Who was more powerful: Sirius Black or Dolores Umbridge? Welcome back to Harry Potter Theory.
For those of us who think this question has an obvious answer, we might blindly claim Sirius as the mightier wizard.
But others, who consider this question carefully, know that it’s not as simple as black and white.  Sirius Black was one of the greatest duelists in the entire Order of the Phoenix.  But Dolores Umbridge was a cunning strategist, and in her own way, was able to defeat even Albus Dumbledore.
So today, we’re going to take a look at these two prominent members of the wizarding world, and figure out who was more powerful.
HOW WE’LL DO IT
Now, whenever you compare wizards and witches to see who is more powerful, there are a few different ways to go about it.  We can just stack up their list of dueling opponents, and see which one had defeated the most powerful wizard or witch… but that doesn’t quite capture a full picture.  On the other side of the debate, we could just rifle through Sirius Black’s and Dolores Umbridge’s proficiency with spells and potions, but that too doesn’t quite seem like enough either.
To really get to the answer, we’re going to take a holistic approach.  We’ll break down these two opponents in three different categories:
1. Magical Feats
2. Dueling
3. Intangibles
After taking a look at each of these, we should be able to get to the bottom of this matter, and figure out who really was the more powerful magic-user between them.