Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix recap

With Voldemort returned but the Ministry of Magic denying it and branding Harry a liar, Harry's fifth year is one of official persecution. He is taken to the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, the secret society fighting Voldemort. At school the Ministry installs Dolores Umbridge, who bans practical Defence lessons and seizes ever more power, so Harry secretly teaches his classmates to fight, forming Dumbledore's Army. Harry suffers visions through a growing mental link to Voldemort and is made to take Occlumency lessons with Snape to shut it. When he sees his godfather Sirius being tortured, he leads friends to the Ministry to save him, but it is a trap: Voldemort lured him to retrieve a prophecy about the two of them. In the battle Sirius is killed by Bellatrix Lestrange. Voldemort's public appearance finally forces the Ministry to admit he is back. Dumbledore reveals the prophecy: Harry and Voldemort are fated to face each other, and only one can survive.

Harry Potter, orphaned as a baby when Lord Voldemort killed his parents and was defeated trying to kill him, learned at eleven that he is a wizard and went to Hogwarts, where he was sorted into Gryffindor and befriended Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Over four years he foiled Voldemort's attempt to steal the Philosopher's Stone; destroyed a diary holding the young Voldemort's memory; cleared his wrongly imprisoned godfather, Sirius Black, of betraying his parents; and, forced into a deadly school tournament, watched the Death Eater Wormtail murder the student Cedric Diggory and use Harry's blood to restore Voldemort to a body and full power. Harry escaped, but the Minister for Magic, Fudge, refused to believe Voldemort had returned and began treating Harry and the headmaster, Dumbledore, as troublemakers. Voldemort is now back, whole and gathering strength, while the Ministry denies it and the wizarding world remains dangerously divided.

Stuck with the Dursleys and starved of news, Harry is attacked in his home town by Dementors that nearly destroy him and his cousin Dudley, and he drives them off with magic, an act that gets him threatened with expulsion for underage sorcery. A guard of witches and wizards spirits him away to a shabby old house that serves as headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix, the secret society Dumbledore has revived to fight Voldemort, run partly by Harry's godfather, Sirius Black. Furious at having been kept in the dark all summer, Harry learns only fragments of what the Order knows. He is cleared at a hostile Ministry hearing, defended in person by Dumbledore, who pointedly does not look at him. Ron and Hermione are made prefects, and the friends prepare to return to a school where the Ministry is beginning to interfere.

The wizarding newspaper and the Ministry wage a campaign to discredit Harry and Dumbledore, painting Harry as an attention-seeking liar for insisting Voldemort has returned. At Hogwarts the Ministry installs a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Dolores Umbridge, a smiling, pink-clad official who forbids any practical spellwork and teaches only from a useless textbook. When Harry contradicts her in class he is given a series of brutal detentions, forced to carve lines into his own hand with a cursed quill. Umbridge is clearly there to bring the school under Ministry control. Harry also befriends the strange, dreamy Luna Lovegood, and struggles with his anger and grief over Cedric's death while the adults around him keep him at arm's length.

The Ministry grants Umbridge sweeping new powers, making her High Inquisitor with authority to inspect and sack teachers, and she tightens her grip on the school with a stream of decrees. Convinced the students must learn to defend themselves, Hermione persuades Harry to secretly teach a group of volunteers real defensive magic. They form a resistance group, half-jokingly named Dumbledore's Army, meeting in a hidden room to practise the spells Umbridge refuses to teach, with Harry proving a natural instructor. Meanwhile Harry, back on the Quidditch team, endures Umbridge's meddling, and Hagrid returns from a secret Order mission bruised and evasive. A current of secret defiance runs beneath the school's growing fear.

