Four Questions I Have About “Prisoner of Azkaban”
Lately, I’ve been rereading the Harry Potter series, and right now I’m currently on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I really enjoy rereading Harry Potter, but I always seem to stop when I reach Prisoner of Azkaban. This book just feels like going home for me. I tend to focus on it so much that by the time I finish and attempt to read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I find that I can’t get the third book out of my head. I have so many questions about this book that I can’t stop thinking about.
Hogsmeade
After Harry runs away from the Dursleys without having his Hogsmede permission slip signed, he asks a few people to sign it instead of his Muggle relatives. Did Harry really think that the Minister of Magic would sign his Hogsmeade permission slip? Or Professor McGonagall? Or even the Dursleys? Honestly, I don’t really believe that any of them would be willing to do that even if Sirius Black wasn’t running around. Sometimes I really don’t understand what is going through Harry’s mind. I know that he was desperate, but he was asking people who would never agree to do that. If I were him, I would have either forged the signature myself or gone straight to Dumbledore, who may have agreed to bend the rules for him.
Wolfsbane Potion
One of the oddest moments in this book was when Professor Snape brought Remus a potion while he was having a chat with Harry. We later find out that it was Wolfsbane Potion, but that brings up even more questions. What was going through Severus Snape’s mind when he agreed to make the Wolfsbane Potion for Remus Lupin? There is some major bad blood going on between those two, and I can’t believe that Professor Snape would just offer to make the potion for Remus. It must have been a really difficult thing for him to do after how the Marauders treated him while they were attending Hogwarts. Did Dumbledore ask him to brew the potion? Was he bribed? Was he forced? I really wish that we could have seen more of their interactions to get these answers.
Boggart
The boggart scene is one of my favorites in this book. This whole chapter showed the Marauder side of Remus Lupin that we don’t get to see much in the series. It makes me wonder if Sirius ever found out about this when the two of them were reunited. Did Remus ever tell Sirius about Neville’s boggart? I’d like to believe that Sirius heard all about Snape wearing Mrs. Longbottom’s robes. Can you imagine Remus borrowing Dumbledore’s Pensieve just to show Sirius this memory? That would be amazing!
Pettigrew
One of the most questionable things about this book is how they handled Peter Pettigrew after the incident in the Shrieking Shack. Why didn’t they just stun Pettigrew instead of binding him? That would have solved all of their problems, and he would not have managed to escape from that on his own. They should have just stunned him and levitated him to the castle just like they were doing with Snape. They all knew that Pettigrew could just transform into a rat to escape, so why did they not prevent him from doing just that?
These are just a few things that I seem to think about every time I reread this book. Do you have any questions about things that happened in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban that you wish were answered? Let us know in the comments!
