overpower the imperious curse.
Mad Eye Moody was always my favorite, but I liked Lockheart a lot. Two really fun personalities and two really fun performances.Love for Snape is one of the weirdest things to come out of whatever the heck the this series was doing with that story
Who knew at the time that Dolores Umbridge was JK Rowling’s valiant attempt to write herself into the narrative.
Am I the only one who sees the image at the top of this article and immediately thinks of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody video?