Mugglenet.com's Harry Potter Should Have Died - Emerson Spartz [66]
Verdict
Has Harry found true happiness as a dark-wizard catcher in the Auror Department? Or does personal fulfillment wait for him in teaching, business, healing, or politics instead? Harry never was much of a student on a good day, and he is always action-oriented, so it’s hard to imagine him leading a quiet life even though his evil nemesis Voldemort is dead and gone. Verdict: Harry should keep his day job as an Auror.
What is the worst book?
These two books work as bridges between the other books. The writing is just as enjoyable as the rest of the series, but readers may feel they have lost their way a little as they wander through them. Again, completely subjective analysis to follow!
Order of the Phoenix
Fans read the Harry Potter books for pleasure and enjoyment, so the alienation and teenage tension in OotP is a real downer that makes the book the least enjoyable of the series. The book is slow paced and dull in the beginning, lingering over Harry’s angst and anger at the age of fifteen. Even on the day he gets away from the Dursleys, he suddenly lashes out in capital letters at his best friends, completely unfairly. It might stand to reason that he is in a dark place after watching Voldemort’s rise from death in GoF, and seeing Cedric Diggory die in cold blood, but that doesn’t completely explain why Harry suddenly whines, complains, and moans about every little thing. Maybe he is taking his cue from Sirius Black, who sulks around his gloomy Slytherin house at Grimmauld Place, acting bitter and resentful that Dumbledore won’t let him do anything. He and Harry really deserve each other in OotP.
But maybe Sirius has a point about feeling trapped and that his life is monotonous, since the fans get stuck with the same feeling while in that depressing house for nearly the first 200 pages of the book. A lot of that could have been edited out. Housecleaning with Molly might make a nice article for Witch Weekly, but it bogs down the story with so-dull-they’re-deadly details of spraying doxies and cleaning cupboards. Unlike cooking scenes in the other books, in this book, J.K.R. doesn’t even waste time listing the food they eat. Dinner is just an excuse for someone to drone on about what Voldemort might be doing, as if he or she actually knows what Voldemort was doing, which no one does. The Order of the Phoenix seems like a bunch of incompetent people—what exactly are they doing? They’re not nearly as cool as their name makes them out to be. They aren’t keeping people from dying, and they can barely protect Harry. It’s also depressing that Dumbledore has apparently abandoned Harry without telling him why, which only freaks him out later when he starts having visions of snakes and thinks he’s turning into a murderous reptile. Too bad he doesn’t—at least that would have been exciting!
When Sirius was growing up, he could escape his gloomy homelife by going to Hogwarts, but that doesn’t work for Harry in OotP because Dolores Umbridge has taken over the school with her reign of terror. And from the time Harry arrives at school, OotP becomes a sad book about the dangers of educational testing in the wizarding world. No joke—that’s probably the worst theme in all the books because it is so mundane: studying for the O.W.L. exams. We are served up one story after another about kids freaking out during testing, and it’s a nightmare for Harry, who is also being tortured by Umbridge with her painful black quill. And worst of all, he’s being banned from Quidditch!
There are a few bright spots in the gloom of OotP. Harry meets the