When Mathilde awoke, she found that she was no longer bound, and she was lying on something soft. She blinked, and sat up. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was after ten'o' clock in the evening. She'd been out for hours. Where was she?
She was sitting on an old-fashioned sofa in what appeared to be a well-furnished office of some sort. The sofa was an orange-red, the walls purple, the carpet red and the desk in the opposite corner was bottle-green. Pulling a disgusted face, she stood up, and made her way to the door.
It was locked.
Cursing, Mathilde banged her fist on the door. Suddenly, she heard footsteps in the hallway just outside; they seemed to be approaching the room she was in. There were voices, too;
"She's in my office, Dumbledore. Just down the hall."
"I've brought with me a sample of her handwriting from her Hogwarts days, Cornelius," said a very familiar voice, "I think you'll find that it corresponds exactly with that of the letter I gave you."
"Thank you, Dumbledore, but that won't be necessary. I believe you already."
Should she return to the sofa? Would her chances be best if she pretended to be unconscious again. No, probably not...should she hide? Try to escape? She then noticed that the door held a keyhole. She peered out of it, and saw that Dumbledore and the man called Cornelius had reached the door, but had stopped in front of it.
"I'll tell you, though. It was a bit of a trick to prevent Barty Crouch from just shipping her off to Azkaban with Black. I managed to convince him that she was my responsibility as a Muggle."
"Sirius Black was sent directly to Azkaban?" Dumbledore inquired, "Do you mean to say that he was not even given a chance to explain himself?"
"Explain himself, Dumbledore? What's there to explain? You said yourself that Black was the Potter's Secret-Keeper, and that someone has been passing information to Voldemort about the Potter's all along, and now here you are; the Potters have been killed, and so has Peter Pettigrew, along with twelve Muggles. We found Black right there on the scene, laughing, with his wand pointed right at what used to be Pettigrew..." He shook his head.
"No..." Mathilde whispered. Sirius hadn't told Dumbledore of the switch! They thought that Sirius had killed an innocent man, and given the Potters to Voldemort! It was her fault...she hadn't put any names in her letter to Dumbledore...
If only she could get out of this damned office and tell them...
Dumbledore was nodding solemnly. "I suppose you're right, Cornelius. It just took me by surprise."
"Well, you are a very trusting man, Dumbledore. Don't blame yourself for that."
Dumbledore had bowed his head, but he lifted it again.
"So...Miss Hawkins is in this office?" he asked. Cornelius nodded. "I assume you've placed an Unbreakable Charm on the window?" This last question was spoken in a louder, clearer voice, and Mathilde was certain that she saw his eyes flicker to the keyhole momentarily.
"Well...no, I haven't. But she's still unconscious for hours, and I doubt she'll feel any need to escape even if she should wake up."
Escape, why should she escape? Was Dumbledore trying to give her a hint? She took no chances, and, seizing a small chair, stood poised and ready to throw it at the window at the slightest provocation.
"If you don't mind, Cornelius, I'd like to have a private word with her before you perform the Memory Charm."
As she was no longer standing by the door, Mathilde didn't see Cornelius Fudge reach out a hand to prevent Dumbledore from entering the office.
"I'm afraid I can't allow that, Dumbledore," he said. "I mean...I certainly don't mind, it's just that I've been ordered not to allow you to. You see, some of my superiors think - and I certainly don't believe this - that you intentionally botched her first Memory Charm after Hogwarts."
"Indeed," said Dumbledore, sounding amused.
"Yes, nonsense, I know," said Fudge nervously, "but orders are orders. Now, anyway-"
He was interrupted by the loud noise of glass breaking behind the door.
"Damn," Fudge muttered, and began to fumble for his keys. Before he could get the proper one into the lock, however, the key ring seemed to inexplicably leap from his hand and onto the floor.
"Oh, let me get that for you, Cornelius," offered Dumbledore, who proceeded to stoop for the keys very slowly.
By the time the two men finally made it into the office, it was empty.
"She's probably climbed down the trellis," said Fudge, peering out of the window, "it's too dark to see right now, though. I'll get a group of Hit Wizards down there immediately to search her out."
"Well, good luck in your task, Cornelius. Unfortunate bit of luck Well, I must return to my school, they'll be needing me." Fudge hastened from the room, and Dumbledore sauntered out after him a moment later.
Another few seconds passed before Mathilde cautiously emerged from her hiding place beneath Cornelius Fudge's desk. She wrapped her cloak tightly around herself and crept silently from the room, and, as it was now very late and the Ministry of Magic offices were now empty, she slipped easily out the back door and back to her home in Godric's Hollow.
She had to hitchhike back to Godric's Hollow, something she wasn't much experienced at. She managed to get home safely though, and no Ministry wizards accosted her on the road to wipe her memories away.
Perhaps the Ministry didn't keep very close tabs on Muggle residency, or perhaps they simply decided that she wasn't worth the trouble. Either way, no wizard ever appeared on her front doorstep to perform the Memory Charm that she'd escaped from, and, in the weeks that followed, she learned to stop looking over her shoulder for them.
