Petros's Reviews > Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Anti-defense defenses
So what does the third book offer besides being a bit darker with a bit higher stakes? Absolutely nothing. Instead of fixing any of the previous problems, it just made them bigger. Starting with the security which is not only easy to break, but now also works against the very people it’s supposed to protect. You see, in order to keep the students safe from an assassin, the teachers bring in a hundred life sucking fiends, which were supposed to track the assassin, while making it impossible to sneak out of school. Well guess what, not only they completely failed to find the assassin, not only they couldn’t prevent the students from sneaking out, but also the only people they attacked throughout the book were innocent children.

And for God’s sake, the same fiends were responsible for keeping the same assassin imprisoned in the highest top secret dungeon of the magic world, from where nobody ever escapes. And guess what, the assassin escaped from that very place, guarded by thousands of these creatures without leaving a trace. So I ask you, would you use the same guards who failed as watchers against the same person that completely escaped their attention, in an environment that offers less security and far more open places to infiltrate from? I think not; you would use somebody else. Preferably, someone who doesn’t like attacking innocent children and sucking their lives dry just for the heck of it.

Also, what is the point of using fiends as guards, when there is a spell that scares them away? And it’s not even a hard to learn spell. Harry learned it, and he is but a third year student who can’t even study all year long back home. It’s a piece of cake for any experienced wizard to instantly scare away all these so called defenses.

And there is more. All doors in the school now open by mentioning a password. How hard is it for an outsider to learn the password simply by hearing a student mentioning it while opening the door? Or even better; just stealing the paper on which all the passwords are written on? That is essentially not defense.

The only thing that offered actual protection were these magic alarms that are very cheap to acquire and glow every time someone is using magic to hide something. So why didn’t they simply fill the school with those alarms and be done with it? Harry wouldn’t be able to use his invisibility cloak to sneak out, and any evil wizard who was using a spell to hide something would be exposed immediately. Unfortunately, the characters were all retards, so no matter how much the alarm tried to warn them, they kept not paying attention to it. It was like “Watch out! Danger near by! Prepare yourselves!” and all they said was “Hm, what for dinner?” So essentially, even when defenses are working, the characters are incapable to use them.

Bullshit sport
And speaking of security, why is Quidditch not banned? It’s an extremely dangerous sport. How many times did a player miss by a hair to crush on the stage and kill dozens of spectators? There are no safety measures against that. In fact, in the first book someone was using magic to control a broomstick and make the player crush on the ground. And if you thought that was something hidden so it’s doesn’t count, in this book the children are forced to play a match in the middle of a tornado. The teachers do not cancel the match and keep it going. Not only that but those hundred fiends literally entered the playfield and began attacking the players and the on lookers. Wouldn’t logically the teachers have canceled the match then? Guess what, they didn’t. They even allowed one team to have a valid win, despite the obvious fact that the fiends ATTACKED THE OTHER TEAM AND KNOCKED OUT THEIR PLAYERS. The fairness of this game simply does not exist. A hydrogen bomb could explode in the middle of the field and for all we see the teachers would simply allow the match to continue.

Time travel
And as if that wasn’t enough of a mess, Rowling makes things even more contrived by introducing a time machine; that piss poor method of fixing all that went wrong by simply going back in time. You would assume such a powerful artifact would only be used in the gravest of moments (such as destruction of the world) and only by the most powerful wizards (such as heroes or ministers of magic). But no; it was actually given to a greenhorn student, just so she would use it to attend more school classes. WHAT KIND OF RETARDS GIVE A TIME MACHINE TO A CHILD, FOR SUCH PETTY REASONS?

And not only that, she is specifically told to not use it for anything dangerous. Well, what a surprise, she used it for many dangerous things JUST BECAUSE SHE FELT LIKE IT. Yes, very responsible uses of time travel there. And don’t give me excuses of the sort “It was done for a good purpose.” This is time travel we are talking about, it rewrites reality, you don’t use it in any way you like. And also, who are you to judge what is good in the first place? What if someone believes it’s a good thing to go back in time and help Voltemort not to die and to take over the world?

Awful messages
And in the middle of all that is of course Harry, who teaches the little children who are reading his books, to break all the rules, even when there is no sane reason to do so. There is an assassin and a hundred fiends out there. He still wants to sneak out of school, endangering his life in case he is found out, and the only reason he does it for, is because he wants to buy sweets from a candy shop. What kind of a retarded logic is this? Someone else can bring you sweets you retard, you don’t have to go buy them yourself. But it’s ok, it’s not an evil act because he is the protagonist and everything he does is right. Bullshit!

Blind to the obvious
By the way, do you remember in the previous book when Harry solved the mystery by magically finding the solution? Well there is also a mystery in this book and despite being far easier to solve, he and everybody else are incapable to solve it. If you have a magic alarm crying out bloody murder and you keep not paying attention to it, you are a retard. Not only that but imagine looking for the identity of, let’s say a vampire to avoid spoilers. He is hiding amongst the people in the school, he is a newcomer, hates garlic, and his name is Dracula. Shouldn’t it be obvious or what? Where did Harry’s ability to reach conclusions not even Sherlock Holmes could, went to all of a sudden?

Lazy infodumping
Anyways, Harry eventually confronts the assassin, who once again spends 50 pages explaining all his plans to Harry. Harry by the way really hated this guy for believing he helped Voltemort to kill his parent. He spent the whole book saying how he wants to kill this guy, and yet the moment he finally finds him, he just sits down and listens to his life’s story. What a lovely consistent personality he has. First he stops being able to solve mysteries, and now his anger disappears in a flash.

Cheap showdown
The final showdown is again disappointing. Not only we don’t have Harry fighting the assassin, but also turns out the real guilty person was a weak coward who surrendered the moment he was uncovered. So then all Harry needs to do is take this guy to the teachers and he can have the very nice bonus of finally moving away from his foster parents and going to a better place with a person who is a wizard who actually loves him a lot. But no, because Rowling didn’t want to take away the hero’s victimizing, she had someone going berserk because he forgot to take his medicine, thus allowing the guilty guy to escape in the commotion. Meaning, powerful wizards and huge monsters get killed with plot convenience, and now weaklings manage to escape, again with plot convenience. How consistent of you Rowling.