Book Review #17 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Reason of choice

Since it is one of the books of the Harry Potter series, I would have to read this book in order to finish it, not to mention that, in my opinion, it has one of the best plots of the entire series if we look at it as a standalone.

Reaction to the first pages

Once again, comparing the book to its movie adaptation, the details and differences that are in the book but that aren’t shown in the movie made me feel even more pleased to read this book again.

Summary

The book starts when Harry is still with the Dursleys and Marge, uncle Vernon's sister, comes to their house to stay a week. Harry had made a deal with his uncle that he would sign a permission form for Harry to go to Hogsmeade, a village near Hogwarts, but only if Harry behaved properly, since the relationship between Harry and aunt Marge was worse than the one between Harry and his uncles. Harry did his best to control himself but he couldn’t stick to the deal because aunt Marge was always taunting him, saying that he was a disgrace and a failure because of his parents.

Losing control, Harry inflated his aunt and left the Dursleys’ house. Thankfully for himself, he was picked up by the Knight Bus, where he knew that Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban, being the first prisoner to be able to do so. The Knight Bus took him to the Leaky Cauldron, where Fudge, the Minister of Magic, told him not to worry about what he had done but that he had to stay in there until the start of the school.

Before going to Hogwarts, Harry eavesdropped Mr. and Mrs. Weasley saying that Sirius Black was after him. Before arriving at the school, the dementors, the guards of Azkaban, inspected the train, making Harry faint, while all the others had just feeling cold and that all the happiness had disappeared.

When the school started, they found out that Hagrid would be the new teacher of Care of Magical Creatures. In his first lesson, Hagrid showed them hippogriffs and Harry rode one. It could’ve been a great success if Malfoy followed Hagrid’s instructions, but he didn’t and he was attacked by Buckbeack, one of the hippogriffs. Moreover, in their first lesson of Divination, their teacher told everyone that Harry would die. Those two subjects were new for them but they had also a new teacher for Defense Against the Dark Arts: professor Lupin, which in his first lesson showed them how to face a boggart, a creature that would shift his form to what they feared the most.

The time went by and, one day, the Fat Lady, the woman in the painting who would ask for the password to enter in the Gryffindor common room, was attacked by Sirius Black. After that, the school was searched but nobody found anything. The Quidditch season was about to start and the Gryffindor team was training very hard for their first match, which they lost because the dementors invaded the field, making Harry fall from his broom, which fell in the Whomping Willow, that ripped it apart.

Harry was very sad, not only about it, but also because he couldn’t go to Hogsmeade. Seeing this, Fred and George Weasley handed the Marauder’s Map to Harry so he could sneak out of Hogwarts through one of the many secret passages to go to Hogsmeade. Some time later, he received the Firebolt, the fastest broom created, but he didn’t know who had sent it, so Hermione, fearing that it had been sent and bewitched by Black, told professor McGonagall, who confiscated it.

Before Christmas, Harry was told by Lupin that he would teach Harry to defend himself against the dementors but only after Christmas. He kept his word and, in the beginning of the second term, he taught Harry the Patronus Charm, which was like a shield made of happy memories so that the dementors would feed themselves with it.

Thankfully for Harry, it was confirmed that the Firebolt wasn’t bewitched, so he could use it in his matches against Ravenclaw and Slytherin, which Gryffindor won both. In the end of the year, they were informed that Buckbeak was sentenced to death. In the day of the beheading, they met Hagrid in his hut, where they also found Scabbers, Ron’s rat, which all of them thought was eaten by Hermione’s cat. They left Hagrid’s hut before the arrival of the men who had to be there to witness the death but they didn’t return to Gryffindor’s common room, because Scabbers ran away from them again. Ron chased it and caught it but the Grim, an enormous black dog, which was Harry’s death sign and which he had seen many times before, bit Ron’s leg and dragged him through the Whomping Willow.

Harry and Hermione had some trouble to get into the passage too but they were able to enter. In the end of the passage, they arrived at the Shrieking Shack, where there were Ron, Scabbers and Sirius Black, which they understood was an animagus because he could transform himself into the Grim whenever he wanted. A while later, Lupin and Snape arrived, respectively. They knocked out Snape and then Black, which was Harry’s godfather, told them that he wasn’t the responsible for the death of Harry’s parents but Peter Pettigrew was, who they thought was dead, but that, in reality, was Scabbers, because he also was an animagus. Before leaving the Shrieking Shack, Lupin transformed into his werewolf form because that night it was full moon night and he lost his control because he didn’t drink his potion.

Black, in his dog form, tried to face Lupin to protect the other from being bitten. He was successful but he was beaten very hard and Harry heard him in pain and he went after him to protect him from the dementors. He wasn’t able to hold much time against them but a wizard, he thought it was his dad, drove all the dementors away.

When they were back to their minds, since they passed out, Dumbledore heard their story and told them that more than one life could be saved if some things were changed. Harry didn’t understand what he said but Hermione did and she used her Time-turner to return to the past. While they were waiting, Hermione told Harry that she was attending all her classes using it and that they couldn’t be seen. They were able to save Buckbeak from death, Harry found out that the wizard that drove all the dementors away was himself and they were also able to save Black from death, being this the end of the book.

Highlights

In my opinion, this is once more pure genius from J. K. Rowling because she keeps telling her story with lots of details which we see merely as it but that are clues for what will happen. The way she does this is so smooth that, in the end, we can only see her as a pure genius. Moreover, we can see it from the very beginning:

- Harry saw the Grim walking with Hermione’s cat and later they found out that the cat was the reason why Sirius entered in the Gryffindor common room, because Neville lost the paper with the password, which was also told before

- The picture of Ron and Scabbers in the newspaper when he was with his family in Egypt was in the beginning of the book and it was the reason why Black managed to run away from Azkaban

- We should also mention that the author tells us in the first book that Scabbers doesn’t have a finger

- Throughout the whole book, Ron questions himself how can Hermione attend so many classes without missing any of them. These are just a few of the many examples we can find.