History Fridge / HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban

* During the first Divination class, Ron's prediction for Harry boils down to: "You're gonna suffer, but you're gonna be happy about it." It's actually subtle foreshadowing for Harry's confrontation with the Dementor swarm: They cause him great suffering, but he defeats them by thinking happy thoughts.

* Speaking of Lupin, one of his most well-known traits is his great love for chocolate. Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, and by association, ''wolves''. What if the real reason Lupin loved the sweet so much was because he thought it could kill the wolf part of him, bit by bit?

* Hermione's Boggart is Professor [=McGonagall=] telling her she's failed everything. She's not just afraid of academic underachievement, but also general failure and being inadequate. As a young Muggle-born, she's terrified of being expelled from Hogwarts. On top of that, the Boggart takes the form of [=McGonagall=], Hermione's favourite teacher.

* Why was the Dementor's Kiss used as punishment instead of death? It prevents people from just coming back as ghosts.

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** On the other end of that, imagine spending more than a decade as a pet rat in a house in a bunch of wizard children. Particularly Fred and George, who were given to experimenting and playing pranks (so much so that they scarred Ron for life by turning one of his stuffed animals into a spider when they were about ''five''.) Heck, even Ron himself had no qualms about trying magic on him.

* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's mind, [[spoiler:but the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.]] Alternatively, July 31st is the middle of winter... ''[[ProphecyTwist in the southern hemisphere]]''.

* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's mind, [[spoiler:but the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.]] Alternatively, July 31st is midwinter... ''[[ProphecyTwist in the southern hemisphere]]''.

* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's mind, [[spoiler:but the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.]]

* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter Solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's mind, [[spoiler:but instead the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.]]

* Snape always desired to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, so he probably only agreed to brew the Wolfsbane Potion every month for his Lupin in exchange for substituting for Lupin on full moons.

* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter Solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's mind, [spoiler:but instead the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.]]

* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter Solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's "mind," but instead the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.

* Why does Hermione struggle at Divination, despite being skilled at every other subject? Because she is narrow-minded and logical, and Divination requires predicting the future by considering many possible outcomes of a situation (even unlikely ones), and accept that all of them have a chance of happening. As Dumbledore says, "The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.

* The first time Sirius breaks into Hogwarts is on Halloween, coincidentally the same date that Lily and James were murdered. [[spoiler:Imagine sneaking around the castle you and your three best friends grew up in, trying to break into your old common room to avenge the death of one of those friends by killing another; all on the anniversary of James's death.]] No wonder he got so angry when the Fat Lady wouldn't let him in.
* In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on July 31st, so how? Midwinter does not just mean the middle of winter. Trelawney could have been (subconsciously) referring to the more traditional use of the word, with the meaning of "at or around the winter solstice". Winter Solstice is the 22nd of December, far from Harry's birthday, but a birthday near Winter Solstice is December 31st, the birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's "mind," but instead the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.
* You know the 'thing you are dreading will happen on the 16 of October' prophecy given to Lavender? Hermione attempts to use it to prove that Trelawney is a fraud; Lavender couldn't have been dreading what happened (her rabbit dying), as it came as a shock to her. However, the prophecy makes perfect sense if you assume one thing: it was a SelfFulfillingProphecy! Lavender wasn't dreading her rabbit dying, but ''something bad happening on October 16'', as per Trelawney's prophecy. And something did: she got the news of her rabbit dying.

** Despite handing chocolate out frequently, Lupin never eats it himself. Why? Because as a werewolf, he might suffer from theobromine poisoning from chocolate, as both wolves and dogs do.
** It also fits Remus’ character: carrying around something that can bring happiness to others but he can’t use himself.
** Also, since he's powerful and skilled enough to use the Patronus charm to fight a Dementor, he may not need the mood-enhancer as much as his more vulnerable students.
* When Snape confronts Sirius at the Shrieking Shack, he says: "Give me a reason. Give me a reason to do it and I swear I will." This may seem solely stemmed from Sirius almost getting Snape eaten by a werewolf, but fast forward to ''Deathly Hallows'' and [[spoiler:Harry's tour through Snape's memories shows him that Snape was in love with Lily]], which puts a whole new spin on the conversation. Like the rest of the magical world, Snape believed that Sirius betrayed the Potters and was responsible for [[spoiler:Lily's death]]. He only found out the truth after meeting Voldemort two hours after the Triwizard final and seeing Pettigrew there. Snape and Sirius are more civil to each other after this, but still obviously carry grudges.
* At first, Voldemort offering to spare Lily's life seems unimportant. Then ''Deathly Hallows'' rolls around and [[spoiler:Snape admits he begged Voldemort to spare her. Voldemort agreed to spare Lily if she let him kill Harry, but she refused and offered ''herself'' in place. Voldemort essentially accepted the bargain and then went back on it, ''which was why the spell backfired.'' Because Snape asked for Lily to live, Harry became the Chosen One! It could never have been anyone else.]]

* When Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Ginny are confronted by the Dementor on the Hogwarts Express, Harry passes out because, as Lupin later states to him: "There are horrors in your past that others don't have." Of the other four kids, the one most affected is Ginny, "who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as Harry felt". Not much emphasis is put on this because she's only ''two months'' removed from having been MindRaped by Diary Horcrux-Voldemort. Lastly, Neville was very pale and had a higher voice than normal, which foreshadows the reveal of his parents having been tortured into insanity by Voldemort and no longer recognizing him.

