Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Book Summary

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Summary

*The article contains spoilers from the book: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third book of the famous seven-part series by J.K Rowling.

The book starts with the main character Harry at his home with his aunt, uncle and cousin.

His uncle’s sister is coming over whom he calls aunt Marge.

Harry absolutely hates her but he made a deal with his uncle that if he behaves his uncle has to sign his form. The whole time she was over everything went smoothly until the last night at dinner, his aunt marge starts to humiliate his dead parents. 

Angered by what she said he loses control and blows up his aunt then he takes all his luggage, his pet owl, his wand and leaves.

With no place to go, he sat alone on a bench but he got a feeling that he was being watched so he turned around and saw a huge black dog then he fell.

And immediately a triple-decker bus arrives out of nowhere from inside comes out a person from his late teens he announces himself as stan and tells harry about the one and only knight bus that takes lost wizards to their desired place.

 

Harry gets inside and asks to go to the leaky cauldron in the inn that guards the entrance of Diagon alley, the famous street that wizards shop at.

When arrived at the location he is surprised and scared to see the minister of magic waiting for him on the other side.

At first, Harry thought that he was here to punish Harry for blowing up his aunt since magic is restricted outside of school but that was not the case. He told Harry that they took care of the situation and that his aunt and uncle have accepted to take him back next summer though something seemed off with the way the minister was taking things.

Then the minister of magic made Harry promise to not go to the muggle street and to stay within Diagon alley.

After a few days Harry’s friends run and Hermione arrived though Hermione was alone, Ron was with his family and he tells harry that they went to Egypt to meet their oldest sibling bill, though from there his pet rat caught a fever so he, Ron and Hermione go to a pet shop in Diagon alley from where Hermione also buys a cat named Crookshanks who always goes after Ron’s sick rat scrubbers and annoys Ron.

After a while, Harry finds out that why the minister was so anxious about him running away was because Sirius black, the first-ever person to have ever broken out from the wizard prison, Azkaban, wants to kill Harry and he is also known as the dark lord most devoted follower who blasted of a whole street full of people.

While on his way to the Hogwarts Express, Ron’s father stopped harry and made him promise that no matter what happens or what he hears harry is not to go and chase Sirius black which made harry confused since he didn’t know why he would go chase someone who wants to kill him.

On the train, there are no empty seats so Harry, Ron and Hermione sit together in a compartment with a teacher. That is asleep, he is supposedly the new defense against the dark arts since that is the only position open.

On the train, Harry tells Ron and Hermione about Sirius black and how he wants to kill him but in the middle of the ride the train stops and all lights turn off. Outside Harry spots a weird creature. 

The teacher that was with them wakes up and faces that creature and says a spell that leads them away but before that Harry faints.

When he regains consciousness again, they go to Hogwarts, where he finds out that they are creatures named dementors that suck out people’s happy memories and that they guard the wizard prison Azkaban.

 

Everything goes normally until the Halloween feast, when they finish eating they go to the portrait of the fat lady who guards the entrance to the Gryffindor common room and they find her missing but not only that, there are claw marks on the painting.

They find her and she tells that Sirius black was here and when she denied it he got angry and attacked her, after that incident, she was too scared to come to her post again so instead they put the painting of a weird knight who kept changing passwords and annoying them which was trouble for their friend Neville who was forgetful and already was bad at remembering passwords.

After a while, one night they are all woken up by Ron’s screams and he claims that he saw Sirius black standing with a knife on the edge of his bed.

Which startled all of them and doubled the security inside and outside their school immediately.

Harry on the other hand tired after fainting every time he gets near a dementor asks their new defence against the dark arts teacher, professor Lupin to teach him how to fight dementors.

Lupin teaches him a spell called the Patronus charm that creates a form of happiness and chases away dementors but it is a really hard spell and even some grown wizards can produce a fully-fledged Patronus.

Then it’s finally time for another trip to a village called Hogsmeade but only those who have a signed form can go and since harry couldn’t get his form signed and the dark lord most trusted follower is after him, he has no chance but Ron’s older twin brothers Fred and George give Harry a magical map called the marauder’s map that tells the whereabouts of everyone in the school and also lists all the secret passageways, some that even the teachers don’t know about. With the help of the map and his father’s invisibility cloak, he gets to the village with no problem but there he overhears the supposed real reason about Sirius blacks intentions towards him.

Sirius Black was Harry’s fathers best friend but when his father and mother found out that the dark lord was after them, they hid away with baby harry and made Sirius their secret keeper but he betrayed them to lord Voldemort but when another one of Harry’s father’s friend came to take revenge, Sirius black killed him and blasted a whole street of innocent smugglers in the process but since then he’s been in Azkaban.

Angered by the truth he vows that he’s gonna get his revenge and goes with Ron and Hermione to their friend Hagrid’s house who is also the keeper of keys in the school and newly appointed caretaker of magical creatures.

There harry is surprised to find hagrid in tears, it turns out that one of the hippogriffs in the enchanted forest was sentenced to death 

Since it kicked Draco Malfoy, whose dad is really powerful but it wasn’t Buckbeak the hippogriffs fault since Draco was the one to anger him in the first place.

