Third year

"Most important of all, he had to buy his new schoolbooks, which would include those for his two new subjects, Care of Magical Creatures and Divination."

- Third year is the first in which students start electives A third year is a student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry who is in their third year of magical education, and are 13 to 14 years of age.

It is an important year for students, as they have to start elective courses. Every student must select at least two elective courses to pursue, along with the core classes they must take.

Classes
Third year students must take: Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, History of Magic, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, Herbology,and two or more electives.

Electives


Students have to start two or more electives during this year. Divination teaches methods of divining the future, or gathering insights into future events, through various rituals and tools. The magic taught in this class, as well as the ability to say prophetic things is a branch of magic referred to as "divination." Arithmancy is apparently a more accurate (or at least more accepted) way of predicting the future, similar to an obscure but existing hobby of numerology — the belief that number patterns existing in real life can be calculated to give information regarding the future.



Study of Ancient Runes is a mostly theoretical subject that studies the ancient runic scripts of magic. In Care of Magical Creatures students learn about a wide range of magical creatures, from flobberworms to Fire crabs, and even unicorns and thestrals. Students are taught about feeding, maintaining, breeding, and proper treatment of these various creatures. Muggle Studies is exactly what the name implies — the study of the daily lives of Muggles and how they cope with not being magical.

Hogsmeade
"Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card; the little thatched cottages and shops were all covered in a layer of crisp snow; there were holly wreaths on the doors and strings of enchanted candles hanging in the trees."

- Hogsmeade description During this year, students have more freedom and independence. Hogsmeade weekend trips are special trips that third year and above students at Hogwarts can take on certain weekends to Hogsmeade village. They have to obtain the permission of a parent or guardian, who have to sign a premission slip. If a student does not have the form signed, they may not enter the village and will have to stay at Hogwarts Castle in sight of the teachers. But if the form was signed but the student did something which disrupted the school's educational aura or safety, then they will lose their visitation rights to for the rest of a year.

Defence Against the Dark Arts

 * Boggart
 * Red Cap
 * Kappa
 * Werewolves
 * Grindylow
 * Hinkypunk
 * Vampire

Potions

 * Shrinking Solution
 * Confusing Concoction

Herbology

 * Puffapod

Transfiguration

 * Animagi

Charms

 * Cheering Charm

Care of Magical Creatures

 * Hippogriff
 * Flobberworm

Muggle Studies

 * Electricity

Divination

 * Tessomancy
 * Palmistry
 * Crystal Ball

Summer holidays
Harry Potter, the boy who became famous all over the wizarding world for being the first person to ever his survive the Killing Curse during Lord Voldemort's attack on and murder of his parents (thus causing the dark wizard's downfall and bringing an end to the First Wizarding War), got his third year at Hogwarts filled with depressing occurrences before he even got to school. It started when Hedwig, Errol and a postal service owl appeared at his window in the house of his Muggle aunt and uncle Vernon and Petunia Dursley on 31 July (Harry's thirteenth birthday), where Harry was staring out through it from his bed while thinking about how late they were. Having just finished an essay on Wendelin the Weird and her Flame-Freezing Charm with only Dudley Dursley snoring in the next room as background noise, the young wizard was still bored from getting punished by his uncle for giving their phone number to his friends his friends (most notably Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger), which might have made the Dursleys forget about his birthday, for they were too busy preparing for a visit from Aunt Marge. The sight of a copy of the Daily Prophet among the mail from Errol interested Harry, as it said that Ron had returned from a trip to Egypt to visit his oldest brother Bill Weasley, a Curse-Breaker of Gringotts, for which Arthur Weasley paid using seven hundred galleons he won in the Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw. It was there that Ron bought Harry the most fascinating present: a Sneakoscope, which was sold for tourists.

When his Hogsmeade permission form was delivered, Harry was worried of the trouble will probably go through in order to persuade his aunt or uncle to sign it. They agreed to do so the next morning, but only if he behaved during Marge's visit. However, Marge began insulting the memory of Harry's mother at the dinner table three days later, describing her as a "bad egg" who ran off with a "scoundrel" and left the Dursleys with Harry as the "result in front of them". Harry lost his temper to this, inadvertently making Marge's wine glass explode. The insults transitioned to his father on the final day of her visit, making him very upset to such extent that he ended up losing all control of his magic powers on the final day of her visit and accidentally inflated her, possibly with an Engorgement Charm. Vernon ordered his nephew to put Marge back the way she was, but Harry instead packed up his school things and left the house, fearing of his uncle's bet about being expelled from Hogwarts by the Ministry of Magic for using magic outside school.

