Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

“Don’t kill Cedric. […] Dad! Help me, Dad! He’s going to kill me!”

Dudley, Harry’s cousin, cruelly and mockingly recounts the contents of Harry’s nightmares. Harry’s vivid nightmares illustrate his ongoing trauma over the events at the Triwizard Tournament featured in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where Cedric was murdered in front of Harry by Voldemort, who also tried to kill Harry.

“They want wizards on the street to think you’re just some stupid boy who’s a bit of a joke, who tells ridiculous tall stories because he loves being famous and wants to keep it going.”

Fudge and the Daily Prophet attempt to discredit and ridicule Harry rather than entertain his terrifying claim that Voldemort has returned. This institutional denial leads to Harry being oppressed and ostracized at school.

“Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks, begone from this place! How dare you befoul the house of my fathers. […] Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!”

Sirius’s mother, who occupies a portrait at Grimmauld place, yells offensive slurs at Harry, his friends, and members of the Order. Although the portrait is dismissed as a nuisance, it illustrates the offensive views about blood purity that many witches and wizards hold.

“He’s not James, Sirius!”

Molly draws attention to Sirius’s haphazard role as Harry’s guardian. He sometimes confuses his role between parental figure and friend and gives Harry irresponsible advice, such as meeting him in Hogsmeade. Molly suggests that Harry’s similarity to his father, James, causes this.

“Like a weapon. Something he didn’t have before.”

Sirius alludes to the prophecy at the Department of Mysteries, which Voldemort desperately seeks. Voldemort’s desire for the prophecy drives the plot, making Voldemort plant the fake vision of Sirius’s torture in Harry’s mind, which leads Harry and his friends, and then members of the Order, to the Ministry of Magic. This leads to the arrest of several Death Eaters and results in Sirius’s death.

“‘Dumbledore. Yes. You—er—got our—er message that the time and—er—place of the hearing had been changed, then?’ ‘I must have missed it,’ said Dumbledore cheerfully. ‘However, due to a lucky mistake I arrived at the Ministry three hours early, so no harm done.’”

Fudge tries to influence the outcome of Harry’s Disciplinary Hearing; his agenda is to have Harry expelled so that he can continue to discredit and silence Harry’s declarations about Voldemort’s return. The changed time and location of the hearing allude to corruption in the Ministry. Fudge intended for Dumbledore to miss the hearing so that Harry would have no voice to advocate for him.

“A powerful emotion had risen in Harry’s chest at the sight of Dumbledore, a fortified, hopeful feeling rather like that which phoenix song gave him.”

Dumbledore is a symbol of the forces of goodness and integrity. His arrival fills Harry with relief because Harry knows that Dumbledore will advocate for him to ensure his trial is fair. It also points to Harry’s worry over possibly being expelled from Hogwarts.

“Let us move forward; pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be prohibited.”

Umbridge’s ominous welcome speech alludes to changes she plans to enact at Hogwarts. Fudge’s fear of Dumbledore leads him to appoint Umbridge to increase the Ministry’s control at Hogwarts, which leads to unfettered cruelty and corruption at the school. Pruning sounds innocuous, but in reality, Umbridge’s techniques will be cruel, discriminatory, and evil.

“He was sick of it, sick of being the person who is stared at and talked about all the time. If any of them knew, if any of them had the faintest idea what it felt like to be the one all these things had happened to.”

Harry, publicly mocked and derided while also dealing with the trauma of the events of the previous school year, feels isolated and alone. Many at school believe the version of events touted by the Daily Prophet, that Harry is an attention-seeking liar. The statement represents Harry’s frustration at dealing with the baggage of being “the boy who lived.”

“He said his ‘gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.’”

Hermione reminds Ron and Harry of Dumbledore’s speech the previous school year after the traumatic events of the Triwizard Tournament. He reminded the students to stay united; this is especially relevant given the rifts in the wizarding community over Voldemort’s alleged return.

“You have been exposed to some very irresponsible wizards in this class […] not to mention,’ she gave a nasty little laugh, ‘extremely dangerous half-breeds.’”

Umbridge reveals her racism in this slur against Lupin, a werewolf. This also alludes to her later discrimination against Hagrid and the centaurs. There also is an implication that the previous teachers were irresponsible in teaching students practical magic against the Dark Arts instead of just theoretical magic, as Umbridge is doing.

“The words had appeared on the back of Harry’s right hand, cut into his skin as though traced there by a scalpel—yet even as he stared at the shining cut, the skin healed over again […]. Harry looked round at Umbridge. She was watching him, her wide, toadlike mouth stretched into a smile.”

Umbridge is a cruel and antagonistic character in her violent punishments of students who contradict her. She derives joy in causing children pain, making her one of the series’ greatest villains. That the Ministry empowered her shows its corruption has reached Hogwarts, where she can mete out her sadistic punishments.

“‘You’re less like your father than I thought,’ he said finally, a definite coolness in his voice. ‘The risk would’ve been what made it fun for James.”

Sirius tries to encourage Harry, Ron, and Hermione to meet him at Hogsmeade, even though it is suspected that Lucius—and therefore Voldemort—knows of his animagus form. Harry discourages him from doing this, fearing that he might be captured and returned to Azkaban. Sirius’s response reveals that Sirius sometimes gives Harry unsound advice and relates to Harry more as a friend than a parental figure.

