B re-reads Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

OMG, I wish I could have sat down one morning and read this book cover to cover because that is just what I wanted to do! I took to reading it in the morning before going to work and it kept making me late! SO GOOD!

Prisoner of Azkaban was one of my favourite Harry Potter books, along with Half-Blood Prince (which I cannot WAIT to re-read). I’m not sure quite why I loved it above all others for so long. It contains just as much unpleasantness and evil. Ron is a complete prat to Hermione for most of the book. Poor Hermione. Yet somehow then this book feels different from the others. You get a sense of the characters maturing into young adults with all the issues that entails (Cho Chang fore-shadowing).

The story also feels more acceptable. The school year progresses relatively normally. There are lessons and Quidditch, and the students actually have exams. I enjoy the exams scenes. There are no monsters or mysterious cursed objects or overly-grand adventures. Events which characters have been working towards for the duration of the book occur, then the protagonists go back in time to fix them. Simple.

The final revelation scenes and then the do-over is still exciting, but somehow more tension laden because you know it’s all going to go wrong and you want to leap in and interject and stop it all going bad! Hurry up with the explanations! Don’t go out into the moonlight! Keep rats in cages, not pockets! My heart bleeds for Sirius and Harry at the end of it all.

Things I like about Prisoner of Azkaban:

1. That Voldemort doesn’t make an appearance and that Harry doesn’t have to battle him…again.
2. The dementors – which in my head look exactly like the ghost of christmas past from the Muppet’s Christmas Carol – are so vile and such fantastic creations. You can imagine them existing in our every-day world.
3. That we get to see the students sit exams.
4. Lupin!
5. Sirius!

Things I don’t like about Prisoner of Azkaban:

1. Ron being a dick.
2. The idea of carrying around a full-grown wizard for years as a pet. Eurgh.

Also, can I say? Sirius in the book – SO NOT SEXY. Sirius in the movies – hell yeah.

Sex symbol. Siriusly.