Summary
After fainting during his History of Magic final, the examiner lets Harry leave the Great Hall and seek some bedrest. Instead of heading to the dorm, Harry makes a beeline for the hospital wing. He needs to tell Professor McGonagall about his vision; he is certain that Sirius is being tortured by Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries. When Harry arrives at the hospital wing, Madam Pomfrey informs him that McGonagall was transferred to St. Mungo's Hospital because she sustained rather serious injuries, especially at her age. This information fills Harry with dread. With Dumbledore, Hagrid, and McGonagall gone, there is no one left for him to confide in from the Order. Harry tells Ron and Hermione about his vision and insists that they go to the Department of Mysteries at once. Hermione doubts that Sirius is actually there with Voldemort. She believes that Voldemort is fabricating this vision in order to lure Harry to the Department of Mysteries. Harry is furious with her, but compromises to breaking into Umbridge's office, using her fireplace to communicate with Grimmauld Place, and verifying that Sirius is not, in fact, still confined to his house. They recruit Neville, Ginny, and Luna to help them create a diversion.
Harry and Hermione break into Umbridge's office under the invisibility cloak and Harry manages to stick his head in the fireplace and look into Sirius' house. There is no one there but Kreacher, who claims that Sirius has gone out. Harry asks Kreacher if Sirius went to the Department of Mysteries, Kreacher whoops with glee and claims, “Master will not come back from the Department of Mysteries ... Kreacher and his Mistress are alone again!” (348). Before Harry can question Kreacher further, he's pulled out of the fireplace by Umbridge. The Inquisitorial Squad has already rounded up the rest of his friends and brought them to the office too. Umbridge demands that Harry tell her with whom he was just communicating. Harry refuses, so Umbridge fetches Snape. When Snape arrives, he informs her that she already used the remainder of his truth serum on Harry, and that another batch would take a full month to mature. Umbridge fumes and places Snape on immediate probation. As Snape leaves the office, Harry blurts out, “He’s got Padfoot at the place where it’s hidden!” (350). Snape doesn't register an understanding, but Harry holds out hope that he communicates this message with the rest of the Order.
Umbridge then considers using the Cruciatus curse on Harry in order to question him. She admits that she is the one who ordered the Dementors to Little Whinging over the summer to give Fudge an excuse to expel Harry from Hogwarts. Hermione, realizing that Umbridge will not hesitate to use unforgivable curses on students, concocts a convincing ruse. She tells Umbridge that Harry was attempting to communicate with Dumbledore through the Floo network. She claims that they've been developing a secret weapon in the Forbidden Forest on Dumbledore's orders, and that they recently finished constructing it. This story convinces Umbridge to take Harry and Hermione into the forest to show her the fictional secret weapon.
Hermione leads Harry and Umbridge deep into the Forbidden Forest, making as much noise as possible in order to attract the attention of the centaurs, who eventually surround them. Hermione's plan unfolds perfectly in front of them. Umbridge provokes the centaurs, insulting them by calling them "half-breeds" and beings of "near-human intelligence" and questioning their claim to the land in the Forbidden Forest. She eventually provokes them to the point of being carried away screaming by them. What Hermione didn't bargain for was that the centaurs would also turn on her and Harry. She makes the mistake of telling the centaurs that they only came to the forest because they hoped the centaurs would "drive [Umbridge] off" for them (355). The centaurs immediately interpret this to mean that Hermione sees them as servile to humans. The centaurs grab Harry and Hermione and seem poised to carry them off when Grawp, Hagrid's half-brother, bounds through the trees. Grawp is looking for Hagrid and asks Hermione and Harry, in the few words of English he knows, where he is. Then the centaurs attack Grawp, and he chases them through the forest, leaving Harry and Hermione alone again.
Harry is furious, thinking they wasted all this time while Sirius is being tortured. He wonders how they'll get to the Ministry without wands. Just then, Ron, Neville, Ginny, and Luna emerge through the brush looking bruised but highly pleased with themselves. They dueled their way out Umbridge's office and followed Harry and Hermione out to the forest. Ron returns their wands. Luna, Neville, and Ginny insist on joining them on their journey to the Department of Mysteries. After some arguing, Harry relents, realizing that he can't stop them. Attracted by the scent of Grawp's blood, several Thestrals approach them. Luna points out that they can fly on the Thestrals to the Ministry; they are very smart animals and good at navigating wherever their rider needs to go. So, they climb atop six Thestrals and head towards the Ministry.