** The black dog is also [[https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=gljuh a euphemism for suicide]], fitting for several reasons. Firstly, the Dementors herald Sirius’ arrival, the incarnation of depression and despair making way for thoughts of suicide. Second, Sirius offers Harry [[spoiler:a “way out” of his life with the Dursleys]] that, due to the blood protection of living with them, was ultimately a false hope that would never succeed and may have put Harry in more peril. Third, Sirius causes James, Peter, and himself to take actions that directly lead to their own deaths: convincing James to [[spoiler:secretly make Peter the Secret-Keeper]], which led to James being betrayed to Voldemort and murdered; attempting to murder Peter, which led to him [[spoiler:running away to rejoin Voldemort out of fear]]; and then [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves being murdered by his own Voldemort-gifted hand]] and taunted and toyed with Bellatrix Lestrange, which led to [[spoiler:her cursing him into the Veil and killing him]]. James, Peter, and Sirius all die because of their fatal flaws: their [[FantasticRacism house pride and prejudice]], their [[DirtyCoward cowardice]], and their SuicidalOverconfidence, respectively. Haunted by the black dog indeed.

* Harry's dad was the genius behind the three animagi -- an incredibly difficult transfiguration to pull off which he pulled off as a teen (as did Rita Skeeter). Back in ''Philosopher's Stone'', Ollivander described Daddy Potter's wand as "good for transfiguration." Wand and wizard were more than just good; they were exceptional. Exceptional enough that with James' and Sirius' help, mediocre Peter, whom [=McGonagall=] often was harsh with, managed to pull it off by 4th or 5th year. Giving [=McGonagall=] yet another reason to kick herself in the backside mentally when she found out.
** Rita may have been a natural at the animagus spell, just as Gilderoy Lockhart, who was by all accounts a fraction of an inch from being a squib, was a natural at memory modification charms.
* Why does Voldemort have so much control over Dementors, and why don't Dementors seem to affect him like everyone else? Voldemort's soul is so tiny that the Dementors see a creature similar to them, and thus are more likely to follow him! Also, his soul is so small that the Dementors wouldn't get much out of it (coupled with Voldemort's Horcruxes protecting it). On the flip-side, the reason Harry is ''so'' affected by Dementors and why they always seem to go for him is that Harry is established as having a particularly powerful soul, full of all the things that Voldemort has ignored in his pursuit of immortality. To the Dementors, they see something so unlike them that they need to put it out. To consume Harry's soul would be like a rare feast, since his heart is full of the things that Dementors feed on. Add to this the fact that [[spoiler:Harry technically has two souls in his body due to the Horcrux]] and they're basically getting a free dessert with their meal.
* Several people mention that Dumbledore dislikes Dementors. He lets them guard the school, but bars them from entering the grounds. This seems perfectly reasonable - Dementors are, after all, nasty creatures. But there is also a personal reason: [[spoiler:Everytime the Dementors are near Dumbledore, he has to relive Ariana's death.]]
* On the American English hardback jacket, the preview gives plenty of information on Sirius FromACertainPointOfView. It implies guilt without stating it as fact. Additionally, the last sentences are: "Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst". At the bottom of this fold in the jacket is a rat which, [[LawOfConservationOfDetail unlike everything else on the cover]], is small and casts a large shadow. It's even standing on its hind legs.
* Every animagus turns into an animal indicative of their true personality: James became a stag and was a proud leader; Sirius became a dog and was very loyal, a prized trait in dogs; and Peter became a rat, suspicious and parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease. Also, to "rat on" someone is to betray them by informing the authorities of a crime or misdeed they committed. Rita Skeeter, the life-ruining IntrepidReporter, became a beetle, which are often seen as pests. As for [=McGonagall=], cats are often regarded as [[CatsAreSuperior proud, aloof, austere and intelligent,]] which certainly fits her as a SternTeacher and IronLady. Also, [[CatsAreMagic cats are often connected to magic]], and [=McGonagall=] is the Hogwarts professor that introduces Muggle-borns to magic.
* Hermione's boggart is Professor [=McGonagall=] telling her she's failed everything. She's not just afraid of academic underachievement, but also general failure and being inadequate. As a young Muggle-born, she's terrified of being expelled from Hogwarts. On top of that, the boggart takes the form of [=McGonagall=], Hermione's favourite teacher. Imagine being introduced as an eleven-year-old to this marvellous world parallel to the one you've grown up in and where you make real friends for the first time in your life... only to have it stripped away at age 13 by the teacher that you respect the most.
* After Snape confiscates and attempts to read the Marauders Map, he calls Lupin and asks if he believes Harry may have gotten the map from the makers. It's not obvious at the time, but he's indirectly accusing Lupin of giving Harry the map; after all, he went to school with the Marauders and knows the nicknames they gave themselves (not to mention he was likely insulted by them in the same way as the map). Lupin eventually says, "I'll take this (the map) back, shall I?", even though he hasn't held it at any point during the conversation. Of course, Lupin is one of the owners.
* Harry remarks in his farewell to Lupin that none of his actions "made any difference". In a way, this makes it something of a ShaggyDogStory. Who was the Prisoner of Azkaban? A Shaggy Dog. Lupin rebuffs this, claiming Harry "made all the difference in the world". What seemed like a Shaggy Dog Story at first was actually something much more meaningful.

