Harry Potter returns for his fifth year at Hogwarts angry and isolated. He has seen Lord Voldemort return with his own eyes, yet the Ministry of Magic insists it never happened, and the wizarding press has spent the summer painting Harry as a liar and Dumbledore as a fading fool. Worse, the Ministry has installed its own agent at the school: Dolores Umbridge, a sweetly smiling tyrant whose grip on Hogwarts tightens by the week, and whose refusal to teach practical defence leaves students helpless against the danger she claims does not exist.
In secret, the Order of the Phoenix, a society founded by Dumbledore during the first war against Voldemort, has re-formed to fight the growing threat. Shut out of its plans, Harry starts a resistance of his own, teaching fellow students real Defence Against the Dark Arts under Umbridge's nose. But as his scar burns and strange visions of a long dark corridor invade his sleep, Harry finds his connection to Voldemort deepening in ways nobody understands. What lies at the end of that corridor will draw him into a battle that costs him more than he can bear.