The six of them manage to make it to the Ministry without issue, though the journey is far scarier for Hermione, Ron, and Ginny, who cannot actually see the Thestrals and have been essentially flying without any visible support from Hogwarts to London. Harry is familiar with the guest entrance to the Ministry from his trial over the summer. The six of them crowd into the old phone booth, state their business, and are shuttled down into the lobby of the Ministry of Magic. The halls are eerily unguarded and the security desk unmanned. They forge ahead to the lifts and take one down to the Department of Mysteries. Again, they face no resistance. After trying several doors in the Department of Mysteries, they finally find the room from Harry's dreams. It is a huge library of glowing orbs, one of which has Harry's name on it. It is marked:
S. P. T. to A. P. W. B. D.
Dark Lord
and (?) Harry Potter (366)
Sirius is nowhere to be seen. Harry takes the orb with his name on it off the shelf, and as soon as he does, the drawling voice of Lucius Malfoy orders him to hand it over.
Behind Malfoy, a dozen Death Eaters materialize in wisps of black smoke, faces Harry and his friends recognize from the Daily Prophet as recent escapees of Azkaban. Among them is Bellatrix Lestrange, the woman who tortured Neville's parents into permanent insanity. Malfoy demands the prophecy again, but Harry, recognizing how important it must be to them, refuses to hand it over. A tense back-and-forth between Lucius and Harry ensues, while Harry indicates to Hermione that on his mark, they should start destroying the shelves of prophecies to cause a diversion. When the prophecy orbs shatter, the voice of the prophet rings out, repeating the exact wording of the prophecy. When Harry gives the signal, his friends blast the shelves with charms, sending them toppling. They then make a run for it.
What follows is a chaotic battle between the Death Eaters and Harry and his five friends. Considering their age and level of experience, and the fact that they are outnumbered 2:1, the Hogwarts students put up a shockingly good fight. Hermione and Luna are stunned in the course of the battle, Ginny breaks her ankle, and Ron is temporarily incapacitated by some kind of hysteria-inducing charm. Harry and Neville are the only two left fighting by the time the Order of the Phoenix arrives. Tonks, Kingsley, Lupin, Sirius, and Mad-Eye burst onto the scene and rain hexes down on the Death Eaters. Shortly after they arrive, Dumbledore shows up, which sends the majority of Death Eaters into a real panic. The only two people left dueling are Bellatrix and Sirius. Harry watches as Bellatrix's hex hits Sirius squarely in the chest, knocking him off the platform and straight through the mysterious veil in the center of the room. Sirius disappears and does not emerge from the other side. Harry screams after him and runs toward the veil, but Lupin restrains him, telling Harry that there is nothing he can do; Sirius is gone forever.
Harry, realizing that his beloved godfather is dead, breaks from Lupin's grip and chases Bellatrix Lestrange through the Department of Mysteries and out to the atrium of the Ministry. They duel around the Fountain of Magical Brethren and Harry even casts the Cruciatus curse on Bellatrix, but its effects don't last long. Their spells ricochet through the atrium and destroy statues and walls. Bellatrix demands the prophecy, at which point Harry laughs at her. He tells her the prophecy is shattered, and based on the excruciating pain in his scar, Voldemort knows that the prophecy is lost. As Harry explains this to Bellatrix, Voldemort materializes before them. Dumbledore follows closely after, and Voldemort and Dumbledore duel in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic. At the climax of the duel, Harry goes unconscious, and when he wakes, Dumbledore is leaning over him, making sure he is alright.
Voldemort is gone by the time Harry wakes. The atrium is full of people, including Cornelius Fudge, who has finally witnessed Voldemort with his own eyes and believes that he has returned. Dumbledore greets Fudge with a sense of urgency. He assures Fudge that if his Aurors attempt to apprehend him again, he will fight them and defeat them again. He then explains to Fudge the terms of his return to Hogwarts, which mostly involve the Ministry butting out of school affairs. Dumbledore produces a Portkey for Harry to take back to school. He then informs Fudge that he will take the next thirty minutes to explain everything that's happened at the Ministry that evening, and leads Fudge down to the Department of Mysteries, where several escaped Death Eaters are still magically bound together. Harry takes the Portkey back to Dumbledore's office.