* Why is Hermione's meeting with [=McGonagall=] [[spoiler:about the Time Turner]] so quick? [[spoiler:They used the Time Turner to go back after the conversation was over so Hermione could learn how to use it!]]
* After transforming into a dog to fight Lupin and find Peter, Sirius ends up incapacitated by the Dementors to the point where he changes back into a human. They normally didn't really affect him; transforming into a dog is one of the things that minimized their effects. When Sirius was in Azkaban, he had no happiness for them to drain from him, whereas here he had just proved his innocence to his friend and made plans to live with Harry. It was this overwhelming happiness that made him extremely vulnerable to the Dementors.

* Why does Harry have such a negative reaction to the Dementors? He's not just hearing his mother’s voice as she was protecting him, but the Dementors are also forcing the piece of Voldemort to relive its worst memory as well: the memory of being ripped apart by the curse that backfired. This also becomes Fridge Horror when you realize that both memories are ''Voldemort's''.
* Lupin is one of the few whom deliberately perform wandless magic when he conjures fire on the train, so it seems to be either a rare skill or just not something most people bother with. Why would he have learned how to do it? Without the Wolfsbane Potion, he transforms and probably can't have his wand with him. So doing basic spells without an expensive, breakable, and gnawable wand would be really really useful.
* Why does Harry's Patronus become so powerful when he and Hermione use the Time-Turner to save Sirius? He's had time to think about how wonderful a life away from the Dursleys and with Sirius would be, even describing how it would feel to Hermione as they watched and waited for things to go wrong.
* In the film, just as Werewolf-Lupin is about to attack Harry, the sound of a female werewolf draws him away. Hermione is able to perform such a call because she was the only student to do the essay that Snape assigned while covering for Lupin.
* Trelawney's prophecy contains a subtle hint of Sirius' innocence. She says that "tonight, before midnight... the servant will break free." However, Sirius is ''already'' free, having broken out of Azkaban months ago. Pettigrew, on the other hand, is still in his self-inflicted rat body and finally returns to human form that night.
* In the film, the music Lupin plays during the Boggart lesson seems silly at first. But then you realise he's trying to keep the mood light and relax the students.

* Why does Hermione struggle at Divination, despite being skilled at every other subject? Because she is narrow-minded and logical, and Divination requires predicting the future by considering many possible outcomes of a situation (even unlikely ones), and accept that all of them have a chance of happening. As Dumbledore says, "The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed." Hermione tends to fixate on only a select few but likely outcomes, and [[AgentScully dismiss]] ones that logically only have a very small chance of occurring. Something completely unexpected occurring [[DidntSeeThatComing catches her completely off-guard,]] since she did not consider it.
* Lupin stops Harry's boggart from emerging by stepping between them... and the boggart changes into a full moon.
* Trelawney making a big panic about 'when thirteen dine together, the first to rise shall be the first to die' is played for laughs, as Trelawney sits down, and later Harry and Ron get up at the same time. However, there were actually ''fourteen'' people sitting around the table before Trelawney arrived. The thirteenth was ''Pettigrew'', in his Scabbers disguise. [[spoiler:Dumbledore gets up to greet Trelawney as she enters. Unless the unnamed students died at some point before ''Half-Blood Prince'', the first one among that thirteen to die is...]]

** It also metaphors Harry's entire life. He goes through a zillion different layers, levels, and kinds of Hell. But eventually, [[spoiler:he did [[EarnYourHappyEnding earn that happy ending.]]]]
* Harry tells Hermione that he managed to perform the Patronus charm to save Sirius because, due to time-travel hijinks, he 'had already done it before... [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble does that make sense]]?'. He was telling the truth; in the Quidditch game between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, Harry shot something large and bright out of his wand at the (fake) Dementors. He was too focused on the game to pay attention, but he did cast a full-fledged Patronus, and his joy and determination during the game was enough that he didn't have to focus on one happy thought. As Lupin said before, a Quidditch match was basically the idea of a feast of emotions for Dementors.
* Snape always desired to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, so he probably only agreed to brew the Wolfsbane Potion every month for his old enemy Lupin in exchange for substituting for Lupin on full moons.

* Sirius explains that the main reason that he was able to survive the effects of Azkaban was that as a dog, his emotions aren't as complex, indicating perhaps that nonhumans hold up against Dementor proximity better than humans do - or even maybe that Dementors don't register emotions from nonhumans as strongly as they do from humans. Given the next book's reveal of Hagrid as a [[HalfHumanHybrid half-giant]], is it possible that this was the reason that Hagrid returned from his imprisonment (albeit a short one) in Book 2, shaken but also able to recover?

** The Patronus Charm was implied to be a N.E.W.T. level spell that really only had one primary use, and that was driving off dementors. Why was Lupin of all people such an expert when dementors, up until recently, were rare to run across in civilized society outside of Azkaban? Remember, Lupin's a known werewolf, and, as we would come to find out later, Umbridge, who hates werewolves and is specifically mentioned as drafting anti-werewolf legislation in the Ministry, was not above dispatching Dementors to 'take care of' people she didn't like. So... there's that.
*** It was previously mentioned that Dementors were on Voldemort's side during the Wizarding War and that the Order of the Phoenix used a method that Dumbledore came up with to use Patroni for communication, so most members would learn the spell to communicate and to ward off the Dementors since they were working for Voldemort at the time. All members would or should be experts on the spell.
* One of the books Harry reads mentions the witch burnings and about how they were ineffective because any ''real'' witch or wizard would just cast a protective charm on themselves. Which is very nice... for the wizards whose captors helpfully left them their wands and the freedom to use their hands. For those who were searched and tied properly, on the other hand... Then there's the fact that ''dozens'' of Muggles must have been mistaken for witches and wizards, and subjected to burning...and the real wizards did (or could do) nothing to help them... As well as the children, wizards and witches too young to learn how to control their powers or cast proper spells: as Literature/TheTalesOfBeedleTheBard has one of its notes pointing out, the majority of the actual witches or wizards caught and executed were children who were at a constant danger of giving themselves away with their random acts of magic, and magical families tended to lose young members often.

