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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Stenciled Edges)

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There is a door at the end of a silent corridor. And it's haunting Harry Potter's dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night, screaming in terror? It's not just the upcoming O.W.L. exams; a new teacher with a personality like poisoned honey; a disgruntled house-elf; or even the growing threat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Now Harry Potter is faced with the unreliability of the very government of the magical world and the impotence of the authorities at Hogwarts. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), he finds depth and strength in his friends beyond what even he knew, boundless loyalty, and unbearable sacrifice.

870 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2025

23 people are currently reading
45 people want to read

About the author

J.K. Rowling

672 books233k followers
See also: Robert Galbraith
Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry." Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King's Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.

Rowling's sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee." At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind," gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, "I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life." She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of." Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as "not exceptional" but "one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English." Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.

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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
Profile Image for Fefyy Antela.
523 reviews29 followers
December 22, 2025
-2019-
How many rereads of this will it take for me to finally get over this ending? 💔

-2020-
"But some part of him realised, even as he fought to break free from Lupin, that Sirius had never kept him waiting before… Sirius had risked everything, always, to see Harry, to help him… If Sirius was not reappearing out of that archway when Harry was yelling for him as though his life depended on it, the only possible explanation was that he could not come back…"

I AM NOT OK

That's it... That's my review.

Bye ✌🏼




-2023-
I'M ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATED 😭

This book will never NOT hurt 💔

-2024-
It was unbearable, he would not think about it, he could not stand it… there was a terrible hollow inside him he did not want to feel or examine, a dark hole where Sirius had been, where Sirius had vanished; he did not want to have to be alone with that great, silent space, he could not stand it-



I can't stand it either, Harry 💔

-2025-
'He gave Narcissa information of the sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too trivial for Sirius to think of banning him from repeating it.’

‘Like what?’ said Harry.

‘Like the fact that the person Sirius cared most about in the world was you,’ said Dumbledore quietly.

STAWP 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Matt McLain.
130 reviews18 followers
November 14, 2025
The end of the 4th and now the entire 5th book had that foreboding, dark tone. One of the complaints some have about this book is it kind of just plods along slowly. I actually like that. I’ll stay in the Harry Potter world as long as Rowling wants to keep us there. Another great Harry Potter book.
Profile Image for Emily Schatz.
10 reviews
December 10, 2025
Loved it!! Same as the others, Stephen Fry is such an awesome narrator.
I thought the first half of the book was captured well by the movie but the second half got ALL out of whack. A number of cuts were made that seemingly could’ve been fixed by adding a line or two?? I’m relieved to be past Umbridge cause I was dreading her whole plot line obviously.
SO hype for The Half Blood Prince, I feel like it’s a lot of people’s favorite and after how much I enjoyed books 4 and 5 I have a feeling that one is going to be next level.
Profile Image for Phoebe.
272 reviews34 followers
October 19, 2025
SUMMARY:
There is a door at the end of a silent corridor. And it's haunting Harry Potter's dreams. Why else would he be waking in the middle of the night, screaming in terror? It's not just the upcoming O.W.L. exams; a new teacher with a personality like poisoned honey; a disgruntled house-elf; or even the growing threat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Now Harry Potter is faced with the unreliability of the very government of the magical world and the impotence of the authorities at Hogwarts. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), he finds depth and strength in his friends beyond what even he knew, boundless loyalty, and unbearable sacrifice.

REVIEW:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the fifth book in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Harry Potter has been having a rough summer with the Dursley family trying to find out any news about Voldemort now that he was back in his own body. Unfortunately Harry is attacked by Dementors while he was with his cousin Dudley and he had to do magic in order to defend them both even though it was against Wizarding Law to perform magic as he was under age. When Harry was able to produce the Patronus to save himself and his cousin Dudley form the Dementors that attacked them had been an intense and scary moment as he was alone with the fear that even though he was saving them he could be expelled from Hogwarts. Things do not get better for Harry and his friends even at Hogwarts they aren't safe as the Ministry of Magic sent Professor Umbridge to teach at the school in the position of the dreaded Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.

It was such a fun and exciting moment when Hermione convinced Harry to start a Defense Against the Dark Arts secret club for everyone that wanted to learn especially because professor Umbridge wouldn't allow them to learn or practice spells. When Harry watched as Sirius fell into the Veil after Bellatrix killed him was the most heart wrenching moment for him as he lost that last person that he loved that was a parental figure in his life and the person that knew his father the most. J.K. Rowling delivered another adventure full of mystery and unbearable loss for everyone. Harry, Ron and Hermione grow so much in their fifth year at Hogwarts as they work together and with other students to save the school from Professor Umbridge who used her power to make sure that no one would be able to disobey her commands. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in Harry's adventures with Ron and Hermione against Voldemort.
Profile Image for John.
1,879 reviews59 followers
September 25, 2025
Fine performance by Fry, of course--but this is my least favorite of the series, as it sort of lumbers along advancing the plot by an inadequate amount for the page length. Not to mention that here Harry is the very image of a temperamental, unlikable adolescent.....the loyalties of his friends and allies certainly aren't built on any personal charm or charisma. Am skipping ...Half Blood Prince to go on the finale.
Profile Image for Fran O.
39 reviews
December 15, 2025
The way the adults behave..........is interesting from the perspective of a 26 year old. But the story is still generally good...why, when Harry finds the mirror at the end, does he not think about how he could have used that to communicate with Sirius all along? A weird plot hole.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Sabrina M..
11 reviews
July 26, 2025
Stephen Fry nailed it! If you haven't listened to his rendition of the Harry Potter series, it is definitely worth it.
Profile Image for Sandy.
745 reviews4 followers
April 15, 2025
Interesting to read the British audiobook.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews

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