They leave Hagrid’s place since he didn’t want thirteen-year-olds to witness an execution so they go under the invisibility cloak just before the executioner, the minister and their principal arrive.

As they go back to their school Ron’s rat scrubbers escapes from his pocket Ron chases after it but just when he actually catches it a big black dog arrives, the same one harry saw before and it drags on to a secret passageway under the ferocious whomping willow and Harry and Hermione try to follow him miserably but Hermione’s cat comes to Dave the day when she touches a hidden knot the whole tree freezes and they are finally able to follow them down there.

Where they find Ron with a broken leg who claims that the dog is actually Sirius black and that he is an Animagus like their transfiguration teacher (a wizard who could take the form of an animal).

There they have a fight but suddenly professor lupin emerges inside and stops them, it turns out that lupin followed them via the marauder’s map that he confiscated from harry.

He asks Sirius black a series of weird questions then Harry Ron and Hermione are surprised to see lupin treating Sirius as a brother. Hermione gets angry and reveals that Lupin is actually a werewolf and that she figured it out by a series of things.

Lupin on the other hand is still calm and explains again the whole story but this time the true version. Harry’s father James, Sirius, Lupin and a wizard called Peter Pettigrew were very good friends but Lupin was scared that if they found out that he is a werewolf they would leave him so whenever it was time for the full moon. 

He would make some excuse and get away but since they were all so smart they found out themselves and instead of leaving they decided to secretly become an image to accompany him as animals since they could not as humans after all their adventures they decided to make the marauders map and that’s how lupin knows how to use it. 

When Harry was born his parents even named Sirius as his godfather but they already knew that there was someone close to the potters that were revealing their secrets to the dark lord so when they found out that the dark lord was planning to kill them, they hid and decided to make Sirius their secret keeper but instead, Sirius secretly suggested that they make Peter their secret keeper instead.

To Sirius it was the most perfect plan, everyone would think that it’s him but no one would even dream that they made their secret keeper a worthless, talentless person like him but it was Peter who was the traitor and he immediately told Lord Voldemort.

After witnessing the ruins of the potters home, Sirius went after peter Pettigrew but peter announced that Sirius was the traitor, killed a street full of people from behind, cut off his finger so people think he got obliterated as well then turned into a rat and escaped through the sewers while Sirius got blamed and arrested for everything that peter did and the reason why Sirius broke out of Azkaban was so that he could go after peter Pettigrew not harry.

Harry, Ron and Hermione didn’t fully believe it at first but as proof, they took Ron’s pet rat scrubbers who were trying very desperately to escape and did a spell that changed him into Peter Pettigrew. At first, he tried very desperately to clear his name but when that failed he started begging everyone to forgive him since he was scared of the dark lord and was only trying to please him so he does not get slaughtered but Sirius and Lupin round him up and get ready to kill him but just then harry stops them and says that his father wouldn’t have wanted them to be turned into killers just because of him.

So they decide to tie him up and give him to the dementors which would also prove Sirius is innocent.

As they are taking him up Sirius offers that Harry comes live with him since he is Harry’s godfather which excites Harry since he hated his aunt and uncle but when they get outside, it’s a full moon and Lupin gets turned into a werewolf. Sirius tries to control him and takes him into the forest but in all that commotion Peter turns again into a rat and escapes.

Harry goes after Sirius and there he finds a hard of dementors coming towards him and his godfather he tries to stop them but faints but just before he fully loses consciousness he sees a bright light.

Harry wakes up to find himself in the hospital ward with Ron and Hermione.

Ron is still asleep while Hermione like Harry is eavesdropping on the minister and their potions master Snape’s conversation.

It turns out that Sirius is arrested and they are about to perform the dementors kiss on him at any moment, the dementors kiss is a move that the dementors are allowed to do only when they have permission. The dementors basically suck out a person’s soul so the victim is alive but the outcome is worse than death.

After hearing that Harry and Hermione rush out to explain what really happened and prove that Sirius is innocent but unfortunately no one would believe the words of two thirteen-year-olds.

Just then their principal comes and says that he wants to have a private conversation with Harry and Hermione, then again they start storming him with the truth but he stops them and tells them that he believes Sirius but unfortunately, he cannot do anything then he leaves just after giving Hermione an unknown clue and Harry finds out the secret of Hermione’s unknown absences and mysterious appearances throughout the entire semester.

Since Hermione was taking too many classes as their head of the house, professor McGonagle gave her a time turner which allowed her to go back in time therefore she’d be able to have two classes at once.

So she and Harry go back in time but first, they go to Hagrid’s house to release Buckbeak the hippogriff without anyone knowing then they wait with him through the night.

Harry who was curious about what the light was about before he fainted went after himself and Sirius and hid behind a tree but then suddenly realization hits him and he casts a Patronus so powerful that it chased away all the dementors and harry also sees that his Patronus is a stag, the same form his father used to change into.

Then he and Hermione ride Buckbeak and go to where the principal told that Sirius was being held and they helped him escape on Buckbeak.

Harry and Hermione get back to the hospital ward just in time to meet their principal leaving after telling them their mission.

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HARRY POTTER TIMELINE

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