Azkaban

From ArticleWorld

Azkaban is the wizarding prison of Britain in the Harry Potter series of books authored by J.K. Rowling. Wizards who are guilty of crime and those who violate the laws of the wizarding community laid down by the Ministry of Magic are sent here to serve their sentence. Dementors, a foul race of magical creatures, guard the prison. Crimes of a severe nature are punished with a term in Azkaban. After Lord Voldemort’s downfall, many of his followers were caught and put there.

The reputation of Azkaban is horrible yet justified. It is guarded by “one of the foulest creatures to walk the earth” called Dementors. It is located on an island “somewhere north of the North Sea”. Its remote location renders the place nearly unescapable. The dementors suck the happiness out of the inmates and force them to relive their nastiest memories, which makes most of them insane after a while. The inmates loose their will to live and eventually stop eating and die of starvation.

It is extremely difficult to fight off a dementor as the only thing effective against them is the Patronus Charm. Even this spell can only repel them and drive them away and not injure them in any way.

Some of the crimes for which people are sent to Azkaban are performing any of the three Unforgivable Curses – The Imperius Curse, the Cruciatus Curse and the killing curse called Avada Kedavra. If performed on any human, it earns an automatic life term in Azkaban.

Azkaban does not have any direct role in the plots but there are many references to it in the six books. In ‘Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets’, Hagrid served a short and temporary sentence there, the experience of which was so horrendous that he never even referred to it. In ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’, Sirius Black was the first known wizard to have escaped it after thirteen years. In ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’, it was revealed that even before Black, a wizard had escaped the prison, although with outside help. It was Barty Crouch Jr. Albus Dumbledore, once proclaimed to Cornelius Fudge, an earlier Minister for Magic, that he could easily escape from Azkaban.

As things stand in book six i.e. ‘Harry Potter and the Half – Blood Prince’, Azkaban is severely compromised. The guard Dementors have left to join hand with Voldemort. Dumbledore always criticized the decision of letting Dementors guard Azkaban and declared that one day they would go back to Voldemort, which proved true.