Chapter four: The Escape of Sirius Black
There were some strange goings-on before Harry Potter returned to Hogwarts in September 1993. First of all, Sirius Black, notorious Muggle killer and obvious Death Eater (again, see "Sirius Black: Friend or Foe"), made the first escape from Azkaban under the noses of the Dementors. It was rumoured that Black was planning to go to Hogwarts at this point, whether to kill Harry Potter or encourage him to become a rally point for other Death Eaters. Both seemed plausible options for Black, who had been in Azkaban for twelve years without contact with any other Death Eaters.
Around the same time, according to Potter's cousin Dudley Dursley, who as I have mentioned before was so good to be persuaded to be interviewed for this book, Potter managed to "blow up his aunt".
"We were all sat having a meal when Harry lost his temper. Next thing we knew, Aunt Marge was inflating, then she floated away. Harry legged it. My parents were really worried, they didn't know where he'd gone, and Aunt Marge was in trouble."
Dudley was obviously badly scarred by this episode, and we can see that Potter was a terribly bad influence on the poor boy who was evidently threatened by Potter's magic. However, he must have been very concerned about his cousin, and no doubt spent a lot of the night searching the streets for Potter.
According to Ernie Prang, mad driver of the Knight Bus, Potter boarded his bus, heading for London.
"He got on, giving us a false name, and I don't blame him, blew up his aunt and all, spilt hot chocolate all over his pillow. He chatted to us and didn't even know who Sirius Black was, just saw him on one of those Muggle telly-whatsits, so I don't know why you're asking me what Black had to do with Harry Potter," he said, as I was forced to travel on that rickety old bus to interview him. Obviously Prang was enchanted by the obvious celebrity travelling on his bus- the "false name" story doesn't wash with me! Prang wasn't aware of the lengths Potter would go to lie about, well, anything really, having only met the boy a handful of times.
Potter ended up staying at the Leaky Cauldron, the magical haven of waifs and strays from all over Britain. It makes one wonder why Harry managed to avoid yet another run-in with the law. After his exploding-pudding act the previous year, Potter should have been expelled from Hogwarts as per the rules set down by the Ministry of Magic. However, this is before people like the Minister, Cornelius Fudge, realised what a barmy weirdo Potter actually is. As the Minister still thought that Potter was a genius, he probably just made the inflating-aunt incident "go away".
Potter met the first of his father's friends, Remus Lupin, at the beginning of his third year at Hogwarts, as Lupin had been appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. What that mad fool Dumbledore was doing, appointing a werewolf within the school, we will never know, but he was putting all of his students in danger.
A source, who does not wish to be named, claims that Potter was becoming increasingly friendly with the werewolf, taking remedial lessons with him throughout the year. It has been suggested that Lupin was using Potter as a replacement for his father, James, and there have been rumours of a map, a map used for rule-breaking, which Lupin had passed on to Potter as a last request from Potter, Sr. It is unknown whether this map ever existed, and whether it actually fell into Potter's hands. It may have been reality, or it may have been a myth worthy of Beedle the Bard. We may never know.
Potter trundled along with his studies, as mediocre as ever. There is no evidence to suggest when Potter realised that Sirius Black was friends with his father, and was in fact Potter's own Godfather. Black managed to get into the school at Halloween that year. It was claimed that he was trying to kill Potter- something his master had been unable to do. Another rumour was that Black was going to kidnap Potter and use his charms to brainwash him into a rally point for the Death Eaters.
My source tells me that at Christmas, the talk of the school was the present that Potter had received, a Firebolt broomstick. Nobody knew who had given him the broom, as it was well known that Potter hated his only blood relatives, and they hated him. It was unlikely that the Dursleys had given him the broomstick- the poor Muggle fools would never have found out where to buy a racing broom even if they'd wanted to.
Another point of interest is that Potter's very good friend, the mad half-giant Rubeus Hagrid, was in trouble with the Ministry when a Hippogriff attacked star pupil Draco Malfoy. Potter was a part of the class, and it must be noted that Potter had been riding the same Hippogriff moments before the horrific attack. What did Potter do to make the Hippogriff attack the young boy who was obviously trying to learn, and who was known to be an enemy of the Potter boy.
Most of the rest of Potter's third year puttered along without incident- until the Hogwarts exam period. Suspiciously, the day that the Hippogriff was meant to be executed by the Ministry, was the day that Sirius Black managed to both get into Hogwarts and escape from it, from under the Minister of Magic's nose. It would be naïve to think that these two facts are unrelated, just as it would be naïve to think that Potter had nothing to do with either incident. It is known that Potter and his sycophantic chums, Ronald Weasley, who is barely worth mentioning, and that ghastly Muggleborn Hermione Granger, met Black that night, and although Dumbledore always claimed that the three were safely in the castle at the time of the escape of both the Hippogriff and Black. It would be easy to connect the two- the most logical explanation would be that Black stole the Hippogriff and escaped that way, but the two incidents were some three hours apart.
Cornelius Fudge, then the bumbling Minister for Magic (how he managed to get that position we'll never know), claimed later that it was something to do with a dead man and a Time-Turner. Intriguing words, to be sure. Who was the dead man? Who would have a Time-Turner? My source claims that it was the Granger girl who had the Time-Turner, and one could hazard a guess that the dead man was the fourth of the quartet of Potter Sr.'s friends, Peter Pettigrew. We know that the idiot faked his own death, or that Black faked it for him (see Sirius Black- Friend or Foe), because of his discovery some sixteen years later, but was he there that night? Why would he be at Hogwarts as well? There are some things we may never know, but what we do know is that something strange happened that night, and it was something to do with Potter.