The Prisoner of Azkaban Read online

  Mr Weasley flinched at the sound of the name, but overlooked it.

  ‘Harry, I knew you were, well, made of stronger stuff than Fudge seems to think, and I’m obviously pleased that you’re not scared, but –’

  ‘Arthur!’ called Mrs Weasley, who was now shepherding the rest onto the train. ‘Arthur, what are you doing? It’s about to go!’

  ‘He’s coming, Molly!’ said Mr Weasley, but he turned back to Harry and kept talking in a lower and more hurried voice. ‘Listen, I want you to give me your word –’

  ‘– that I’ll be a good boy and stay in the castle?’ said Harry gloomily.

  ‘Not entirely,’ said Mr Weasley, who looked more serious than Harry had ever seen him. ‘Harry, swear to me you won’t go looking for Black.’

  Harry stared. ‘What?’

  There was a loud whistle. Guards were walking along the train, slamming all the doors shut.

  ‘Promise me, Harry,’ said Mr Weasley, talking more quickly still, ‘that whatever happens –’

  ‘Why would I go looking for someone I know wants to kill me?’ said Harry blankly.

  ‘Swear to me that whatever you might hear –’

  ‘Arthur, quickly!’ cried Mrs Weasley.

  Steam was billowing from the train; it had started to move. Harry ran to the compartment door and Ron threw it open and stood back to let him on. They leant out of the window and waved at Mr and Mrs Weasley until the train turned a corner and blocked them from view.

  ‘I need to talk to you in private,’ Harry muttered to Ron and Hermione as the train picked up speed.

  ‘Go away, Ginny,’ said Ron.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Ginny huffily, and she stalked off.

  Harry, Ron and Hermione set off down the corridor, looking for an empty compartment, but all were full except for the one at the very end of the train.

  This only had one occupant, a man sitting fast asleep next to the window. Harry, Ron and Hermione checked on the threshold. The Hogwarts Express was usually reserved for students and they had never seen an adult there before, except for the witch who pushed the food trolley.

  The stranger was wearing an extremely shabby set of wizard’s robes which had been darned in several places. He looked ill and exhausted. Though he seemed quite young, his light-brown hair was flecked with grey.

  ‘Who d’you reckon he is?’ Ron hissed, as they sat down and slid the door shut, taking the seats furthest away from the window.

  ‘Professor R. J. Lupin,’ whispered Hermione at once.

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘It’s on his case,’ replied Hermione, pointing at the luggage rack over the man’s head, where there was a small, battered case held together with a large quantity of neatly knotted string. The name ‘Professor R. J. Lupin’ was stamped across one corner in peeling letters.

  ‘Wonder what he teaches?’ said Ron, frowning at Professor Lupin’s pallid profile.

  ‘That’s obvious,’ whispered Hermione. ‘There’s only one vacancy, isn’t there? Defence Against the Dark Arts.’

  Harry, Ron and Hermione had already had two Defence Against the Dark Arts teachers, both of whom had only lasted one year. There were rumours that the job was jinxed.

  ‘Well, I hope he’s up to it,’ said Ron doubtfully. ‘He looks like one good hex would finish him off, doesn’t he? Anyway …’ he turned to Harry, ‘what were you going to tell us?’

  Harry explained all about Mr and Mrs Weasley’s argument and the warning Mr Weasley had just given him. When he’d finished, Ron looked thunderstruck, and Hermione had her hands over her mouth. She finally lowered them to say, ‘Sirius Black escaped to come after you? Oh, Harry … you’ll have to be really, really careful. Don’t go looking for trouble, Harry …’

  ‘I don’t go looking for trouble,’ said Harry, nettled. ‘Trouble usually finds me.’

  ‘How thick would Harry have to be, to go looking for a nutter who wants to kill him?’ said Ron shakily.

  They were taking the news worse than Harry had expected. Both Ron and Hermione seemed to be much more frightened of Black than he was.

  ‘No one knows how he got out of Azkaban,’ said Ron uncomfortably. ‘No one’s ever done it before. And he was a top-security prisoner, too.’

