Fair Warning
Prisoner of Azkaban, book three of seven, hides its twists in plain sight, and today we go back and find every clue.
Fair warning, this video is full of spoilers for the whole book, and one section flags spoilers for later books in the series. If you haven’t read it, watch my spoiler free review first. Here’s what we’ll cover. The rat, the cat, the dog, the schedule, the map, the werewolf, the stag, and the escape.
The Rat
Let’s start with Scabbers. In the very first chapter, a newspaper clipping arrives from Ron, and the moving photograph shows the whole family in Egypt, with Scabbers on Ron’s shoulder. Hermione even mentions the picture in her letter. Hold on to that.
Later, at the magical creatures shop, Ron says Scabbers has been off color since Egypt. The witch looks him over, notices a toe missing on his front paw, and says a normal rat lives about three years. Scabbers had once belonged to Percy, and in all that time he never showed a single power.
Even the Sneakoscope plays a part. On the train it whistles and spins in Harry’s trunk, with Scabbers in Ron’s pocket nearby. The book lets you blame the cheap toy. Look at Lupin’s number, too. He later says Scabbers had been in the Weasley family for twelve years. A rat that old should have been long dead.
The Cat
Now Crookshanks. When Hermione chooses him, the shop witch says nobody wanted him. He is bowlegged, with a squashed face, and he goes straight for Scabbers. Ron is certain the cat is vicious. Hermione says all cats chase rats.
But watch what the cat actually does. On the train, his yellow eyes sit on Ron’s top pocket. In the common room, he pounces on Ron’s bag right after Ron says Scabbers is inside. Ron even says the cat heard him. He wasn’t hunting dinner. He was trying to catch a traitor.
In the Shack, Black says Crookshanks is the most intelligent cat he’s ever met. The cat recognized Peter at once, and helped Black by stealing the passwords into Gryffindor Tower from a boy’s bedside table. Neville, remember, had written them down and lost them. When blood and ginger hairs turn up on Ron’s sheets, it looks like murder. It was a rat running for his life.
The Dog
Next, the dog. On the night he runs away, Harry sees something huge and black with gleaming eyes between a garage and a fence in Magnolia Crescent. A moment later the Knight Bus arrives. Then, in the bookshop in Diagon Alley, he notices a book called Death Omens.
In Divination, Professor Trelawney sees the Grim in Harry’s teacup, a giant spectral dog that haunts churchyards, and she calls it the worst omen of death. One student says it looks like a donkey from another angle. Hermione insists it’s all nonsense. The book plays with two meanings of one image.
Then the dog turns up in the stands at the Quidditch match, in a flash of lightning, just before the dementors arrive. The night before the final, Harry sees it walking across the grounds beside Crookshanks. And he notices that if the cat can see the dog, it can’t be an omen. The real clue is the cat and the dog together. They were allies.
Hermione’s Schedule
Now for Hermione’s impossible timetable. The first chance to catch it is on the opening night. After the dementor scare, Professor McGonagall takes Hermione aside to talk about her course schedule, and she comes out looking very happy about something.
The next morning, Ron spots three subjects at the same hour, nine o’clock Divination, Muggle Studies and Arithmancy. Hermione says she has fixed it with McGonagall. On the stairs after Potions, she is right behind them one second and back at the bottom the next, with a split bag and something tucked into the front of her robes.
Later, Ron hears her talking about a lesson she could not have attended, because she was with them in another class. And on the day she slaps Draco, she walks to Charms with Harry and Ron, and then she is simply not there. Moments later she is asleep in the common room. There was a trail of crumbs for anyone who looked.
The Map
Then there is the Marauder’s Map. When Fred and George wake it up, it announces itself as the work of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. Those are the same four names Lupin explains at the end. They had been in plain sight since the middle of the book.
Even better is the scene in Snape’s office. The map insults Snape, with a different voice for each name, including Wormtail. Lupin arrives, stares at the map, and says it looks like a Zonko product. Then he takes it, saying he knows it was confiscated years ago, and that the mapmakers would have loved to lure Harry out of school. The book is quietly telling us he wrote it.
Fred also says that nobody has ever used the passage under the Whomping Willow, and it is marked on the map the whole time. That tunnel, as we learn, was built for Lupin.
The Werewolf
Lupin himself is full of clues. He looks ill, and shabby, and keeps missing lessons. Hermione later says she checked a lunar chart and noticed it matched the full moon. When Snape fills in, he sets an essay on werewolves, and Hermione is the one who answers him in class.
Snape also brings Lupin a smoking goblet of potion, and Lupin says it is the only thing that helps. Harry has a crazy urge to knock it out of his hands. It was medicine, and Snape was brewing it for him all along.
In the boggart lesson, Lupin jumps in front of Harry, and the boggart turns into a silvery orb. Lavender wonders why Lupin is scared of crystal balls. It was the moon. And in the Patronus lessons, Harry asks if Lupin knew Black. He says, yes, or I thought I did.
The Stag
Now the stag. Lupin tells Harry that every Patronus is unique to the wizard who casts it. During the Ravenclaw match, Harry conjures one that charges a gang of Slytherins dressed as dementors, and Dumbledore remembers its unusual shape at the end.
That night, Harry dreams that he follows something silvery white through a forest, and hears hooves galloping ahead. The book never says what it is. On a reread, it is obviously the stag.
And when a dementor gets close, Harry hears his father’s voice for the first time in his life. Every one of those scenes is leading to the silver stag across the lake, the most emotional payoff in the book.
How Sirius Escaped
Then the escape. On the Knight Bus, Stan says nobody has ever broken out of Azkaban. Mr. Weasley says the guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, always the same words, he’s at Hogwarts. At the time we thought that meant Harry. It meant Pettigrew.
Fudge says that when he visited Azkaban, Black was strangely calm, and asked whether Fudge had finished with his newspaper. That was the photo. When Harry says Black escaped from the dementors, Lupin’s briefcase slips and he has to catch it. And Lupin explains that dementors are drawn to emotion, which is exactly why a dog, with simpler feelings, could slip past them.
Seeds For Later Books
Now a flagged section. These are spoilers for the rest of the series, so skip ahead if you want to stay clean.
Dumbledore says that the time may come when Harry is glad he saved Pettigrew, and that pays off in the final book. In book four, Pettigrew helps return Voldemort to a body. Sirius, the godfather Harry gets in this book, does not survive book five. Lupin returns in later books, too. Dumbledore says Trelawney has now made two real predictions, and the first, revealed in book five, shapes the whole series. The Time-Turners also shatter in the Ministry battle.
Sign-Off
That’s the foreshadowing in Prisoner of Azkaban. Which clue did you spot on your first read? Tell me in the comments, I would love to hear. And if you want to see how the movie handled all this, my book versus movie video is next. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you in the next one.