Later that night, Harry was picked up on the curb of Magnolia Crescent by the triple-decker wizard transport called the Knight Bus, which was sent to drive him to the Leaky Cauldron for a meeting with Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge. During the ride, the bus's conductor Stan Shunpike gave him a copy of the Daily Prophet with its front page story being about the Ministry's struggle to recapture Sirius Black, a convicted Voldemort supporter who recently escaped from the wizard prison Azkaban (the first person ever to have done so) after spending twelve years there for mass-murder with a single Blasting Curse. They arrived at their destination in the presence of Fudge himself, who informed Harry during their meeting that Marge was returned to normal and Obliviated. To Harry's relief though, the minister did not blame him since accidental uses of magic did not count as a violation to the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, but described running away as very irresponsible and only seeing Harry was safe mattered. In addition, Fudge booked the young wizard a room in the Leaky Cauldron Inn for the rest of the summer, although this made him worried still about Harry's safety.

Stay at the Leaky Cauldron
When finished with his exploration of Diagon Alley for school supplies three weeks later, Harry found Ron and Hermione looking all over for him at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour four days afterwards while the Weasleys were booking a room at the inn. They already heard of his inflation of Marge, and while Ron thought it funny, Hermione was amazed to learn that Harry was not expelled and wondered why Fudge really let him off the hook. Ron, however, was more concerned for his pet rat Scabbers, who was looking very ill since he was brought back from Egypt (possibly due to the stress of the trip), so he and Harry went over to the Magical Menagerie to buy a bottle of rat tonic for him. While there, Hermione spent the early birthday money from her parents on a half-Kneazle cat named Crookshanks, who began tormenting Scabbers the moment they first met.

When the rat tonic was misplaced somewhere around the Leaky Cauldron salon later that night, Harry volunteered to search for it there while Ron was busy helping his older brother Percy Weasley search for his new Head Boy badge in their room at the inn. But the conversation which a worried Molly Weasley was having with her husband soon caught his attention, so Harry listened to what they were saying about Sirius Black's escape, and what connection it had to Harry himself. According to Mr Weasley, when Voldemort met his downfall, Black lost everything he hoped to gain, but to that day he remained a faithful servant to the Dark Lord's cause. The Ministry feared that the killer's motive was to use Harry to return his master to full strength, as evident to the report from Fudge's inspection of Azkaban saying that Black was repeatedly muttering "He's at Hogwarts" in his sleep. This shook Harry a little to the realisation that Fudge let him go because he was relieved to see Harry all right after running away. Though he was convinced that Hogwarts was a a safe haven, the senior Weasleys agreed that Black could break into the school if he could break out of his Azkaban.

Delay on the Hogwarts Express


When they got onto Platform 9¾, Mr Weasley moved Harry aside to tell him not to go looking for Black, but Harry claimed that he would never look for someone who wanted him killed. He, Ron and Hermione found only one empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express, but had to share with a friend of Harry's parents, Remus Lupin, who was recently appointed Hogwarts' new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. As Harry told his friends of what he heard about Black coming after him until, the train stopped almost halfway to Hogwarts, letting one of the Dementors (a gliding wraith capable of feeding on human happiness to cause depression and madness to anyone near it via mental energy draining) used as the Azkaban guards aboard to determine if Black himself was hiding on it. Only Harry and Ginny Weasley were the most affected by the creature (since he had the worst past involving the night Voldemort killed his parents, and she had the worst experience of being under the control of the sentient memory within Voldemort's old school diary the year prior), and were about to fall victim to its fatal kiss when Lupin cast a Patronus Charm which drove the Dementor away. Harry fainted to the sound of his mother screaming, but recovered when Lupin gave him a piece of chocolate to feel better and sent a letter ahead to Professor Minerva McGonagall see he was taken ill.

For one, Hermione was taking nearly twice as many classes, including some taught at the same time. Rubeus Hagrid for Care of Magical Creatures. While Lupin's lessons were enjoyable, Hagrid's soon become dreary. During the first class, Draco Malfoy deliberately provoked the hippogriff Buckbeak into attacking him, forcing Lucius Malfoy filed a complaint against Hagrid. Meanwhile, tensions grew between Hermione and Ron over Crookshanks' continuing habit of trying to harm Scabbers.

After several Dementors approached Harry during a Quidditch match, causing him to faint and fall off his broomstick. Albus Dumbledore stopped Harry's fall, but his Nimbus 2000 flew into the Whomping Willow and was destroyed, much to Harry's dismay. At Christmas, Harry received a new, superb Firebolt broomstick, although Hermione suspected Black was the anonymous donor. She reported it to Professor Minerva McGonagall, who confiscated the broom for testing. Harry and Ron were furious with Hermione and they stopped speaking to her. When the broom was returned some months later, the two boys tried to make up with her, but it went wrong when Ron discovered Scabbers was missing; Ron blamed Crookshanks because he found cat hairs and blood on his dormitory floor.

The Mauraders Map
"Get away from me, werewolf!"

