What was the Order of the Phoenix?

[jodel_from_aol]

No: HPFGUIDX 101310

We have yet to be given a *really* satisfactory explanation for what
the OotP's actual function was back in VoldWar I. 

In Book 5 it is a "secret society". Well, okay, since the Ministry is
trying to shut down anyone who claims that Voldemort is back, it has
to be secret. From the Ministry as well as from Voldemort. But it
wasn't any secret to the Ministry the first time around. It is not a
stretch to believe that it was something fairly classified the first
time around as well, but they worked *with* the Ministry in the first
VoldWar, and a good deal of what it is doing now, may not be it's
original agenda, but something it is only doing because the Ministry
won't.

I'm not sure that the kids' nebulous understanding that it was merely
made up of people who "fought Voldemort" is altogether on-target. 

So what do we know about it? And what was its function likely to have
been?

What we know:

Dumbledore founded it. (When? We don't know)

The Potters and the Longbottoms were both involved.

Molly and Arthur Weasley were not.

When Moody found the vintage photo of the original Order he
immediately thought it would be a fine thing to show it to Harry.

That last strikes me as significant. I have a theory;

I think that the Order of the Phoenix was founded to perform a
function that Albus Dumbledore felt was essential, that the Ministry
could not or would not take on. Essentially the Ministry "contracted
out" this particular function to Dumbledore.

By the time Harry and Neville were born the WW had been under attack
by a group of organized terrorists for about 10 years. The Ministry's
resources were entirely taken up by the war effort (as well as
attempting to keep the actual business of running the WW from breaking
down completely).

For that entire span of time Albus Dumbledore had a day job. A very
demanding one. He couldn't be everwhere at once, and he couldn't take
on additional major comittments without help which could be where he
couldn't, hear what he wouldn't and act in his absence.

So he founded the Order and staffed it with some of his own most
trusted personal associates, along with the people who were most
deeply involved, along with some of their closest friends and family
members.

Namely; the Potters and the Longbottoms.

The function of the origional Order of the Phoenix was specifically to
protect the two most likely candidates for being the child of the
Trelawney prophesy. It was the Harry Potter/Neville Longbottom
Protective Association.

The Ministry couldn't handle it. They were already stretched to the
limit. They couldn't redeploy Ministry resources on the strength of a
maybe-prophesy from a self announced seer with no track record
whatsoever. And besides they knew that Voldemort had moles in their
organization.

Actually, since we now know how the Fidelius Charm works It's amazing
that both couples didn't protect their homes (and their children) with
it from the outset. They would have been free to come and go as they
pleased, risking their *own* lives, but the children would have been
safe. But perhaps there was some other consideration at work. We don't
really know everything about that charm.

But I suspect that now the breech with the Ministry has been settled,
the Order of the Phoenix may be returning to it's original function as
teh Harry Potter Potective Association.