Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter, #5)

by J.K. Rowling

“Harry, we saw Uranus up close!” said Ron, still giggling feebly. “Get it, Harry? We saw Uranus — ha ha ha —”

“you know who this girl is, Harry? She’s Loony . . . Loony Lovegood . . . ha ha ha . . .”

Then, high above them, two more doors burst open and five more people sprinted into the room: Sirius, Lupin, Moody, Tonks, and Kingsley.

Malfoy turned and raised his wand, but Tonks had already sent a Stunning Spell right at him.

Tonks, still halfway up the tiered seats, was firing spells down at Bellatrix —

A jet of green light had narrowly missed Sirius;

Harry saw Tonks fall from halfway up the stone steps, her limp form toppling from stone seat to stone seat, and Bellatrix, triumphant, running back toward the fray.

Sirius yelled, dashing to mee...

Sirius and Bellatrix were now dueling.

“Harry, I’b sorry!” cried Neville, his face anguished as his legs continued to flounder, “I’b so sorry, Harry, I didn’d bean do —”

Directly above them, framed in the doorway from the Brain Room, stood Albus Dumbledore, his wand aloft, his face white and furious. Harry felt a kind of electric charge surge through every particle of his body — they were saved.

One of the Death Eaters ran for it, scrabbling like a monkey up the stone steps opposite.

JAJJAJAJAJAJ

Only one couple were still battling, apparently unaware of the new arrival. Harry saw Sirius duck Bellatrix’s jet of red light: He was laughing at her. “Come on, you can do better than that!” he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room. The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest. The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock. Harry released Neville, though he was unaware of doing so. Harry jumped to the ground, pulling out his wand, as Dumbledore turned to the dais too.

It seemed to take Sirius an age to fall. His body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backward through the ragged veil hanging from the arch. . . .

And Harry saw the look of mingled fear and surprise on his godfather’s wasted, once-handsome face as he fell through the ancient doorway and disappeared behind the veil, which fluttered for a moment a...

But Sirius did not reappear.

Lupin grabbed Harry around the chest, holding him back. “There’s nothing you can do, Harry —”

“There’s nothing you can do, Harry . . . nothing. . . . He’s gone.”

NOOOOOO

“Potter, I am going to give you one chance!” shouted Bellatrix. “Give me the prophecy — roll it out toward me now — and I may spare your life!” “Well, you’re going to have to kill me, because it’s gone!”

was quite unconnected with his own rage. “And he knows!” said Harry with a mad laugh to match Bellatrix’s own. “Your dear old mate Voldemort knows it’s gone! He’s not going to be happy with you, is he?” “What? What do you mean?” she cried, and for the first time there was fear in her voice.

“He can’t hear you from here!” “Can’t I, Potter?” said a high, cold voice. Harry opened his eyes. Tall, thin, and black-hooded, his terrible snakelike face white and gaunt, his scarlet, slit-pupiled eyes staring . . . Lord Voldemort had appeared in the middle of the hall, his wand pointing at Harry who stood frozen, quite unable to move.

“I have nothing more to say to you, Potter,” he said quietly. “You have irked me too often, for too long. AVADA KEDAVRA!” Harry had not even opened his mouth to resist. His mind was blank, his wand pointing uselessly at the floor. But the headless golden statue of the wizard in the fountain had sprung alive, leaping from its plinth, and landed on the floor with a crash between Harry and Voldemort. The spell merely glanced off its chest as the statue flung out its arms, protecting Harry.

Meanwhile, the goblin and the house-elf scuttled toward the fireplaces set along the wall,

The headless statue thrust Harry backward, away from the fight, as Dumbledore advanced on Voldemort and the golden centaur cantered around them both.

“It was foolish to come here tonight, Tom,” said Dumbledore calmly. “The Aur...

“You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?” called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. “Above such brutality, are you?” “We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,”

“There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!” snarled Voldemort. “You are quite wrong,” said Dumbledore,

“Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness —”

Fawkes swooped down in front of Dumbledore, opened his beak wide, and swallowed the jet of green light whole. He burst into flame and fell to the floor, small, wrinkled, and flightless.

For the first time, Dumbledore sounded frightened.

and the tiny baby Fawkes croaking feebly on the floor

“Kill me now, Dumbledore . . .” Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again. . . . “If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy . . .”

And I’ll see Sirius again. . . .

“Are you all right, Harry?”

The Atrium was full of people. The floor was reflecting emerald-green flames that had burst into life in all the fireplaces along one wall, and a stream of witches and wizards was emerging from them.

“He was there!” shouted a scarlet-robed man with a ponytail, who was pointing at a pile of golden rubble on the other side of the hall, where Bellatrix had lain trapped moments before. “I saw him, Mr. Fudge, I swear, it was You-Know-Who, he grabbed a woman and Disapparated!”

“I know, Williamson, I know, I saw him too!” gibbered Fudge,

“Harry, you know that Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge,” said Dumbledore steadily, “but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the forest. It was he too who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell of Sirius’s whereabouts . . .”

Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape,

servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike. . . . The fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward.”

“SO SIRIUS DESERVED WHAT HE GOT, DID HE?” Harry yelled. “I did not say that,

he’s so me

“It is time,” he said, “for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me — to do whatever you like — when I have finished. I will not stop you.”

“Wait,” said Harry. “Wait a moment.” He sat up straighter in his chair, staring at Dumbledore. “You sent that Howler. You told her to remember — it was your voice —” “I thought,” said Dumbledore, inclining his head slightly, “that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate son.”

“I cared about you too much,” said Dumbledore

“The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly.”

I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer, and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave.”

“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 . . .”

“It means — me?” Dumbledore took a deep breath. “The odd thing is, Harry,” he said softly, “that it may not have meant you at all. Sybill’s prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom.”

“The official record was relabeled after Voldemort’s attack on you as a child,”

He chose you, not Neville.