* The scene where Sirius and Lupin interrogate Pettigrew and give him a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech starts out as well-deserved but gets scary after the two openly admit to planning to KILL Pettigrew, especially when we have every reason to believe that they would have done it, had Harry not intervened (admittedly, just to have Pettigrew submitted to a FateWorseThanDeath in Azkaban and probably to clear Sirius' name by showing everyone the very person Sirius was supposed to have killed. This is hammered home by the Ministry of Magic song "Marauder's Map".) The casual way they discuss killing Pettigrew is very disturbing as well as the fact that they had no problem trying to do it in front of Harry, Ron and Hermione. Sure, the bastard may had deserved it but that doesn't change the fact that three kids would've had to see two adults (one of whom they'd considered a mass murderer a while ago and the other, a respected and trusted teacher) murder someone in cold blood. Plus there's no guarantee that producing Pettigrew's body would've cleared Sirius's name since as Pettigrew mentioned, the officials could claim that Pettigrew had chosen to hide himself from Voldemort spy and mass murderer Sirius
* Sirius has been living off rats. Peter's animagus form is a rat. Sirius really wants Peter dead. Make of all that what you will.
** That coupled with the fact that rats are numerous and probably pretty easy to catch for a dog of Sirius' size even when Sirius is weakened from 12 years of prison. Rats being numerous and inconspicuous is probably also why Peter even kept using the animagus transformations (Lupin and Sirius theorize he ''started'' out as a rat because they all wanted to help Lupin and werewolves, stags and dogs all being big they needed someone who could free up the path by touching that one spot on the Whomping Willow.)
* If Snape had died as a result of Sirius' "prank", three guesses what would have happened to Lupin. (Also, Dumbledore would have been discredited and most likely arrested for Hogwarts' institutionalised child endangerment finally killing someone) Sirius still shows no sign of remorse for this.
** Also, Sirius ''doesn't'' face expulsion or a severe punishment for this (or at least, it's never alluded to him receiving one). Makes you wonder, if all the time Snape spent being bullied by the Midnight Marauders and seeing them receive ''no consequences'' whatsoever from the teachers, hasn't influenced Snape's later bullying personality in a huge way. No, it's not remotely right that he became a bully - but from his perspective, his own bullies thrived a lot better than he did, among other things being more beloved than he.
* Dementors bring back the worst memories and moments of our lives with their very presence. Ginny Weasley looks especially shaken after her encounter with them on the Hogwarts Express. They probably made her re-live doing horrible things while being possessed by Tom Riddle.
* During Harry's first tutoring session with the dementor!boggart, Harry hears his mother and father's voice for the first time in a decade. When Harry tells Lupin about it, he freezes and whispers, "You heard James?" He must have missed his best friend so much.
* In this book, Draco learns Harry has an invisibility cloak, and he sits on this information for almost three years before making use of it. When Harry attempts to spy on him in HBP, Draco uses ''Petrificus Totalus'' on him, breaks his nose, leaves him bleeding and frozen under his own invisibility cloak, and almost ends his school year right then. That speaks volumes about Draco's patience, and that trait for Slytherins as a whole. Instead of being a straight up bully, who would pound Harry the next time he saw him, he withheld his knowledge of that information and only used it when the time was right. When you consider how many opportunities he had to seriously screw Harry over during those three years in between, it becomes scary.
* Professor Lupin steps in before Harry can face the boggart, so we see his own, instead: the full moon, which the students mistake for a crystal ball. It's all pretty harmless. But return to this chapter later, having read ''Order of the Phoenix'' where Molly's boggart takes the form of her children and husband, murdered, you realise how very lucky this class of thirteen-year-olds was that their teacher's greatest fear was so inoffensive.
* After completing the series: try reading the confrontation between Snape and the others in the Shrieking Shack [[spoiler: with the knowledge that Snape will eventually die in that very room]], and see if it ''doesn't'' give you cold chills.
* Harry's boggart copies a Dementor's abilities accurately enough that Harry has the same reaction to the boggart as he does to the real thing, including the same cold feeling and hearing his parents' voices. If this mimicry of the magical properties of the shape it assumes is taken as standard for boggarts (or even if it just copies the effects the person fears most), then Lupin being exposed to his own boggart - the full moon - for more than a few seconds in a class full of children could potentially have horrific consequences. It's also probably a good thing none of the petrification victims from last year have a basilisk boggart!
** Even if the boggart's imitation is weaker than the real thing (as a real dementor is said to be much worse than the boggart version), a boggart full moon triggering any sort of wolf-y response in Lupin would reveal his furry little problem to a class full of kids, some of who would definitely write home to tell their parents about the werewolf DADA teacher who nearly transformed while teaching them. Given the wizarding world's general attitude towards werewolves at the best of times, Lupin would likely face far harsher consequences than simply losing his job if such a thing happened.
* On subsequent read-throughs of the series, the scene where the Dementors are introduced is even harsher when thinking about some of the trauma that befell characters that, at this point in the series were either minor or not introduced yet. It's mentioned, almost in passing, that Ginny was 'shaking like mad'... ''well, of course she was.'' She was only a few months removed from Voldemort-induced MindRape and nearly DyingAlone in a secret Hogwarts dungeon. Somewhere on that train, as well, was a twelve-year-old Luna, and once you find out in Book 5 ''why'' she can see Thestrals[[note]]At age 9, she watched her mother die in front of her, in implicitly sudden and[=/=]or violent fashion[[/note]] if you put two and two together, it's fairly easy to figure out what she had to relive if the Dementors got too close to her. And, given her age at the time (compared to Harry being barely a year old), her memories would have been ''far'' more vivid.
* ''The whole concept of Azkaban Prison'' is messed up - and adding the Dementors takes it from messed up to inhumane. Just about any prison is already an isolating, depressing place where people spend a lot of time alone with their own thoughts. Given that the Dementors are themselves basically clinical depression taken physical(ish) form... that raises ''a lot'' of horrifying questions. Assuming that wizard criminals also go to Azkaban for sentences less than indeterminate life (which would probably be most of them)… those wizards will be released back to society eventually. But how many people were sentenced to shorter stints in Azkaban, maybe for lesser crimes, but were [[SanitySlippage never the same]] after that? How many people [[DrivenToSuicide didn't even make it]] [[DeathByDespair to the end of their sentence?]] And given what happened to Hagrid and Sirius (and what ''almost'' happened to Harry himself later), how many of those people were sent there wrongly in the first place - perhaps even due to bias and the Ministry's FascistButInefficient tendencies?
** Also, is agreeing to let the Dementors [[FateWorseThanDeath kiss]] 'capital' offenders the way the Ministry has secured the Dementors' services in the first place? From the POV of the Dementors, being assigned as an Azkaban guard really isn't that great of a gig. You're confined to one place, and although it would seem that you'd have a large smorgasbord of happy thoughts and memories to feast on, it's probably more like being locked in a pantry closet with a diminishing supply of snacks. Dementors feed on happiness, and prison isn't a happy place. A lot of those prisoners have been there long enough for the Dementors to suck everything out of them but the soul itself. And there are a lot of Dementors, so you're stuck in this small pantry closet with a hundred of your closest friends, with someone throwing donuts (i.e. new prisoners) into the closet every once in a blue moon that are in theory supposed to keep everyone satiated but never really do. How bad did the Ministry screw things up by entering a contract with the Dementors in the first place? They only had two choices - allow them run of Britain (where, given their AlwaysChaoticEvil tendencies, you would've wound up with a lot of people with their souls sucked out - including potentially even Muggles and ''kids'') or confine them to Azkaban where they wouldn't be entirely satisfied and would just be biding their time until someone came along with the requisite power and sociopathy to let them roam free - at which point they'd all be slightly hungry and pissed off, to boot.

