Harry Potter: 10 Mistakes JK Rowling Made In The Prisoner Of Azkaban Book

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third book in the series and hit shelves back in the summer of 1999. It saw the Boy Who Lived return to Hogwarts with the threat of Sirius Black hanging over him, with his godfather wrongly accused of being in Lord Voldemort’s inner circle. Harry spends the whole school year battling to avoid humiliation after passing out in front of the Dementors on the train journey in, and ends it freeing Sirius and Buckbeak the Hippogriff.

JK Rowling’s novels are timeless masterpieces – but even she is prone to the odd mistake. So these are just a few errors she made in the third novel, starting with one on the back cover…

10 Moon Mistake

The Prisoner of Azkaban is the first time fans are introduced to the character of Remus Lupin, who is appointed as Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher following the departure of Gilderoy Lockhart. He features on the back of the US cover, with Harry and Hermione Granger on the back of Buckbeak as they fly the creature to safety.

In this image, the moon should be full – given that Lupin transforms into a werewolf on the night in question. Yet this cover has a crescent shape instead. Remus wouldn’t have been able to change as a result and Sirius would likely have been given a pardon. Alas that didn’t happen, with Lupin’s transformation instead costing his best friend dearly.

9 Mrs. Weasley And The Prefects

Mrs. Weasley is always bemoaning the behavior of her children Fred and George. She thinks they don’t try hard enough in school and vents her frustrations that they weren’t made prefects ahead of their fifth year, therefore not following in the same footsteps as Bill, Charlie and Percy.

Yet while Fred and George’s conduct at Hogwarts certainly left much to be desired, it’s impossible they both could have become prefects at the same time. Albus Dumbledore usually gives the honor to one male and one female, as he does with Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger in the Order of the Phoenix. So, in this instance, Molly should definitely cut them some slack.

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8 Mr. Weasley Gets His Facts Wrong

When talking about Harry in a conversation Harry’s eavesdropping on, Mr. Weasley claims both Harry and Ron have been in the Forbidden Forest twice. While this is accurate for the movies, it isn’t for the source material. Because Ron has only been there once.

In The Sorcerer’s Stone novel, Ron actually isn’t put in detention with Harry, Hermione and Draco Malfoy – with Neville Longbottom having to venture into the forest instead. This means Mr. Weasley should have got his facts right. He does end up in the forest on multiple occasions in the years that follow though.

7 Lupin And The Train

Harry, Ron and Hermione first meet Lupin on the Hogwarts Express. With all other carriages full of returning students, they’re left with no choice but to occupy the same room as their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. He ends up coming to their rescue, helping the trio deal with the Dementors of Azkaban when they come calling.

However, with this incident taking place on September 1, 1993, Remus shouldn’t actually be on the train, because it was the night of the full moon.

6 Trelawney’s Prediction

Sybill Trelawney is definitely a quirky character. While being pretty bad at her job as Divination teacher, she is known to get the odd prediction right. One instance of this is when she tells Lavender Brown the thing she is dreading (which is the death of her rabbit) will take place on Friday the sixteenth of October. Again, however, it seems Rowling got her dates mixed up.

This is due to the fact that October 16 of 1993 fell on a Saturday. Lavender is left heartbroken when her pet dies, with Harry and Ron showing little tact about it. Parvati Patil is also infuriated when Hermione continues to criticize Trelawney and her predictions, labeling her teacher a fraud despite her occasional accurate moments.

5 Lupin’s Reason

When Harry starts getting Patronus lessons from Lupin, the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher opens up on why the Dementors impact him so badly. He tells Harry that it’s because he saw his parents die in front of him, therefore has experienced horrors nobody else should have. However, there’s definitely a problem with that reasoning.

The same can easily be said for just about everybody Harry’s age. Many, such as Neville Longbottom, saw their parents tortured or killed by Lord Voldemort while he was operating at the peak of his powers. Therefore, many more students should have had the same reaction of fear and terror. Ultimately it was just Harry, something that makes him feel deeply ashamed and embarrassed – especially when Draco uses it to mock him over the course of the year.

4 Hermione And Cheering Charms

In The Prisoner of Azkaban book, Hermione is upset when she finds out she’s missed Cheering Charms. She misses the lesson because of her time-turner, as she’s using that magical object to sit multiple classes at once. She ends up telling Harry and Ron she’ll talk to Professor Flitwick about her absence, feeling guilty about missing such an interesting lesson.

But, given time-turners allow users to go back up to five hours, she could have merely sat in the lesson and corrected that wrong. Maybe she felt cautious about using it too much, especially due to Minerva McGonagall giving her strict orders to keep use and knowledge of its existence to a minimum, but this goes down as another error for the third book.

3 Buckbeak’s Imprisonment

Before going back in time, Harry and Hermione note that Buckbeak is tied to a tree as they look to save the Hippogriff from a horrible and unjust execution. However, when they travel down to Hagrid’s hut to help him escape, they find him tied to a fence instead.

This is merely a minor error, one that was eventually corrected in the years since the book’s release. Buckbeak ends up being freed, along with Sirius Black, and even returns to Hogwarts to live with Hagrid as ‘Witherwings’ following Sirius’ death.

2 The Gang’s Oversight

When Lupin tells Harry, Ron and Hermione they weren’t alone when they ventured out to help Buckbeak, the trio deny this. They insist it was just them and that nobody accompanied them on their journey. But this is an oversight, with Ron in possession of Scabbers the Rat at the time.

The trio should have mentioned Scabbers because they know the Marauders Map shows animals, with Harry noting the presence of Mrs. Norris, Argus Filch’s pet cat, earlier in the book. It’s only a small oversight, one that makes the story more exciting as a result, but it’s another minor error that’s been pointed out since.

1 The O.W.L.’s

On the train journey home in June, it’s revealed that Fred and George Weasley have ‘scraped’ a few O.W.L.’s each.

However, they wouldn’t have got them by now. In the Half-Blood Prince book, Harry and Ron don’t receive their own results back until near the end of the summer holidays. Both students do well, but not as well as Hermione who, somewhat inevitably, comes top of the class. Harry does better her score for Defence Against the Dark Arts though – getting an ‘Outstanding’ compared to his friend’s ‘Exceeds Expectations’.

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