The Child of Azkaban is a Harry Potter fanfic by LonelyHarvest.
Being in the middle of a dangerous war meant having to plan ahead for the worst case scenario, as both James and Lily Potter very well knew. And as such, they placed powerful safeguards to ensure their son Harry would grow up with proper guardians should anything happen to them.
...in their defense, neither of them would have ever expected what would happen to one Sirius Black after their deaths.
The fanfic is the first in The Quiet Ones series and can be found on Archive of Our Own here
, and is continued in the sequel story The Boy in the Book.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Adaptational Nice Guy: The various Death Eaters in Azkaban, while established as being fully loyal to their Dark Lord at first and making attempts at Harry's life, slowly grow to be fond of the boy and wind up becoming a Family of Choice to him and Sirius. It is revealed later that this is because Harry possesses a rare magical ability that causes him to emit an aura of reason, causing those around him for long periods of time to think rationally and heals mental trauma, as well as providing an immunity to the Dementor's psychovoric presence.
- While he was at first dismissive and hostile to Harry, Snape backs off and starts treating him better when Harry prevents serious injury from a botched potion mixture in-class. This is also implied to be a side-effect of Harry's aura.
- While Minister Fudge in-canon is an opportunistic politician that would go to great lengths to secure the public's faith in the Ministry, here he seems more interested in doing the right thing, allowing Sirius to have a real trial and willingly reimburses him when he is found innocent despite how it may reflect on the Ministry's track-record.
- The Basilisk of Hogwarts is more of a Non-Malicious Monster than the Ax-Crazy Attack Animal of canon, having taken up the unofficial role of guardian of Hogwarts and its students and cursed Voldemort from entering the Chamber of Secrets for 20 years after being forced to kill Myrtle.
- Ascended Extra: Theodore Nott is a main character, when he only briefly appeared in canon.
- Creepy Child: Apparently Bellatrix Lestrange gave Harry lessons to deliberately invoke this — playing up his parseltongue accent and choosing vocabulary to make him sound like Voldemort — in order to scare people off from bothering him. Harry puts it to good use in intimidating Draco Malfoy but is naturally quite a normal, if quiet, boy.
- Demoted to Extra: Hermione and Ron, with the justification both of them are too loud for Harry.
- Didn't Think This Through: Trying to justify his decision to deny Sirius a trial, Crouch tries to use the latter's behavior when he and his wife last visited Crouch Junior but, before he says whatever was wrong with Sirius' behavior, he's reminded that he couldn't have seen anything without seeing there was a toddler with Sirius in Azkaban and thus he's basically "confessing" to have known about Harry's predicament for the last eight years and done nothing about that.
- Emotion Bomb: In the Chamber of Secrets, Voldemort reveals to Harry that both he and Harry possess a rare magical skill (other than being a parselmouth) that causes them to emit a magical aura that enforces a specific temperament onto those around them. Voldemort emits an aura of awe, ensuring that those around him - be they allies or enemies - notice him and take him seriously. Harry on the other hand enforces a sense of Reason, causing those around him to remain calm and think rationally, with prolonged exposure healing mental trauma, as it slowly did with the Longbottoms and the inmates in Azkaban.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: When Voldemort and Quirrel bring Harry down into the Chamber of Secrets to be fed to the Basilisk, the Basilisk becomes enraged when she finds out that he was trying to feed her a parselmouth and that Quirrel himself was not a speaker, causing the enraged snake to devour Quirrel and become a protector to Harry.
- Honorary Aunt: Harry calls Bellatrix his "Aunt Bella".
- I Warned You: Subverted when Professor McGonagall learns that the Dursleys abused Harry Potter. She storms into Professor Dumbledore's office intending to tell him "I told you so", only to find it redundant due to all the outraged Howler letters he's been surrounded by, so she holds her tongue and helps him clean up his office instead.
- Karmic Jackpot: After Harry was discovered in Azkaban, Sirius was finally given a trial when they convince Fudge and Dumbledore how little sense it made for him to be the traitor. What follows is a trial where Sirius was finally able to explain himself calmly and rationally, Harry's aura preventing damage to his mind, making it clear that he himself was not a Death Eater and puts Bartemius Crouch's methods as an Auror under investigation. The real clincher was when Sirius made it known that he was fully willing to take veritaserum. He is found innocent of all charges, is reimbursed handsomely for his wrongful imprisonment, is allowed to take up full legal status as Harry's guardian and is promised to be let off with a warning for his unregistered state as an animagus as long he registers properly shortly after his time as St. Mungos's.
