Crazy muttering such as the type that got her in trouble with the centaur wasn't unusual for Dolores. She would spend hours at night laying awake, staring at the ceiling, remembering her horrible childhood and burying the last remnants of human kindness in the dark recesses of her blackened heart. Surprisingly, Dolores had once been a decent human being. But then her father, a werewolf, infected her mother when he forgot to take his Wolfsbane potion at the full moon. How well Dolores remembered that night, when she'd lain awake and listened to her parents clawing at her door, trying to get in. Being an intelligent third-year witch, she cast a spell to make the door stronger so she didn't have to worry. But worry she did, as the angry scratching turned to howling and goose-bumps appeared on her young arms. Eventually her parents ran off, never to return. 

Not knowing what to do, Dolores wrote a letter to the current Hogwarts Headmaster, telling him her plight and asking where she might find lodging for the summer. The headmaster received the tear-splattered parchment, and took pity on her. He wrote a reply, suggesting she spend the summer at the leaky cauldron, and he arranged for her to clean the hotel in exchange for her stay. While she was immensely grateful to her headmaster, Dolores could not help but feel resentful and sad about the way life had turned out for her. She wandered the lonely hotel every night, hoping to hear her mother's voice one more time, or at the very least someone friendly. But no one took pity on the little abandoned soul, and as the days grew on, she became more distrustful of everyone. The events that followed in that hotel, the horrible abuse that she was a victim to as such a young, vulnerable girl, cannot be mentioned here, for they are too horrible. Let us just say that when she returned to Hogwarts, she isolated herself from everybody and she was laughed at from afar for her hand-me-down clothing and plain unattractiveness. At night, alone in the common room, she would use a special quill to cut her arms and wrists, the pain being a relieving distraction from the worse pain she dealt with every minute of every day. Such was the life of Dolores Umbridge.