Harry waits for Dumbledore to return, still in shock after witnessing the death of his godfather. When Dumbledore appears, he tries to comfort Harry, but Harry flies into a rage. All of his repressed feelings about Dumbledore ignoring him and keeping him in the dark finally boil over. Harry goes on a rampage, overturning tables and throwing Dumbledore's possessions at the wall. Dumbledore calmly watches while Harry destroys his things. He then tells Harry that he, Dumbledore, deserves this and more. Dumbledore takes full responsibility for Sirius' death, claiming that if he had explained to Harry the reason he needs to learn Occlumency, he would've known that Voldemort was fabricating the vision of him torturing Sirius. Dumbledore asks Harry to sit down and give him a moment to explain himself.
Harry relents and finally takes a seat. Dumbledore explains the background of the prophecy. Going back almost sixteen years, Dumbledore recalls hearing the prophecy. He went to the Hog's Head Inn to interview a potential Divination professor, but, perceiving no trace of a Seer in Trelawney, turned to leave. But as he was leaving, she snapped into a trance and uttered the prophecy:
THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES... BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES... AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT... AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES... THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES... (394)
This prophecy, Dumbledore explains, could have applied to one of two wizards born "as the seventh month dies," either Harry or Neville Longbottom. For a moment, Harry has hope that maybe he isn't the chosen one, maybe it is Neville who must fight Voldemort to the death. However, Dumbledore somberly assures Harry that Voldemort chose him and marked him, and thus marked, the prophecy belongs to Harry. The reason Harry has to live with the Dursleys every summer is that his mother's blood keeps him protected, and as long as Petunia, as his mother's sister, can provide him with a home, Voldemort cannot touch him. So, Dumbledore finally confirms it to Harry: one day, he will have to kill Voldemort, or else be killed by Voldemort.
The rest of Harry's friends return safely from the battle at the Ministry, and Harry visits them in the hospital wing as they make their steady recoveries. Harry still grieves the death of Sirius, but he doesn't know who to turn to to talk about it. Most of the time he doesn't want to talk about it at all. He tries talking to Hagrid, who has returned to his groundskeeper cabin, but is quickly uncomfortable with the conversation and abruptly leaves. Hagrid continues to raise Grawp in the Forbidden Forest, and Grawp is responding well to English lessons and socializing with humans. Umbridge also makes a slow recovery in the hospital wing. Apparently Dumbledore was able to extract her from the clutches of the centaurs before they were able to hurt her, but she does appear quite traumatized in her hospital bed, unable to speak for over a week. As he packs up his trunk, Harry finds the package Sirius gave him in case he ever needed to contact him. He opens it up and it's a two-way mirror with a note scribbled on the back from Sirius; he and James used the same set of mirrors when they were teenagers to communicate when they were serving detention with two different teachers. Harry tries to contact Sirius in the mirror, but of course he doesn't respond because he's dead.
Harry then shatters the mirror in frustration before he has another glimmer of hope—eperhaps Sirius will return as a ghost. He races through the corridors to find Nearly Headless Nick and stops him on his way to the farewell feast. Harry asks Nick about how wizards become ghosts, and Nick says he's been expecting Harry to reach out to him ever since he heard about Sirius. Nick assures Harry that Sirius will not become a ghost. Wizards are given a choice when they die, either to pass on completely, or to leave a pale impression of themselves to float around the mortal plane. Nick suggests that becoming a ghost is a regrettable decision that one makes out a grave fear of death and the unknown. Disheartened, Harry leaves Nick and walks back through the corridors where he runs into Luna. Luna expresses condolences about Sirius and then shares her story of how she lost her mother. She was nine, and one of her mother's experimental charms backfired and killed her. Luna witnessed it. But Luna believes that she will meet her mother again in the afterlife and references the veil that they saw in the Department of Mysteries. She says, “Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?” (405) referring to the spirits of people who have passed on. The encounter with Luna gives Harry an inkling of hope that his godfather waits for him somewhere with his parents.
