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.

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