- Ron yelling at Lupin

Shortly before Christmas, the Weasley twins gave Harry their Marauder's Map, a magical document that showed every person's location within Hogwarts, what they were doing, and secret passageways in and out of the castle. Harry used a tunnel to sneak into Hogsmeade village, where he overheard a disturbing conversation that Sirius Black was his parents' best friend, as well as his godfather and legal guardian. Black was the Potters' Secret Keeper and he allegedly divulged the Potters' secret whereabouts to Lord Voldemort and murdered their friend Peter Pettigrew, as well as twelve Muggle bystanders. Peter left a finger to prove that he has been killed with the twelve Muggles.



After Harry completed his Divination exam, Professor Trelawney entered a trance and predicted that the Dark Lord's servant would return to him that night. Harry and Ron finally made peace with Hermione, but the trio soon learned that Buckbeak would be executed. When they visited Hagrid to console him, Scabbers appeared, and Ron picked him up. Cornelius Fudge, Albus Dumbledore and the executioner were making their way to Hagrid's hut, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione made their way out the back door. As they were walking up the path, they thought they heard Buckbeak executed, when all of a sudden, Scabbers bit Ron, and Ron chased him to the Whomping Willow. A large dog attacked Ron and dragged him and Scabbers into a hole at the tree's base. Harry and Hermione followed, finding a tunnel leading to the Shrieking Shack. Inside, Harry confronted Sirius Black, who, as an unregistered, and therefore illegal, Animagus, could transform into an animal at will.

The Prisoner of Azkaban
"The Dark Lord lies alone and friendless, abandoned by his followers. His servant has been chained these twelve years. Tonight, before midnight... the servant will break free and set out to rejoin his master. The Dark Lord will rise again with his servant's aid, greater and more terrible than ever he was. Tonight... before midnight... the servant... will set out... to rejoin... his master."

- Professor Trelawney's second prediction



Lupin, who spotted the group on the Marauder's Map, suddenly burst in and embraced his old friend Black. Confronted by Hermione, Lupin admitted to being a werewolf, as well as the Map's creator along with Sirius, Peter Pettigrew, and James Potter, the latter two also being illegal Animagi (a rat and a stag, respectively). Lupin and Black explained that Scabbers was actually Peter Pettigrew in his Animagus form. He was Voldemort's servant, and he betrayed the Potters, framing Black for the crimes. Harry was sceptical until Black and Lupin forced Pettigrew back into his human form. Black explained he discovered that Pettigrew was still alive and escaped Azkaban to seek revenge, as well as to make sure that Pettigrew could not harm Harry. Harry stopped Black and Lupin from murdering Pettigrew, believing that his father would not have wanted his two best friends to become killers.

Saving the innocent
As the group headed back to the castle, the full moon rose, causing Lupin to turn into a werewolf. During the ensuing commotion, Pettigrew escaped, while Sirius turned into his dog form to protect the others from Lupin. Lupin fled, leaving Black badly injured. As Dementors moved in to attack Black, Harry saw a mysterious figure in the distance cast a powerful stag-shaped Patronus, scattering the vicious creatures. Harry became convinced it was his father, or at least his father's spirit, who produced the Patronus. Black was then captured and taken to the castle where the Dementors intended to suck out his soul.



Hermione revealed to Harry that she was entrusted with a time-travelling device, called a Time-Turner, which was how she was able to attend so many classes. Prompted by Dumbledore, she and Harry travelled three hours into the past, watching themselves go through the night's previous events. They freed Buckbeak and returned to the Whomping Willow. As the Dementors were about to attack the "other" Harry and Sirius, Harry realised that the mysterious figure he saw earlier was actually himself. He cast the powerful Patronus that repelled the dementors. Harry and Hermione freed Black, who escaped on Buckbeak, as they rushed back to where they were before. As they saw Dumbledore exiting the hospital wing, they completed their journey.



After Sirius was revealed to have once again escaped, Severus Snape burst into the hospital wing and blamed Harry, but left when he was unable to convince anyone without any proof. Fudge said he would remove the Dementors because they tried to perform their kiss on Harry. Draco Malfoy was furious that Buckbeak escaped, while Hagrid was ecstatic. Professor Lupin resigned after Snape "accidentally" revealed that he was a werewolf.

When Harry told Dumbledore about Professor Trelawney's prophecy, Dumbledore encouraged him to not feel guilty about letting Pettigrew live. On the train back, Harry received a letter from Sirius, telling him that he sent him the Firebolt, and included a letter giving Harry permission to visit Hogsmeade. The letter was delivered by a small minute owl, which Sirius gives to Ron as a replacement for Scabbers. The owl was later named Pigwidgeon by Ginny.

Appearances

 * PS undefined
 * PS F
 * PS G

Notes and references
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