Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN is the third book in the Harry Potter series so has Harry in his third year at Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

But before Harry can start his third year, he must once again spend the summer holidays with the Dursley family, his muggle relatives. They treat him so badly that eventually he loses control and blows up his aunt. He escapes into the night and is picked up by the magical night bus, but not before he sees the giant black dog for the first time.

The main news in the wizarding world is the escape of Sirius Black from the wizard prison – Azkaban. Harry soon finds out that Sirius was blamed for his parents’ death and is probably hunting Harry to kill him. The Azkaban prison guards, the dementors, are hunting for Sirius and have been stationed around Hogwarts. They are horrible creatures who have the ability to suck all the happiness out of anyone around them. They affect Harry more than others as they cause him to flash back to the death of his parents.

Harry has new classes in his third year, the main ones being divination and Care of Magical Creatures. But his friend Hermione seems to have taken every class there is (Harry and Ron can’t imagine how). Hermione has a new pet, a cat named Crookshanks, who has taken an interest in Ron’s rat Scabbers. This causes a lot of conflict between the friends. The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher this year is Remus Lupin and he is the best teacher that Harry has ever had and was also a friend of his father.

Eventually, Harry, Ron and Hermione come into contact with Sirius who is not at all what they have imagined. But then things go wrong and the trio need to put all of their magical skills and learning into practice to make things right.

 

This is one of the best books of this series. Harry is in many ways still an innocent child. It is in the next book that things start to become much darker. We got to know Hermione and also Hagrid much better in this book as well as finding out more about Harry’s tragic past. I particularly like Remus in this novel and really loved Hermione

I’m going to take a break before the next novel – HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE, unless I can’t stop myself from continuing.

 

Published 1999

 

See a full list of books by J.K. Rowling

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