Harry and his friends take the Hogwarts Express back to London, where the Weasleys (including Fred and George, wearing new dragon skin jackets) greet them. On the platform, they're greeted by a small group of Aurors from the Order: Tonks, Lupin, and Mad-Eye. Before Harry heads back to Privet Drive, the Aurors and Mr. Weasley speak to the Dursleys, assuring them in no uncertain terms that if they mistreat Harry this summer, or if he doesn't contact them in a space of more than three days, they will be paying them a visit. Vernon doesn't like being threatened, but then again, there's not much he can do against a crowd of witches and wizards. Harry walks off with the Dursleys, touched to have so many people by his side who care about him. Despite the darkness that lies ahead and the grief of losing Sirius, his friends leave Harry with a definite feeling of hope.
Analysis
The last several chapters of The Order of the Phoenix focus on death and the afterlife. The great irony of Sirius Black's death is that for the duration of the book and at Albus Dumbledore's request, Sirius stays in his childhood home at Grimmauld Place, totally against his will and wishes. He stays there as an act of self-preservation, but he's a marked man from the beginning, wanted by both the Ministry and Death Eaters. If found, he would face almost certain death. After Sirius dies, Dumbledore says of him, "Sirius was a brave, clever, and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger" (387).
However, fatalism emerges as a strong theme in book five, and Sirius simply cannot resist the current of fate. The sequence of events that leads him to the Department of Mysteries is full of many near misses and red herrings; his death is made possible because so many people, especially Harry, try so hard to keep him alive. Voldemort weaponizes the love that Harry feels for Sirius and manipulates him with it. He seizes upon the knowledge that Harry regards Sirius as a father figure. Dumbledore says, "There is a room in the Department of Mysteries... that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight" (396). The power Dumbledore refers to is the capacity to love. Once Voldemort realizes the magnitude of Harry's love for Sirius, he implants a false vision of Sirius in the Department of Mysteries that he knows will lure Harry there. But Sirius doesn't need saving in the first place. The situational irony that unfolds is that Sirius is lured to his death by an effort to save his godson who is lured to the Ministry by an effort to save his godfather. Voldemort creates mayhem out of nothing but other people's feelings of love for one another.
Sirius' death leads Harry to wonder about ghosts and the afterlife. Before Sirius' death, Harry never bothers to question how and why ghosts become ghosts, but after losing his godfather, it occurs to him that Sirius could possibly still communicate with him in the form of a ghost. However, when he finds Nearly Headless Nick and asks about the process of becoming a ghost, Nick says with certainty that Sirius would never choose that path. Through this conversation, Rowling reveals that becoming a ghost is, in fact, a choice that one makes in their moment of death. Nick says, "I was afraid of death... I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn’t to have... Well, that is neither here nor there... In fact, I am neither here nor there... I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead. I believe learned wizards study the matter in the Department of Mysteries—” (404).
Rowling poses the choice to become a ghost as one born from fear and almost cowardice. The fear of the unknown leaves a ghost in eternal limbo. This stance seems to value faith that there is an afterlife, or that dying is better than half-living. The fear of death is a theme throughout the book. During Voldemort and Dumbledore's duel in the atrium of the Ministry, Voldemort says, "There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!” and Dumbledore replies, “Your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness—” (382). Rowling casts Dumbledore as an almost omniscient, infallible figure, and thus the reader can safely presume that his position about fearing death is the position of the novel too. Between Nearly Headless Nick's description of what it means to choose to become a ghost and Voldemort's declaration that there's nothing worse than death, the books make a clear value judgement on those who fear death above all else.
In the final chapter, Luna skips the farewell feast to post signs in the corridors asking that people return her possessions. She tells Harry that every year, her stuff goes missing. When he asks her why this happens, she explains that she's the target of bullying. Kids think she's weird and "loony." Harry offers his help to find her things, but Luna assures him that it all always turns up in the end. Luna's faith that her possessions will simply "turn up" reflects the book's value of faith on a grander scale. In the same conversation, Luna shares with Harry the story of her mother dying; Luna doesn't fret because she knows that she'll meet her mother again in the afterlife. The "veil" that they saw in the Department of Mysteries, from which issues a choir of chatter, the same veil that Sirius fell through after being cursed by Bellatrix, represents a portal to the afterlife. Luna references the veil when she assures Harry that they'll meet their dead loved ones again someday. She says, "Oh, come on. You heard them, just behind the veil, didn’t you?” (405). The Order of the Phoenix tries to contend with death and the placement of disembodied souls more directly than any of the previous installments. The Department of Mysteries manifests as a liminal space where wizards explore intangible concepts like love and unanswerable questions like, what happens after we die?