* Sirius explains that the main reason that the

* On subsequent read-throughs of the series, the scene where the Dementors are introduced is even harsher when thinking about some of the trauma that befell characters that, at this point in the series were either minor or not introduced yet. It's mentioned, almost in passing, that Ginny was 'shaking like mad'... ''well, of course she was.'' She was only a few months removed from Voldemort-induced MindRape and nearly DyingAlone in a secret Hogwarts dungeon. Somewhere on that train, as well, was a twelve-year-old Luna, and once you find out in Book 5 ''why'' she can see Thestrals[[note]]At age 9, she watched her mother die in front of her, in implicitly sudden and[=/=]or violent fashion[[/note]] if you put two and two together, it's fairly easy to figure out what she had to relive if the Dementors got too close to her. And, given her age at the time, her memories would have been ''far'' more vivid.

* Hermione's boggart is Professor [=McGonagall=] telling her she's failed everything. She's not just afraid of academic underachievement, but also general failure and being inadequate. As a young Muggle-born, she's terrified of being expelled from Hogwarts. On top of that, the boggart takes the form of [=McGonagall=], Hermione's favourite teacher. Imagine being introduced as an eleven-year-old to this marvellous world parallel to the one you've grown up in and where you make real friends for the first time in your life... and then have it snatched away at age 13.