  ‘But they’ll catch him, won’t they?’ said Hermione earnestly. ‘I mean, they’ve got all the Muggles looking out for him, too …’

  ‘What’s that noise?’ said Ron suddenly.

  A faint, tinny sort of whistle was coming from somewhere. They looked all around the compartment.

  ‘It’s coming from your trunk, Harry,’ said Ron, standing up and reaching into the luggage rack. A moment later he had pulled the Pocket Sneakoscope out from between Harry’s robes. It was spinning very fast in the palm of Ron’s hand, and glowing brilliantly.

  ‘Is that a Sneakoscope?’ said Hermione interestedly, standing up for a better look.

  ‘Yeah … mind you, it’s a very cheap one,’ Ron said. ‘It went haywire just as I was tying it to Errol’s leg to send it to Harry.’

  ‘Were you doing anything untrustworthy at the time?’ said Hermione shrewdly.

  ‘No! Well … I wasn’t supposed to be using Errol. You know he’s not really up to long journeys … but how else was I supposed to get Harry’s present to him?’

  ‘Stick it back in the trunk,’ Harry advised, as the Sneakoscope whistled piercingly, ‘or it’ll wake him up.’

  He nodded towards Professor Lupin. Ron stuffed the Sneakoscope into a particularly horrible pair of Uncle Vernon’s old socks, which deadened the sound, then closed the lid of the trunk on it.

  ‘We could get it checked in Hogsmeade,’ said Ron, sitting back down. ‘They sell that sort of thing in Dervish and Banges, magical instruments and stuff, Fred and George told me.’

  ‘Do you know much about Hogsmeade?’ asked Hermione keenly. ‘I’ve read it’s the only entirely non-Muggle settlement in Britain –’

  ‘Yeah, I think it is,’ said Ron in an offhand sort of way, ‘but that’s not why I want to go. I just want to get inside Honeydukes!’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Hermione.

  ‘It’s this sweetshop,’ said Ron, a dreamy look coming over his face, ‘where they’ve got everything … Pepper Imps – they make you smoke at the mouth – and great fat Chocoballs full of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, and really excellent sugar quills which you can suck in class and just look like you’re thinking what to write next –’

  ‘But Hogsmeade’s a very interesting place, isn’t it?’ Hermione pressed on eagerly. ‘In Sites of Historical Sorcery it says the inn was the headquarters for the 1612 goblin rebellion, and the Shrieking Shack’s supposed to be the most severely haunted building in Britain –’

  ‘– and massive sherbet balls that make you levitate a few inches off the ground while you’re sucking them,’ said Ron, who was plainly not listening to a word Hermione was saying.

  Hermione looked around at Harry.

  ‘Won’t it be nice to get out of school for a bit and explore Hogsmeade?’

  ‘’Spect it will,’ said Harry heavily. ‘You’ll have to tell me when you’ve found out.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ said Ron.

  ‘I can’t go. The Dursleys didn’t sign my permission form, and Fudge wouldn’t, either.’

  Ron looked horrified.

  ‘You’re not allowed to come? But – no way – McGonagall or someone will give you permission –’

  Harry gave a hollow laugh. Professor McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor house, was very strict.

  ‘– or we can ask Fred and George, they know every secret passage out of the castle –’

  ‘Ron!’ said Hermione sharply. ‘I don’t think Harry should be sneaking out of school with Black on the loose –’

  ‘Yeah, I expect that’s what McGonagall will say when I ask for permission,’ said Harry bitterly.

  ‘But if we’re with him,’ said Ron spiritedly to Herm
ione, ‘Black wouldn’t dare –’

  ‘Oh, Ron, don’t talk rubbish,’ snapped Hermione. ‘Black’s already murdered a whole bunch of people in the middle of a crowded street, do you really think he’s going to worry about attacking Harry just because we’re there?’

  She was fumbling with the straps of Crookshanks’s basket as she spoke.

  ‘Don’t let that thing out!’ Ron said, but too late; Crookshanks leapt lightly from the basket, stretched, yawned, and sprang onto Ron’s knees; the lump in Ron’s pocket trembled and he shoved Crookshanks angrily away.

  ‘Get out of it!’

  ‘Ron, don’t!’ said Hermione angrily.

