Or, as I’ve come to dub it, Harry Potter and the Mammoth Book of Angst. This book, while I love it and think it’s awesome, IS SO LONG. Too long, I think, there is too little to piece together and it takes too much time. And Harry is so pissy about everything, I feel like slapping him.In it, Harry faces some Dementors in Wisteria Lane and is forced to use magic outside of school, and is forced to face trial. Later, he is picked up by some Aurors and friends of Dumbledore who take him to his godfather’s house, where the Order of the Phoenix has its headquarters. The Order is a movement against Lord Voldemort, and Harry’s parents were a part of the first Order before they got killed. They are now defending the wizarding world against Voldemort’s return the best they can, since the Ministry refuses to accept he’s back.
Meanwhile, there’s hormones everywhere, as Harry takes a fancy for Cho Chang, and there’s a fascist at Hogwarts, Dolores Umbridge, who I hate. I don’t hate people in the Harry Potter series, but Umbridge is just so infuriating! I have a teacher just like her this year, I keep wishing centaurs were real so she’d just GO AWAY. Umbridge is an awful, awful person, but a brilliant character.
Umbridge coming along only accentuates Harry’s angst towards everything: being left with the Dursleys with no news all summer, no one telling him anything (actually, if Dumbledore had explained everything to him properly, things would have been so much easier, really.), not being able to take part in the order, teen hormones about the place, Voldemort slowly trickling into his brain, and generally just being fifteen years old. Being fifteen is really, really bad. I just went through it 2 years ago, and teenagers are just such stupid people. We think we know everything! We don’t listen! We sulk! We yell at our parents for asking how school went! Since Harry has no parents to yell at, he yells at Ron and Hermione, which are the closest thing Harry has to a family.
All in all, I do like this book, since there’s a lot school life (which I love), but not one of my favourites. It’s very long, and not much of it is necessary. It made me realize that if Harry listened more to Hermione, his life would be a lot easier. The ending is quite sad, because we get so little of Sirius and then just made me think of what happens to Lupin in the last book. Which made me think of the twins escaping Hogwarts, which is awesome, but then made me think about Fred. GOD.
To tell the truth, I’m very eager to finish re-reading the Harry Potter series. For one, I know my heart is going to get all broken in the last book, and there’ll be a lot of crying and such. I’m almost annoyed by it (I know! The horror!) and just wanting to finish this, because I cannot stop thinking about Harry Potter! I thought this ended with the release of Deathly Hallows, but the foreshadowing is just so blatant when re-reading, that I keep hoping the deaths and bits I don’t like have changed in the end, and then it doesn’t, and it makes me sad.
Two more books to go!