But while she was glad that no Ministry wizards ever sought her, she was desperate that some wizard would. Her wand had been taken from her; so had her owl, and she was now left without any way to contact the magical community. No one in the world except her knew that an innocent man had been imprisoned in Azkaban, and he would remain there until someone came to her...
Surely it would happen soon...surely, someone would question what they had seen happen...someone would still believe in Sirius...Dumbledore, Remus, anyone. Surely they would come to her, any day now...
But twelve years passed, and no one came.
Mathilde sat at home one night on a rainy evening, and found herself thinking about him again. There was always a little voice inside her head telling her she shouldn't, that it had been twelve years since she'd seen him, he wasn't coming back, and that it was unhealthy to keep thinking about him like this; she should get on with her life.
I have been getting on with my life, Mathilde thought, I do my concerts, I teach a few students I love my work. , She knew what the voice meant, though; Stop thinking about him. Find someone else.
She wasn't quite sure where this voice came from. It seemed like the sort of thing one of her friends would tell her...if she'd ever told any of her friends about Sirius. After all, what could she say? "The real reason I haven't dated anyone in twelve years is that my soul mate is locked away in a magical dungeon"? Well, some of her friends might think that she was speaking symbolically, put they'd still try to set her up with someone at every turn.
She knew she'd rather have her memories and be alone than be with someone else and trying to push these thoughts of Sirius out of her mind.
Some nights if hurt more than others. Tonight, it was the worst it had been in a long time, but she never pushed the pain away. It was bittersweet, and it warmed her heart at the same time it broke it to be reminded of Sirius at all. Right now, she was going over in her head the night she'd met him at behind the orchestra hall. This was one of many memories she'd preserved in her mind completely, memories that she browsed through every now and then as though they were pages in a scrapbook.
She found it helped her to have objects that reminded her of him, but these were precious few. She had her pendant, which she now never removed, she had the beautiful blue flowers, which she'd hung upside-down to dry them, and she had the glass unicorn she'd bought in London.
She'd been trying to practice this evening, but she couldn't. It was one of those times when nothing could distract her from her thoughts of Sirius. These thoughts consisted of the same things they'd always consisted of; reliving all of the time she'd spent with him, trying desperately to uncover any new detail of her memory that had lay forgotten since it had happened and , also, fantasizing about breaking into that awful prison and rescuing Sirius, or having him turn up on her doorstep, or somehow finding her way into the wizarding world and telling Remus and Dumbledore the truth at last.
Her thoughts made her feel so restless and powerless after a time that she needed a distraction from them. She had been pacing up and down her living room impatiently, but now she forced herself to sit down and turn on the television.
She half-watched a comedy program, her mind still humming away, for the millionth time, at the prospect of what might have happened if she'd written her letter to Dumbledore differently.
She watched the news. At a commercial break, she got up and headed into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, mostly because she desperately wanted some objects to fidget with.
"Police are on the search for a dangerous escaped convict today," the newsman was saying.
Mathilde dashed from the kitchen back into the living room in an instant
Oh, what if, what if? she thought, the way she always thought when watching reports of these kind. She didn't harbor any real hope, she knew, but she still liked to imagine.
For this reason, her heart almost stopped when she heard the man on the television say "Sirius Black".
For a moment, she didn't move, she didn't even breathe.
"The public is warned that Black is armed and extremely dangerous," the anchor was saying, but Mathilde barely heard it.
Her heart was beating so fast...she was shaking. A shriek of joy escaped her lips. Sirius was free!
Apparently the magical community had felt he was dangerous enough that the Muggles should be informed that he was at large. That was the only explanation Mathilde could come up with for why she should hear about his escape on the local news.
A hot line number was now flashing on the screen, and it made Mathilde smile. Did the Ministry really think that a bunch of Muggles could help them nab Sirius when he'd already escaped from Azkaban? Perhaps they didn't know that Sirius was an animagus, a fact that Mathilde was aware of; Sirius had told her all about the exploits of the Marauders when he was catching her up on her lost years at Hogwarts.
What if he was recaptured? Mathilde's heart skipped a beat at this thought, but she realized that even if Sirius was recaptured, there would be information about him left behind somewhere in the Muggle world, some police contact with a wizard somewhere, and she would find it, and she would find a way to contact the wizard world and clear his name.
And then, there was a picture of him on the television screen. Mathilde recognized him, but barely. It was more the expression on his face she recognized than the face itself. The eyes were definitely his, but the laughter was gone from them.
Mathilde felt the prickling of tears beginning to form in her own eyes. She knew what Azkaban was, and for years she had been tormented by the image of Sirius locked in its dark dungeons, alone except for his own miserable thoughts, the only sorts of thoughts and feelings the dementors would allow. The image before her eyes confirmed some of her worst fears, and it made her heart sick.
Where would he go? Where would he be now? Cold and alone, somewhere in the dark, in the rain, hiding, or running for his life? Please come to me, she willed, oh please, Sirius, come to me.
As if in answer to her prayers, she heard a knock at the door.