“Harry felt happier for the rest of the weekend than he had done all term. […] The knowledge that they were doing something to resist Umbridge and the Ministry, and that he was a key part of the rebellion, gave Harry a feeling of immense satisfaction.”

Harry, with Ron and Hermione’s help, forms Dumbledore’s Army. Being involved in this underground resistance allows Harry to withstand the injustices and indignities of Umbridge’s cruel and corrupt rule. It also makes Harry feel that preparations are being made to resist Voldemort and his supporters. It also raises Harry’s spirits because he knows that several of his peers now believe him about the threat of Voldemort.

“He was walking once more along a windowless corridor, his footsteps echoing in the silence. As the door at the end of the passage loomed larger, his heart beat faster with excitement.”

Harry has recurring dreams of a corridor that turns out to be the corridor leading to the prophecy in the Department of Mysteries. These dreams allude to the dangerous connection between Harry and Voldemort’s minds and foreshadow the dramatic climax at the end of the novel, when Voldemort lures Harry to the Ministry of Magic to retrieve the prophecy.

“He had no choice…He reared high from the floor and struck once, twice, three times, plunging his fangs deeply into the man’s flesh, feeling his ribs splinter beneath his jaws, feeling the warm gush of blood.”

The deep connection between Harry and Voldemort’s minds is again revealed when Harry experiences the attack by Nagini. Voldemort occupied the mind of his snake, Nagini, and thus Harry also experiences the event from this point of view. Harry raising the alarm saves Mr. Weasley’s life and alerts Dumbledore to the intensity of the connection between Harry and Voldemort, prompting him to insist that Snape teach Harry Occlumency.

“Professor Umbridge seized Marietta, pulled her round to face her and began shaking her very hard. A split second later Dumbledore was on his feet, his wand raise. […] ‘I cannot allow you to manhandle my students, Dolores,’ said Dumbledore and, for the first time, he looked angry.”

Dumbledore’s integrity is clear; he is not angry or rattled by being discredited, insulted, fired from his post, or threatened with arrest, but he is irate when Umbridge threateningly shakes Marietta. Unlike Umbridge, Dumbledore feels immense responsibility for the students’ well-being.

“Granger, I’ll have five from you for being rude about our new Headmistress. Macmillan, five for contradicting me. Five because I don’t like you, Potter. Weasley, your shirt’s untucked, so I’ll have another five for that. Oh yeah, I forgot, you’re a Mudblood, Granger, so ten off for that.”

The increasing corruption at Hogwarts after Dumbledore’s departure is epitomized in Umbridge’s delegation of discipline to the Inquisitorial Squad. As illustrated in Draco’s unjust deduction of points from other students, Umbridge’s leadership results in cruelty and injustice. Her minions are an extension of her power, giving her a greater hold over life at Hogwarts.

“Umbridge spent her first afternoon as Headmistress running all over the school answering the summons of other teachers, none of whom seemed able to rid their rooms of the fireworks without her.”

The teaching staff at Hogwarts remain loyal to Dumbledore and show their defiance to Umbridge in various ways, which cleverly do not contravene any of her rules. Humorously, they focus her attention on removing Fred and George’s fireworks; the reader infers that these teachers would have certainly been capable of doing this themselves.

“‘[…] so I took the chance and flew left—his right—I man—and—well—you saw what happened,’ he concluded modestly, sweeping his hair back quite unnecessarily so that it looked interestingly windswept and glancing around to see whether the people nearest to them—a bunch of gossiping third-year Hufflepuffs—had heard him. […] Ron had just reminded Harry forcibly of another Gryffindor Quidditch player who had once sat rumpling his hair under this very tree.”

Harry’s perception of his father as a hero is disrupted when he sees James being a cruel and arrogant bully to Snape; Harry sympathizes with Snape and no longer feels proud to be like his father. Ron helps him to come to terms with his father’s inevitable imperfection. This is an important turning point where Harry accepts that all 15-year-olds can act foolishly, as Sirius and Lupin suggested.

“Voldemort knows you, Harry! […] He knows you’re the sort of person who’d go to Sirius’s aid.”

Hermione correctly deduces Voldemort’s plan to lure Harry under false pretenses to the Department of Mysteries. These comments allude to the ambush of the students by the Death Eaters and characterize Hermione as intelligent and discerning.

“‘The Cruciatus curse ought to loosen your tongue’ […] There was a nasty, eager, excited look on her face.”

Umbridge’s cruel and sadistic tendencies are epitomized in her outrageous decision to use one of the unforgivable curses on a student, which would cause unimaginable and torturous pain. Furthermore, she is visibly excited by the prospect of causing Harry pain, further solidifying her as a villainous antagonist.

“And I’ll see Sirius again. …And as Harry’s heart filled with emotion, the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone.”

Voldemort occupies Harry’s body but is repelled when Harry’s heart is filled with love for his recently deceased godfather, Sirius. Dumbledore explains that Harry overcame Voldemort because Harry, unlike Voldemort, has the power to feel and give love.