OotP Harry is the Best Harry and I will Fight You

It's always interesting to hear what a person's least favourite Harry Potter book is. My personal least favourite is Philosopher's Stone which I think had the weakest writing and plot. Many people dislike the later books because they're too dark, while many people dislike the earlier books because they're not dark enough. There are many different reasons why a certain book might be a person's least favourite in the series.

But here's the thing. If a person's least favourite book is Order of the Phoenix, nine times out of ten it will be for the exact same reason. They found OotP Harry annoying.

I get it. Reading about a main character who is not perfect all the time and who actually has interesting personality flaws can be unenjoyable. Reading about a character who is actually emotionally affected by the traumatic things that they've gone through rather than acting as if nothing happened can be annoying. Wait, no. I actually don't get it at all.

Can it be a little bit difficult to read OotP Harry's POV? Totally. But that's what makes his character in this book so brilliant. He's so real. If you think that I'm wrong and that the way Harry acted in OotP was not realistic, here is a list of only some of the things that happened to him before and during this book:

• He spent ten years of his life living with people who hated him and abused him.
• He discovered that he was part of a secret magical world, only to discover that he was already famous in this world for something he can't remember, causing him to constantly be the center of attention.
• He discovered that his parents were MURDERED and that he was almost murdered with them as a baby, rather than just being in a car crash like he'd been told all his life.
• He met and fought with the man who murdered his parents not once, not twice, but THREE times, each time only barely escaping with his life.
• He watched Cedric, a person he liked, die for absolutely no reason and felt that it was his fault.
• He had basically the entire wizarding world including some of his friends, despise him and believe lies about him on several occasions.
• He has the entire wizarding world hating him AGAIN in this book, this time with the government and the media calling him a liar and an attention seeker and completely demonizing him.
• He is forced to spend the entire summer locked in the house of his abusive family with barely any news from the wizarding world.
• He has one of the people he respects most in the world completely ignore him for the entire year (Fuck you, Dumbledore).
• His teacher literally makes him carve words into the back of his hand.

Keep in mind that this is not a complete list.

I want you to go out and experience everything that Harry did. Now come back and tell me that you're Just Fine, not emotionally affected at all, and are going to continue being a perfect sefless hero. Harry's anger and angst in OotP are completely justified and realistic and I will fight you. It is a little bit frustrating when he takes out his frustration on Ron and Hermione, yes, but in my opinion, it's understandable. He was 15 years old. 15 years old.

This is somewhat unrelated, but Order of the Phoenix is, more than any of the other books in the series, a tragedy. It is not the only book which ends with the protagonists losing, but it is the only book in which Harry himself fails utterly and completely. I understand that some people do not like tragedies. They do not like that everything that Harry does in this book is futile and pointless and ends up resulting in the death of Sirius. But that's what life can be. For me, Order of the Phoenix represents being a teenager, and the feeling of complete powerlessness and terror that can accompany that. It's a mix between wanting more responsibility and feeling as if you have far too much.

Also, the scene where Harry screams at Dumbledore and smashes up his office is the second most emotional scene in the entire series and it never fails to make me cry.