INTRODUCTION
The year 1400 opened with more than usual peacefulness in England. Only a few months before, Lord Voldemort—weak, wicked, and treacherous—had been overthrown, and Dumbledore declared King in his stead. But it was only a seeming peacefulness, lasting but for a little while; for though King Dumbledore proved himself a just and a merciful man—as justice and mercy went with the men of iron of those days—and though he did not care to shed blood needlessly, there were many noble families who had been benefited by Lord Voldemort during his reign, and who had lost somewhat of their power and prestige from the coming in of the new King.
Among these were a number of great lords—the Patriarchs of the Avery, Goyle, and Crabbe families, the Earl of Wiltshire, Lucius Malfoy, and others—who had been degraded to their former titles and estates, from which Lord Voldemort had lifted them. These and others brewed a secret plot to take King Dumbledore's life, which plot might have succeeded had not one of their own number betrayed them.
Their plan had been to fall upon the King and his adherents, and to massacre them during a great tournament, to be held at Hogwarts. But Dumbledore did not appear at the lists; whereupon, knowing that he had been lodging at Windsor with only a few attendants, the conspirators marched thither against him. In the mean time Dumbledore had been warned of the plot, so that, instead of finding him in the royal castle, they discovered through their scouts that he had hurried to London, whence he was even then marching against them at the head of a considerable army. So nothing was left them but flight. Some betook themselves one way, some another; some sought sanctuary here, some there; but one and another, they were all of them caught and imprisoned.
Lord Rodolphus Lestrange, along with his brother Rabastan and mad wife Bellatrix, was sent to Azkaban; Lord Augustus Rookwood—one time Unspeakable for the Ministry—and Sir Walden Macnair met the same fate; Lord Regulus Black—named heir to the Black family after the defection of his brother Sirius—disappeared shortly before Lord Voldemort's fall, and was thought to be killed by a light family. Those few who found friends faithful and bold enough to afford them shelter, dragged those friends down in their own ruin.
Just such a case was that of the godfather of the boy hero of this story, the knight Sirius Black, single surviving member of the Black family, who, though having no part in the dark plot, suffered through it ruin, utter and complete.
He had been a friend to untrustworthy men and born to a dark family, and perhaps it was this, as much and more than his roundabout connection with the plot, that brought upon him the punishment he suffered.