Muggles In The Harry Potter Franchise Ranked By Likability

The world of the "Harry Potter" franchise is filled with magic and wonder. It tells the story of a secret society hiding within our very own that uses sorcery in place of technology. There is a mysterious alley where you can buy magical wands. Broomsticks that let you soar through the clouds. And most importantly, Hogwarts, a school where you can learn to use potions and spells. 

The reason this world feels so incredible is because it contrasts so sharply with our ordinary world. A world where there is no secret Platform 9¾. Where you can't fly no matter how much you run around with a broomstick between your legs and call it "quidditch."

In the "Harry Potter" books and movies, non-magical people are called "muggles," and they are generally looked down upon as inferior to proper witches and wizards. The series has introduced several muggle characters in major and minor roles. Let us take a look at the most significant muggle characters, ranked from most likable to least likable. 

In Harry Potter's wizarding world, there are pure-blooded wizards who come from entirely magical families and half-blooded wizards with a mixed wizard and muggle heritage. Finally, there are the witches and wizards, deemed the most inferior, who belong to an entire muggle bloodline. 

Hermione Granger was one such muggle-born witch who was ironically also the most gifted student during her time at Hogwarts. Hermione's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Granger, have a limited role to play in the storyline, but they seem like stand-up people from what little we know. They were both dentists and were deeply supportive of their daughter being a witch, unlike Harry Potter's aunt and uncle, who always viewed him as a freak for being a wizard. Mr. and Mrs. Granger were also shown to be very patient and polite with Ron's father, Arthur, who had an almost unhealthy obsession with all things muggle-related. 

Tragically, Hermione had to wipe her parents' memory of her and send them to a different part of the world for their own safety once Lord Voldemort began to grow in power again. Once Voldemort was defeated, Hermione tracked down her parents, gave them their memories back, and brought them home. Mr. and Mrs. Granger eventually became grandparents when Hermione married Ron and gave birth to Rose and Hugo Granger-Weasley.   

It can seem almost incredible that an entire wizarding community could exist in Britain without the muggles knowing anything about it. As was revealed in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," some muggles actually are aware of the secret world operating in the shadows, but that information is on a strictly "need-to-know" basis.

Foremost among those who need to know is the muggle British Prime Minister, who is traditionally visited by the Minister for Magic on the night of their appointment. We see this tradition play out in the book when the previous Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge met the newly-appointed and unnamed Prime Minister of the time to inform him that magic exists, and witches and wizards are real and living among ordinary people.

The Prime Minister seems to handle the shocking news reasonably well. He is visited a few more times over the years by Fudge to be briefed on wizarding matters pertaining to muggles. There isn't much the Prime Minister can do except follow Fudge's directions and hope the problems of the wizarding world do not spill out and start affecting the muggle population of the country.    

Harry Potter presents a curious case when it comes to his wizarding ancestry. On the one hand, he can be considered a pure-blooded wizard since both his parents Lily and James, were a witch and wizard, respectively. But on the other hand, Lily was born in a muggle family to Mr. and Mrs. Evans, and so certain purists would consider Harry a half-blooded wizard at best. 

Fortunately, neither Harry nor his parents ever cared about such labels. On their part, Mr. and Mrs. Evans were thrilled to discover one of their daughters was a witch and supported her wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, this love apparently did not extend to their muggle daughter Petunia, who felt othered and rejected while her parents showered all their love on Lily. 

Since all we have is Petunia's word on the subject, it is difficult to ascertain whether Mr. and Mrs. Evans were truly neglectful towards her, or Petunia was being overly sensitive and consumed by jealousy towards her sister. In any case, when Harry gazed into the Mirror of Erised in his first year at Hogwarts, he saw his grandparents along with the rest of the family he had never known smiling and waving at him lovingly. The family was reduced to just Harry's parents in the film adaptation. 

While wizards tend to look down upon muggles generally, most of them act kindly towards these non-magic folk when business needs to be conducted. In that capacity, Harry met Mr. Roberts at the start of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" when he was gearing up to attend the Quidditch World Cup. 

Mr. Roberts was the muggle manager of a campsite near where the world cup was going to be held. As such, Roberts was faced with a deluge of visitors who were secretly witches and wizards to request the use of his grounds. Since the magical folk were not used to behaving like ordinary muggles, Roberts could not help but suspect that there was something strange going on with the sudden influx of weirdly-acting visitors. 