* The first time Sirius breaks into Hogwarts is on Halloween, which coincidentally is the same date that Lily and James were murdered. [[spoiler:Imagine, sneaking around the castle you and your three best friends grew up in, trying to break into your old common room to avenge the death of one of those friends by killing another one of them; all on the anniversary of James's death.]] No wonder he had such a violent outburst when the Fat Lady wouldn't let him in.
* In Harry's Divination lesson Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Now, he was born on July 31st, so that doesn't make any sense. But, Midwinter might not mean the middle of winter, Trelawney could have been (subconsciously or otherwise) referring to the more traditional use of the word, with the meaning of "at or around the winter solstice". This is still stupid, because Winter Solstice is like the 22nd of December, so still not close to Harry's B-Day. But a birthday near the Winter Solstice is December 31st. The birthday of Tom Riddle. Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's "mind," but rather reading off of the bit of Voldemort's soul within him.
* You know the 'thing you are dreading will happen on the 16 of October' prophecy, to Lavender? Hermione uses it to prove that Trelawney is a fraud, as Lavender couldn't have been dreading what happened (her rabbit dying), as it came as a shock to her. But, the prophecy makes perfect sense if you assume one thing: it was a SelfFulfillingProphecy! Lavender wasn't dreading her rabbit dying, which probably didn't happen on the 16th (she only got the news then), and came as a shock, but ''something bad happening on October 16'', as per Trelawney's prophecy. And something did: she got the news of her rabbit dying.
* Lupin regularly hands Harry chocolate after a Dementor attack and insists it will make him feel better. Chocolate contains amino acids that encourage the production of dopamine, which is a chemical that in very simple terms makes you happier. It's a known anti-depressant. Probably the best way to help recover from a creature that literally sucks the happiness out of you, creatures thematically based on depression.
** Despite handing chocolate out frequently, Lupin never eats it himself. Why? Because as a werewolf, he is partly wolf, and might suffer from theobromine poisoning from chocolate, as both wolves and dogs do.
** That fits Remus’ character, carrying around something that can bring happiness to others, but he can’t use himself.
* When Snape confronts Sirius at the Shrieking Shack, he says: "Give me a reason. Give me a reason to do it and I swear I will." Pretty harsh, but remember, this is the guy that almost got Snape eaten by a werewolf. Then in ''Goblet of Fire'' and ''Order of The Phoenix'', they're a bit more civil to each other, but still obviously carrying grudges. Fast forward to ''Deathly Hallows'', [[spoiler:and Harry's magical mystery tour through Snape's memories shows him that Snape was in love with Lily]]. Like the entire rest of the magical world, Snape had thought that '''Sirius''' betrayed the Potters and was responsible for [[spoiler:Lily's death]], and only found out the truth after Voldemort's return (when he went to Voldemort two hours after the Triwizard final and would have seen Pettigrew there). This instantly did two things: put a whole new spin on that entire confrontation, and made you realize how far in advance JKR had planned out the whole thing.
* At first that Voldemort's line "Stand aside, you foolish girl" and offering to spare Lily's life seems unimportant. Then ''Deathly Hallows'' rolls around, and [[spoiler:Snape admits he begged Voldemort for Lily's life. Because of this, he offered to spare Lily if she let him kill Harry, and ''she'' offered herself in place. When he killed her, he essentially accepted the bargain, and then went back on it, ''which was why the spell backfired.'' Because Snape asked for Lily to live, Harry is the Chosen One! It could never have been anyone else.]] ''That'' is brilliant.
* Why the Dementor's Kiss was used as punishment instead of death: People can just come back as ghosts if their soul isn't harmed.
* When Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Ginny are confronted by the Dementor on the Hogwarts Express in ''Prisoner of Azkaban'', Harry passes out because, to paraphrase Lupin's later quote: "There are horrors in Harry's past that the others don't have." However, remember that of the other four kids, the one most affected is Ginny, "who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as Harry felt". Not much emphasis is put on this, but the reason is that she's ''only two months removed'' from having been MindRaped by Diary Horcrux-Voldemort. Also Neville was very pale and his voice was higher then normal. Neville's parents were tortured into insanity and can no longer recognize him, thats pretty traumatic.
* When reading ''Prisoner of Azkaban'', Sirius's nickname Padfoot seems just a sort of pun like the rest of them, because dogs have padded feet. Now, after looking into some of the British Isles mythology, the black dog is a death avatar that goes by many different names. One of them happens to be Padfoot. Now Trelawney's prediction makes a lot more sense. Sirus also is a death avatar; his friends from school all die rather violent deaths, so does Harry, and his cousin Tonks.
** The black dog is also [[https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=gljuh a euphemism for suicide]], fitting for several reasons. Firstly, the Dementors herald Sirius’ arrival, the incarnation of depression and despair making way for thoughts of suicide. Second, Sirius offers Harry [[spoiler: a “way out” of his life with the Dursleys]] that, due to the blood protection of living with them, was ultimately a false hope that would never succeed and might have put Harry in more peril. Third, Sirius’ causes James, Peter, and himself to take actions that directly to their own deaths. Sirius convinced James to [[spoiler: secretly make Peter the Secret-Keeper]] which led to James being betrayed to Voldemort and murdered, attempted to murder Peter, which led to Peter [[spoiler:running away to rejoin Voldemort out of fear,]] and then [[RewardedAsATraitorDeserves being murdered by his own Voldemort-gifted hand]] and taunted and toyed with Bellatrix Lestrange, which led to [[spoiler:her cursing him into the Veil, killing him]]. Each of the characters' fatal flaws (James' [[FantasticRacism house pride & prejudice]], Peter's [[DirtyCoward cowardice]] and Sirius' SuicidalOverconfidence means they cause their own death. Haunted by the black dog indeed.
* The Marauders are first mentioned in ''Prisoner of Azkaban'' in the order "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs". This just happens to be [[spoiler:the reverse of the order in which they die - James first, then fourteen years later Sirius, then two years later Peter at Malfoy Manor, then a few weeks later Remus during the final battle.]]
* Harry's dad was the genius behind the three animagi -- an incredibly difficult transfiguration to pull off [no comment on how Rita Skeeter did it] which he pulled off as a teen. Back in Book one, Ollivander described Daddy Potter's wand as "good for transfiguration." Wand and wizard were more than just good; they were exceptional. Exceptional enough that with James' and Sirius' help, mediocre Peter whom [=McGonagall=] often was harsh with, managed to pull it off by the time they were in 4th or 5th year. Giving [=McGonagall=] yet another reason to kick herself in the backside mentally when she found out.