  Ron was about to answer back when Professor Lupin stirred. They watched him apprehensively, but he simply turned his head the other way, mouth slightly open, and slept on.

  The Hogwarts Express moved steadily north and the scenery outside the window became wilder and darker while the clouds overhead thickened. People were chasing backwards and forwards past the door of their compartment. Crookshanks had now settled in an empty seat, his squashed face turned towards Ron, his yellow eyes on Ron’s top pocket.

  At one o’clock the plump witch with the food trolley arrived at the compartment door.

  ‘D’you think we should wake him up?’ Ron asked awkwardly, nodding towards Professor Lupin. ‘He looks like he could do with some food.’

  Hermione approached Professor Lupin cautiously.

  ‘Er – Professor?’ she said. ‘Excuse me – Professor?’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Don’t worry, dear,’ said the witch, as she handed Harry a large stack of Cauldron Cakes. ‘If he’s hungry when he wakes, I’ll be up front with the driver.’

  ‘I suppose he is asleep?’ said Ron quietly, as the witch slid the compartment door closed. ‘I mean – he hasn’t died, has he?’

  ‘No, no, he’s breathing,’ whispered Hermione, taking the Cauldron Cake Harry passed her.

  He might not be very good company, but Professor Lupin’s presence in their compartment had its uses. Mid-afternoon, just as it had started to rain, blurring the rolling hills outside the window, they heard footsteps in the corridor again, and their three least favourite people appeared at the door: Draco Malfoy, flanked by his cronies, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle.

  Draco Malfoy and Harry had been enemies ever since they had met on their very first train journey to Hogwarts. Malfoy, who had a pale, pointed, sneering face, was in Slytherin house; he played Seeker on the Slytherin Quidditch team, the same position that Harry played on the Gryffindor team. Crabbe and Goyle seemed to exist to do Malfoy’s bidding. They were both wide and muscly; Crabbe was the taller, with a pudding-basin haircut and a very thick neck; Goyle had short, bristly hair and long, gorilla arms.

  ‘Well, look who it is,’ said Malfoy in his usual lazy drawl, pulling open the compartment door. ‘Potty and the Weasel.’

  Crabbe and Goyle chuckled trollishly.

  ‘I heard your father finally got his hands on some gold this summer, Weasley,’ said Malfoy. ‘Did your mother die of shock?’

  Ron stood up so quickly he knocked Crookshanks’s basket to the floor. Professor Lupin gave a snort.

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Malfoy, taking an automatic step backwards as he spotted Lupin.

  ‘New teacher,’ said Harry, who had got to his feet, too, in case he needed to hold Ron back. ‘What were you saying, Malfoy?’

  Malfoy’s pale eyes narrowed; he wasn’t fool enough to pick a fight right under a teacher’s nose.

  ‘C’mon,’ he muttered resentfully to Crabbe and Goyle, and they disappeared.

  Harry and Ron sat down again, Ron massaging his knuckles.

  ‘I’m not going to take any rubbish from Malfoy this year,’ he said angrily. ‘I mean it. If he makes one more crack about my family, I’m going to get hold of his head and –’

  Ron made a violent gesture in mid-air.

  ‘Ron,’ hissed Hermione, pointing at Professor Lupin, ‘be careful …’

  But Professor Lupin was still fast asleep.

  The rain thickened as the train sped yet further north; the windows were now a solid, shimmering grey, which gradually darkened until lanterns flickered into life all along the corridors and over the luggage racks. The train rattled, the rain hammered, the wind roared, but still, Professor Lupin slept.

  ‘We must be nearly there,’ said Ron, leaning forward to look past Professor Lupin at the now completely black window.

  The words had hardly left him when the train started to slow down.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Ron, getting up and walking carefully past Professor Lupin to try and see outside. ‘I’m starving, I want to get to the feast …’

  ‘We can’t be there yet,’ said Hermione, checking her watch.

  ‘So why’re we stopping?’

  The train was getting slower and slower. As the noise of the pistons fell away, the wind and rain sounded louder than ever against the windows.

  Harry, who was nearest the door, got up to look into the corridor. All along the carriage, heads were sticking curiously out of their compartments.