His mind had to be wiped repeatedly by Ministry of Magic representatives to stop Roberts from getting too suspicious. Unfortunately, Roberts and his family were caught in the crosshairs of a drunken group of Death Eaters looking to let loose after the World Cup ended. The family was marched through the woods, bound and levitating helplessly. The ministry managed to rescue Mr. Roberts and his family before any fatality occurred, and their memories were wiped once again to remove all traces of the traumatic incident. 

Frank Bryce was as far removed from the world of wizards and magic as you could be. But he had the misfortune of being distantly involved with Lord Voldemort's search for his heritage. Frank was a gardener for the wealthy muggle Riddle family in the village of Little Hangleton.

One day, the members of the Riddle family were killed under highly mysterious circumstances. Frank was the prime suspect, but the police had to let him go due to a lack of tangible evidence against him. Since then, Frank lived under a cloud of suspicion while he continued to go about his gardening duties at the Riddle house. Years later, Voldemort returned to hide in the house, which belonged to his ancestors on his father's side, and whom he had murdered years earlier while still a student at Hogwarts. 

Frank detected his presence and went to confront the intruder, not knowing he would be facing the most evil and powerful wizard of all time. Frank's fate was sealed the moment he challenged Voldemort, who was sitting with his back to him, to turn around and face him like a man. At the end of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," Frank was one of the spirits who came to Harry's aid and helped him escape Voldemort's grasp by charging the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters.  

Before Lord Voldemort became the most dreaded wizard in history, he was simply Tom Marvolo Riddle, a child living in Wool's Orphanage in London, where his dying mother had left him in the care of Mrs. Cole. The name "Tom Marvolo Riddle" was given to the infant by Mrs. Cole on the request of his mother as a way to honor his absentee father and her own family.

Mrs. Cole had no inkling about the reality of the wizarding world and assumed Tom Riddle's mother had run away from the circus. She was perceived to be an "inconveniently sharp" woman by Albus Dumbledore when he came to visit Tom to inform him of his admittance to Hogwarts. She was also not a very villainous character but seemed to be trying to do her best for the children under her care.  

Mrs. Cole appeared to be supportive of Tom's entry into the mysterious school. She had also noticed something was off about the little boy. She confided in Dumbledore that strange things happened around Tom, and the other children in the orphanage were terrified of crossing him. It is unknown what happened to Mrs. Cole or her orphanage after Tom went to Hogwarts and later embarked on his path to becoming Lord Voldemort, although it is made clear that the young sorcerer had little to no affection for the place he had called his home for the first 11 years of his life.  

A major theme throughout the entirety of "Harry Potter" deals with the sins of the parents being visited upon their children. Lord Voldemort came to hate muggles on a deeply personal level after learning that his muggle father had abandoned his mother before his birth. Severus Snape made Harry's life at Hogwarts miserable because Harry's father James used to bully Snape when they were at school relentlessly.

And Snape himself suffered greatly during his childhood due to his mother and father's neglectful attitude. Severus was the only child of pure-blooded witch Eileen Prince and her muggle husband, Tobias Snape. While fans never get to interact with the real Tobias in person, we get enough hints to make it clear he was far from a good father figure or husband. 

In a few brief memories Harry saw in Severus' mind, "A hook-nosed man was shouting at a cowering woman," J.K. Rowling wrote in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," "while a small dark-haired boy cried in a corner." Snape also once mentioned to his only friend Lily Evans that this sort of outburst was a common thing with his father. It is strongly implied through the books that Snape's morbid nature, his dislike for muggles, and his later descent into darkness were a result of the absence of a happy and secure childhood.

If we were to try to decide which father figure was worse between Tobias Snape and Tom Riddle Sr., the choice would be between the man who abused his son and wife or the man who abandoned them at the earliest possible opportunity. Either way, Lord Voldemort's father, Tom Riddle Sr., was far from a good dad or human being.

To be fair, there were some extenuating circumstances for the senior Riddle's behavior. He was the handsome son of a wealthy muggle family who was born in a class-conscious and snobbish environment. As a result, Riddle looked down on the strange "Gaunt" family that lived in poverty and squalor near the village. But one of the Gaunts, Merope, was besotted with Tom Riddle, even while the latter had no interest in her. 

Being a witch, Merope was able to get Tom to marry her under the spell of a love potion. In his mind-controlled state, Tom was forced to have a child with Merope. When the kid was about to be born, Tom came out from under his spell, and his first act was to run away from Merope and his unborn child. He returned to his ancestral home soon afterward and never showed any interest in finding out what had happened to Merope or their son. 

One reason Harry was particularly thrilled to go to Hogwarts was because his time at the muggle school he attended before had been made absolutely miserable by the actions of his cousin Dudley Dursley and his gang of hooligans, notably Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon. Their favorite pastime was bullying Harry and making sure no other kid would dare to befriend him.

