Fridge / Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Warning: Marked and Unmarked spoilers ahead. Read at your own discretion.

Fridge Brilliance

• In Harry's Divination lesson, Trelawney predicts that Harry was born around Midwinter. Only, he was born on 31st July. Midwinter could have been referring to at or around the winter solstice. The winter solstice is 22nd December, far from Harry's birthday, but nearer the birthday of Tom Riddle (which is New Year’s Eve). Trelawney wasn't reading Harry's mind, but the piece of Voldemort's soul within him.
• Lupin regularly hands Harry chocolate after the Dementor attacks, insisting it will make him feel better. Chocolate contains amino acids that encourage the production of dopamine, a chemical that in very simple terms makes you happier. It's a known anti-depressant. Probably the best way to help recover from creatures thematically based on depression that literally suck the happiness out of you.
• At first, Voldemort offering to spare Lily's life seems unimportant. Then Deathly Hallows rolls around and Snape admits he begged Voldemort to spare her. Voldemort agreed to spare Lily if she let him kill Harry, but she refused and offered herself in place. Voldemort essentially accepted the bargain and then went back on it, which was why the spell backfired. Because Snape asked for Lily to live, Harry became the Chosen One. It could never have been anyone else.
• Why was the Dementor's Kiss used as punishment instead of death? It prevents people from coming back as ghosts.
• When Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Ginny are confronted by the Dementor on the Hogwarts Express, Harry passes out because, as Lupin later states to him: "There are horrors in your past that others don't have." Of the other four kids, the one most affected is Ginny, "who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as Harry felt". Not much emphasis is put on this because she's only three months removed from having been Mind Raped by Diary Horcrux-Voldemort. Lastly, Neville was very pale and had a higher voice than normal, which foreshadows the reveal of his parents having been tortured into insanity by Crouch Jr. and the Lestranges, and no longer recognising him.
• Sirius Black's nickname, Padfoot, seems a pun like the rest of the Marauders, because dogs have padded feet. But after looking into the mythology of the British Isles, the black dog is a death avatar that goes by many different names, one of which is Padfoot. This gives more credence to Trelawney's prediction. Sirius is a death avatar; his friends from school all die rather violent deaths, as does Sirius himself, Harry and his cousin Tonks. Although Harry’s Only Mostly Dead.
• The Marauders are first mentioned in the order "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs". This just happens to be the reverse of the order in which they die - firstly James, then Sirius fourteen years later, then Peter two years later at Malfoy Manor, and lastly Remus a few weeks later during the final battle.
• Harry's dad was the genius behind the three Animagi - an incredibly difficult transfiguration to pull off which he did as a teen (as did Rita Skeeter). Back in Philosopher's Stone, Ollivander described James Potter's wand as "good for transfiguration". Wand and wizard were more than just good; they were exceptional. Exceptional enough that with James' and Sirius' help, mediocre Peter, whom McGonagall was often harsh with, managed to pull it off by 4th or 5th year.
• Several people mention that Dumbledore dislikes Dementors. He lets them guard the school, but bars them from entering the grounds. This seems perfectly reasonable. Dementors are, after all, nasty creatures. But there is also a personal reason: Everytime the Dementors are near Dumbledore, he has to relive Ariana's death.
• Every Animagus turns into an animal indicative of their true personality.
  • James Potter became a stag and was a proud leader;
  • Sirius Black became a dog and was very loyal
  • Peter Pettigrew became a rat, suspicious and parasitic animals that steal food and spread disease. Informally, to “rat on” or “rat out” someone is to betray them by giving out information that could get them in trouble, and he was the one who “ratted” Harry’s parents out to Voldemort.
  • Rita Skeeter, the life-ruining Intrepid Reporter, became a beetle, which are often seen as pests.
  • Professor McGonagall becomes a cat, creatures known for being proud, aloof, austere and intelligent, which certainly fits her as a Stern Teacher and Iron Lady. Also, cats are often connected to magic, and McGonagall is the Hogwarts professor that introduces Muggle-borns to magic.
• Hermione's Boggart is Professor McGonagall telling her she's failed everything. She's not just afraid of academic underachievement, but also general failure and being inadequate. As a young Muggle-born who desperately wants to prove that she has a place in the Wizarding World, of course she'd be afraid of being expelled from Hogwarts. On top of that, the Boggart takes the form of McGonagall, Hermione's favourite teacher.
  • It's also mentioned at one point that before the incident with the troll in first year, Hermione had little to no friends, due to her high intellect and bossy nature. If she were to be expelled, she would also lose the only place she ever found friends as loyal and caring as Harry and Ron, as well.
