Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

  The third installment is arguably the best of the series so far.  It starts off with Harry accidentally blowing up his nasty Aunt Marge like a balloon, where upon he runs away from the Dursleys.  While he is outside, Harry spots a large black dog before he encounters the Knight Bus, which takes him to Diagon Alley.  During the ride there, Harry learns about the notorius criminal Sirius Black who was apparently second in command to Lord Voldemort.  His crime was that he had killed 13 people with a single curse, 12 muggles and a wizard.  Black has recently escaped from the notorious wizard prison of Azkaban, a feat no one had done before.  Just the name Azkaban sends shivers down a wizard's spine and people appear to be frightened of the guards of Azkaban.
  At Diagon Alley, Harry meets up with the Weasleys and Hermione.  Hermione purchases a large orange cat named Crookshanks who has a thing for Ron's rat Scabbers.  It’s also revealed that Black is after Harry, which is understandable since he had defeated Voldemort.  Later, when they head for the Hogwarts Express, Mr. Weasley pulls Harry aside has him promise that he won't go after Sirius Black himself.  Harry has no idea what he's talking about.
  On the express, the trio runs into the new professor, Remus J. Lupin.  As the express enters Hogwarts, it is suddenly stopped when an Azkaban guard, a dementor enters the train.  Dementors are foul creatures with hooded cloaks and rotten hands and they suck out all happy feelings away from the atmosphere around them.  Due to Black's escape, dementors had been stationed at Hogwarts, much to Dumbledore's reluctance.  Since Harry's experiences with Voldemort are the worse of them all, he ends up fainting.  Lupin successfully wards the dementors away.
  When they arrive at Hogwarts, they discover that Hagrid has been made the new Care of Magical Creatures professor, due to his recent clearing of the charges surrounding the Chamber of Secrets.  The class is a new one of the trio's along with Divination, taught by the eerie Sybil Trelawny, who predicts that Harry has seen the grim, a black dog that is an omen of death.  Ron is worried but Hermione is skeptical of the eerie and superstitious professor.  In Hagrid's class, he introduces to the half eagle half horse hippogriffs.  During the class, Draco Malfoy foolishly insults the hippogriff Buckbeak and is promptly slashed at by the prideful animal.  After that, Malfoy fakes an injury in an attempt to get Hagrid fired and Buckbeak killed.  Buckbeak is taken to court and the trio start to dig up evidence to prove Buckbeak's innocence.
  Lupin turns out to be the best Defense against the Dark Arts Professor they ever had.  His class soon becomes the most popular of all the students (except the Slytherins).  However, there are times when he is absent during the course.  During one of those absences, Snape takes over one of the classes and has them all do an essay on werewolves.  There are also times when Snape comes to Lupin and gives him some kind of potion.  On Halloween, Sirius Black somehow enters the castle and attacks the Fat Lady guarding Gryffindor Tower in an attempt to get in.  Furthermore, during the next Quidditch match, the dementors enter the pitch causing Harry to black out and lose his first game against Cedric Diggory: the Whomping Willow destroys his broomstick.
  It must be also noted that Harry had been banned from going to the town of Hogsmeade due to Black's escape.  One day, Fred and George come up to Harry and give him a magical parchment created by some Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs called the Marauder's Map.  It is a magical map showing everybody in Hogwarts and the secret passages out.  Using the map, Harry goes to Hogsmeade.  There he learns the fact that Sirius Black was actually the best friend of his father James Potter.  That Sirius had betrayed James and Lily to Voldemort and that the wizard he had killed was James's friend Peter Pettigrew who was trying to avenge Harry's parents.
  During this time, Hermione is getting more and more worn out due to the fact that she was taking far more classes than other students.  The strange thing is that she's taking multiple classes at the same time.
