Harry’s outburst in Umbridge’s class is understandable,
given the circumstances of her lesson, but it is also rash and hot-headed. Throughout Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry wholeheartedly
embraces his role as the troubled teenager, picking fights with
Umbridge and constantly snapping at his best friends. Harry is still
upset at not being chosen as a Gryffindor prefect and displays very
little tolerance for Ron and Hermione’s normal quibbling. In Book
IV, Harry witnessed Lord Voldemort’s ugly return to full power,
which involved loads of blood, severed limbs, and the grisly murder
of a classmate, Cedric Diggory, and these events seem to have wounded
Harry in deep and personal ways. He is no longer the calm and affable
young man from the first four books. Instead, he is irritable and
rash, no longer able to quietly accept torment, whether it’s from
his boorish cousin, Dudley, or his new professor. Because of Harry’s
behavior he must miss Keeper tryouts, and he manages to fall very
far behind on his schoolwork. Harry’s ever-brewing anger and impatience
will later lead him to make a series of poor, ill-conceived decisions
with deadly consequences.