• When Snape confiscates and attempts to read the Marauders Map, the map insults him. He calls Lupin and asks if he believes Harry may have gotten the map from the makers. Because Harry hasn't connected the dots that "Mr. Moony" is Lupin, he doesn't realise Snape is directly accusing Lupin of giving Harry the map.
• When Harry and Hermione return to the Hospital Wing after rescuing Sirius from the tower, they hear Peeves "bouncing along the corridor in boisterous good spirits, laughing his head off". Hermione assumes that Peeves is "all excited because the Dementors are going to finish off Sirius". However, Order of the Phoenix reveals that Peeves likes school troublemakers, like Fred and George. He was celebrating Sirius' escape.
• Fudge remarks that Snape seems unbalanced after his attempted tirade against Harry, and tells Dumbledore to "watch out for him", but Dumbledore is unfazed. Three years later, Snape will prove to indeed be somebody Dumbledore apparently should have been watching out for, but in the end we learn Dumbledore was right to trust him.
• When Harry wakes up in the hospital wing after being attacked by Dementors in a Quidditch game against Hufflepuff, he hears someone comment that he didn't even break his glasses. Hermione put an Impervious charm on them during the game, which not only kept water off of them but also probably made them temporarily unbreakable!
• Harry has such a negative reaction to the Dementors because he isn't just hearing his mother’s voice as she was protecting him, but the Dementors are also forcing the piece of Voldemort to relive its worst memory as well: the memory of being ripped apart by the backfired Killing Curse. This also becomes Fridge Horror when you realise that both memories are Voldemort's.
• Lupin is one of the few who deliberately perform wandless magic when he conjures fire on the train, so it seems to be either a rare skill or just not something most people bother with. But the whole reveal that he's a werewolf puts things in a different perspective. Without the Wolfsbane Potion, he transforms and probably can't have his wand with him. So doing basic spells without an expensive, breakable, and gnawable wand would be really useful.
• Trelawney's prophecy contains a subtle hint of Sirius' innocence. She says that "tonight, before midnight...the servant will break free." However, Sirius is already free, having broken out of Azkaban months ago. Pettigrew, on the other hand, is still in his self-inflicted rat body and finally returns to human form that night.
• The first time Harry and Ron notice Hermione has briefly stepped away from them between classes, she changes the subject by voicing her hope that there's something good for lunch. She's starving: she's just used the Time Turner to live through twice as many hours since breakfast as they did!
• While on the Knight Bus in the film, Harry voices his concern about Muggles being able to see them, to which the Shrunken Head says "No [they don't see anything], but if you jab 'em with a fork, they feel." It's basically their way of saying that the Knight Bus isn't seen by any Muggles but it can still cause damage, hence why it has to stop to let an old lady cross, why it has to squeeze itself to fit between two other vehicles, and how it set off a car alarm from bumping it.
• When Uncle Vernon is talking to Aunt Marge about James, he says James was unemployed. As it's later revealed, after graduation, the Marauders and Lily became "full-time fighters" for the Order - mostly because James (who Marge was trying to cast as a drunk vagrant) was set for life due to his parents having become wealthy from inventing Sleekeazy's Hair Potion, and thus, being a trust fund baby, he didn't need a full-time job.
• Why does Hermione struggle at Divination, despite being skilled at every other subject? Because she is narrow-minded and logical, and Divination requires predicting the future by considering many possible outcomes of a situation (even unlikely ones), and accept that all of them have a chance of happening. As Dumbledore says, "The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed."
  • There's also the fact that she takes academia more seriously than Harry or Ron. They're fine with having an easy class where they can just make up answers for homework, but Hermione wants to actually be academically challenged by a teacher who knows their material (and, while Trelawney does have a fair amount of talent, it's clear that she's not nearly as good as she makes herself out to be). Furthermore, while Trelawney is a fairly talented Seer, she's a really poor teacher. While there may be legitimate ways to foretell the future without going into a trance, she clearly doesn't know them herself.
• Trelawney making a big panic about "when thirteen dine together, the first to rise shall be the first to die" is played for laughs, as Trelawney sits down, and later Harry and Ron get up at the same time. There are actually fourteen people sitting around the table before Trelawney arrived. The thirteenth was Pettigrew, in his Scabbers disguise. Then Dumbledore gets up to greet Trelawney as she enters.
• Snape always desired to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, so he probably only agreed to brew the Wolfsbane Potion every month for Lupin in exchange for substituting for Lupin on full moons.