- Locked into Strangeness: Dementors repeatedly attempting to Kiss him - or rather suck the Horcrux out of him - left Harry with several white streaks in his hair.
- Magic Misfire: The reason why Harry wound up in Azkaban in the first place is because James and Lily's wills possessed a magical clause that would send Harry away to the next available candidate for guardianship (that being Sirius, who had long since been imprisoned) when his then-current guardians were deemed a threat to him.Let that sink in readers, Harry Potter was taken by magic to Sirius Black of all people at the tender age of one and a half because the muggle guardians Dumbledore placed him with ABUSED him! But was a childhood in Azkaban truly preferable to one with violent muggles, one that the Ministry should have removed him from at the first signs of friction?
- Messy Hair: The reason why Harry would rather keep his hair long, it keeps being untamable otherwise. Also Theodore, whom Blaise outright chases with a comb.
- Morality Pet: Harry, to the whole Death Eater block.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Harry writes about a boy named Neville Longbottom in his year, Bellatrix suddenly realizes there was a baby in the house when she tortured the Longbottoms.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's strongly implied Harry's magical aura helped Voldemort to keep madness at bay, letting him fly under the radar since he didn't act as rashly as he did in canon.
- Poor Communication Kills: Sirius recalls that the only time there were any non-inmate humans close enough to his cell to hear him was when Mr. and Mrs. Crouch went to Azkaban to visit their son. He tried to get their attention when they came so people would know his godson somehow ended up in Azkaban but both of them at first ignored him (as inmates screaming in Azkaban isn't anything new). On their way out, Mrs. Crouch noticed Harry but her husband shushed her without even looking. Her health was so poor she didn't live long enough to have another chance to tell. Although it's later revealed that said Mrs. Crouch was actually a polyjuiced Barty Crouch Jr. being smuggled out of the prison, much like in canon.
- Related in the Adaptation: After observing a magical updated family tree, Harry discovers that Monica Isolde - his direct maternal ancestor - was a many great-grandchild of Salazar Slytherin, meaning that he is a distant cousin to Tom Riddle/Lord Voldemort and an Heir of Slytherin.
- Actually something of a subversion, because while the details are original to the fanfic,
Rowling has established that the two are canonically distant relatives, like most pure and half blooded wizards. So it’s more More Closely/Explicitly Related In the Adaption.
- Actually something of a subversion, because while the details are original to the fanfic,
- Shrinking Violet: The Quiet Ones are a band of these.
- Sickeningly Sweethearts: Bellatrix and Rodolphus can be extremely passionate towards each other, which dismay everyone else in the Northern tower.
- Single Line of Descent: Averted with Slytherin's bloodline, which isn't limited to the Gaunts. So Harry can be a Heir too.
- Also averted by Helga Hufflepuff's descendents. She had around ten children, so there's many children with a blood relation to her in the present day.
- Sneeze Cut: One scene cuts from an Azkaban inmate yelling "HOW in Merlin's name did Severus end up becoming a TEACHER?!" to Severus Snape sneezing in a staff meeting at Hogwarts. Another professor lampshades the sneeze with "I think there's a muggle superstition that you sneeze whenever someone is talking about you behind your back."
- Speech Impediment: When Bellatrix found out that Harry was a parselmouth, she encouraged him to use it more often, causing Harry to develop a mild lisp in the process.
- Too Dumb to Live: Professor Quirrel is warned to keep his eyes shut because there's a basilisk in the room. As long as he keeps his eyes shut, the basilisk can't petrify him. But he can't bear the suspense of not seeing what's going on and opens his eyes. The basilisk promptly petrifies and eats him.
- Would Hurt a Child: As if Harry growing up in a prison filled with some of the most dangerous witches and wizards in the world wasn't bad enough, there's also the fact that every Halloween, the Dementors would take Harry and chain him up, before attempting to use their soul-sucking kiss on him. One can only imagine how terrified Sirius must have been, seeing his little godson be dragged away and unable to help him. It's a good thing they were only interested in trying to suck out the Horcrux in Harry's forehead.
