Order of the Phoenix comments

[psocoptera]

I love realistically15!Harry. From the very first chapter,
zoom, hopelessness, whoosh, fury, taunting Dudley, his screaming fit at Ron and Hermione... oh, our little boy is growing *up*, and he's such a wonderfully drawn moody teenager! And all his friends trying to be patient while he takes it out on them... if I have one complaint, it's that no one
else is as realistically 15, although I suppose Ron got his sulks in last book and Hermione grew up a lot during her Time-Turning travails back in #3.

Despite my worst fears, it did not, at least not on the first read, feel remotely in need of editing for length. Of course I was excited enough that I probably wasn't especially critical about the pacing, but I thought it moved well.

Meta-analysis: the problem of a seven-book series with one major conflict has always been drawing it out; I thought Rowling did an excellent job setting up the Ministry/Umbridge as this book's secondary antagonist, delaying the opening battle of the Second Voldemort War until the very end;
it (the Ministry as 2nd enemy) proceeded naturally from the previous book, and Umbridge was a terrific YA villain. I used to have a smarmy vice-principal who would make audiences repeat "good morning, Mrs. Spicer" if she said good morning and they didn't answer loud enough... this included audiences of parents... And nice job squeezing something new out of Quidditch by sidelining Harry and sending in Ron and Ginny. I foresee at least one more Big Quidditch Moment for Harry, but I can't really see more than one...

Biggest disappointment: as Dumbledore freaking *admits*, the
entire climactic sequence could have been totally avoided by *five words* to Harry: "Voldemort can send you false visions." Whoops, that's six.

And Rowling's attempt to justify it through Dumbledore doesn't fare any better... there's the contrived excuse that he didn't want Voldemort to know "their relationship was closer than that of headmaster and pupil", which for the record sounds wrong wrong wrong, which is particularly pathetic given that Wormtail was hidden at Hogwarts for *months* as
Scabbers and surely could report to Voldemort that Dumbledore takes a special interest in Harry... or maybe *Snape* was supposed to explain this to Harry? Did the entire Big Battle go down because of Snape's no-explanation-just-do-as-you're-told *pedagogical style*??

Which is not to say I wasn't thrilled out of my little socks by the Big Battle, oh my god, curses flying like phaser beams, Neville, Neville! busting out heroic at last... (I thought one of the most fascinating new developments, and one that I suspect (and hope) will lead to a lot of fanfic, is the idea that the prophecy could have referred to either Harry or Neville. I love Neville as the failed Harry, the non-Harry, the Harry that might have been, *god* that's just bursting with potential...).

Some obligatory Predictions for the Future: we really, really need to find out more about Snape. It seems very odd that the memory of being turned upside down by schoolmates is "Snape's Worst Memory", given that he was a Death Eater... and now that Snape's failure has maybe caused the loss of Harry's father/brother figure, it seems quite likely that Snape is going to either A) Be Understood At Last B) Die C) Be Understood At Last And Die.

Shipping... god, I could still sail any which way at this point. So many good moments, and new characters, even. Love that Luna Lovegood; will be interesting to see if she's on The Team at this point or what.

Arrgh, we're going to have to wait, like, five years to find out how everybody did on their OWLs, aren't we. Worse, we totally utterly failed to find out whether Percy reconciled with his family when the Ministry faced up to the truth about moldy Voldy... hm, I foresee, oh, eight thousand fics on this subject.

Nice to see some of the expected developments going along, particularly DEs breaking out of Azkaban and the students organizing to learn and practice for the upcoming fight. ::sighs over Harry as reluctant-but-proud secret new DADA teacher::

I liked the move away from Harry's parents as saints, fit in well with his growing-up arc.

Well. I could go on (and on and on and on), but I'll close with the Time I Nearly Died In Chapter Three and Almost Never Got To Read The Rest: practically being *invited* to think about Harry's ass with that line about both buttocks still on. Oh *my*.