　On Christmas, Harry is surprised when he receives a Firebolt, the most advanced broomstick in the world.  Hermione however, suspects that the Firebolt was sent by Sirius Black and has McGonagall confiscate it.  This causes Harry to be angry with Hermione for a while.  But in the mean time, Harry starts having anti-dementor lessons with Lupin, hoping to prevent another incident with the dementors like at the last Quidditch match.  Lupin teaches Harry the patronus charm, the one of the most advanced Dark Arts defense charms in existence.  Essentially, the patronus is a guardian of positive energy that drives dementors away.  During one of the lessons, Lupin reveals to Harry that he too was an old friend of James.
  Eventually, it turns out that there was nothing wrong with the Firebolt and McGonagall returns it to an ecstatic Harry.  Immediately after that however, it appears as if Crookshanks had eaten Scabbers: an incident which just about destroys Ron and Hermione's friendship.  Even Harry's attempts at trying to reconcile them go to dust.  During this time, Harry wins the Quidditch match against Ravenclaw and one attractive seeker named Cho Chang.  After the game, there is another incident where Sirius Black sneaks into Gryffindor Tower, whereupon Ron sees him with a knife.  After that, he sneaks into Hogsmeade with his invisibility cloak but is nearly caught when Draco Malfoy sees his head.  Snape interogates him and finds the Marauder's Map looking like an ordinary parchment.  When the map insults Snape, he calls Lupin to his office and his him examine the parchment, but Lupin claims it is just a joke product.  However, Lupin later reveals to Harry that he knew what the parchment really was, and has it confiscated.  After this, Hermione comes up and tells Harry and Ron that Hagrid wrote to her, telling her that Buckbeak was going to be executed.
  Apparently, Lucius Malfoy had bribed the court into signing Buckbeak's execution.  Whichever way, the incident leads to the reconciliation between Ron and Hermione as the trio work to prove Buckbeak's innocence.  One day, Herrmione slaps Malfoy for insulting Hagrid.  Then, she storms out on Trelawny's class, convinced that she was a fraud.  She seems to be getting more and more exhausted as her classes take their toil.  Finally, the day of the Quidditch Final comes, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin.  Harry beats Malfoy and wins the Quidditch cup for the first time!
  Soon, finals come and go, and the day of Buckbeak's appeal and scheduled execution is here.  Before that however, Harry hears Trelawny make a true prediction for once, about a servant rejoining Voldemort and restoring him to full power.
  Right before Buckbeak's execution, Harry, Ron, and Hermione go see Hagrid and Buckbeak.  He is shaken up badly.  But there is a huge surprise when Hermione finds Scabbers very much alive.  Hagrid sends the trio away just as the ministry official and the executioner, McNair comes, along with Dumbledore.  Harry, Hermione, and Ron try to get back to the castle but are stopped when Crookshanks comes.  Scabbers runs off and Ron gives chase.  Then, a large black dog appears and pulls Ron into the bottom of the Whomping Willow, along with a squirming Scabbers.  Crookshanks leads Harry and Hermione after them to the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade.  There, they discover that the black dog was really an animagus, a wizard who could turn him or herself into a certain animal.  It’s Sirius Black!
  When Sirius talks about James, Harry is blinded with rage and he attacks the man.  The trio manages to overpower Black and Harry seems to be about ready to kill him.  He however discovers that he can't bring himself to kill Black.  At this moment, Lupin appears.  He starts to put pieces together in his head whereupon he realizes something and embraces Black like a brother!
  Harry feels betrayed and Hermione reveals that Lupin is a werewolf: she had known since Snape had assigned them the essay on the subject but had kept it a secret since she had come to trust Lupin.  Lupin starts explaining and during the process, he and Sirius claim that Scabbers is actually the animagus Peter Pettigrew.  This causes the trio to believe that Lupin and Black are completely mad but they decide to listen as Lupin starts to tell his story.  Of how he had come to Hogwarts and of his three best friends: Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and James Potter.  These three eventually discovered that Lupin was a werewolf and decided to help him.  They became illegal animagi so that they could keep company with him while he was in his wolf form.  They were the writers of the Marauder's Map: Lupin was Moony, Pettigrew was Wormtail, Black was Padfoot, and James was Prongs.  At this time, Lupin also explains why Snape loathes them so much.  During their school days, Sirius had played a trick on Snape and Snape had ended up coming upon Lupin in his wolf form.  At the last minute, James had came and saved Snape's life (which is why Snape hates James and Harry so much).  Suddenly, Snape emerges from under Harry's invisibility cloak.
