Tony's Review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The storm breaks, and everything that once felt safe is called into question.

There’s a moment in adolescence when the world no longer feels like a place built for you. Where anger becomes your most fluent language, trust cracks under pressure, and everything, everything feels like it’s shifting beneath your feet. Order of the Phoenix is that moment for the Harry Potter series. Gone is the last glimmer of innocence; what remains is the long, slow burn of resistance in the face of apathy, and the terrifying realization that the adults in charge are more fragile, more compromised, and more human than we ever wanted to believe.

Before we continue it’s impossible to revisit these stories without acknowledging the harm J.K. Rowling has caused, particularly to trans people and their communities. Her views have rightly drawn criticism and sparked necessary conversations about accountability, authorship, and legacy. While the world of Harry Potter has meant a great deal to many, including those who no longer feel welcome in its fandom, it is important to hold space for both the impact of the work and the real-world consequences of the author’s rhetoric. Stories live beyond their creators, but we cannot ignore where they come from.

This is the longest book in the series, and that’s not an accident. It’s a dense, sprawling reflection of what it means to grow up in a world that lies to you. Harry is raw in this installment bitter, isolated, and overwhelmed by a truth no one wants to face. He is a trauma survivor surrounded by people who minimize or suppress that reality, and his resulting fury is not just understandable, it’s vital. Order of the Phoenix doesn’t make him easy to like, but it doesn’t ask us to. It asks us to understand.

The centerpiece of this novel is not the prophecy or the Ministry, it’s Harry’s inner life. The weight of his isolation is suffocating. Dumbledore, once a calm and guiding hand, is now distant and silent. Ron and Hermione are still loyal, but they don’t truly get it. And Sirius, his one tenuous link to family, is caught in his own arrested development, trying to relive battles already lost. What emerges is a study in trauma grief without guidance, responsibility without power.

Enter Dolores Umbridge. She is, hands down, the most viscerally hateable character in the entire series not because she’s monstrous in a Voldemort way, but because she’s real. She is institutional evil wrapped in pink and bows, a masterclass in bureaucratic horror. Through her, Rowling indicts the systems that enable cruelty under the guise of order. She doesn't have to kill to be terrifying she just follows the rules. And bends them when no one’s looking.

Dumbledore’s Army becomes the heart of the novel, a literal underground movement in a school that has turned against itself. These students are not just learning spells, they’re reclaiming agency. In the Room of Requirement, we see the spark of revolution, the moment when hope stops being passive and becomes active. It is messy, imperfect, and entirely necessary.

And then there’s Luna Lovegood, perhaps the most quietly profound addition to the cast. She is untouched by the expectations that bind the others, moving through the world with a kind of fragile honesty that becomes more meaningful with every reread. Her presence reminds us that sanity is not conformity, and that belief, however strange, can be a kind of strength.

The climax at the Department of Mysteries is as surreal as it is brutal. The teenagers are outmatched, but their courage is undeniable. The loss of Sirius is shattering not because of what it means for the war, but because of what it means for Harry. It is a cruel reminder that even in rebellion, even in love, there are no guarantees.

Dumbledore’s confession in the final chapters reframes everything. We see the cost of secrecy, of playing chess with human lives. The prophecy, long whispered about, becomes less about destiny and more about choice. And in that moment, Harry shifts again from victim, to survivor, to someone ready to fight on his own terms.

Order of the Phoenix is not an easy book. It is heavy with grief, bloated with bureaucracy, and unflinching in its portrayal of emotional collapse. But it is also vital. This is the why behind the how. This is the pain that precedes transformation. This is what it means to be a soldier before you’re ready, to carry burdens you never asked for, and to rise anyway.