* Why Voldemort has so much control over Dementors, and why Dementors don't seem to affect him like everyone else: Voldemort's soul is so tiny, the Dementors see a creature similar to them, and thus, are more likely to follow him! Also, the fact that his soul is so small means that the Dementors wouldn't get much out of it (and the Horcruxes might also mean they actually can't feed on it). On the flip-side, the reason Harry is so affected by Dementors, and why they always seem to go for him: Harry is established as having a ''particularly'' powerful soul, full of all the things that Voldemort has ignored in his pursuit of immortality. To the Dementors, they see something so unlike them, that they need to put it out, to consume Harry's soul would be like a rare feast, since his heart is full of the things that Dementors feed on. Add to this the fact that [[spoiler:Harry technically has two souls in his body due to the Horcrux]] and it's like they're getting a free dessert with their meal.
* Several different people mention that Dumbledore dislikes Dementors. While he lets them guard the school, he doesn't let them enter the grounds and is furious when they do. This seems perfectly reasonable - Dementors are, after all, nasty creatures - but there is a simpler explanation: [[spoiler:Every time the Dementors come near him, Dumbledore has to relive Ariana's death.]]
* On the American English hardback jacket, the preview information gives plenty of information on Sirius, FromACertainPointOfView. It implies guilt, but does not explicitly state it as fact. Additionally, the last sentences are "Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst". At the bottom of this fold in the jacket is a rat, which [[LawOfConservationOfDetail unlike everything else on the cover]], is small, casts a large shadow, and seems unnecessary. It's even standing on its hind legs.
* Every animagus in the series turns into an animal indicative of his or her true personality. James became a stag, a proud leader (plus possible Bambi references). Sirius became a dog, and he was very loyal, a prized trait in dogs. Peter Pettigrew became a rat, Wikipedia has them as "vicious, unclean, parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease" and further comments "It is a term (noun and verb) in criminal slang for an informant - "to rat on someone" is to betray them by informing the authorities of a crime or misdeed they committed. Describing a person as "rat-like" usually implies he or she is unattractive and suspicious." Rita Skeeter, the life-ruining IntrepidReporter, became a beetle, which are often seen as pests. As for [=McGonagall=], cats are often regarded as [[CatsAreSuperior proud, aloof, austere and intelligent,]] which certainly fits her as a SternTeacher and IronLady.
** [[CatsAreMagic Cats are often connected to magic]], and who is the Hogwarts professor that introduces Muggle-borns to magic? [=McGonagall=], who becomes a cat.
* Hermione's boggart is Professor [=McGonagall=] telling her she's failed everything--not because she's afraid of academic underachievement (although yes, she certainly is) but because she's afraid of failure and being inadequate. Worse still, it could be that she was terrified of being expelled from Hogwarts - as a young Muggle-born, she likely wouldn't be able to get back into the Wizarding world. Imagine being introduced as an eleven-year-old to this marvelous world parallel to the one you've grown up in, where you've made real friends for the first time in your life, and then have it snatched away at age 13.
** It goes deeper still. The boggart takes the form of the teacher whom Hermione is closest to and whose opinion means everything. Not only does she fear failure and having to leave the Wizarding world, she's also afraid of disappointing her favorite teacher.
* After Snape confiscates and attempts to read the Marauders Map, he calls Lupin, and asks him if he believes Harry might have gotten the map from the makers. While it's not obvious at the time, he's indirectly accusing Lupin of giving Harry the Map - after all, he went to school with the Marauders, and knows the nicknames they gave themselves (not to mention he was likely insulted by them in the same way as the map). At the end of the conversation, Lupin says, "I'll take this (the map) back, shall I?" even though he hasn't held it at any point during the conversation. Of course, Lupin is one of the owners.
* At the very end of the story, Harry says that "none of it made any difference". In a way, this makes it something of a ShaggyDogStory. Who was the Prisoner of Azkaban? A Shaggy Dog. To take it one step further, Lupin replies "it made all the difference in the world!" What seemed like a Shaggy Dog Story at first was actually something much more meaningful. Sort of like how the Prisoner of Azkaban was not just a "Shaggy Dog".
* When Harry and Hermione are on their way back to the Hospital Wing after rescuing Sirius from the tower, they hear Peeves "bouncing along the corridor in boisterous good spirits, laughing his head off". Hermione assumes that Peeves is "all excited because the Dementors are going to finish off Sirius". However, we know from book 5 that Peeves likes the school troublemakers, like Fred and George. Peeves isn't celebrating because Sirius got caught--he's celebrating because he knows Sirius escaped.
* Fudge and Dumbledore's exchange after Snape's tirade at the end turns out to be mildly foreshadow-y. Fudge says Snape seems unbalanced and that "I'd watch out for him if I were you, Dumbledore," but Dumbledore is unfazed. Three years later, [[spoiler:Snape will prove to indeed be somebody Dumbledore apparently should have been watching out for, but in the end we learn Dumbledore was right to trust him.]]
* Hermione's meeting with [=McGonagall=] [[spoiler:about the Time Turner]] only takes a few minutes, but surely giving Hermione such important information would take more than--oh! [[spoiler:They used the Time Turner to go back after the conversation was over so Hermione could learn how to use it!]]
* After transforming into a dog to fight Lupin and find Peter, Sirius ends up totally incapacitated by the Dementors to the point where he changed back into a human. This happens despite the fact that they normally didn't really affect him, that transforming into a dog is one of the things that minimized their effects, that the Dementors weren't actually near him. The difference is that when he was in Azkaban he had no happiness for them to drain from him, while at this moment he had just proved his innocence to his friend and made plans to live with Harry. It was this overwelming happiness that made him extremely vulnerable to the Dementors.
* When Harry is waking up in the hospital wing after the Dementors attack the Quidditch game, he hears someone comment that he didn't even break his glasses. This is because Hermione put an Impervious charm on them during the game, which not only kept water off of them, but also probably made them temporarily unbreakable!
* Why does Harry have such a negative reaction to the Dementors? He's not just hearing his mother’s voice as she was protecting him - but the Dementors were also forcing the piece of Voldemort to relive its worst memory as well…the memory of being ripped apart by the curse that backfired. Mind you, this also becomes Fridge Horror when you realize that it wasn’t ''Harry’s'' memory of his father telling Lily to take Harry and run, and neither was the one of Lily screaming...it was ''Voldemort's''.
* Lupin is one of the few characters we see deliberately performing wandless magic, when he conjures fire on the train, so it seems to be a rare skill or just not something most people bother with. Why would he have learned how to do it? Maybe because without the Wolfsbane Potion, when he transforms he probably can't have his wand with him and he's probably usually in a windowless basement or something. So doing basic spells without an expensive, breakable, gnawable wand would be really really useful.
* Why is Harry's Patronus suddenly so immensely powerful when he and Hermione use the time-turner to go to the lake where he and Sirius ended up? Now, he's had the time to think about how wonderful a life away from the Dursleys with Sirius would be, and he even described how it would feel to Hermione as they watched and waited for things to go wrong.
* (Film only) Just as Were-Lupin is about to attack Harry, a female werewolf is heard which draws Lupin away. Hermione is able to perform such a call because she is the only student to do the essay that Snape assigned while covering for Lupin.
* Trelawney's prophecy contains a subtle hint of Sirius Black's innocence. She says that "tonight, before midnight... the servant will break free." However, Sirius Black is already free, having broken out of Azkaban months ago. Peter Pettigrew, on the other hand, is still in his self-inflicted rat body prison and finally returns to human form that night.
* In the film, the music Lupin plays during the Boggart lesson. Seems silly at first but then you realise he's trying to keep the mood light so the students will be able to imagine their worst fears as something comical.
* The first time Ron and Harry notice Hermione has briefly stepped away from them between classes, she changes the subject by voicing her hope that there's something good for lunch, she's starving. Of ''course'' she's starving: [[spoiler:she's just used the Time Turner to live through twice as many hours since breakfast as they did!]]
* A minor one for the film, but while on the Knight Bus, Harry voices his concern about Muggles being able to see them, to which the Shrunken Head says "No [they don't see anything], but if you jab 'em with a fork, they feel." It's basically their way of saying that the Knight Bus isn't seen by any Muggles, but it can still cause damage, hence why it has to stop to let an old lady cross, why it has to squeeze itself to fit between two other vehicles, and how it set off a car alarm from bumping it.
* When Vernon is talking to Marge about James, he says he was unemployed. He was right, as Jo said: after graduation, the Marauders and Lily became "full-time fighters" - mostly because James (who Marge was trying to cast as a drunk vagrant) had enough money for everyone to live off that he didn't need a full-time job.
* Why isn't Hermione good at Divination, despite being skilled at every other subject? Predicting the future requires a person to consider many possible outcomes of a situation, including unlikely ones, and accept the possibility that all of them have a chance of happening. As Dumbledore says, "The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed." Hermione is a very narrow-minded and logical type of person; if asked to predict the future, she would probably fixate on only a tiny handful of likely outcomes and [[AgentScully dismiss]] the ones that, logically, had a very small chance of occurring. Something completely unexpected happening [[DidntSeeThatComing would come as a great shock to her,]] since she probably would not have considered it.