Harry's dreams grow stranger and more vivid, tied somehow to Voldemort's own mind. One night he witnesses, as if he were the snake itself, an attack on Ron's father, Arthur Weasley, at the Ministry, and his warning saves the man's life. Deeply shaken, and afraid he is being used or even possessed by Voldemort, Harry is sent to learn Occlumency, the art of sealing one's mind against intrusion, from Snape, who despises him. The lessons are painful and go badly. Over Christmas at the Order's headquarters the friends see the recovering Arthur and feel briefly safe, but Umbridge's power at school keeps rising and the connection in Harry's head keeps deepening, leaving him more isolated and more frightened of what he is becoming.

News breaks that a mass of Voldemort's followers, including the cruel Bellatrix Lestrange, have broken out of Azkaban, and the Ministry shamelessly blames Sirius Black to avoid admitting Voldemort is behind it. Umbridge grows more tyrannical, sacking the Divination teacher and hunting for the secret defence group. Harry gives a truthful interview about Voldemort's return to a fringe magazine, which many students quietly believe. During a disastrous Occlumency session Harry sees into Snape's memory of being humiliated as a boy by Harry's own father, and Snape furiously ends the lessons. As exams approach, Harry's mental link to Voldemort betrays him: he sees a vision of Sirius being tortured in the Department of Mysteries deep within the Ministry, and, unable to confirm whether it is real, resolves to act.

Dumbledore's Army is betrayed and discovered; Dumbledore takes the blame to protect Harry and flees the school, and Umbridge becomes headmistress. Unable to reach the Order and desperate to save Sirius, Harry, with Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, and Neville, evades Umbridge and races to the Department of Mysteries. There they find no Sirius: the vision was a trap. Voldemort lured Harry to retrieve a prophecy, sealed in a glass orb that only Harry or Voldemort can take, concerning the two of them. Death Eaters ambush them, and a running battle erupts among the strange chambers. The young wizards fight bravely and are badly outmatched until members of the Order, including Sirius, arrive to rescue them. In the chaos of the fight the prophecy orb is smashed, and Bellatrix Lestrange strikes Sirius, who falls through a veiled archway and is gone.

Harry, wild with grief, chases Bellatrix and is confronted by Voldemort himself, who has come to kill him. Dumbledore arrives and duels Voldemort in the Ministry's atrium, and in the struggle Voldemort briefly possesses Harry before being driven out and fleeing. Crucially, the Minister for Magic, Fudge, and other officials see Voldemort with their own eyes, so the Ministry can no longer deny that he has returned; Fudge is disgraced and the wizarding world at last mobilizes for war. Back at school, Dumbledore finally tells Harry the truth he has withheld all year: a prophecy made before Harry's birth says that neither he nor Voldemort can live while the other survives, that one must eventually kill the other, and that Voldemort marked Harry as his equal when he attacked him as a baby. Dumbledore admits he kept Harry at a distance to shield him and himself failed him. Sirius is dead, the prophecy is lost but its meaning known, and Harry returns to the Dursleys carrying the weight of a destiny he never chose.

Harry's fifth year ends in loss and grim clarity. Tricked by a false vision, Harry leads his friends to the Ministry of Magic to rescue his godfather Sirius, only to find it was a lure: Voldemort wanted Harry to retrieve a prophecy that only he could take from the Hall of Prophecy. Death Eaters attack, the young wizards fight desperately, and members of the Order of the Phoenix arrive to help; in the battle Sirius is struck by his cousin Bellatrix Lestrange and falls through a mysterious veil to his death. Voldemort himself appears and duels Dumbledore, and the Minister for Magic, Fudge, sees him with his own eyes, so the wizarding world can no longer deny that Voldemort has returned. Voldemort briefly possesses Harry and then flees. Afterward Dumbledore finally explains the prophecy and why he kept his distance all year: Harry and Voldemort are bound so that neither can live while the other survives, and one must ultimately kill the other, which is why Voldemort marked Harry as a baby. Fudge is discredited, the Ministry mobilizes for open war, and Harry, grieving Sirius and burdened with his destiny, returns to the Dursleys knowing what lies ahead.