The Defence Against The Dark Arts post at Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry was a cursed one. As such, for every year that Harry attended the school, the audience was introduced to a brand new professor who put their own spin on proceedings. This meant that the majority of those who taught young wizards to defend against dark magic were only around for one school year.
While the majority of these teachers were downright cruel, there were a couple of saving graces lurking within. With that in mind, here are all of the Harry Potter Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers in the franchise, ranked from most to least evil.
HONORABLE MENTION: Amycus Carrow
The Carrows joined Hogwarts after it falls to the darkness. Amycus took over Defence Against The Dark Arts duties, just as the subject was transformed into the simple study of Dark Arts. As such, it isn’t the same subject, and Amycus technically isn't allowed onto the full list.
However, the fact that he was openly a Death eater who liked to torture his students means he has to be mentioned. As he was tied up in Ravenclaw Tower, he was unable to fight in the Battle Of Hogwarts, but was thrown into Azkaban after.
Dolores Umbridge
No list of evil in Harry Potter can be complete without a mention of Dolores Jane Umbridge. She wasn’t a Death Eater or specifically on team Voldemort, but that sort of makes the context of her actions even more centered on deep-rooted evil. She just loved to be cruel while looking down on those she considered to be impure.
Her time as Hogwarts teacher was defined by torturing her students, enforcing crazy rules and slowly being allowed to take over as headmistress. On top of that, all of her teaching was built on theoretical exam-passing knowledge, so she doesn’t even get points for being an effective teacher.
Barty Crouch Jr. / Mad-Eye Moody
The fact that Barty Crouch Jr.’s actions led to the return of Lord Voldemort and the murder of Cedric Diggory suggests that he was probably a worse person than Dolores Umbridge deep down. However, his actual actions as a teacher need to be taken into account.
He genuinely helped his students to understand new and important concepts, and halfway through The Goblet Of Fire, he turned Malfoy into a ferret. But still, this is only the reason he isn’t at the very bottom of this list. He can’t be any higher because he’s one of the main reasons Voldemort could return.
Quirinus Quirrell
Stuttering Professor Quirrell was one of the least suspect people in the first Harry Potter book. He wasn’t particularly important and he pretty much seemed scared of everything, but then he turned out to have Voldemort literally living in the back of his head.
Unlike Barty Crouch, Quirrell wasn’t a Death Eater hungry for Wizarding purity. In fact, he encountered Voldemort during a trip to discover what was left of the Dark Lord after his encounter with baby Harry. His resistance to Voldemort’s possession of him wasn’t exactly strong, though, and he ended up trying to lure a child to his death.
Gilderoy Lockhart
Lockhart might have been an annoying fraud, but he didn’t seem to have the layer of pure evil that many of the Defence Against The Dark Arts teachers of Hogwarts had. His lessons were chaotic and taught the students nothing (except the number of times Lockhart won Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award).
Despite his stupidity, he was very gifted at memory charms, and was able to prove his lack of morals when he tried to wipe the memory of two twelve-year-olds. No matter how brilliant he thought he was at this one piece of magic, he still got his comeuppance when the spell rebounded onto him.
Severus Snape
No matter how much Snape was eventually able to redeem himself, he was still a horrible person. He was rude to the students he didn’t like and inflicted constant psychological abuse on Harry, because of a grudge harbored against his father for many years after his death.
The fact that his morality was pretty much exclusively built around his love for Lily meant that he wasn’t a genuinely good person at all, and he remained unpleasant even after finally landing the Defence Against The Dark Arts job. The one good thing about Snape as a DATDA teacher is that his experiences on both sides of the law probably helped his teaching.
Remus Lupin
The singular beacon of true good in the long list of Defence Against The Dark Arts teachers at Hogwarts was Remus Lupin. If we overlook the fact that he is capable of becoming a hungry werewolf and had that weird moment in The Prisoner Of Azkaban where he made himself look really suspicious, he is one of the most encouraging and important people in Harry’s life.
He taught him to produce the Patronus that would save him and many others countless times, and eventually gave his life in the fight against Voldemort. Lupin and Tonks’ son Teddy was made Harry’s Godson.