Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

by Zach Loavenbruck

Published in 1999, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third installment in her seven-book series. A pivotal book in the series, the Prisoner of Azkaban introduces several new characters who shed light on Harry’s past, facilitate a significant maturation of Harry’s character, and change the course of his future. This was one of my favorite turning points in the series. The novel opens, as usual, with Harry at his aunt and uncle’s house, where he struggles to maintain a level head while his uncle’s sister berates him for a variety of perceived disappointments. As an adolescent boy subjected to an overwhelming amount of stress, Harry loses his temper and inadvertently performs magic on the woman to halt her verbal abuse. Harry then runs away from home and spends the remainder of his summer at an inn in the magic world until he starts the new term at Hogwarts. During his stay at the inn, Harry overhears his best friend’s parents discussing a dangerous criminal’s escape from wizard prison and his suspected plot to hunt down and kill Harry. He also ascertains that this particular wizard is widely believed to have betrayed Harry’s parents and, essentially, caused their death. Through a subsequent sequence of plot twists and turns, Harry meets childhood friends of his parents, encounters conflicting accounts of their tragic demise, and is forced to decide who to trust. Once Harry decides in whom he can trust, he dares to hope for a more pleasant future with adults who promise to love and care for him, as opposed to the way his coldhearted aunt and uncle have treated him up to this point in his life. Unfortunately, just as Harry begins to imagine his much-improved future, it is hindered by the closed-minded prejudices of fearful authority figures. The loving adults who so recently entered his life are forced into exile and hiding. Harry is once again forced to decide, this time as to whether or not he should align himself with his headmaster, who has resolved to sidestep the authority of the wizard government for the sake of true justice, or quietly accept his loss and hope that someday wizard-government officials will realize his friends’ innocence. This third novel marks the beginning of a substantial change in Harry’s understanding of the world as he confronts serious and difficult decisions. It also marks the beginning of an emerging atmosphere of anxiety and distrust in the wizarding world that Harry must combat in later novels. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling expertly develops her characters and sets the stage for the final half of her epic.

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