• It has been implied that Hogwarts itself has some level of awareness, refusing to let Umbridge into Dumbledore's office for instance. If true, then it explains how Sirius is able to make it to the Gryffindor dorm entrance before anyone can stop him: because the school deduced that he was innocent and is trying to remove a legitimate threat, and so allows him to proceed.
• Sirius explains that the main reason that he was able to survive the effects of Azkaban was that as a dog his emotions aren't as complex, indicating perhaps that non-humans hold up against Dementor proximity better than humans do, or even maybe that Dementors don't register emotions from non-humans as strongly as they do from humans.
• Professor Trelawney is noted to be unusually thin. Given that she's constantly predicting doom and disaster she might eat little because she's afraid of being poisoned.
• Twice in the book, a Potter literally stands between a Dark Wizard that doesn’t want to kill them, and an innocent that the Dark Wizard plans to harm. The first time is Lily, pleading with Voldemort to kill her and spare Harry, and the second time is Harry, stopping Snape from subjecting Sirius to the Dementor’s Kiss. Is it any wonder that Harry, who had been hearing his mother’s dying words all book, doesn’t even need to think before he reacts?
• In this book, Lupin mentions a particularly horrifying bit of information about Dementors, that if you are around one of them for too long it will feed on you until you are reduced to "...Something like itself, soulless and evil". If Lupin's words are correct, and being fed on by the Dementors has a risk of essentially draining away your better nature until you become much more evil and practically soulless, then this fits nicely with one way Barty Crouch Jr. can be interpreted in the very next book. Someone who may not have been evil, or at least not as bad as they were when they went in, twisted and drained of all but the worst of who they were, and left a shell of what they once were, which would explain Barty Junior's traits of Undying Loyalty and his obsession with Voldemort, as well as his cruel and manipulative behavior, and his rejection of Winky's love or his mother's sacrifice. If he was a better person before Azkaban, with issues but other positive qualities or doubts about his devotion to Voldemort, then they and everything else that made him a more "complete" person might very well have been literally sucked out of him by the Dementors! Overlaps with Fridge Horror.
• In the film, Lupin turns on some peppy jazz music during the lesson with the Boggart. As the students will be confronting a creature that manifests as their worst fear, the music is an attempt to keep the mood light and give them a better chance of casting the spell.
• Also in the film, Snape instinctively shields Harry, Ron and Hermione from werewolf Lupin, foreshadowing that he was Good All Along.
• A third fridge moment from the film is Sirius's insult of telling Snape to go play with his chemistry set. On the surface, this seems a little odd given Sirius's status as a pureblood wizard, but the Order of the Phoenix reveals that Sirius had at least some knowledge of the muggle world (partially learned to piss off his parents) and given Snape's preference to treat certain subjects (such as potions) with an almost obsessive reverence, Sirius is giving a subtle dig at Snape by comparing his beloved subject to something as mundane as chemistry.
• Pettigrew doesn't just transform into a rat to escape his shackles when Lupin turns into a werewolf. It's said that he became an Animagus because the werewolf posed less threat to animals. So he was being a Dirty Coward and banking on Lupin going for the children rather than him.

Fridge Horror

• Once Scabbers is outed as Peter Pettigrew, Ron realises that he and Percy handled Pettigrew's poop for 12 years, and were likely naked in front of him.
  "Ron. haven't I been a good friend... a good pet? You won't let them kill me, Ron, will you. You're on my side, aren't you?"
  But Ron was staring at Pettigrew with utmost revulsion.
  "I let you sleep in my bed!" He said.
  • As in the previous book with Ginny and the diary, it's an example of how a potentially dangerous individual can get close to your children without your knowledge.
• On the way to Hogwarts, at least one Dementor searches the train. A creature that feeds on happiness and souls was in confined quarters with a few hundred emotional children and teenagers. Even worse, it's implied that there wasn't an Auror or official around keeping an eye on it. What if Lupin didn't drive it off with a Patronus? This might be a bit of Fridge Brilliance itself. Lupin was likely on the train was because Dumbledore asked him to so he could keep an eye on the students in case a Dementor (or even Sirius Black) showed up.
• Azkaban. Outside of school, they have fines, permanent loss of magical power, and soul torturing imprisonment that often drives people mad within weeks, making even the shortest sentence horrifying. What do they do to petty criminals? A fine? Permanent loss of their wands? Torturing them into madness?
