Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling and the third in the "Harry Potter" series. The book follows Harry Potter, a young wizard, in his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Along with friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry investigates Sirius Black, an escaped prisoner from Azkaban who they believe is one of Lord Voldemort's old allies. The book was published in the United Kingdom on 8 July 1999 by Bloomsbury and in the United States on 8
Religious debates over the Harry Potter series number of Wiccans and other commenters have argued that the critics' definition of Wicca tends to lump together many and various spiritualist practices that actually have little in common. They have also highlighted the differences between magic within Wicca, which is invocational and derives from the divine powers, and that depicted by the "Harry Potter" books, which is a purely mechanical application of spells without invoking any deities. A Wiccan review of "Harry Potter: Witchcraft Repackaged" pointed out that "communing with the dead and spirit world, sorcery, curses, occult symbology, black magic [and] demon possession"—all cited by the book as