AbiReadThat

Hello my friends!

870 pages and I wished it had been longer. That is all you really need to know.

4.5 ⭐️

⚠️ Spoilers ahead!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is where the series truly grows up and I think that is exactly why it hits so differently to the others. Gone is the lightness, gone are the clear cut heroes and happy endings. What we get instead is something messier, harder, and so much more real.

The way this book opens genuinely floors me every time. Where you expect Harry to be in the know, he is completely in the dark. Where you expect the wizarding world to be rallying behind Dumbledore, there is only silence. And you FEEL that injustice right alongside him because you were there. You stood with him when he faced Voldemort and his Death Eaters alone. So how dare they?

Dolores Umbridge. I do not have the words. The rage that woman produces is something else entirely and the fact that she made me angrier than Voldemort himself is a testament to just how brilliantly she is written.

What I love most about this one is the shades of grey that start to bleed through. Sirius isn’t infallible. James Potter isn’t infallible. Albus frigging Dumbledore isn’t infallible. And those you thought were fully evil? Not so simple either. This is the book that teaches you that adults are not the perfect protectors you believed them to be and honestly, as a reader, that hits harder every time you return to it.

Fred and George giving Umbridge everything she deserved. Ginny finally stepping into her own. Neville’s quiet and steady courage building throughout. Hermione’s honesty. Ron’s loyalty. The entire school eventually banding together exactly as the Sorting Hat suggested at the very beginning of the year. Every single one of those threads is handled with such care.

And the ending. Sirius dying mid taunt, smiling, egging them on, still that ego inflated teenager you glimpsed through the Pensieve. No grand sacrifice. No goodbye. Just gone. And then the gut punch that it was all so avoidable.

“We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on.”

The book wins. It always wins.

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