  Abandoning reason, Snape ties up Lupin and faces off Black.  He starts to lose his sanity to mad vengeance for the trick Black had played on them during their school days and is ready to hand him off to the dementors.  Realizing that Snape was beyond reason, Harry, Ron, and Hermione all fire disarmers at Snape and knock him unconscious.  After Snape is out of the picture, Lupin and Black reveal the truth that Lupin had only figured out about a hour before: Peter Pettigrew was the one who really betrayed James and Lily to Voldemort.  Black had tracked Pettigrew down, but then, Pettigrew had killed the twelve muggles whereupon he escaped with his animagus powers.  Pettigrew had framed Sirius for the murders of himself and the muggles and the betryal of James and Lily.  When Sirius saw a picture of Scabbers with the Weasleys in the Daily Prophet, it had given him the vigor he needed to fight off the dementors and use his animagus powers to escape.  After this, it is shown that Scabbers is indeed Peter Pettigrew.
  When he is revealed, Pettigrew tries to claim innocence with a whole load of excuses.  These excuses and Sirius's sincerity finally convince Harry of Sirius's innocence.  Sirius and Lupin are about to kill Pettigrew but Harry decides to spare his life: give him to the dementors and get Sirius cleared.  For a while, it looks like Harry would finally leave the Dursleys and go live with his godfather.
  However, things turn for the worse when the full moon rises, causing Lupin to transform into his wolf form.  During the ensuing chaos, Pettigrew manages to escape and Sirius is surrounded by dementors.  Harry and Hermione try to save him but they are over powered by the dementors, who try to perform their fatal kiss... At the last moment, they are saved by a powerful patronus that was created by someone that looked a lot like James!
  When Harry and Hermione come too, they are in the hospital wing and the dementor's kiss is about to be performed on Sirius!  Harry and Hermione try to tell everyone the truth but only Dumbledore believes them.  He has no power to counteract the Ministry's decision, but he tells them something about "time" and saving "two lives".  Hermione seems to understand the time bit and when Dumbledore locks them in, she produces what looks like a hourglass.  It is a timeturner: she had been using it for the past year to go back in time and take her extra courses!  With the timeturner, Harry and Hermione go back three hours where Harry realizes that they are to rescue Buckbeak and use him to help Sirius escape.
  Harry and Hermione manage to rescue Buckbeak from the executioner.  After that, they just wait until the past them emerge.  When the dementors surround Sirius, and the past Harry and Hermione once again, Harry realizes that the person he saw was not his father but rather himself.  He conjures up a powerful patronus that drives away the dementors.  The patronus is in the form of a stag and Harry realizes that that was the animagus form of his father.
  Finally, Harry and Hermione fly up to the school on Buckbeak and manage to get Sirius out.  He flys away on Buckbeak and Harry and Hermione manage to make it back to Dumbledore on time and tell them what happened.  Snape is humiliated by the incident but gets even when he "accidentally" reveals that Lupin is a werewolf.  Feeling guilty about his dark nature, Lupin resigns from his teaching position.  Meanwhile, when Harry tells Dumbledore about mistaking himself for his father, Dumbledore tells him that when Harry conjured the stag patronus, he had found his father inside of himself.  The year ends, and the trio are off on the Hogwarts Express back home.  During the ride, a tiny owl comes and delivers Harry a letter from Sirius telling his that he was safe.  He reveals, as Hermione had correctly suspected, that he was the one who sent Harry the Firebolt and he also gives Harry permission to go to Hogsmeade.  Furthermore, he gives the tiny owl to Ron as a gift.  Thus, the trio's third year ends on a happy note.

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