* When Trelawney makes a big panic about 'when thirteen dine together, the first to rise shall be the first to die' is played for laughs, as Trelawney sits down, and later Harry and Ron get up at the same time. However, at that point, there were actually ''fourteen'' people sitting around the table. Before Trelawney got into the hall, there were thirteen people, the thirteenth was ''Pettigrew'', in his Scabbers disguise. And [[spoiler:Dumbledore gets up to greet Trelawney as she enters. Unless the unnamed students died at some point before Half-Blood Prince, the first one among that thirteen to die is...]]
* During the first Divination class, Ron's prediction for Harry is basically, "You're gonna suffer, but you're gonna be happy about it." It's actually subtle foreshadowing for Harry's confrontation with the Dementor swarm: They cause him great suffering, but he defeats them by thinking happy thoughts.
** Or. . . well, Harry's entire life. He went through a zillion different layers, levels, and kinds of Hell, but eventually, [[spoiler:he did [[EarnYourHappyEnding earn that happy ending.]]]]
* Harry tells Hermione that he managed to perform the Patronus charm when they travelled back in time because, due to time-travel hijinks, he 'had already done it before... [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble does that make sense]]?'. Except that wasn't the first time Harry successfully performed the charm. In the Quidditch game between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, Harry shot something large and bright out of his wand at the (what turned out to not really be) Dementors. He was too focused on the game to pay attention, but he did cast a full-fledged Patronus at that time, and his joy and determination during the game was enough that he didn't have to focus on one happy thought. As Lupin said before, a Quidditch match was basically the idea of a feast of emotions for Dementors.
* Snape always wanted to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, so he probably only agreed to brew the Wolfsbane Potion every month for his old enemy Lupin on the condition that he could substitute for Lupin on full moons.
* It has been implied that Hogwarts itself has some level of awareness, refusing to let Umbridge into Dumbledore's office for example. If so it explains how Sirus was able to make it all the way to the Gryffindor dorm entrance before anyone stopped him, the school somehow knew that he was innocent, and in fact trying to remove a legitimate threat and so allowed him to get that far.

* When Vernon is talking to Marge about James, he says he was unemployed. He was right, as Jo said: after graduation, the Marauders and Lily became "full-time fighters".