  The train came to a stop with a jolt and distant thuds and bangs told them that luggage had fallen out of the racks. Then, without warning, all the lamps went out and they were plunged into total darkness.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Ron’s voice from behind Harry.

  ‘Ouch!’ gasped Hermione. ‘Ron, that was my foot!’

  Harry felt his way back to his seat.

  ‘D’you think we’ve broken down?’

  ‘Dunno …’

  There was a squeaking sound, and Harry saw the dim black outline of Ron, wiping a patch clean on the window and peering out.

  ‘There’s something moving out there,’ Ron said. ‘I think people are coming aboard …’

  The compartment door suddenly opened and someone fell painfully over Harry’s legs.

  ‘Sorry! D’you know what’s going on? Ouch! Sorry –’

  ‘Hello, Neville,’ said Harry, feeling around in the dark and pulling Neville up by his cloak.

  ‘Harry? Is that you? What’s happening?’

  ‘No idea! Sit down –’

  There was a loud hissing and a yelp of pain; Neville had tried to sit on Crookshanks.

  ‘I’m going to go and ask the driver what’s going on,’ came Hermione’s voice. Harry felt her pass him, heard the door slide open again and then a thud and two loud squeals of pain.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Ginny?’

  ‘Hermione?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I was looking for Ron –’

  ‘Come in and sit down –’

  ‘Not here!’ said Harry hurriedly. ‘I’m here!’

  ‘Ouch!’ said Neville.

  ‘Quiet!’ said a hoarse voice suddenly.

  Professor Lupin appeared to have woken up at last. Harry could hear movements in his corner. None of them spoke.

  There was a soft, crackling noise and a shivering light filled the compartment. Professor Lupin appeared to be holding a handful of flames. They illuminated his tired grey face, but his eyes looked alert and wary.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ he said, in the same hoarse voice, and he got slowly to his feet with his handful of fire held out in front of him.

  But the door slid slowly open before Lupin could reach it.

  Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the shivering flames in Lupin’s hand, was a cloaked figure that towered to the ceiling. Its face was completely hidden beneath its hood. Harry’s eyes darted downwards, and what he saw made his stomach contract. There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, greyish, slimy-looking and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water …

  It was visible only for a split second. As though the creature beneath the cloak sensed Harry’s gaze, the hand was suddenly withdrawn into the folds of the black material.<
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  And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it was trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings.

  An intense cold swept over them all. Harry felt his own breath catch in his chest. The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest, it was inside his very heart …

  Harry’s eyes rolled up into his head. He couldn’t see. He was drowning in cold. There was a rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downwards, the roaring growing louder …

  And then, from far away, he heard screaming, terrible, terrified, pleading screams. He wanted to help whoever it was, he tried to move his arms, but couldn’t … a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him –

  ‘Harry! Harry! Are you all right?’

  Someone was slapping his face.

  ‘W-what?’

  Harry opened his eyes. There were lanterns above him, and the floor was shaking – the Hogwarts Express was moving again and the lights had come back on. He seemed to have slid out of his seat onto the floor. Ron and Hermione were kneeling next to him, and above them he could see Neville and Professor Lupin watching. Harry felt very sick; when he put up his hand to push his glasses back on, he felt cold sweat on his face.

  Ron and Hermione heaved him back onto his seat.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Ron asked nervously.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Harry, looking quickly towards the door. The hooded creature had vanished. ‘What happened? Where’s that – that thing? Who screamed?’

  ‘No one screamed,’ said Ron, more nervously still.

  Harry looked around the bright compartment. Ginny and Neville looked back at him, both very pale.

  ‘But I heard screaming –’

  A loud snap made them all jump. Professor Lupin was breaking an enormous slab of chocolate into pieces.

  ‘Here,’ he said to Harry, handing him a particularly large piece. ‘Eat it. It’ll help.’

  Harry took the chocolate but didn’t eat it.

  ‘What was that thing?’ he asked Lupin.

  ‘A Dementor,’ said Lupin, who was now giving chocolate to everyone else. ‘One of the Dementors of Azkaban.’

  Everyone stared at him. Professor Lupin crumpled up the empty chocolate wrapper and put it in his pocket.