• The scene where Sirius and Lupin interrogate Pettigrew and give him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech starts out as well-deserved but gets scary after the two openly admit to planning to kill Pettigrew, especially when we have every reason to believe that they would have done it, had Harry not intervened (admittedly, just to have Pettigrew submitted to a Fate Worse than Death in Azkaban and probably to clear Sirius' name by showing everyone the very person Sirius was supposed to have killed. This is hammered home by the Ministry of Magic song "Marauder's Map".) The casual way they discuss killing Pettigrew is very disturbing as well as the fact that they had no problem trying to do it in front of Harry, Ron and Hermione. Sure, he may had deserved it but that doesn't change the fact that three kids would've had to see two adults (one of whom they'd considered a mass murderer a while ago and the other, a respected and trusted teacher) murder someone in cold blood. Plus there's no guarantee that producing Pettigrew's body would've cleared Sirius's name since as Pettigrew mentioned, the officials could claim that Pettigrew had chosen to hide himself from Voldemort spy and mass-murderer Sirius.
• Sirius has been living off rats. Peter's Animagus form is a rat.
• Lupin steps in before Harry can face the Boggart, so we see his own, instead: the full moon, which the students mistake for a crystal ball. It's all pretty harmless. But return to this chapter later, having read Order of the Phoenix where Molly's Boggart takes the form of her children and husband, murdered, you realise how very lucky this class of thirteen-year-olds was that their teacher's greatest fear was so inoffensive.
  • Especially when one considers that Lupin also lived through the first war against Voldemort, lost all three of his closest friends, and was witness to the horrors that the members of the original Order went through including Frank and Alice Longbottom. Despite these horrors, his transformation remains his biggest fear.
  • His worst fear isn't any of the violence from the first war happening again. Instead, his worst fear is of transforming into something that can do much worse to the people he cares about. He's more afraid of being the one hurting his friends than of them being hurt by someone else and sadly, without the threat of war hanging over them (at this point), he's the most realistic threat to the people around him.
• On a similar note, we know from the boggart-dementor that boggarts can mimic the magic of the things they turn into, and there are multiple students who were petrified by the basilisk last year. What if one of them had caused the boggart to turn into a basilisk, in the middle of a class?
  • It seems unlikely that this would happen. Moaning Myrtle only remembered the Basilisk's eyes, not its full appearance, and the memory of Hagrid's framing in Tom Riddle's diary implies that other students were petrified before Myrtle's death, yet the identity of the monster of the Chamber of Secrets remained unknown for another 50 years. They probably didn't remember it clearly.
• When a desperate Death Eater blew up the street, the cover story was that it was a gas explosion. But what if Muggles at the gas company got Mis-blamed for it?
• Fans make much of Remus being the only werewolf to attend Hogwarts, with bashing fics claiming Dumbledore admitted him to groom him into becoming his pet werewolf for the Order. But a more thorough look at the events as Rowling presents them leads to an unpleasant conclusion: Remus’ admission to Hogwarts was a pilot program — one that failed thanks to the Marauders, especially Sirius. In the era before Wolfsbane Potion, Remus had to go to the Shrieking Shack every time he transformed. While he was in school, his friends discovered his secret and became Animagi to keep him company. During this time, they let him out of the Shack and into the Forbidden Forest. It is unlikely Dumbledore was aware of these escapades, but the last straw came when Sirius lured Snape to a face-to-face encounter with a transformed Remus. This drove home to Dumbledore the hard truth that it was not feasible to admit werewolves to Hogwarts, because the student body at large lacked the maturity to handle things responsibly, and it would only be a matter of time before a student was turned or killed. Even with Wolfsbane Potion, it would only be a matter of time before an idiotic bully decided it would be fun to sabotage or swap out the potion.
  • If you count it, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery actually shows that the idea of Remus being the 'pilot' in a werewolf program was actually successful, as you do meet a werewolf student in the games that Dumbledore is quite aware of and for whom Snape brews the Wolfsbane Potion for.
• Snape outing Remus as a werewolf and getting him fired from one of the only stable jobs he'd ever had out of petty malice is bad enough. But then you realize that Lupin's going to face constant bigotry from pretty much everyone who reads the Prophet (aka just about the entire British Wizarding World) for the next few years.
• Also, imagine how Lupin would have felt after reading an entire set of essays (including one written by his best friend's son) about, essentially, how to kill werewolves—in other words, how to kill him. Not to mention the fact that he's very lucky the only person in the entire class who put two and two together is Hermione, despite Snape dropping a giant hint. No wonder he tells the class not to turn it in.

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