Spoiler Warning
This is the ending of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, book five of seven, and fair warning, it is full of spoilers. If you have not finished the book, go watch my spoiler free review first.
Here is the quick answer. Harry is tricked into rescuing someone who was never in danger. A prophecy is smashed, Sirius is lost, and Dumbledore finally tells Harry the truth. That truth is that one of them must kill the other. Let’s walk through it.
Where We Left Off
By the final act, Hogwarts belongs to Dolores Umbridge. Dumbledore has been driven out of the school, and Umbridge is Headmistress. Hagrid is chased away in the middle of the night, and Professor McGonagall is struck by four Stunning Spells and sent to St Mungo’s.
Harry has spent months dreaming of a long corridor that ends in a black door. Snape ended his Occlumency lessons, so the dreams never stopped. Now Harry is tired and alone, and nobody on his side is left at the castle. Then, in the middle of his History of Magic exam, he falls asleep.
The Vision and the Fire
In the dream he walks into the Department of Mysteries, to a room full of glass spheres. Harry is looking through Voldemort’s eyes, and Voldemort is speaking with Harry’s mouth. On the floor in front of him is Sirius, being tortured. Harry wakes up screaming in the exam hall.
Hermione is doubtful, and she gives him a speech about his need to save people. She is not wrong, but she is not helping. So they agree on a check. They will use Umbridge’s fireplace and see if Sirius is at home.
Harry puts his head in the flames and talks to Kreacher, who laughs and says Sirius has gone to the Department of Mysteries. Then Umbridge drags him out of the fire, and her Inquisitorial Squad catches the others.
She sends for Snape and demands a truth potion. Snape says he has none, and Harry shouts that Voldemort has Padfoot at the place where it is hidden. Snape acts as though he does not understand, and leaves.
Umbridge then lifts her wand to use the Cruciatus Curse on Harry. Hermione cries out and pretends to break. She says there is a secret weapon in the Forest.
The Forest
Hermione marches Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest and makes plenty of noise. The plan works in a terrifying way. Centaurs surround them, and Umbridge calls them half breeds and tries to bind one. They seize her and carry her off.
Then Grawp, Hagrid’s giant half brother, crashes in. The centaurs shoot him full of arrows, and he lunges after them through the trees. Ron, Ginny, Neville and Luna turn up, having escaped from the Inquisitorial Squad. They are all going to London, and there is only one way to travel.
Two Thestrals come out of the trees, drawn by the blood on Harry and Hermione. More follow. Luna helps the ones who cannot see them climb on, and six students take off into the evening sky, bound for the Ministry.
Into the Ministry
They land at the visitors’ entrance, and everything is eerily empty. The six walk down to the Department of Mysteries, through a circular room of doors that spin each time they leave a room. They pass a tank of brains, and a stone room with an archway and a fluttering veil that whispers.
At last they find the room with the glass spheres. Row ninety seven has no Sirius. Instead, Ron finds a sphere with Harry’s name on it. Harry takes it off the shelf, and a voice behind him says, give me that. Lucius Malfoy and a ring of Death Eaters step out of the dark.
It was a trap from the beginning. The prophecy can only be lifted by one of the two people it concerns, so Voldemort needs Harry to fetch it. Bellatrix Lestrange wants him to hand it over, and he does not.
The Battle
Harry stalls, then the group blasts the shelves and runs. The next minutes are chaos. They split up, and Death Eaters hunt them through the Time Room and the Brain Room. Hermione is struck by a curse and falls. Ron is attacked by a brain from the tank. Ginny’s ankle is broken, and Luna is knocked flat.
Harry ends up in the death chamber with the stone archway. Bellatrix tortures Neville to force Harry to give up the prophecy. Then the Order arrives, Sirius, Lupin, Moody, Tonks and Kingsley, and the room explodes into a duel.