The list of ways the gang tortured Harry is too large to recount here. Some highlights include trying to make Harry stand inside a toilet, chasing him around the school with the express intention of beating him up, and teasing him relentlessly for wearing broken spectacles held together by duct tape and Dudley's hand-me-down clothes.  

The bullies play a return date at the start of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Their bullying is shown to have evolved into teenage delinquency as they have taken to terrorizing the neighborhood and beating up children much smaller than them. Although Harry is no longer afraid of them, the bullies gleefully welcome the chance of picking on him once again. They are also shown to be complete cowards since they flee immediately with no thought for each other's safety when they sense the arrival of the dementors.  

Lily Evans' sister, and later Harry's aunt Petunia Dursley was the reason why he had to endure those torturous years living with the Dursleys. Harry's mother had died shielding Harry from Voldemort, and her protection would remain active as long as Harry had a blood relative of Lily's to live with.

Petunia knew of this fact, which Dumbledore had explained to her in the letter he left on her doorstep on the night Harry was delivered to the Dursleys. Still, despite technically helping keep him alive, Petunia never attempted to provide any sort of maternal comfort to her nephew because of her own intense hatred and jealousy towards her late sister. Petunia turned a blind eye to her son's relentless bullying of Harry, and joined her husband Vernon in belittling and mentally abusing Harry at every opportunity. 

The kindest thing that can be said about Petunia is that she continued to keep Harry in her home even after it became clear that he presented a high level of danger to her family following the return of Lord Voldemort. Maybe she was scared of what Dumbledore would do if she kicked Harry out. Or maybe, in some small corner of her heart, perhaps she did indeed care for her nephew. Too bad Harry didn't get to see that care in action too often. 

When it comes to ranking the Dursley by likability, the problem is all of them were so uniformly terrible, and presented such a united front in tormenting Harry, that it is difficult to rate one over the other. In any case, Harry's cousin Dudley was another member of the household who was a source of constant torment. 

Dudley's bullying of the smaller, scrawnier Harry was shown to have begun at a very early age. In school, Dudley would organize his thuggish friends around their favorite sport of "Harry-hunting." After it was revealed that Harry was a wizard, Dudley was too scared to physically attack Harry. But he continued to verbally taunt and harass him at every opportunity. 

Things changed after Harry saves Dudley from a dementor attack in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." The dementors forced Dudley to see himself for what he really was, a cruel, selfish coward who needed to be saved by his cousin. After that, Harry and Dudley's relationship improved somewhat. J.K. Rowling has even stated that Harry sometimes brings his children to visit Dudley's family, and the two cousins are now on "Christmas Card" terms as adults.  

If Petunia and Dudley were empty wells of niceness towards Harry, Vernon Dursley was a black hole. Vernon was uncle to Harry by marriage after hitching up with Petunia, and he had a deep and solid dislike for his nephew that went beyond anything even Petunia or Dudley ever exhibited.  

In an interview reported by Time, J.K. Rowling revealed that Vernon's strong dislike of Harry stemmed from his interactions with his father, James. When Petunia was about to marry Vernon, she introduced him to her sister Lily and her boyfriend James Potter. At first, Vernon tried to patronize James, but the latter was only ever amused by Vernon's puffed-up self-importance and did not attempt to hide it. 

Since then, Vernon grew to loathe James, and by extension Lily, and Harry as well. It did not help that Vernon was an exhaustingly ordinary and narrow-minded man who was deeply suspicious of anything strange or unusual. Thus his attitude towards Harry was doubly colored by his dislike of his father and viewing Harry as a freak of nature due to his magical ability.  

It takes a very special type of terrible person to make it to the top of the list of least likable personalities on the strength of a single appearance. Vernon's sister Marge Dursley only ever showed up at the start of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," but her behavior was enough to make her one of the most deeply loathed characters in the entire franchise. 

Following the rule of law of the Dursley bloodline, Marge felt nothing but vicious hatred towards Harry. When she showed up at the Dursley household for a visit, one of her first questions was whether Harry was receiving enough of a beating at his school. When he replied in the affirmative, her response was, "I still don't like your tone, boy. If you can speak of your beatings in that casual way, they clearly aren't hitting you hard enough."

Things only went downhill from that point. Marge went on a long and involved rant against Harry's side of the family, calling Lily Potter a "bad egg" and James, a "wastrel." She also squarely blamed them for their fate and for foisting Harry on the Dursleys since infancy. Marge's language became so offensive that Harry lost control and caused her to inflate like a balloon and sail away into the sky.