In the scramble, Neville’s foot kicks the prophecy and it smashes on the steps. A figure rises from the glass and speaks, but nobody hears it. Then Dumbledore arrives, and Sirius is laughing at Bellatrix when her spell hits him in the chest. He falls backward through the veil, and he does not come back.
Voldemort and Dumbledore
Lupin holds Harry back. Harry breaks free and chases Bellatrix up to the Atrium, shouting that he will kill her. He tries the Cruciatus Curse on her, and she tells him he does not really mean it.
Then Voldemort himself appears, and he knows the prophecy is gone. He raises his wand to kill Harry, and a golden statue leaps in the way. Dumbledore is there, and the two of them duel, with statues, fire and a water cocoon. Fawkes dives in front of a killing curse and takes it, and the phoenix is reborn small.
Then Voldemort possesses Harry. Harry is in agony, and Voldemort tells Dumbledore to kill the boy. Harry wants it to end, and he thinks he will see Sirius again. Something in that thought, in his grief, makes Voldemort let go. Voldemort flees, and the Minister arrives to see him with his own eyes.
Dumbledore’s Explanation
Back in the office, Harry smashes Dumbledore’s instruments and screams at him. Dumbledore lets him. Then he tells Harry that Sirius’s death is largely his own fault, for not being open.
He explains that he kept his distance because Voldemort might use their link, and that is why he sent Harry to Snape for Occlumency.
He also reveals that Kreacher had been serving the Malfoys. Kreacher told Narcissa that Sirius was the person Harry would do anything for. Then he lied to Harry in the fire, while Sirius was upstairs looking after Buckbeak.
And then he shows Harry the prophecy. He heard it himself, years ago, from Professor Trelawney, in the Hog’s Head. It says that a boy born at the end of July to parents who had defied Voldemort three times will have a power he does not know. It says that the Dark Lord will mark the boy as his equal. And it says that either must die at the hand of the other, because neither can live while the other survives.
It could have meant Neville, Dumbledore says. But Voldemort chose Harry, marking him as his equal. And Voldemort only heard the first half, so he never knew that attacking Harry might hand him power.
What Happens Next
In the aftermath, the world finally accepts the truth. The Daily Prophet reports Voldemort’s return, and the Minister admits it. Umbridge is silent in the hospital wing, and then leaves the school, chased out by Peeves. McGonagall returns and gives the friends fifty points each.
Harry finds the mirror Sirius gave him, tries it, and it stays blank. He hurls it into his trunk and it shatters. He asks Nearly Headless Nick if Sirius will come back as a ghost, and Nick says no. Luna tells him she is sure the voices behind the veil were real people, just out of sight, and that he will see them again. Harry does not know what to believe, but it helps him a little.
At King’s Cross, the Order faces down the Dursleys and warns them to treat Harry well. Harry smiles, and the book ends.
What It Means
So what is Rowling saying?
First, this is a story about the cost of keeping secrets. Dumbledore protects Harry from a terrible truth, and the protection is what leads to Sirius’s death. He even admits it. It is one of the rare times he is wrong, and that matters.
Second, it is about a power the villain cannot copy. Dumbledore says Harry has a force that Voldemort lacks, and that it drove Voldemort out of him. Most readers take that to mean love, and that reading fits what Harry feels in that moment.
Third, it is about grief. Harry is not rescued from his pain at the end. He just learns to sit in it. And fourth, it tells us the war is real now. From here on, the story is no longer a school adventure, and every book after it is darker.
My Verdict on the Ending
I love this ending, and I find it hard to read. The Ministry battle is one of the best action sequences in the series, and the death of Sirius is shockingly sudden. It hurts because it is not given a grand moment.
My one complaint is the placement of the big explanation. Dumbledore’s speech is long, and it comes after a lot of tension. I understand why, but some of it feels like a lecture.
Still, the final quiet scenes, Luna at the noticeboard and the Order standing on the platform, are what stay with me. Tell me in the comments, what did you think of Sirius’s fall? Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.
